Ken Avidor
Minneapolis

Stadium owners want us to pay for their risk
Let me see if I’ve got this straight … the Twins and Vikings owners want new stadiums. The owners of these sports businesses want us to believe that we’ll all profit from these new buildings but for some strange reason don’t wish to do what real business people do and take the risk (and profit) for themselves.

I think most intelligent people that aren’t tied to politics understand this as a red flag. That’s probably why the franchise owners and their political friends needed to come up with some way to make these stadiums happen with public money, but without public approval.

I don’t believe a majority of the public favors paying for non-essential services at a time when our leaders are telling us we have no money to spend on services that are essential.

L. Hutchinson
Circle Pines

‘In Case You Missed It’ didn’t tell whole story
Please find enclosed two recent articles on the GMO issue, one from Pulse, [In Case You Missed It, “Human Genes Now Inserted into Rice Crops,” [April 20, 2005] and one from the Science News. I feel that these are, respectively, bad and good examples of science reporting. I am writing because I hope to convince you to take a broader view of science issues, including controversial ones.

We have some common ground. I suspect you would agree with me that corporations and great concentrations of wealth ought to be broken up. I further believe that patents and copyrights have become destructive to the progress of the arts and sciences, and should be abolished.

But I am a scientist, and I believe in the pursuit of knowledge. I also believe that science issues should be discussed in logical terms. For instance I think it is an error to equate “natural” with good, and “artificial” with bad. Snake venom is natural. Agriculture, vital as it is to our survival, is a profoundly artificial activity.

Whatever techniques we use will have consequences. Plowing to keep weeds down risks increased erosion. Any technique at all (including organic approved ones) will lead to selection for resistant traits in weeds and insects. It’s an ongoing battle. GMO, it can be argued, is another technique in that ongoing battle, and it may be an unavoidable technique if we are to feed nine billion people with the same (or less) arable land.

It isn’t possible to discuss the morality of agricultural techniques outside of the context of the current farming practices, fields and famine. We don’t have the luxury of enough land or topsoil to ignore the question of yields. Organic farming is not an option. It doesn’t have the yields to feed everyone with the land that we have. Wealthy countries can indulge this way. I buy some organic produce, but I do so with guilt, knowing that I am helping to take land out of production that could feed people.

I wish you could have heard Niels Borlaug—the Nobel Prize winner for his work on the “green revolution”—speak recently. Higher-yielding rice varieties helped India go from famines to food exports; of course, they have one of the worst rich/poor divides of anywhere, and they still let people starve—deliberately as I see it. Borlaug was scathing about the political situation in India. Still, it is important to distinguish that from the scientific issues.

United States yields have gone up by a factor of three since 1950. If we were trying to produce our current amount of food with the yields of 1950, we would need arable land equivalent to the entire surface area of the U.S., plus most of the land east of the Mississippi again. We couldn’t do it. And we would have to cut down all our forests trying. That’s a moral issue too.

In this context, I found the invocation of “cannibalism” in regard to human genes to be inappropriate. Humans and plants already share genes and protein—humans and mammals share more than 90 percent. So, by that logic, eating 11 ounces of steak is the equivalent to eating 10 ounces of someone’s leg? I hope to be more careful with logic.

I hope I have given you some ideas and I tried to avoid unnecessary provocations. I apologize if I have given offense.

Michael Welsh
St. Paul

Editor’s response:
Thank you, Mr. Welsh, for your thoughtful letter.

You are right that Science News—which I read regularly—contains more nuanced depictions of genetic engineering than our “In Case You Missed It” column, as they write full articles instead of briefs. Also, our briefs rarely contain original reporting, but are culled from other articles; in this case, the reference to cannibalism was from a quotation in the London Guardian.

Speaking personally, I agree that there is a case to be made for genetic engineering, and you bring up many good points. I would respond that the obesity in some nations and starvation in others is a problem with our economies, not our food—a point you said Borlaug also touched on. I would also say that many people have legitimate moral objections to the manipulation of human genes, no matter how much more efficient it would make our production.

Most importantly, however, we believe people should hear many sides of this debate and know about new developments—like human genes in food—that mainstream media do not widely report. We don’t have all the answers, but we can spur some debate.

Brian Kaller
Managing Editor