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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

> This cannot be a good thing:
>
> "Biotech farmers this week are lauding what they say is a milestone for the
> industry — the planting of the billionth acre of biotech seed. "
>
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/farm_scene

What, technology is moving too slowly for you? Have but a bit of patience; 
Monsanto is working hard to convert the world to its corporate image. 
Bioethics be damned, the revolving door between their head office and the 
FDA spins fast.

I myself suffer from the dis-ease of future-shock. I am highly concerned 
about what I put in my mouth and I care about soil and downwind pollution 
of organic acreages. Besides withdrawing to my personal piece of rural 
paradise and there being largely in control of my food and my life, I see 
little I can do about the Monsanto Monster and its ilk.

An article in the May-June 2005 issue of Utne Reader gave pause. The title 
is HUMANITY: The Remix; Is building a better human the key to utopia--or 
the world's most dangerous idea? The author is Alyssa Ford. While the 
article is about transhumanism, the parallel with food crop bioengineering 
is apparent.

"Today human intelligence, in the form of technology, is about to make 
possible the elimination of pain and lives filled with unimaginable 
pleasure and contentment, writes James Hughes, author of Citizen Cyborg: 
Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future 
(Westview, 2004). The former editor of a zine called EcoSocialist Review 
who teaches health policy at Trinity College in Connecticut, Hughes, 44, is 
executive director of the World Transhumanist Association. His goal, he 
says is to convince fellow liberals that a pro-technology, democratic form 
of transhumanism is the way of the 'Next Left.'"

"The movement's eccentric subchapters include the body-modification 
transhumanists, who have implanted silicon-based magnets under their skin 
to create a computer-human chimera effect. The Singularitarians believe 
we're heading for a genetic point of no return--the Singularity--when 
change in the species will be so great as to make us virtual gods."

"Transhumanists like Hughes dismiss what he calls 'bio-Luddite' concerns as 
just another case of future shock. At any major shift, they say, the 
change-fearing masses first rebel and then get over it. What's more, with 
our contact lenses, artificial heart valves, and cell phones, we are 
cyborgs already. Smallpox vaccine and anesthetics for childbirth pain were 
once both renounced as insults to God. How is Bush's effort to limit 
federal funding for stem cell research, and the wider crusade against 
cloning, any different?"

"Amid the debate over whether these powerful new tools should be 
controlled, or even can be, one thing is sure: If we ever find ourselves 
stepping into a posthuman future, it will be for all the usual human reasons."

Seems to me that the arguments over stem-cell research, cloning and genetic 
engineering may be moot. Humans have an insatiable desire, an instinct it 
seems, to explore new fields, to reach ever further, and, yes, to make life 
easier. Slothful creatures that we are, technology that promises 
more-better-faster is resisted only when it comes at us faster than we can 
assimilate.

I see no way technology can be stopped. The question is control. The issue 
is not if, but how fast.