North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>]

My thanks to Bill for mentioning the problem of the pro and anti GM 
emotions.  In my case, I happen to have read the story of they guy who was 
really big in the GM world, and developed the potatoes with the snowdrop 
lectin in them.  They safety tested them by feeding rats or mice on 3 
different diets:  ordinary potatoes, ordinary potatoes with the lectin 
extracted from snowdrops, and the new GM potatoes that made their own 
snowdrop lectin.  The first two groups did fine, as expected.  The third 
group had such terrible health problems, including if I remember correctly, 
malformations, that he decided that in artificial adding genes from one 
species to another, that one and one do not necessarily add up to two.  He 
called for more careful testing and some foot dragging till we know more. 
He was ridiculed and blackballed by the rest of the GM development and 
promotion world and has lost a lot of income and prestige for sticking to 
his guns.  Who then would you choose to believe on this subject?   Donna

P.S.  While we are on the subject of people who are ruined for saying bad 
things about big business, how much do you use your microwave?  There is 
another big scandal over some studies done in Switzerland that were 
suppressed.