From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sun Mar 02 2003 - 09:42:56 MST
On Sun, Mar 02, 2003 at 07:57:25AM -0800, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> As I have made the argument that GM crops cannot be stopped -- anti-aging
> research cannot be stopped as well. As Spock so well observed in
> Star Trek II: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few... or
> the one". The "deathist" bioethicists will fail.
>
> My conclusion (and suggestion to Natasha) is that ExI should not focus
> too much energy on dealing with anti-stem-cell/cloning efforts. It
> is a question of inertia -- opinions in the U.S. or Europe are only
> going to have a limited impact on global inertia.
Yes and no. Just look what the EU stance on GM food has done to
people in Africa. By the combination of FUD about the safety and
an unwillingness to accept import if there is a slight chance of
"contamination" EU has been quite powerful in preventing the
usage of GMOs in Africa - including accepting US grain. In the
end, people suffer and die due to bad policies and bad memes.
While I think such hindrances will vanish in the long run, that
can be a very long run indeed. And the path there can be quite
bloody. So ignoring US and Europa opinions because they are not
ESS is a risky strategy if we want good things for ourselves and
others. Policies instituted by the most economically and
politically powerful nations and institutions have huge impacts,
and even if they will go the way of the Galileo trial they can
temporarily (like across our lifetime) hinder development
worldwide.
The right thing to do is to deal with the opinions here, and
promote our alternatives. It might not completely change the
biases here, but it might mean avoiding a future War on
Unacceptable Biotech by making the spectrum of possible views
broader and the debate more complex. It can also help make some
of the huge resources here available for investment elsewhere in
good research, if it is not acceptable here.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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