Christians Listen to Modern Day Parable About Genetically Modified Good and Evil:

U.S. Holy See embassy wades into genetically modified crops debate
25.oct.06
National Catholic Register via Agnet
Edward Pentin
ROME — As part of its ongoing efforts to stimulate debate about genetically modified organisms, the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See invited three American professors to Rome on Oct. 5-6, to present eight years of research on genetically modified organism (GMO) crops and their effect on farmers, industry and the environment.
The story says that a network of Christian and environmentalist groups recently spearheaded a campaign warning of “Terminator Technology” (genetically modified seeds that could be programmed to die and so protect intellectual property rights of the corporations that engineer the seeds).s
The story also says that in September, the non-profit Public Patent Foundation filed a formal request for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to revoke patents issued to one biotech multinational, St. Louis-based Monsanto. The foundation alleges that Monsanto is using the biotech patents “to harass, intimidate, sue — and in many cases bankrupt — American farmers.”
For its part, the Vatican has expressed awareness of the technology’s great potential in reducing hunger, but has offered no definitive judgments on its use.
Pope Benedict XVI has not spoken on the issue, and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences have advised scientists to “proceed with caution.”
The three professors who spoke this month in Rome offered some compelling arguments about the merits of genetically modified organisms. Between 1996 and 2004, the researchers found substantial net economic benefits at the farm level amounting to a total of $27 billion.
The technology had also reduced pesticide spraying by 380,000,000 pounds and significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture — the equivalent, the researchers said, of removing five million cars from the roads.
Furthermore, none of the professors had come across a single case of negative health effects on human beings from using or consuming the genetically altered products.
The story says that all three academics were former Peace Corps volunteers whose research focused on the humanitarian aspects of GMO science. And all three said they had no direct ties to biotech multinationals, although one does belong to an organization that receives some funding from Monsanto.
Professor Greg Taxler, an Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology lecturer at Auburn University in Alabama, was quoted as saying, "We’re just public sector employees. We usually like to run these things down, run them to the ground."
The professors advocated more genetically modified organism research targeted towards developing countries and the small-seed market, and more public-sector investment in biotechnology research.
Apart from a few government-directed projects, most commercial genetically modified organism products are sold by Monsanto and three other multinationals.
But the researchers debunked the claim, often made by anti-GMO campaigners, that profiteering multinationals make poor rural farmers dependent on genetically modified seeds that aren’t beneficial to the farmers.
These “paternalistic” arguments imply that farmers are not clever enough to be able to discern the advantages of one crop from another, the researchers said.This “misinformation” — particularly prevalent among European environmentalist groups — prevents farmers in developing countries from being able to make good choices because propaganda has caused some regulators in developing countries to prohibit genetically modified organism products.
Professor Lawrence Kent, director of International Programs at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, was quoted as saying, "The regulators always tend to say No, but in the meantime agricultural productivity goes down, poverty goes up, and people aren’t finding a solution."
Particularly frustrating for Prof. Kent is that his organization has teamed up with biotech multinational Monsanto to offer free modified seeds to poor farmers, but many African governments won’t look at them.
Carl Pray, professor of agricultural food and resource economics at Rutgers University in New Jersey, cited documentation of genetically modified organisms from China that actually showed a “dramatic” drop in nausea and signs of pesticide poisoning when farmers used genetically modified crops that contain their own internal pesticide mechanism.