"All genes interact to some degree, and traits that are strongly influenced by several genes working together will stand as a barrier to the gene splicer. Some traits . . . are affected by many hormones, including episodal ones that are present for short periods of time in low concentrations." [Consider the unknown effects of multiple industrial chemicals that behave like hormones.]
Because many people are becoming "increasingly suspicious of the health and safety of their industrial chemicals". . . Monsanto is "turning away from the single molecule approach to the single gene approach. But have they learned the lesson of Darwin as they turn to the employment of biotechnologies?"
Questioned about the number of ecologists in their employ, Monsanto responded with silence. They had none. "Monsanto is a chemical company and biotechnologists of the modern stripe emerged enamored of chemistry more than biology, let alone evolutionary biology."
Monsanto has begun to address the poisonous effects of chemicals on people and ecosystems, yet are ignoring that "the genome is a miniature ecosystem. The genes within the genome interact with one another and collectively interact with the environment . . . the architecture of the genome results from the context of the history of gene-carrying predecessors in times past."
"At the level we are talking about the world is grossly unknown, indeed unknowable. So much is subtle; so much is small effect. The multicellular life forms that have survived to the present feature gene assemblies with small effects."
But biotech companies seek to transfer and patent genes that have big effects which they can market. The genome attempts to "absorb the shock of an alien gene" but in making the adjustment the genome compromises its functions. Such compromises eventually result in the organism's dependency on further human technological input.
"Corporate disrupters . . . create problems for which they will sell future bandaid equivalents as solutions to a broader systemic disorder ... In such a manner capitalism expands its markets."
"The introduction of alien genes will likely yield only short-term benefits . . . such genes eventually respond as though 'tar has been smeared over them.'" The genome shifts.to isolate and inhibit the alien genes. But "we are compromising the self-regulating resilience of a nano-ecosystem by forcing that system, meaning the genome, to adjust its architecture."
"The economic benefits of the architecture of the genome can never be calculated. The harm from the wholesale employment of the new forms of biotechnology will come in the threat to the very architecture of the genomes of our major crops.
The clear cutting of forests and replacing them with monocultures unravels the ecology and diminishes the ecosystems services to such a degree "that we in one way or another say Uh-oh!"
Biotechnology deals "aggressively with evolution at the smallest level on the biological scale." Biologists appreciate the need to respect the ecology of forest or prairie but "lack adequate appreciation for ecological integrity at the genome level." We "still know only to a very small degree the interaction of DNA with its products and other components within the cell, "Clear cutting at the molecular level . . . will force future geneticists to study the exits none of which are likely to be painless." (Wes Jackson, The Land Report, Fall 1999)
The study of black holes exemplifies two truths of science. First, today's scientific accuracy will be proved wrong in the future. Second, science advances by being willing to be proved wrong.
Faith is also required. Who has seen black holes, electrons, protons, neutrinos or quarks? We assume their existence through experimental evidence. Consider the electron; is it a particle, a wave or a cloud-like energy field? No one knows. [Mystery thrives!] (Discover, 7-2002)
The vast amount of interstellar space is "fantastically empty." Nothing there. Gravity concentrates matter which then seems dense compared to outer space. In each of your fingertips are a trillion trillion atoms.
Yet each fingertip contains vast expanses of nothing. 99.995 percent of each atom's mass is in the nucleus, composed of protons and neutrons. "If a typical atom were the size of a football field, the nucleus would be a grain of salt at midfield. A cloud of electrons marks the atom's outer bounds; the rest is void."
"Although you may feel solid, you are mostly emptiness." Same for all solid objects. Why can't we walk through walls? Negatively charged electrons in the wall repel negatively charged electrons in your body. [Maybe]
The Crab pulsar, a collapsed star in the Crab nebula, lost its "nothingness" becoming "an atomic nucleus 10 miles wide." Similarly compacted, the entire universe would be a ball smaller than Mar's orbit. "So ultimately, we owe our lives to nothing." (Discover, 7-2002)