Read how a noted scientist from the U. of Washington in Seattle views the power of the academic-industrial complex to distort the public's understanding of biotechnology in favor of simplistic notions about GMO crops.
The central dogma of GE is this image of the genome as a Lego set, where you can take out the green one and put in a red one. In reality, however, the genome is highly fluid and the parts interact. The Lego model is quite wrong, yet it’s used constantly in public discourse, regulatory submissions, and legislative testimony. Biologists know how the genome actually works, but advancement in the profession rules out of play such subjects of discourse because they would challenge the positions taken by industry funders. Scientists who wish to break that boundary, either by scientific experimentation or by public writings, have largely been isolated and marginalized by the wealthy and the powerful within the academic-industrial complex....Food production is another area where the capitalist system has brought profits to a few while having devastating effects on huge numbers of people. Here we see it in terms of nutrition and adequate calories, local farming economies, and migration into city slums and across borders.
The larger farmers can afford the mechanization, and the smaller ones get wiped out. Cities are growing exponentially in developing countries, and becoming ungovernable hotbeds of unemployment and crime. Nairobi doesn’t need more people coming in from the countryside looking for jobs. This poses a threat to public health, while the monoculture of the farms is a threat to food security.
