109 Nobel Laureates sign a letter slamming Greenpeace.

[Lithos]

102. Thanks - it's a fun 4th of July

Hope you are having a good one as well...

First, please do not assume a false dilemma fallacy here. Because I say Monsanto is not out for the common good, it does not imply that I believe Monsanto is evil. Monsanto is a corporation - their goals are focused to making money.

Second, holding a science degree suggests absolutely nothing about someone's ethics or integrity or consistency. William Shockley (Nobel) was a racist; Kary Mullis (Nobel - Chemistry) is an AIDS denials; and James Watson (Nobel - DNA discovery) was both a racist and sexist. A friend of mine who I grew up with was head of the FDA with very impressive paper as a Doctor, but never practiced medicine nor has any clue how a real practice works.

Third, Monsanto does suffer from some very bad press as they are one of the faces of the modern agribusiness. I do recognize Monsanto is not *the* leading player here, but they still are probably the most brand-toxic. Perhaps unfair, but still they willingly entered into this arena.

However, Monsanto (and DuPont and other agri-businesses) have occasionally engaged in practices, which while lucrative, are not necessarily in the best interests of the world. Evil? No, but in some cases not necessarily something which should be condoned. Does the agribusiness industry, the associated chemical industry (and Monsanto who played in both arenas until selling off their chemical side) have a history of bad science? And by bad science, I mean science done without a fully understanding of the implications (which can take years in some cases). Absolutely, they do.

Examples from Monsanto which were considered good science at the time: DDT, Agent Orange, Dioxin, Bovine Growth Hormone.

It is this type of short term product which scares people. One example (non-Monsanto) is the Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis which plagued British beef supplies - because of short term interests which did not understand the bigger picture. But issues like this do affect views of what companies like Monsanto are doing.

The ethics of Monsanto are also rather interesting given that they did attempt to pull into play the 'terminator' seed (they acquired the company), but stopped the effort as it failed to work as hoped (for $$$ reasons, not ethics).

Back to the original piece about "golden rice". Ostensibly a very good project, but IMHO, it fails to frame the problem correctly. It is an expensive solution which fails to solve the real issue of food diversity. Rice itself is a water-intensive resource which does not translate well in the changing climate. It has been shown that there is far better effects fortifying existing foods and by adding additional crop diversity. The latter giving additional nutritional value than just Vitamin A.

Short summary - Monsanto, like many of the agribusinesses are in an industry which has very little watch dog oversight save for consumer opinion.