Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Plant Rights!




For the love of God. Anybody out there want to place bets on how long it will be before vegetarians starve to death? I discovered this article on FoxNEWS and I can't believe it! If I find any more information on the subject or find this information to be erroneous, I'll let you know. It seems too ridiculous to be true. What do you think?

It isn't just the rights of animals that some are promoting. The Weekly Standard reports an ethics panel in Switzerland is expressing concern that the arbitrary killing of plants is morally wrong. The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology says that humans cannot claim "absolute ownership" over plants; that "individual plants have an inherent worth," and that man may not use them as he pleases.

It cites a hypothetical example of a farmer "decapitating" wildflowers as expressing a moral stance toward the organism and possibly doing something bad to the flowers themselves.
One critic of the report says the concept of plant dignity provides what he called "another tool of opponents to argue against any form of plant biotechnology."

4 comments:

Jim said...

The idea that "individual plants have an inherent worth" is pretty laughable. There are great things that scientists can achieve with genetically modified plants.

There are some scary scenarios concerning genetically modified foods however. So, I hope they proceed with caution.

The first worry is the possibility of antibiotic resistance genes which were engineered into a genetically modified crop as "marker genes" managing to escape into humans, or elsewhere in the environment, in ways which would accelerate resistance to the current antibiotics.

Another worry is unintended consequences like rendering plants sterile and unable to reproduce. Obviously, if the world's crops are rendered sterile, we all die. Scientists have seen genetically modified plants, used to produce ethanol, render the soil sterile. It killed essential soil nutrients, robbing the soil of nitrogen and killed nitrogen capturing fungi. So, it's a legitimate worry.

But, I don't think we need ethics committees looking out for plants rights. LOL If corn, wheat and rice get wiped out, check back with me because it's possible I'll change my mind. LOL

VoteNovember2008 said...

Jim, all I can say is, "give me a break!" Have people completely lost their cotton pickin minds? If cotton pickin offends anyone, I am unapologetic, sorry! LOL

Jim said...

VN8 if you're going to chance offending, you might as well do it up right. They're called "Cotton-Picking Peckerwoods." LOL

VoteNovember2008 said...

Well, I've never heard that version! Thanks for keeping me informed!