A Visit to New York City and Other News

We all have times when one becomes so busy with everything that the more superfluous details fall by the wayside.  So it is with this journal, as I prefer to think of it; but regardless it is time to share recent news.

First and foremost, something that came to my attention:  we are in general supposed to be reacting to articles from the New York Times, but news has reached me that I believe is far more important than anything the Times has written today (unless they too have written something about it).  The issue concerns food.  Apparently, the FDA is planning to approve genetically engineered and cloned organisms as foodstuffs (right now the issue on the table is genetically altered fish), and they will not even require labels to be put on these foodstuffs warning the public of their potential poison.

Yes, poison.  I am an artist/artisan, it is true; I am in an art program.  But what many people do not realize is that I am also a scientist.  I have a fascination with biology in particular.  It is not official, but the interest is there, and I can tell you that I know enough about biology to know that no human being, however brilliant, is a match for nature.  We have no business genetically altering anything, be it flower, fish, tomato, or tree.  It is one thing to breed one animal (or pea plant) with another to bring out the desired traits - it is quite another to tear into an organism's genetic code amd violate it by forcibly inserting the genes of, say, a jellyfish, into a chimpanzee!  Or a more important issue is, currently, the creation of 'natural' pesticides.  Natural, that is, by taking the genes that make a tomato plant's leaves and shoots toxic and inserting them into other plants.  Food plants,  Only one animal can eat a tomato plant and not die - the tomato horn-worm.  Human beings can be killed by the poison.  Indeed, it is only recently that humans realized that we could eat the tomato fruit without dying.  Genetic engineering is a very serious issue, partially because there is no way we can predict the results (as much as scientists boast, we really have no idea how genes work and how interconnected they are), and what is more, those who perform this kind of alteration often think only of the supposed beneifts, and rarely (if ever) of the negatives.

So what shall we do about the FDA's decision to allow this?  Stop them in their tracks, I say.  At least we must make the attempt.  They are obligated to listen to us, for we are the country's citizens.  If they, once again, ignore what we as a people desire, then that is a whole other issue.  But at the least we can make the attempt.

Here is how to do your part: write to your representatives and tell them to block these fish from our markets.  Perhaps the easiest way to go about this is by following this link.
http://cfs.convio.net/site/Advocacy?s_oo=trNsbK4-VJ0Gosr6PxW99Q..&id=365