Dear Editor:
I am amazed at the "Wisdom of Nature" perspective James Terrell took in his article, "Butterfly Marks Limit of Unintended Consequences." Nature has no wisdom. It has no great plan or perspective. It has no goals or hopes or intentions. Those things come with thought and sentience, and it takes a mind to set them in motion. Nature is a process that can sometimes result in sentient minds like our own. That genetic information cannot spread from a bacteria to a plant is not an intentional design that is sacred and sacrosanct, but the simple result of hundreds of millions of years of evolution making the reproductive strategies of plants and bacteria incompatible.
But the funny thing is that research like the Human Genome Project and similar efforts has shown that we have many genes in common with organisms vastly different from ourselves. While we are almost genetically identical to chimpanzees, the further away from primates that you move (taxonomically speaking) the less we have in common with other animals. But we still retain some similarities. Almost the entire set of nematode genes can be found in ours. That doesn't make us want to crawl through mud or give us the ability to reproduce with nematodes, but we do have something in common with them. And this is true throughout all life on this planet. We share genetic structures. Some life gets by with simple genes, but others make changes, improvements, and complications on simple ideas until they seem radically different.
Humans have been borrowing and altering genetic information defining our domesticated animals and crops (and even ourselves!) for centuries, although most of that time we were unwitting in our efforts; today a new technology exists that could allow us to far more precisely control this information to our benefit. The btMaize controversy revolves around the fact that the new corn can kill butterfly caterpillars. That sounds terrible. But consider this: what effect on those caterpillars do the sprayed pesticides that would be needed to protect normal corn have? The pollen from btMaize kills some monarch caterpillars in a given area. I bet the alternative pesticide would kill most if not all of those caterpillars in the same area. The new corn has a new genetic way of saying, "eat me, and I'll kill you." Neigboring plants will gain some benefit from this, and smart farmers might even surround their btMaize crops with other vulnerable crops to capitalize on btMaize's properties.
Mr. Terrell says he has a corn garden in his back yard. Isn't that nice? If everyone had backyards and time to plant, big agriculture wouldn't be necessary. But most people in western culture don't have that time or space. We are too busy being productive in other areas. Does a doctor have time to grow enough food to support his family? No. He pays other people to do that. And this leads to a need for the large, monolithic agriculture Mr. Terrell shallowly derides.
Modern practices put more food on the table than older techniques. In the 19th century, Thomas Malthus predicted that the expanding population of London would soon face starvation as the growing number of hungry mouths outstripped the capabilities of neighboring farmers to feed them. What he didn't reckon on was simple innovation. London would have starved, but the growing population produced more farmers, and better ways to tend crops.
"If man were meant to fly, he'd have wings," has been cried so many times whenever a new, strange idea comes to light! People like Terrell so wring their hands in worry about the ways innovation could go wrong that they lose all perspective on the far greater outcome of everything that goes right.
Michael DeLuca II
Blue Bell, PA
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