Ewan R takes up the cudgels on genetic engineering:
If the western world would invest 1/100th of the amount it blows on new methods of killing people into transgenics developed by the public sector for specific small scale problems the world would likely be a far better place (and the requirement for the other 99/100ths of that arms budget would also probably fall off dramatically)
Not sure why he singles out the western world, but let that slide. To which James responds:
As I see it corporate research is a separate pot of money. If it doesn’t get spent on genetic engineering it’ll get spent on marker assisted breeding for similar traits in similar crops. If for some reason it couldn’t be spent on crop improvement at all, it’d probably be spent on… I don’t know… advertising. … [M]oney spent in commercial research isn’t at the expense of humanitarian projects so it isn’t (or shouldn’t be) begrudged. (And when/if nitrogen use efficiency and drought resistant traits make it to market they’ll be worth every penny of that price tag.)
Which neatly encapsulates several of the ideas swirling around. Ewan is probably right that 1% of the “death” budget would improve life for billions of people. And James is right that the many pots of money simply aren’t fungible. What strikes me is that these kinds of points are discussed at our level, but the high-ups just don’t seem interested. In my naiveté I’d have thought that world leaders, business titans and gung-ho philanthropists would be more interested in finding out whether different approaches to their concerns might in fact be worthwhile. I guess they have more important things to think about.
I guess perhaps singling out the western world was a little short sighted and perhaps prejudicial of me – it’s a fair point that a lot of 3rd world countries may well be a lot less 3rd world if they invested in infrastructure for peace rather than war… however I’m willing to bet that the spend of western countries on weapons and warfare dwarfs the spend of 3rd world countries to almost the point of insignificance.
I do however think I may have taken James’ stance somewhat the wrong way(or even completely the wrong way), I believe I had assumed that he was making the point the money was best spent on x rather than z, rather than the very good point he was making that if the quantity of money spent on x were equally to be spent on z that it is possible that it would do more good. (my default position on commercial GMOs tends to be pretty defensive, which may explain my misinterpretation a tad…)
I think there is a change in the wind right now – at least from the high ups in Monsanto (and a lot of people involved in the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation) which hopefully will build momentum and see the fruition of a lot of projects in the next decade or so – with the hope being that once GM solutions from a non-commercial background begin to become more widespread so will the acceptance of the technology.