The philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It certainly seems that we have a very short memory in America. We are constantly searching for “wonder” materials. Wall Street gets excited by them, our government throws open regulatory doors to give them free reign, and corporations can’t wait to be first to market something new. Of course this is good business for PR firms and ad agencies and it gives journalists something to write about.
But have we forgotten about the human suffering and environmental damage from past miracles of science? What about asbestos? Remember DDT? And PCBs?
There is currently a hot debate over genetically modified (GM) seeds and produce. The government doesn’t require labeling of GM products, so the consumer has no way of identifying them. There is very little known about the long-term effects of the process of modifying cells with foreign DNA. We don’t know how it will affect our own DNA and we don’t know what the environmental effects will be. This is simply human and biological experimentation on an unprecedented scale.
Meanwhile, biotechnology has embarked on an even newer journey—nanotechnology. This involves the design and manipulation of materials at the atomic and molecular level.
If you think processed food is bad, we’re talking about food processing the likes of which we’ve never even imagined.
This is not to say that all new technology is bad. It isn’t inherently bad. The question is, how will it be used and will we prize human and environmental health over corporate profits?
As to how nanotechnology will be used, who knows? There are already over 700 nanotechnology products on the market and in the next four years nanotechnology will be generating $2.6 trillion in business.
As to priorities, the answer is that corporate profits trump human and environmental health yet again. There are no regulations requiring the safety of nanomaterials to be determined prior to commercial release. And there are no labeling requirements; so, just like GM food, you won’t know what nanoparticles you are wearing or putting on your skin or ingesting.
There has been a lot of press coverage and government talk about food safety recently. But none has focused on genetically modified food or growth hormones and antibiotics in meat, poultry and dairy products or the fast food/junk food that is at the root of the obesity and diabetes epidemic in this country. Meanwhile, we allow these corporate science people to play with our food on an atomic and molecular level—the equivalent of a biological atomic bomb. Where’s the safety in that?
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