Denialism

The Plant Liberation Front

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by

Chris
in

Gautam Naik covers an interesting development in Switzerland. Scientists there must now justify the ethics of genetic research on plants:

Dr. Keller recently sought government permission to do a field trial of genetically modified wheat that has been bred to resist a fungus. He first had to debate the finer points of plant dignity with university ethicists. Then, in a written application to the government, he tried to explain why the planned trial wouldn’t “disturb the vital functions or lifestyle” of the plants. He eventually got the green light.

The rule, based on a constitutional amendment, came into being after the Swiss Parliament asked a panel of philosophers, lawyers, geneticists and theologians to establish the meaning of flora’s dignity.

The rule incorporates the idea that vegetation has an inherent value, and so pointless harm to flora is immoral. Genetic modification is allowed, but a key concern is whether such modifications protect the plant’s reproductive and adaptive ability.

Defenders of the law argue that it reflects a broader, progressive effort to protect the sanctity of living things. Last month, Switzerland granted new rights to all “social animals.” Prospective dog owners must take a four-hour course on pet care before they can buy a canine companion, while anglers must learn to catch fish humanely. Fish can’t be kept in aquariums that are transparent on all sides. The fish need some shelter. Nor can goldfish be flushed down a toilet to an inglorious end; they must first be anesthetized with special chemicals, and then killed.

And I can’t resist including this:

Dr. Keller in Zurich…wants to breed wheat that can resist powdery mildew. In lab experiments, Dr. Keller found that by transferring certain genes from barley to wheat, he could make the wheat resistant to disease.

When applying for a larger field trial, he ran into the thorny question of plant dignity. Plants don’t have a nervous system and probably can’t feel pain, but no one knows for sure. So Dr. Keller argued that by protecting wheat from fungus he was actually helping the plant, not violating its dignity — and helping society in the process.

One morning recently, he stood by a field near Zurich where the three-year trial with transgenic wheat is under way. His observations suggest that the transgenic wheat does well in the wild. Yet Dr. Keller’s troubles aren’t over.

In June, about 35 members of a group opposed to the genetic modification of crops, invaded the test field. Clad in white overalls and masks, they scythed and trampled the plants, causing plenty of damage.

“They just cut them,” says Dr. Keller, gesturing to wheat stumps left in the field. “Where’s the dignity in that?”

Comments

  1. Bob O’H

    Isn’t this old news? They even won the IgNobel Peace Prize for it.

    Also nice to see powdery mildew getting a mention. One of the beasts I used to work on.

    Reply
  2. jayh

    well apparently wackjobs are not all confined to the US!

    “Defenders of the law argue that it reflects a broader, progressive effort to protect the sanctity of living things”

    You gotta worry about the weasel word sanctity. It sort of means whatever you want it to mean. Sure it’s important to be concerned about environmental issues, but that can best be addressed by cold rational study of damage, without once resorting to “sancitity”

    As usual, when ever “ethics” comes up they are always sure to include theologians. How the hell does professing deep belief in fairy tales qualify one to make ehical dedcisons?

    Reply
  3. MKandefer

    “When applying for a larger field trial, he ran into the thorny question of plant dignity. Plants don’t have a nervous system and probably can’t feel pain, but no one knows for sure. So Dr. Keller argued that by protecting wheat from fungus he was actually helping the plant, not violating its dignity — and helping society in the process.”

    But now what will provide care for the fungus?

    Reply
  4. mufi

    Perhaps I’ve read too much environmental philosophy, but these just sound to me like applications of arguments in the old and on-going debate regarding the intrinsic vs. instrumental value of (non-human) nature.

    While I personally tend to fall on the side of the instrumentalists (for a variety of reasons, which are by no means independent of my emotions), I have to admit that I often blanch when I see beautiful landscapes being spoiled in the name of human progress or development.

    Unsurprisingly, it’s possible to go too far in either direction.

    Reply
  5. mufi

    PS: Having now read other comments, I feel obliged to state (what seemed obvious to me) that value (in an ethical or an aesthetic sense) is not an empirical question, notwithstanding the fact that its application to the real world is normally informed by real-world experience.

    In other words, a “cold rational study of damage” does not necessarily lead every individual (or even a majority of individuals) to the same conclusion regarding how we should (as opposed to how we, in fact, do) interact with (non-human) nature.*

    After all, this isn’t science (or even science-based medicine) we’re talking about here.

    * Note the famous is/ought, or fact/value, dichotomy here, made famous by Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume in the 18th Century, which still dominates formal ethical thought today.

    Reply
  6. Kagehi

    What, and you think examining the “dignity” of the plants will Mufi? As someone pointed out, one could have **just as easily** argued that making the wheat resistant to disease undermined the “dignity” of the damn disease. And I am sure there is some moron out there who **would have**. In the end, the entire argument is still, “Ah, that’s a nice little “, vs., “Kill it, kill it, I hate , so just kill it!”

    Its taking the cold rational examination of damage and cramming idiocy into the mix, so that some nitwit can come along who played too much Everquest, founded a church of Bertoxxulous, master of disease and plagues, and argue, **convincingly**, that making it harder for the damn blight to survive was endangering the diversity of species, making it harder for the thing to reproduce, and undermining “its” dignity too.

    In the end, we can try to limit our impact, but unless we want to sit in a damn cave someplace, afraid to even fart without “hurting” the environment somehow, humans have to look at “practicality”. This gibberish throws out that, and replaces it with idiocy on the par with PETA advocates claiming its OK for animals to eat people, but not for people to eat animals.

    Reply
  7. Michael Paul Goldenberg

    “In June, about 35 members of a group opposed to the genetic modification of crops, invaded the test field. Clad in white overalls and masks, they scythed and trampled the plants, causing plenty of damage.”

    No, you can’t make stuff like that up, can you? But of course, those particular nutjobs aren’t worried about the dignity or feelings of plants so much as their paranoid beliefs that genetically-altered plants will eventually rise up and eat us all. FEED ME, SEYMOUR!

    Reply
  8. mufi

    Lest my point get lost in Kahegi’s rant, I just want to make it clear that I don’t share the conclusions of the Swiss parliament, as portrayed in the article. In fact, as I suggested, I tend to evaluate non-human nature more in instrumental, rather than instrinsic, terms – although I’m aware of possible exceptions (which I suppose coincides somewhat with the biblical concept of wanton destruction – although it’s arguable that there is an instrumentalist urge lurking in that concept, as well, given longer-term considerations).

    But, in light of the fact/value dichotomy I mentioned earlier, I would not assume that the Swiss legislators and their informers are necessarily any less rational than we are. In fact, it is at least as likely that they are guilty of being overly rational; say, for having obsessed over abstract ethical principles arrived at over years of armchair study and debates, which are by now so divorced from human ethical intuitions as to seem absurd to anyone living outside of the Ivory Tower.

    Call that “nuts” if you like, but irrational it is probably not (unless, perhaps, we read some contingent set of emotional states into our definition of “reason.”)

    Reply
  9. Michael Paul Goldenberg

    But if you post the same comment three times running, you lose a lot of credibility, not to mention style-points.

    Reply
  10. mufi

    Lest my point get lost in Kahegi’s rant, I just want to make it clear that I don’t share the conclusions of the Swiss parliament, as portrayed in the article. In fact, as I suggested, I tend to evaluate non-human nature more in instrumental, rather than instrinsic, terms – although I’m aware of possible exceptions (which I suppose coincides somewhat with the biblical concept of wanton destruction – although it’s arguable that there is an instrumentalist urge lurking in that concept, as well, given longer-term considerations).

    But, in light of the fact/value dichotomy I mentioned earlier, I would not assume that the Swiss legislators and their informers are necessarily any less rational than we are. In fact, it is at least as likely that they are guilty of being overly rational; say, for having obsessed over abstract ethical principles arrived at over years of armchair study and debates, which are by now so divorced from human ethical intuitions as to seem absurd to anyone living outside of the Ivory Tower.

    Call that “nuts” if you like, but irrational it is probably not (unless, perhaps, we read some contingent set of emotional states into our definition of “reason.”)

    Reply
  11. mufi

    My apologies for the double-posting. (A poor interface combined with multi-tasking don’t work well together.)

    Reply
  12. PalMD

    It’s not you, it’s our blog. If it says it didn’t post, it really did. I got rid of your duplicates for you.

    Reply
  13. llewelly

    Er. Wow. Years ago, the Arrogant Worms wrote the hilarious song Carrot Juice Is Murder spoofing the crazy side of animal rights activism. Reality imitates parody. Almost like Gillette’s five-bladed razor.

    Reply
  14. The Chemist

    @Mufi yeah, something’s gone all sparky on SB, maybe a DOS. Just post your comment once, check to see if it appeared, and resend it only if it hasn’t.

    Regarding the topic at hand:

    I’m just going to call the whole thing ridiculous. Period. There’s not getting around it. Either man starves to death and preserves some inane and contrived holiness of existence, or we establish a reasonable balance based on sustainability.

    While I’m on the pro-choice side of the abortion issue, it strikes me as contradictory that the Swiss would do this and still permit abortion before the first trimester. Very weird.

    Reply
  15. Roger Sweeny

    While I’m on the pro-choice side of the abortion issue, it strikes me as contradictory that the Swiss would do this and still permit abortion before the first trimester.

    Religions often are contradictory, maybe especially when they pretend not to be religions. Any time you hear the word “sanctity,” religion is talking.

    Reply
  16. eddie

    I can’t help but worry about that poor powdery mildew. Going about it’s day, trying to make a living and along comes the labcoats with genocide in their hearts…

    Reply
  17. eddie

    Aaarrrggghhh!!!

    I meant to say ‘fungicide’. Joke is broken 🙁

    Reply
  18. Bob O’H

    eddie – most plant pathologists are actually more interested in the fungus than in destroying it. I know I was.

    Did you know that wheat mildew comes in two colours? Did you care?

    Reply
  19. Paper Hand

    Eddie: For what it’s worth, I think that the way you actually wrote it made the joke funnier, by the exaggeration of referring to killing a fungus as “genocide”

    Reply
  20. BruceK

    Didn’t Samuel Butler write about something like this in his novel ‘Erewhon’?

    I think that dates from the 1880’s!

    Reply
  21. Chris H.

    @BruceK, the best recent literary example (IMHO) is Roth’s American Pastoral, where the protagonist’s daughter becomes a Weatherman Underground bomber and eventually practices an ascetic, Jain-like religion where she won’t harm anything–even the bacteria living on her body.

    Reply
  22. Bjoern Brembs

    Didn’t read the original source: they really never even considered the dignity of powdery mildew? What kind of ethics experts are these bozos? Which brings me to the ethics of insecticide laced mosquito nets in malaria-stricken countries. Or the practice of meat inspection which has brought trichina worms to all but extinction. Lice and flees? Some of those are specialized human parasites and can’t survive without us. I could go on, but you get the gist.
    As I see it, the only logical and fully ethical action humans can take at this point is mass suicide of the entire human race. Everything else is just handwaving, self-serving hypocrisy.

    Reply
  23. Lilly de Lure

    Bjoern brembs said:

    As I see it, the only logical and fully ethical action humans can take at this point is mass suicide of the entire human race. Everything else is just handwaving, self-serving hypocrisy.

    Wouldn’t that be rather unfair to the fleas and lice you were talking about earlier? 😉

    Reply
  24. Dave

    I think something got lost in one of these comments; how could you possibly have an abortion *before* the first trimester?

    Reply
  25. Mike

    In the movie Notting Hill, didn’t Hugh Grant’s character go on a blind date with a fruitarian? I never could stop wondering how she actually survived….

    Reply
  26. DuWayne

    Dave –

    I recently did – and I’m a guy. I got my bits snipped and make no more swimmy sperms with which I could impregnate my partner (again). We have the sex pretty regularly (still with the damned condoms – I’m testing at nearly zero, but we really can’t afford any mistakes. Hell, just using the condoms and the spermicide with it qualifies.

    We have the sex, yet have proactively ensured that no living sperm will make contact with eggs. In the minds of a great many folks, if it doesn’t exactly qualify as an abortion, it is the next worse thing.

    Reply

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