OK, I am pissed off with the slack-jawed,
Daily Mail reading idiots who populate this country, as always. And the spectacularly clueless
media. Here's why : In recent times, people have started to use the imbecilic phrase "
perhaps science doesn't hold all the answers". Now, this is a cool premise for a
45 minute syndicated TV show, but if you start attempting to apply it to your
healthcare preferences, you'd just better hope you don't get hit by a fucking bus. Or get a
real disease. Because no amount of
acupuncture or
tiny, expensive labelled bottles of tap water are going to help you then.
Worse than the knuckle-headed acceptance of
alternative(s to) medicine is the attitude toward
genetic modification of
food organisms, and genetics in general, even. The last straw was seeing a poster for
The Science Museum (yes, the
Fucking Science Museum) which contained the blurb :
"Cloning : How is it done? What are the implications? And is it right?"
Jesus Fucking Christ. How about rephrasing the question : "Finding a cure for cancer and terminal diseases : Ooh, is it right?" Don't be such pussies, come out of the lab and brandish your monkey forceps with pride, you're a scientist. Dammit, man, A SCIENTIST! BE PROUD! It's the fucking political-correctness nutjobs that are the real villains.
OK, just so's you know, this is a rant rather than a totally rationalised argument. I think that an anti-GM stance is a rational one, provided that you express it through proper channels of debate, and at least accept that GM has the potential to benefit people as well as possible dangers. Going and ripping up crops is stupid and wasteful, at best. Science doesn't hold all the answers / any of the answers, but I think that people interpretting this as meaning "new-age mumbo jumbo and alternative medicine are as valid as science" are wrong, and nudging us closer to the
Dark Ages. Although, with any luck this is just a fad.
Question everything. Basically, full kudos to
Pseudomancer and
Halcyon&On for actually saying what I was trying to say a bit better than I did. The total rant mode that I engaged in to make this point was a deliberate reaction to the very, very annoying groundswell of middle-class opinion that
Science == Evil. And the unchallenged proliferation of
medical ethics committees that are an unelected, unaccountable obstacle for legitimate medical research, made up of right-wing Lords, whose only interest in the issues they have power of veto over is that they recieve a fat (five/six figure) pay cheque every six months for turning up.