Thursday, November 20, 2003

ANTI-PROGRESS CORRECTNESS

Michelle Malkin writes (Excerpts):

They are bomb-throwing Birkenstock brats. Wolves in hemp clothing. Enemies of scientific progress. Inveterate haters of humanity. They are environmental extremists and animal rights zealots. They are running loose. And they are endangering us all. of a sustained campaign of intimidation, harassment and violence by anti-science thugs.

No one was hurt in the northern California attacks, but the bomb blasts struck terror in researchers at both

The national press, which has put a happy green face on the environmental movement for three decades, has largely ignored a recent rising tide of violence being waged by eco-nuts across the country -- and around the world.

What's at stake? While aspiring terrorists with tofu breath build nail bombs and play with matches, the best and brightest scientists around the world are forging miraculous breakthroughs that will benefit all mankind -- and especially the poor in underdeveloped nations that the leftists and Luddites claim to care about so much. Science journalist Michael Fumento comprehensively documents such stunning developments in his eye-opening new book, oevolution: How Biotechnology Is Changing Our World."s an invaluable antidote to the irrational hysteria of eco-terrorists. Fumento reports on how agricultural biotech researchers are refining methods of pumping up protein levels in corn, boosting vitamin levels in a wide variety of crops, making crops resistant to the cold, and finding ways to accelerate the growth of cotton, potatoes and tomatoes. They've developed a process called "gene silencing" to fight bacterial diseases that can devastate fruit and nut harvests and have even come up with a potato plant that glows green when it's thirsty.

The same technology that is producing miracle crops is producing miracle medicines to improve human health and longevity. Biotech is also being used to tackle toxic waste, reduce lead contamination and clean up sewage systems. But in the minds of the technophobes, the only politically correct way to cure disease is to wear red-string bracelets, eat organically grown ginger and pray to Gaia. The only environmentally acceptable way to improve the earth is to compost banana peels and recycle soy milk cartons. And the only morally tolerable way to use modern technology -- e.g., the Internet -- is to use it to preach violence and destroy the progress of others.

With each new scientific breakthrough, the anti-biotech militants have grown more desperate and reckless. "Ultimately," Fumento writes, "only two things can defeat such negativism. One is education; the other is the products themselves." There is a third force: the voices of biotech's myriad beneficiaries, from the cancer patients whose lives have been saved by Gleevec to the Third World consumers of golden rice.

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