FEATURE
Jai Ram (Jai Hind) Ramesh
Prof. B. M. Hegde,
hegdebm@gmail.com
It makes one feel good to know that there are some men in our government that have the guts to say no to a large multinational when the latter tries to make money at the cost of human future. Jai Ram Ramesh belongs to that class. May his tribe increase! It is not very easy when even the Indian business honchos were also backing the demand for introducing BT Brinjal in India. The business lobby has a point to make big money fast which is why they are in biotechnology business. Corporate business follows the only mantra of their mentor, Bernard Mandeville, Adam Smith’s teacher, who propounded the first law of corporate business thus. "The ONLY aim of corporate business is to make profit, irrespective of the consequences, as it is the duty of the corporate management to earn money for their stake holders. Philanthropy has no place in corporate business."
Most, if not all, ills of mankind are due to this greed of the corporate lobby which we see in abundance in the pharma lobby whose hold on the gullible public is complete, thanks to the vested interest media blitz on the wonders of modern hi-tech medicine and its benefits. The truth, however, is that the modern medical establishment is th
e leading cause of death in the advanced countries where audits are available. We do not have that kind of audit and as such are not aware of the danger. The debate going on in the media on BT Brinjal is very interesting and makes one feel that people keep worrying about problems which they have not been able to unravel fully.
Genetic engineering and human health:
I would like to know who was that scientist who found out that the conventional brinjal, egg plant; (Solanum melongena) is safe and good for human health while there are many other similar plants belonging to the solanceace family in the wild? It was the holistic science of our ancestors that worked with the observational science for thousands of years to evolve the edible substances science. In modern medicine we do not have a strong base for our nutritional science except the stolen data of the German army during the Second World War.
By genetically engineering the brinjal, we would have succeeded in many things in vitro, but what happens when human beings eat the new variety, the in vivo changes can never be predicted as there are so many imponderables inside the human system that determine the fate of that brinjal inside. That is called butterfly effect, first described by Edward Lorenz, the father of weather predictions model. All these models work wonders in the laboratory but not inside the non-linear human system. Evolution of the Bt Brinjal could bring out even a non-edible poisonous variety in due course, unbeknownst to the scientists and the consumers.
Science should only try to understand nature. Technology, on the other hand, wants to manipulate nature to make money. The scientists will never be able to predict what happens to these manipulative efforts. To give a good example let us study the Mendalian inheritance in man. Gregory Mendel and his followers were concentrating on the genes within the nucleus. They are called nuclear genes. But in nature there are very significant genes that remain outside the nucleus in the mitochondria of the cells. The mitochondrial genes have a bigger say in inheritance, disease and also healing. Total dependence on the Mendalian inheritance has been the bane of genetic engineering in human diseases. Recently, Douglas C Wallace, a geneticist, has been able to study the mitochondrial genes using his invention of a chip, MITCHIP, which has shown that all (every single) chemical molecules targeting a specific organ in medical pharmacology end up damaging the human cells resulting in the ghost of adverse drug reactions that kill millions. (Genetics 2008; 179: 727-735)
Using this analogy, I am sure Bt. Brinjal will be a curse on human health. When this country has many varieties of healthy, nutritious brinjals produced in India why, on earth, should we go in for this Bt Brinjal which could be dangerous. No short term reductionist study could reveal the dangers as it takes years to mutate and damage the human system by which time the damage will have been already done. I can understand if there is a life saving emergency we could accept it to save some one, but here is a situation where the need is minimal except the greed of the industry which is looking for making a fast buck!
Science is what scientists do:
Science, in the true sense, is only curiosity to understand this enigma, the world. True scientists do not bother about patenting their discoveries (lay people call it invention) but the present prevailing atmosphere every one is talking about patenting their findings. The Patent Law is meant for those that want to make money. How does one discover any new idea? The thought which comes to us is a kind of energy which has come to us from without. Where did it come from and how did one get it at that point in time? Why does one get a new thought can never be answered in our present science but how does one get a thought has undergone scientific scrutiny. Every single thought is a transferred entity from some source, may be far, far away.
That source is not known to us at this point in time. Physics knows up to the last bit of an atom, the lepto-quark. But physics does not know where did the lepto-quark come from? Energy and matter are interchangeable at the sub-atomic level (E=M), the so called a-duality of Hans Peter Duerr. There were three physicists from Cambridge that came to India in the beginning of last century, Edwin Babbitt, Annie Besant, and Charles Leadbeater. They became yogis here and were getting into yogic Siddhi state. On one such occasion they could visualize the inside of an atom of nine elements from Hydrogen to Helium. Interestingly, they could visualize the last bit of an atom (present lepto-quark) seem to flow from an ethereal world, a world beyond ours! The present super string theory in physics fits the bill correctly there. Annie Besant and Leadbeater have written up all these in their book Occult Chemistry published by the Oxford University Press in Madras in 1920.
In short, a scientist, if he is lucky to get a new thought (worth a Nobel) he does not own it to claim the Nobel. The owner is nature. The process of a thought coming falls under the new physics of teleportation. Man, proud man, do not claim credit for your self. But we mortals are deluded so much that we think we run this world using our technology. Some even go to the extent of saying that it is technology that will take mankind forwards. It is true that the technological inventions have made life look comfortable. If one studies a recent scientific audit done from 28 scientific papers (Meta analysis) one realises that the cell phone, a new invention, has been able to increase the incidence of brain cancer exponentially, especially when used for prolonged periods of time! Younger generation beware!! Of course, there are enough small, studies, commissioned by the cell phone companies, which show the cell phone to be safe!!! Remember what Richard Feynman, a physics Nobel, wrote about technology: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." It is very sad that we lost thousands of crores of precious money in our Moon Mission which eventually failed. That money could have instead fed the 67 million hungry mouths of children in India who die daily of NIDS (Nutritional Immune Deficiency Syndrome). A French Nobel laureate had recently stated that moon is not worth going after! But our astronomers cooked up a big story about the great Moon Mission.
Karl Popper had warned us a long time ago that: "The wrong view of science betrays itself in the craving to be right; for it is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and reckless critical quest for truth. Looking at what the BT Brinjal lobby is doing reminds me of what Aldus Huxley said about this world, "maybe this world is another planet’s hell."
Conclusion:
Our democracy, for all its short comings, seems to be alive still and has not committed suicide as many other democracies have done. Even the United States seems to have committed a democratic suicide. John Adams, the second President of the USA had this to say: "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." I think it was Roosevelt who wrote that "No American President ever runs the country. The back room boys of the Multinational Corporations have taken over that job a long time ago." Bob Hope added a rejoinder there too: "All those who know how to run the US government are either driving taxis or cutting hair."!
It is good that Jai Ram (Jai Hind) Ramesh did not allow that to happen here yet. No reductionist scientific study based on linear laws would reveal the real long term dangers of genetically engineered food stuffs. It takes hundreds of years of observational studies which are not feasible in this set up. Why not rely on our age old observational studies and eat what we have been eating all along? Let us be wiser to learn from others’ mistakes and not wait to make those mistakes ourselves before learning the lesson. Jai Hind.
Prof. B. M. Hegde,
hegdebm@gmail.com
It makes one feel good to know that there are some men in our government that have the guts to say no to a large multinational when the latter tries to make money at the cost of human future. Jai Ram Ramesh belongs to that class. May his tribe increase! It is not very easy when even the Indian business honchos were also backing the demand for introducing BT Brinjal in India. The business lobby has a point to make big money fast which is why they are in biotechnology business. Corporate business follows the only mantra of their mentor, Bernard Mandeville, Adam Smith’s teacher, who propounded the first law of corporate business thus. "The ONLY aim of corporate business is to make profit, irrespective of the consequences, as it is the duty of the corporate management to earn money for their stake holders. Philanthropy has no place in corporate business."
Most, if not all, ills of mankind are due to this greed of the corporate lobby which we see in abundance in the pharma lobby whose hold on the gullible public is complete, thanks to the vested interest media blitz on the wonders of modern hi-tech medicine and its benefits. The truth, however, is that the modern medical establishment is th
e leading cause of death in the advanced countries where audits are available. We do not have that kind of audit and as such are not aware of the danger. The debate going on in the media on BT Brinjal is very interesting and makes one feel that people keep worrying about problems which they have not been able to unravel fully.Genetic engineering and human health:
I would like to know who was that scientist who found out that the conventional brinjal, egg plant; (Solanum melongena) is safe and good for human health while there are many other similar plants belonging to the solanceace family in the wild? It was the holistic science of our ancestors that worked with the observational science for thousands of years to evolve the edible substances science. In modern medicine we do not have a strong base for our nutritional science except the stolen data of the German army during the Second World War.
By genetically engineering the brinjal, we would have succeeded in many things in vitro, but what happens when human beings eat the new variety, the in vivo changes can never be predicted as there are so many imponderables inside the human system that determine the fate of that brinjal inside. That is called butterfly effect, first described by Edward Lorenz, the father of weather predictions model. All these models work wonders in the laboratory but not inside the non-linear human system. Evolution of the Bt Brinjal could bring out even a non-edible poisonous variety in due course, unbeknownst to the scientists and the consumers.
Science should only try to understand nature. Technology, on the other hand, wants to manipulate nature to make money. The scientists will never be able to predict what happens to these manipulative efforts. To give a good example let us study the Mendalian inheritance in man. Gregory Mendel and his followers were concentrating on the genes within the nucleus. They are called nuclear genes. But in nature there are very significant genes that remain outside the nucleus in the mitochondria of the cells. The mitochondrial genes have a bigger say in inheritance, disease and also healing. Total dependence on the Mendalian inheritance has been the bane of genetic engineering in human diseases. Recently, Douglas C Wallace, a geneticist, has been able to study the mitochondrial genes using his invention of a chip, MITCHIP, which has shown that all (every single) chemical molecules targeting a specific organ in medical pharmacology end up damaging the human cells resulting in the ghost of adverse drug reactions that kill millions. (Genetics 2008; 179: 727-735)
Using this analogy, I am sure Bt. Brinjal will be a curse on human health. When this country has many varieties of healthy, nutritious brinjals produced in India why, on earth, should we go in for this Bt Brinjal which could be dangerous. No short term reductionist study could reveal the dangers as it takes years to mutate and damage the human system by which time the damage will have been already done. I can understand if there is a life saving emergency we could accept it to save some one, but here is a situation where the need is minimal except the greed of the industry which is looking for making a fast buck!
Science is what scientists do:
Science, in the true sense, is only curiosity to understand this enigma, the world. True scientists do not bother about patenting their discoveries (lay people call it invention) but the present prevailing atmosphere every one is talking about patenting their findings. The Patent Law is meant for those that want to make money. How does one discover any new idea? The thought which comes to us is a kind of energy which has come to us from without. Where did it come from and how did one get it at that point in time? Why does one get a new thought can never be answered in our present science but how does one get a thought has undergone scientific scrutiny. Every single thought is a transferred entity from some source, may be far, far away.
That source is not known to us at this point in time. Physics knows up to the last bit of an atom, the lepto-quark. But physics does not know where did the lepto-quark come from? Energy and matter are interchangeable at the sub-atomic level (E=M), the so called a-duality of Hans Peter Duerr. There were three physicists from Cambridge that came to India in the beginning of last century, Edwin Babbitt, Annie Besant, and Charles Leadbeater. They became yogis here and were getting into yogic Siddhi state. On one such occasion they could visualize the inside of an atom of nine elements from Hydrogen to Helium. Interestingly, they could visualize the last bit of an atom (present lepto-quark) seem to flow from an ethereal world, a world beyond ours! The present super string theory in physics fits the bill correctly there. Annie Besant and Leadbeater have written up all these in their book Occult Chemistry published by the Oxford University Press in Madras in 1920.
In short, a scientist, if he is lucky to get a new thought (worth a Nobel) he does not own it to claim the Nobel. The owner is nature. The process of a thought coming falls under the new physics of teleportation. Man, proud man, do not claim credit for your self. But we mortals are deluded so much that we think we run this world using our technology. Some even go to the extent of saying that it is technology that will take mankind forwards. It is true that the technological inventions have made life look comfortable. If one studies a recent scientific audit done from 28 scientific papers (Meta analysis) one realises that the cell phone, a new invention, has been able to increase the incidence of brain cancer exponentially, especially when used for prolonged periods of time! Younger generation beware!! Of course, there are enough small, studies, commissioned by the cell phone companies, which show the cell phone to be safe!!! Remember what Richard Feynman, a physics Nobel, wrote about technology: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." It is very sad that we lost thousands of crores of precious money in our Moon Mission which eventually failed. That money could have instead fed the 67 million hungry mouths of children in India who die daily of NIDS (Nutritional Immune Deficiency Syndrome). A French Nobel laureate had recently stated that moon is not worth going after! But our astronomers cooked up a big story about the great Moon Mission.
Karl Popper had warned us a long time ago that: "The wrong view of science betrays itself in the craving to be right; for it is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and reckless critical quest for truth. Looking at what the BT Brinjal lobby is doing reminds me of what Aldus Huxley said about this world, "maybe this world is another planet’s hell."
Conclusion:
Our democracy, for all its short comings, seems to be alive still and has not committed suicide as many other democracies have done. Even the United States seems to have committed a democratic suicide. John Adams, the second President of the USA had this to say: "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." I think it was Roosevelt who wrote that "No American President ever runs the country. The back room boys of the Multinational Corporations have taken over that job a long time ago." Bob Hope added a rejoinder there too: "All those who know how to run the US government are either driving taxis or cutting hair."!
It is good that Jai Ram (Jai Hind) Ramesh did not allow that to happen here yet. No reductionist scientific study based on linear laws would reveal the real long term dangers of genetically engineered food stuffs. It takes hundreds of years of observational studies which are not feasible in this set up. Why not rely on our age old observational studies and eat what we have been eating all along? Let us be wiser to learn from others’ mistakes and not wait to make those mistakes ourselves before learning the lesson. Jai Hind.
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