Volume 48, Number 10 · June 21, 2001
Genes in the Food!
By Richard C. Lewontin
The Ecological Risks ofEngineered Crops
Jane Rissler and Margaret Mellon
MIT Press, 168 pp., $19.95 (paper)
Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply
Vandana Shiva
South End Press, 140 pp., $14.00 (paper)
Pandora's Picnic Basket: The Potential and Hazards of Genetically Modified Foods
Alan McHughen
Oxford University Press, 277 pp., $25.00
Genetically Modified Pest-Protected Plants: Science and Regulation
a report by the Committee on Genetically Modified Pest-Protected Plants, Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources, National Research Council
National Academy Press, 263 pp., $44.95
If the nineteen recent books and fifteen-pound stack of articles that confront me as I write are any measure, then nothing is more productive of food for thought than thoughts about the production of food. The introduction of methods of genetic engineering into agriculture has caused a public reaction in Europe and North America that is unequaled in the history of technology. Not even the disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were sufficient to produce such heavy and effective political pressure to prohibit or further regulate a technology, despite the evident fact that uncontained radioactivity has caused the sickness and death of very large numbers of people, while the dangers of genetically engineered food remain hypothetical.
Review, 6092 words
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