"Waaaaaaah! Vielen Dank, Switzerland!! Finally, our time has come!! Say it loud, I'm green and I'm proud! This is a beautiful day for all cruciferous vegetables!"
Posted on 10/10/2008 1:17:28 PM PDT by SuperSonic
Who Is to Say Flora Don't Have Feelings? Figuring Out What Wheat Would Want
ZURICH -- For years, Swiss scientists have blithely created genetically modified rice, corn and apples. But did they ever stop to consider just how humiliating such experiments may be to plants?
That's a question they must now ask. Last spring, this small Alpine nation began mandating that geneticists conduct their research without trampling on a plant's dignity. [Beat Keller]
Beat Keller
"Unfortunately, we have to take it seriously," Beat Keller, a molecular biologist at the University of Zurich. "It's one more constraint on doing genetic research."
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.
"We couldn't start laughing and tell the government we're not going to do anything about it," says Markus Schefer, a member of the ethics panel and a professor of law at the University of Basel. "The constitution requires it."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
If you worry about what unlimited experimentation would do to cabbages, that’s OK: you can still cut off babies’ heads.
I wonder what these people eat? Or if the mow their lawns?
They're determined not to feel guilty about things that really ARE morally grotesque (no guilt for fornication, adultery, marriage-mangling divorces, walking out on kids, propagating diseases like AIDS via the affirmation of mass perversion) so there's all this accumulated guilt that's not attached to its proper objects.
So, what do they do with all the accumulated but unacknowledged guilt? They re-assign it. What do they really really feel guilty about? Ah: eating unborn soft-boiled chicken-babies. Taking milk from the moo-cows. Being a carbon-based life form. Tormenting vegetables.
That last turtle must be a doozy.
“Vegetable rights and Peace!”
After reading a story like this I think that anyone who sees the Swiss Franc as a safe haven currency should think again.
"Waaaaaaah! Vielen Dank, Switzerland!! Finally, our time has come!! Say it loud, I'm green and I'm proud! This is a beautiful day for all cruciferous vegetables!"
No fossil fuels, no biofuels. OK, what’s next, no nukes due to “Atom Rights”?
They won’t have any qualms about bulldozing and burning all the john birches. /old joke alert
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