Thursday, August 30, 2012

The Capitalist Tool On Synthetic Biology

Forbes published an article on August 29, 2012, warning the European Union ("EU") against excessive regulation of synthetic biology.  The article, entitled "Will Overregulation In Europe Stymie Synthetic Biology," cautions that
if the EU applies to synthetic biology its existing dysfunctional approach to genetic engineering, the former will join the latter in bypassing the continent and depriving its citizens of prodigious scientific, health and economic benefits.
The authors are Henry I. Miller, a fellow at the Stanford University Hoover Institute and the first Director of the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Biotechnology, and Drew Kershen, the Earl Sneed Centennial Professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Law and international authority on the law of genetically-modified agriculture.  The article cites my article "Planted Obsolescence:  Synagriculture and the Law," discussed earlier here on Lexvivo.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Diamond On Romney On Diamond

Mitt Romney, the presumptive 2012 Republican Party presidential candidate, recently invoked the scholarship of UCLA Professor Jared Diamond while visiting Israel.  On July 29, 2012, in a speech at a fundraiser in Jerusalem, he interpreted Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel as "basically say[ing that] the physical characteristics of the land account for the differences in the success of the people that live there."  Diamond, winner of Japan's Cosmos Prize, the National Science Medal, and the Pulitzer Prize, disagreed with this characterization of his work.  In an August 1, 2012, New York Times opinion-editorial entitled "Romney Hasn't Done His Homework," Professor Diamond pulled no punches, punctuating his critique of Romney's Weltanschauung with
Mitt Romney may become our next president.  Will he continue to espouse one-factor explanations for multicausal problems, and fail to understand history and the modern world?  If so, he will preside over a declining nation squandering its advantages of location and history.
One suspects that Romney may not win Diamond's vote come November.