New data issues

The accompanying editorial, headed " A victory in the battle against hunger " , said the news was " a cause for major congratulation " to the scientists involved, and for the decision to place their findings openly on the internet. Now here are some readers' responses: " I will never eat the crap. Are you out of your mind? " , " Sounds like 'cure for cancer has been found'. Big corps would not allow their markets demise, just like the 'cancer industry'! " , " GMO is a potential new plague brought about by mankind's greedy behaviour – birth control and reforms are the solution to overpopulation, not GMO. The EU should ban GMO forthwith " , " The words 'Play with the natural balance of nature at your peril' come to mind. It seems akin to taking a buzzsaw to a finely tuned ecosystem. Taking random cuts through the chain of life that binds us all " , " I am NOT for GMO foods because of the KNOWN mutations they cause to the HUMAN genome " , " And there they sit, the Uber-Rich patent holders, their backyards filled with totally resilient wheat, while the rest of the world, without the means to afford it, or even the means to save themselves from starvation, will die in the swamps of Mother Nature's own selective breeding program. " Even in the USA, which never experienced the European anti-GM furore, press coverage was followed by angry ripostes. " Scientists have published the first genome of wheat, an achievement that should benefit food security challenged by the Earth's population, climate change and emerging plant pasts, " the Discovery channel announced. " Scientists are too stupid to see the WHOLE picture of what this will do, " said one response, " It will only cause more intolerances, more digestive issues, more toxin accumulation in bowels (because the proteins which were easy to break down are now more 'resilient' to everything). " " Kiss wheat as we know it goodbye… Just like Monsanto Corp. There is no more natural soya, " said another. " I love science, but it's supposed to help us understand nature, not change it. " Misapprehensions maybe. Atypical perhaps. But the vox pop now available through the Internet on occasions of this sort provides sobering insights for scientists everywhere. In the final years of the last century, …