[extropy-chat] Most Outrageous Anti-Biotech Statements

Mike Lorrey mlorrey at yahoo.com
Mon Jan 5 06:47:06 UTC 2004


"All of Medieval Europe was organized collectively. Sustainable
agriculture. Generation after generation, the serfs, the landlords,
they farmed the same lands, trod the same path, and they organized
themselves communally in order to sustain their existence. It may not
have been the best of all possible worlds, but it was a sustainable
form of life for six centuries." - Jeremy Rifkin,
http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/rifkin.html

Other quotes of The Jeremy:
"The ozone hole is now so gaping, we are being subjected to massive
doses of ultraviolet radiation, millions of additional skin cancers ...
our immune systems and all the other creatures on the chain, are so
compromised, read the paper this morning, so compromised from the UV,
that we are now prone to traditional diseases we had eradicated long
ago, and a whole new host of diseases that cross species boundaries, to
which we know no antidote or cure." 

"These crises cannot be dealt with or addressed until we are willing to
do battle with the world view that gave rise to them."

"Efficiency. How important is that? ...Efficiency is the prescription
for disaster for this Earth. Efficiency is destroying the planet."

Also:
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/headline_detail.cfm?HEADLINE_ID=2239

Quotes by Jerry Mander:
"I do not tell do-gooders or other people working on Public Media
Center activities not to use television. What I say is that we should
have no television at all. The same could be said of computers. I argue
that life would be better, power systems would be more egalitarian, we
would have a more even playing field in terms of information flow, and
our media would be more democratic, if there were no television. We'd
also have a less-alienated population, less pacified, less inundated by
other people's imageries. But I also recognize that you can't just
remove television and keep everything else in place. It's the nervous
system of the technological machine. It's part of a very integrated
system, so we have to talk about all of technology when we talk about
television." 

"Corporations will advertise whatever isn't true because if it were
true they wouldn't have the image problem in the first place. If the
corporation were a good citizen it wouldn't need to say it is. The
truth is that corporations generally act in direct opposition to nature
because profit is based on the transmogrification of raw materials into
a new, more salable form." 

an admission:
"I have lots of modern technologies. It's impossible to function and
not have some relationship to technology."
turns into a protest:
"My feeling is that computers really strongly change the way we think.
I think computers are changing the world more rapidly and more
negatively than any other around. So I would really like to maintain a
disconnection from that."

A great page of Jerry Mander's aphorisms:
http://www.mrs.umn.edu/~mcphee/Courses/Readings/Manders_aphorisms.html

Kirkpatrick Sale on the Unabomber and his manifesto:
"I'm sure he makes good bombs, but grading  him on his intellect I
wouldn't give him more than a C+. I venture to  say he didn't make it
to his senior year."

The New Luddite:
"Many New Luddites are uncomfortable with using Email. There has been
concern that Email is both exclusive and ultimately puts people like
post-persons out of a job."

Prince Charles Windsor:
"Laboratory tests showing that pollen from GM maize in the United
States caused damage to caterpillars of the monarch butterfly provide
the latest cause for concern." (after it has been shown that the
reverse, in fact, was the case)

"I believe that we have now reached a moral and ethical watershed
beyond which we venture into realms that belong to God, and to God
alone. Apart from certain medical applications, what actual right do we
have to experiment, Frankenstein-like, with the very stuff of life? We
live in an age of rights  - it seems to me that it is about time our
Creator had some rights too ..."

"science should be used to understand how nature works, but not to
change what it is" 

"We only have one planet. There are lots of people out there busily
trying to find other ones. Some people think that when we have finished
with this one we can simply start again somewhere else. But I'm not
prepared personally to find another one."


Baron Melchett, Director of Greenpeace, on Prince Charles:
"it is about time somebody pointed out how bereft of humanity and human
values it is for people to claim that they can take decisions simply on
the basis of what they call 'sound science'."









--- Natasha Vita-More <natasha at natasha.cc> wrote:
> 
> Max and I spent the evening reading preposterous statements made by a
> 
> uniformity of anti-biotech advocates.  Geez. :-)
> 
> Damien (Broderick) - or someone - what is the most collectable,
> flagrant 
> anti-progress statement you've seen quoted?
> 
> Natasha
> 
> 
> Natasha Vita-More
> http://www.natasha.cc
> ----------
> President, Extropy Institute  http://www.extropy.org
> Founder, Transhumanist Arts & Culture  http://www.transhumanist.biz
> http://www.transhuman.org
> > _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat
> 


=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                       - Gen. John Stark
"Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..."
                                       - Mike Lorrey
Do not label me, I am an ism of one...
Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com

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