Vexing Nature?: On the Ethical Case Against Agricultural Biotechnology

Gary L. Comstock

Dec 2012 · Springer Science & Business Media

About this ebook

Agricultural biotechnology refers to a diverse set of industrial techniques used to produce genetically modified foods. Genetically modified (GM) foods are foods manipulated at the molecular level to enhance their value to farmers and consumers. This book is a collection of essays on the ethical dimensions of ag biotech. The essays were written over a dozen years, beginning in 1988. When I began to reflect on the subject, ag biotech was an exotic, untested, technology. Today, in the first year of the millenium, the vast majority of consumers in the United States have taken a bite of the apple. Milk produced by cows injected with a GM protein called recombinant bovine growth hormone (bGH), is found, unlabelled, on grocery shelves throughout the US. In 1999, half of the soybeans and cotton harvested in the US were GM varieties. Billions of dollars of public and private monies are being invested annually in biotech research, and commercial sales now reach into the tens of billions of dollars each year. I Whereas ag biotech once promised to change American agriculture, it now is in the process of doing so.

About the author

Gary L. Comstock is Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, and Coordinator of the Bioethics Program, at Iowa State University (ISU), USA. Comstock is best known as the director of the ISU Bioethics Institute, a faculty development workshop that has helped hundreds of life scientists from around the world to integrate discussions of ethics into their courses. He has published dozens of articles; edited the volume, Is There A Moral Obligation to Save the Family Farm? (ISU Press, 1987), compiled Religious Autobiographies (Wadsworth, 1995), and is editing a collection of essays titled Life Science Ethics. A popular speaker who has lectured across Europe, Canada, Central America, and East Asia, he won his College's Award for Excellence in Outreach in 1998.