I hope you read numbers more carefully than you read words.
I should have just gone back up the thread and read Scott Martens and ‘doormat’ and left it at that.

drm,
I won’t quibble with your personification of bacteria[!], but I’d tend to see a difference between organisms that developed by evolutionary processes parallel to our own, and those we’ve manufactured. Beyond that, I began my rant along the lines you assumed: talking not about science but its reception. I can argue against the sensibilities of scientists as inventors who are often more interested in satisfying their own curiosity than anything else, but I’m not a scientist myself (and I don’t play one on the web)
s.

Not in any objective sense. Technically, putting a florescent protein gene into a bunny is a well defined operation. Cross-breeding involves altering relationships among thousands of genes (e.g. my earlier comment on tomato breeding) with consequences that are in principle harder to predict. Our cummulative experience indicates that the risks of conventional breeding are also very low. But, very occaisionally stuff happens.

Horizontal gene transfer between kingdoms is not new. The most common method used for inserting foreign genes into plant genomes was invented by a species of bacteria that has been genetically engineering plants for millions of years.

My earlier point was meant to illustrate that GM technology is not likely to be nearly as transformative as the pre-historic domestication of the grasses.

All that said I’m not trying to trivialize the issues involved. Is it possible to make GM organisms that have bad consequences? Yes. But, its pretty low on my list of things to worry about.

“What we live with today are end products of evolution over millions of years, of a cone of experience and time narrowing to a point in the present. [and our impact is minimal seen in this scale] The desire to expand from a point is one of the most famous fallacies of modernity,”The Year One” being a famous early example.”

Read that carefully. By your logic the harnessing of nuclear energy is the equivalent of the discovery that a mixture of olive oil and vinegar goes well with ripe tomatos.
Less glibly, even fossil fuels are less of a transformative break than nuclear energy and they’ve been problematic enough. I’ll return to the image of a cone of events, leading to a point in the present, or from the present into the future.
What’s the number of combinations that computers have been able to map out and predict on a billiard table?
Every event is at the end of a process of narrowing cone of probability and the beginning of another cone of widening probability. Revolutionary modernists like to say they can predict the future, and that everything will be fine, but their success rate isn’t very good; and though it isn’t very sexy the basics of improved public health have saved more lives than high tech science, which seems driven more by desire than the mundane logic of human decency.
I prefer a retrospective intelligence to a simply predictive one. That’s preference but not a religious one.

As far as whether economists disagree more than other scientist, going by the list, I’d say:

anti-”price gouging” legislation

“living wage” mandates

minimum wage laws

rent control

protectionist import tariffs and quotas

farming price supports

immigration restrictions

Now if say, monetary and fiscal policy were on that list I’d say you’re right, there is a lot of disagreement. But so what? That just means that science, economic or otherwise is hard. Models are sensitive to assumptions. Testing models is not simple. Intelligent well informed people can disagree. Or are there no controversies in physics, astronomy or chem?
(In fact I’d be more worried about a discipline, math aside perhaps, where there is NO disagreement. It’d mean people aren’t thinking seriously)

Seth,

What’s your point exactly. GM technology is not based on creating mutations, “mutation breeding” had its hay day back in the ‘60’s. It was not considered controversial at the time as far as I know. Domestication of corn from its wild relative involved selection of a whole series of mutations that radically changed the form of the plant – making it among other things totally dependent on man for propagation. That biotechnology crime was committed >8,000 years ago by native women (most likely) in the Central America. The ensuing bio-catastrophe converted the American midwestern plains into the monocultural corn desert we enjoy today. We didn’t actually get around to crossing corn in ernest until the late 19th century. Lewontin still claims that the hybrid seed industry built on wonton crossing of corn is a capitalist conspiracy, but not many agree with him. Ilegitimate crossing of corn with other grass species also has a rich history. In recent years, some real sickos at the U. of Minn even crossed corn with oats. On the other hand, maybe its like the guy who wrote “Botany of Desire” suggested, agriculture is nothing more than an elaborate conspiracy of the grasses to get rid the trees. It seems to be working ;)

There is a difference between the authoritariarnism of people and of ideas. Plenty of people are comforted by the thought that God is in control. But they might rise up in arms if a mere person were running things. It mght make sense to think of the relationship of creationism to science as similar to the rise of plain spoken protestantism against the obscurantist ritual of the Catholic liturgy. Why should people trust what they can’t understand?

Also this is the country of Fordism and the myth of mechanics and science: of equating technical and moral progress (and in the silliest possiible ways). And as far as biotech is concerned the fear is the result of memories of that arrogance more than anythings, of the fear of unpredictable consequences.
Creating genetic mutations in a lab is not the same as cross fertilizing corn. What we live with today are end products of evolution over millions of years, of a cone of experience and time narrowing to a point in the present. The desire to expand from a point is one of the most famous fallacies of moderniy,”The Year One” being a famous early example.
Modernity prefers theory to history. The recent religious revival is the unintellectuals’ anti-intellectual defense of the moral primacy of history over theory.
The humanities at their best represent the intellectuals’ (secular)defense of the same thing.

And especially in this country people can be on different side of the argument at different times of any given day.

Other issues where politicians War against the Science of economics are more bipartisan: protectionist import tariffs and quotas, farming price supports, immigration restrictions.

Crooked Timber is hosting a seminar on Chris Mooney’s book The Republican War On Science. In the course of a guest post, D2 asks whether there could be a Democrat war on science as well. Some commentors point out the typically left-wing opposition to …

I can speak to what I know—I can’t answer all your questions, though, as to industry practice.

In the cases I know of, you can have an occasional cigar/cigarette and get non-smoker rates if you test clean for nicotine on a blood test.

Having a smoker in the household increases rates to some extent in some cases, but I don’t know the rules in detail.

I am not aware of any underwriting for exposure to tobacco smoke other than “live in the same household as a smoker.” If exposure to tobacco smoke was measurably harmful to health, we’d have a strong incentive to know that and underwrite for it—even if we had to use proxies, we could add bartending (e.g.) to the list of occupations that increase rates (there’s a long list of those).