Michael Riordon

the view from where I live

Category Archives: Ethics


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Free Dr Tarek Loubani & John Greyson: Open letter to Daryl Kramp, Member of Parliament

As residents of Prince Edward-Hastings riding, we call on you to exercise your influence and responsibility in the following matter of urgent concern to all of us.

As of October 3, Canadian citizens Dr Tarek Loubani and John Greyson have already been imprisoned for 48 days by the military government in Egypt.  Recently their imprisonment was extended once again, for an additional 45 days.  They have not been charged with any offence.

In contravention of international law, the Egyptian military regime claims the right to hold them without charge for as long as two years.

We are encouraged to hear that Prime Minister Harper told Canadian media on September 29, “In the absence of charges, Dr. Loubani and Mr. Greyson should be released immediately.”  This is a step in the right direction, but given the degree of injustice and life-threatening circumstances it’s not enough.  The Prime Minister should be speaking directly to his counterpart in Egypt, demanding that these two Canadian citizens be released immediately and allowed to return safely to Canada.

Dr Tarek Loubani is an emergency room physician in London, Ontario; John Greyson is an award-winning film and video maker.  Both of them teach at universities in Toronto and London.  Each is highly respected in his field.

On the night of their detention, Dr Loubani was doing what his professional oath as an MD requires of him, providing emergency medical care to people who’d been attacked by soldiers in a public protest.  John Greyson was doing what he intended to do on this trip, documenting Dr Loubani’s work.

Amnesty International has called for their immediate release.  More than 145,000 people have signed an international petition demanding their immediate release.  Their release has also been demanded by the Ontario & Canadian Medical Associations, the United Church of Canada, the Presidents of York, Ryerson, Queen’s and Wilfred Laurier Universities, and many other organizations and individuals.

We call on the Prime Minister of Canada to make the same demand, immediately and directly to the appropriate Egyptian authorities.


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Just say no.

This “synthetic biology” scheme is patently nuts.  In fact it’s criminally insane.ETC synthetic biology image

Once released, these Frankenseeds, a very dangerous gimmick, can never be recalled.  Governments claim to be helpless in blocking it.

Can we stop it?  Maybe not, but surely it’s worth a try.

The organization behind the petition to block the funding, ETC (Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration), is deeply responsible and worthy of trust.

Please read their plea, and decide for yourself.  You can add your name and voice, here.


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The war on science

“History tells us that the suppression of knowledge is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes.”  Save ELA

–  from an eloquent open letter to Yukon Member of Parliament Ryan Leef from Linda Leon, an artist, writer and stage designer living in Whitehorse.

She calls out the wrecking crew in Ottawa on its needless, heedless destruction of the internationally respected Experimental Lakes Area, and other vital environmental research programs.

A compelling argument for resistance.  At the stake for the ruling elites: power and profit.  At stake for the rest of us: life.


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Awe

Human responses to a spider’s web:2006_0819Fleurs_aug19_060001

1.  Awe.

2.  Eeew.  Call the exterminator!

3.  Make metaphors.
O, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!
– Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, 1808.

4.  Make sense. “Given the presumed metabolic effort required by the spider for rebuilding an entire web, localized failure is preferential as it does not compromise the structural integrity of the web and hence allows it to continue to function for prey capture in spite of the damage.” Cranford, S.W. et al, Nature, 2012..

5.  Make products.   In the works:  Tiny sutures for eye and nerve surgery, artificial ligaments and tendons, textiles for parachutes….

6.  Make a superhero: 700 comic issues, 2 live-action TV series, 7 animated series, 4 movies (to date), video games, backpacks, blankets, water bottles, ball-caps, action figures, costumes, weapons, the most expensive Broadway musical in history…

7.  Make military/police products.   In the works: Comfy body armour for the imperial guard…

8.  Awe.  Or its close cousin, horror.

“All knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.”       – Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 1605.

I would add:  Wonder, or awe, is indispensable in the quest for knowledge.  But it goes far too easily missing along the way.  (Wonder and awe I count as degrees of the same response.)

Awe revels in the mystery, elegance and grandeur of existence.  It is rooted in healthy humility.  In awe, we know our place – in nature, not above it.  Falling out of awe, we lose our place.

Wonder is spontaneous and ecstatic.  Children feel it, uninhibited.  Then we learn how to think, and then we learn what to think.  Wonder is at risk.  If it withers enough, eventually we have to pretend it.  Or buy it.

Awe touches vast questions, some of them best left as questions.  But religion and science keep trying to answer them.

On a mid-winter walk, breath clouds under clear sky, transparent to infinity.   I watch rising sun brush grey tree-tops with a buttery glow.  For an instant I feel its warmth, and the pleasure of it draws a smile.  But in another instant, pleasure surrenders to memory – a hymn from Presbyterian childhood in another century:

When morning gilds the skies
My heart awakening cries…

A rapturous image of awe.  Then the author (unknown) delivers a message from the sponsor (unknowable):

…may Jesus Christ be praised. 

Religion can’t resist transforming awe into worship, a more governable activity.

Science does something different, but remarkably similar.  Very often it treats awe as superstition, a vestige, like the tailbone, of our primitive past.  In doing so it lures wonder away from its natural object, the universe, to be dazzled instead by the brilliance of human science as it deconstructs the universe.

The lure is beguiling.  When we reduce the universe to data it appears more manageable, less terrifying.  Not an unreasonable goal in a universe that dispenses catastrophe as casually and indiscriminately as impressions of pleasure.  But data is cold.  It shrinks, chills, and eventually freezes wonder.

In 1605 Francis Bacon also wrote:  “I am come in very truth leading to you Nature with all her children to bind her to your service and make her your slave.” – The Masculine Birth of Time.

A cruel paradox here:  Nature enslaved can no longer elicit wonder.  Yet Bacon calls wonder “the seed of knowledge.”  Without seed, what can we expect to grow?

Awe induces respect.  What we don’t respect we tend to neglect or destroy:  people we dislike, countless fellow species, forests, oceans, air, the breath of life.

A cruel paradox: What are we to do?


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Science is objective: true or false?

After teaching plant agriculture for 32 years at Guelph University, Associate Professor Ann Clark ‘retired’ in 2010 to a farm in eastern Ontario.  It would be her refuge and her lab.

Clark designed the farm to be “post-oil.”  Here she can try out experiments for which research Monsanto Business Incubatorfunding always eluded her.  Since neither of her teaching specialties, grasses and organic agriculture, tends to generate proprietary profits, the corporate funders that increasingly dominate research funding were not interested.

From the late 1990s on, Ann Clark became an eloquent critic of the impacts that GMOs (genetically modified organisms) can have on livestock, farm survival and the environment.  Unsought by her and unpaid, this new public role did not foster Clark’s career.  “Academic suicide, some of my colleagues called it,” she says.  “By their standards I’m not a very good scientist.”

By what standards can they judge as ‘not good’ a scientist who has inspired countless students, farmers and citizens with her knowledge and integrity?  “The problem is,” she replied, “I can’t accept one of the central tenets of their dogma: that science is objective.  When I got my PhD I fully believed that it is.  But then one of my PhD examiners backed me into a corner where I had to acknowledge that personal values will inevitably determine what questions you ask as a scientist, and the questions you ask will inevitably pre-determine the range of answers you’ll get.”

This view is powerfully confirmed by the ongoing battle over a study by French scientist Gilles-Eric Séralini & his co-researchers, on impacts of Monsanto’s genetically modified maize and its associated herbicide Roundup.

Hours after the study was published in 2012, a vicious, well-orchestrated assault erupted against Séralini.  “This is so disturbing,” says Ann Clark.  “Very often industry research doesn’t ask the right questions.  He  asked some of the right questions, and for that he’s under attack.”

In response, Clark joined with eight other scientists to publish an open letter supporting Séralini, and to “raise the profile of fundamental challenges faced by science in a world increasingly dominated by corporate influence.”  Signed by an impressive roster of scientists in many countries, the October 2012 letter cites other researchers who’ve been attacked for studies questioning GMOs and Monsanto.

Read more:

Ann Clark’s vision of post-carbon farming and food production is here:  The future is organic: But it’s more than organic!

Corporate Push for GMO Food Puts Independent Science in Jeopardy.  Vandana Shiva, The Asian Age, December 2012.

Growing Maize Disaster (in Mexico).  ETC Group, December 2012.

FDA [Food and Drug Administration, US] Quietly Pushes Through Genetically Modified Salmon.  Anthony Gucciardi, Natural Society, December 2012.