Category Archives: Random Blogging

Now, Something Completely Different

My cousin, an eminent cardiologist, sent me a brief essay he recently wrote about GMs–genetically modified foods. It exemplifies the sort of appeal to science and evidence that should guide decision-making. Or so my logic tells me. Nevertheless…Well, let’s start with his essay.

   “On May 25, 2012, The New York Times ran an article titled “Battle Brewing Over Labeling of Genetically-Modified Foods.” The article pointed out that for more than a decade, almost all processed foods in the United States — cereals, snack foods, salad dressings — have contained ingredients from plants whose DNA was manipulated in a laboratory. Moreover, almost all the corn and soybeans grown in the United States now contain DNA derived from bacteria. The foreign gene makes the soybeans resistant to an herbicide used in weed control and causes the corn to produce its own insecticide, thus increasing yields and reducing the need for artificially added chemicals.  In addition, almost all the food derived from plants you eat has been produced by selective breeding, artificially selected for various favorable traits, including the enrichment of the content of certain proteins.

   Regulators and scientists say genetic manipulations pose no danger. But as Americans ask questions about what they are eating, popular suspicions about the health and environmental effects of biotechnology are fueling a movement to require that food from genetically modified crops be labeled, if not eliminated.

    Labeling bills had been proposed in more than a dozen states over the previous year, and an appeal to the Food and Drug Administration to mandate labels nationally drew more than a million signatures. The most closely watched labeling effort is a proposed ballot initiative in California prompting a probable subsequent vote that could influence not just food packaging but the future of American agriculture.

     Tens of millions of dollars are expected to be spent on the election showdown. It pits some consumer groups and the organic food industry, both of which support mandatory labeling, against more conventional farmers, agricultural biotechnology companies like Monsanto and many of the nation’s best-known food brands like Kellogg’s and Kraft.

    The root of this latest push is most likely fear. Anything that is unknown or perceived to be “foreign” is feared by a general public that is ill educated about the topic, and this likely leads to a form of hysteria. Perhaps it conjures up an Orwellian image of “big brother” manipulating our genes to the point of modifying our own makeup and mischievously invading our stem cells and future progeny.

    And of course there is the ubiquitous presence of moneyed interests. If the California initiative passes, “we will be on our way to getting genetically-tainted foods out of our nation’s food supply for good,” according to Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association—with financial gain at stake—who stated in a letter seeking donations for the California ballot initiative. “If a company like Kellogg’s has to print a label stating that their famous Corn Flakes have been genetically engineered, it will be the kiss of death for their iconic brand in California — the eighth-largest economy in the world — and everywhere else.”

     Opposing such interests are such organizations as the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the National Corn Growers Association, which stand to lose by required labeling, believing that this would seriously undermine their sales.

     What is the science behind such hysteria? A recent comprehensive review* concluded that foods derived from genetically modified crops have been consumed by hundreds of millions of people across the world for more than 15 years and there have been no reported ill effects (or legal cases related to human health), despite many of the consumers coming from that most litigious of countries, the USA. This report pointed out the many advantages of such modification that included, among others, increasing crop yields and more nutritious contents. There are also a number of uses for plants outside of the food industry, for example in the timber, paper and chemical sectors and increasingly for biofuels. Of significance to the medical field is the use of genetically modified plants for production of recombinant pharmaceuticals. Molecular farming to produce such plant-derived pharmaceuticals is currently being studied by academic and industrial groups across the world. The first full-size native human product, human serum albumin, was demonstrated in 1990, and since then antibodies, blood products, hormones and vaccines have all been expressed in modified plants. Protein pharmaceuticals can be harvested and purified from these plants, or alternatively, plant tissue in a processed form expressing a pharmaceutical could potentially be consumed as an ‘edible vaccine’.

    In conclusion, I believe that anxiety-producing labels are counterproductive, but if such ill-advised legislation results in their appearance, don’t panic—these foods are harmless! In most cases they are far superior to “organic” products that I have reviewed in a previous publication.”

Why am I not entirely convinced?

First, on general policy grounds, I favor disclosure–whether it be disclosure of political contributions, or state budget calculations, or the ingredients in my food.  I may make poor decisions based on those disclosures, but that is still preferable to government exercising “father knows best” paternalism.  Accurate food labeling empowers me; it provides me with the information I need to make informed decisions about what I eat–calorie counts, sugar content, or genetic modifications.

Second, while I am confident that my cousin is correct about the results of testing that has been done– science isn’t static. New genetic modifications appear with some frequency, and newer ones have not been tested over a period of years. Manipulation of genes is different from selective breeding, although both result in genetic modification. The risk may be slight, but individuals should have the information necessary to make risk calculations for themselves–including the sort of information about their safety provided by current science.

Third, call me overly cautious, but some problems take time to emerge. We are just now recognizing the deleterious effects of some pesticides and antibiotics used in large-scale farming. While those techniques to increase crop and animal yields are not genetic modifications, they too were long thought to be free of side effects. One of the reasons we trust science is that it is falsifiable–always open to revision on the basis of new evidence. The jury is always out.

None of this is intended to suggest we avoid GM food, even if we could. I am simply arguing that more information is better than less.  Decisions about disclosure of ingredients in our foods should not rest with manufacturers worried about market share, just as decisions about disclosure of political contributions should not be made by those profiting from them.

Just sayin’


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Announcement–and Invitation

Anyone who regularly reads this blog knows that I’m more or less obsessed by what Americans–ordinary citizens and elected officials alike–don’t know about our nation’s history, founding documents and legal system.

To reiterate my thesis: In a country where, increasingly, people read different books and newspapers, visit different blogs, watch different television programs, attend different churches and even speak different languages—where the information and beliefs we all share are diminishing and our variety and diversity are growing—it is more important than ever that Americans understand their history and their governing philosophy.

Our constitutional values are a covenant; they are ultimately all that Americans have in common.

All governments are human enterprises, and like all human enterprises, they will have their ups and downs. In the United States, however, the consequences of the “down” periods are potentially more serious than in more homogeneous nations, precisely because this is a country based upon covenant, upon what I have elsewhere called the American Idea. Americans do not share a single ethnicity, religion or race. Culture warriors to the contrary, we never have. We don’t share a comprehensive worldview. What we do share is a set of values, and when we don’t know what those values are or where they came from, we lose a critical part of what it is that makes us Americans.

At the end of the day, our public policies must be aligned with and supportive of our most fundamental values; the people we elect must demonstrate that they understand, respect and live up to those values; and the electorate has to be sufficiently knowledgeable about those values to hold public officials accountable.

To put it another way, our ability to trust one another and work together ultimately depends upon our ability to keep our governing structures true to our fundamental values, and we can’t do that if we don’t know what those values are or where they came from.

In a country that celebrates individual rights and respects individual liberty, there will always be dissent, differences of opinion, and struggles for power. But there are different kinds of discord, and they aren’t all equal. When we argue from within the constitutional culture—when we argue about the proper application of the American Idea to new situations or to previously marginalized populations—we strengthen our bonds and learn how to bridge our differences. When our divisions and debates pit powerful forces trying to rewrite our history and most basic rules against citizens who lack the wherewithal to enforce those rules, we undermine the American Idea and erode social trust.

That brings me to an announcement and a request—or maybe I should call it an invitation.

Scholars and educators have expressed concern over inadequacies in civic literacy and citizenship education for a very long time. Periodically, there have been efforts to increase requirements for civic and constitutional educational content, generally in government or “social studies” classes. Most recently, in 2003, the Alliance for Representative Democracy launched the Congressional Conference on Civic Education, and evidence indicates it did have a modest effect.  However, it followed the typical trajectory of these efforts, which has been an initial burst of enthusiasm followed by limited implementation.  The vast majority of new initiatives have had a very limited impact; worse, some states are now reducing social studies and civics requirements in order to focus on subjects tested under the No Child Left Behind Act.

I am currently working with several of my colleagues on a new project: the establishment of a Center on Civic Literacy at IUPUI.  We just received funding for our first three years, so this is a brand-new initiative. My colleagues and I represent different disciplines—law, business, social work, religious studies, bioethics and education—because we are painfully aware that all of our disciplines are adversely affected by low civic literacy. The Center will offer a clearinghouse for research, and will publish a peer-reviewed journal; we also intend to conduct original research on a large number of questions: we want to identify programs and curricula that have demonstrated effectiveness in producing civically-literate students; we want to know why previous efforts at reform have lacked staying power.  We want to investigate the theorized consequences of civic ignorance. And we want to develop a set of recommendations for basic civic education that can be both implemented and sustained.

One of our first projects is something we are calling “The Civic Challenge.” Indiana will celebrate the bicentennial of the state constitution in 2016. What better way to mark the occasion than with a two-year Civic Challenge, in which the entire community engages in a conversation about the U.S. and Indiana Constitutions?  The idea is that every organization we can enlist will use their program years 2015 and 2016 to focus on the Constitution and issues of Constitutional literacy. I see it as sort of a “One community, one book” project on steroids.

Even though we have barely begun, a number of organizations are already on board: the Indianapolis-Marion County Library system, the Indiana Historical Society, the Indiana Humanities Council, Phoenix Theater and the IRT, the League of Women Voters, the Bar Foundation…and many others. We want to make this a high-profile, community-wide, fun project. (It has even been suggested that we enlist sports bars willing to focus their trivia contests on Constitutional rather than sports trivia.) We plan a web site, a Facebook page…well, you get the idea. The hope is to engage the whole community—left, right and center, religious and secular, immigrant and native born, minority and majority–everybody we can corral.

We plan to administer a survey to Indianapolis citizens before we begin the Civic Challenge, and again when it concludes, to see if we have managed to “raise the bar.” If we have, we will challenge other cities to do the same.

We are in the very early planning stages. If this first project is to be successful, we need good ideas for organizations, programs, contests..in short, we need people willing to be involved with the effort. That’s my invitation. If you are interested in knowing more, you can contact me directly at shekenne@iupui.edu or follow our progress on this blog.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if I think the Establishment Clause requires a certain result and you think it requires a different one. What matters is that we both know what the Establishment Clause is, and what value it was meant to protect. It doesn’t matter whether I think Freedom of the Press extends to bloggers and you disagree. It matters a lot that we both know what Freedom of the Press means, and why it was considered essential to trustworthy government.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said we are all entitled to our own opinions, but not to our own facts. If I think this is a table and you think it’s a chair, we aren’t going to have a productive discussion about its use. We don’t need citizens who all agree about the implications of our founding decisions, or who even agree with the decisions themselves. But we desperately need citizens who share an understanding of what those decisions were.

I hope you’ll agree—and participate in the civic challenge!

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Res Ipsa Loquitor

There is a legal term, “res ipsa loquitor,” meaning “the thing speaks for itself.” Today’s example? The Texas Republican Party Platform. 

Texas Republicans call for abolishing the 16th Amendment, which authorized the Income Tax. It calls for repeal of the tax on capital gains, and the abolition of the state’s property tax. It opposes the imposition of ANY tax other than a (regressive) sales tax. And it demands a return to the gold standard. (There was no call for abolition of public services, and the document appears silent on how, exactly, those services are to be paid for.) The platform also supports privatization of Social Security.

By far the most telling provisions of the GOP platform, however, are those addressing education.

The party goes on record opposing “multicultural” education, and supporting the use of corporal punishment by school officials. It demands that “both sides” be taught when “controversial” theories like evolution and climate change are addressed.

Given these positions, it should come as no surprise that the platform also opposes the teaching of critical thinking skills–since those “undermine parental authority.” Such skills probably DO undermine the parental authority of the authors of this platform–which speaks for itself.

I don’t know what happened, exactly, to turn the Republican Party I used to belong to into whatever it is today–but I am pretty  sure it wasn’t critical thinking.

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Politics at the Bed and Breakfast

We took our grandchildren to Williamsburg and Jamestown (where they were fascinated by the muskets), then came to Washington, D.C. so that they could experience the nation’s capital. Yesterday was the Museum of the American Indian (pricey buffalo-burgers in the cafeteria!) and the Air and Space Museum with a planetarium show narrated by Whoopie Goldberg.

We are staying in a Bed and Breakfast, the Aaron Shipman house, located in the Logan Circle area. It’s a lovely residential neighborhood,with excellent public transportation. (I’ve been VERY  jealous of the transportation on this trip! It makes any place more livable and civilized. Too bad the Indiana legislature doesn’t consider livability important…)

There are seven bedrooms rooms in this house, and we met the other travelers at breakfast yesterday. We went around the table making introductions. Five were traveling together from Alabama, and after the (wonderful!) breakfast, we were making small talk. One woman, a retired second-grade teacher, said “You teach law. How can Roy Moore be considered eligible to run again for the Alabama Supreme Court? Didn’t his previous behavior and contempt for Separation of Church and State disqualify him?” Roy Moore, you may recall, was the zealot who had the Ten Commandments carved on a five-ton stone and placed at the entrance to the Alabama Supreme Court. Apparently, his opponent is genuinely mentally ill, so voters have no reasonable choice in this election, and she was agitated.

“Everyone will look at Alabama and think we actually wanted this creep! We don’t!”

That led to a more general discussion of the political environment and the extremism of today’s GOP. The owner of the B and B opined that Republican Senators and Representatives who had opted to put politics before the national interest and simply say NO to anything and everything that might make Obama look good should be expelled from office. The rest of the short discussion was similar. (And for the record, I didn’t start it!)

I’m hesitant to draw large conclusions from this anecdote: I remember a friend from law school who was absolutely certain McGovern was going to win the election that year because everyone in his neighborhood was a McGovern supporter. He lived in Greenwich Village. But it was interesting to see a group from Huntsville, Alabama–hardly a “blue” location–so utterly disgusted with the radicalism that characterizes today’s GOP.

I believe the acronym young people use these days is FWIW–for what it’s worth.

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Today’s Coffee House?

I’ve been reading a book called Abundance, which details the multiple breakthroughs that promise to eliminate poverty in the world–if we humans deploy them wisely. There’s a lot of interesting information, and stories of human ingenuity are encouraging.

An interesting observation was that the Enlightenment was a product of the coffee house. According to the author, the practice of gathering in coffee houses and exchanging points of view–debating, discussing, considering alternatives–sparked the development of new philosophies, new ways of engaging reality. That diversity of perspective is also what makes cities important generators of new ideas, new inventions–as the author points out, the density of urban life also requires that we encounter people with different ideas, backgrounds and points of view, and it is that “bubbling cauldron” that incubates progress.

Then, however, the author made a comparison that may be too optimistic. He sees the internet as an extension of the city–a vast coffee house where even the most rural or isolated individuals can encounter the diversity of ideas and opinions that characterize the human family. And theoretically, that’s true. Those who actually seek out new and different points of view can certainly find them on line, along with information (and disinformation) about virtually anything. But as Eli Pariser pointed out in The Filter Bubble, the internet is increasingly being used not to explore new ways of seeing, but to reinforce existing prejudices.

If we use our new, marvelous technologies to construct “bubbles”–comfortable realities within which we encounter only those who agree with us–we might just as well be back on the farm.

We live in a time when we have access to marvelous tools. The question is: will we use them to encounter and engage with each other, or to construct comfortable silos that wall off those who are different, those who make us uncomfortable?

Progress is rarely comfortable.

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