Intelligent question. The responsibility of a brain worker is to use her/his brain without looking at political context. I think scientists are shaping our world definitely but in certain cases they focus more on issues that are politically motivated.

Dear András,

thanks for sharing. I must commit, besides my personal behaviour when bying food, bying such called bioDiesel and planting trees and flowers etc. I´m helpless at the moment. I don´t have any practible and effective idea.

In my surrounding many farmers refuse industrial modified seeds. I don´t know, if they are part of seed conserving society.

Dear Hanno,

I am sure your opinion itself may be a positive example for the hesitating and mainstream accustomed people.

Thanks for sharing this question.  Andras, without the use of GM crops, will our world be starving?

Who actually decides to buy GM produce?  If it's the govt representatives, what can people like us do?  Once a decision is made to buy GM soya or tomatoes (for example) wouldn't most of us be eating that, knowingly or unknowingly?  

Andras, what do you think about these things that have always been on my mind?

Dear Miranda,

I do not think that GM crops and corporations like Monsanto are the saviours of humanity. GM crops may be such momentary and provisional and false solutions like the DDT and similar pesticides were. For us only sustainable agricultural/crop protection solutions can matter and the understanding that wasting materials and energy (the slogans of deformed growing paradigm) as well as the exponential growth of people are not sustainable opportunities. Unfortunately, GM producing corporations and many mainstream “ideas” deserving medias operate very effectively and are able to rule the ignorant masses.  

 Dear Miranda,

Who actually decides to buy GM produce?  

Business interests decide how to produce for a while bad quality but relatively cheap agricultural products. Relatively cheap means that the charges of such growers are low but we costumers should pay the real prices in terms of the quality of soil, water, air and the decline of biodiversity.  Your question is excellent.

Let us see an example: How did decide the Indian farmers?

Here you are the answer:

On India’s Farms, a Plague of Suicide (New York Times)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/19/world/asia/19india.html

People who have nothing to choose and who have but false media information on GM products decide.

Dear All,

A little reminding:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are_you_aware_of_what_is_going_on_for_GMs_PCBs_and_dioxins_in_agriculture?_tpcectx=home_feed

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are_you_worried_because_of_human_infertility?_tpcectx=profile_highlights

A brain worker is an important person in the world scenario as many ideas from his brain will finally be implemented for the betterment of mankind.

Brain workers output must be integrated into politics, but I don´t know how.

Dear Hanno,

There is an uncertain and risky way, showing example even if it seems to be in vain.  Many of us are teachers and  we can distribute what we think and feel right.

 Dear All,

One of my RG friends wrote me why to make war in so many directions!

I can but quote Saint Francis of Assisi:

“Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

He was right it is difficult to find the difference but one should try!

Dear András,

that´s the minimum, we can do and I proceed in this way when teaching.

Dear Andras

Unfortunately the power of money and multinationals are involved. As you have rightly said either the public is ignorant, or do not care of the consequences.

“Researchers from the Food Policy Institute at Rutgers' Cook College found that only 52% of Americans realized that genetically modified foods are sold in grocery stores and only 26% believed that they have ever eaten genetically modified foods -- a modest 6% increase since 2001.”

In the name of patenting, the multinational companies are squeezing the farmers and making money while the farmer is helpless because of the collusion of politicians and multinational companies as in India.

In US at least in a few states such as California and Washington, people are realizing the need for organic produce. This has to become a movement where people have to make sure that their interest should be kept at the forefront and wage war with their wallets against the GM food. Also I think it is necessary to bring awareness of these to the common public as well as children in school be made to understand the dangers involved in the process.

The idea of Avaz to have a free ebay style seed banks is a great idea.

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/are-biotech-foods-safe-to-eat

Dear Nageswara,

Many thanks for your detailed analysis on the American situation. My wife with our daughter was at New York in this winter and my daughter in Boston in the spring and they could buy organic food and fruits as well as vegetables at both cities. This means that there is still hope. I think many American people can afford to buy organic food or food from integrated production. Unfortunately, the economic situation in other countries is not as favourable. The continuous decrease of our crops’ genetic diversity intensify the use of synthetic pesticides which means that the pollution level in the commons and the food will be multiplied.   

Intelligent question. The responsibility of a brain worker is to use her/his brain without looking at political context. I think scientists are shaping our world definitely but in certain cases they focus more on issues that are politically motivated.

Dear Andras

Thanks for your response. It is a fact that organic produce is more expensive and is thus can be affordable to a few affluent countries. However if the people are educated about the way it can be practiced without going for heavy investments it would help. There are a number of resources available and educated people living in bigger cities can with a little thought about sustainability can easily adopt. A lot of resources are available. I am giving here a few of the links that are useful for the purpose.

http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/organic/

http://www.groworganic.com/

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/global-observer/health-concerns-spur-organic-gardening-in-indian-homes/

http://www.purnaorganics.com/

Independant from science a trend has grown up in Germany to buy "bio" products. Some times the reasons for the users are irrational, the products are more expensive and not distinguishable in shape and taste. But the trend will possibly help to minimize the industrial production of  nourishments.

Dear Nageswara,

The same people who spare their money for healthy food and fruits spend relatively high amounts of money for liquor, cigarettes, drogues and very expensive cars.

Dear Alessandro,

There are many ways!

One of them is what I proposed to Hanno: “There is an uncertain and risky way, showing example even if it seems to be in vain.  Many of us are teachers and we can distribute what we think and feel right.”

Another may be to show our force because without us there is no production, no teaching, no research, no profit, no power and you can continue.

We are satisfied with getting a modest salary, seeing our names in journals, talking at conferences and some of us are working hard to fix the mainstream status quo.

What if we...

Dear Cecilia,

Thanks for your comment and question.

Miranda asked almost the same thing. Now, I say something else: What about wasting materials, energy and a lot of food.

 Consumers in the USA throw away food. The food waste calculated was 150 trillion kcl per year = 300 million barrels of oil and a lot of freshwater. http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0007940&representation=PDF

Why destroying our environment with pesticides and GM crops when the valuable (?) food get into the garbage?  I am sure we waste too much (often unnecessary) products in which mistakes are voluntarily built in order to increase growing. Pesticide use, cosmetics, medicaments, food, toys, electrical nonsense etc. are part of this irrational (but profit increasing) overproduction.  

I repeat,  is it impossible to feed so many people?

Dear Hanno,

As far as I know German speaking people prefer organic food and organic production too. Regarding the taste of fruits and vegetables, I think crops nourished harmonically must have better taste. Regarding the shape of fruits, I have read an English investigation and according to this majority of consumers preferred the products with irregular shape and hated uniform carrots, potatoes or apples etc. 

@ Cecilia Lewis Kausel

Tremendously good reply, indeed.

Dear Andras,

Good question. There are countries, Norway to be one of them,  who oppose the use of GM seeds and products on the soil of their countries for the reasons you have eloquently presented. Although the problems are apparent, the reasons of not coming to a consensus among all researchers is that,  giant companies who run  GM products for mere reason of rising profit with minimal or no concerns to the environment and  to the lose of the tapestry of nature and its diversity to sustain life and deliver beauty, hire their own researchers. These researchers are part of the profit making scheme who are not abided by any ethical and social obligations - but only to their luxury living and follow the scheme of their companies.

It is those researchers who work in government and public institutions, who are guided by  ethics, social obligations and responsibility in selecting products that are harmonious with nature and with the environment, not only to protect what nature has but to augment and increase the  varieties it has.

Besides when it comes to food, over consumption of it is a source of different types of ailments to humans and that alone should have given reasons for companies to revisit and see their reasons to produce such over inflated products with dangerous consequences to humans and at the expense of nature.

It is time all researchers come to an agreement on this issue - protecting the mother of all mothers - nature. If such amount of proportion of nature's varieties disappear in this short period of time, I am afraid every variety will disappear shortly and the human species and all living  inhabitants of nature are in trouble.

Great question, indeed! Congratulations and thank you dear András. Subtle and deep - as always.

I shall participate in various posts, out of time and space.

First, the responsibility of a brain worker: in my opinion, the very first responsibility is lucidity! Difficult and painful it is the moral and intellectual imperative of any scientist to shed continuous lights on lucidity. Thanks to arguments, based on proofs, grounded on experiments, and always critical and questioning anything that goes without saying, namely: common sense an circulatory knowledge.

Secondly, I am personally very much satisfied with what scientists do and are doing. However, it is a political hurdle what comes first to the fore. In my view, it is the state and the corporations that are responsible for the real crises who are facing and quickly going into.

Dear Cecilia,

Yesterday, I was painting and I could not answer you in time.

Thanks for your long comment. My first remark is that the example of the food wasting in the USA was only a side line in my argumentation. However, this later was a 2009 article in which real data was assessed till about 2003 by American scientists.

I have never been to the USA, and have but zero personnel information about its food situation. However, regarding the general way of production and the interests which determine globally the aims of producing of all kinds of goods, wasting became an integral (and irrational from point of view of our future) part of practically the whole producing sector.

You wrote: “The sustainability of the earth is also very important in the US, and our anti-GM activism is strong and widespread. Sustainability, anti-GM food, recycling, energy saving, protection of the earth and its creatures, are strongly enhanced in all high school and university education.”

I ask you: For whom are sustainability of the earth and all the items you listed important in the USA? For the policy makers? The leaders and workers of corporations? For the average Americans?

I think these people as their peers in Europe are not really concerned on the issues of sustainability but on widening the production which is the most silly and deformed way how to control systems (http://www.donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/). Please, read the 12 points of Donella Meadows and you will find out how our world is shaped.

I am sure that the biggest problem is that we err using a deformed and false paradigm for a long time.

I have a feeling that the most crucial mistake humanity ever made was the present blind and egoistic economic order: I guess the money and lending money at interest are the most evil human inventions and this became the transcendent paradigm of our era. Their use is the bottom initiator of human and environmental misery.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_are_the_most_evil_spiritual_inventions?_tpcectx=profile_questions

Dear Dejenie,

Thanks for your valuable opinion.

Unfortunately, we do not know how much time we have to save the natural structure what is still able to maintain normal nature order but multinational corporations with the help of mercenary scientists and their allies, some? policy makers continue the destruction. I cannot assess what is bigger their greed or ignorance?

Dear Carlos,

Thanks for your opinion.

Agree, lucidity is a major responsibility of us. To be enlightened and to distribute the light of world phenomena for everybody. But not like Lucifer did it! That is why we need a healthy ethics.

I envy you – unfortunately – I am not satisfied with the doings of scientists or with our impacts on world order.

I repeat: We are satisfied with getting a modest salary, seeing our names in journals, talking at conferences (+ having a good forum = RG) and some of us (obedient servants or manipulated individuals) are working hard to fix the mainstream status quo which is the surest way to the collapse.

Oh my! Voilà precisely a show of lucidity, dear András. And I mean it, seriously. That is, in fact, wehat most of us are doing, indeed.

Please allow me to insist on this: we scientists - some of them even "savants", as it is beautifully said in French -, try our best. But since a very long time ago, we do not have the "real tools" to manage the world. The ones who run the world are specifically businessmen, managers and politicians in general They should have the means to impede the collapse. And yet, they do nothing - most of them. They lack a strong sense of time density and careing about people, I beleive.

Brain workers should do their jobs sincerely, as their brains direct them, without any type of pressure and they definitely shape our worlds !!!

Thank you, Andras, for your extremely important question, particularly for our times. I also say thank you to all contributors. Not only I found out new perspectives and information, but  I felt that the answers are really given with deep concern and from the heart.

Reading this thread, I was wondering if there are universities where courses on responsibly-conceived technology and responsible behavior exist.  Given the gravity of the global situation, I think that such courses should constitute the backbone of the curricula in most of the specializations, if not in all.

I think that we evidence to-day a profound lack of explanatory frames and regulative long-term visions for organizing the political and public future of our globalized, highly interconntected, scientifically and technologicallly specialized world (frames and visions comparable to, analogically speaking, the political and social philosophies that have accompanied the evolution of the modern world since the 16th/17th century). And in my opinion, this is one of the most central challenge for "brainworkers" ...

Thanks to Prof. András Bozsik for It’s really an interesting question and very Interesting respondents answers. It is very useful to me for got a new idea please.

Many Thanks,

Kind Regards,

Gopinath. R.

Dear All,

Thanks for your opinions and contributions. I am glad that many of us observe and see the present situation as well as our task as you put it. There is still a big step: all of us should try to act and live according our better selves!

I am clinician and scientists, so my role is established by ethics and effectiveness of my work in health care and research on new therapeutic methods. If I satisfies - I do not know - it seems I always try to fulfill my tasks as proper as possible, but I never do not know if we did all that we could ...

Dear Emilia,

Responsibility of a scientist is enormous because of our ability of thinking. I feel to be a good specialist is not sufficient. A scientist should be a shining star, a lighthouse for simple people...