Science, Good and Bad

I was thrilled to hear that Mozambique was using rats to detect land mines until I saw the article says it's Tanzania. No matter, they share a border, and maybe the rats are used in each.

Still, I was smiling like a child getting a pony for Christmas. What better use for rats, I wondered, than to send herds of them scurrying over minefields? They would not only find the mines, but it may be a better way of dealing with them than the old spring traps. Sure, the rats are too light to trip the mines, but that could easily be solved with tiny lead vests, perhaps festively colored. Hell, you could include wagering and make it a fun event for the entire village.

Alas, the rats only sniff the explosive and, so far, none have been blowed up.

It's a good thing to do, though, so I applaud those who came up with this idea. Not so with these geneticists, though. It seems they've identified a gene that will let them create "waterproof" rice. This Sub1A-1 gene, which sounds suspiciously like the first one mapped, will let rice plants live for a couple weeks while submerged. This is not good. Manipulating the genetic makeup of plants is evil, and those who depend on rice to live are far better off going hungry and dying of famine if their fields get flooded. Especially now, with global warming melting arctic ice, we can only expect more flooding, and treating a valuable food commodity can only result in increasing human life.

The only salvation I can hope for from this horrendous effort is that this is that cheap white crap, the kind nobody of any value eats, anyway.