There is also the case of papayas in Hawaii. In the past few years, a new strain of papaya was developed to combat the papaya ringspot virus. This virus threatened to destroy Hawaii's entire commercial papaya industry. With the GM varieties, the papaya is now immune to this deadly rinspot virus. See this article from UH's student newspaper here http://www.kaleo.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/10/1 2/416b77d697d77
This is great news for any papaya farmer who wants to use the new GM varieties, but terrible for the organic papaya farmers. Recently, the organic farmers have found contamination in their crops. This could cause any organic farmer to lose his/her organic certification. In the world of organic farming, this is akin to a truck driver losing his CDL. In other words, all the work that went into getting certified for organic farming goes down the tube. As an aside, a large market for Hawaii's organic papaya crop is Japan, which has a zero-tolerance GM policy. Any contamination, and an organic papaya farmer would lose Japan as a market.
And what is the cause of the contamination? It looks like there are two possibilities. The first is contaminiation from a nearby farmer's pollen (if the neighbor uses GM papayas). The other is from buying contaminated seeds. When an organic farmer buys seeds that are labelled "non-GM", there should be absolutely no trace of GM in those seeds. This however is not the case - the quality control in keeping GM seeds and non-GM seeds is obviously not good enough and needs to be improved. Until these types of problems are worked out, I still see GM crops as dangerous. Not in the sense that the crop is necessarily unhealthy or dangerous to eat but, as in this case, could cost an organic farmer his livelihood.
Most articles list contamination as only a possibility, and rarely talk about the effects that GM contamination can have on a farmer. These effects are real and should not be ignored.
Why wouldn't they go through with an attack? A cyber-attack has the benefits of causing no bloodshed but could potentially cause anything from a minor headache to millions (if not billions) of dollars in damages if launched properly.
Also, it's pretty interesting that the attacks on S. Korean computer systems seemed to be based in China. If this were indeed true (doubtful), this would cast doubt on dubbya's assertion in the debate that bilateral talks with N. Korea will alienate China, which is supposedly imposing some kind of leverage on N. Korea.
My corneas were too thin for lasik (the doctor that i went to is conservative, and he won't do a lasik unless there's enough cornea there to work with in case they need to go in later for a correction). so instead i was a candidate for lasek, which is basically the same thing as the old prk method, except that they are able to scrape aside the epithelium during the procedure and put it back in place afterwards. this makes the recovery much faster than a typical prk but is still not the quick and easy approach that lasik offers.
The benefits were:
1. no flap is cut, so no problems that are typically associated with the flap (i.e. halos at night, double-vision, etc.). apparently most of the risks associated with lasik are a result of the flap.
2. slightly better precision than with lasik
The disadvantages were:
1. the most painful 3 days of my life (first 1.5 days felt like alcohol burning my eyes, second 1.5 days felt like sand paper on my eyes).
2. took 1 week to get decent vision, i.e. better than 20/30. after 2 weeks i was 20/20.
3. dry eyes for over a year - it's been almost 2 years, and i still add lubricant eye drops a few times a week.
4. during the initial healing process, one of my healing contacts came out (this is what holds the epithelium in place until it heals), so my left eye was a lot slower in healing. i didn't realize how much slower, and probably exposed it to too much uv too soon (i live in hawaii, surf, beach, etc.). this has caused a little more haze than is normal in my left eye, and my vision isn't quite as good in that eye, but still good enough that i am more than satisfied.
5) a little more sensitive to bright light than i used to be (this has gotten better over time).
My overall feeling:
I wore glasses since i was 3 years old, first learned about corrective eye surgery when i was ~ 16, and finally got it done when i was 24. for me, this was the best decision i have ever made. now i can wear real sunglasses (like i said, living in hawaii), go surfing and see other peoples' faces, see everything when i play sports and not have to worry about damaging my $400 glasses, and don't get bothered by glasses constanly being on my face.
It's a big decision, so make sure you weigh the plusses and minuses. also, be sure to go to a doctor that only does corrective eye surgery, and one who has done at least 3000 procedures. ask around. you'd be surprised how many friends of your who you never knew wore glasses had the procedure done a few years ago.
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There is also the case of papayas in Hawaii. In the past few years, a new strain of papaya was developed to combat the papaya ringspot virus. This virus threatened to destroy Hawaii's entire commercial papaya industry. With the GM varieties, the papaya is now immune to this deadly rinspot virus. See this article from UH's student newspaper here http://www.kaleo.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/10/1 2/416b77d697d77
This is great news for any papaya farmer who wants to use the new GM varieties, but terrible for the organic papaya farmers. Recently, the organic farmers have found contamination in their crops. This could cause any organic farmer to lose his/her organic certification. In the world of organic farming, this is akin to a truck driver losing his CDL. In other words, all the work that went into getting certified for organic farming goes down the tube. As an aside, a large market for Hawaii's organic papaya crop is Japan, which has a zero-tolerance GM policy. Any contamination, and an organic papaya farmer would lose Japan as a market.
And what is the cause of the contamination? It looks like there are two possibilities. The first is contaminiation from a nearby farmer's pollen (if the neighbor uses GM papayas). The other is from buying contaminated seeds. When an organic farmer buys seeds that are labelled "non-GM", there should be absolutely no trace of GM in those seeds. This however is not the case - the quality control in keeping GM seeds and non-GM seeds is obviously not good enough and needs to be improved. Until these types of problems are worked out, I still see GM crops as dangerous. Not in the sense that the crop is necessarily unhealthy or dangerous to eat but, as in this case, could cost an organic farmer his livelihood.
Most articles list contamination as only a possibility, and rarely talk about the effects that GM contamination can have on a farmer. These effects are real and should not be ignored.
Why wouldn't they go through with an attack? A cyber-attack has the benefits of causing no bloodshed but could potentially cause anything from a minor headache to millions (if not billions) of dollars in damages if launched properly.
Also, it's pretty interesting that the attacks on S. Korean computer systems seemed to be based in China. If this were indeed true (doubtful), this would cast doubt on dubbya's assertion in the debate that bilateral talks with N. Korea will alienate China, which is supposedly imposing some kind of leverage on N. Korea.
The benefits were:
1. no flap is cut, so no problems that are typically associated with the flap (i.e. halos at night, double-vision, etc.). apparently most of the risks associated with lasik are a result of the flap.
2. slightly better precision than with lasik
The disadvantages were:
1. the most painful 3 days of my life (first 1.5 days felt like alcohol burning my eyes, second 1.5 days felt like sand paper on my eyes).
2. took 1 week to get decent vision, i.e. better than 20/30. after 2 weeks i was 20/20.
3. dry eyes for over a year - it's been almost 2 years, and i still add lubricant eye drops a few times a week.
4. during the initial healing process, one of my healing contacts came out (this is what holds the epithelium in place until it heals), so my left eye was a lot slower in healing. i didn't realize how much slower, and probably exposed it to too much uv too soon (i live in hawaii, surf, beach, etc.). this has caused a little more haze than is normal in my left eye, and my vision isn't quite as good in that eye, but still good enough that i am more than satisfied.
5) a little more sensitive to bright light than i used to be (this has gotten better over time).
My overall feeling:
I wore glasses since i was 3 years old, first learned about corrective eye surgery when i was ~ 16, and finally got it done when i was 24. for me, this was the best decision i have ever made. now i can wear real sunglasses (like i said, living in hawaii), go surfing and see other peoples' faces, see everything when i play sports and not have to worry about damaging my $400 glasses, and don't get bothered by glasses constanly being on my face.
It's a big decision, so make sure you weigh the plusses and minuses. also, be sure to go to a doctor that only does corrective eye surgery, and one who has done at least 3000 procedures. ask around. you'd be surprised how many friends of your who you never knew wore glasses had the procedure done a few years ago.