News | GM-deficiency syndrome
Be on the watch for symptoms of GM-deficiency syndrome.
The symptoms of this new disease are not yet well characterised, but you will know when you've contracted it when you hear your voice pleading for more GM food.
To help you, the biotech industry will launch a disease awareness campaign. No advertising of its GM products will be allowed, but you will be freely supplied with all the information about them you might need to deal with your illness. To help you even more, the trade arm of the European Commission is looking into ways to allow biotech companies to provide access to you.
Consumer groups which are supporting the dissemination of GM information while receiving significant funding from the biotech industry have hit out at perverse suggestions that their judgement may be biased because they are in the pocket of the companies. They insist that the biotech companies are a legitimate source of information on GM foods and that the public is well able to recognise propaganda.
OUR COMMENT
Apologies to our more serious-minded readers.
The above nonsense was inspired by an article in the Guardian on 21.05.07, describing how drug companies are setting about dealing with their declining sales and inability to get new products to market. In league with the European Commission and industry-funded patient groups, they are stage-managing “disease awareness campaigns” in which they will supply information about their drugs direct to patients, who will then have the ammunition to nag their doctors into writing prescriptions.
The shakiness of the drug industry has clear parallels with the situation shaping up in the GM food industry, and the same desperate tactics are very likely to be applied.
You have been warned.