In West Central Minnesota, local farmers have been opposing an electrical transmission line for over four years. The resistance dates back to the very first information meeting staged by the utilities. The public relations person for the utility company said at the meeting, "You should be proud to have the biggest...
Tag - 1980
With the breeding and marketing of new “improved” varieties, traditional varieties are being replaced. Farmers and gardeners stop growing them. Field after field is planted with one variety. Where thousands of varieties of wheat once grew, only a few can now be seen. When these traditional plant varieties are lost...
With recombinant DNA technology in the hands of industry – aided by academic scientists – we can expect continued exposure to biological risks, and continued benefits to private interests at public expense. As David Suzuki, a geneticist, wrote three years ago, "What could be more explosive than the application in...
For nearly a decade a major battle has been waged over conditions in coke plants. While the steel industry has resisted clean-up efforts tooth and nail, the United Steel Workers of America (USWA), prodded by rank-and-file coke oven workers, has won definite improvements in conditions in coke plants. Still, most plants...
Nonionizing radiation is an example of a presumed benevolent technology which, because found useful for military and corporate purposes and for social benefit, has become intertwined in our lives to a potentially dangerous level. When it first gained widespread use some 30 to 50 years ago, little work was done to...
In recent years labor unions have become more and more interested in problems in the work environment. In Denmark unions have initiated research into social and medical problems related to work. Their goal has been to make the workplace safe for their members and to track down work-related health hazards and illness...
But ever since last December, when Washington was notified that chemical industry representatives were offering multi-million dollar deals to Third World leaders in exchange for guaranteed dumping sites, an ad hoc committee of representatives from the State Department, the EPA, and the Council on Environmental Quality...
I had been to China in February '72, and I spent two years giving lectures on China. When I talked to people about worker control of the factory, their eyes glazed over. But when I talked about a health care system which was run by the community and in which many of the people doing health care work identified...
This battle of the experts obscures a critical point. Whether a fetus is or is not a person is a moral and not a scientific question. Determining whether a fetus is a person is not like determining whether a newly-discovered plant is edible or inedible. It is instead like determining whether it is morally acceptable...
In this article I will discuss the transition from eugenics to population control as it occurred in the work of one man, Raymond Pearl (1879-1940). Pearl is a useful and important figure for several reasons. He was a well-known biologist with a considerable reputation both in the United States and abroad. In the early...