Golden rice criticism prompts pro-GM apoplexy

1.Golden Rice board dubs GM-free campaigners 'cranks'
2.Taking the rap

NOTE: Couldn't resist including item 2 in this context :)

If Adrian Dubock seems a mite apoplectic, then this former Syngenta man's list of recommended reading may give some clue to the disease.

His favourite publications include 'The March of Unreason: Science, Democracy, and the New Fundamentalism' by Dick Taverne.

A reviewer in The Guardian described this book as 'hectoring dogma' and 'rant rather than reason'. The reviewer also said Taverne displayed 'a little knowledge and a lot of bombast'.

James Wilsdon in a review in the Financial Times accused Taverne of using evidence selectively and unscrupulously to bolster prejudice, and of engaging in "fundamentalism... His is a world in which science can do no wrong; in which research is untainted by vested interests, and companies such as Monsanto exist purely to feed the hungry."   
http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=127

Another Dubock favourite is, 'The real GM food scandal' by, errr... Dick Taverne. Other Dubock recommendations include a book on the benefits of pesticides (well, if you're going to work for Syngenta, you may as well look on the bright side!)and 'Why ethical shopping harms the world'.
http://www.sfiar.ch/pubrecommend.htm
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1.Golden Rice board dubs GM-free campaigners 'cranks'
John Vidal
Eco Soundings, The Guardian, 25 March 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/mar/24/golden-rice-gm-brian-john-cymru

The latest spat between pro- and anti-GM camps is getting nasty. It revolves around Golden Rice, the GM crop that was bio-fortified to produce vitamin A and was intended to be rolled out to the world's poor many years ago, but hasn't got very far.

A few weeks ago, when it was found that it was being fed to Chinese children without being licensed, Brian John, of GM-Free Cymru, fired off a letter to the Golden Rice board.

An immediate reply from top man Adrian Dubock, former UK government GM cheerleader and latterly a Syngenta man, started mildly enough with

"[You are] a failed bunch of cranks"

Then he went on

"You, and your kind, really are degenerately immoral."

Tsk, tsk.

 Eco Soundings is our regular bite-sized blog series. It appears every Wednesday in the Guardian newspaper
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2.Taking the rap
John Vidal
Eco Soundings, The Guardian, 6 October 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/oct/06/environment.environment2

Rohan Prakask is the 12-year-old rapper son of Professor CS Prakash, director of the Centre for Plant Biotechnology at Tuskegee university, Alabama. Young Rohan has leapt to his father's side after penning a pro-biotech song that was mentioned by the UK web-based GM Watch group.

He emailed them: "If you want to insult me, i'm going to insult you fucking dick ass bit[c]h whor. Ya you can never talk about me like that cuz 12 year old rohan that's me and say sorry because universal records gave me a record contract and i can make a rap to get you out of business bitch. Do not talk about my dad because biotechnology is tight and you do not fuck with me!"

Sweet child.