Sometimes, activists like to scream "ban this" and "ban that" anytime something has a side effect. But before you join their brigade, you might want to study the issue
1) Drones
Am I for or against drones?
Depends!
If we're sending out drones to bomb Al Quaida hideouts, then do it!
But if we're just sending out drones to take sides in someone else's civil war, then screw it, don't do it!
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In World War 2, we didn't stop the German or Japanese fascists by singing peace songs.
We bombed military targets.
Some bombs missed and killed innocents.
But whose fault was it?
It was the fault of the German and Japanese governments for starting wars in the first place.
While their people didn't like getting bombed by the US warplanes, they also understood that their own governments was at fault.
That's why after World War 2, the Germans and Japanese citizens just gave up with imperial impulses. They also didn't retaliate against the US after the war was over. They just re-built their country instead. They re-built it so well that they even sold their surplus cars and electronics to us.
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With drones, we damage the enemy with putting less of our troops at risk.
But we still should be careful about where to send our drones (and troops) to.
We shouldn't get involved in other countries civil war.
It's best to keep our troops, drones, planes, whatevers out of the conflicts going in Syria, Mali or other troubled spots.
After all, we nation building to do at home.
2) GMO's
Am I for or against GMO's.
Depends.
Whereas many activists stereotype all GMOs as health hazards, I wont' even go there.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/project_syndicate0/2013/02/gm_food_golden_rice_will_save_millions_of_people_from_vitamin_a_deficiency.html
Finally, after a 12-year delay caused by opponents of genetically modified foods, so-called “golden rice” with vitamin A will be grown in the Philippines. Over those 12 years, about 8 million children worldwide died from vitamin A deficiency. Are anti-GM advocates not partly responsible?
Golden rice is the most prominent example in the global controversy over GM foods, which pits a technology with some risks but incredible potential against the resistance of feel-good campaigning. Three billion people depend on rice as their staple food, with 10 percent at risk for vitamin A deficiency, which, according to the World Health Organization, causes 250,000 to 500,000 children to go blind each year. Of these, half die within a year. A study from the British medical journal the Lancet estimates that, in total, vitamin A deficiency kills 668,000 children under the age of 5 each year.
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Similarly, it is argued that golden rice will not be adopted, because most Asians eschew brown rice. But brown rice is substantially different in taste and spoils easily in hot climates. Moreover, many Asian dishes are already colored yellow with saffron, annatto, achiote, and turmeric. The people, not Greenpeace, should decide whether they will adopt vitamin A-rich rice for themselves and their children.
Most ironic is the self-fulfilling critique that many activists now use. Greenpeace calls golden rice a “failure,” because it “has been in development for almost 20 years and has still not made any impact on the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency.” But, as Ingo Potrykus, the scientist who developed golden rice, has made clear, that failure is due almost entirely to relentless opposition to GM foods—often by rich, well-meaning Westerners far removed from the risks of actual vitamin A deficiency.
Regulation of goods and services for public health clearly is a good idea; but it must always be balanced against potential costs—in this case, the cost of not providing more vitamin A to 8 million children during the past 12 years.
As an illustration, current regulations for GM foods, if applied to non-GM products, would ban the sale of potatoes and tomatoes, which can contain poisonous glycoalkaloids; celery, which contains carcinogenic psoralens; rhubarb and spinach (oxalic acid); and cassava, which feeds about 500 million people but contains toxic cyanogenic alkaloids. Foodstuffs like soy, wheat, milk, eggs, mollusks, crustaceans, fish, sesame, nuts, peanuts, and kiwi would likewise be banned, because they can cause food allergies.
In other words, every food item has side effects.
You can spread awareness by labeling GMO foods. That's already being done in Europe.
If you don't like GMO foods, then don't eat it!
But if someone wants to take the risk and eat GMO food, then let them!
After all, pretty much everyone knows alcohol and tobbacco are dangerous, but people still consume them.
After all, their body, their choice.
