Word: doomsdayers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...doomsday prophets need to get a life! In a universe that is 15 billion years old, the entire era of human existence is a nano-blip." JENNIFER L. WOOD Bakersfield, Calif...
...science take hold, opponents warn darkly, and farmers could find themselves coming to Monsanto, seed cup in hand, paying whatever the company demands before they can plant that season's crop. Worse still, some doomsday scenarios suggest, pollen from Terminator plants could drift with the wind like a toxic cloud, cross with ordinary crops or wild plants, and spread from species to species until flora all around the world had been suddenly and irreversibly sterilized...
Despite the doomsday alarms being sounded by environmentalists, genetic engineers at Monsanto argue that there is no real risk of pollen from Terminator plants causing widespread sterilization in other plants--and they're probably right. Gene drift does occur, but nature doesn't make it easy. Many crops, like rice, are mostly self-pollinated. As for crops that are pollinated by wind or insects, precautions like planting border fields to keep crops isolated help confine genes. What's more, crops tend to mature at the same time--sending out a great puff of pollen all at once--while wild plants...
...cybermogul resembling Bill Gates figures as something like the Antichrist in Judgment Day 2000 by Richard Wiles, in which the breakdown of all computers leaves America vulnerable to terrorists with nuclear bombs in suitcases and a leftover Soviet doomsday machine called the Dead Hand. Wiles, 45, a onetime marketing director for Christian Broadcasting Network, believes God directed him to write his book. "In 12 months we'll know if I'm right," says Wiles. "If I'm wrong, the worst that will happen to me is I'll be tremendously embarrassed. If other people are wrong and don't listen...
...were to pass before the full power of recombinant-DNA technology got into the hands of working scientists, who by then were itching to explore previously unattainable secrets of life. Happily, the proposals to control recombinant-DNA research through legislation never got close to enactment. And when anti-DNA doomsday scenarios failed to materialize, even the modestly restrictive governmental regulations began to wither away. In retrospect, recombinant-DNA may rank as the safest revolutionary technology ever developed. To my knowledge, not one fatality, much less illness, has been caused by a genetically manipulated organism...