Author: Ophelia Benson

Good; let’s everybody pile on Charles. He needs to be told his status doesn’t substitute for scientific training.

The heir to the throne may wish to use his privileged position to promote his organic produce while denigrating those of us who wish to use science to help feed the world. But he should at least do so from a position of scientific evidence rather than ideological dogma. He shows a common misunderstanding of how agricultural science works. What’s worse, though, is that his comments risk reinforcing the mistrust felt by much of the public about how their food is produced.

Because of who he is – which is exactly why he should be more cautious about mouthing off instead of less so. His irresponsibility is shocking to behold.

I am reminded of the suggestion made some time ago by Professor Steve Jones of University College London that the best thing the prince could do would be to take an A-level in biology: it would help him to understand the irrationality of his position.

Yes but that would be so plebeian. One isn’t just anyone, after all.

He also blames various ills on modern agriculture more generally – yet fails to see that GM technology could be the solution. He is worried, for instance, about the huge salination problems faced by farmers in many parts of the world. Soil becoming too salty is indeed a problem in places – but GM technology offers us the chance to develop crop varieties that will not just survive but thrive in such conditions.

Yes but you see – hem hem hem, excuse me I’m due at polo just now.

Not so fast Sir.

The Prince is as entitled to his views as anyone. What he is not entitled to do is share them with us. This has nothing to do with whatever merit they might or might not have. It has everything to do with the fact that one day he will be King…The attacks on further GM experiments – which, by definition, are designed to further our knowledge – expose the ignorance behind Prince Charles’s remarks. There is not a shred of evidence – not a jot, not a hint, not a fraction – that there is any risk from GM crops.

Yet his privileged position as next king means that his ignorant views get more exposure than those of people who know something about the subject. That’s bad, and the fact that he doesn’t seem to grasp this makes it worse. It doesn’t seem to cross his mind at all that he could be genuinely harming millions of people (could if his views are ever acted on, at least) and that he therefore ought to…shut up.

I’ve yet to hear Prince Charles decry the use of insulin for diabetics as a “real disaster”. But if he rejects, on principle, the idea of GM crops, he should, because the insulin used is genetically engineered – the human gene that codes for insulin has been transferred into bacteria and yeast, a process that involves crossing the species barrier. But then ignorance need not be consistent and when the Prince opens his mouth he serves only to advance the cause of an unthinking, irrational, ignorance as a basis for policy.

And that cause carries the risk of harming millions of people.

Charles and Bush should form a tiny little book group or something; they have a lot in common.

Charles is misusing his wealth and status again, taking advantage of his privileged position to lay down the law on subjects he knows nothing about.

Des Turner, a Labour MP and member of the Commons science committee, said: “Prince Charles has got a way of getting things absolutely wrong.
It’s an entirely Luddite attitude to simply reject them out of hand. In some developing countries where for instance there is a problem with drought or salinity, if you can develop salt or drought-resistant crops there are great benefits.”

Oh well you see that would require thinking about specifics, and Charles doesn’t want to do that, he just wants to use his unearned unmerited authority to make sweeping unsupported evidence-free Grand Statements. He should subscribe to the WMST list, he’d feel right at home.

In a statement setting the Prince against politicians who believe GM foods will be crucial to feeding under-nourished populations in the developing world, he said: “What we should be talking about is food security, not food production – that is what matters and that is what people will not understand.”

Horrible man. ‘What people will not understand’ indeed – spoken like a true royal. He has no expertise in this subject, he’s not a trained agronomist or economist or biologist, he’s not a scientist of any kind, yet he thinks he’s perfectly qualified to tell the world what ‘people’ obstinately ‘will not understand’ no matter how many times he orders them to. What we should be talking about is not food production – no matter how many people starve while Charles cuddles his fantasies about small farms and bijou apples.

Phil Willis, a Liberal Democrat MP and the chairman of the Commons science committee, said the Prince’s “lack of scientific understanding” would “condemn millions of people to starvation in areas like sub-Saharan Africa. The reality is that without the development of science in farming, we would not be able to feed a tenth of the world population, which will exceed nine billion by 2050.”

Yes but you see that’s specifics again and Charles is your grand generalization man. He wears expensive suits, he must be right.

Ian Gibson, a Labour MP and former lecturer in Biology, said: “Prince Charles should stick to his royal role rather than spout off about something which he has clearly got wrong.”

Trouble is, Charles thinks he’s a powerful thinker, and he acts on that mistaken view.

Mark Henderson does a good job of saying how Charles gets it all wrong.

Not exactly.

Of course, the novel will be published sooner or later. Writing about Muhammad has become the shortest cut to media attention in the west. And of course semi-employed young men and women from religious Muslim backgrounds will be out on the streets, shouting.

Women? No they won’t. You don’t see them out there much – which is not surprising, since in ‘religious Muslim’ countries they’re not always encouraged to join in, if you get my drift. But they also, quite possibly, have better sense. It tends to be the young men who work themselves into stupid frenzies about this kind of thing. Rage boy, remember? Rage girl not so much.

[E]ven very religious Muslims cannot ignore the west any more, and – unfortunately – the west, it appears, cannot ignore them either.

Well there are those tugs on the sleeve every now and then, you know. The exploding bus, the exploding airplane, the exploding building – they’re hard to ignore.

European newspapers compared the deferred novel on Aisha to two recent, and very sad, events: the protests that followed the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and the Danish Muhammad cartoons, in which – wrote the Guardian objectively – “more than 100 people died”. The implication – unintended by the Guardian – is that about 100 people were killed by Islamic fundamentalists or protesters…But the fact remains that on both the occasions at least 80% of the people who died were Muslims protesting against Rushdie’s novel or the Danish cartoons. They were often shot by the police, sometimes in Muslim countries, when the protests got out of hand or were inconvenient.

I don’t think that is the implication. On the contrary. I think the intended implication is that the 100 people died because Rushdie’s novel and the Danish cartoons ‘sparked outrage’. The implication is not that Islamic fundamentalists killed each other, but that offended people were upset and then tragically got killed in the resulting violence, which was ultimately the fault not of the offended people or of the police but of the authors of the works that offended them. The BBC and the Guardian generally (though not this time) say that the novel or the cartoons ‘triggered’ or ’caused’ or ‘set off’ protests and riots – which is not true, and does imply that the novelist and the cartoonists did it on purpose or at least should have known better. So…Tabish Khair and I see the matter differently.