Col’s Rational World

Today’s game card – Prince Charles of Great Britain

I thought I’d go with a topical, if somewhat unpatriotic card today by choosing the heir to the British throne.

Prince Charles is certainly a nice bloke. One can’t disagree with that – he seems reasonably genuine and it’s certain that he is campaigning for things about which he is passionate.  That can only be good for a monarch.  I think that in most subjects we would agree, and would probably get on very well.

The problem is, however, that the subjects he has chosen to champion are basically thinly-veiled conspiracy theories, primarily about genetically-modified crops and multinational capitalism.  Charles, who has no formal scientific training whatsoever, has only two A-levels in history and french (grades B and C) and required an entirely separate bespoke degree at Cambridge because he wasn’t clever enough to do the real one.  A skeptic could perhaps argue exactly why he believes he has any say in scientific matters, especially to complain about a science which, by tentative estimates, has saved over a billion (yes, billion with a ‘b’) lives in the last fifty years due to the efforts of heroes like Norman Borlaug.

GM technology offers us a very real possibility to massively reduce the proportion of our precious countryside which is currently dedicated to intensive agriculture.  It offers us the hope of freedom from (or massive reduction in) our use of artificial pesticides and fertilisers. It will allow us to halt the current destruction of precious habitats such as the South American rainforest, which is currently being massacred at a staggering rate to create farmland fit for agriculture.  As far as any study has ever shown, genetic modification is totally risk free, and offers us a very real possibility to massively improve the condition of every single human being on planet Earth.  As such, I gave him a danger score of 6 because his imminent power may well give him the ability to put the brakes on research into these massively important areas of science.

I think it’s about time we stopped listening to hippies and conspiracy theorists, no matter how rich and important they may be, and started respecting the scientists who, like Borlaug, will never achieve the public status they so richly deserve and which so many others seem to waste.

Prince Charles

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