Love for Life

The Silent Scream Of The Asparagus - Get Ready For 'Plant Rights.'
By Wesley J Smith
12th May 2008
The Weekly Standard - Volume 013, Issue 33
The Silent Scream Of The Asparagus - Get Ready For 'Plant Rights.'

You just knew it was coming: At the request of the Swiss government, an ethics panel has weighed in on the "dignity" of plants and opined that the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong. This is no hoax. The concept of what could be called "plant rights" is being seriously debated.

A few years ago the Swiss added to their national constitution a provision requiring "account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms." No one knew exactly what it meant, so they asked the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology to figure it out. The resulting report, "The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants," is enough to short circuit the brain.

A "clear majority" of the panel adopted what it called a "biocentric" moral view, meaning that "living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive." Thus, the panel determined that we cannot claim "absolute ownership" over plants and, moreover, that "individual plants have an inherent worth." This means that "we may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger, or if our actions do not endanger the species, or if we are not acting arbitrarily."

The committee offered this illustration: A farmer mows his field (apparently an acceptable action, perhaps because the hay is intended to feed the farmer's herd--the report doesn't say). But then, while walking home, he casually "decapitates" some wildflowers with his scythe. The panel
decries this act as immoral, though its members can't agree why. The report states, opaquely:

At this point it remains unclear whether this action is condemned because it expresses a particular moral stance of the farmer toward other organisms or because something bad is being done to the flowers themselves.

What is clear, however, is that Switzerland's enshrining of "plant dignity" is a symptom of a cultural disease that has infected Western civilization, causing us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns. It also reflects the triumph of a radical anthropomorphism that views elements of the natural world as morally equivalent to people.

Why is this happening? Our accelerating rejection of the Judeo-Christian world view, which upholds the unique dignity and moral worth of human beings, is driving us crazy. Once we knocked our species off its pedestal, it was only logical that we would come to see fauna and flora as entitled to rights.

The intellectual elites were the first to accept the notion of "species-ism," which condemns as invidious discrimination treating people differently from animals simply because they are human beings. Then ethical criteria were needed for assigning moral worth to individuals, be they human, animal, or now vegetable.

Rising to the task, leading bioethicists argue that for a human, value comes from possessing sufficient cognitive abilities to be deemed a "person." This excludes the unborn, the newborn, and those with significant cognitive impairments, who, personhood theorists believe, do not possess the right to life or bodily integrity. This thinking has led to the advocacy in prestigious medical and bioethical journals of using profoundly brain impaired patients in medical experimentation or as sources of organs.

The animal rights movement grew out of the same poisonous soil. Animal rights ideology holds that moral worth comes with sentience or the ability to suffer. Thus, since both animals and humans feel pain, animal rights advocates believe that what is done to an animal should be judged morally as if it were done to a human being. Some ideologues even compare the Nazi death camps to normal practices of animal husbandry. For example, Charles Patterson wrote in Eternal Treblinka--a book specifically endorsed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals--that "the road to Auschwitz begins at the slaughterhouse."

Eschewing humans as the pinnacle of "creation" (to borrow the term used in the Swiss constitution) has caused environmentalism to mutate from conservationism--a concern to properly steward resources and protect pristine environs and endangered species--into a willingness to thwart human flourishing to "save the planet." Indeed, the most radical "deep ecologists" have grown so virulently misanthropic that Paul Watson, the head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, called humans "the AIDS of the earth," requiring "radical invasive therapy" in order to reduce the population of the earth to under a billion.

As for "plant rights," if the Swiss model spreads, it may hobble biotechnology and experimentation to improve crop yields. As an editorial in Nature News put it:

The [Swiss] committee has .  .  . come up with few concrete examples of what type of experiment might be considered an unacceptable insult to plant dignity. The committee does not consider that genetic engineering of plants automatically
falls into this category, but its majority view holds that it would if the genetic modification caused plants to "lose their independence"--for example by interfering with their capacity to reproduce.

One Swiss scientist quoted in the editorial worried that "plant dignity" provides "another tool for opponents to argue against any form of plant biotechnology" despite the hope it offers to improve crop yields and plant nutrition.

What folly. We live in a time of cornucopian abundance and plenty, yet countless human beings are malnourished, even starving. In the face of this cruel paradox, worry about the purported rights of plants is the true immorality.

Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture.

Link to this article: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/065njd...

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A reply to this article

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Re: The Silent Scream of the Asparagus Get ready for ‘plant rights.’
From The Administration Department Of The Federation of Sovereign Nations
12th May 2008

This is in response to an article that appeared in The Weekly Standard, a Washington, DC-based publication titled: The Silent Scream of the Asparagus, Get ready for ‘plant rights.’ by Wesley J. Smith. The article labels Switzerland as enshrining “plant dignity” and it “being a part of a cultural disease that has infected Western civilization, causing people to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns. It also reflects the triumph of a radical anthropomorphism that views elements of the natural world as morally equivalent to people.”

I would easily agree with Wesley J. Smith if the Swiss were going around jailing people for cutting down dandelions, picking a few tulips for the vase, or ripping out a ripe radish for your salad, but I think their report titled “The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants,” stems far beyond the limited and agenda influenced eye of The Weekly Standard.

The world is in a state of corporate catastrophe. Bulldozers destroy hundreds of acres of land simply to reach a development site. Water tables are polluted beyond a living organisms hope of sustaining life just to extract a few barrels of oil. Pesticides are sprayed in blankets eradicating everything in their path, except the ones that are “genetically designed” to withstand their chemical concoction.

In defense to Paul Watson, the Sea Shepherd who describes human beings as being the “AIDS of the Earth.” He further adds to the quote “Our viral like behaviour can be terminal both to the present biosphere and ourselves. We are both the pathogen and the vector. But we also have the capability of being the anti-virus if only we can recognize the symptoms and address the disease with effective measures of control.” Paul Watson is guilty of stopping thousands of illegal fishing boats that send thousands of miles of hooks and line across ocean waters killing tens of thousands of fish each day (all species not just shark). This illegal fishing is not stopped by what we call “third world” countries, provides a large influx of capital to those who have next to nothing. Shark fins are sold on twisted legal Asian markets that believe the shark fin has mystical healing powers. (Source: Sharkwater the movie)

If you’re worried about the Sea Shepherd wiping out humanity, I tell anyone influenced by Wesley J. Smith’s article not worry about what Mr. Paul Watson, head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society says or does. If you wanted something to worry about, worry about people like Dr. Eric R. Pianka, Bill Gates, John D. Rockefeller, Hillary Clinton (if she makes it to office) and even those who operate the World Bank. These are the people and organizations that have the greatest amount of control over populations and have publicly admitted that there are too many people on this planet. The world bank is starving countries, third-world countries are granted loans that they can not afford, they contain unheard of conditions that take over their land, prohibit them from farming their own food, and in some cases, taxing the water which falls from the sky.

Dr. Henry Kissinger wrote: “Depopulation should be the highest priority of U.S. foreign policy towards the Third World.”

The Swiss are just trying to make people aware of their actions, that this world we live in is in fact a living organism in itself, connected to all forms of life. Why should life be taken for from it for no reason? If it is not feeding you, sustaining you, why destroy it? To make Q3 numbers for stakeholders?

The corporation is not sustainable, especially when anything (living or inanimate) that stands in its path is a commodity they can do with as they please. If anything comes of the “The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants,” by the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee, then I hope it is simply to protect the genetic traits of these plants by banning any type of manipulation by corporations who simply want to patent, control and “improve” these species for profit.

‘”As for “plant rights,” if the Swiss model spreads, it may hobble biotechnology and experimentation to improve crop yields.’ - Wesley J. Smith

Improve? Excuse me. Look at Monsanto and the disaster they have created with the Corn and Canola. US corn is banned in many countries across the world because it’s basically a horrible science project gone wrong. Many people have shown allergic and sometimes fatal reactions to these GMO crops. Have you ever eaten an Apple that is local and organically grown, then had one that isn’t organic or came from 3000 miles away? It’s like eating a ball of watered down cardboard. Not to mention the nutrients are not even there. When Biotechnologists say they wish to “improve crop yields” they simply mean bigger, tasteless, less-nutritious foods that wont spoil as fast when their picked raw 3000 miles from you and trucked over by huge diesel guzzling 18-wheelers, and ripened with a dose of nitrogen.

People need to start walking up, stop taking needlessly, this abundance which we have been used to is slowly disappearing. If “The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants” short circuits your brain, then we’ll see how your brain is functioning after the only nutrient-deficient food you can get at the grocery store is called by a brand name (®MonsterGene’s Golden Delicious™), not a fruit or vegetable.

Link to this article response: http://www.jointhefederation.org/2008/05/12/re-the-silent-scream-of-the-...