Power Hour with @DrMaxham guest of @AlexEpstein

The latest episode of “Power Hour”, the weekly podcast hosted by Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress and author of the must-read book “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” does not talk about energy, for a change.

The topic discussed with his guest Dr. Amanda Maxham, an author which I had already covered in a previous blog post, is genetic engineer, which is the correct term that we should all be using now that GMO or genetically modified organism has been so badly vilified by those technofobes who are scared about anything new that they do not know much about.

Why would Alex Epstein have Amanda Maxham on his energy show?

There are main reasons I see:

  1. Both Amanda and Alex, and their common friend Don Watkins, have been or are working at the Ayn Rand Institute in California.
  2. The technofobia which is preventing genetically engineered products from the markets where they could be accepted by the consumers has strong parallels with the same trend in the energy sector, particularly in nuclear energy. As a matter of fact, Greenpeace is scaring people off on both GMOs and nuclear energy in much the same way, by using a similar approach based on the “precautionary principle”, something which works very well with the many people who have little or no knowledge on genetic engineer or nuclear energy, as Alex points out in the final part of the interview.

As a type 1 diabetic and technology enthusiast, I have always been very much in favor of genetic engineering because I need to use insulin multiple times every day of my life, and I am extremely thankful that very smart people have used their brain and ingenuity to create a safe and extremely modern product such as genetically engineered insulin.

Over the past 18 years as a type 1 diabetic, I have seen many new types of insulin being researched and introduced on the market, and knowing that they are all based on genetic engineering, makes me want to scream “Thank You!” to all those who have been using their own time to work on such amazing projects.

On a side node, I have discovered Amanda Maxham’s work thru Alex Epstein’s friend and former Ayn Rand Institute colleague Don Watkins, when I discovered that they had been guests on the Yaron Brooks Show in the past. Amanda and Keith Lockitch were hosting the weekly Yaron Brook Show on Earth Day in April 2015. That show is quite fun, and Keith and Amanda covered aspects related to global warming and GMOs, but most importantly for me they referred to an amazing 1970 speech by Ayn Rand when Amanda said that she would give

a hearty Earth Day “thank you” to “the nearest, grimiest, sootiest smokestacks” they can find.

I then did some research and discovered that Ayn Rand used this very term during a speech she did in 1970 titled “The Anti-Industrial Revolution”, a speech which is a must-listen to, as it goes into a lot of details on the roots of modern day environmentalism and the dangers posed to society by the awfully wrong concepts and ideas which are so commonly heard these days by people who know nothing more than propaganda coming from the likes of Greenpeace or the Sierra Club.

As usual, the podcast is very much worth listening to, and can be found here:
http://industrialprogress.com/power-hour-amanda-maxham-on-the-virtues-of-gmos/

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *