THE TRANSHUMANISM SCRAPBOOK: DRONES WITH HONEYBEE BRAINS

Sometimes you just have to wonder about the ultility of all this "progress." Case in point: having now decimated the populations of honey bees all over the world, a decimation that some scientists have connected to the dramatic rise of GMOs and various new pesticides which seem to have accelerated the rise of bee colony collapse disorder, some scientists are now implanting honeybee brains into drones. The purpose for this? Well, read it for yourself:

Drone flies after being installed with honeybee brain

The subtitle here says it all: "Fleets of these 'artificial bees' could one day pollinate our crops just like real bees do." And just so you don't miss the importance of this point, the article emphasizes it again:

"Over time, Green Brain scientists want to reconstruct enough of a real-life honeybee brain so that the robots are capable of acting autonomously, with the ultimate aim of creating fleets of these drones to perform tasks just like real bees. For instance, given that populations of honeybees are dwindling worldwide, there may come a day when these bee-bots will be needed to pollinate our crops. Let's hope they're never equipped with stingers."

Oh really? I feel comforted, and I hope you do too.

Not.

This is the problem of modern science, or rather, scientism. Rather than following up the suggestions of research that has clearly connected the collapse of honeybee populations to the introduction of GMOs and their supporting technologies, and rather than calling a moratorium on their planting and use until adequate intergenerational environmental testing can be done, we rush blindly forward to the next technological fix, drones with honey bee brains. And I hope you catch the self-defeating logic going on here.

Let's assume, in our high octance speculation of the day, that colony collapse disorder is related to the GMO issue. If honey bees are thus so effected by it, how would a drone with a honeybee brain be any different? Might not the effect not only be the same but, because of the technology involved, be somehow amplified? Why do all of this? One answer, immediately apparent, is the same answer that gave rise to the whole stinking GMO complex to begin with: natural seeds cannot be patented, and hence, GMOs, over the short run, give greater profits, plus allow the corporations sponsoring and promoting them an unprecedented measure of control over the world's food supply.

The key to this control has, of course, been patent law. Genetic tinkering with nature allows the process to become one of private ownership. One cannot patent a nitrogen molecule, for example, but one can patent a process to extract it from thin air and use it to make explosives, for example. It is the same danger that Dr. Scott DeHart and I warned of in our book Transhumanism: A Grimoire of Alchemical Agendas, and that I warned about again in Genes, Giants, Monsters, and Men. Take the logic of Mon(ster)santo, and apply it to genetic editting of the human genome. Mon(ster)santo and other members of the IG Farbensanto agribusiness "community" aggressively prosecute (read persecute) farmers whose fields have been found to contain their genetically modified crops, even if those farmers never planted them, and the plants made their way to their fields through natural processes. That doesn't matter to the corporations and seldom matters to their bought-and-paid-for courts. The same logic could conceivably be used on humans whose DNA is discovered to contain some patented genome. Imagine having to pay a license fee every year to IG Farbensanto for the privilege of living, should your DNA contain such a genome. Indeed, studies in Europe have found glyphosate in human urine, and I'm a bit surprised the various agribusiness and chemicals companies haven't started hauling people into court, suing them for renting their product without a license. Too far-fetched? No more far fetched than suing farmers for the presence of unwanted GMO plants in their fields.

Apply the same logic to honeybee brains in drones. One cannot make a profit on the natural processes of honeybees pollinating plants. Solution? Get rid of them, and invent drones with honeybee brains to do the work for them. Now you can make a profit.

The real solution? Better not to have embarked down this road at all. Restore the widespread use of natural crops, and my bet is that the honeybee population will come back. Just a thought.

See you on the flip side...

(My thanks to Ms. B.H. for sharing this article)