Transparency over banning

My comment at a Truthout.org article: Gene Drives: A Scientific Case for a Complete and Perpetual Ban which proposes banning gene drives 'techniques to promote the inheritance of specific alleles':

Broadly speaking, the scale, scope and range of human economically driven activity has extended beyond the containment of normal (non-human) geophysical, geochemical or biological systems. The only hope for containment is other human activity. When most of the human decision making (various forms of consumption) is directed by profit making business interests, controlling information is key. Consumers are told consumption will make them happy and the planet is good and dandy (more profits for business!). If consumers actually understood the unknowns and risks of their consumption (less profit for business), we would all be living in a far different world.

When the disposition of privately owned information is enforced by the power of the state, it's not difficult to control its dissemination. When all information is publicly owned, it becomes very difficult to apply it in secret.

Update: same post

Someone commented: I still haven't read any evidence of actual harm. Only potential, theoretical harm. Did I miss something?

I responded:

The impact of an asteroid caused the extinction of dinosaurs. The outcome of such an event could not be tested prior to it happening. It was possible that the asteroid would break up into chunks and disintegrate into smaller less destructive meteors but as it happens, that natural experiment resulted in the mass extinction of the majority of the plant and animal species on earth. Climate change is an anthropogenic global scale experiment with a potential outcome on a similar scale for humans and the environment. The risk of gene drive technology is unknown and may fall into a similar scale. In theory, a large asteroid impact (or climate change or gene drive or any novel chemical(s)) could do minimal damage, in fact, it has the potential to do immense damage.

If you chose to expose yourself to the risk, please contain its effect to yourself and do not place anyone else at risk.