"Bioethics and value decisions are necessary in the Third World because biotechnology, like any technology, is not neutral in its impacts. It carries disproportionate benefits for some people, and disproportionate costs for others. To ask who gains and who loses, and what are the benefits and what are the costs, is to ask ethical questions. It is the Third World which has raised these issues in the Convention on Biological Diversity. It is the powerful industrialized nations which insist that bioethics is a luxury for the Third World.

"However, the needs of corporate interests do not reflect the needs of people. The alternative to prolonged shelf life and long-distance trade is not the reengineering of fruits and vegetables. The alternative is to reduce "food miles". Cuba for example has used the crisis of the US trade embargo to create thousands of urban organic gardens to meet the vegetable needs of each city from within its municipal limits.

"Long distance transport for basic food stuffs which could be grown locally serves the interests of global agribusiness, not the small farmer."

See complete paper from Dr. Shiva at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1527/bioethics.html