Dear Jeremy Cooke,

In "GM food Monster or saviour?" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7426054.stm) you write in connection with GM foods "It is something that Americans, generally, do not even think about. Certainly, throughout the four years my family and I spent in New York we must have eaten hundreds of meals containing GM in blissful ignorance."

1. "Innovation and technology: Twenty-First Century"

In the journal "Leonardo", Volume 28, Number 4 -published by Pergamon Press in 1990 we read an article with the title directly above, written by Lowell T. Harmison (biophysicist, scientist, administrator) Maxwell Foundation, USA:

Once upon a time, adults used to question things: They would ask themselves and others why some things were good and why some things were bad. This was called "discussion" and some people enjoyed it.

However, one day, a very clever person discovered that if you kept repeating how clever you were and how wonderful your products were, then after a while other people got too tired to argue with you and so they just went out and bought these products however "good" or "bad" they really were. This was called "advertising".