Most international environmental agreements explicitly embrace the precautionary principle, and it increasingly appears in domestic environmental policy discussions. Yet the scientific consensus is that genetically modified crops are no more, and no less, dangerous than those developed by less sophisticated cross-breeding or hybridization techniques. The problem is not simply that the precautionary principle is being misapplied to relatively safe products but that the precautionary principle poses problems of its own. For one thing, it is a Luddite's dream. If inventors and scientists are uncertain whether they can market new products or processes, they are less likely to develop them in the first place.
Progress is stifled.
This keeps lifesaving drugs off the market for years. Yet for victims of life-threatening diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer's, and AIDS, few side effects are a greater threat than their own medical condition, which these drugs could address. In the early 1990s, Peru cut the chlorination of its water supply, citing, among other things, an EPA report suggesting that chlorination might increase cancer rates. Yet this risk pales in comparison to the risks posed by waterborne disease. Molds produce some of the most potent carcinogens found in nature.