In article
<3e928080-b0ad-4e64-bddc-c4b8f0867280@y18g2000pre.googlegroups.com>,
dumpster4@hotmail.com wrote:
> "At the request of the Swiss government, an ethics panel
> has weighed in on the "dignity" of plants and opined that
> the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong. This is no hoax.
> The concept of what could be called "plant rights" is being
> seriously debated."
You left off the most disturbing part:
A few years ago the Swiss added to their national constitution a
provision requiring "account to be taken of the dignity of creation
when handling animals, plants and other organisms." No one knew
exactly what it meant, so they asked the Swiss Federal Ethics
Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology to figure it out. The resulting
report, "The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants," is
enough to short circuit the brain.
So...they amend their Constitution *first* and THEN they get around to
trying to figure out what the amendment means?
Yes, I know we have similar confusion over some parts of the US
Constitution, but in our case it is a matter of culture and language
changing over a couple centuries, so we are unclear on meaning. But at
least the people who wrote the amendments knew what they meant. It
sounds like the Swiss didn't even go that far, and just put effectively
gibberish into their Constitution!
--Tim Smith
Paul Bartram
Jeßus
