Monday, April 21, 2008

PETA offers $1 million prize for vat-grown meat

James Randi comes to mind. I hope my cynicism is unfounded.
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Anonymous said...

No, your cynicism is not unfounded.

PETA's offer is bogus, and a stunt, just like Randi's is--it's intended to raise the profile of the organization, and "awareness" I suppose, due to the conditional nature of the offer:

From the NY Times:

“first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012.”

Within 5 years? Unlikely. And it has to be "commercially viable" and at "competitive prices." Even less likely. Does PETA have a spare million laying around for something like this? No. Cost of developing such tech? Tens if not hundreds of millions.

So, like Randi's bogus $1 million offer for a demonstration of psi abilities, for which he never had the money anyway, and was so conditional on his rules that it was absurd, PETA's offer is also bogus, and intended as PR hype and self-promotion.

NYT details: http://tinyurl.com/47x2r8

5:58 AM

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