Can vandals apologize? Can destroyers say “Oops? Surely, there must be some ceremony of atonement for the silviculturally destructive, and if there is, Mead Corp. and Dorman Farm in Milo appear to be the deserving recipients of lavish mea culpas. At least as important, Maine deserves a break from those who carry pruning shears late at night.

A group opposed to genetic engineering (GE) that recently destroyed – clear-cut – 3,000 small trees at the Milo farm was right about one thing. As a calling card, participants spray painted “NO GE TREES!” on the side of a truck. According to Mead, which leases land at the farm, there were none and never had been; only hybrid trees, grown under the kind of science that has been around since Gregor Mendel got interested in peas. Mead reports that not only didn’t the Dorman Farm contain GE trees, but that it does not test GE trees anywhere. But even if this small plot did contain GE trees, the most useful public service the saboteurs could have undertaken would have been to let the research continue, then obtain the testing results and make them public. Instead, they ended the experiment.

This destruction follows last year’s misguided macheteing of GE corn at a University of Maine research plot. In that case, the researchers wanted to know how genetic changes to the corn plants would affect their resistance to herbicide. Because the plot in Orono wasn’t commercial but grown for the purposes of information, the only reason to cut it down was because someone – never caught – was afraid of what would happen if that information got into the hands of scientists and the public. They apparently believed it would be better to keep people in the dark and feed them hysterical warnings about the unknown.

Opposition to genetic engineering rapidly is being reduced to those who want more information about this science and those who oppose it because it does not fit into their view of the world. Members of the latter group seem certain that their beliefs supercede anyone else’s, so that any level of aberrant behavior is acceptable if it aligns with what they believe. What a tiny world to live in, and what a dangerous world for everyone else.