The clash of views between Prince Charles and Prof. James Watson, of DNA fame, goes to the very heart of the argument about the speed and direction in which society should or should not be moving (Prince is told his GM views are 'criminal', 8 February 2003).

What Prof. Watson ignorantly refers to as the Prince's "irrational superstitions" in respect to GM food, are, in my view, the deeply felt reservations of someone with a profound sense of awe and reverence for nature, rather than for what is an ingenious, but in contrast still rather tacky, "model" of how a tiny bit of it works.