Ad hominem attack completely unexamined by the article's author: """Of his harshest critics Borlaug stated, "some… are the salt of the earth, but many of them a

Ad hominem attack completely unexamined by the article's author: """Of his harshest critics Borlaug stated, "some… are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things." """ Logical breakdown: 1) My critics are elitist who have not experienced hunger. 2) Therefore, they are wrong. Relationship to actual argument: nonexistent. As a note, I do think Norman Borlaug was a remarkable person. But there are lots of interesting questions to ask about his work, and it doesn't make someone an "elitist", or a bad person to ask them. Asking them doesn't mean they think Norman Borlaug was a bad person either. A few that spring to mind... 1) How many have died from malnutrition after crop yield booms resulted in rapidly expanding populations suddenly constrained when the next yield limit was hit? 2) If education expenditures for the third world matched those given for improving agriculture and food aid starting in the 1960's, what would the "third world" look like today? Better? Worse? What if expenditures had been divvied evenly between the two?