Ethical issues concerning tobacco

In one of Virginia Tech's tobacco reports, they state ethical issues concerning genetically engineered technology contained in bio-pharming never made the radar screen during interviews with tobacco producers because the issue was never brought up during an interview without direct prompting from a project interviewer.

In fact they also said, when a question is directly asked on the subject, ethical issues are either met with a positive statement about making helpful medicines or with obvious confusion about why they should ask such a question.  None of the interviewers showed any doubt about putting a human gene into a tobacco plant, from the point of view of playing against religious belief or somehow unnatural.  Furthermore, a number of people who grow these plants and associated agricultural professionals recommended that there was an irony with using tobacco to produce treatments for cancer.  Many growers seemed inspired that tobacco could be used for the betterment of society, and that they would be involved in this process (Tobacco).