02 September 2010
Genetically Modified Nonsense
Executive Summary
For over two decades, biotechnology has been an effective means of creating new pharmaceuticals or mass producing known drugs that were previously were difficult and expensive to produce and limited in availability. As such, it was a proven method for bettering the human condition. During this time, biotechnologies for accelerating plant breeding and development using various techniques of tissue culture were successfully applied to agricultural needs. (DeGregori, 1985, 133-134) Pharmaceutical giants began acquiring seed companies in a process of transforming themselves into life science enterprises. It was assumed that their experience and capability in bioengineering of drugs could carry over into agriculture. They were correct in terms of the science and technology of process. Sizeable expenditures were made in research for product development in agriculture. By the 1990s, the biotechnology for inserting a gene for a specific trait was increasingly being used in agricultural research for crops like cotton, maize and soybeans. Even though testing for safety and prior approval were not required for crops from traditional plant breeding, a testing and approval process was worked out through co-operation between the private and public sectors. (USDA, 1993) The new seeds were marketed to farmers and their crops entered the marketplace virtually unnoticed by the public. In the early stages, some farmers had the usual problems with a new technology but there for simply no problems for the crops in the marketplace. As the number of people using or consuming these products mounted into the hundreds of millions, there were not and subsequently have not been any adverse human health outcomes, verifiable or otherwise, in their production, processing, use or consumption.
By the mid-1990s, bioengineered crops were being grown in such diverse places as Argentina, France, China and India as well as the United States and Canada. Large acreage for many other experimental bioengineered crops could be found in these and other countries. Experimentation and testing for safety was not only taking place in the field but others in the private, public and non-governmental and professional sectors were studying and examining the issues involved in bioengineering from every conceivable perspective including ethics and religion with bioengineering passing all with flying colors. There had been numerous semi-utopian articles on the enormous potential for biotechnology in the popular media since the 1970s, so that nobody should have been caught by surprise.
There was reasonable expectation for continued expansion and introduction of new crops. The success of the Green Revolution was simply beyond question for all but those whose brains were eaten away by a Luddite ideology. The Green Revolution technologies accommodated a doubling of world population by more than doubling food supply so that per capita food consumption (in terms of daily caloric intake) increased between 30 and 40% in developing countries, the real price of basic foodstuffs like rice had fallen in half and the absolute number of people in absolute poverty and hunger has continued to decline. This was achieved without significant increases in land under cultivation therefore allowing other land to be used for purposes such as wildlife conservation (see for example, Swaminathan, 2000). By the mid 1980s, many of the Green Revolution gains in yields had begun to level off and most of those involved in agricultural policy recognized the critical need as well as promise of biotechnology to carry forward the task of feeding the worlds population increasing not only the availability of calories but the potential for even greater advances in human nutrition. This potential is now under serious threat. The greatest jeopardy is not to the corporations who are the ostensible targets of the attack but it is the poorest and most vulnerable of the world's populations whose future ability to feed themselves and their family is being seriously undermined.
It was no surprise then when those who had long attacked the Green Revolution focused their pestiferous ignorance on biotechnology. Many of us naively assumed that they would be as ineffective against biotechnology as they were against the Green Revolution. How wrong we were! Certain key elements emerge in the following narrative. The very vastness of the knowledge involved in modern science and technology makes it impossible for all of us to know everything or even everything that we "need" to know. So it is not condescending to say that the public was largely uniformed about biotechnology in spite of occasional favorable popular articles over the previous two decades. This allowed with the most profound ignorance such as Jeremy Rifkin, Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth to dominate the inevitable and necessary public discourse. They scored early with their misinformation by defining the terms of discussion with such names as frankenfoods and terminator genes. They played both sides of the "science" game. When a study in the UK that was not peer reviewed was released in a press conference and on television purported to show the dangers of bioengineered crops, they claimed that science was on their side. When the leading scientists countered that these conclusions were unwarranted and that bioengineered foodstuffs were safe, then we were told that scientists were not to be trusted, after all look at the mad cow scare in the UK and the way that the scientists allegedly misled the public. All of which is to say that science is "good" when it confirms Luddite fears and "bad' when it denies them. In the public arena, ideologues can pronounce on issues with a confident air of certainty while scientific inquiry is by its very nature dealing with subtle detail and operates in terms of probabilities and not certainties. The demand for certainty embodied in the so-called "precautionary principle" is asking that science do what is humanly impossible to do, that is, to guaranty absolute certainty of outcome. The precautionary principle operates in a mythical framework that assumes that there are a "risk free alternatives." In actual fact, the alternative to bioengineered foods, is a world that will increasingly be unable to meet the nutritional needs of its human inhabitants (McKie, 2000).
The following study seeks to demonstrate that quality science and quality scientists in the leading journals of science have overwhelmingly endorsed the safety of bioengineered foodstuffs and have not only indicated the necessity for them and the enormous potential that they offer for a better world for all of us. Since the issue is currently controversial, there is admittedly a deliberate overkill in the presentation of evidence and sources for it as a precaution against the inevitable charge that the study is "selective" in its presentation. The war over bioengineered foods is well underway. In the United Kingdom, continental Europe and in other parts of the world, much of the public, if not a majority, have been thoroughly brainwashed on this issue and frightened to the point of opposition to all uses of bioengineering in agriculture. Many political leaders in Europe who should know better are pandering to the hysteria rather than trying to educate and provide enlightened, intelligent leadership for their citizens. Though the public in the United States has not yet been aroused on the issue, the vandals are in the fields tearing up the crops and the organized opposition is growing as the United States has to deal with those who are trying to use issues of bioengineered foods as way of restraining trade. The effort of many pharmaceutical companies to rid themselves of their agricultural divisions and the response of investors to biotechnology firms - pharmaceuticals without agriculture going up - sends a danger signal that we can not ignore.
In many ways, the first battle of this war has gone to those who oppose modern science and technology. The following paper dwells on the specifics of the biotechnology issue but this issue is part of the ongoing conflict between unreason and reason, between those who seek progress for all and those who operate in a make believe new age world. As these words are being written, an email arrived announcing a declaration of over 600 (and still counting) scientists stating that: "recombinant DNA techniques constitute powerful and safe means for the modification of organisms and can contribute substantially in enhancing quality of life by improving agriculture, health care, and the environment."
This petition was presented in Montreal on January 24, 2000, at the UN forum to create a 'Biosafety Protocol'. European countries have been pushing for restrictions on trade in bioengineered foodstuffs in the name of the precautionary principle and want to use this Protocol to further this goal. The petition further asserts that: "To promote a responsible use of biotechnology in addressing the global problems of agricultural productivity and world hunger, it is critical that we as scientists become more proactive in making our voices heard." This paper is a modest attempt to further this worthy endeavor.
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