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The Insanity of Gene Technology
Andrew Paterson—06/2002 |
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There is a gold rush currently taking place.
Prospectors are jostling each other for a piece
of the action, knowing that untold wealth is for
the grabbing. Already, much of the land has been
fenced off, demarcated with "PRIVATE" notices
and "KEEP OUT" signs. But this is no ordinary
gold rush, for it is taking place inside you and
me — in our DNA. The gold is our genes and
the prospectors are the biotechnology companies
that hope to make massive profits in future gene
therapies that involve "their" particular
DNA sequences. |
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WAS ASSUMED THAT, when the Human Genome Project started, the results
would be in the public domain — owned
by humanity. That would have been right, for how can
one company own the expression of a particular DNA
sequence that is part of the function of our own bodies?
But that ideal, like all ideals, has given way to the
pragmatic commercialism of greedy men and woman who
could not ignore the massive future profits that will
result from patenting sequences of DNA today. And so
thousands and thousands of patent applications for
gene sequences have been filed — the gold rush
is on. |
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| "This will be in the best interests of humanity",
the gene companies parrot; "We just want to feed
the world"; "We want to alleviate the suffering
of humanity"; "Gene technology will transform
the world, increasing the quality of life for everybody".
How noble of them; how magnanimous. If you have ever
seen their promotional videos you will see images of
the starving in Africa, of dire warnings that the Earth
will no longer be able to feed its people and that
biotechnology is our only hope, of old and new disease
which need a gene solution, and of children suffering
from genetic afflictions, staring pleadingly into the
camera. You would think that these companies were charities
the way they present themselves, not the aggressive
multinationals they actually are. And of course, the
implication of their message is that if you oppose
their research and their control, then you are against
humanity, against feeding the world, against alleviating
the suffering of innocent children and against human
progress. |
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| "Luddite" is a term disparagingly used to
label all those who oppose genetic engineering and
the patenting of gene sequences. It has become the
knee-jerk response of those on the payroll of gene
companies, a term that hints only at the shallowness
of the minds that use it. After all, why is the opposition
to new technologies necessarily a bad thing? Was it
against progress to oppose the eugenics program of
the Nazi's in the Second World War, or the development
of nuclear weapons? Is it against progress to oppose
nuclear power stations, now we have seen what happened
at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl? Is it against progress
to limit pharmaceutical drugs that are now one of the
leading causes of death in hospitals, the exponential
growth of violent films and computer games that teach
our young Neanderthal solutions to conflict, or the
production of ever more efficient and poisonous pesticides?
Technology has its uses, but only a backward society
would impose no restraints upon its direction and development. |
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| Genetic engineering is a technology that, in theory,
could bring benefits to humanity, just as the development
of nuclear weapons brought peace between the East and
the West. It is undeniable that some lives will be
saved as a result of genetic intervention, and that
a few crops more suited to a particular environment
will be produced (although there will not be the massive
increase in food production the biotechnology companies
promise). But the more powerful the technology, the
more potentially destructive it can also be, either
accidentally or intentionally. Today, the threat of
nuclear war is greater than ever as the disintegrating
Soviet Union leaks weapons and know-how into the hands
of those who would use them without hesitation. And
genetic engineering is even more potentially destructive
than nuclear fission, because genetic engineering can
create self-replicating disasters. Like AIDS, a self-replicating
enemy would be difficult to control and could permanently
damage the human gene pool, and that of the rest of
nature. Given this fact, the possibility of which no
thinking person can deny, is it in the interests of
humanity and of the planet to disparagingly dismiss
those who want much tighter controls (if not an outright
ban) on the use of gene technology — at least
until more is understood about the consequences of
genetic meddling? |
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| With the nuclear weapons industry, government retained
control, preventing financial interests from diluting
responsibility. But this is unfortunately not the case
with the gene technology industry which is largely
in the hands of the corporate sector. Caution is never
foremost in the minds of corporate directors who have
caught the scent of dollar bills — billions of
them. Directors are responsible to shareholders, and
shareholder's primary concern is stock value. These
shareholders are often the very scientists who are
doing the "independent" research and the very
politicians who are clearing the way for complete corporate
autonomy. Gene technology companies are amongst the
wealthiest in the world, and the presence of these
quantities of money is able to warp the staunchest
democratic institutions, bending the rules in their
favour, and manipulating governments into defending
them against public opposition. |
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| It is tempting for those in positions of authority — those
with titles, degrees, money, connections — to
label the ordinary people as ignorant, incapable of
understanding the complexity of these issues, ungrateful
to those who think they know what is best for "the
masses";
a position admirably demonstrated by Professor Bainbridge
in her astonishingly arrogant quote at the top of this
article. (These are the same "stupid public" which
opposed nuclear testing, nuclear power stations, increased
CO2 production, DDT, the military base at Greenham
Common, the onslaught of Wal-Mart, the Vietnam war,
the invasion of East Timor and Tibet, to name just
a few) The experts know the truth by definition as
they are the experts — they assured us that nuclear
power was safe, that unleaded petrol was the solution
to pollution, that Mad Cow disease wasn't a problem,
that Gulf War syndrome was all in the mind, that milk
was healthy, that global warming was unlikely, that
giving the Taliban military training during the Soviet
invasion of Afganistan was the best solution, that
the Titanic was unsinkable! And these are the same
experts today trying to persuade us that genetic engineering
is for the good of humanity, that it will feed the
hungry, cure the sick, and maybe even bring back the
dead. |
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| The problem with experts is that they are precisely
those individuals who have spent most of their academic
lives specialising in one tiny area of research — the
perfect recipe for narrow mindedness. And anyone in
the academic world will know that you can find an "expert" to
back almost any viewpoint, which is why you often see
experts pitted against each other in the court room.
There are even "experts" who disagree that
human CO2 production is a key factor in global warming.
Most of these specialists are also on the payrolls
of large corporations (or of universities or governments
that are increasingly influenced by corporations),
which only serves to narrow their view even further
as they are nudged into pleasing their paymasters — reducing
their status to pawns in the corporate/political game
and giving profit-orientated institutions the sanction
of Science. Experts want it both ways: they want money
(either for themselves or research grants) and they
want to retain their "independent" academic
status, deluding themselves that they have the intelligence
to maintain unwavering impartiality in the face of
blatant conflicts of interest. (Recently, medical researchers
have come under fire for fixing research results to
please their pharmaceutical sponsors.) |
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| Complex issues require a different kind of understanding,
a different kind of intelligence: minds have to be
open and flexible, able to join together with other
minds to grasp the nuances of complex systems. On these
uneven surfaces, the specialist is often at a disadvantage
and needs to stand back while the generalist steps
in to "feel" out the situation, creating a
broad framework before handing over to the specialists
to fill in the details. That is efficient and responsible
investigation, and one that is much more likely to
be in the interests of society. Ordinary people tend
to be better generalists because most of us have not
had extreme specialist training and most of us are
not (yet) in the pockets of the big corporations or
our politicians. This is why it is invariably ordinary
people who are best at understanding problems in the
world (which is pretty complex), and is why the ordinary
person is invariably at the forefront of campaigns
for ecology, peace, justice and democracy. |
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| Ordinary people are saying "no" to genetic
engineering because, all ethical considerations aside,
we realize that the stakes are currently two high with
this fledgling science to monkey around with DNA just
for the sake of making these multinationals extremely
rich. We all will suffer the consequences of their
mistakes, and there have already been many — field
trials of GMO crops that have gone through without
proper assessment, GM hormones and other products that
are now commonly used without proper testing and with
destructive results and rogue scientists that continue
to strive for the "accolade" of developing
the first human clone. Some genetic modification has
already proved fatal, as happened with genetically
engineered tryptophan food supplements in the 90s.
What would happen if a grand mistake was made and a
self-replicating disease organism was produced or a
GM field-trial cross-pollinates another plant species
(entirely possible) and sterilized a major food crop
or, worse, the soil itself? What good would an apology
be from the scientist or biotechnology company that
made it? No amount of compensation or apologies will
rectify these sorts of catastrophes. Wouldn't the wise
recourse be to wait a few decades until more is understood
about gene expression before feeling that we are in
a position to accurately assess the risks? |
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| To meddle with a system that you do not fully understand
because of commercial incentives is not only extremely
dangerous (given the possible consequences), but shows
short-sightedness, the same short-sightedness that
led Albert Mickelson, in his 1894 speech declaring, "While
it is never safe to say that the future of Physical
Science has no marvels even more astonishing than those
of the past, it seems probable that most of the grand
underlying principles have been firmly established." And
the same stupidity admirably demonstrated by the biotechnology
companies who are pushing for genetic modification
at a time when 90% of our DNA currently has an unknown
function — dismissed by many scientists as "junk
DNA". Indeed, geneticists will freely admit that
gene expression is showing itself to be extremely complex — not
the one-to-one gene to characteristic expression that
is the working model used by biotechnology companies.
And yet these companies are trying to convince us that
it is perfectly safe to release GMO crops into the
environment after only a rudimentary assessment lasting
mere months. |
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| Assessing the risks of this tinkering is impossible
unless you know the system inside out and this may
take many decades of careful observation. So risk assessment
at this stage of the game is totally misleading because
it serves only to dress up ignorance with statistical
analysis. Garbage in, garbage out. And as many of the "independent" scientists
assessing the risk of genetic modification are either
directly or indirectly on the payrolls of biotechnology
companies, or governments wishing to ignite their economies,
this is clear insanity. We all share DNA, we all share
this planet, and when there is a problem, we will all
be involved. Humanity and the planet carries the real
risk, not these multinationals. So it is only right
that we should all be involved in the decision making
processes of this technology. We need to all take that
responsibility and not leave it to those whose responsibility
is primarily to keep shareholders happy and GNPs growing. |
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| Of course, if there was a referendum on gene technology
today, it would be outlawed. This is why governments
and the industry will not have them. This is also why
plans and policies in this area are conducted behind
closed doors, hidden by a vale of corporate confidentiality,
and why academic whistleblowers are treated with such
derision by both government scientists and the research
institutions that employed them. |
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| So, with all ethical and moral considerations aside,
biotechnology should be halted — at least for now.
Greed is the only reason for continuing the rapid and
reckless implementing of a fledgling technology as
potentially dangerous as this one. Also, ethical and
moral considerations should not be ignored as they
are fundamental to a humane and decent society. It
is often tempting to dismiss them as the emotional
rants of the uneducated or the religious, as many scientists
are currently doing. But without strict ethical and
moral structures, society is reduced to a barbaric
pragmatism. Ethics and morality ended the slave trade,
stopped eugenics programs, gave equal voting rights
to women and the working classes, and defined human
rights for people throughout the world. Just because
these considerations are subjective, and therefore
sometimes difficult for scientists to appreciate, does
not mean that they are not essential to civilisation.
Try telling a political prisoner freed by Amnesty International
that ethics and morality are worthless. |
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Genetic engineering, with its ability to blur the
lines between species and its potential to permanently
destroy the integrity of the human and other DNA — DNA
that took billions of years to evolve to its present
state (which although not perfect is perfectly workable) — cannot
and must not be left in the hands of multinationals
and the governments that support them. These institutions
do not have our best interests at heart for they are
working to their own agendas. We cannot, therefore,
trust them with the heritage of the human race. We
must act in the interests of future generations by
opposing, at every opportunity, biotechnology — from
the cloning research undertaken by our most respected
scientific institutions to the Frankenstein foods that
are appearing in our supermarkets. Field trials for
GM crops must be stopped before the gene pool is seriously
damaged (and it WILL happen if things continue at this
break-neck speed), and gene patents must be overthrown
for they do not serve humanity. If we do not act now
to stop this biotechnological insanity, our descendants
will look back with incredulity at a generation that
sold every last family heirloom for a quick cash fix. |
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| "Most people
do not even know what a gene is. Sometimes
my young son wants to cross the road when
it's dangerous — sometimes you have to
tell people what's best for them." |
Professor Janet Bainbridge
(The response of independent GM expert and chairperson
of the UK Advisory Committee on Novel Foods
and Processes when asked whether the public
should be able to choose between GM and non-GM
food. Quoted in Captive State / Monbiot) |
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| Andrew Paterson is an independent writer currently living in London. |
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