The Guardian 18.12.97 Page 8
The debate: Genetic seeds of hope and despair
For: Potential medical spin-offs from plant biotechnology include more potent vaccines and an end to malnutrition
By Bernard Dixon
Thursday December 18, 1997
We shall not be far into the next millennium before we realise that much of the current angst over genetically modified food was unnecessary. If research and development are allowed to continue without unreasonable restrictions, the products will be there for all to see and appreciate.
New varieties of rice and other crops, resistant to insects and disease, will have replaced those cultivated today. Farmers will no longer lose substantial proportions of their harvests, which at present provide food for insect and microbial pests. The impact of these advances, economically and on health, will be felt especially keenly in less developed countries.
Health benefits will also come from plants genetically engineered to be more balanced nutritionally than those that have evolved through natural selection or been bred by traditional methods. Examples include crops with more of particular amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) than existing varieties have.
The potential medical spin-offs from plant biotechnology are considerable. A new generation of much more potent vaccines, many against illnesses for which no vaccines have been available, will be grown in plants such as maize and bananas.
And malnutrition could be banished. Biotechnology can improve efficiency of food production (and storage) and generate more nourishing crops.
Throughout the world, gardeners, vegetarians and supermarket customers will benefit from plant varieties resistant to spoilage, foods which reduce our dependence on animals, and cheaper and/or tastier products.
Two examples already on the shelves are tomato puree and cheese made with a genetically engineered enzyme (chymosin) rather than with rennet from calves' stomachs.
We should not, however, overlook potential hazards in altering our diet by genetic engineering. As with all other applications of science to human welfare, biotechnology is likely to have risks. As with all human endeavours, mistakes will be made.
Nevertheless, any rational analysis of the new techniques for ferrying genes between plants must surely conclude that they are being applied and controlled more stringently than any technology ever before.
Nearly 25 years ago, when scientists first learned to combine DNA from different sources, commentators warned of the iniquity of "opening Pandora's box". Among their horrific forecasts were unstoppable epidemics and worldwide pestilences. None of these has come to pass, partly because genetic manipulation has not proved inherently dangerous.
In addition, regulatory committees (many with public representation) have been set up to ensure that experiments are conducted in appropriately safe conditions.
The regulators' task is not simply to allow research to go ahead unless potential hazards are obvious. It is to consider risks that could come to light later. Will a gene, introduced into rape to protect it against virus attack, also make the pollen grains more likely to cause hay fever? All proposals have to survive positive vetting of this sort before they are sanctioned.
Genetic engineering is far more precise - and thus predictable - than the gene movements which occur in nature. When plants fertilise, cross-fertilise and hybridise in the wild, large numbers of genes are transferred in a haphazard fashion. Even traditional plant breeders, who harness these processes, cannot avoid mobilising many more genes than they wish.
Biotechnology allows individual genes to be moved with precisionfrom one plant to another. It is much easier to know how one gene will work in its new setting. The likelihood of unexpected consequences, and the margin of error, are correspondingly reduced.
There is a chance, however remote, that a gene introduced into a particular plant at one time and location might have adverse consequences if it eventually gets into to another plant distant in space and time.
Given the astronomical amount of random gene transfer which occurs throughout the biosphere, such extreme caution is unwarranted. I believe most food producers - and eaters - would agree.
Dr Bernard Dixon is a member of the European Federation for Biotechnology's task group on public perception and editor of the journal Medical Science Research
Against: The risks are not understood. And the livelihoods of millions of people in the Third World are threatened
By Vandana Shiva
The problems with the genetic revolution developed right from the start. Twenty-five years ago, molecular biologists evolved the tools of genetic engineering in labs, working with organisms designed not to survive in an open environment.
Today, long before the science of molecular biology has matured, global corporations have rushed to the market, applying the tools of genetic engineering to whole systems of agriculture and food production.
Genetically engineered crops and foods are already being launched by big companies bent on taking over agriculture. Profits are being privatised by patenting seeds, and safety concerns are not being addressed in the industry's desperation to make profits at any cost.
The industry, which is speeding an immature technology on to the market, operates double standards. It declares an organism "novel" when it wants to claim it as property, and as "natural" when it wants to avoid the responsibility of risk.
Commercial applications of genetic engineering are a large scale experiment being carried out on nature and people. Risks associated with laboratory experiments do not provide proper lessons for safety of commercial use of genetically engineered organisms designed to survive in the environment. The risk of genetic engineering in agriculture has to be assessed in the context of its use on a huge commercial scale.
The commercial growing of genetically engineered crops and micro-organisms has only just begun. We cannot justify taking the results of small scale experiments in laboratories to extend those to complex ecosystems and commercial releases. Field tests for safety and risk assessment only look at the plants and are not designed to look at what happens to surrounding environments where commercial crops may be grown.
Genetic engineering is not a precise science. It is a highly uncertain and imperfect technology. The ability to move individual genes is not equivalent to knowing how the transgenic organism will behave. Gene transfers lead to unpredictable outcomes because plants and organisms are continuously changing.
Corporate biotechnologists depict genetic engineering as children playing with a Lego set, moving the genetic material around to make new toys over which they have total mastery.
One micro-organism, Klepsiella Planticola, which was recently genetically engineered to digest agricultural waste and convert it to ethanol, was found to destroy crops and soil, fauna and flora, thus threatening the very basis of agriculture instead of providing a solution to disposal of agriculture bioproducts.
Crops designed to reduce pesticide use by engineering toxins into plants, as in the case of cotton, are in fact threatening to create "super pests" by inducing resistance.
Genetic engineering threatens to destroy millions of peasant livelihoods in the Third World. Tropical crops like sugar cane, coconut, vanilla and cocoa can be grown anywhere with genetic engineering. Whole industries in developing countries may disappear.
The introduction of herbicide-resistant crops destroys biodiversity and rural livelihoods, which are supported by the full variety of nature. Herbicide use in societies where people collect "weeds" for vegetables and fodder can destroy nutrition and women's work. In India women gather more than 130 species of greens, or weeds — the most important source of vitamin A in rural areas.
The irresponsible spread of herbicides through herbicide-resistant crops will aggravate malnutrition in poor communities.
The most popular argument used by the biotechnology industry is that without its genetic engineering the world will starve. The industry promises an increase in crop yields of 10 to 15 per cent, but data from across the world shows that small farms which base their agriculture on many different sorts of farming can be five or 10 times more productive per unit than large monocultural farms.
Land reform is a much safer and more equitable route to food security. In terms of ecological and social sustainability, food security and equity, genetic engineering in agriculture is neither necessary nor desirable.
Dr Vandana Shiva is director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Ecology in Delhi
Copyright Guardian Media Group plc 1997