Dangers of genetic engineering.

[Guest guest]

The entire genetic engineering industry is thick in the middle of a raging

controversy. While the media is busy eulogising the genetic miracle ahead (even

the gene mapping is not a complete process yet), they are not so enthusiastic

about reporting its myriad dangers. This has forced a major chunk of ethical

genetic engineers to form a peer group called the Institute of Science in

Society (ISIS). Our own Dr. Vandana Shiva of the Research Foundation for

Science, Technology and Ecology, India, is a valued member of this group which

points out the flaws in the very concept of genetic manipulation.

 

To quote Dr Mae-Wan Ho, founder ISIS, "It had quickly dawned on me how much

science matters in the affairs of the real world, not just through practical

applications like genetic engineering, but especially through a mechanistic

world-view that makes people act unthinkingly, to shape the world to the

detriment of human beings and all other inhabitants. I began to see how science

can be used, often without conscious intent, to intimidate and control, to

obfuscate, to exploit and oppress. I began to see how the dominant paradigm can

generate a selective blindness in scientists, making them ignore and deny

scientific evidence, or fail to interprete them correctly".

 

She also says, "Gene biotechnology has all the hallmarks of bad science

working together with big business against the public good, against public will

and aspiration, and against the moral values of society."

 

You can get an idea of how much attractive the returns from the combination of

bad science with big business can be from the example of the Monsanto

Corporation currently blacklisted by many countries and by ethical groups for

its role in GM food and livestock.

 

To quote a business journal, "Typical of new biotech trends is the bold

decision by the Monsanto Corporation, long a world leader in chemical products,

to sell off its entire chemical division in 1997 and anchor its research,

development and marketing in biotech-based technologies and products. Global

conglomerates are rapidly buying up biotech start-up companies, seed companies,

agribusiness and agrochemical concerns, pharmaceutical, medical and health

businesses, and food and drink companies, creating giant life-science complexes

from which to fashion a bio-industrial world." Monsanto seeks to capture a

sizeable chunk of the current $29 billion a year bio agriculture market. This is

besides the untapped genetically altered livestock market and human genetics

market. What this market could be is anybody's guess.

 

Now what made Monsanto public enemy number one? It was observed that the

genetic plants created and introduced by it had some strange effects not only on

the plant and on the person feeding on its produce but also on those who handled

the plants and grew them. These plants also affected the ecosystem by changing

the genetic patterns of plants around it. It is being studied whether those

plants also affect the organism life teeming in the soil around them. In India

scientists are recently terribly worried that certain farmers have sold their GM

produce in the market that was a part of an experiment. They had instructed the

farmers to burn and destroy their crop.

 

Thus what was most feared by the scientists is confirmed. The gene is not a

physically closed mechanical entity. It is a "fluid genome" and can affect

itself, the host as well as the entire environment in unknown ways. It also

confirmed "the horizontal transfer of transgenic DNA" predicted and mooted by

genetic engineers who oppose the current resarch in genetics for commercial and

practical use. The effect of such tampering would be somewhat like detonating an

atom bomb within the body.

 

The scientists say that genetic engineering and the changing of the gene

pattern in human, animal or plant species can and will be catastrophic. In man

for example, there is an entire universe of bacterial flora existing within and

on which chemical life depends. By the "horizontal transfer" the genetic

composition of this entire life form would change. It is also not known how the

genetic change would be accepted by the intricately delicate cell system of the

body. Each cell in the body would react differently to the genetically altered

cell and not even God can predict the outcome.

 

Not only the business houses, the political machinery could also be terribly

interested in the prospect of "genetically altered humans". I can only say at

this point that Adolph Hitler would look like a sick joke if any country decides

to go ahead with such plans. It can secretly carry out tests in third world

countries. Such a step could result, in an optimistic scenario, a race whose

needs could be controlled to suit all political, business and scientific

machinery. We are seeing this in the GM crop fields where the GM plants and

those around them are not responding to usual herbicides but by those provided

by these companies. Thus these companies benefit by selling seeds and the

herbicides too.

 

Therefore let us not go overboard with the magic of genetic engineering but be

extremely cautious and watchful about the method as well as the machinations of

its champions.

 

Regards,

Jagannath.