Pro-cloning LM lobbyist helping to regulate cloning!

[Guest guest]

Subject:GMW: Pro-cloning LM lobbyist helping to regulate cloning!

" GM WATCH " <info

Wed, 9 Mar 2005 12:38:05 GMT

 

 

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

------

 

Pro-cloning LM lobbyist helping to regulate cloning!

 

Recently George Monbiot drew attention once again to the way in which

members of the extremist LM network were gaining control of " much of the

formal infrastructure of public communication used by the science and

medical establishment. They hold key positions in Sense About Science,

the Science Media Centre, the Genetic Interest Group, the Progress

Educational Trust, Genepool and the British Pregnancy Advisory

Service. They

have used these positions to promote the interests of pharmaceutical

and biotech companies and to dismiss the concerns of the public and

non-governmental organisations. "

 

George Monbiot also noted that the colonisation of these bodies was

unlikely to have happened by chance given that one was talking about a

very small group of people and that most of those " who have taken these

posts do not have a background in science. "

http://www.lobbywatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=52 & page=1

 

Now comes the news (see the item below) that a member of the LM network

- a movement which eulogises genetic engineering and human cloning -

has become the Policy Manager of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology

Authority (HFEA), the Government body which, amongst other things,

licenses and monitors all human embryo research being conducted in the UK.

 

The fact that a pro-cloning lobbyist is in such a sensitive position is

unlikely to worry the British government which is currently preparing

to vote against the ban on cloning at the UN. And this week also brought

news that the government will spend GBP1bn on biotechnology by 2008.

This represents 10% of the projected budget for UK science over the next

three years. Investment in nanotechnology-related research would also

rise.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4325885.stm

 

Much of the funding will be targeted at human biotech and the

government is determined to promote genetic technologies to the

public. To that

end it seems happy to use whoever it sees as effective lobbyists.

 

The LM lobbyist in question, Juliet Tizzard, previously headed a

controversial lobby group with close links with the pharmaceutical

industry.

Latterly, this lobby group has also been receiving funding via an

educational grant from the Department of Health, following a Government

White Paper " Our Inheritance, Our Future - Realising the

potential of genetics in the NHS " (June 2003). This specifically

announced funding was to be given to the lobby group as part of an

effort " to

promote public understanding of genetics " .

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=160 & page=P

------

Pro-cloning lobbyist helping to regulate cloning!

http://www.lobbywatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=52 & page=1

 

Hard on the heels of renewed controversy about how LM ers are

colonising the infrastructure of public communication used by the

science and

medical

establishment, comes news that Juliet Tizzard has become the Policy

Manager of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the

Government body which, amongst other things, licenses and monitors all

human embryo research being conducted in the UK.

 

Prior to joining HFEA, Tizzard was director of the lobby group,

Progress Educational Trust, which 'believes that reproductive and genetic

technologies have much to offer' and argues against their regulation. As

Tizzard put it, 'our organisation exists to make sure that access to new

technologies is not restricted by parliament or by doctors'. PROGRESS,

which is even equivocal about human reproductive cloning, enjoys a

close relationship with AstraZeneca.

 

Prior to joining PROGRESS, Tizzard appeared in the Channel 4 TV series

Against Nature, which represented environmentalists as Nazis

responsible for death and deprivation in the Third World, and argued

germline

gene therapy and human cloning would liberate humanity from nature.

 

Subsequent investigations revealed that certain of the programme makers

and several key contributors to the series, including Tizzard, had been

closely involved with LM. As well as contributing articles to LM,

Tizzard has also contributed to the LM network's later fronts: Spiked,

and

the Institute of Ideas .

 

Tizzard appears to regard 'spin' as a valid way of overcoming public

concerns, 'Three cheers for PPL Therapeutics! Not for their success in

cloning pigs (although this is worth at least three cheers), but for

their success with the media coverage of those five little piggies. Press

coverage in the United Kingdom of the cloned pigs was almost universally

positive... Perhaps PPL Therapeutics is just good at media spin. But

maybe media spin isn't such a bad thing in science... perhaps instead of

spin doctors, what we need is spin scientists!'

 

The news that an ideologically-driven pro-cloning lobbyist is working

for a Government body egulating cloning came shortly before the news

that HFEA has granted a licence to the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh,

which cloned Dolly the Sheep, to create stem cells from embryos

produced by

cell nuclear replacement, a technique also referred to as

therapeutic cloning.

 

Tizzard is not the first Furediite to gain entry to the HFEA. HFEA's

former Director of Communications was Ann Furedi, wife of the ideological

'Godfather' of the LM network and star of Against Nature, the

sociologist Frank Furedi.

 

 

---------