GM-free Scotland

News | August '08 | GM - more spin less science


An image of people in suits wearing sheep heads with the tag patented on itTHE BEST SCIENCE FOR THE JOB

Let's be clear what is meant by:

'Science' :originally this meant knowledge, but has come to mean systematic and formulated knowledge, or an organised body of knowledge.
'Biology' : science of physical life, dealing with the morphology, physiology, origin and distribution of animals and plants (now, also includes microbial forms of life)
'Chemistry' : science of the elements and compounds and their laws of combination and behaviour under various conditions
'Ideology' : science of ideas; visionary speculation; manner of thinking characteristic of a class or individual; ideas at the basis of some economic or political theory or system

Got it?

Now, let's put things in their proper places.

Biologists study the science of the holistic values of life, which means everything involved in the connections which keep life together and functioning. There is no part of the structure (morphology), working (physiology), evolution (origin) or ecology (distribution) of any life-form which can exist in isolation: if you remove it from its 'whole' it will be changed, its qualities will be different, its health will no longer be supported, and the science of life (biology) derived from it will be limited, or just plain wrong. Chemistry is an invaluable reductionist tool for the biologist.

In modern times, biology has been hijacked by chemistry, and the tool with which to study life has become the object of study. To labour the point a bit, the science of life derived solely from chemistry is limited, or can be just plain wrong.

The biology á la mode (the science you have to be into if you want to get any funding to pursue it) is 'molecular biology'. Molecular biologists are also euphemistically referred to as 'life scientists' which just plain wrong because they don't study life, they study chemistry.

Chemistry is also a valuable tool with which to study commercially-useful aspects disease (for example, if you are trying to develop and sell drugs (chemicals) to interfere with the disease). However, biology is the only way to study health.

Using chemistry to create a chemical and slot it into the control-centre of a life-form, creates a novel organism which has a unique biology: it has a new structure, a new inner functioning, a new evolution, and a new ecology. Each and every such organism represents a whole new entity for biological study, and one which it would take many years to study in any depth. The time taken to assess whether such a novel organism can live in healthy harmony with its surroundings would take the longest of all.

Unfortunately, food from plants into which artificial DNA has been inserted are just such a chemists' creation. They have not been subject to years of study, and you are its surroundings. No one has even begun to assess whether you can live in healthy harmony with it.

Now, let's look at how the biotech companies fit into this picture.

The story of the FlavrSavr tomato, the first attempt to commercialise a GM wholefood, is explained very lucidly by one of the scientists involved in the project. The story is one of a very early biotech company whose managers hadn't a clue about science but knew a lot about marketing. The R&D was driven forward by their customary technique of setting the researchers deadlines by which they must to reach pre-determined 'scientific' outcomes, demanding that they work to order rather than within their areas of expertise, and keeping everything as hush-hush as possible so that only the science the company wanted to know was ever 'known'. This re-invention of 'science' by the biotech industry has continued, not only unquestioned, but positively promoted by regulators, to this day.

Here in Scotland we have become a world-renowned biotech legend for having produced Dolly, the cloned sheep. Dolly was not, of course, genetically transformed, but since cloning technology is a vital first step to producing a GM animal, the two are inextricably linked.

The person behind the explosion in biotech interest which Dolly created was Simon Best. Best was responsible for commercialising the cloning technology and establishing the original company which held the Intellectual Property rights (these were sold 9 months later for £50 million). The exercise seems to have spearheaded a European fad for biotech company flotations, despite the lack of any ability to make a profit.

Another of Best's earliest projects was the launch of Zeneca's tomato paste made from GM tomatoes with delayed ripening (they were also touted as needing and containing less water which made them easier and cheaper to process and more environmentally friendly, but this hype was nothing to do the genetic transformation).

Best is seen as a unique influencer in the Scottish, and possibly Europe-wide, biotech industry. One admirer, a co-creator of Dolly and now a Vice-Principal in Edinburgh University, describes him as very quick on the uptake, “You talk to him and frankly you would think he was a biologist.”

So what is Best? Well, he started with a degree in music, followed by a few years in the music industry, including a stint as tour manager for a pop band. Then, one night he went to an Edinburgh night club where he ran into some Ph.D. students studying molecular biology and was converted to science. He went on to take an MBA at London Business School. He has been chairman of the UK BioIndustry Association, on the board of the Bioethics committee, and governor of the food and agriculture section of World Economic Forum. Currently he has several projects in hand, including chairing the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (a research centre in India looking at staple crops for the world's poorest farmers), and a US virtual drug testing company (i.e. drug safety testing-by-computer).

OUR COMMENT

Does all this begin to give you an inkling if what's wrong with GM?

GM is a branch of chemistry treated as biology. It's a reductionist technology which produces organisms of unknown, unstudied and unpredictable biology. These mystery organisms are going to become part of you and of your environment.

All the people holding the GM reigns are talented business managers with biotech stars in their eyes and a nose for money: they have no problem in ordering scientists what to find, and no problem reinventing science when it doesn't do what they want. The GM drivers are people who can talk well and know how to sound like biologists even to scientists who think they themselves are biologist (and may once have been) but who haven't noticed they are chemists. A musician/band manager who has 'converted' to science suggests he hasn't realised that biological science isn't an ideology: it's not about forcing ideas and speculation (no matter how visionary) into existence. Sales-talk is a manner of thinking that can be molded into an economic or political system, biology is not.

Unfortunately, the people in influential positions in agricultural affairs in the developed and developing world are these very same people.

A thumbnail image of the cover of the book In Defence of FoodIf you can't quite get your head around the limitations of chemistry, and the confusion between the chemistry of life and the holistic value of life (a distinction applicable to our entire, living, food supply), Michael Pollan describes it perfectly in his book 'In Defence of Food', 2008, ISBN 978-1-846-14096-9.

Also, if you can manage to arrange for Simon Best to meet up with a couple of organic farmers in a night club, please do. He might be persuaded to apply his undoubted talent and vision to promote a future world of wholesome and sustainable food for his children at home and for the world's poorest farmers in India.


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