Brown Stuff

Jim heartfield jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Thu Aug 12 10:25:17 PDT 1999


Rakesh,

I did some work researching a television programme, a round-table discussion on GM food, so I'm fairly up on the science - as much as any lay-person might be. And I have to say, from my reading, every single story so far has been a scare story.

'Biodiversity' itself is a questionable category. What does one mean by it exactly? Is it a natural law, or a human aspiration? Does nature care whether it is diverse or not? Are we really in a position to frustrate or impose it? If you are saying that there are species that have been lost because of human intervention in nature, then, yes, clearly that's the case. As yet we have no record of any species being lost through genetic engineering. Richard Dawkins estimates that 99.9 per cent of all species that have existed have become extinct through natural selection. We have a big job on our hands if we are going to make a dent into mother nature's own extinction plan.

It is possible that herbicide resistant genes could cross over from plants into weeds, but only if those plants and weeds were themselves compatible species. The creation of vectors to transmit genetic material into plants does not mean that those vectors carry on infecting new plants. The plants created by GE are then bred in the normal way. As for your nightmare scenario, if the worst comes to the worst, weeds can still be pulled out of the ground - but it is pretty unlikely in any event.

The debate is complicated - overcomplicated. Questions of science have been unduly politicised, in such a way as to militate against reasoned debate. Much heat, little light. From my own foray into the science, I have to say, it is very esoteric, and demanding. But sadly that has not stopped a great many green activists from arbitrarily grabbing hold of findings that they do not understand, and making them into a holy war against ... what? Plants!

Don't these people have some more pressing concerns?

These debates go on as little skirmishes, but the truth is that no pollution or ecological question will be properly addressed until the ideological component is recognised for what it is: a deeply conservative impulse from the petit bourgeois, whose real meaning is a intuitive hostility to mass society and to the masses.

In message <v02130500630bde5afcba@[128.112.71.26]>, Rakesh Bhandari <bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU> writes
>Jim, you continue to support the highest tech, largest scale agricultural.
>I asked you what you made to the risks of biodiversity implicit in the
>latest biotechnology (considered in the work of Fowler, Mooney,
>Kloppenburg). These risks have long been recognized--see Carol Hoffmann
>"Ecological risks of genetic engineering of crop plants" Bioscience 40 (6)
>
>E.g. herbicide resistant genes could be exchanged between domesticated
>plants and wild weeds, resulting in larger does of chemicals to control the
>now resistant weeds. New types of weed then emerge that threaten
>agricultural systems as more dangerous chemicals will now be needed to
>destroy them. Similarly insent resistant traits might lead to a rapid
>evolution of pest species.
>
>Moreover, genetic diversity can be reduced as old seeds are replaced by the
>development of only those seeds that will not be sensitive to the
>particular herbicide that the seed firm (now often merged with
>petrochemical and pharmaceutical companies) owns. The economic and
>ecological consequences thereof need to be considered.
>
>It seems to me the debate is quite a bit more complicated than big versus
>small, modern vs. traditional, progress vs regress.
>
>Yours, Rakesh
>
>

-- Jim heartfield



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list