This is one of those issues where I feel alienated from both sides. James has complete faith that allowing Monsanto the fuck with the gene pool is just fine, nothing to worry about. But opponents of genetic engineering want to junk it all. Isn't there a difference between science that's done under principles of profit maximization and science whose aim it is to maximize human happiness? Isn't there anyone around who understands both the science and the politics of the issue? Or is this one of those thing where each side views the other as the enemy of all that's holy?
Doug
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I'll volunteer to be presumptuous enough to assume I understand the science, economics, and the politics involved.
The way out of this quagmire is to destroy the copyright and patent laws that form the legal foundation for this corporate exploitation. I think some one already alluded to this argument (Paul Rosenberg?). In any event, this should over time, kill off the profit incentives for corporate expropriation of both the scientific knowledge and the production skills. If a company can not hold a patent and therefore exercise its monopoly, then the potential profit maximization is diminished back down to the more usual levels of competition and exploitation. Not great, but better. Without those kind of legally supported incentives, what's the point?
There are multiple consequences that would follow back up the ladder, if patents and copyrights were re-worked. The scientific establishment would have to clean up its act on where it stands in terms of knowledge versus application for profit, since a fair amount of their funding comes directly or indirectly from corporate interests, who in turn depend on the academy for a steady supply of PhD's and post-docs and the evolution of lab techniques. Progress in certain kinds of mechanization and automation would probably drop back down to ordinary levels too. Lab techniques would lose some cutting edge technology development, but since most public universities can't afford to buy this technology, that might be a mute point. For example, industry has fast turn over DNA sequencing machines, but many bio-science departments don't because they can't afford them. See, and note who their main customer is (UC Davis--the agriculture campus):
On the other hand, there is nothing of particular scientific interest in most of the industrial work in the first place, since altering genetic codes isn't really the point to molecular biology and in an of itself, doesn't directly extend the conceptual frontiers of knowledge.
But agricultural is just part of this picture. There are the medical establishment and the drug industry to consider. Again re-working the patent and copyright laws seems to me to be the most direct fix, particularly if these fixes are aimed at genetic applications and knowledge. I am not sure how to conceptually wrap genetics into law--perhaps as a publicly held natural resource (I think somebody said this too).
Just a point on this quote from Shane Mage, "Alteration of genes by deliberate manipulation of DNA is, as far as we can know, a completely new event in the evolutionary history of this planet.."
If this quote means what I think it does, then it isn't true. (Now I want to qualify all this by saying that there are a lot of conceptual details that have been ignored in this discussion, so if I mis-characterize any one, my apologies in advance.)
Part of the normal genetic process is to maintain itself and the system accomplishes this by cleaning out unrecognized DNA sequences that occur all the time in the process of replication and transcription (routine protein synthesis), not to mention the immune system responses. Furthermore different sequences are turned on and off selectively, mixed, and transposed for all kinds of processes during metabolism, meiosis and mitosis. It is also thought that under used or un-used sequences can be turned on under certain conditions that involve long term evolutionary response systems. I think somebody already mentioned viral manipulation of host DNA.
So, our techniques of genetic engineering follow the viral and bacterial models. That is, we use their existing systems to perform our engineering. Industrial level bio-engineering amounts to something like a beer brewery, with fermentation tanks and filtering systems. The altered bacteria are brewed up to make the patented swill.
I don't know the details of the patent laws, but most of the engineering itself probably isn't part of the patent, however the resultant product is. This might form a weak point and be a basis for attacking the scope the various laws themselves.
None of this addresses the problem of using agricultural pesticides and hormones. Although, some of these are complex enough to require some form of genetic engineering for their production. In those cases then, getting rid of the patent protections might be a more direct fix, that could easily be combined with simple bans on usage.
While safety scare tactics and dummy bio-doom slogans might work in the short term to get obnoxious practices stopped, this sort of PR will backfire. Industry can always buy a few scientist to explain why rubber tomatoes, mutant sheep, and toxic cows are not only safe but absolutely essential to the continued existence of the human species as we know it.
But the issue isn't really safety is it? If that is the center of concern, then once that is addressed, the concern goes away? What is safe is a dead-end and easily trivialized argument. In my opinion the next quote from Rachel's Environmental Weekly, indicates the real problem:
"With terminator technology, anyone who becomes dependent upon Monsanto's genetically-modified seed will have to come back to Monsanto year after year to purchase new seed. By this means, Monsanto will gain a substantial measure of control over the food supply of any nation that widely adopts the company's genetic technologies. It is not a conspiracy, merely a shrewd business venture, but it is clear that Monsanto's goal is effective control of many of the staple crops that presently feed the world."
This is essentially the same sort of corporate manipulation that goes on in medicine with drug regimes and therapies, including of course the various research developments in the human genome. What is going on is that what should be decision and policy making in a public forum with some sort of directed 'public good' has been transformed into a capitalist rendition of public good, as good for profit. I think some body else made this point too. In any event, check it out:
[http://mdi.ucsf.edu/BioMed_WEB_Sites.html]
Follow just about any link here and you will discover how intimately the scientific, medical, academic, and corporate worlds have or want to merged seamlessly in the pursuit of bio-science knowledge for exploitation, profit, and power over the bio-sphere.
If you want to bone up on your molecular biology and be ready for the next round of PR bullshit from the vast medical-agricultural-academic and government complex try:
[http://www.biology.arizona.edu/molecular_bio/molecular_bio.html]
or the home page:
[http://www.biology.arizona.edu/]
Then do a search here for current articles:
I looked around briefly for a standand DNA and genetics education site but didn't find one quickly--maybe somebody else can it.
Chuck Grimes