[escepticos] Re: Lewontin y los transgenicos.

[josé march <15709jmf@...>]

Envio un texto con Lewontin como coautor publicado en *Le Monde
diplomatique*. Me refiero al Lewontin de *no esta en los genes* del que  a
menudo se ha hablado en la lista. Se trata de un texto que trata de la
dimension politica de los transgenicos. Dice, y en ello estoy por completo
de acuerdo: "El complejo genetico-industrial se esfuerza por transformar las
cuestiones politicas en cuestiones tecnico-cientificas, con objeto de
desplazarlas hacia ambitos que puede controlar."

Otro punto interesante es el siguiente: "Las revistas americanas de biologia
exigen que sus colabadores indiquen sus intereses personales o familiares en
empresas de biotecnologia, asi como sus fuentes de financiacion. Esta
transparencia es el minimo que se debe exigir a aquellos que toman la
palabra en los comites de expertos independientes".  Me gustaria que Catala
se aplicara el cuento y nos dijera de forma veraz si su interes por los
transgenicos tambien adopta una forma economica.

Saludos

Jose March




At , you wrote:
>Genetically modified organisms (GMO) are under fire. But the  multinational
firms which make up the genetic-industrial complex -  like the
military-industrial complex we used to talk about before -  are hiding
behind all sorts of committees of ''experts'', most of  which they have
infiltrated, in their effort to dodge questions  from a worried public: is
it acceptable to play with living things,  or even sterilise them, in order
to increase profits? Can the heads  of public research establishments, and
the ministers they report  to, continue - through ignorance, thoughtlessness
or self-interest  - to back this complex so little concerned with the common
good?   In December, the French Council of State will rule on the
authorisation by the agriculture ministry last February for the  marketing
and cultivation of three varieties of transgenic maize  developed by
Novartis. This follows suspension by France's highest  administrative court
on 25 September of any implementation of the  ministerial decree on grounds
of caution
>by JEAN-PIERRE BERLAN and RICHARD C. LEWONTIN *
______________________________________________________________ 

>
>Life has two fundamental and paradoxical properties (1): the ability to
reproduce and multiply (while preserving its characteristics) and the
ability to adapt, change and evolve. The first has given us farming, the
second selection. Geological time has seen an extraordinary genetic
variability develop both between and within species. In the course of their
very short history, men have domesticated plants and animals, selecting them
and adapting them to their needs by exploiting and expanding this natural
variability. But towards the middle of the 19th century, these two
complementary properties became incompatible. Selection was no longer a way
of satisfying needs, but of making money. Seed-producing "investors"
realised that their work could not become a source of gain if farmers sowed
grain they had harvested themselves. Nature became set against the "natural
law" of profit; farming and farmers against selection and breeders. As
nature's unfortunate property of reproducing itself and multiplying could
not, at the time, be legally taken away by political means, the only way of
achieving the same result was to use biological methods. Agricultural
genetics was to devote all its efforts to doing this. In March 1998 genetics
scored a new victory with the Terminator patent granted to the United States
Department of Agriculture and a private company, Delta and Pine Land Co. The
technique consists of introducing a killer "transgene" that prevents the
germ of the harvested grain from developing. The plant grows normally and
produces a normal harvest but the grain is biologically sterile. In
May 1998 the multinational Monsanto bought Delta and Pine Land Co and the
Terminator patent - by now registered, or in the process, in 87 countries -
and is currently negotiating exclusive rights to it with the Department of
Agriculture. Also in May, Monsanto tried to woo French public opinion with
an expensive advertising campaign about the philanthropic wonders of
genetically modified organisms (GMO). Neither the scientists concerned nor
the media nor the French Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of
Scientific and Technological Options went to much trouble to understand the
issues at stake, let alone explain them to the public. Terminator is merely
the outcome of a long process of seizing control over living things (2) that
began when biological heredity (3) started to become a commodity. In 1907
Hugo de Vries, the most influential biologist of his day who "rediscovered"
Mendel's laws (4), was the only one to realise that in an applied science
like agricultural genetics, economics took precedence over science: what is
profitable affects, or even determines, what is "scientifically true" (5).
He investigated replacing the technique of improving cereals by isolation,
which dated back to the early 19th century and was based on the fact that
the plants go on to breed true - and therefore bring no profits to the
investor - by the continuous selection method. According to this method,
justified by the best science of the time, Darwinism, varieties
"deteriorate" in the farmer's field. This method cannot improve the plants,
as was demonstrated empirically by Nilsson
at the Svalöf Institute in Sweden in 1892 and confirmed by the earliest
work inspired by Mendel at the beginning of this century. Thus, even then, a
technique that was profitable but incapable of bringing the slightest
progress replaced one that was useful to society but generated no profits. 

>
>Sterilising the harvest. 
>Ignorant of the history of their own discipline and of the work of de Vries
in particular (6), the 20th century's agricultural geneticists repeated the
same scenario. At the end of the 1930s they triumphed with "hybrid" maize,
which was extravagantly fêted (7). The technique of hybridisation,
which has become the model for agronomic research the world over, is now
used in around 20 food species and a dozen others are likely to follow.
Poultry of every kind and a large number of pigs are also "hybrids". On the
strength of a sham theoretical explanation of hybrid vigour,
heterosis-superdominance (8), geneticists have tried since the mid-1930s to
get the hybrid technique generally accepted following their success with
maize in the United States. "Hybrids increase yield", they say. This puts
the theory of heterosis in a nutshell: having different genes - "hybridity"
- is beneficial per se. In reality, what distinguishes this varietal type
from all the others is the reduction in yield in the next generation - that
is, in plain terms, sterility. As a result, the farmer is obliged to buy his
"seed" in every year. But varietal progress can only come from improving
populations by selection, the very thing that this quest for hybrids
prevents. Apparently unaware of what they are doing, the agricultural
geneticists have dialectically overturned reality: they state they are using
a biological phenomenon, heterosis, to increase yield, while actually using
inbreeding to create sterility. But if they were politically successful in
sterilising maize, they had to focus attention on the illusion created by
selection - improvement -to mask their real objective. There is therefore no
difference between the late 19th century "deterioration" technique - hybrids
- and the Terminator technique. The only innovation is the political
context. Until recently, the investors could not reveal their true design
-the sterilisation of living things - without making it unachievable.The
peasantry were a powerful social group. Life was sacred. But peasants are
disappearing: they have become farmers, eagerly awaiting the smallest sign
of "progress" capable of delaying their ultimate demise. And life has been
reduced to a source of profits in the banal form of strands of DNA. 
Numbed by 20 years of neo-liberal propaganda, people have been conditioned
to look to science and technology for the answers to society's major
political problems, while politicians are content to "manage". Finally, the
small breeding firms have given way to a
powerful genetic-industrial complex with ramifications extending into the
very heart of public research (9). Terminator shows this complex now feels
so powerful it no longer needs to hide its quest for control over life itself. 
For example, Monsanto, the firm that is most advanced in "life science"
applications, has no compunction about publishing threatening display
advertisements in American farming journals. Under a banner headline
pointing out the cost of planting pirated seed, it reminds farmers who
purchased Biotech seed - genetically modified and including a gene for
resistance to Roundup, its flagship herbicide - that they are not entitled
to keep any of the harvested grain for use as seed the following year. This
is "contractual sterility". But the farmer may have bought Roundup Ready
grain without signing a contract - from neighbours, for example. In that
case the company can prosecute him because the variety is patented. So now
we have "legal sterility". 
Monsanto, which has just made 2,500 people redundant, is using the old
familiar response of hiring Pinkerton agency detectives (10) to track down
farmers who "pirate" its seed as well as using more conventional informers:
neighbours, crop-spraying companies and seed merchants. To avoid a
potentially ruinous lawsuit, more than 100 farmers have been obliged to
destroy their crops, pay compensation and allow Monsanto agents to inspect
their accounts and their farms
for years to come. It is perfectly legal to keep harvested grain to
sow the following year: the farmer's only obligation is not to sell
that grain to his neighbours. But according to Monsanto, that right
does not apply to genetically modified seed that is covered by a
patent (11). 

As for the risks of "biological pollution" and the consequences -
quite unknown - of genetically modified varieties for public health
and the environment, the genetic-industrial complex's philosophy was
clearly summed up by Monsanto's communications director Phil Angell
when he said with unusual frankness that his company had "no need to
guarantee the safety of genetically modified food products"; it was
only interested in selling as many as possible and safety was a
matter for the Food and Drug Administration (12). This from the
people who paint the benefits of genetic manipulation in such glowing
colours (13). 

Monsanto and its ally-competitors, Novartis, Rhône-Poulenc,
Pioneer-DuPont and many others, have specialised in the "life
sciences". Strange life sciences that conspire against the marvellous
property of living things to reproduce themselves and multiply in
farmers' fields so that capital can reproduce and multiply in
investors' bank accounts. Will we soon be forced to brick up doors
and windows to protect candle makers from unfair competition from the
sun (14)? There is no shortage of arguments that the sun should shine
for everyone. Here are just four. 

First, the wealth of variety was created by peasants all over the
world, the third world in particular. It is a point always being
raised by non-governmental and intergovernmental organisations like
the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). The
domestication and selection/adaptation work done by peasants over
thousands of years has built up a biological heritage from which the
industrialised nations have greatly benefited - and which they have
plundered and already partly destroyed. American agriculture was
built from these genetic resources freely imported from all over the
world, the only important species native to North America being the
sunflower. If justice still means anything, the US - where there is
much opposition to allowing a few companies to expropriate the
universal biological heritage - should repay their "genetic debt" to
the world. 

Second, we owe the unprecedented increase in yields in the
industrial countries, as well as the third world, to the free
movement of knowledge and genetic resources and to public research.
(Yields have increased four or five fold in two generations, after
taking 12 to 15 generations to double and being no doubt much
unchanged for thousands of years before that.) The contribution of
private research has been marginal, including in the US with its
hybrid maize. 

For example, in the course of the 1970s nearly all the hybrids in
the US Corn Belt were the result of crossing two public lines - from
the universities of Iowa and Missouri. It is public research and
public research alone that does all the basic work on improving the
populations of plants on which everything depends. An expert from the
National Agronomic Research Institute (INRA) recalled that at the
start of his career packets of seed often came free with scientific
publications. Thirty years later, he suspects some of these journals
of deliberately misleading the reader - and the competition. Research
work is being hampered by the privatisation of knowledge, genetic
resources and the techniques for their use. Tired of paying royalties
on genetic resources that were snatched from them in the first place,
many countries in the Southern hemisphere are now trying to stop
their circulation. 

Third, experience shows that the price of privatised "genetic
progress" is and will be exorbitant. For example, in 1986 an INRA
researcher estimated the additional cost of hybrid wheat seed - that
is, the cost of bricking up doors and windows plus the cost of hybrid
candles - at between 6 and 8 quintals per hectare (15). Another
researcher, in charge of the INRA hybrid wheat programme - which is
continuing despite this incredibly high estimate - recently came up
with an even higher figure of 8 to 10 quintals per hectare sown (16).
This means, at the very least, $500 million a year, or the entire
INRA budget, for a net gain of scarcely a few quintals - a gain that
can be more easily and quickly obtained using lines or varieties
reproduced by the farmer. But those lines were of no interest to
INRA's "partner", Lafarge-Coppée. 

Fourth, giving up our rights in living things means giving the
genetic-industrial complex a free hand to guide technical progress
into the paths that will bring it the most profits rather than those
that will be most useful to society. Rambling on about progress in
general while ignoring how things are done in practice smacks of
deception. As does invoking some alleged "social demand" in
justification of the scientific choices made by the authorities.
Public opinion is massively against GMO. So there is no "social
demand" for GMO; the term is simply being used as a smokescreen for
the demands of the genetic-industrial complex. And yet, in France,
ministers have just opened a genetic research centre in Evry. 


>
>Easy prey for investors
> 

The myth of hybrids is easily exposed. On the one hand, farmers
want better quality varieties that are more productive per unit cost.
But they are unable to specify in what form. Unfortunately, they
can't rely on scientists to tell them that there are a number of
routes to improvement and that the choice between a free variety and
a hybrid is a political, not a scientific one. Scientists are not
political animals, as we know. 

On the other hand, investors, looking to maximise the return on
their investment, choose the most profitable varietal type: they take
the hybrid route of sterile varieties. Whether spontaneously or
working to order, researchers set to work, devoting their efforts
exclusively to the success of these hybrids. And, sooner or later,
the technique is made to work, proving the initial choice was
correct. A technical choice is like a self-fulfilling prophecy - the
farmer's demand for better varieties is transformed into a demand for
hybrids. 

In the twin fields of applied biology, health and medicine, we are
trying to get rid of the great scourges of cancer, obesity,
alcoholism, etc. But we don't know how to reach this objective. The
genetic-industrial complex, for its part, is trying to make more and
more money. Confusing the agent with the cause, it drums into us that
these social ills are genetic and therefore individual, transforming
every well individual into a potential patient, expanding the market
to the limit - as it previously did for seed with hybrids and as it
will with Terminator. 

By definition, we are all carriers of genetic diseases. Since
genes produce proteins and proteins are involved in every function of
life, to speak of a "genetic" disease is a virtual tautology. But in
a society where the social and political causes of disease are
absent, the genetic agent manifests itself very rarely, if at all
(17). The deception of individualising and naturalising a social and
political cause is the death knell of any system of social security.
In France we see this every day with the endless debates about the
chronic but oh-so-profitable social security deficit. 

By cutting themselves off from society in the name of objectivity
and technology, biologists are falling victim to their own narrow
concept of causality and their "a-historicity" - easy prey for
investors. But the way for researchers to work for that better world
that the vast majority want is for them to open themselves up to the
scrutiny of their fellow citizens. That means scientific democracy.
 

The genetic-industrial complex is trying to transform political
questions into technical and scientific ones so that responsibility
for them can be shifted on to bodies it can control. Its experts,
dressed in the candid probity and the white coat of impartiality and
objectivity, use the camera to distract people's attention. Then they
put on their three piece suits to negotiate behind the scenes the
patent they have just applied for, or sit on the committees that will
inform public opinion - quite objectively, it goes without saying -
and regulate their own activities. It is a serious thing when
democracy no longer has any independent experts and has to depend on
the courage and honesty of a few scientists and researchers, as it
must, for example, in the nuclear industry. 

Such abuses are beginning to elicit a timid reaction. American
biological journals, for example, are asking their contributors to
declare their personal or family interests in biotechnology companies
and their sources of funding (18). This is the minimum level of
transparency that should be asked of anyone who takes the floor or
sits on committees of supposedly independent experts. We would then
become aware of the genetic-industrial complex's many and various
ramifications. 

In short, do we want to allow a few multinationals to take control
of the biological part of our humanity by granting them a right -
legal, biological or contractual - over life itself? Or do we want to
preserve our responsibility and our autonomy? Will farmers'
organisations continue to allow ruinous techniques to be imposed upon
them or will they debate what would be in the farmers' and the
public's interest with renewed public research and a network of
breeder-agronomists? Finally, what are the intentions of "public"
agronomic research - which for decades has been privatising the
material of life economically, and now biologically? 

There is another way. Turn our backs on the present European
policy of allowing life forms to be patented, which is nothing but a
servile imitation of what is happening in the US, and declare living
things "the common property of humanity". And reorganise genuinely
public research around this common property in order to block the
already well-advanced private hold that is seeking to eliminate any
scientific alternative that would make ecologically responsible and
sustainable agriculture possible. Guarantee the free movement of
knowledge and genetic resources that have made the extraordinary
advances of the last 60 years possible. Restore power over living
things to the farmers, that is to each one of us. Replace economic
warfare and the plundering of genetic resources with international
cooperation and peace.    

_________________________________________________________________
 
>
>

* Respectively Director of Research at the National Agronomic
Research Institute (INRA); and holder of the Alexander Agassiz chair
in zoology and professor of population genetics at Harvard
University. 

         
>
>Translated by Malcolm Greenwood
>
> 

(1) This article takes up the theme of a European workshop on the
subject "Should we create a right in living things?" held, because of
opposition from the board of the INRA, at the Montpellier Centre for
Higher Agronomic Studies on 26-27 September 1997. 
>
>

(2) In his article "Playing God in the Garden", Michael Pollan
writes that with the rise of biotechnology, farming is entering the
information age, and Monsanto, more than any other firm, looks set to
become its Microsoft, providing the proprietary "operating systems",
to use its own metaphor, that will manage the new generation of
plants. The New York Times Magazine, 28 October 1998. 


>
>(3) The biological concept of heredity appeared in the mid-19th
century, at the same time as the heredity of property. See the
contribution by Jean Gayon to the European workshop mentioned in note
1. 


>
>(4) The botanist Johann Rehof ("Gregori") Mendel was the founder
of genetics. He described the laws of hybridisation (or Mendel's
laws) in a seminal article published in 1886 but generally unknown
until rediscovered in 1900. 
>
>

(5) Hugo De Vries, Plant-Breeding, The Open Court Publishing Co.,
Chicago, 1907. 
>
>

(6) For the elimination of history from scientific projects, see
Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond, La Pierre de touche. La science
à l'Épreuve de ... la société, Gallimard,
coll. Folio, Paris 1996. 

  
>
>

(7) From the start of the development of "hybrids" (1922) - when
the Department of Agriculture imposed the technique on reluctant
breeders - to their conquest of the Middle West in 1945-46, the maize
yield increased 18% while that of wheat increased 32%. But the small
wheat breeders only serve the general interest, while the
"hybridisers" create a new source of profit and therefore become
scientific heros. 
>
>

(8) See "The Genetics and Exploitation of Heterosis in Crops",
Book of Abstracts, International Symposium, Mexico City, CIMMYT,
1997. This symposium, whose purpose was to popularise the "hybrid"
technique the world over and to extend it to new species, was
sponsored by the cream the genetic-industrial complex, including
Monsanto, Novartis, Pioneer, DeKalb and Asgrow, as well as by US Aid
and the American Department of Agriculture. China was also among the
sponsors. 
>
>

(9) In France, a former chairman and director of INRA boasted in
1986 of being on the boards of Rhône-Poulenc, Entreprise
minière et chimique, and Société commerciale des
potasses d'Alsace et de l'azote. The present director of this public
research institute was formerly (1989-94) on the board of
Rhône-Poulenc Agrochimie. 
>
>

(10) The Pinkerton private detective agency traditionally supplied
employers with auxiliaries to break trade unions and whip up
provocation. 


>
>(11) See Progressive Farmer, Birmingham, Alabama, 26 February
1998. Monsanto has recently spelled out the penalties to be imposed
on farmers found to be "pirating" its varieties: they will have to
pay a royalty and allow their farms to be inspected for a period of
five years. Two farmers in Kentucky were obliged to pay it $25,000.
In France, farmers belonging to the Confédération
paysanne are actively fighting against GMO. See the Confederation's
monthly, Campagnes solidaires (104, rue Robespierre, 93170 Bagnolet.
Tel.: (+33) 143-62-82-82). See also the dossier on GMO published in
the October 1998 edition of the monthly Regards, Paris. 
>
>

(12) Reported by Michael Pollan, "Playing God in the Garden", op.
cit. 
>
>

(13) See interview with Axel Kahn, "Les OGM permettront de nourrir
la planète en respectant l'environnement", Les Echos, 18
December 1997. Mr. Kahn, a member of the National Consultative
Committee on Ethics and chairman of the Biomolecular Engineering
Commission from 1988-1997, is director of research unit 129 at the
National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM) and
assistant director of life sciences at Rhône-Poulenc. 


>

>

(15) Michel Rousset, "Les blés hybrides sortent du
laboratoire", La Recherche, Paris, No. 173, January 1986. 
>
>

(16) Gérard Doussinault, report to the scientific committee
of the Economics Department of the INRA, December 1996.
>
> 

(17) See Richard C. Lewontin, The Doctrine of DNA. Biology as
Ideology, Penguin Books, London, 1993. 
>
>

(18) In his article "Study discloses financial interests behind
papers" (Nature, vol. 385, 30 June 1997), Meredith Wadman shows that
one third of the main authors of articles published in 14 cellular
and biomolecular biology and medical journals had a direct financial
interest in the work they were reporting. The definition of
"financial interest" is narrow, however, since it does not include
consultations, private shareholdings or fees.    

_________________________________________________________________
 

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