The article below is on the four Rs of RNA evolution (the thrust of
evolution seems to be away from spelling ) The important point is
the "new" genetics is the large proportion of retrotransposons (sleeping
viruses) and the high frequency of alternatively spliced genes. Plant
molecular genetics has lagged behind the animal work and it is unclear
what proportion of plant genomes are retrotransposons in most cases and
the proportion of alternatively spliced genes is undetermined even
though alternate splicing will impact on the safety of transgenes.

doi:10.1038/ng1275 2004
volume 36 no. 1 pp 19 - 25 Nature genetics
The four Rs of RNA-directed evolution
Alan Herbert

The way we quantify the human genome has changed markedly. The estimated
percentage of the genome derived from retrotransposition has increased
(now 45%; refs. 1,2), as have the estimates for alternative splicing
(now 41-60% of multiexon genes)3, 4, antisense transcription (now 10ñ20%
of genes)5, 6 and non-protein coding RNA (now 7% of full-length cDNAs)7.
Concomitantly, the estimated number of protein-coding genes (now 24,500)
has decreased8. These numbers support an RNA-centric view of evolution
in which phenotypic diversity arises through extensive RNA processing
and widespread RNA-directed rewriting of DNA enables dissemination of
'selfish' RNAs associated with successful outcomes9. The numbers also
indicate important roles for sense-antisense transcription units (SATs)
and coregulatory RNAs (coRNAs) in directing the read-out of genetic
information, in reconciling different regulatory inputs and in
transmitting epigenetic information to progeny. Together, the actions of
reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic and replication constitute the four Rs of
RNA-directed evolution.

http://www.consciouschoice.com/issues/cc1611/agrisciencebusride1611.html

"Agriscience Bus" Takes Teachers For a Ride

Big business interests are pushed in a program to teach educators about "agriculture"... their agriculture.

by Jane Garrison

Conscious Choice, November 2003

When the topic of genetically modified foods came up in the teachers' lounge one day, my friend Tom (not his real name) chimed in, "It's like when nectarines were made from peaches and plums." He said he had learned this on the "Agriscience Bus."

Having a working knowledge of genetically modified foods and knowing the fallacy of that analogy, I asked other previous Agriscience Bus participants about it. They all had the same impression, saying things like, "The course really opened my eyes to biotechnology" and "Some important biotech research is making big differences in improving the world's food supply."

I asked whether any fellow course participants had brought up concerns over genetically modified organisms (GMOs). "Well, no," they answered, "it's hard to know what to ask when a geneticist is talking."

I took this as a sign that it was my time to take the Agriscience Bus tour.

Getting to the Kids via the Teachers

I first heard of "Teachers on an Agriscience Bus" about 12 years ago. Teachers in area school districts spend three days of their summer traveling to farms and other agriculture-related businesses west of Chicago.

The Agriscience Bus is an appealing three-day summer course offering guided tours of various agribusiness venues in a travel bus, comfortable overnight accommodations, generous meals, and the chance to hang out with colleagues. It's fully sponsored by local ag organizations and free to the teachers (with college and professional credit available for a tuition fee).

At our first meeting we were showered with stacks of class materials from every area ag-related organization I could imagine -- from the Illinois Pork Producers Association to the DuPage County Farm Bureau. We received beautiful posters for our classrooms, lesson plan ideas, and free samples.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Opening Message of the "Biotechnology Basics Activity Book" (shown on our cover)

Hi Kids,

This is an activity book for young people like you about biotechnology -- a really neat topic. Why is it such a neat topic? Because biotechnology is helping to improve the health of the Earth and the people who call it home. In this book, you will take a closer look at biotechnology. You will see that biotechnology is being used to figure out how to: 1) grow more food; 2) help the environment; and 3) grow more nutritious food that improves our health. As you work through the puzzles in this book, you will learn more about biotechnology and all of the wonderful ways it can help people live better lives in a healthier world.

Have Fun!

-- sponsored by the Council For Biotechnology Information, an industry trade group

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Included among these materials were copies of the AgMag and the Biotechnology Activity Book -- provided by Monsanto and the Council for Biotechnology Information and geared to children. Nothing aggravates me more than the assumption that teachers of children are willing and blind messengers of anything put in front of them. Having said that, these materials include statements such as, "My teacher says biotechnology is helping scientists make edible medicine!" and "Seeds with special qualities could allow farmers to grow plants that are more nutritious, more resistant to pests, and more productive."

I also learned at the meeting that 641 area teachers have participated in the Agriscience Bus since the course tour started in 1991. Creation of this teacher "education" was based on a perceived need for agricultural literacy among young school students -- and it was decided the best way to reach the students was through teachers. Several highly-regarded and dedicated area farmers had been involved in the development of this bus tour program. So, I asked myself, could this really be a "corporate conspiracy"? Good people had put it together.

Nonetheless, literally, tens of thousands of kids were getting its message as a result of this teacher education program.

No Room for Dissent

Nearly all of the tour stops focused on "advanced technological aspects" of the agriculture industry -- which meant biotechnology and factory farms.

Still, it didn't come as a surprise to me that 80 percent of the grain fed to most hogs is genetically modified or that the mass production of meat means that a sow typically produces five artificially inseminated litters of 8-11 pigs before her productivity declines.

Neither was I surprised that the farmers I met are thoughtful and intelligent people of high character who possess a sense of responsibility for the population as well as for the environment. I already knew these things.

The surprise came on the bus. Our instructor was a friendly guy who directs our county's farm bureau. His blend of agriculture and political science experience made him perfect for his job. Our tight schedule didn't allow much time for group discussions so he suggested that we talk together on the bus. Yet when I indicated that I would like to discuss the controversy over genetically modified crops, the friendliness switched to off. He snapped, "Not on this bus. Not while we're paying for it. That's not on the syllabus."

So much for post-graduate course work that engages in lively debate! It was clear that the only way we teachers were going to hear the arguments against GMOs was if they were discussed "off the bus." Fat chance. Monsanto was our next stop.

Our tour of Monsanto's research facility began with a "wagon ride" out to the test soybean fields. Our guide, a charming Brazilian scientist sang the praises of "Roundup Ready" soybeans and Bt (GMO) corn. "Farmers can now spend their summers in Florida instead of in their fields pulling weeds," he happily exclaimed.

When I asked how non-GMO farmers keep their fields from being contaminated by GMO pollen, his explanation stressed the technology's approval by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency (how could the government be wrong?!). He admitted that 1-2 percent of pollen could conceivably make its way to neighboring plants -- but that planting 15 days after the GMO crops are planted helps alleviate the chances of contamination.

A more formal presentation followed, presented by a plaid shirt-clad geneticist who attempted to approach the GMO controversy head-on, relating its nickname of "Frankenfood" with a chuckle and pointing out that the European refusal to legalize GMOs was purely political and economic manipulation intended to drive down U.S. GMO prices. One teacher asked about the monarch butterfly research and he discredited it as "poorly planned and irrelevant...that test did not take into account the timing of monarchs' milkweed diet with the GMO plants' pollen dispersal." Another teacher brought up the StarLink/Taco Bell issue, and his explanation emphasized the "very small" probability that GMO corn could cause a problem.

"So what's the big controversy?" queried one teacher.

"People don't like the idea that there are food products that have DNA from another organism," he replied. "There is no concern that human bodies cannot break down the Bt [GMOS]."

The polite side of me was saying, "Stay in your seat, Jane." But the "know thyself" side made me stand up. I was aware of the lack of research pointing to human safety and, in a bold move, I piped up to make this point citing Monsanto's "Right to Know" safety sign, prominently displayed on the wall of the pole barn in which we were seated.

Our speaker acknowledged that long-term effects on health and the environment are not known and that Monsanto directs millions of dollars toward lobbying the Food and Drug Administration to prevent the labeling of GMO foods. I told him that it's unconscionable that the public is serving as guinea pigs in this giant human experiment, and we have no idea how GMOs will effect us, our children, our grandchildren, and ecosystems. There was no response from our speaker; there was no response from the audience.

Later, a teacher quietly suggested that I shop at Whole Foods Market.
Another teacher said she was interested in more information about GMOs and a friend teasingly called me "gutsy." My bus partner, a young social sciences teacher of like mind, quietly thanked me. On the other hand, our bus guide remarked that I didn't have to "put down" our host; that "we do the best we can with what we have." And later, in a course evaluation a participant wrote, "Some teachers are clueless as to proper behavior."

However, in that same evaluation, someone suggested a trip to an organic farm and another pointed out the importance of discussing the ethics of biotechnology, neither of which had been addressed during the tour.

The last stop of that day was an award-winning feedlot farm, on which hundreds of cattle are fed until ready for market. This business -- run by a respected, close-knit local family -- is state-of-the-art with everything from Global Positioning Satellite on its tractors to ultrasound testing for predicting optimum cattle size for quality cuts of meat.

The impact of consumer demand was glaringly clear on this factory farm -- Holstein cattle, known as dairy cattle, are now raised and butchered for beef because Wal-Mart customers are scrambling for the unique shape of their rib eyes. The farm grows a field of non-GMO soybeans to sell to the European market. "This is a capitalist country and we're in the business of making food for people," explained one of the farmers. "If consumers demand something -- and we can provide it safely and legally while making a profit
-- we'll produce it."

The Media Package

The tour served to show that the power of the biotech industry and industry giants such as Monsanto is far-reaching -- and that local Chicago media play a big part in that. For instance, one of our tour stops was at WGN-AM, known for its local color and syndicated farm reports and owned by the Chicago Tribune Company. On our last day, we met the two gentlemen with memorable voices who present WGN's daily farm reports, broadcast nationwide. A teacher asked, "What are some of the most controversial issues facing agriculture today?"

"Some amazing and wonderful things are being done with biotechnology," one of the reporters replied. "Most of the protests are emotion-based; you don't hear much concern in the U.S. In fact, the most recent protest had only about 600 people. That's compared to how many million U.S. citizens who have no problem with it?"

Is there a chance that Monsanto is a WGN client?

One of the stated objectives of the three-day tour is "to provide relevant teaching and curriculum materials that be integrated into various subject matter disciplines."

It could be a tough row to hoe if a teacher comes away not wanting to integrate the ideas espoused during the Agriscience Bus tour. Why? Participating teachers must make this commitment: "ALL staff will be required to develop curriculum materials using information obtained from the trip program."

Jane Garrison, mother of two, teaches fourth grade in a west Chicago suburb

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-2-944108,00.html
London Times
December 27, 2003

Scientists' bid to combat TB made it more virulent
By Oliver Wright, Health Correspondent

SCIENTISTS have accidentally created a highly virulent form of
tuberculosis by trying to alter its genetic structure, it emerged yesterday.
Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley had been
trying to disable genes and make the bacterium less deadly. But the mutant
form of the bacterium that they created multiplied more quickly, and was more lethal than its natural counterpart. Within seven months of exposure,
laboratory rats infected with the new strain began to die while those
infected with normal TB survived the experiment.

“This is one of the very few hypervirulent organisms ever created,” said
Lisa Morici, lead author of the study. “This breaks a longstanding
assumption among scientists that disabling a potential virulence gene
weakens a pathogen."

Tuberculosis is one of the world’s biggest killers. The bacterium that
causes the disease has infected one third of the world’s population -
although the overwhelming majority of these people will never fall ill.
Two million people die of tuberculosis a year. According to the World Health
Organisation, which in 1993 declared tuberculosis a global emergency, 36
million people could die of TB by 2020 if the disease is not controlled.

In response to the gravity of the problem, scientists have been
examining the genetic structure of tuberculosis in search of weaknesses
that might be exploited by new treatments.

The Berkeley study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, concentrated on a particular collection of genes thought to
give TB some of its virulence and its ability to infect.

They disabled these genes and expected to find a weakened form of TB as
a result. Instead, the organism grew in virulence. Scientists were so
surprised by the results that they did the experiment again but got the
same results.

Further investigations suggested that the genetic changes had the
unexpected effect of undermining the body’s own immune response to TB. The
gene mutations led to changes in the TB bacteria that meant the host’s own
immune response was compromised. “It appears that the host immune system does
not recognise the mutated TB organisms, so the bacteria are left to grow
unchecked," Dr Morici said.

“These findings came as a complete surprise to us. We thought we had
made a mistake, so we repeated the test several times, and we always got the
same result."

There have been fears that similar genetic modifications might lead to a
new form of tuberculosis that could be used in bioterrorism, but Dr Morici
said that this was unlikely.

The bacterium would be hard to spread by aerosol, the most probable
method of spreading toxins over large populations, and can be treated by
antibiotics.

“Mycobacterium tuberculosis grows extremely slowly, is hard to
aerosolise and, if it is not in a dormant stage, can be treated with
antibiotics," Dr Morici said. “There are other organisms that are easier to manipulate
than TB."

Dr Neil Stoker, from the Royal Veterinary College at the University of
London, said that his research had also uncovered “hypervirulent”
strains of TB. But he added, the emergence of these strains should pose no
risk to humans.

“These are not going to become "super-strains" he said. “They are
already going to be out there, and they have not become dominant."

TB, Professor Stoker said, was “such a phenomenal pathogen because it
does not cause disease in everyone it infects. It has this extraordinary
ability to transmit itself, and nine out of ten people who have it will never
fall ill."

Professor Lee Riley, who supervised the American research, added that
even though they had not found what they expected it was still useful. “TB is
very difficult to treat — not because it kills people rapidly, but
because it stays dormant," he said.

“By understanding the mechanism behind latency, we may also be able to
develop new diagnostic tests to predict who will develop the active
disease."

A CURABLE KILLER

Tuberculosis is a communicable disease caused by infection from
Mycobacterium tuberculosis, most frequently affecting the lungs.

A cure was developed more than 50 years ago but it is still one of the
top three killer diseases in the world, with malaria and HIV.

A person with TB can spread the disease to 10 to 15 others each year,
but ceases to be infectious within two weeks of starting treatment.

More than 7,000 cases are currently identified across Britain, an 80 per
cent rise over the past decade.

> Whats your take on Critical Realism?

Some comments inserted. My general impression is of pseudo-novelty.

I welcome any realisation that pomo was crap, but if we are to
regenerate natural history, the study of nature while refraining from
wrecking it, we'll need (I suspect) to pick up anew the 'dialectical
realism' of my hero Wm Temple, as science's philosophical context (would
you believe 'ambience'? what about 'landscape'? certainly not 'text'
...) within which scientists conduct their actions on nature.

I Cc your local fisofoler, and my old cobber Tom Richards, and one
of ours here.

thanx

R

http://www.philosophynow.org/issue42/42caldwell.htm

Hot to Get Real

Is Postmodernism finally on its deathbed? Roger Caldwell examines the
evidence and takes a look at its would-be successor: Critical Realism.

For the last two decades of the twentieth century the dominant cultural
paradigm was that of postmodernism. But at the beginning of the new
millennium a new paradigm is on offer. Postmodernism is dead. It is to be
succeeded by the age of critical realism. That at least is the promise
that José López and Garry Potter hold out as propagandists of the new
movement (they edited a collection of essays called After Postmodernism -
An Introduction to Critical Realism, published by Continuum in 2001).
True, the two movements have much in common in their sheer scope - offering
an overall view of science, social science and the arts, and all in the
interests of an emancipatory politics. However, although postmodernism
made an easy transition from academia to the media, critical realism has
shown to date no signs of doing so. From this, however, no adverse
inference should be drawn as to the quality of its thought.

The talk of paradigms recalls the term used by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions: for him long periods of ‘normal science’ were
punctuated by crises leading to ‘paradigm shifts’. For Kuhn competing
paradigms were incommensurable: they involved looking at the world in
radically different ways. Certainly, the world looked at through the eyes
of critical realism is vastly different from that seen through the eyes of
postmodernism - for a start, there is a single world again - but there is
more to the matter than an irrational leap from one view to the other. For
critical realism begins with the awareness that the postmodernist project
is fatally flawed.

There is the danger of anachronism here. Roy Bhaskar may be regarded as
the founding father of critical realism, yet his first book, A Realist
Thought of Science appeared in 1975 when postmodernism was still in its
infancy. Nevertheless, the central targets of the book, Kuhn and Paul
Feyerabend, were undoubtedly (and perhaps unwittingly) forerunners of
postmodernism in their questioning of scientific rationality. Of the two
it was Kuhn who was the closest to realism - he held that even after a
revolution at least part of the previously ‘normal’ science proves to be
permanent, and that science offers us our surest example of sound
knowledge. Indeed, it is hard to see in what way there could be a growth
of scientific knowledge except from a realist stance, however finely
nuanced that claim to realism may be.

Feyerabend, acting as a gadfly to all scientific pretensions, held that
there was no such thing as the scientific method and saw science as an
essentially anarchic enterprise in which ‘anything goes’. The one scarcely
follows from the other, however. It is true that there is no single method
that marks out science from any other form of rational enquiry but
nonetheless there are a range of criteria - such as explanatory scope,
predictive power, experimental repeatability, consistency with other
well-established theory - that make it a different sort of enterprise to,
say, astrology or alchemy. Feyerabend could scarcely have expected that
his remark that "science is the myth of today", intended no doubt as a
provocation, would so soon become orthodoxy, at least in the Humanities.

If philosophers outside science were led in an anti-realist direction there
were also developments within science itself - notably the enigmas of
quantum physics - that seemed to go against the normal assumption that
there is a single observer-independent reality. The Copenhagen
interpretation of quantum physics remains the most popular one but it
doesn’t take us very far; it confirms that the equations work but doesn’t
provide a physical model to account for their success. Attempts to relate
the collapse of the wave function in terms of the ‘real’ world - such as
Hugh Everett’s many-worlds model - seem unconvincingly extravagant. Much
of science is counterintuitive, but the notion that whole new universes are
continually splitting off, for all that it has eloquent defenders, would
seem in need of firmer foundations to be persuasive.

< agreed !

Here Christopher Norris (once a prolific writer on postmodernism and now an
avowed critical realist), rather than accepting the notion of a universe
which is dependent on human observers to exist, attempts to bring quantum
physics within the embrace of realism. There are several points to be made
here. If no realist model of quantum physics has yet been agreed on, this
may be because the science itself is incomplete, or because no one has yet
devised a suitable model, or because we have yet to decide between
competing models. (I understand that in the last decade realistic models
have been devised that don’t demand the extravagance of a ‘many-worlds’
interpretation). Also, even if no agreement has been reached on an
interpretation of quantum physics, its capacity for precise physical
prediction and the fact that it has given rise to sophisticated technology
potently suggest that it has latched on to certain objective underlying
features of physical reality. It is further worth pointing out that the
particular problems of quantum physics don’t carry over into the rest of
physics or into chemistry or biology, much less constitute any kind of
general scientific crisis. The existence of stars and planets, of DNA, of
human bodies and animal bodies is not thereby put into doubt, nor is the
validity of the considerable body of scientific knowledge we have developed
about these entities. Whatever problems there may be at the subatomic
level do not affect our ability to devise realistic theories of the
macroworld.

This excursion into quantum physics is necessary because postmodernists
have drawn unwarranted conclusions about a general epistemological crisis
from, for example, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. In fact, as Sokal
and Bricmont have shown in Intellectual Impostures (1997) these conclusions
are invariably based on a lack of understanding of the relevant science.
If postmodernism is indeed dead - the announcement may yet prove premature
- then Sokal and Bricmont have surely been instrumental in hastening the
death-throes. They show that, scientifically speaking, the postmodernist
gurus have feet of clay.

Indeed, it is hard to give an overview of the major postmodernist tenets
without seeming to fall into parody. All knowledge, scientific knowledge
included, is held to be socially constructed through and through. Science
is therefore merely one story among others. The world we know is one that
is constructed by human discourses, giving us not so much truths as
‘truth-effects’ which may or may not be pragmatically useful. From this
point of view, epistemologically speaking, a scientific text is understood
as being on a par with a literary text. Further, given that for Derrida
language is a self-referential system, all communication is reduced to the
model of an avant-garde poem in which all meaning is indefinitely deferred.

So put this seems scarcely persuasive. (Indeed, as Garry Potter points
out, this is not even a plausible account of an avant-garde poem: if there
are no inherent meanings in the text it is not properly a text at all but
indistinguishable from an arbitrary jumble of words.) More basically, a
denial of realism can take two forms: the first is to accept the
possibility of there being an objective reality but to deny that we are in
a position to have knowledge of it; the second - more typically postmodern
- is to see reality as entirely composed of our discourses about it. The
effect of either form is that we no longer are in a position to talk of
reality or truth as such: rather, both words are, as it were, to be put in
inverted commas. Clearly, if we adopt the latter form of anti-realism, we
should have a magical solution to all our problems. For example, as Ted
Benton points out, if nature were merely a cultural construct, all we would
need to solve our ecological problems would be to change the terms of our
discourse. That these theorists do not in fact take this step suggests
that they (for good reasons) fall shy of the consequences of their own
theories.

One may question whether it is even possible to state theories of this kind
without self-contradiction. If objective truth about reality is
impossible, then what is the logical status of the statement that objective
truth about reality is impossible, since it itself aspires to objective
truth?

< I have been fond of that type of manoeuvre for 4 decade, having
slapped it on that fatuous Wittgenstein "logical positivism". But I have
always worried that it may not be straightforwardly kosher to apply to
axioms the same rules as to other statements. Can B Russell have done
anything as useful as examining this question?

A similar problem arises, as Bricmont points out, with regard to Richard
Rorty’s neopragmatism. If, as Rorty proposes, we replace the notion of
truth with that of usefulness, so that we accept only those propositions
which we find in general to be ‘useful’, then the question arises as to
whether they are really useful or not. That is, the very criteria by which
we judge a proposition to be useful involve the same recourse to a
correspondence with reality which the theory denies us in advance. We are
left, inescapably, with the conclusion that the theory is incoherent.

< Is there, at this rate, any coherent theory?

Critical realism, then, rescues us from the postmodernist nightmare and
restores us to reality. We cannot manage without a concept of truth.
There is (as most of us thought all along) a pre-existing external reality
about which it is the job of science to tell us. True, we must be cautious
about claims to objective reality, alert to ideological distortions, and
aware that the world is a messier, more complicated place than the accounts
of physicists would suggest. This does not mean that such claims cannot
plausibly be made. A central plank of critical realism is that science can
no longer be considered as just another myth or story.

< It never was, by any sensible philosopher (or scientist).

Ted Benton is concerned to restore the centrality of the concept of nature
to the social sciences. He notes that, among sociologists, there is an
ambiguous attitude to the natural sciences, debunking on the one hand but
envious of their success on the other. The notion of nature, and for that
matter human nature, tends to be seen as essentially a social construct,
which means that we can never speak of nature as such but only of
discourses about nature. The result of this, combined with a suspicion of
scientific thought as indissolubly linked with political and social
domination, is that sociologists are powerless to contribute to debates
about such important contemporary issues as loss of biodiversity or
ecological degradation, assessment of which is crucially dependent on
scientific analysis. If sociologists deny the validity of a scientific
account of nature to begin with, dissolving ‘nature’ into so many
discourses, they are left with a hapless relativism, inadequate to deal
with the ‘real’ problems that clearly exist. This is not to deny that
science may be put in the service of political or social oppression, or
indeed that scientifically-based remedies may be inappropriately applied.
The answer to this is better political systems and more finely tuned
application of science. It does not constitute an argument against
scientific truth as a whole.

Bhaskar himself tends to argue on an ontological level (he asks what kinds
of entities — natural and social — exist) rather than on an epistemological
one (that is, asking what different ways there are of arriving at
knowledge). There are good reasons for this. If scientific method does
not differ essentially from other ways of determining the probable truth of
a state of affairs, then it is hard to see how there can be competing
epistemologies. Think, for example, of a murder enquiry: X has been shot,
and the evidence available suggests that it was Y who did it. He was known
to have a grudge against X, he had previously threatened to shoot him,
there is good DNA evidence, and he was seen standing over the body with a
smoking gun. Then, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it would
surely be rational of anybody to conclude that X was murdered by Y.

Now, this judgement may be wrong: later there may come conclusive evidence
that it was Z who did it, having cleverly incriminated Y. In which case
our conclusion will be revised accordingly. But any investigator
considering the available evidence should reach the same conclusion
regardless of their age, gender, race or sexual persuasion. That is what
we mean by objective truth. If this is true of a murder enquiry it is
surely true of how progress is made in the physical sciences: just as X was
murdered either by Y or Z or somebody else, so the speed of light is either
one value or another. It cannot be the case that the speed of light has
one value for one theorist and another for another: either one or the other
(or both) are mistaken. It is considerations of this sort that make
nonsense of Luce Irigaray's notorious question; "Is E = Mc2 a sexed
equation?" Equations cannot be sexed like humans or chickens: the equation
in question is true or false, regardless of who discovered it. It just
happens that it was Einstein: it could easily have been someone else.

Clearly, critical realism is by now a diffuse and interdisciplinary
movement, covering a wide spectrum of opinions. The question is: how broad
a church can critical realism be if it is to remain both critical and
realist? Most of the contributors to López and Potter’s anthology clearly
accept scientific objectivity: it is far from clear that the contributors
to the section entitled ‘Ways of Knowing’ are similarly committed. Jenneth
Parker, invoking Lyotard, Feyerabend and feminist epistemology, explicitly
argues that the ‘reductionism’ of Western science derives from the economic
and political organisation in which it is embedded. This reductionism has
allegedly led to the loss or marginalization of less privileged
knowledge-systems. This may be so, but the term ‘knowledge-systems’ rather
rigs the question in advance. If instead we talk of belief-systems — which
say cover, for example, witchcraft, Christianity, astrology, not to say
science itself — we can then ask the crucial question: are they true? For
only then can they become knowledge-systems proper. And I’m not clear on
what basis Parker could decide this.

She argues that Western science should not be privileged over, say,
acupuncture; that to include both is likely to lead to a better
understanding of the human body. Again this may be so: acupuncture is
clearly widely-practiced and may have beneficial effects on health. But
how many ways of understanding how a human body works can there be? If
behind acupuncture there lies genuine knowledge about the human body so far
unrecognized by science then the only rational procedure for scientists is
to modify their theories so as to take this new knowledge into account. If
this is thought to privilege the hegemony of science then I make the
alternative proposal: that if there is genuine knowledge in Western science
about the human body not previously taken account of by acupuncture (and,of
course, relevant to healing) then it is only rational of acupuncturists to
incorporate that knowledge into their practice, if it is possible to do so.
The result is, in the first case, that science remains science, but better
science. The result is, in the second case, that acupuncture becomes more
scientific.

Parker is arguing for pluralism. However, whilst there can be, and
obviously is, pluralism in regard to the values which particular societies
endorse, it is unclear in what way there can be a pluralism in regard to
truth. Obviously, there is a pluralism of ways of looking at the human
body — an artist, a sexual partner, a surgeon will all look at it from very
different perspectives. But it seems to me that only the biologist is in
the business of explaining how the human body functions. It is
theoretically possible that at any one time there may a number of competing
biological theories, but only one (or none) of them is likely to be
correct. A plurality of ways of looking does not translate into a
plurality of ways of knowing

Alison Assiter, writing on Descartes, adopts similarly dubious tactics.
She argues that Descartes’ philosophical project foundered on its failure
to take other people and their beliefs into account, and on Descartes’ own
assumption that he could isolate himself from his particular values and
beliefs to produce knowledge. She further argues that Descartes’ ultimate
reliance on God is a result of his having severed any dependency on
anything else, and that, from the standpoint of feminist epistemology,
there is no ‘project of pure enquiry’ but that all enquiries are dependent
on a social context. One may well agree that Descartes failed in his
project, though scarcely for the reasons she gives. Assiter is here
falling back into positions that are closer to postmodernism than to that
of critical realism.

If the latter involves, as she says, "a socio-historical situating of
knowledge", there is a singular failure in her essay to locate Descartes’
own philosophical project socio-historically. The main purpose of what we
now think of as Descartes’ philosophical works was to establish a certain
foundation for his physical science which he hoped, nervously aware of the
fate of Galileo, would be acceptable to the Catholic Church. In this, as
we know, he failed: for all his efforts to placate the Church, his works
were placed on the Index of Prohibited Books. In his scientific work, like
Galileo, he attempts to provide an account of the natural world in the
light of human reason and independent of theology. If this is to be
acceptable to the Church then he must find a way of showing that human
reason is somehow guaranteed by God, that God is not a malignant trickster.

If we approach Descartes’ project historically in this way it is easy to
see that Assiter’s charges are misconceived. Descartes' dependency on God,
in the context of his period, is scarcely a pathological matter, requiring
a Freudian reading. The method of hyperbolic doubt is a heuristic device
for a particular end, not a universal prescription: it is, I agree with
Assiter, not something that school teachers should recommend to their
charges, but Descartes would not have recommended it either. She finds it
strange that Descartes, as a practising scientist, should not have emulated
the procedures of the sciences in seeking help from others. This is
anachronistic with a vengeance: there were in Descartes’ time no scientific
institutions in our sense. Science was necessarily carried out by
individuals in isolation. Indeed, contra Assiter, individualism in this
sense has had a rather successful track-record in science. Whether or not
there is ‘a project of pure enquiry’ one only has to think of the
achievements of Newton, Darwin, Mendel, Einstein to doubt Assiter’s
recommendation that truth is best validated in collectives.

What Assiter is mainly concerned to do, however - and here Descartes is
only a convenient whipping-boy - is to advocate "the more collective,
cooperative, self-reflective" approaches advocated by feminist methodology
as exemplifying scienticity. It is hard to see, however, in what this
methodology consists, or what defects in non-feminist methodology it seeks
to remedy. Assiter invokes the insights of Sandra Harding for whom
feminism requires us "to reinvent science and theorizing". The
achievements of ‘feminist science’, however, as Susan Haack reminds us,
have been unimpressive. Harding tells us that, thanks to feminist
scientists, "we now know that menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause aren’t
diseases." We may wonder what other great discoveries are to follow.

< where is Margeurita Levin now that we need her? She removed
Harding from serious status in the devastating 'Caring New World: Feminism
and Science' Amer. Scholar 57 ( 1988 winter) 100-106.

Haack argues in her book Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate (199 that the
profusion of incompatible themes offered as feminist epistemology itself
speaks against the idea of a distinctively female cognitive style.

< It is hardly news that wimminsLib is incoherent.

Besides, if there are insights available to women that are not available
to men, it is hard to see how men could even come to understand what
feminist science is saying. The same, of course, applies to women
attempting to understand masculinist science. But if we are to posit
different epistemologies for men and women, what logical reason have we to
stop there? Are there perhaps ‘gay’ ways of knowing as opposed to
‘straight’ ones? Are there perhaps black as opposed to white ones, urban
as opposed to rural ones, childrens’ as opposed to adults’? And so on. If
so we are each of us a confused site of many ways of knowing. The question
is: what difference does it make to our ability to arrive at objective
knowledge? I fail to see that it makes any difference at all. Assiter may
well argue that it is impossible for us, Descartes-style, to strip
ourselves of our social context, of our assumptions and values. In one
sense it is. But if your purpose is, say, to discover the structure of
DNA, they are not going to be of much use to you. As we know, Watson and
Crick made the discovery; it could have been - and, as we know now, nearly
was - Rosalind Franklin. This was not a triumph of a male cognitive style
over a female one. If Franklin had made the discovery it would not have
been the triumph of a female cognitive style over a male one. In either
case the structure of DNA is a double helix.

< Little does Roger suspect how bad an example he has selected.
Not only is that DH not "the" structure of DNA, but there certainly are
many others, and for all we know the DH doesn't occur on any serious scale
in nature.

To postulate the existence of competing epistemologies in the way that
Parker and Assiter do is surely regressive - it involves a fracturing of
knowledge and, by implication, leads to the relativistic impasses that are
characteristic of postmodernism. It invites the suspicion that not all of
those who now choose to operate under the banner of critical realism have
the right to do so - they have changed the label but not the brew. It
perhaps illustrates too that to go over from one paradigm to another is a
messy business, and takes time. To the degree that critical realism has
broken free of its successor it is surely to be welcomed — we have reality
once again, and we have the possibility of progress in knowledge. We have
(potentially) a social science that operates on the basis of a realistic
conception of the natural sciences. There is at last light on the horizon.
On the fringes of the movement there may be a few dubious practitioners who
wish to return us to the postmodernist night in which all cows are black.
But the centre seems firm enough, and we can only hope that it will hold.

< I only wish Roger would give credit to those who have been thinking straight
all along.

© Roger Caldwell 2003

Roger Caldwell is a poet, philosopher and literary critic who lives in
Essex. His book of philosophical poetry, This Being Eden, was
published recently by Peterloo Press.


© 2003 Philosophy Now. All rights reserved.

I've been pointing out for a couple y a possible connection between
the lurid falsities of gene-jiggering and the eerie invalid worship of
"the" double helix.

The drastically spurious logic of the gene-jockeys is an offence
against science generally - far beyond mol biol which has almost
collapsed in a roiling mound of bullshit. (should we run here one of the
WTC tower collapses, with roiling dust ... ? naah, probably too
distracting) The Watson-Crick ikon, like a neon sign over Las Vegas, casts
its baneful glare of corruption, bias, suppression, and Crick-style
bullying over the whole scene of 1°-struct tamperings.

The connection is not mainly logical - tho' one could develop
some hypotheses about interactions of 1° with 2° structs; gene-tampering is
intended to change the 1° structure, the very sequence of the DNA, whereas
the W-C and the many other foldings to be seen at
http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/contents.htm are in a different category, 2°
structure. The connection is mainly social psychology: the gene-jockeys
jeer "see, the dominant ikon of science in the late C20 {says Prof Steve
Jones} is rather obviously bullshit, and so we can get away with any plurry
bullshit as we strew 'cassettes' of synthetic DNA on heavy-metal
microbirdshot, or attached to synthetic modified elements from pathogenic
bacteria & viri, into a dozen unknown places in the target genome; select
from the tiny minority of surviving cells on one criterion (resistance to
an antibiotic); and then assume "substantial equivalence"." The list goes
on; my immediate point is that all the bullshit about 1° struct tamperings
is indirectly psychologically pseudo-legitimized by the baneful W-C ikon's
degradations of logic.

R

The following letter from me to the British Grauniad newspaper about one of
their columnists indicates some of many reasons to support our monarchy.
(It was deep-sixed - but not before it was shown to Monbiot.)

R

The leading environmental journalist George Monbiot has made some
of the most penetrating comments on genetic modification (GM). It is
therefore a shame that he now presumes to set up several false antinomies
for the purpose of attacking Prince Charles' view of the issue.

Monbiot begins with the assumption "Prince Charles's solution to
the environmental crisis is spiritual transformation, rather than political
awakening". Monbiot seems to assume that political awakening can be
achieved without spiritual transformation, or anyhow these are mutually
exclusive, alternative pathways.

This is a fake counterposition. The big efforts to achieve
political awakening aside from, or in direct opposition to, spiritual
advancement have been disastrous - the French and Russian revolutions,
for instance. And today's dominant money-worship (your Thatcherism, our
Rogernomics, etc) is all the more insidious because it uses PR instead of
guns. Either way, not only spiritual health but also ecology suffer
drastically under ideological materialism.

Monbiot takes from his Bible that "God granted man dominion over
nature" and suggests this idea is contrary to any environmental ethic.
Again, a false antinomy. When man takes care of nature on his best
understanding of God's plan, he does relatively well; but in Genesis 3, and
in the big GM corporations today, man presumes to know better than God, and
tends to cause ecological & social mayhem.

And again: "the need to protect the environment springs not from 'a
sense of the sacred', but from social justice." Why can this "need" not
spring from both sources? Why imply they are in conflict? (Where does
Monbiot get his sense of justice, by the way?)

Monbiot asserts "human life, resulting from a series of
evolutionary accidents, is arguably meaningless". If it were so, why
should anybody care for the biosphere in which the human species will live
or die? Ethics has no logical or workable basis except in religion; and
the religion which our monarchy defends, and which Monbiot evidently
dislikes, is the only known basis for a decent society and for properly
taking care of nature.

The media have, over the past decade at least, presented every
issue as a one-dimensional bipolar gladiatorial conflict. I had thought
Monbiot above this type of journalism. But apparently his antagonism to
religion has misled him to join the common game. In so doing he has
misused the hard-won right to voice criticism of the heir to the throne.

yrs etc

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17379
AlterNet December 12, 2003
Lose Weight and Use Up Global Resources!
Stan Cox and Marty Bender
"Lose That Extra Weight ... While Eating the Foods You Love!"

For decades, such headlines were fixtures of supermarket checkout lanes,
to be taken no more seriously than claims of alien abduction. But times
have changed. High-protein, low-carbohydrate diets have become wildly
popular because they help adherents lose dozens of pounds without having
to gnaw on rice cakes.

It seems too good to be true, and some critics say it is. The debate
over the long-term health effects of Atkins and similar weight-loss
plans might grind on for years with no satisfactory conclusion. But
whenever we're faced with a fast-growing trend on this shrinking planet,
scientists should look beyond human health to weigh other ecological
consequences as well. That's what we decided to do for Atkins-style
diets.

We started with the Worldwatch Institute's estimate that 1 billion of
Earth's inhabitants are overweight and assumed that on average they eat
56 grams of animal protein a day. That is the average in Western
countries, and most overweight people eat Western diets.

If all of those people went on an Atkins-style diet, their requirement
for animal protein would rise to about 100 grams. A billion dieters each
eating an extra 44 grams could not easily be satisfied by giving them a
bigger share of current animal protein production. As it is, humans
worldwide average only 28 grams per day. Instead, by our calculations,
the meat, dairy, poultry and seafood industries would have to increase
output by 25 percent.

The dieters would no longer get much of their protein from plant sources
(grains being too heavily "polluted" with carbohydrates), so less
cropland would be required for that. Still, the net result of their big
switch to animal protein would require almost 250 million more acres for
corn, soybeans and other feed grains. That's because feeding grain to
animals and then eating the meat, milk, eggs or farm-raised fish is much
less efficient than eating plant products directly.

(Cattle in particular are good at converting grain into wastes like
carbon dioxide, methane and manure so that weight-watching Westerners
don't have to eat all those bad carbs. With worldwide per capita grain
production in decline since the 1980s, that bovine talent is less well
appreciated by the planet's hungrier people.)

Finding a quarter-billion acres for adequate feed grain harvests would
mean at least a 7 percent increase in cropland worldwide at a time when
farmers are already using most of the better land. Much of the newly
plowed acreage would likely be marginal, subject to greater erosion and
requiring extra generous applications of fertilizer and pesticides.

Furthermore, feeding that grain to all those extra animals would lead to
greater air and water pollution from feedlots, poultry and hog
confinement operations and slaughterhouses. Trying to spare the land and
squeeze more protein from the already-overfished oceans would likely be
even more damaging.

And that's not all. Cattle and other ruminant animals, whose numbers
would have to rise by 25 percent to supply our dieters, get a large
share of their food from pasture and rangeland. If most of the
additional animals were raised on current range and pasture that are
already fully stocked, the result would be overgrazing and degradation.
If new pastures were to be created for, say, half of the additional
animals, a billion more acres would have to be found. Most of this would
probably be obtained by deforestation, meaning that 10 percent of the
Earth's remaining forests would have to go.

It's unlikely that all 1 billion of the world's overweight people will
have the desire or the means to make the move to expensive animal-based
food. Nevertheless, the kind of ecological damage we have described will
occur in direct proportion to the number of people who do adopt the diet.

Already, industry analysts give much of the credit for this fall's
sharply higher beef and egg prices to high-protein, low-carb dieters.
Stepped-up production is sure to follow.

While it's true that overconsumption in the industrial West doesn't
exactly qualify as "breaking news", we're now seeing a new twist to an
old story. The obesity epidemic, caused largely by excess food
consumption, has proven to be one of our society's most vexing problems.
The diets now in vogue may be a breakthrough in addressing obesity, but
their success entails even greater consumption of global resources.

Marty Bender and Stan Cox are scientists at the Land Institute in Salina,
Kansas, and members of the Institute's Prairie Writers Circle.

BIO-IPR docserver
____________

TITLE: US 'should be more flexible on patent law'
AUTHOR: David Dickson
PUBLICATION: SciDev.Net
DATE: 22 December 2003
URL:
http://www.scidev.net/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readNews&itemid=1163&language=1
NOTE: The RFF report, "American Patent Policy, Biotechnology, and African
Agriculture: The Case for Policy Change", can be downloaded from
http://www.rff.org/rff/News/Features/American-Patent-Policy-Biotechnology-and-African-Agriculture.cfm
____________

US 'SHOULD BE MORE FLEXIBLE ON PATENT LAW'

David Dickson
SciDev.Net
22 December 2003

Substantial changes could be made in the way that the US government
interprets patent law that would benefit farmers in developing countries
without undermining the interests of US companies, according to a report
from a respected Washington-based think-tank.

"Important components of the biotechnology tool kit - gene traits, plant
transformation tools, and genetically improved germplasm - have been
patented in the United States and elsewhere by companies that have little
economic incentive to develop and disseminate the technology to meet the
needs of these farmers," say the authors of the report.

Michel Taylor, a former vice-president for public policy at Monsanto, and
his co-author Jerry Cayforth, both of whom work for Resources for the Future
(RFF) in Washington, point out that the United States has acknowledged the
importance of developing-country agriculture in achieving the United
Nations' Millennium Development Goals.

But they say that many US policies, including those on patents, are not
fully aligned with these goals, or with achieving global food security. In
contrast, they argue that changes in patent policy could simultaneously
advance both food security and the broader international interests of the
United States.

The authors acknowledge that patents play an important role in stimulating
private investment in plant biotechnology, and emphasise that they are
neither pro-patent nor anti-patent.

"But we find the case for policy change convincing," they say, adding that
biotechnology cannot benefit African companies "if those who would develop
the technology specifically for developing-country purposes cannot gain
access to it".

The authors point out that the ways that US patent policy affects developing
countries are complex and multifaceted, and include domestic policies on
what gets patented and the rules governing access to US-patented technology.

In future, they add, developing-country access to biotechnology for food
security purposes may be affected even more substantially by patent-related
policies in the international arena, such as implementation of the
Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement,
international harmonisation of patent laws through the World Intellectual
Property Organisation (WIPO), and the use of bilateral trade relationships
to strengthen patent protection.

"There is flexibility within the TRIPS agreement, but it is important the
developing countries are supported in using that flexibility to devise
systems that meet their needs," says Taylor, echoing arguments put forward
last year by the UK-financed international Commission on Intellectual
Property Rights.

In contrast, however, WIPO is focusing on a 'one size fits all' approach to
patents that would support the move toward a single worldwide patent. "If
successful, this approach to harmonisation could hinder developing countries
in adopting patent regimes tailored to their particular needs, including the
need to foster dissemination of biotechnology for food security purposes,"
say Taylor and Cayforth.

They argue that, as the richest and most powerful country in the world, the
United States has a duty to avoid actions and policies with unnecessary and
avoidable adverse impacts on progress elsewhere. This includes patent
policies that adversely affect food security in developing countries.

"A lot of people think that it is a zero sum game, and imagine that anything
that weakens a patent is to the detriment of the patent holder," says
Cayforth. "We argue that, if you take the broader picture into account, that
is not necessarily the case."

He and Taylor place possible changes in US patent policy in three
categories: changing law and policy to improve access to patented
technologies; preserving the flexibility developing countries have under the
current TRIPS agreement to tailor their patent systems to their local needs;
and implementing more fully the article regarding support for technology
transfer.

Five domestic patent policy alternatives, they add, deserve consideration:
creating a strong research exemption; compulsory licensing for agricultural
biotechnology; requiring patent holders to demonstrate that they are
exploiting the patents; making use of the government's authority to allow
the use of patented tools of biotechnology for food security purposes; and
placing government-funded technology in the public domain.

"There are changes the United States could make in both its domestic and
foreign policies that would improve developing-country access to the
patented tools of biotechnology without significantly undercutting the core
invention incentives of the patent system," say Taylor and Cayforth.

"These changes deserve consideration as the United States grapples with its
heightened national interest in global food security and works to build a
harmonised global patent system that embraces the needs of developed and
developing countries alike."

Michael R. Taylor and Jerry Cayford
"American Patent Policy, Biotechnology, and African Agriculture: The Case
for Policy Change"
Resources for the Future, Washington DC, 2003, 127 pp.

A TALE OF TWO COMMISSIONS

by Robert Mann

Public inquiries into controversial technology have a mixed history
in New Zealand. Having proposed in 1973 a public investigation of nuclear
power, I was then sufficiently encouraged by the proceedings of the Royal
Commission on Nuclear Power that in 1977 I put forward a similar idea
regarding the then nascent recombinant-DNA technology - commonly called
genetic engineering (GE) - for splicing genes from unrelated organisms &
viruses to create novel organisms that could not come to exist naturally.
The NZ Association of Scientists promoted this proposal for a full public
inquiry; but GE enthusiasts had a few keen allies in Parliament, notably
Bill Sutton (Jim's brother), and GE evaded public scrutiny.

Two decades later, the Labour party promised to set up, within 100
days of being elected, a Royal Commission on Genetic Modification. This
promise was broken as the then Minister for the Environment Ms Marian Hobbs
(who had not claimed any environmental interests, on the Labour website
during the election campaign) negotiated secretly with who knows whom.

The Royal Commission on Genetic Modification was finally
established on 8 May 2000: long-serving Chief Justice Sir Thomas
Eichelbaum, Jean Fleming Ph.D, Jacqueline Allan M.B, and the Rt Rev Richard
Randerson. It thus turned out that a gene-tamperer was on it, but no
scientist suspected of harbouring reservations about GM. A pro-GE staffer,
Ms Beale, was transferred to the RCGM staff from the ERMA - the
Environmental Risk Management Authority which in 23 decisions on GM field
trials had issued 23 approvals. The Commission refused to accord any
individuals status as legal persons to participate in its hearings; this
exclusion restricted the supply of informed cross-examination.

Most shockingly, oaths were not required. Witnesses were thus not
under threat of gaoling for perjury if they lied; neither were they
privileged from defamation suits for what they said on the "witness" stand.
Thus the main reasons for setting up a Royal Commission, as opposed to less
formal inquiries, were quietly flagged away for no apparent reason. The
Commission was severely handicapped in its ability to get at the truth.
Who decided on this inferior approach?

Instead, time & money were allocated to 14 informal meetings - a
flak-catching process which the Commission had little duty to take notice
of. Members of the public were given 3 min to express themselves. A great
deal of time-wasting repetition is inevitable in such a process, while the
'formal' hearings had time only to skim lightly over the scientific details
which are the basis for grave concerns over some types of GM (as can be
seen at http://www.psrast.org).

Their very first hearing was a secret ceremony for Maoris only (at
Ohinemutu). In depressingly predictable PC trendiness, the RCGM also
organised 40 informal Maori meetings. As a result, their 'formal' hearings
were severely curtailed so that some important questions were not permitted
in cross-examination because of "lack of time". Experts Arpad Pusztai &
Stanley Ewen from Aberdeen - among the world's few scientists who have
tested GM food - were granted only 20 min each to present their findings.
This extreme restriction must be contrasted with the enormous amounts of
time allocated to the extensive informal meetings from Bluff to Whangarei,
and the even more numerous special Maori meetings.

The Commission procured special briefing papers early on, which
were not available for criticism. When later put on the RCGM website they
turned out to contain falsehoods - no great surprise in view of the known
pro-GE attitudes of the selected authors.

The Commission's advisory counsel, Brendan Brown QC, repeatedly
failed to acknowledge written inquiries and was later quietly replaced for
no stated reason.

The Commission's website (http://www.gmcommission.govt.nz) has been
unsatisfactory in some ways. Their 'logo', a Maorified double helix, cost
me 20ç to receive - sent to me by the Commission staff unsolicited - as
it took 20min to download (it was a 7MB M$W file). What it cost as a fee
to some consultant has yet to be revealed. Submissions critical of
gene-tampering have not been made so readily available on the RCGM website
as those repetitively promoting it. Both longer examples such as mine and
some important brief examples were suppressed.

Some inquirers found the Commission staff unhelpful and even rude.
Complaints to the ostensible staff chief evoked no action. Agent Beale
returned to the ERMA in February 2001, but not before a lot of harm had
been done to the Commission's effectiveness and credibility.

The media did not report the hearings much. Of the tiny time given
to such reporting, most was frittered away, especially by Veronika Meduna
of Radio NZ, on prior announcements of a general nature and then bland
outlines of what witnesses talked about, rather than attempts to report the
significance of evidence or the impact of such cross-examination as was
permitted.

The large fraction of the RCGM time given over to informal talk is
still more regrettable when one realises that even the "formal" hearings
were conducted without benefit of oaths. It is not clear whose big idea it
was to abolish the potential for prosecuting liars. The Royal Commission
on Nuclear Power, chaired by former president of the Court of Appeal Sir
Thaddeus McCarthy, required oaths; very few lies were told in its hearings.
Let us pause to honour this famous judge who recently died at 94.

A further difficulty for the public is that the chairman's promise
in his opening statement (Wellington, 7 Aug 2000) to conduct formal
hearings in Christchurch and Auckland was soon cancelled. The obvious
result would be to increase difficulties and expenses for would-be
participants who live far from the capital. Under pressure he conducted a
couple of short-notice sessions in Auckland, and then on very short notice
in Christchurch.

The government allocated for the RCGM nearly $5M, later augmented
to $6.2M; but no help was made available to any public-interest groups.
The Commission showed signs of difficulty in getting rid of all this money:
they announced 20 free youth trips to Wellington, selected on the basis of
children's 500-word responses to the essay topic "What future does genetic
modification have in New Zealand?" - forecasting, rather than moral
assessment.

The Commission was initially required to report by 1-6-01and used
this as an excuse to insist that some speakers must be cramped for time.
However, the Prime Minister's formal statement in Parliament on 13-2-01
said not 'June' but 'this year', which was a hint that an extension was to
be given as had been openly offered by Ms Hobbs and was of course later
done (to the end of July).

The extra time was, so far as one can see, mainly used for the
commission's private deliberations and writing. What else could be done
with extra time? One threat was that the Commission would permit lawyers
for the GM trade to lodge 'rebuttal evidence' which would not be subject to
cross-examination. These lawyers had to a considerable extent declined to
cross-examine the main experts called by critics of GM; but then they tried
to bring in assertions contradicting them, insulated from testing. Instead
of being argued in a public hearing and reported, this unjust concept was
the subject of more private negotiation. That a former Chief Justice would
contemplate such a procedure is dismaying.

The report of the RCGM contains some radical misrepresentations,
notably on the Pusztai/Ewen results and on the notorious Showa Denko
GM-tryptophan, exposed in detail at . A short
account of what is known about the latter history is at


This is all very disappointing compared with the Royal Commission
on Nuclear Power.

One obvious difference is that the two decades in between have
allowed hundreds of people in NZ to get money (at least $120M in public
funding) from gene-tampering, or hope to do so from investment, whereas
very few had any financial reason to promote nuclear power before Sir
Thaddeus's inquiry in effect stopped the NZ Electricity Dept's nuclear
programme.

Also one must acknowledge the sordid burgeoning of the depraved
trade of commercial propaganda during the 1980s and 1990s, with the result
that today almost every significant utterance from the GM-promotors has
been 'spinned' by mercenary deceivers. These PR agents have become much
bolder, even lying to the RCGM, whereas the manufacturers of nuclear
reactors left the promotional role at the RCNP hearings to the local
advocates (NZED and parts of the DSIR).

A further handicap is the ascendancy of wimminsLib as a political
ideology. Attention-craving wimminsLib politicians, notably Bunkle and
Kedgley, have been put to the fore by the media, especially Fiona Hill on
Radio NZ, giving the public distorted information because these politicians
lack the understanding of the topic which is needed to convey a balanced
account. Thus, discussion of a main threat to the biosphere is hampered by
the dominant ideology of WimminsLib. Of course, anyone who has the
hardihood to point out that these empresses lack clothes is routinely
insulted by the accusation of being anti-women.

The dismal contrast between the two Royal Commissions shows that
the notion of a full independent public inquiry has been drastically
degraded. If the committees of Parliament had been greatly strengthened
meanwhile, this would not be so worrying.

Gene-tampering has, to date, killed only a hundred or so people and
maimed only a few thousand, so far as we yet know. But it has enormously
greater potential than that to harm humans and ecosystems. Like nuclear
power, it has become a technological and financial fad. How will it be
brought under control?

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/12/283134.html

EU-Ministers Propose Yet Another Loophole in EU CO2-Emission Reduction
Market

vlo, 23.12.2003

A majority of EU-ministers spoke out last weekend on the 2005 European
emission reduction market, advocating an unlimited use of climate
projects abroad by private companies. Then it will be much cheaper to
comply with the Kyoto reduction-targets in Europe; by linking these
projects with the EU-trading regime, the price of reducing emissions
falls sharply. Real solutions are being postponed and the dependence
on the fossil fuel economy will be broadened. Earlier at the Climate
Conference in Milan, the UN agreed on using genetically modified trees
to "absorb" greenhouse gasses and accordingly to produce tradeable
"carbon credits".

The ministers were meeting on 22 December at the last European
Environment Council under the Italian Presidency of the EU, which runs
until the end of the year when Ireland will take over the Presidency.
The Commission proposed a cap of 8 per cent, and an evaluation if more
than 6 per cent of the total carbon credits were produced outside the
EU, and not to start before 2008 with this type of linking. A majority
of EU-ministers said to be in favour of no cap or evaluation at all
wants to start linking in 2005. An oversupply of these type
carbon-credits could make the market "bubble" and burst, which is a
very likely scenario according to economists.

The European Parliament is due to start its deliberations on the
proposed text for the European Market next year. The European
Commission and Parliament will then come together to negotiate the
final text, with a target date of before the European Parliament
elections in spring. The European Parliament can then either vote for,
or against, the new law and has the final saying in the matter.

The EU-Ministers are said to be divided on the issue of which projects
would qualify to sell credits into the scheme, according to a
EU-spokesman in a report from PointCarbon. The Commission proposed to
exclude nuclear power projects, forestry and land use projects and
large hydropower dams that do not meet World Commission on Dams
standards. According to the spokesman, “several" ministers wanted to
stick to UN rules, as agreed at Marrakech, which are more liberal than
the EC’s proposals. The spokesman said he was unable to say if it was
a majority.

According to WWF: The "EU member states, with the backing of industry,
are undermining the effectiveness of the trading system to clean up
Europe's greenhouse gas emissions by allowing carbon credits from
developing countries climate projects to be included in the European
trading system. This effectively means that EU countries will not have
to reduce their CO2 emissions by so much." Clearly, the WWF does not
disagree with the Trading Scheme as a whole, neither do the Greens in
European Parliament. Research and briefings ever since the
Kyoto-process started, by Carbon Trade Watch, Corporate Europe
Observer and the Cornerhouse, however, reveals the proposed trading
schemes are very unlikely to deal with Climate Change effectively.

One of the new issues is the use of genetically modified trees. In the
Milan Climate Conference of early December 2003, the UN agreed that
countries and companies can earn carbond credits under the Kyoto
protocol through forest projects and for planting genetically modified
trees "to absorb carbon dioxide". According to the proposal, countries
should be entitled to (dis)allow the projects on their own soil, and
are obliged to conduct research on the effect of the trees on the
local flora and fauna. Clearly, this sets open large doors for
Monsanto and alike to press several countries to accept "their" trees.
In the future, it could be possible however, that these credits can be
bought on the European Market as well.

In the meantime, Climate Change becomes more of a reality. The
money-makers become more somber as well. According to an expert on
weather and climate risk at the reinsurance company Munich Re,
monetary damages from extreme weather events are escalating--amounting
to more than $20 billion in 2003 alone. And a new report by the World
Health Organization (WHO) says climate change is adversely affecting
the health of millions of people across the world, leading to the
death of thousands, and fuelling diseases like diarrhoea and malaria.
The study released at the UN Climate Conference in Milan, estimates
that in 2000, 150,000 deaths were caused because of climate change.
There is yet some hope: the Inuit of Canada and Alaska have launched a
human rights case against the Bush Administration, arguing they face
extinction because of global warming.

Read more on the subject at http://indymedia.org.uk
Debates And Actions Around Climate Conference In Milan
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/12/282600.html

[Milan-Cop9] "UN to allow GM-Trees for producing carbon credits"
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/12/282705.html

Sources:
Majority of EU environment ministers want link to CDM from 2005
http://www.pointcarbon.com/article.php?articleID=3025&categoryID=147

EU Environment Ministers fail to live up to their Kyoto promises

http://www.panda.org/news_facts/newsroom/other_news/news.cfm?uNewsID=10341

Climate Change Leading to Diseases: WHO
http://www.oneworld.net/article/view/75433/1/

Inuit begin rights case over global warming
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/12/15/1071336885565.html

Links:
Carbon Trade Watch
http://www.tni.org/ctw/index.htm
CDM Watch
http://www.cdmwatch.org/
Sinkswatch
http://www.sinkswatch.org/
http://www.risingtide.nl
http://www.risingtide.org.uk
http://www.burningplanet.net/cop9/

22 December 2003

Press Release

ERMA FAILS ON ALL COUNTS AS N.Z. GOVERNMENT BOWS TO PRESSURE FROM BUSH

ERMA has failed on all counts with it's approval of the GE Onion
Trials, according to Charles Drace, author of "Everything You Need to
Know About GE but the Government Won't Tell You - a genetic
engineering resources book."

* ERMA is supposed to assess the risks of GE technology and provide a
protective framework so GE doesn't pose risks to the environment.
Yet, they've approved an application for trials that are specifically
designed to AVOID showing those risks, known risks like horizontal
gene transfer, pollen contamination, soil contamination, and adverse
effects on insects. It's also been designed to avoid the study of the
proven adverse effects on health associated with this type of GE
technology.

* ERMA is supposed to only approve the use of technology that brings
a potential benefit to the country. Yet, the purpose of these trials
is to develop technology for the use of and future profitability of
an American company, Semenis, and to help the chemical powerhouse
Monsanto sell more chemicals.... in other words, for the profits to
go overseas.

* ERMA is supposed to consider other alternatives. Conventional
onions, a major export of New Zealand, sell for 30 cents per pound,
wholesale. GE food always sells for at least 1/3rd less because of
the health risks, so the most we could sell GE onions for would be 20
cents per pound. New Zealand organic onions currently sell overseas
for $3 per pound and we can't keep up with demand. Go figure!

* ERMA is supposed to assess the legitimacy of an application. The
Round-Up Ready GE onions Crop and Food are developing for Semenis
through these trials are designed to reduce herbicide use. Yet,
overseas studies over the past six years show that Round-Up Ready GE
technology, when used in practice, results in 2 to 5 times MORE
herbicide use than conventional practices. ERMA knew this yet ignored
it. It defies all logic to accept, as ERMA has, that a technology
designed by a chemical company to enable it to sell more chemicals
will somehow miraculously reduce the use of chemicals.

* ERMA is supposed to review and assess scientific studies. Yet, ERMA
has ignored recent studies from France and Belgium, which I presented
to them, which show that all the major GE foods now produced in
America have mutated so far from the original approved GE
construction that they would no longer qualify for approval. In fact,
GE Bt Corn has mutated into a form that is so toxic it would be
illegal if it hadn't already been approved in it's original form The
reason for these mutations is that GE scientists still have no way of
controlling GE technology. Because it's an out of control technology
thousands of scientists around the world who are not funded by GE
chemical companies have joined organisations committed to keeping GE
out of the environment until it can be understood and controlled.
ERMA has ignored those.

* The only justification for ERMA's decision lies in the fact that
Helen Clark and team are committed to a free trade agreement with the
United States and the Bush administration have stated, categorically,
that they will not discuss free trade UNTIL we have opened out
markets to American GE food and GE technology companies. That's why
the moratorium was lifted, that's why the onion trials were approved,
and that's why the New Zealand government has decided to pay to cost
of all applications to ERMA for GE trials - so they can prove to Bush
that they're opening our market as he has instructed. The stink of
government involvement in this decision is the ruse of trying to
embargo the decision until journalists go on leave for the holidays,
a ruse they've used on every occasion when there's been an unpopular
GE announcement.

For more information, particularly the details of how this Onion
trial has been designed to AVOID the study of risks associated with
this type of GE technology, please contact:

Charles Drace, CFP
PO Box 3833
Christchurch
Bus. 03-364-9140
Priv. 03-365-6607
email: charles@cdrace.co.nz
phone no. from 25 Dec to 29 Dec. 03-304-7602

First-Ever U.S. Mad Cow Case Suspected
23-11-03

By JONATHAN SALANT, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The first suspected case of mad cow disease in the United
States has been discovered in Washington state, but officials took
immediate action Tuesday to ensure the safety of American beef.

"We remain confident in the safety of our food supply," Agriculture
Secretary Ann Veneman told a hastily assembled news conference.

The announcement could have dramatic economic ramifications for the beef
industry after earlier scares in Europe heightened consumers' fears that
they could contract the disease from eating meat.

Veneman said a single Holstein cow that was either sick or injured - thus
never destined for the U.S. food supply - tested presumptively positive for
the brain-wasting illness.

"It is too early at this point to say whether or not this will be an
isolated case," she said.

Mad cow disease, known also as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, eats holes
in the brains of cattle. It sprang up in Britain in 1986 and spread through
countries in Europe and Asia, prompting massive destruction of herds and
decimating the European beef industry.

A human illness, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (news - web sites), is
related to mad cow disease and doctors believe humans get it from eating
meat containing infected tissue.

It was not immediately known how this particular cow could have become
infected. Scientists believe that the disease is usually transmitted when
cattle eat feed containing tissue from a sick animal.

The Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) has banned such feed
since 1997.

"This incident is not terrorist-related," Veneman said Tuesday. "I cannot
stress this point strongly enough."

Veneman said the apparently diseased cow was found at a farm in Mabton,
Wash., about 40 miles southeast of Yakima. She said the farm has been
quarantined.

"Even though the risk to human health is minimal, we will take all
appropriate actions out of an abundance of caution," she said.

Samples from the cow have been sent to Britain for confirmation of the
preliminary mad cow finding, she said.

Mad cow disease has never been found in the United States before this
incident despite intensive testing for it.

However, there was a case of mad cow disease in Canada last May that
officials described as a single, isolated incident. That cow was suspected
to have links to cattle in the United States, but there was never any
evidence that the infection had spread into this country.

The United States originally banned imports of Canadian beef, as did other
countries. The U.S. and Canadian governments are lobbying international
regulators to change the policy of closing borders when mad cow is found so
that trade can continue in the case of an isolated incident.

Veneman said a tissue sample from the suspect U.S. cow was taken on Dec. 9
and had been tested at a lab in Ames, Iowa.

She said the Agriculture Department has had safeguards in place since 1990
to check for mad cow disease, and 20,526 cows had been tested in 2003 in
the United States.

"This is a clear indication that our surveillance and detection program is
working," Veneman said.

She said U.S. beef remains "absolutely safe to eat," adding that she plans
to serve it at her Christmas dinner Thursday.

The USDA will frequently update its Web site, and concerned consumer can
call a hot line at 1-866-USDA-COM.
____

On the Net:

Agriculture Department: http://www.usda.gov

December 17, 2003

Prof. Joe Cummins
e-mail: jcummins@uwo.ca

Rice with human genes: pharming in California

In 2002 Greenpeace disclosed the location of a site in Northern
California where rice plants modified with the human genes for lactoferrin
and lysozyme were being tested. Lactoferrin acts against bacterial
pathogens by preventing them from taking up iron needed for their
growth, while lysozyme acts against the cell wall material of the
bacterial pathogens. The biopharmaceutical rice crop was being tested by
a California biotechnology company, Applied Phytologics.(1,2).

In spite of the intense public scrutiny efforts are being made to
continue the open field testing of the rice plants modified with two human genes.

The Greenpeace disclosure created an avalanche of concern from the public
and from both conventional and organic rice farmers who feared
contamination of their crops would lead to economic disaster.

Washington State University field-tested barley altered with human genes for
lactoferrin, lysozyme, antitrypsin and antithrombin (3) but that field
test release was not acknowledged in public even though it posed a
threat to both conventional and organic production of beer and animal
feed.

Maize modified with human lactoferrin was field-tested by Biochem
SA company and by Meristem Therapeutics company in France (4). The
French field tests do not appear to have been acknowledged by the public
even though such tests threatened both conventional and organic maize
production on the continent.

Most of the field testing of genetically modified (GM) biopharmaceutical
crops appears to have been done in the United States (US), France and
Canada. US completed 315 such tests between 1991 and 2002, the main
modified organisms included maize, rice soy and Tobacco Mosaic Virus.
The majority of tests were done in Nebraska, Hawaii, Wisconsin and
Puerto Rico (5). Canada completed 53 field tests of biopharmaceutical
crops between 1995 and 2003 (6) while France completed 24 field tests on
GM biopharmaceutical crops 1995 and 1998 (4). The US and Canadian field
trials of GM biopharmaceuticals are clouded by the use of confidential
business information (CBI) designations which hide the details of the
gene construction and the exact locations of the field tests. Those
neighboring the field trials have no means of relating any illness or
discomfort experienced from exposure to polluted plant debris or pollen,
or to contaminated ground or surface water escaping from the test site
to the GM biopharmaceuticals being tested, certainly an unjust situation.

Returning to the rice GM biopharmaceutical genetic construct, like other
biopharmaceuticals produced in seed, the construct includes the human
genes for the primary biopharmaceutical protein driven by a seed
specific promoter and the protein is expressed with a fusion polypeptide
(the signal peptide) that causes the fusion protein to accumulate in a
cell compartment such as a vacuole or seed endosperm (7). Human
lactoferrin produced in plants has been described (. Human lysozyme
produced in plants has been patented as a biopestide to protect plants
against fungal and animal pests (9). Human lysozyme produced in rice has
been localized to the endosperm of transgenic rice (10,11).

Expression of human milk proteins in plants has been discussed by
nutrition authorities who have maintained that such products should be
tested using feeding experiments in rats then human volunteers(12). The
problem of inadvertent exposure to the products by consuming crops
contaminated by the products by accidental spread of pollen or seeds was
not discussed. Chicks were fed rice bearing human lysozyme and
lactoferrin and the rice was found to have antibiotic-like properties (13).

Lactoferrin is a protein that participates in regulation of immune
functions and controls pathogens by binding iron required for bacterial
growth. Lactoferrin has been in asthma with fatal outcomes (14).
Lactoferrin variants has been associated with localized juvenile
periodontitis (15). It has been suggested that milk lactoferrin
possesses allergenic sites (16). Lactoferrin is a protein modified by
glycosylation, which contributes to enzyme activity and to allergenicity of
the protein.

Human lactoferrin was found to be glycosylated differently from the
human transgene protein produced in tobacco(17). The different pattern of
glycosylation observed in human and the tobacco transgene product should
not be considered insignificant until full studies of allergenicity of
the transgenic protein are completed. Chicken egg lysozyme is a well
known potent food allergen (1 while human lysozyme is clearly not
allergenic. Like lactoferrin, lysozyyme is a glycosylated enzyme and
variants of human lysozyme have been studied (19). The glycosylation
patterns of the transgenic enzyme produced in plants seems to have been
neglected even though that pattern will influence allergenicity of the
product. Clearly, both transgenic lactoferrin and transgenic lysozyme
are potentially hazardous to human health and such concerns should be
made clear to those exposed to the field test sites or those living nearby.

Transgenic rice crops may spread pollen or seeds to adjacent fields thus
contaminating those crops. Rice is known to be somewhat self fertilizing
but clearly capable of spreading both pollen and seeds to nearby fields.
Gene flow has been studied between commercial rice and weedy red rice
(20,21). These studies suggest that transgenes may spread to
non-transgenic rice. Once established the transgenes may be difficult to
impossible to eliminate. Organic and conventional rice producers have a
legitimate concern over secretive field testing of transgenic rice.

Transgenic glufosinate resistant rice (LibertyLink®) was de-regulated in
the US during 1999, the Animal Plant Food Inspection Service (APHIS) of
USDA guessed that the transgenic rice would not pollinate weedy red rice
but even if it did the weed could be eliminated using herbicides other
than glufosinate (22). Concern over the threat of transgenic rice to
organic and conventional producers was outlined and the probable
instability of transgenic rice do to somaclonal variability was
discussed (23).

Recently, recombinant biopharmaceutical production in transgenic crops
has been actively promoted, in spite of incidents of contamination of
food production observed during field test releases of the transgenic
biopharmaceutical crops (24,25). Production of the biopharmaceutical
crops in confined greenhouses was deemed un-economic even though such
production provides the barest essentials for protecting the food crops
>from genetic pollution. The unacceptable practice deeming secretive
field tests to be confidential business information must be stopped.
Both testing and production of transgenic crops producing
biopharmaceuticals should be restricted to confined greenhouses that
provide isolation from the atmosphere and groundwater.

Transgenic crops bearing human milk proteins are promoted because
"mother's" milk is presumed safe for all, but the crop transgenic
"mother's milk" is far from identical to the real thing.

Furthermore , the transgenic milk crops will soon be followed by
anticoagulants, human growth hormone, antibodies and a range of other
biopharmaceutical products all potentially significantly different from the
original products. The biopharmaceutical dam may soon burst leaving the
human population with an array of hidden medications in their food.

References

1. Greenpeace Press Release ìCrop producing human proteins found
growing in open field testî 2001
http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/media/press_releases/01_09_06text.htm
2. Wilson,K. ìCrop Producing Human Protein Found Growing in Open
Field Testîng 2002 Synthesis/Regeneration
http://www.greens.org/s-r/28/28-26.html
3. APHIS field test permits for bio-pharm crops Washington State University
2001 Barley
http://www.colostate.edu/programs/lifesciences/TransgenicCrops/pharmpermits.html
4. France Total number of summary notifications circulated 2003
http://biotech.jrc.it/deliberate/FR.asp
5. Freese,B. ìManufacturing drugs and chemical crops :biopharming poses
new threats to consumers, farmers, food companies and the
environmentî2002 Friends of the Earth Genetically Engineered Food Alert
pp1-98
6 Canadian Food Inspection Agency ìconfined field trials Canada
pharmaceutical ì 2003
http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/plaveg/bio/triesse.shtml
7. Lemaux,P,Cho,M. and Buchanan,B. ìProduction of protein in plant
seedsî 2003 US Patent 6,642,437 pp 1-48
8. Legrand,D.,Salmon,D.,Spik,G.,Gruber,V.,Bournat,P. and Bertrand,M.
ìRecombinant lactoferrin ,methods of production from plants and usesî
2003 US Patent 6,569,831 pp 1-39
9.Hain,R. and Stenzel,K. ìUse of lysozyme gene structure in plants to
increase resistanceî 1994 US Patent 5,349,122 pp 1-24
10. Yang,D.,Guo,F.,Haung,N. and Watkins,S. ìExpression and localization
of human lysozyme in the endosperm of transgenic riceî 2003 Planta
216,597-603
11. Huang,J, Nandi,S, Wu,L, Yalda1,D, Bartley,G, Rodriguez,R.,
Lonnerda,B. and Huang,N. ìExpression of natural antimicrobial human
lysozyme in rice grainsî 2002 Transgenic Research 11, 229ñ39
12 Lonnerdal,B. ìExpression of human milk protein in plantsî2002 Journal
of the American College of Nutritionî 3,218s-221s
13. Humphrey,B.,Haung,N. and Klasing,K. ìRice expressing lactoferrin and
lysozyme has antibiotic like properties when fed to chicksî 2002 J.
Nutr. 132,1214-18
14. Tsokos,M. and Paulsen,E. ìExpression of pulmonary lactoferrin in
sudden onset and slow onset asthma with fatal outcomeî 2002 Virchows
Arch. 441,494-99
15. Velliyagounder K, Kaplan J, Furgang D, Legarda D, Diamond G, Parkin
R. and Fine D. ìOne of two human lactoferrin variants exhibits increased
antibacterial and transcriptional activation activities and is
associated with localized juvenile periodontitis.î 2003 Infect Immun.
71,6141-7
16. Sharma S, Kumar P, Betzel C. and Singh T. ìStructure and function of
proteins involved in milk allergiesî 2001 J Chromatogr B Biomed Sci
Appl. 756,183-7
17. Samyn-Petit,B, Wajda Dubos,J, Chirat,F,Coddeville,B, Demaizieres,G,
Farrer,S, Slomianny,M, Theisen,M and Delannoy,P. ìComparative analysis
of the site-specific N-glycosylation of human lactoferrin produced in
maize and tobacco plantsî 2003 European Journal of Biochemistry 270,3235-42
18. Yoshinori ,Y and Zhang,J ìComparative Studies on Antigenicity and
Allergenicity of Native and Denatured Egg White Proteinsî 2002 J. Agric.
Food Chem., 50 , 2679 -83
19. MELCHER,R, HILLEBRAND,A, BAHR,U, SCHRODER,B, KARAS,M and HASILIK,A.
ìGlycosylation-site-selective synthesis of N-acetyl-lactosamine repeats in
bis-glycosylated human lysozymeî 2000 Biochem. J. 348, 507-15
20. Newswise ìGene flow patterns may give clues to managing promiscuous
plantsî 2002 pp1-2 http://www.newswise.com/p/articles/view/?id=GENEFLOW.UAR
21.Song,Z.,Lu,B.,Zhu,Y and Chen,J. ìPollen competition between
cultivated and wild rice speciesî 2002 New Phyologist 153,289-96
22.APHIS ìdetermination of non-regulated status for glufosinate tolerant
riceî 1999 pp1-25
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/brs/aphisdocs/98_32901p.pd
23. Cummins,J. ìLiberty Link Rice: Herbicide Tolerant Rice for the
Massesî 2001 pp1-4
http://www.amberwaves.org/web_articles/joecummins.html
24. Ma,J., Drake,P and Christou,P. ìTHE PRODUCTION OF RECOMBINANT
PHARMACEUTICALPROTEINS IN PLANTSî 2003 Nature Reviews of Genetics 4, 794-806
25. Peterson,R. and Arntzen,C. ìOn risk and plant based
biopharmaceuticalsî 2004, Trends in Biotechnology in press
doi:10.1016/j.tibtech.2003.11.007

letters to editor:
email: Editor@northernadvocate.co.nz
fax: 430 5665

"Kaipara Council calls for report on GE risks"
Dargaville
by Robyn Downey

The Kaipara District council has decided it needs more information on its
legal position in regard to any negative effects of genetic engineering on
the Kaipara environment.

At a meeting in Dargaville last week, the council resolved to combine with
the Far North and Whangarei District Councils to jointly commission the
Sustainability Council, by contributing $5,000, to have a report done on the
environmental effects of GE with other councils, including the Rodney
District Council, and to research the liabilities and risks to councils from
the release of genetically modified organisms into the region.

After the council meeting Kaipara Mayor Graeme Ramsey said although the
council had undertaken research adn received significant amounts of
information on GE there were still unanswered questions as to possible
environmental effects.

"We have real concerns as to the possible risks and we need to know where we
stand as to our liability if something were to go wrong," Mr. Ramsey said.

He said there were existing examples where introduced animals such as
possums had not produced results promised and a pest situation had arisen.
"One great concern for here is that there is evidence that some GE crops
have become resistant to herbicide chemicals and if you ended up with a
situation of a rampant weed such as rice grass which became resistant to
herbicides imagine what a nightmare that would pose," he said.

He said the council had received a significant number of community
submissions not to allow GE into the Kaipara and several national polls had
shown more than 60% of people were saying "NO" to GE.

The moratorium on GE was lifted from October 29, allowing genetic
engineering in NZ's cropping industry. Opposing groups are concerned about
its long-term effects on the NZ environment and they fear that once it is
out of the laboratory it will become hard to recall. As well they fear the
negative effect on NZ's clean green image and the unpredictability of
transferring GE material between species, creating new toxins or allergies.

Those in favour of GE believe it will produce pest-resistant crops and
disease- resistant animals, higher agricultural productivity and possible
medical breakthroughs having an impact on bringing down the cost of
pharmaceuticals.

The Kaipara District Council hoped to have the Sustainability Council report
early next year.

SARS may be mammal-bird merger
Genetic shuffle might have allowed human infection.
19 December 2003 Nature news
HELEN PEARSON

The SARS virus looks like a dangerous mix of bird and mammal viruses,
say researchers in Canada. The genetic merger may have fuelled its leap
from animals into humans.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) infected more than 8,000 people
early this year and killed more than 770. Researchers suspect that the
virus, a previously unknown member of the coronavirus family, lived in
animals before infecting people.

The pathogen may have arisen when a mammalian and a bird coronavirus
mixed and matched their genes, suggest David Guttman and John
Stavrinides of the University of Toronto, Canada. They found that some
of the SARS virus' genes match those from related mammalian
coronaviruses, whereas others mirror those from birds1.

One gene in particular appears to be half mammalian, half bird. It makes
part of the virus coat called the spike protein. The hybrid protein
might have eluded human immune surveillance, allowing it to reproduce
and spread.

Although possible, this scenario "is entirely speculation", says David
Mindell, who is analysing SARS at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
His studies support the idea that the virus is a crossbreed - but the
mixing might have occurred long ago, he points out.

Another hypothesis, says bioinformaticist Daniel Janies of Ohio State
University in Columbus, is that the SARS virus is a mammalian
coronavirus that has simply accumulated mutations over time. "It's not
an open-and-shut case," he says.

Isolating patients, as well as other strict public-health measures, has
brought the disease under control before - but there are fears that it
might return. This week a research scientist in Taiwan was infected from
a lab sample.

Market share

SARS is thought to have made the leap into people in the live-animal
marketplaces of Guangdong province, China. Researchers have so far found
the culprit virus in three animals from the markets: masked palm civets,
raccoon dogs and ferret badgers.

SARS might hurdle again from animals into humans. This is impossible to
predict until scientists nail down which animals are carrying SARS or
its parent virus; studies in China are under way to assess this.

What's needed is lots more basic detective work
David Mindell
University of Michigan

Researchers also hope to trace a more accurate history of SARS, armed
with the genetic sequence of related coronaviruses lurking in these
animals. "What's needed is lots more basic detective work," says Mindell.

References
Stavrinides, J. & Guttman, D. S. Mosiac evolution of the severe acute
respiratory syndrome coronavirus. Journal of Virology, 78, 76 - 82,
doi:10.1128/JVI.78.1.76-82.2004 (2003). |Article|

23-12-03

Not only practising gene-manipulators but also a much wider range
of scientists should speak out for much stricter control of gene-tampering
because it is based on dud science.

Prof Richard Strohman has pointed out, in a sporadic small series
of articles in Nature Biotech, many defects in the Lego model of biology
which 'informs' the gene-tampering trade. Dogma long refuted is crucial
among the axioms of the gene-jiggerers, e.g
* 'one gene one protein', 'only 4 letters in the code',
* 'randomness becomes utmost precision as we slam in synthetic nucleic
acids by weapons-grade biolistics',
* 'seen one redwood y' seen 'em all, once we've cloned lo-lignin sequoia';
* etc etc.

The main characteristic of this set of slogans is that they are
scientific drivel. The Schubert Letter (Nat Biotech Oct 2002 p. 969) would
alone serve to refute them.

The main general scientific answer is that nature is far from
random. The idea that slapping in - randomly ! - a few genes by
radically unnatural processes will have more predictable effects than
offering a whole genome of 10^5 genes in cross-pollination is wrong for the
main reason that it assumes natural crosses to be random or nearly so. A
top-level affirmation of this assumption was stated by main
Monsanto-connected gene-jockeys Roger Beachy et bulk in their (Nat Biotech
Nov 2002) 'enraged' response to the Schubert Letter:

' The reality is that "unintentional consequences" are much more
likely to occur in nature than in biotechnology because nature relies on
the unintentional consequences of blind random genetic mutation and
rearrangement to produce adaptive phenotypic results, whereas GM technology
employs precise, specific, and rationally designed genetic modification
toward a specific engineering goal. '

The immediate response to this furphy is that there's almost
nothing random in nature. We know, admittedly, v little about the natural
barriers to error in traditional breeding; that does not prove they're
unreal or random. A gene-jockey of plants, Prof Patrick Brown, has made
this & related points on the www.psrast.org site.

What is so precise, specific, or rational about GM as done so far?
The answer is, very little indeed. Its outcomes are inherently
unpredictable. The tiny minority of target cells that both survive and
have incorporated somewhere in the genome the desired gene cassette will,
in general, also develop other unforeseeable properties, some as deviant
metabolism generating toxins or allergens.

The fundamental answer however is that nature is extremely orderly.
It is complex, but not like a bowl of alphabet soup; nature - especially
life - is systematic. This should be agreed by all scientists, even
atheists; of course, us theists ascribe the systematic order to design, but
those who resist belief in design will, I hope, agree nature to be
systematically orderly. If you think, like Dawkins, that nature is just
the result of the outworkings of physics & chemistry, then you could fairly
easily assume that even random insertion of 'cassettes' would be no more
likely than traditional breeding to cause harm. If on the other hand you
believe (to take a specific case) that an apple is not just a random
collection of biochemicals but a creation of a benign Creator, and that
Grandmother Smith in a Seedknee suburb was a humble agent of that Creator
(selecting a new mutant that had arrived according to His rules), then you
will contrast such natural processes with the overwhelming of natural
barriers by biolistics, modified T-plasmids, viral promoters joined onto
synthetic bacterial genes for insertion into plants, etc.

I tend to think it is on this level that the issue really turns.
For those who think so, re-reading of _Genesis 3_ may be salutory.

In a culture that has largely turned away from the religion that
gave rise to its implied legal principles, the ethics of gene-tampering is
in drastic need of fundamental review. Gene-jiggering has already sucked
in $10^11, and still only a few corporations have anything saleable (except
those selling the enzyme kits etc for the gene-tampering expts). The
science behind this commercial frenzy is junk; the Lego model of biology
never looked promising and is now known to be wrong. Proper biology points
to the Schubert Letter (Nat Biotech Oct 2002), and in response a gaggle of
Monsanto stooges intones 'enragedly' that atheistic rubbish quoted above.

Never in the history of science has a family of "technologies" been
developed, and deployed in many plant GM-mutants, based on such junk
science as stated by Beachy et al.

But the ethical appraisal of GM is even more backward. The most
dangerous technology of all history blunders on, little understood by
venture-drongos and by ethicists. The good scientists like Pat Brown and
David Schubert are crucially valuable. The Union of Concerned Scientists
should emulate its anti-nuclear activism of the golden Kendall era. Go to
it, Yanks!

Much more importantly, If the human has no duties to a higher
power, how can selfishness & greed be curbed? The religion that gave rise
to the code of ethics claimed to be implemented, if imperfectly, in British
& USA legal systems had better get involved in renewal of ethics. It is a
major embarrassment to Christians that a bishop (of my denomination)
contributed scarcely at all to the Royal Commission on GM. A powerHarpie
has set up tiny sandpits with pompous titles 'Interchurch Commission' etc
but has produced nothing significant. As an Anglican I have said for years
that the churches are the sleepers in the movement for control of GM. I
only hope & pray they will take GM much more seriously.

R

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/02/1064988341844.html

Church unity hinges on the response to a small rebellion

October 3, 2003

Just nine parishes rebelled, but the issue of same-sex unions and how
Canterbury deals with it is of great import, writes Peter Jensen.

Everyone who knows the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, personally
testifies to his deep commitment to the unity of the Anglican
communion. It is also recognised that he is going to need all that
commitment and his theological skills to hinder it from self-destructing in
what he acknowledges to be a time of crisis.

Developments in the Canadian diocese of New Westminster provide a
useful template for the future of the communion and the role of
the Archbishop of Canterbury. The situation in New Westminster as I
understand it is that, following a vote in favour of the blessing of
same-sex unions by a considerable number in the synod, Bishop Ingham
agreed to make provision for such services.

As soon as the vote was taken, representatives of about nine parishes
withdrew from the synod. They have appealed to the Archbishop of
Canterbury for his recognition that they are authentically Anglican, and
continue to be part of the Anglican communion. Can they be part of the
communion if they have broken with their bishop?

The role of the archbishop in answering this question is crucial,
though it is not utterly decisive. He is faced with extremely painful
choices. They amount to three options.

First, he could do nothing. He would not recognise the dissenters as
other than a breakaway group who should revert to the diocese.
Second, he could recognise both the dissenters and the diocese of New
Westminster. This would amount to a recognition that the Anglican
communion is a federation or network of local churches held together by
history and respect for Canterbury.

Third, he could take the view that Ingham has in fact broken unity by
his action and that it is an action so much at odds with the mind of the
communion and the teaching of scripture, that he can no longer have
whatever benefits are conferred by the recognition of the See of
Canterbury.

There is something to be said for the approach of doing nothing.
It allows local people to deal with local problems, as have occurred and
will continue to occur all over the world.

However, the problem for the archbishop is that so many people in
the communion see the particular issue of homosexuality as having high
moral and spiritual importance, and requiring a firm and clear decision
by him. In his New Directions magazine article, he raises the question of
whether we are in fact dealing with a matter of such significance.

He says that some people have seen the ordination of women as a
communion-breaking issue, while others who object to same-sex unions accept
the ordination of women. In my judgement, however, he has misjudged the
present situation and his peaceable approach has run out of time. There
are several reasons for this.

First, although we may want to regard issues of human sexuality as of
the second order, they are in fact so prominent in the Bible and the moral
tradition is so clear that the "time for listening" beloved of liberal
thinkers is not available.

Second, many people regard the matter of homosexual practice as the
last point of a drift which has been occurring for several decades.
It is the final moment for the communion.

Third, the offence caused to churches in the global south by the
maverick Western decision-making has been seriously underestimated. There
is deep hurt, and the communion has been destabilised.

It should be noted that there is a moral strength in the position of
the so-called traditionalists. It is the innovators who are the threat to
unity, not those who have remained exactly as they are, and hold the views
of the vast majority of Christians in the world.

It is going to be difficult for the archbishop not to act. His moral
authority is on the line. Even if he cannot accept that the blessing of
same-sex unions and the endorsement of a gay bishop are wrong in
themselves, it will be expected that he can see that faithful Anglicans
have been disenfranchised for no other sin than holding on to the
majority traditional view. Not to act will invite others to act in
support of the traditionalists.

What of the second option, the way of recognising both parties?

Such a route would not please many people, but it may create time for
the communion to settle. It is also less draconian than the expulsions
and suspensions being spoken of under the third option. On the other hand,
it is a frank recognition, perhaps foreshadowed by the archbishop, that we
are going to see "new alignments and new patterns"

The third option requires disciplining the erring churches in the only
realistic way possible, namely withdrawing recognition. This, of course,
is the way of greatest risk and requires the greatest courage.

It would mean a belated recognition of the distance we have already
come along a liberal path, and the need for decisive action. It would
send a powerful moral and spiritual message to the churches of the
West, that our flirtation with secularism has gone too far and we are
in real danger of losing the moral and spiritual imperatives of the
gospel.

"Accountability" is a key word in the archbishop's New Directions
article. He has in mind both accountability to one another and
accountability to the past. Given his doctrine of the Church, that it
finds its source in the act of God in calling forth a people, I missed a
clearer statement of our accountability to God as he has spoken in
scripture.

It is true that the archbishop counts the use of scripture along with
the creeds and the sacraments more or less as the boundary markers of
the church. The difficulty is that the authority of scripture needs
to be asserted and defended precisely where the argument is
occurring - in today's world, over homosexuality. Dr Williams wonders
whether this will turn out to be a marginal issue: I believe it is the
latest version of a conflict over major issues which the communion cannot
and must not evade.

Dr Peter Jensen is the Archbishop of Sydney.

To everybody


It appears, in these litigious days, that one cannot be too careful.
Hence the somewhat formal expression of greetings, as follows:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit our best wishes for
an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress,
non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the winter solstice holiday,
practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion
of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the
religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice
not to practice religious or secular traditions at all . . .

And a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically
uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar
year 2004, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other
cultures whose contributions to society have helped make New Zealand great,
(not to imply that New Zealand is necessarily greater than any other
country or is the only "New Zealand" in the western hemisphere), and
without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious
faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual preference of the wishees.

(By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting
is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with
no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher
to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is
void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of
the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual
application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance
of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is
limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole
discretion of the wisher.)

This greeting is intended only for the person(s) or entity (entities) to
whom it is addressed. The information it contains may be classified as IN
CONFIDENCE and may be legally privileged. If you are not the intended
recipient any use, disclosure or copying of the message or attachment(s) is
strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error please
notify us immediately and destroy it and any attachment(s). Thank you. I
accept no responsibility for changes made to this message or to any
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Subject to all of the above - CHEERS !!!!!!!!

http://anon.user.anonymizer.com/http://biz.yahoo.com/rm/031219/food_biotech_1.html
Reuters
Widespread testing woes found for biotech grains
Friday December 19, 4:50 pm ET
By Carey Gillam

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Dec 19 (Reuters) - Laboratories measuring the amount of
genetically modified grain mixed into supplies of U.S. corn and other
crops -- a vital factor among foreign buyers of U.S. commodities --
routinely provide inaccurate results, federal grain inspection officials
said on Friday.

The problem lies with methods used to detect the amount of gene-altered
material mixed in with corn and other grains. The issue is critical to
international grain trading as countries that don't want biotech grain are
setting very specific standards on how much accidental mixing they will
tolerate.

"The biggest problem we have right now is we can really just estimate the
quantity of bio material in there," said Steve Tanner, director of technical
services for the Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Administration
(GIPSA), which operates the federal grain inspection service.

In April, European Union member states will start requiring labeling of
foods and grains that contain more than 0.9 percent of genetically modified
materials.

Tanner said recent examinations of commercial and government grain testing
laboratories found they failed to produce consistent results when measuring
the biotech material in control grain samples.

He said variability "was disappointing" among the more than 30 laboratories
examined.

Although the companies did better when asked only to detect whether biotech
materials were present at all, the error rate of about 10 percent was still
worrisome, Tanner said.

GIPSA is preparing another round of the voluntary examinations in January.

Scientists in Europe, Canada, Japan, and the United States have started
working with GIPSA and the U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of
Standards & Technology to standardize testing and make it more reliable,
said Donald Kendall, GIPSA's biotechnology program manager.

Both Kendall and Tanner said dozens of different tests are used, and methods
vary widely for conducting the tests and analyzing the results.

"What we're trying to do is rein in some of the chaos," Tanner said.

The issue came to a boil several years ago when an unapproved variety of
biotech corn accidentally entered the food supply and re-energized fears
among those who believe biotech foods may be dangerous to health and the
environment.

The United States once sold hefty amounts of corn to Europe, but the EU now
bans U.S. corn imports. It does allow imports of corn gluten for animal
feed, but that too will require labeling and testing next year.

Tolerance levels of 1 percent or less have been set by India, Australia and
Poland, South Korea allows up to 3 percent, and Japan, Russia, and Taiwan
allow up to 5 percent.

Vincent L. Vilker, division chief for biotechnology at the NIST, said
assurances that grain shipments meet tolerance levels are now nearly
meaningless.

"They want to put a number on it and that is putting a demand on the
technology that just can't be met at the present time," Vilker said. "You
can put any number you want. But be aware that you're not doing much more
than wasting paper."

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/latestnewsstory.cfm?storyID=3539716&thesection=new
s&thesubsection=general&thesecondsubsection=latest

Summer training camp for anti-GE protestors
NZ HERALD
16.12.2003

A group of anti-genetic engineering lobbyists says it is planning to train
members of the public in "non-violent direct action" at a summer camp near
Motueka at the top of the South Island.

The camp will take place at Mountain Valley School near Motueka on January
2-4.

"After five years of campaigning using conventional tactics, we are still
being ignored by the Government," said a spokeswoman for the People's
Moratorium Enforcement Agency, Lenka Rochford.

The agency had recently been formed to provide information and training on
non-violent direct action against genetic engineering (GE), she said in a
statement.

"Direct action is now all we have left to enforce the will of the people,"
she said. The camp would equip people with "the necessary tools to stop the
contamination of our fields and food with genetically engineered organisms".

Ms Rochford was involved in an anti-GE protest at Parliament in October,
when anti-GE protesters who set up about 20 tents on a grass road verge near
Parliament left after being told it was illegal to camp in central Wellington.

About 70 protesters set up a makeshift canvas city on the verge outside
Parliament grounds to protest against the expiry of the Government's
moratorium on wide-scale release of GE organisms.

Today she said the January camp would be an opportunity for people "to take
the campaign to the next level and learn how to take direct action against GE".

Training would consist of a series of workshops, including supermarket
actions, legal advice, and dealing with the police as well as blockading,
and crop pulling.

Details of the camp have been posted on the Internet at www.pmea.org.nz.

- NZPA

MEDIA RELEASE 19/12/03
REGULATOR LICENCES GENE AND CHEMICAL POLLUTION

The Office of Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) today licensed Monsanto's
Roundup herbicide tolerant canola for release throughout Australia -
anywhere, anytime, on any scale, by anyone, and permanently.
The licence does not require further reporting (other than seed sales),
monitoring, review or assessment.

"Australia's invaluable reputation for clean green foods and the quality of
our environment will be in tatters if state governments allow the licence to
be used," says GeneEthics Director, Bob Phelps.

"The licence is a blank cheque for GE canola users to contaminate the
environment with foreign genes and toxic chemicals," he says.

"No effective segregation or identity preservation systems exist to protect
GE-free food supplies and growers," he says.

"Australia's markets, the environment, animal and human health, and safety
are all at risk," he says.

"Key issues such as the increased use of toxic chemicals, GE contamination
of GE-free supply chains, and lost market access here and abroad for
Australian farmers were ignored," Mr Phelps says

"The OGTR did not comply with the law," he says.

"The OGTR forgave Monsanto's history of law breaking and non-compliance with
safety rules which makes the company unfit to hold the licence," he says.

"Monsanto delayed disclosing the impacts of many other chemicals, such as
Agent Orange, 2,4D, and PCBs and has been convicted countless times of
lawbreaking," he says.

"The OGTR should also have required effective risk management systems and
emergency exit strategies to save the day when disaster hits, but the
licence requires nothing," he says.

"A new US report at http://wwww.biotech-info.net/technicalpaper6.html shows
that after 8 years of growing GE crops, pesticide use on GE crops has hugely
increased after falls in the first 3 growing seasons," he says.

"The OGTR handballed this nasty problem to the APVMA which today extended
Roundup use to GE canola, without consulting the public at all," he says.
"Older, more toxic chemicals will be used to control Roundup tolerant canola
weeds created by seed spills on roadsides, rail lines and parks, since
Roundup will not manage them anymore," he says.

"We call on all state and territory governments for new consensus - to stay
GE-free for at least another 5 years until solutions are found to all GE's
uncertainties," Mr Phelps concludes.

More comment: Bob Phelps 03 9347 4500 (O) 03 9830 1592 (H)
.......................................................................
Bob Phelps
Executive Director
GeneEthics Network
Level 1, 60 Leicester St, Carlton 3053 Australia
Tel: 03 9347 4500 {Int Code +613} or 1300 133 868
Fax: 03 9345 1166
Email: info@geneethics.org
WWW: http://www.geneethics.org

Nature 426, 769 - 770 (18 December 2003);

doi:10.1038/426769a

Gaia: The living Earth

JAMES LOVELOCK

James Lovelock is at Green College, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HG, UK.

Imagine a science-based civilization far distant in the Galaxy that had
built an interferometer of such resolving power that it could analyse
the chemical composition of our atmosphere. Simply from this analysis,
they could confidently conclude that Earth, alone among the planets of
the Solar System, had a carbon-based life and an industrial
civilization. They would have seen methane and oxygen coexisting in the
upper atmosphere, and their chemists would have known that these gases
are continually consumed and replaced. The odds of this happening by
chance inorganic chemistry are very long indeed. Such persistent deep
atmospheric disequilibrium reveals the low entropy characteristic of
life. They would conclude that ours was a live planet - and the presence
of CFCs in the atmosphere would suggest an industry unwise enough to
have allowed their escape.

As part of NASA's planetary exploration team in 1965, thoughts such as
these led me to propose atmospheric analysis for detecting life on Mars.
I also wondered what could be keeping Earth's chemically unstable
atmosphere constant and so appropriate for life, and what kept the
climate tolerable despite a 30% increase in solar luminosity since the
Earth formed. Together, these thoughts led me to the hypothesis that
living organisms regulate the atmosphere in their own interest, and the
novelist William Golding suggested Gaia as its name. Although the
concept of a live Earth is ancient, Newton was the first scientist to
compare the Earth to an animal or a vegetable. Hutton, Huxley and
Vernadsky expressed similar views but, lacking quantitative evidence,
these earlier ideas remained anecdotal. In 1925 Alfred Lotka conjectured
that it would be easier to model the evolution of organisms and their
material environment coupled as a single entity than either of them
separately. Gaia had its origins in these earlier thoughts, from the
evidence gathered by the biogeochemists Alfred Redfield and Evelyn
Hutchinson and from the mind-wrenching top-down view provided by NASA.

Although welcomed by atmospheric scientists, Earth scientists were
cautious. Biologists, especially Ford Doolittle and Richard Dawkins,
argued strongly that global self-regulation could never have evolved, as
the organism was the unit of selection, not the biosphere. In time I
realized that they were right - but still I thought, something keeps the
Earth habitable. In 1981 I composed a model of dark- and light-coloured
plants that competed for growth on a planet in progressively increasing
sunlight. My intention was not to make a blueprint for the Earth, but a
model to show that Gaia is consistent with natural selection. This
'Daisyworld' regulated its temperature close to that fittest for plant
growth and - unusually for an evolutionary model made from coupled
differential equations - it was stable, insensitive to initial
conditions and resistant to perturbation. Daisyworld is darwinian, but
the evolution of the organisms and the evolution of temperature proceed
as a single, coupled process. The model was much criticized, but so far
has resisted falsification. It was easy to show that Daisyworld
tolerates 'cheats' - daisies that grow but offer nothing towards
self-regulation. Other critics claimed that daisies would adapt to
changing temperature and therefore simply track temperature change, not
regulate it. But the restraining function connecting growth with
temperature is not negotiable; chemistry, not biology, sets its constants.

At this stage, the Gaia theory was missing plausible control mechanisms.
The first discovered was a biological process that redressed the
imbalance of the nutritious elements sulphur and iodine - these are
abundant in the oceans, but deficient on the land surface. It was widely
assumed that hydrogen sulphide and sea salt aerosol drifted from the
ocean to the land. In 1971 I discovered that methyl iodide and dimethyl
sulphide were ubiquitous in the Atlantic surface waters, and from my
measurements Peter Liss calculated their fluxes in 1974. He argued that
these biogenic gases were the main carriers of the natural elemental
cycles of sulphur and iodine.

Then in 1982, the geochemists James Walker, P. B. Hayes and Jim Kasting
suggested that the weathering of calcium silicate rock could regulate
carbon dioxide and climate. Greater warmth leads to more rainfall and a
faster removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by rock weathering,
which provides a negative feedback on temperature. This plausible
mechanism is by itself too small to account for the observed rate of
weathering. Organisms on the rocks and in the soil bring it to life as a
Gaian mechanism; their growth varies with temperature and their presence
amplifies the rate of weathering.

In 1986, there was the awesome discovery by Robert Charlson, James
Lovelock, Meinrat Andreae and Steven Warren of a connection between
biogenic dimethyl sulphide gas - the product of ocean algae - its
oxidation in the atmosphere to form cloud condensation nuclei, and the
subsequent effect of the clouds formed on climate. We wondered whether
this could be a Gaian regulatory mechanism through the feedback between
climate change and algal growth.

By the end of the 1980s there was sufficient evidence, models and
mechanisms, to justify a provisional Gaia theory. Briefly, it states
that organisms and their material environment evolve as a single coupled
system, from which emerges the sustained self-regulation of climate and
chemistry at a habitable state for whatever is the current biota.

Like life, Gaia is an emergent phenomenon, comprehensible intuitively,
but difficult or impossible to analyse by reduction - not surprisingly
it is often misunderstood. A simple automatic mechanism, like a
thermostatically controlled oven, requires a sensor to measure the
difference between the ambient temperature and the set point of
regulation, and an amplifier to magnify this difference and apply it as
negative feedback to oppose unwanted change. Living systems rarely work
in this simple way; they require positive as well as negative feedback
for homeostasis, and a restraining function replaces the simple manual
set point. This function allows regulation within a physiologically
acceptable range, instead of at a single set value. Andrew Watson and
other critics have assumed that to be Gaian, a planet must regulate near
perfectly - but physiological systems may perform no better than is
needed. No one doubts that humans are in thermostasis, yet our core
temperatures range from 35 to 40 °C and our extremities from 5 to 45 °C.
This may appear imprecise, but it serves us well. For the past ten
million years the Earth's average surface temperature has covered a
similar range between 11 and 16 °C. This is not evidence of incompetent
regulation - it is sufficient to sustain the Earth system. The
occasional failure of the Earth to regulate efficiently - as in the
present interglacial - resembles the physiological condition of a fever
where positive feedback dominates.

Gaia theory does not contradict darwinism, rather it extends it to
include evolutionary biology and evolutionary geology as a single
science. In Gaia theory, organisms change their material environment as
well as adapt to it. Selection favours the improvers, and the expansion
of favourable traits extends local improvement and can make it global.
Inevitably there will be extinctions and losers, winners may gain in the
short term, but the only long-term beneficiary is life itself. Its
persistence for over three billion years in spite of numerous
catastrophes, internal or external, lends support to the theory. I have
never intended the powerful metaphor 'the living Earth' more seriously
than the metaphor of 'the selfish gene'. I have used it, along with my
neologism geophysiology, to draw attention to the similarity between
Gaian and physiological regulation.

I was pleased when Stephen Schneider persuaded the distinguished
American Geophysical Union to devote their 1988 Chapman Conference to
Gaia, but disappointed when too many of those who attended argued
against the discarded Gaia hypothesis of the 1970s, seemingly unaware
that the theory had been revised. I suspected that few would take Gaia
seriously until eminent scientists approved it publicly. In 1995 I
started dialogues with John Maynard Smith and William Hamilton. Both of
them were prepared to discuss Gaia as a scientific topic , but neither
of them saw how planetary self-regulation could evolve through natural
selection. Even so, Maynard Smith gave unstinted support to my colleague
Tim Lenton when he wrote a seminal article in Nature. Hamilton wondered,
in a joint paper with Lenton, if the need of organisms to disperse was
the link that connected ocean algae with climate. In a 1999 television
programme, Hamilton said: "Just as the observations of Copernicus needed
a Newton to explain them, we need another Newton to explain how
darwinian evolution leads to a habitable planet."

Then the ice began to melt. In 2001, at a conference in Amsterdam - at
which four principal global change research programmes were represented
- more than a thousand delegates signed a declaration that started with
the statement: "The Earth System behaves as a single, self-regulating
system comprised of physical, chemical, biological and human components."

Gaia theory is fruitful and makes successful or useful predictions (see
Table 1). More than this, it enlightens our view of Earth system science
and the environment. Importantly, as Lynn Margulis has insisted, it
draws our attention to the microorganisms, which are the biological
infrastructure of the Earth. Microorganisms filled the whole biosphere
for the greater part of life's history and they are still vital for
effective planetary regulation.

A major achievement of Gaia has been the change in style of Earth system
models. Climatologists, notably Peter Cox, Richard Betts and John
Schellnhuber and colleagues, now include a responsive biota in their
models of future climates, and their contributions have added realism to
the predictions of the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
third assessment report.

As the Earth ages, the Sun's heat ineluctably intensifies; in
approximately one billion years the Earth will pass the limit of
climatic stability and irreversibly return to inorganic chemistry.
Moreover, as it grows older the Earth system weakens, and before long a
large planetesimal impact may throw our planet prematurely into its
final hot, dry state. A few thermophiles in oasis ecosystems might
survive, but we could never recapture the abundant life and lush
environment we now enjoy. The Earth system is elderly and we should
treat it with respect and care.

Gaia theory reconciles current thinking in evolutionary biology with
that in evolutionary geology. It extends, not contradicts, Darwin's
vision, just as relativity enhances, not denies, Newtonian physics. The
theory is provisional, but provides an intellectual habitat where
understanding of the Earth can evolve and grow. Perhaps its greatest
value lies in its metaphor of a living Earth, which reminds us that we
are part of it and that human rights are constrained by the needs of our
planetary partners.

FURTHER READING

Kump, L. R., Kasting, J. F. & Crane, R. G. The Earth System 2nd edn
(Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 2004 ).

Hamilton, W. D. & Lenton, T.M. Ethol. Ecol. Evol. 10, 1-16 (1998 ).

Lenton, T. M. Nature 394, 439-447 (1998 ).

Lovelock, J. E. The Ages of Gaia (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 2000 ).

Margulis, L. The Symbiotic Planet (Phoenix, London, 1999 ).

Schellnhuber, H.-J. & Wenzel, V. (eds) Earth System Analysis (Springer,
New York, 1998 ).

Turney, J. Lovelock and Gaia (Icon, Cambridge, 2003 ).

The Amsterdam Declaration on Global Change online at
http://www.sciconf.igbp.kva.se/AMS_DECLARATION.pdf

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994492

'Humanised' organs can be grown in animals

19:00 17 December 03

It's bad news, says your doctor. Your liver is failing. So he extracts stem
cells from your bone marrow and injects them into a sheep fetus while it is
still in the womb. When the sheep is born, much of the animal's liver will
consist of your own cells - ready to be harvested and given back to you.

This dream therapy is still years off, if it happens at all, but the first
steps have already been taken by a team led by Esmail Zanjani at the
University of Nevada, Reno. "Esmail has some pretty startling results," says
Alan Flake of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Zanjani's team hopes the animal-human chimeras they are creating will one
day yield new cells genetically identical to a patient's own for repairing
damaged organs, and perhaps larger pieces for transplantation.

It might even be possible to transfer whole organs, since in some cases
having at least a partly human organ would be better than a purely animal
xenotransplant. Immune rejection of the animal portion would still be a
problem, but it is not insurmountable, says Flake. "I don't think that in 10
to 15 years that's out of the question."

Growth factors

If perfected, the technique could overcome some of the big stumbling blocks
facing researchers who want to make tissues and organs for implants. It
might yield significant quantities of just about any kind of cell or tissue,
for instance, with no need to fiddle about with different culture conditions
or growth factors.

Instead, the host animal's own developmental program guides the injected
human stem cells into their final roles. "We take advantage of the growing
nature of the fetus," Zanjani says.

It would also allow doctors to obtain immune-compatible cells without having
to create human embryos by therapeutic cloning. Human cells could be
separated from the animal ones simply by modifying existing cell-sorting
machines.

Providing the method really does produce normal human cells, they would not
be rejected. And any stray animal cells would be killed off by the
recipient's immune system.

Of course, the idea of using part-human, part-animal chimeras as living
factories for producing cells or organs raises a host of ethical and safety
issues. There is the risk of transferring animal diseases to humans, for a
start. And the creation of such chimeras has long been controversial. Is a
sheep with human cells making up part of its brain no longer just a sheep?

Stem cell jab

Zanjani's original goal was to see if unborn children with genetic defects
could be treated by injecting healthy stem cells into the fetus. This is
still his main aim, but while doing animal experiments he realised the
technique could also be used to grow "humanised" organs.

The first hint this might work came from work done by Flake a few years ago
(Nature Medicine, vol 6, p 1282). He showed that when human mesenchymal stem
cells extracted from bone marrow are injected into sheep fetuses, the human
cells become part of the heart, skin, muscle, fat and other tissues. But the
numbers of human cells were very low. Zanjani's team has now managed to
produce sheep-human chimeras with a surprisingly high proportion of human
cells in some organs. According to results presented at a conference earlier
in December, in some cases between seven and 15 per cent of all the cells in
the sheep's livers are human.

The human cells must be injected around halfway through gestation - before
the fetus's immune system has learned the difference between its own and
foreign cells, so that the animal does not reject them, but after the body
plan has formed.

That ensures that the resulting animals look like normal sheep rather than
strange hybrids like the "geep", created by fusing the embryos of a sheep
and goat.

Clustering together

In some cases the human liver cells cluster together to form functional,
fully human liver units, says Graca Almeida-Porada of the Nevada team. These
units could be transplanted whole as auxiliary organs, says Zanjani.

What is more, human albumin - a blood protein produced by the liver - has
been detected in the host animals' blood. The work has been submitted for
publication.

Meanwhile, results of similar experiments on the heart will be published
early in 2004. "The type of stem cells we use make a lot of heart cells," is
all Zanjani will say about these experiments.

If he is right, it would be an important advance because it would open the
door to creating fetal heart cells for therapy. For example, a kind of fetal
heart cell called a cardiomyocyte has been shown to be especially good at
repairing hearts in rats or mice, but there is one big obstacle: at the
moment the only source of human fetal heart cells is human fetuses.

Robert Kloner, a heart expert at the University of Southern California in
Los Angeles, says an approach like Zanjani's would get around this ethical
issue.

Time and place

Zanjani says it might also be possible to grow a wide range of other
tissues, such as insulin-producing islet cells for treating diabetes. And he
hopes it will be possible to increase the proportion of human cells in
organs still further.

The team is now trying to identify subpopulations of stem cells that might
be better at producing one organ or another. Their results also hint that
the timing and site of the injection make a difference.

But all members of the Nevada team stress that the technique is years, if
not decades away from being tested in humans. For starters, it will be
crucial to make sure the human cells really are functional. Recent
experiments have suggested that some stem cells fuse with other cells when
injected, rather than forming normal heart cells or liver cells.

A key question is whether the human cells fuse with sheep cells, says Philip
Noguchi, head of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the US
Food and Drug Administration. It would not necessarily be the death knell if
the cells do fuse, but it would be important to know what problems it
presents, Noguchi says.

Zanjani is optimistic, however: with human cells making up such a large
proportion of some chimera organs, he thinks the sheep would die if these
cells were dysfunctional fused cells.

Lurking viruses

All the same, there is widespread opposition to xenotransplantation in
countries such as the UK and Canada. One big worry is that retroviruses
lurking in animal DNA could mutate into forms that infect people.

The US is more open to the idea, and a few clinical trials are under way,
but health concerns mean Zanjani's technique would be expensive to develop.

What is more, companies are unlikely to invest in the method because he has
not tried to patent it. And it could even be unpatentable: in 1998, the US
Patent Office declared it unlikely that it would grant any more patents on
part-human inventions.

Then there is the moral issue. Some people oppose the creation of all
human-animal chimeras on religious grounds, and many more would join them if
there were the slightest chance that sheep with human brain cells might be
more than just sheep.

Zanjani doesn't rule out the possibility entirely. "There is no way for us
to know," he says. "But at the level we're working with the animal, it's
still a sheep."

Sylvia Pagán Westphal, Boston

Today the European Parliament adopted a report "on coexistence
between genetically modified crops and conventional and organic crops", which
calls inter alia for a european wide regulation of coexistence and
liability and for the labelling of GMOs in seeds at the detection
threshold (i.e. 0,1%). The Parliament also calls upon the Commission
and the member states not to approve any cultivation of GMOs until
such legislation is in place. The initiative report was adopted by a
large majority of 327 vote in favour, 52 against and 34 abstentions.
Although the report has no imediate legislative implication it is is a
major political victory in the ongoing discussion about coexistence,
pending legislation on seed purity and about the moratorium on new
approvals for GMOs within the European Union. The "Save our Seeds"
initiative would like to congratulate the rapporteur,
Friedrich-Wilhelm Graefe zu Baringdorf, who drafted the report for the
Parliaments Agricultural Committee and thank him for the good
co-operation.

Benedikt Haerlin
"Save our Seeds" Initiative
c/o Zukunftsstiftung Landwirtschaft
Marienstr.19/20, 10117 Berlin Tel. +49(030)27590309 Fax
+49(030)27590312
eMail: haerlin@zs-l.de
www.saveourseeds.org

The full report as adopted is available in all EU languages at
http://www2.europarl.eu.int/omk/sipade2?SAME_LEVEL=1&LEVEL=4&
NAV=S&DET
AI L=&P
UBREF=-//EP//TEXT+REPORT+A5-2003-
0465+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN#Content570990
More details at
http://zs-l.de/saveourseeds/news/international/news.html

Here are some key excerpts from the report:
The European Parliament...
E. convinced that the introduction of GMOs in agriculture must not
bring with it any additional costs for farmers who do not use these
technologies and who wish to grow and market non-genetically modified
products,

2. Calls on the Commission to stipulate the labelling of GMOs in
seed at the technically measurable and reliable detection threshold on
the basis of Article 21(2) of Directive 2001/18/EC, and to take
account of scientific assessments regarding practical applicability;

3. Calls for uniform and binding rules to be established without
delay at Community level on the coexistence of genetically modified
crops on the one hand, and non-genetically modified conventional crops
on the other hand; calls for the European Parliament to be included in
this process under the codecision procedure;

7. Calls on the Commission to submit a proposal on Community-wide
civil liability and insurance in respect of possible financial damage
in connection with coexistence;

Calls on the Commission and the Member States to include workable
and legally enforceable civil liability provisions for sufficient
insurance cover on the part of the applicant as a component of the
authorisation procedure for placing GMOs on the market, so that claims
by persons affected can be dealt with adequately and quickly in the
event of damage;

9. Calls on the Commission and Member States not to proceed with
the approval of the release of any further genetically modified varieties
of plant until such time as binding rules on coexistence, backed up by
a system of liability based firmly on the 'polluter pays' principle,
have been agreed and implemented;

13. Takes the view that the voluntary or regionally restricted
renunciation of GMO cultivation in certain areas and under certain
cultivation conditions may be the most effective and least costly
measure to ensure coexistence and that it must be available to the
Member States when implementing Article 26a of Directive 2001/18/EC,
on condition that all the players involved agree, with the aim of
guaranteeing full freedom of choice;

14. Takes the view that Community coexistence rules must allow
Member States the right to prohibit completely the cultivation of GMOs
in geographically restricted areas so as to safeguard coexistence;

Can you read the hand writing on the wall?

As you walk up the steps to the Capitol Building which houses the Supreme
Court you can see near the top of the building a row of the world's law
givers and each one is facing one in the middle who is facing forward with
a full frontal view - it is Moses and the Ten Commandments!

As you enter the Supreme Court courtroom, the two huge oak doors have the
Ten Commandments engraved on each lower portion of each door.

As you sit inside the courtroom, you can see the wall right above where
the Supreme Court judges sit a display of the Ten Commandments!

There are Bible verses etched in stone all over the Federal Buildings and
Monuments in Washington, D.C.

James Madison, the fourth president, known as "The Father of Our
Constitution" made the following statement "We have staked the whole of
all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for
self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern
ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten
Commandments of God."

Patrick Henry, that patriot and Founding Father of our country said, "It
cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was
founded not by religionists but by Christians not on religions but on the
Gospel of Jesus Christ."

Every session of Congress begins with a prayer by a paid preacher, whose
salary has been paid by the taxpayer since 1777.

Fifty-two of the 55 founders of the Constitution were members of the
established orthodox churches in the colonies.

Thomas Jefferson worried about that the Courts would overstep their
authority and instead of interpreting the law would begin making law an
oligarchy, the rule of few over many.

The very first Supreme Court Justice, John Jay, said "Americans should
select and prefer Christians as their rulers."

How then, have we gotten to the point that everything we have done for the
past 225+ years in this country is now suddenly wrong and unconstitutional?

The following is a excerpt from one of my posts that was released on 2-14-03:

I know that you agree that discussions on the Internet are at best
difficult, and I do not wish to become embroiled in the quagmire of
personal politics and religion. However I submit the following statement by
Alexander Solzhenitsyn for your perusal:

"The world has never before known a godlessness as organised, militarised
and tenaciously malevolent as that preached by Marxism. Within the
philosophical system of Marx and Lenin and at the heart of their
psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental
than all their political and economic pretensions. Militant atheism is not
merely incidental or marginal to communist policy; it is not a side effect,
but the central pivot. To achieve its diabolical ends, communism needs to
control a population devoid of religious and national feeling, and this
entails a destruction of faith and nationhood.

Then the communists changed their tactics and decided to try co-opting
religion to help them achieve their ends. They set about subverting it.
One of the first things they did was to take over the (WCC) World Council
of Churches as well as the (SACC) South African Council of Churches using
moles and agents of influence. The WCC later donated large amounts of money
to the Marxist Liberation organisations. Both South African and Rhodesian
Intelligence were aware of these moves in the 1970;s but the world
ignored these facts. Major Golitsyn (ex-KGB) stated that according to The
Great Soviet Encyclopedia the WCC had been "converted from a "pro-Western
orientation to a "progressive (communist) orientation by 1972.

The successful conversion of traditionally conservative, anti-Communist
Christians towards a "progressive" stance is one of communism's great
success stories. They took their most rabid enemies and turned them into
fellow travelers who now believed themselves to be the natural allies of
socialism! I'm sure the communists smile at their achievement!" End of
Quote.

It's truly amazing that so many people stand by and do nothing! Maybe
someone should have a personal talk with a few of these bureaucrats,
teachers and judges!

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 4, 2003

WHISTLEBLOWER MAGAZINE
Exploding the myth of church-state separation
New WND blockbuster ultimate expose of judicial hijacking of First Amendment

Posted: November 4, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

* In Texas, a U.S. District judge decreed that any student uttering the
word "Jesus" at his school's graduation would be arrested and locked up.
"And make no mistake," announced Judge Samuel B. Kent, "the court is going
to have a United States marshal in attendance at the graduation. If any
student offends this court, that student will be summarily arrested and
will face up to six months incarceration in the Galveston County Jail for
contempt of court."

* In Missouri, when fourth-grader Raymond Raines bowed his head in prayer
before his lunch in the cafeteria of Waring Elementary School in St. Louis,
his teacher allegedly ordered him out of his seat, in full view of other
students present, and sent him to the principal's office. After his third
such prayer "offense", little Raymond was segregated from his classmates,
ridiculed for his religious beliefs, and given one week's detention.

* In New York, kindergartner Kayla Broadus recited the familiar and
beloved prayer - "God is great, God is good. Thank you, God, for my food"
- while holding hands with two students seated next to her at her snack
table at her Saratoga Springs school early last year. But she was silenced
and scolded by her teacher, who reported the infraction to the school’s
lawyer, Gregg T. Johnson, who concluded that Kayla’s behavior was indeed a
violation of the "separation of church and state."

"The constitutional separation of church and state" – a reference to the
First Amendment in the Bill of Rights – is a phrase Americans hear
literally every day from the news media, from legal organizations, from
politicians and pundits, and especially from zealous attorneys and judges.

"Separation of church and state" was used by the ACLU to demand that a
banner proclaiming "God bless America," erected outside a school shortly
after Sept. 11, 2001, to honor the 3,000 murdered Americans, must be taken
down.

"Separation of church and state" was used to deny a little, handicapped
girl the right to read her Bible on the bus on the long trip to school.

"Separation of church and state" was used to take Justice Roy Moore's 10
Commandments monument out of the Alabama Judicial Building, and it is being
used right now to challenge the words "under God" in the Pledge of
Allegiance.

The phrase is repeated so often and with such assurance, one would think it
is the keystone phrase of the U.S. Constitution.

And yet – the words "separation," "church," or "state" are not found in the
First Amendment, nor in any other founding document for that matter.

In fact, the entire "constitutional separation of church and state" is a
recent fabrication of activist judges who have ignored the Constitution's
clear meaning.

Indeed, says U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, in the
stunning November issue of WND's Whistleblower magazine, "There is simply
no historical foundation for the proposition that the Framers intended to
build the 'wall of separation' [between church and state]."

Titled

"THE MYTH OF CHURCH-STATE SEPARATION," this
special edition, says WND Editor Joseph Farah, is "a definitive,
once-and-for-all, legal and historical refutation of the fiction that the
Constitution was intended to prohibit or infringe on freedom of religious
expression – whether at home, church, school, or in the public square."

"It's a myth," said Farah, "and this issue of Whistleblower slam-dunks the
case proving that's all it is."

Starting with the famous 1801 letter written by the Baptists of Danbury,
Conn., to newly elected President Thomas Jefferson – and Jefferson's brief
response, in which he coined the phrase "a wall of separation between
church and state" to assure his constituents that the new Constitution
would not establish a national church or otherwise infringe on their
religious liberties – this special Whistleblower edition attacks the
church-state issue from every conceivable angle.

Contents include:

* An overview of the church-state debate by Joseph Farah

* "How courts invented church-state 'wall of separation'" by David Barton,
showing how, after 150 years of honoring the Founding Fathers' intent,
activist judges took a radical new direction.

* "Where it all started" – allowing readers to read the actual letters
between the Danbury Baptists and Thomas Jefferson

* "The war on Christianity in public schools," a jaw-dropping excerpt from
David Limbaugh's best-selling new blockbuster, "Persecution." In this
exclusive and in-depth (8,000-word) article, Limbaugh shows how a
decades-long legal assault on religious expression in America has paved the
way for outright persecution of Christians.

* "Rehnquist: U.S. not founded on church-state separation," a dazzling
opinion in which the U.S. Supreme Court's current chief justice, William
Rehnquist, makes it crystal clear how the high court ignored history, legal
precedent and the constitutional framers' clear intent in its landmark
decision banning prayer from public school.

* "Separation of atheism and state" by Bob Just, showing how citizens can
reconnect America with her Judeo-Christian roots by going on the offensive

* "What you can do" by David Kupelian, with more ways Americans can bring
God and country back together again

These and many other articles make the November Whistleblower the most
devastating journalistic expose yet of the fraudulent "separation of church
and state."

"You will positively cheer when you read this issue," said Farah. "It is
the silver bullet people have been waiting for, that will finally shoot
down this insidious charade that has been destroying every last vestige of
our Christian heritage from America. Maybe this edition of Whistleblower
will finally help turn things around."

from the University of California at Davis site


The gist of the story is that some seeds that weren't thought to be GE
actually were. To what degree these mislabeled seeds were further
amplified and may have contaminated commercial varieties in the U.S. or in
other countries remains to be seen.

Tomato Seed from Seed Bank Found to be Genetically Modified

December 18, 2003 -- The University of California, Davis, is recalling
about 30 tomato seed samples, distributed during the past seven years to
research colleagues in the United States and abroad, after recent tests
showed that the seed was not the intended variety, but rather a very
similar variety developed through biotechnology.

The seed contains a commercially approved biotech trait, referred to as the
PG trait. That trait, which improves the thickness of tomato paste, had
been approved in 1994 for use in human food. A similar tomato variety with
the PG trait had previously been planted commercially in California, and
tomato paste with the trait had been sold to consumers, primarily in the
United Kingdom.

The Seed and Its Distribution

Since 1996, small quantities of seed of the processing-tomato variety known
as UC-82B were provided, upon request, by UC Davis to researchers at 12
institutions in the United States and to researchers in 14 other countries.
Each sample included about 25 seeds to be used in research projects at
those institutions. Two samples were also sent abroad for demonstration
gardens in England and Ethiopia. UC Davis and the recipients were unaware
that these particular UC-82B seeds carried the PG trait.

UC Davis officials have determined that the seeds carrying the PG trait
originated from a 20-gram seed sample donated to UC Davis in 1996 by
Petoseed Company, which has since been acquired by Seminis Vegetable Seeds.
It is unclear when or where the seeds were mislabeled.

The seed mix-up came to light when the Charles M. Rick Tomato Genetics
Resource Center at UC Davis sent samples of what was thought to be
unmodified UC-82B to the UC Davis Plant Transformation Facility. This
research service unit genetically modifies small numbers of plants for use
in campus research projects. In working with the seeds, staff scientists
detected the unexpected presence of a commonly used "marker" gene, NPT II,
and notified the Rick center. The protein derived from the NPT II gene has
been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a food additive.
Subsequent testing also revealed the presence of the PG gene.

A similar tomato variety with the same combination of PG gene and NPT II
was commercialized in 1996 through a collaboration between Petoseed Company
and Zeneca Plant Science. That variety was approved for food and tomato
production in the U.S. by the Food and Drug Administration in 1994 and the
U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1995. It also was approved for food
consumption by the government of the United Kingdom in 1995 and in Canada
by Health Canada in 1996. That variety also passed scientific review in the
European Union. It was grown commercially in California and sold as tomato
paste product in the United Kingdom between 1996 and 1999.

Response by UC Davis and Seminis

Upon learning of the apparent mix-up, the Rick tomato center curator
reviewed records and found that the UC-82B seed had been obtained in 1996
from Petoseed. Although that seed variety had been developed in 1976 by a
UC Davis plant breeder, the campus supply had run low and Petoseed had
replenished it.

"We immediately tested our seed and informed both Seminis and the U.S.
Department of Agriculture," said Neal Van Alfen, dean of UC Davis' College
of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. "DNA sequencing conducted at UC
Davis has confirmed the presence of the PG trait.

"We have notified the individuals or research units that received the
seed," Van Alfen added. "We are asking the recipients to let us know how
they used or disposed of the seed, and to send any seeds remaining from the
original sample to an independent laboratory for DNA testing."

Ed Green, senior vice president of research and development at Seminis,
said: "We will continue to work closely with the university to determine
how this error occurred. We have offered the full analytical resources of
Seminis and have made our records available to university officials.

"While current regulatory controls and technological advances would make
this type of mix-up highly unlikely today, we also feel it's prudent to
review our seed handling, storage and sharing protocols to look for
improvements, " Green said.

Green added that only a small fraction of Seminis' current research
involves biotechnology because the company's focus is on traditional plant
breeding. Seminis does not sell any tomatoes developed with biotechnology.

Background on the Rick Center and Seminis

UC Davis' Charles M. Rick Tomato Genetics
Resource Center is associated with the National Plant Germplasm System.
Upon request, the center provides seed samples to scientists and educators
worldwide. The center houses seeds of more than 3,600 wild species and
domesticated varieties, and is considered the most diverse collection of
its kind in the world.

Seminis markets more than 4,000 vegetable and
fruit varieties. Its products reduce the need for chemical pest controls,
improve grower yields and offer improved nutrition, flavor and convenience,
according to Seminis officials.

Media contact(s):
Gary Koppenjan, Seminis, Oxnard, Calif., (805) 918-2220,
gary.koppenjan@seminis.com
Pat Bailey, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-9843,
pjbailey@ucdavis.edu
Lisa Lapin, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-9842,
lalapin@ucdavis.edu

Hey Yanks

I thought I would pass on this most illuminating post; I hope you find
it worthwhile.

Best wishes,

R

Subject: [heterodox] Mass Court Judicial Coup
Reply-To: heterodox@yahoogroups.com

Judicial Coup Disenfranchises Voters

The recent Travesty of the Absurd concocted by the
Massachusetts (mass) court system to pander to the hatreds and perversions
of the Radical Homosex Lobby did not develop in some sort of isolated case
of legal hallucination, brought on by inhaling the heady odeur of obscene
amounts of money and unbridled power common to the self anointed legal
elites of our alleged "justice" system.

Rather "it was the result of a careful pogrom of
destruction, both of reason and responsibility" which has come to
epitomize the putrid rot at the heart of what passes for our legal system.
It begins with a steady diet of Thought Policing and Indoctrination the
legal establishment starts promoting on the first day of Law School, and
which pervades the so-called "profession" like fluoride does the water
supply.

The end result of flushing such politically polluted waters
(kind of like toxic discharge "only different) in to society, is the
Disenfranchisement of the Voters by the Courts. The four justices of the
Mass court have thus only followed the lead of the pseudo liberal justices
of the U.S. Supreme court, and simply announced that anyone who disagrees
with their politics" is irrational, and Doesn't Deserve a Vote.

The trick (borrowed from the Case of Romer v. Evans) is to use
alleged "Rational Basis" review of laws to protect society from the
hatreds and perversions of the homosexual agenda. The few legal elitists
on the court can then overturn elections held by entire States or the Whole
Country by claiming that the voters or their elected legislators could
not have had a "Rational Basis" for voting as they did.

Without doubt the most instructive case to highlight all these
factors is that of Romer v. Evans, where the USSC (or at least 6 members
thereof) disgraced itself in a manner that resembles nothing so much as the
disgraces of earlier courts (pandering to the klan) since disowned by progressive society. In the case
of Romer, the court overturned the will of the Voters of the State of
Colorado, and prevented them from passing a state constitutional amendment
protecting their families, children and society.

Colorado Amendment #2 was Passed by the Voters after a
statewide referendum in which the issue was debated across the state and
all sides discussed by the People (although the media itself censored many
of the best Pro arguments), before they cast their ballots in a free and
fair election. This vote expressing the will of the sovereign people was
then overturned by a vote of six justices of the USSC, who decided that the
voters could not have reasonably believed the reasons they gave for voting
as they did.

In his dissent, which has achieved legendary status for its
astonishingly frank and honest evaluation of the nature of Thought Policing
in the legal system, Justice Scalia not only addressed the decision of the
court in language that pierced the bubble of hypocrisy in which the ruling
was encased, but also lifted the veil on the political "cleansing" of
legal education in modern America.

In what would be an absolute hoot of irony (were it not so
pathetically sad), Scalia's dissent itself is frequently censored from
legal education texts on Constitutional Law, because it is considered by
"educators" as Ungood for society to expose law Students to the
Warnings of a Sitting Supreme Court Justice as to the political
indoctrination taking place in their law school on certain issues.

After all, you need to be careful with legal education "can't afford
to waste it on someone who might use it to dare to stand up to the Thought
Police.

Or - as Justice Scalia Said in the Lawrence "Homo-Anal perversion case
dissent"

This case "does not involve" the issue of
homosexual marriage only if one entertains the belief that principle and
logic have nothing to do with the decisions of this Court. Many will hope
that, as the Court comfortingly assures us, this is so.

Principle and Logic in the modern day courts of Weimar Amerika, Inc.

LOL

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

In his Dissents to the Romer & Lawrence decisions, Justice Scalia
touches on a highly sensitive central nerve running through what passes for
American Legal "education" "one subject to more Censorship and
Thought Policing in law school than any other issue" that of Pandering
to the Agenda of the Radical Homosex Lobby.

The main purpose for this Unique Treatment on one Political
Special Interest group in legal education, is to promote censorship of
thought and debate to the point where it becomes impossible for law school
to produce graduates capable of representing others (Churches, Boy
Scouts) in the exercise of their right to be free from pandering.

The tactic is to destroy the Rights of Citizens by destroying
the ability to advocate on behalf of them, and law schools are the front
lines for the Thought Police actions to deny their opponents legal
representation when they stand up to such Censorship.

There is a tradition of the U.S. Supreme court for certain dissents -
which ring true for the ages, to live beyond the case at hand (e.g.
Brandeis & 1st Amendment) and later take their place in the law by being
recognized as the sensible and just position they had been all along. It is
in this rare and yet vital aspect of our Constitutional jurisprudence that
I think the words of Justice Scalia will eventually be seen as a truth that
will survive the lies and hate propaganda that fueled this abomination.

Or, As Justice Scalia said so eloquently excerpted here) for the ages in
the recent cases of Lawrence v. Texas and Romer v. Evans (where the USSC
gang of 6 essentially destroyed any ability to protect morals by society)
on the "right" to engage in homo anal buggery and other aberrations:

< <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Today's opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a
law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called
homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual
activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has
traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.

It is clear from this that the Court has taken sides in the culture war,
departing from its role of assuring, as neutral observer, that the
democratic rules of engagement are observed.

Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in
homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their
children, as teachers in their children's schools, or as boarders in their
home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a
lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive.

The Court views it as "discrimination" which it is the
function of our judgments to deter. So imbued is the Court with the law
profession's anti-anti-homosexual culture, that it is seemingly unaware
that the attitudes of that culture are not obviously "mainstream"; that in
most States what the Court calls "discrimination" against those who engage
in homosexual acts is perfectly legal.. and that in some cases such
"discrimination" is a constitutional right, see Boy Scouts of America v.
Dale, 530 U. S. 640 (2000).

Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other
group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means.. But
persuading one's fellow citizens is one thing, and imposing one's views in
absence of democratic majority will is something else. But it is the
premise of our system that those judgments are to be made by the people,
and not imposed by a governing caste that knows best opposed to the
political branches to take sides in this culture war. But the court today
has done so, not only inventing a novel and extravagant constitutional
doctrine to take the victory away from traditional forces, but even by
verbally disparaging as bigotry adherence to traditional attitudes.

To suggest, for example, that this constitutional amendment springs
from nothing more than a bare desire to harm a politically unpopular
group is nothing short of insulting. (It is also nothing short of
preposterous to call "politically unpopular" group which enjoys
enormous influence in American media and politics)

Today's opinion has no foundation in American constitutional law,
and barely pretends to. The people of Colorado have adopted an entirely
reasonable provision which does not even disfavor homosexuals in any
substantive sense, but merely denies them preferential treatment. Amendment
#2 is designed to prevent piecemeal deterioration of the sexual morality
favored by a majority of Coloradoans, and is not only an appropriate means
to a legitimate end, but a means Americans have employed before. Striking
it down is an act, not of judicial judgment, but of political will. I
dissent.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Soooo... Not only does this self anointed, self imposed and self
"regulated" governing caste of alleged legal elites (Judges &
Professors & Lawyers) feel entitled to ignore the will of the rest of the
electorate, they are so convinced of their own superior enlightenment that
they actually claim to understand the lack of "reason" which caused
voters to cast their ballots in an Ungood manner.

Thus, the court in Romer, or Lawrence or the Massachusetts
case can freely destroy the basic element of Democracy "the Vote" by
simply claiming that the voters could not have "Rationally" cast their
ballot, And the Only Votes that should actually count for
anything, are those of the 4 judges when they decide to pander to hatreds
and perversions of the Radical Homosex Lobby - so as to feed their own
pseudo liberal pretentious.

Welcome to Weimar Amerika, Inc.

Hope you like the Ride.

Ohso

12 December 2003

U.S. Farmers Continue to Adopt Biotech, Study Shows
Research of the technology also increasing, researcher says

By Kathryn McConnell
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- The adoption of agricultural biotechnology in the United
States continues to grow, offering increasing economic and environmental
benefits, according to results of a study funded by a major U.S.
biotechnology institute.

The study, presented to reporters December 11 at the National Press Club in
Washington, sought to determine the level of adoption of biotechnology in
the United States, current U.S. biotechnology research and development (R&D)
activities, and the future direction of the industry, according to principal
investigator C. Ford Runge. Runge, who is director of the Center for
International Food and Agricultural Policy at the University of Minnesota,
received funding for the study from the Washington-based Council for
Biotechnology Information.

Runge focused on eight crops: maize, soybeans, cotton, rapeseed/canola,
wheat, potatoes, rice and sugar beets. Biotech varieties of the first four
-- maize, soybeans, cotton and rapeseed/canola -- have been commercialized
in the United States, while biotech varieties of wheat, potatoes, rice and
sugar beets are still undergoing field trials.

He found that in 2002 half of the $40 billion in the value of harvested
maize, soybeans, cotton and canola was from crops grown from seeds improved
by biotechnology.

Of the four commercialized biotech crops, maize produced the largest
increase in value per acre -- $60 -- over acres planted in traditional
varieties. One acre is slightly half a hectare. Herbicide-tolerant soybeans
improved profits nearly $15 an acre, Runge said.

Eighty percent of soybeans grown in the United States in 2003 was from
biotech seeds, up from 9 percent in 1996. The number of acres planted in
biotech cotton in 2003 was 73 percent compared to 17 percent in 1996 and the
number of biotech-planted acres of maize increased from 4 percent in 1996 to
40 percent in 2003, Runge said.

Current agricultural biotechnology research in the United States is focusing
on improving agronomic, environmental and product quality traits, according
to Runge.

Agronomic traits include further yield improvement of varieties, increased
stalk strength and cold and drought tolerancies.

Environmental traits include low-phytate corn and soybeans that, when
digested by livestock, produce lower levels of phosphorous in waste, which
in turn means less harmful run-off going into the country's water supply.

Product quality traits are nutritional improvements such as better
digestibility of wheat, more beta carotene in potatoes and reduced transfat
acids in crop oils, Runge said.

Between 2001 and 2003, 100 traits have undergone testing by 40 universities
and 35 companies, he said. By 2001, 41 of the country's 50 states had some
type of biotech initiative, he said.

Runge found that biotechnology research and development spending is
increasing at both the federal and state levels among governments,
universities and the private sector. Funding from the National Science
Foundation, most of it funneled through universities, increased 70 percent
between 1996 and 2002, he said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is expected to spend more than
$2.3 billion on agricultural biotech research in 2004, Runge said. Private
companies are expected to spend $2.7 billion, he added.

During questioning, Runge said U.S. farmers are choosing biotechnology
because it benefits them and consumers. Farmers spend less money and time on
pest control and reap higher yields. Consumers are offered foods with
greater nutritional value, he said.

"As consumer confidence grows, it will feed the demand for new biotech
varieties, increase the advantages of those willing to and able to supply
them, and indirectly establish a base of support for continued public
investments in plant biotech," Runge said.

The researcher also urged more investment for public education about the
benefits of biotechnology.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information
Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

Although some of youse probably get the Sierra Club GE news, I
onspread this latest item from them because it deserves wide appreciation.
What worries me is that Dr Diamond's point is ignored rather than answered
by the relevant experts & regulatory authorities.

R

San Jose Mercury News via NewsEdge Corporation -- Three years after a
genetically engineered corn banned from human consumption turned up in taco
shells and was pulled from the market, contaminated grain is still showing
up in the nation's corn supply.

A federal testing program found traces of the banished grain, called
StarLink®, in more than 1 percent of samples submitted by growers and grain
handlers in the past 12 months, government records show.

COMMENTS: This was an unintentional but very telling experiment in genetic
contamination. Although unintentional, it's actually "sound science" done
on a large enough scale so that the results are easy to interpret. The
results show that when a genii gets out of the bottle, you won't be able to
put it back.

As for the 3 wishes -- well, that's the stuff of folklore, but as in all
the tales, that part didn't work out as expected either. Aventis hoped
for gold and received ashes. The FDA hoped for glory and received
humiliation. Shareholders hoped for profits and took losses. And the
genii is out of the bottle and laughing in the fields.

The sound science message in this applies to all of genetic engineering.
If X and Y and Z and, over the course of the years, many hundreds, even
thousands of genetically engineered variants in each of hundreds of
different crops are commercialized and spread into outdoors environments,
then all these genetic constructs will be in circulation for long periods
of time. Since genetic code combines, reassorts, mutates, and reproduces
itself, the long term effects of such permutations need to be considered.
The fact that regulatory agencies still don't do this means they haven't
learned the necessary lesson from the Starlink blunder.

Jim
Jim Diamond, M.D.
Sierra Club Genetic Engineering Committee

Dr Eva Novotny's article on animals avoiding GMF is timely &
valuable. She shows up as invalid the Aventis® interpretation of the
'interesting' numbers purported to justify Aventis®'s maize event Chardon
LL as substantially equivalent to proper maize. Grave concern must attend
the revelation that the figures the UK regulatory system had accepted from
Aventis do not, even on their face, justify the corporation's claims that
this particular maize mutant is wholesome animal feed.

For those who have faced up to these unpalatable facts, the news
next gets worse: Some or many of the figures which have been
misinterpreted by GM corporations and by compliant officials may be
themselves be forgeries.

One proven example of such lying should be much better known that
it appears to be. The gist of Monsanto's case for registering Roundup®
with an image of low toxicity was a large batch of forgeries purchased from
Industrial Biotest Corp, whose senior executives served years in jail for
faking these tests. If one or another Mike Moore wants to do something
useful, he could trace these convicts: are they generating new printouts of
LD50 "measurements"? Many details are available in the Ecologist article
at the time. I imagine Rachel's Week could help with a summary of their
crimes.

When I outlined these facts to the NZ poisons regulatory body, the
Health Dept officials who had failed to mention them rolled out their glib
prepared contingency which they had ready in case anyone raised these
facts: 'ah yes - all those tests have been now actually performed, and
the results turn out to be essentially the same as the forged ones'. This
was a decade ago so I could not slap on them the trendy response "like,
yeah right".

One must give credit to the USA justice system for the Industrial
Biotest® criminals' getting punished. However, one must also wonder how
much Monsanto executives knew about these crimes; and they were not
punished. And one must wonder whether forgery of test results is prevalent
for GMOs.

The general point is unpalatable, indeed sordid, but must be faced:
not only misinterpretation but outright forgery are very real possibilities
in applications for legal permits to spread around exotic chemicals OR
those other, more novel patented products from the chemical industry
RoundupReady® GMOs e.g soybean mutants, "Bt"-toxin-suffused maize, etc.

It is of course difficult to discern whether a given applicant is
merely misrepresenting or, furthermore, presenting forged "measurements".
And each batch of purported data applies only to one single 'event' i.e a
unique mutant line whose metabolism may deviate dangerously in some unique
fashion or to some unique extent. The Showa Denko GM-mutants 1983-89
differed at least quantitatively in not only increased L-tryptophan yield
but also increased toxin yield; there was only a trickle (about 100 cases)
of EMS for half a decade, and then the fabled Superproducer strain V went
into production and produced the epidemic - thousands of people harmed, a
couple hundred killed. Each of those strains deserved thorough qualitative
& quantitative scrutiny which it did not get.

The question today remains whether each GM-mutant 'event' is
getting the detailed scrutiny it deserves. So far, officials are
assiduously rubber-stamping each event. In wealthier countries, a
regulatory charade is mounted, with large batches of measurements alleged.
Officials do not scrutinize these with anything like the scepticism due to
an industry which has been for decades, as Goldsmith says, a refuge for
crooks. In countries such as China, even less regulatory scepticism is
imposed.

The notion of case-by-case scrutiny as purported by the NZ govt
rubber stamp ERMA is in principle v dubious if only in that, if seriously
implemented, it could not generate more than a tiny handful of decisions
within a decade or two as the required testing were actually done and
assessed.

The potential is being continually expanded for epidemics of the
human or other spp. It is to the shame of the RS, RSNZ, USNAS, etc that
the main scientific advisors of govts in the overdeveloped world have
utterly failed to tell the truth about the nature of GM hazards and what
would be entailed in a serious effort to regulate them. To retrieve their
reputations, those official science advisors will have to take an
considerable pull.

R

This operative Grieve has recently been made FRSNZ for services
rendered.

To: Janet Grieve Pres NZAssn of Scientists

Subject: your questions

Dear Dr Grieve,

I am responding to your call in the RSNZ 'Alert'.
The questionnaire is not well composed. The idea that all existing
field trials be suspended is not the only possible or even the most likely
government policy. More likely would be that during the period of the
Inquiry, no new field tests will be approved, but investigation by ERMA
staff will proceed to scrutinise existing field trials more closely than
before, in view of the King Salmon case and others.

Here are my comments on your intro and questions.

>It is possible that a proposed moratorium on releasing
>genetically modified organisms (GMOs) may be extended to field
>trials for the duration of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into
>Genetic Engineering.
>
>1. Is the current public debate about the safety of genetic
>engineering and GMO release affecting your ability to do
>science?

I am not a current experimenter in the field, but I was in it
before most of the current practitioners and I attempt to contribute from
that perspective to what you term the debate. I regard this 'debate' as
very scanty & sporadic & even inchoate, but it is something toward what
should happen. To resent it as if it could cease rather than expand is
severely unrealistic. There is no chance that the period of unchallenged
secretive experimentation in GE will persist; a main practical difficulty
is that some of the enthusiasts have yet to face up to this fact. It is
not a proper role of NZAS to assist the attempted protraction of this
period of unscrutinised GE. I refer you anew to the NZAS policy under
President W Q Green which advocated public scrutiny (not case-by-case in
the expensive ERMA rubber-stamp charade, but more fundamentally scrutiny of
policy).

>2. Would a moratorium on field trials affect your long-term
>commitment to staying in New Zealand?

yes, it would increase that commitment.

>3. In relation to Point 2, have you had a job offer from
>overseas?

no; and if Phil l'Huillier has, then let us wish him Godspeed.


>4. Would you advise a student to take up a career in gene
>technology?

of course not - the artificial commercial bubble is about to
burst, and there are far too many scientists in the field already to be
sustained by any reasonable future developments. Biologists are being
purged from university positions to make room for molecular biologists in a
'gene rush' less rational than a typical gold rush.

Most seriously for the NZAS, science itself is being seriously
degraded by the secretive commercialism which characterises this gene rush.
Most of the gene technology that is being done lately is based on junk
science anyhow. NZAS has done nothing that I know of to arrange critical
discussion of this science. Have you foreseen how this will look to the
Royal Commission and to the public?

I have indeed advised several promising recent graduates to stay
out of this fad as it is most unlikely to lead them to a career at all, let
alone a career in real science.

I must point out that my message to you requesting a copy of NZAS
policy on GE has not been acknowledged. That fact is among the evidence
that this questionnaire is intended for the purpose of promoting GE, as Dr
Berridge has so assiduously done recently on behalf of NZAS. I am dismayed
that you have not responded at all to my request for up-to-date info on
NZAS GE policy. Do you seriously claim a right to ignore thus a former
councillor of NZAS?

Yours sincerely

R

ISIS Press Release 13/12/03
Animals Avoid GM Food, for Good Reasons

Experimental and anecdotal evidence shows that animals seek to avoid GM
food and do not thrive if forced to consume such food.

Dr Eva Novotny reports.

In the course of preparing a submission to the public hearing on a
genetically modified (GM) maize that the UK government wanted to put on
the National Seed Register, I had the opportunity to review evidence on
how animals respond to GM food. The evidence makes interesting reading.

Chardon LL experiments

Chardon LL is a GM maize engineered for tolerance to the herbicide
glufosinate. The whole plant is intended as cattle-feed, but no
experiments on whether this is safe or suitable has been carried out.

Approval of the application of Aventis for commercial growing of this
maize in the UK was granted on the basis of two animal-feeding
experiments, one on feeding kernels to chickens and the other on feeding
the isolated GM protein to rats. In both experiments, the investigators
concluded that the tested animals consumed food and gained weight normally.

However, reanalysis of the data led to a different conclusion.

The first experiment fed Chardon LL maize kernels to 280 young broiler
chickens over 42 days, purportedly to detect differences in nutrient
quality of corn samples. All the chickens were allowed to eat at will.

The official report said: "Results of live bird traits show that
source of corn had no effect on body weight, feed intake, or percent
mortality over the experimental period and Glufosinate tolerant corn
from the U.S.A. is comparable in feeding value, for 0-42 day broilers,
relative to the commercially available corn hybrid. Therefore, the
nutritive value of glufosinate tolerant corn hybrid is equivalent to a
commercially available corn hybrid." The mortality rate was judged to be
normal.

Closer examination of the data shows up many unexplained anomalies.

Although chickens on the GM diet have, on average, weights only 1% below
the average weight in the control group, the error bars are much wider
for chickens fed GM maize; and they grow progressively wider as the
experiment progresses.

During the first phase of the experiment (days 0-1, the test group
eating GM maize consumed 9 gm more than the control group; during the
second phase (18-32 days), consumption had dropped to 7 gm less; and in
the final phase (days 32-42) consumption by the test group had fallen to
63 gm less than that of the control group. Again, the error bars are
much greater for the test group and increase with time.

Average body weights and feed intakes of the chickens do not vary
significantly, as concluded in the study. Nevertheless, the much larger
error bars for both these quantities give concern that the weight gains
and the feeding patterns were erratic in the treated group, indicating
that at least some of the chickens were not thriving on the
glufosinate-resistant maize.

Information on deaths during the study is given only in the form of
mortality: 7.14 ± 5.47 % for chickens eating the glufosinate-resistant
maize and 3.57 ± 4.29 % for those fed commercial hybrid corn. Although
the former values are twice those of the latter, the study points out
that values of 5 to 8 % in male broilers are normal at that laboratory.

Nevertheless, it may be significant that the mortality rate was twice as
high among the chickens eating the GM maize as compared with those fed
commercial non-GM hybrid maize.

Another experiment involved feeding PAT-protein to rats. This study on
rats, like that on chickens, has little relevance to cattle, as the
digestive systems of these animals are very different. Furthermore, it
was not the Chardon LL maize itself, but the isolated PAT-protein it
contains that was tested; and the effects of feeding the isolated
protein must be expected to differ from the effects of feeding the whole
maize.

Also, the very short time during which the experiment was pursued (14
days) gives no indication of possible long-term effects of feeding over
a lifetime, especially when the maize is to be fed to a very different
animal species. Only five male rats and five female rats were used in
each of the four groups, and the individual rats had substantial
differences in weight even at the start of the experiment.

Nonetheless, the studies claimed, "Average mean food consumption over
treatment was in the same range for treated groups and controls",
"Occasionally recorded differences between controls and treated groups
were generally small, showed no dose-relationship or consistent trend"
and "Mean body weights were similar for treated groups and controls.
There were no differences which could be attributed to treatment with
the test article."

Although the purpose of the study was to test for toxicity, the data
provide evidence that the animals may not be thriving on a diet
including the PAT-protein. The evidence for this suggestion comes from
data on body weights and food consumption.

The 40 young, rapidly growing rats were divided into two control groups
and two test groups, each containing 5 males and 5 females. All animals
were allowed to eat at will.

Tables provided, separately for males and females, the average weight of
each of the four groups as measured on several days of the experiment.
For males eating a small amount of PAT-protein, weights remained nearly
the same as for one of the control groups; while for those eating the
high dose of PAT-protein, weights fell progressively below those of all
other groups, even though these rats were marginally the heaviest group
at the beginning of the experiment. Females in both groups consuming
PAT-protein had weights falling gradually below those of the two control
groups, although the females fed the high dose were the heaviest group
at the beginning. For both males and females consuming high-doses of
PAT-protein, weight gain per day, averaged over the duration of the
experiment, was distinctly lower than for either control group.

During the latter half of the experiment, data for individual animals
show that 2 males and 2 females on the low-PAT-protein diet were rapidly
falling behind in weight as compared with other rats in the same group
and in both of the two control groups. Of the rats on the
high-PAT-protein diet, 3 males and one female were falling behind in
weight during the latter half of the experiment.

While these data are not conclusive because too few animals were studied
over too short a time, the low rates of weight-gain in several of the
animals eating PAT-protein suggest that some individuals were not
thriving on the diets that included PAT protein.

The data also showed unusual patterns in the food intake, averaged over
the group, of animals consuming the high dose of PAT-protein, suggesting
that the diet did not suit the rats. In the middle of the experiment,
both males and females on this diet had an increase in food intake
followed by a dip, unlike the other groups; then, over the last five
days, their food consumption showed a sharp rise, again unlike other groups.
Stray cattle did not eat GM maize

The following press release - 'Damage To Gm Maize National List Trial
Site' - was issued by the then Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and
Food on November 10, 2000:

The NIAB (National Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology) have
notified MAFF of damage to a national list trial of GM forage maize
taking place in Somerset. The damage was caused by cattle straying onto
the site in October. There is no evidence that the cattle ate any of the
maize.

"Sheridan - the maize in question - has full approval under European GM
legislation to be marketed for both animal and human food use. The
undamaged maize at the site has since been harvested."

Sheridan is a GM forage maize that contains the same genetic construct
(conferring herbicide tolerance) as Chardon LL. It is interesting to
note that the cattle did not wish to eat any of the maize.

'When the Corn Hits the Fan'

American journalist Steven Sprinkel wrote an article with the above
title in an ACRES, USA Special Report dated 19 September, 1999
(reproduced on the Natural Law Party Wessex website,
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/), which contains the following
excerpt.

After four months of retrieving anecdotes from Kansas to Wisconsin, I
think its high time to sample the producer community more thoroughly to
see how many stories are out there. About the hogs that wouldnít eat the
ration when the GMO crops were included. About the farmer who said
"Well, if you want your cattle to go off their feed, just switch them
out to a GMO silage." About the farmer who said that his cattle broke
through an old fence and ate down the non-GMO hybrids but wouldn't touch
the Round-up ready corn, and as a matter of fact "They had to walk
through the GMOs to get to the Pioneer 3477 on the other side." About
the cattleman who saw the weight-gain of his cattle fall off when he
switched over to GMO sources. About the organic farmer with a terrible
deer problem on his soybeans, and when he drives out at night there are
forty of them mowing down his tofu beans while across the road there
isn't one doe eating on the Round-up Readies. About the raccoons romping
by the dozen in the organic corn, while down the road there isn't one
ear that's been touched in the Bt fields. Even the mice will move on
down the line if given an alternative to these ìcropsî. What is it that
they know instinctively that most of us ignore?

Other incidents of cattle refusing to eat Bt maize

Various scientists working actively with the farming community in the
United States have reported difficulties feeding GM maize to cattle. In
April 2000, one of them (who has asked to remain anonymous) sent the
following information:

"There have been dozens of such reports over the last two years.
Generally, the reports are concerned with Bt maize. Many farmers feed
maize to their cattle just as it grows, without mixing in other
feedstuffs. Typical reports are that the farmer buys a new shipment of
maize, which his cattle either refuse to eat or eat with reduced
consumption. Upon making enquiries, he discovers that the maize is a
genetically modified variety. When he replaces it with a non-modified
maize, the cattle start eating again."

Scientific evidence for animal preferences

Although it may be difficult to credit animals with the ability to
distinguish between GM and non-GM feed, this anecdotal evidence is
supported by scientific evidence that they can indeed distinguish
between organically- and non-organically-produced feed; moreover, they
have a definite preference for the former (see "Do animals like good
food?" this issue).

Conclusion

Re-analysis of experiments on chickens and on rats fed Chardon LL GM
maize suggest that, contrary to the official conclusions, at least some
individual animals do not gain weight as rapidly as they should when
given a diet including GM feed. Furthermore, there appear to be
irregularities in the feeding habits of at least some animals given GM
feed. In the experiment on chickens, mortality was twice as high among
those fed the GM maize as among those fed non-GM maize.

Existing scientific evidence indicates that farm animals prefer
organically produced over conventionally produced feed; while a
substantial amount of anecdotal evidence on both domestic and wild
animals indicates that, given a choice, they will avoid GM feed and, if
forced to eat GM feed, they do not thrive.

(This is an edited version of Report for the Chardon LL Hearing:
Non-suitability of genetically engineered feed for animals, by Eva
Novotny, Scientists for Global Responsibility, May 2002.)

This article can be found on the I-SIS website at
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/AAGMF.php

Fonterra is neck-&-neck with Nestlé for the title of 'world's
biggest international trader of dairy products'.

The claim that ViaLactia® is attempting no gene-tampering is
implausible, as it was founded by fanatical proponents of gene-jiggering.

This line 'we don't really believe in it but have to keep up with
unidentified Joneses' is curiously unconfident.

R

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?reportID=53009&storyID=3539351

Putting a toe in the GM pool
NZ HERALD
15.12.2003
By LIAM DANN primary industries editor

To modify or not to modify? That is the question facing Fonterra as it
juggles consumer expectations with pressure to stay ahead of competitors
scientifically.

Fonterra has no intention at this stage of marketing genetically modified
products, says director of marketing and innovation Bob Major.

He is charged with charting Fonterra's course through the political and
commercial minefield of genetic research.

But while Fonterra is driven by the market, he says the company cannot
ignore the potential of genetic modification.

In five to 10 years GM food is likely to be a reality in many Fonterra
markets, says Major.

"It's our responsibility to ensure we're up with the play with those
technologies and at least know what we can do.

"Certainly all our competitors are doing it."

Gene research accounts for just 1 per cent of the budget at Fonterra's
innovation centre in Palmerston North.

The company spends much more on its organic operations, Major says.

Most of that gene research does not involve any genetic modification.

Fonterra has just one project involving transgenic experiments and there are
no plans for field trials.

That work involves taking DNA from fruit and putting it into bacteria.

"It's not to do with fruit characteristics. It's to do with what that enzyme
might do to milk or cheese."

New Zealand's grass-fed cows produce a flavour of cheese that is not popular
with Japanese and Korean consumers.

They see our cheese as inferior to the European product, which gets its
flavour from grain-fed cows.

To deal with that problem Fonterra has developed a cheese called Taupo,
which is selling well in Japan. A cultured bacteria [sic] is used to alter the
flavour.

"That particular bacteria, when you grow it in the milk, produces enzymes
which alter the flavour of the cheese so there is less Oceanic [grass-fed]
flavour," Major says.

"That's been quite successful but it's quite an expensive way to do it. So
we're looking for efficient, less-expensive ways to do that."

The work involves taking genes from some bacteria and putting them in other
bacteria to see what enzymes they produce.

"We collect the enzymes and use those in the cheese manufacture to see what
that does to the nature of the final cheese."

Major accepts that the Japanese are still very sensitive to GM foods.

In part, Fonterra is doing the "blue-skies research" now, he says.

"If the market doesn't accept it we have still built up a lot of knowledge
around what enzyme does what to what particular milk.

"In that case you don't actually use the modified genes in the milk but it
is a research tool that has enabled you to find what you're looking for."

Much of Fonterra's gene research is based around the hunt for medically
beneficial proteins.

Subsidiary firm Vialactia - which has been targeted by the protest group
Mothers Against Genetic Engineering - is not modifying genes.

Major says it trawls through databases of cows to find traits such as fat
and protein content, then identify related genes and investigate the milk
from that group.

Once cows with the right genes are identified, researchers can breed
positive traits into the herd without any genetic modification.

Identifying genes associated with beneficial proteins offers huge financial
rewards, Major says.

Lactoferrin boosts the immune system and acepeptides may be beneficial in
heart disease.

A probiotic bacteria enhances gut health and immune response. "We already
sell two strains," Major says. "We're looking at exactly what genes in those
particular bacteria provide the health benefits."

The biggest single example of the value of being first on the market with
new science is a high-calcium milk powder called Anlene, now the
second-most-valuable brand Fonterra has (the leader is Anchor).

Despite the fact that every other dairy company now has its own high-calcium
powder, Anlene remains the leading brand, he says.

Outside the labs Fonterra has other big choices to make about GM.

New Zealand genetics company Ambreed plans to start selling semen from
cloned bulls.

They will have to export their product. Major says Fonterra is not
interested.

Another concern is the release of GM grasses. Fonterra will not buy milk
from cows fed on such pastures.

"The way in which a scientist would look at is that a cow that is eating
genetically modified grass produces milk which itself has none of the
modified DNA," Major says. "So it's really GM-free milk, but that's not
exactly the way the consumer looks at it."

Herald Feature: Genetic Engineering

One Saturday in 1972 on a door-to-door collection I found myself at
a 1920s bungalow, surrounded by much more modern commercial buildings in
the Auckland suburb of Browns Bay. Deferred maintenance was evident; the
occupant turned out to be a dear simple elderly soul refusing all offers
from would-be 'developers' - she was indeed going to see out her life where she
had always lived.

Looming over her bungalow was a 50-ft avocado tree, dripping with
large green cannonballs.

I had moved into my own Auckland home just a couple year earlier,
to find in a smallish backyard an evergreen tree which bloomed profusely
but never bore any fruit. The 3-volume textbook 'The Evergreen Orchard'
told me that this was an avocado - which I'd never seen, being from
Wellington - and that only 1 in 10,000 seedling avocado trees was
fruitful. Grafting onto a mature tree small twigs from one of the few
fruitful strains Haas, Fuerte etc was said to be difficult, so I'd purged
the tree.

I asked the old woman how her tree came to be. "I just planted a
seed in the back yard when I was a kiddie - same as you do with a peach
stone", she replied. "Nothing to it" she assured me.

I tried to tell her what an unusual event had befallen her. She
proved unable to grasp the concept that an improbable blessing had come her
way. I tried a little too hard to expound 1-in-10,000. I even went so far
as to point out that almost everything of interest that happens is
extremely improbable - me, for instance; she then became unable to
conceal her conclusion that I was crazy.

I gave up on this project of scientific education, and switched to
a request. "My colleague Professor Richard 'Mr plant viruses' Matthews has
a couple dozen avocado seedlings on his holiday property and can't get any
grafting wood of the fruitful strains from the commercial growers. Might
you allow him to prune some twigs off your tree, please?"

"Why does he bother - you just plant an avocado seed and it gives
fruit like mine", she repeated. Nevertheless she undertook to humour this
other deluded person I'd mentioned.

A few years later Matthews told me he'd gone round and accosted the
old woman. She had again been unable to understand the need for grafting,
and had again appeared to think she was dealing with a loony. As he was by
then one of the two FRSs in NZ at the time, I felt in good company.

He had struck it lucky with his grafting. Also he mentioned he had
one such grafted tree at his Auckland residence, producing very large
fruit, but also very bland; herbs, vinegar etc soon take care of that.

In 1981 I met a big-time million-trees-annually nurseryman, who
upon hearing of it wanted to extend propagation of this 'Browns Bay'
avocado. I took him to Matthews' house: in deep porous volcanic soil, that
colossal net of fine roots had grown a new 50-ft tree, "a major producer of
human food October thru April" as Matthews put it. He, unlike the old
woman who in a sense created this mutant, had no difficulty understanding
why we wanted a dozen or so twigs off his tree.

The prof had just learned from his colleagues in plant science
that, during the intervening decade or so, new avocado seedlings in NZ had
become fruitful about 1 in 2 ! This shift of 4 orders of magnitude, from
10^-4 to 10^0, intrigued me. I suggested some transposon might have
brought in a small package of DNA conferring the trait of fruitfulness. He
dismissed this idea on the sole ground that I'd not given any evidence that
this had happened to avocado; but he had no alternative idea. Ah well -
at least he didn't deny the phenomenon on the ground that no mechanism had
been envisaged (a common fallacy). And of course he didn't deny that
horizontal gene transfer occurs in nature; indeed some plant viruses, on
which he was the leading expert, are among the best-known vectors for HGT.

The avocado is a peculiar plant, changing sex daily and, for some
period of history, so lacking fruitfulness that its survival as a species
looks like another puzzle for students to research. But for seeds to grow
into fruitful trees (most of them inferior little twisted fruit, I should
perhaps add - 'my' event remains valuable) when they hardly ever had
borne any fruit at all, looked to me like micro-evolution in action.

I assumed for many years that the variety should be named after the
dear old woman who thought I was crazy. Then I realised it should be
named, if after anyone, for the person who first brought it to the notice
of science. I don't know whether this has yet been done. I continue to
sool nurserymen onto this valuable cultivar for grafting wood. Matthews
FRS has passed away but his 'town tree' is still looming over his former
house, dripping with green cannonballs.

As a consequence of Peter Wills publishing his excellent paper 'New
evidence of problems with GMOs'
he received a fax
from the lawyers of the Life® Sciences PR gang accusing him of a serious
breach of professional conduct for publishing his paper. (He is
counterattacking handily against this furphy.)

Here is another of his essays on GM. I am embarrassed by the PC racism,
but otherwise I recommend this piece.

R

The intrinsic value of genes and organisms

Peter R Wills
Department of Physics, The University of Auckland

From the perspective of modern biology, the most definitive differences
between species are found in their genes. Species gradually diverge and
differentiate themselves from one another when they stop interbreeding and
the inheritance of their genes follows separate genealogies. This has been
the guiding force of biological evolution for three or four billion years
but genetic engineering has put an end to its status as a natural
principle. We have found ways to overcome the apparently happenstance
restrictions on what combinations of genes are found in organisms. It is
now possible to take human genes and put them into viruses, bacteria,
plants, mice, sheep, cows and other animals. It is also possible to
transpose foreign genes into human cells. From a technological perspective
there is absolutely nothing special about human genes. They can be
analysed and manipulated in the same way as genes from any other organism.
From the engineering point of view, human genes are just DNA molecules with
particular sequences. And now that we know the sequence of the entire
human genome, any human gene can be artificially synthesised at will and
inserted into another organism.

Actually, we should no longer think of genes as DNA molecules. We should
think of genes as information. Genetic information is transmitted
naturally through biological inheritance but it can also be transmitted and
stored artificially in whatever other way we choose: as letters written on
a page, as digital information burned onto a compact disk or, as is
proposed for individuals, carried on a bracelet-chip ready for immediate
access as a record of that person's unique set of distinguishing genetic
features. The information in the human genome is considered so valuable
that billions of dollars and enormous scientific effort have been expended
to retrieve it for human use. It has become yet another material resource,
a commodity, available for ownership and exploitation according to the
rules and agreements of our globalised society.

But what about genetic information in itself, as it has been given to us by
evolution, and before we retrieved it for our own use? Do genes have
intrinsic value? What respect, if any, should we afford human genes
themselves? The way in which we choose answers to these questions will
have a profound effect on what it means to be human in the future. In the
hands of the genetic engineer, through the material outworking of his of
her plans, our answers to these questions will enter the processes of
biological evolution at their very root, multiplying and spreading out with
a life all of their own, no longer dependent on or related to the
circumstances and purposes of their conception. Our ability to manipulate
human genes poses an existential dilemma of unprecedented proportions. We
cannot escape deciding, as if handing down a judgment that will take
immediate effect, what intrinsic value human genes have here and now. And
when we put human genes into other organisms, the value of both changes
irreversibly.

Before we change ourselves and our world forever, we should investigate
very carefully the circumstances and the character of the processes at the
origin of the ìothernessî whereby we identify and value ourselves as human.
What is the relationship between us humans and our evolutionary relatives
and how has it come about? Are our genes really our own? Do we have any
broad responsibility for our genetic relationship with other species and
the biological roots of our place in the world around us? There is a
relatively recent point in time beyond which we cannot differentiate
ourselves from other hominid species. If we trace back further through
evolution we find that all cellular life derives from an ancient common
ancestor. The genes of all of hominid species have a recent common origin
and they differ comparatively little from one another. After comparing our
genes, we might say that the average difference between humans and
chimpanzees is only about ten times the normal difference between two
unrelated people. Yet we humans assume a position of enormous privilege
above all other species, emphasising our separateness from, rather than
our commonality with, other organisms.

Although it is not always recognised in practice, humanity, down to the
level of the individual person, assigns itself a certain intrinsic value
that is upheld by political and societal principles and institutions. Our
genetic information, differentiated through the branching of the tree of
life, is a foundation of the physical and biological constitution of
everything human, so it would seem logical that when we start to think
about our genes we should take an approach that is open to associating some
intrinsic value with them. The prospect is odd. How, in any way, could
information, recorded in the form of molecules linked together in
sequences, accumulate intrinsic value, something immaterial, during the
processes of evolution? Within the Western scientific tradition the idea
makes no sense. Science deals with general categories of material objects,
their interactions and transformations. Even its methodology is said to
produce value-free knowledge, dissociated from the particularities of any
historical process or procedure of observation. From a scientific
perspective, values are assigned arbitrarily to things or situations and
are completely contingent upon the assumptions or perspective adopted by
whomever makes the judgment. Scientists think of evolution as a series of
events taking place in the material world, governed by dynamic processes of
a physical nature that is devoid of any necessary relationship to values.
The idea of intrinsic value is foreign to science and within the context of
science cannot be applied to genes or organisms, either human or non-human.

On the other hand, by applying scientific methods we can reconstruct in
some detail the patterns of genetic change that have occurred during
evolution. Sometimes we can even guess why a particular genetic change has
conferred an advantage on a some members of a species to the extent that no
other members of the species have survived. It is within the context of
this insight into natural selection that we must situate our apprehension
of the intrinsic value of genes. The value that a gene has for itself is
the selective advantage, the fitness for survival and reproduction, that it
confers on the organism carrying it. And the most important feature of the
selective advantage conferred by any genetic change is that it is always
tried and measured relative to the characteristics that alternative,
similar sequences confer on the organism, all else remaining equal. Then
we must realise that the effect of any characteristic on the survival of
organisms depends on the environment they are in, and the ecological
environment is determined in part by the genetically influenced traits of
other species in the organismís ecological system. These complex
influences on the mechanisms of genetic change can be described
scientifically, but science holds back from assigning any value to the
coincidences of genetic patterns and historical events that constitute the
survival of organisms. For science, value as survival is completely
arbitrary. Yes, there are patterns in the genetic information of
organisms. So what? Now we can change them and create new patterns.

Science produces knowledge that makes a legitimate claim to be universal,
but it is rarely stipulated that this universality is restricted to a
certain domain of experience. Knowledge derived from non-scientific
perspectives does not always have the same limitations and can be a source
of wisdom that transcends science. In our own country we have a living
example of a non-Western perspective that does not take scientific
agreement as the final arbiter of truth or sound decision-making. Unlike
science, matauranga Maori does not seek the ultimate foundations of reality
in abstract principles that prescribe the behaviour of a purely material
reality. Rather, Maori often express a sense of order and structure that
is first and foremost local and historical, contingent on events and
relationships established by precedent, not given unalterably and
permanently as natural laws. In Maori tradition achieving knowledge of
something includes arriving at a perception of its proper location in time
and space. Knowledge of things and events is concerned with the
particularities of whakapapa - layers of genealogy and lines of descent,
their patterns and linkages. Everything in the world is recognised as
being related to everything else and the true character of something is
dependent on its history. Everything is rooted, not only to its origin in
time, but also to its origin in space - the place and tradition of the
tangata whenua to which it belongs. The relationship of people and events
with the earth and its local geography, evoking the metaphor of an
umbilical connection, is of particular poignancy in the contrast between
scientific and Maori explanations of the how things come about and what
their value is.

We should not be surprised then to find that some Maori have been
especially vocal in expressing opposition to aspects of projects that
involve the engineering of human genes. The origin of the genetic material
that was originally taken from an individual person and then amplified,
analysed and transposed into another organism has often been a matter of
special concern for Maori. The Royal Commission on Genetic Modification
showed sensitivity to this perspective when it recommended that wherever
possible, synthetic genes or mammalian homologues of human genes should be
used in transgenic animals to avoid the use of genes derived directly from
humans. More broadly, rapprochement with Maori perspectives requires
renewal of cultural partnerships. We are now in a position to determine
together what weight should be given to ìancientî ways that are linked to a
world-view that does not give primacy to the scientific prescription of
reality and the ìmodernî way that demands that we establish a single lowest
common denominator based on narrowly prescribed global standards and
specifications. Who, in the end, has the power to decide what ways of
thinking will carry weight in our society? We do, if we choose to and if
we are courageous enough to live with the consequences. But shall we base
our judgment on standards and processes that have been negotiated through
consensual arrangements that follow from the Treaty of Waitangi, or shall
we conform to the demands and imposed force of current international
commerce and global political power?

In my opinion, we in Aotearoa/New Zealand should choose a path, contrary to
global trends of recent years, that expands as far as possible what it
means to be human in a direction that includes, rather than excludes, much
of what we tend to look upon as non-human, as ìotherî, whether it is genes
or organisms that we are talking about. It seems to me that the most
important genuinely humanitarian changes in recent history have been
achieved by expanding the categories that are human rather than limiting
them. For example, being a citizen in a democracy is a privilege which has
been extended to more and more humans over the last couple of centuries,
encompassing the freeing of slaves and woman suffrage. Accordingly, when
we think of genes and other organisms we should think in a way that
emphasises our commonality with other species and extends appropriate
privilege to them in recognition of our shared ancestry and the
relationships implicit in the tree of life. We should not rely on an
antiquated notion that sets what is human above everything else in Nature.
On what basis do we prohibit completely any engineering of our own species
but allow the genetic engineering of animals after a brief process led by
the Environmental Risk Management Authority?

If we decided to assign some intrinsic value to the orderly inter-species
linkages that make up the tree of life, then we might want place greater
restrictions on what genetic engineers are allowed to do to other species,
imposing a need to show respect for the precedents that the historical
processes of evolution have established. The genetic engineering we
currently allow reduces the value of the orderly linkages of the tree of
life to pure utility. Our relatedness to other species is exploited for
potential commercial gain, as was the case of the Waikato sheep that were
used as bioreactors for the production of a human protein that it was hoped
might eventually be sold as a pharmaceutical product. It is part of the
methodology of scientific engineering to make use of whatever natural order
is available without assigning any intrinsic value to it. Considerations
of value or respect that should belong to the objects being engineered, or
their relationships, are superfluous to the engineering methods themselves.
Just to prove that it is possible, humans have put into a rhesus monkey a
gene from jellyfish that is capable of making the animalís cells
fluorescent green. An engineer can put a human gene into a bacterium in an
afternoon; or create cows that graze in a field and for all ordinary
intents and purposes cannot be distinguished from ordinary cows except that
they carry human genes and produce humanoid proteins.

If we are going to move beyond our current anthropocentric and utilitarian
ethics of genetic engineering then we must first recognise that the genes
that we call human are simply our versions of genes that also belong to
other species, in many cases all other species. We could start by
exploring how our view of genes would change if we inverted the usual
relationship between science and matauranga Maori. Suppose we decided to
subject the scientific conception of genes as pure information, dissociated
from any physical or historical associations, to the Maori conception of
phylogenies as whakapapa, bound to the circumstances and conditions of
their occurrence and subject to appropriate tikanga. This would be a
radical reversal of current trends. We would be saying that in our
jurisdiction genes are going to be given a status beyond their scientific,
technical specification as laid out in rules of international commerce. I
would argue that this is exactly the way of thinking that the character of
genes requires. There is something in the unity and diversity of
biological processes that points to and marks what happens at particular
times and in particular places as being uniquely differentiated from
everything else while being simultaneously related to it. Whakapapa gives
vibrant voice to the character of Natureís history in a way that leaves
science mute in the ethical, spiritual and cultural dimensions of human
life. But, like a self-fulfilling prophesy, genetic engineering is
refashioning the orderly linkages of whakapapa in its own image, having
denied that either genes or organisms have any intrinsic value in the first
place.

Let us view, from an evolutionary context, what it means to put a human
gene into a sheep or a cow. The genetic constitution of domesticated
animals has been shaped and moulded by thousands of years of selective
breeding conducted by generation after generation of farmers. Much of this
breeding is now done by using artificial techniques, especially in
industrial societies where many aspects of the formerly close domestic
relationship with animals have been abandoned. The tendency for the value
of these friends of humans to be measured in purely commercial terms has
been taken to a new extreme. Sheep, cows and goats have all been
converted, by putting human genes into them, into bioreactors for the
production of humanoid proteins. I am not completely opposed in principle
to every possible instance of genetically engineering an animal, but I do
believe it is not something that should be done with impunity, outside of a
deep intuition and understanding of the relationship between species.
Genetic engineering changes the relationship between our species in an
unprecedented way. Is it of no consequence that domestication involves the
reciprocity of friendship between species?

It is highly probable that domestic animals have made a significant
contribution to the genetic constitution of humans. We can reasonably
surmise that circumstances uniquely associated with the presence of
domesticated animals produced variations in individual human survivability
and thereby caused biological modification of our species over a period of
tens of thousands of years. We could speculate that even the emotions that
humans are capable of feeling are influenced by genetic features that have
been acquired as a result of those selective pressures. Should this be the
case, the character of the thing we take to be uniquely human, the
conscious identification of the individual ìselfî, owes a debt to the other
species with whom our ancestors formed societies. And we could recognise
that debt by extending to other species privileges and rights of the sort
that we claim for ourselves as humans on account of our selfhood. Note
that I have not said that we should attempt to extend exactly the same
rights and privileges to members of other species. But I believe that the
right not to be genetically engineered should be extended quite generally
to the species with whom we have close genetic and social relationships.
And should it turn out that the only way to give life to some humans is to
put human genes into some animals, then those chimaeric beings should be
given a very special status in recognition of the extreme imposition that
we have placed them under, arbitrarily rearranging their very constitution
for our benefit, down to the DNA in every one of their cells. Our current
laws, conceived primitively in terms of protecting animals from immediate
physical cruelty, are hopelessly ill-equipped to deal with these realities
of genetic engineering.

These brief comments about our relationships with animals serve only to
demonstrate some of the considerations that have been neglected in
discussions of the ethical, spiritual and cultural aspects of human genes
in other organisms. Very different arguments need to be brought to bear on
the question of human genes in laboratory mice, in plants or in
micro-organisms, but in each case the perspective offered by inquiring into
the intrinsic value of genes and organisms must be adopted at some stage.
Genetic engineering confronts us starkly with the question of the
intrinsic value of life itself, its entire history and evolution. On the
basis of my own respect for the complexity of biology and its historically
determined structure, I oppose the release of genetically engineered
organisms, including those that contain human genes, from contained
laboratory conditions. By introducing the products of genetic engineering
into the open environment where they can invade natural genealogies we have
started reducing the ordered tree of life to a twisted heap of broken
twigs. If we take the process to its ultimate conclusion, future
generations will curse us for our arrogance.


Peter R Wills, for Toi Te Taiao

A contribution to the forthcoming publication ìHuman Genes in Other
Organismsî of the New Zealand Governmentís Bioethics Council, Toi Te Taiao.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/southlandtimes/0,2106,2677503a6568,00.html

letters to: mike.fallow@stl.co.nz

Expert shares GE fears

Southland Times
02 October 2003
By SONIA GERKEN

The Government would be committing New Zealanders to
an unknown future with no chance of going back when it
lifted the moratorium on genetic engineering, former
GE scientist Elvira Dommisse warned.

Not enough was known about the effects of genetic
engineering on the environment, insects and humans for
a moratorium to be lifted, the former Gore woman said
during a brief visit to her home town.

"We don't know what we don't know." Dr Dommisse ran
the GE onion project for Crop and Food from 1985 to
1993, discovered it was possible to introduce GE into
the humble vegetable and was the first person to
publish a paper worldwide on the genetic modification
of onions.

She became involved in genetic engineering because
that was where the funding was and she admitted the
times were exciting.

However, by 1993 she had become disillusioned and
resigned from Crop and Food, no longer wanting to be
involved in research on the genetic engineering of
crops.

Dr Dommisse said she had been annoyed so much funding
was going into biotechnology at the expense of other
sectors of the scientific community, a situation that
had not altered a decade later.

Senior scientists in areas that were vital to the
understanding of the implications of GE, such as
entomology, were being made redundant.

GE offered only short-term gains, if any, and there
was no way of controlling where introduced DNA would
insert itself, Dr Dommisse said.

"It's totally like a Pandora's Box."

Making a plant insect-resistant was only good until
the insect became resistant. Then it was back to
square one, Dr Dommisse said.

It was extraordinary the Government had ignored
well-informed individuals and groups in the GE debate,
not to mention the majority of New Zealanders, who
opposed the lifting of the moratorium.

There was a high degree of unease among those in the
GE research industry, said Dr Dommisse, who keeps in
touch with former colleagues.

Those who worked for a Crown Research Institute
expressed their concerns only privately through fear
of losing their jobs, she said.

Dr Dommisse was convinced once GE field trials began
there would be no way to stop the spread of GE genes
in seeds and pollen borne by insects and the wind,
while the country's international markets, built on a
reputation for food safety and quality, would be
threatened.

The haste with which the Government and GE scientists
were forging ahead was a major concern.

"What scares me is normally there are long-term tests
but everything is being fast-tracked and hush-hushed."

With the moratorium due to be lifted in about five
weeks, Dr Dommisse said it was vitally important to do
anything to slow down the process, such as lobbying
politicians and food manufacturers.If the moratorium
were lifted her greatest fear was for New Zealand's
lucrative honey export industry. Bees foraged
everywhere and it would be devastating if they brought
GE pollen into hives.

In a perfect world the moratorium would stay in place
and GE labelling of food would be compulsory.

In a nearly perfect world the public would be told
exactly where and what the GE trial crops were.

Dr Dommisse doubted if all of those things would
happen but that would not stop her trying to make sure
they did.

from a half-decade ago

'ORGANIC METHODS COULD SAVE FARMING', SAYS CHARLES

By Nick Meo, PA News

The Prince of Wales said today he believed agriculture had "lost its soul",
but could be saved by organic farming.

He spoke of his sympathy for Britain's small farmers and rural communities
struggling to survive - and warned of the dangers of rushing into genetic
crop-farming - when he opened a university research centre.

The prince, who has farmed his Highgrove estate in Gloucestershire
organically for seven years, made his call at the opening of the 5 million
Aberdeen University Centre for Organic Agriculture.

The prince, who was later today expected to meet Scottish National Party
leader Alex Salmond for a private meeting, told his audience: "I believe
agriculture lost its soul.

"Organic farming can put its soul back."

Farm management required "a bit of science and a great deal of art," and
the prince said: "It would be a tragedy of immense proportions if we
repeated the same mistake and became obsessed with genetic crops only to
learn our mistake in 30 years' time."

He added: "We have treated the land and animals as machines. Hopefully we
will learn from our mistakes before it becomes too late.

"The demand for organic produce is a consequence of great concerns over
modern scientific farming."

Addressing an audience of farmers, scientists and academics, the Prince
spoke of the crisis facing small farmers, and his particular concern at the
plight of livestock farmers.

And he warned that Scotland's rural culture was at stake.

"I hope this centre can provide help to those farmers who are struggling to
survive.

"The demand for organic produce is at an all-time high. There are real
opportunities for farmers at a time other avenues are becoming
unprofitable."

He said the arguments for organic farming were not just economic, but
across a whole range of environmental benefits. "I believe they will become
more and more apparent as time goes on."

Warning of a "catastrophic decline" in once-common farmland birds like
skylark, red partridge and lapwing and tree-sparrows, he lamented: "We grew
up with sparrows everywhere. Now you rarely see them."

* * * * *

FOOD:
2) New Report Exposes Myths About World Hunger By Danielle Knight
WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 (IPS) - The myth that world hunger is the unavoidable
result of the forces of nature, coupled with a population explosion,
prevents policy makers from understanding the real causes of starvation
worldwide, says a new report.

"The way people think about hunger is the greatest obstacle to ending
it," says Peter Rosset, director of the California-based Institute for
Food and Development Policy, in a report released Thursday - World Food
Day.

"As millions of people starve, powerful myths block our understanding of
the true causes of hunger and prevent us from taking effective action to
end it." Rosset says.

The report - 'World Hunger: Twelve Myths' - says these notions prevent a
true understanding of the real causes of millions of people starving around
the world.

"The true source of world hunger is not scarcity but policy; not
inevitability but politics," says the report. "The real culprits are
economies that fail to offer everyone opportunities, and societies that
place economic efficiency over compassion." Abundance, not scarcity, best
describes the world's food supply. The world produces enough grain and
many other commonly eaten foods to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per
person a day, according to the report.

Even as countries have excess food, people still go hungry. In 1997, for
example, the American Association for the Advancement of Science found
that, in the developing world, 78 percent of all malnourished children
aged under five live in countries with food surpluses.

"The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available
food," says Twelve Myths. "Even though 'hungry countries' have enough
food for all their people right now, many are net exporters of food and
other agricultural products."

Believing that scarcity is the problem, many governments and international
development institutions - like the World Bank - say the answer to solving
the problem is increasing food production. Dramatic production advances of
the 1970s known as the 'Green Revolution', did increase grain supplies.

"But focusing narrowly on increasing production cannot alleviate hunger
because it fails to alter the tightly concentrated distribution of economic
power that determines who can buy the additional food," says the report.

This is why that in several of the biggest Green Revolution successes -
India, Mexico, and the Philippines for example - grain production and in
some cases exports, have climbed while hunger has persisted.

That nature is to blame for famine is another popular hunger myth that
blurs the real causes of starvation. "It's too easy to blame nature; food
is always available for those who can afford it while starvation during
hard times hits only the poorest," the report says.

"Millions live on the brink of disaster in south Asia, Africa and
elsewhere, because they are deprived of land by a powerful few, trapped in
the unremitting grip of debt, or miserably paid." Natural events rarely
explain deaths, they are simply the final push over this brink. Population
growth is another mythical cause of hunger, says the report.

"Although rapid population growth remains a serious concern in many
countries, nowhere does population density explain hunger," it says. "For
every Bangladesh - a densely populated and hungry country - we find a
Nigeria, Brazil or Bolivia where abundant food resources coexist with
hunger."

Costa Rica, with only half of Honduras' cropped acres per person, boasts a
life expectancy - 11 years longer than that of Honduras and close to that
of developed countries, explains the report.

About half of the myths listed in the report involve false assumptions used
to develop current food, land and agriculture policy. Large farms, the
free-market, free trade and more aid from industrialised countries, have
all been falsely touted as the "cure" to end hunger.

Large landowners who control most of the best land often leave much of it
idle, says Twelve Myths. "By contrast, small farmers typically achieve at
least four to five times greater output per acre, in part because they work
their land more intensively and use integrated, and often more sustainable,
production systems," it says.

Redistribution of land would give millions of small farmers in developing
countries the incentive to invest in land improvements, to rotate crops and
leave land fallow for the sake of long-term soil fertility, according to
the report.

Comprehensive land reform has markedly increased production in countries as
different at Japan, Zimbabwe, and Taiwan. A World Bank study of northeast
Brazil estimates that redistributing farmland into smaller holdings would
raise output by 80 percent.

Free-markets and lifting tariffs on trade have also been touted as the
solution to ending world hunger.

"Such a market is good, government is bad formula can never help address
the causes of hunger," says the report. "Such thinking misleads us into
believing that a society can opt for one or the other, when in fact every
economy on earth combines market and government in allocating resources and
distributing wealth."

Because the market responds to money not actual need, it can only work to
eliminate hunger when purchasing power is widely dispersed, says the report.

As the rural poor are increasingly pushed from land, they are less and less
able to make their demands for food register in the market.

Promoting free trade to alleviate hunger has proven to be a failure, says
Twelve Myths. In most developing countries exports have boomed while hunger
has continued unabated or actually worsened, its says.

"While soybean exports boomed in Brazil to feed Japanese and European
livestock - hunger spread from one-third to two-thirds of the population,"
says the report.

"Where the majority of people have been made too poor to buy the food
grown on their own country's soil, those who control productive resources
will, not surprisingly, orient their production to more lucrative markets
abroad." Pro-trade policies like the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) promotes
export crop production and squeezes out basic food production, it says.
Foreign aid from industrialised countries, often seen as an essential key
to ending hunger and famine, has propped up such free trade and free
market policies. Foreign aid, says the report, "works directly against
the hungry."

U.S. aid in particular is used to promote exports and food production - not
to increase the poor's ability to buy food, it adds. "Even emergency, or
humanitarian aid, which makes up five percent of the total, often ends up
enriching U.S. grain companies while failing to reach the hungry." With
different policies, says Twelve Myths, the world could feed itself.

"Hunger is caused by decisions made by human beings, and can be ended by
making different decisions," says Rosset. "Informed social movements like
those that fought for and won landmark civil rights legislation or
abolished slavery or helped end the war in Vietnam, can end hunger too."
Following its own call to action, the Institute for Food and Development
Policy recently launched an "Economic Human Rights" campaign in the
United States which calls for an end to hunger and poverty in the
wealthiest country in the world.

"The scientific evidence shows it is possible to eliminate hunger," says
Rosset. "As societies we have to decide that it is a priority."

November 24, 2003

Prof. Joe Cummins

e-mail: jcummins@uwo.ca

GM viruses as biopesticides

In 2001 I prepared a witness statement for the New Zealand Royal
Commission on genetically modified crops. My statement dealt with several
issues including that of genetically modified (GM) baculovirus as
bio-pesticides and as gene therapy vectors. Baculoviruses are soil-borne
viruses which are very persistent in the soil and multiply with
relatively low killing power. Genetic enhancement with scorpion toxin,
juvenile hormone or even a human cancer gene provided enhanced insect
killing. However, the development of GM baculovirus insecticides was
proceeding without reference to a growing body of studies preparing
baculoviruses as gene therapy vectors because the viruses were capable
of infecting mammalian cells but could not replicate in those cells but
could deliver sizeable mammalian genes. Baculovirus were prevented from
infecting humans by the action of compliment (innate immunity) but that
barrier could be overcome by exposure to inhibitors of compliment or
deficiency of compliment. Baculoviruses are inherently genetically
unstable and prone to numerous small deletions that effect host range
(reviewed with references in 1). Recently, the frequent deletions were
reported to enhance viral infectivity in mixed virus infections (mixture
of defective deletion strains and complete strains); thus the deletions
were more effective than defective (2). The genetic instability of the
baculoviruses questions their usefulness as GM biopesticides and gene
therapy vectors.

Baculoviruses cause pathological infections in susceptible insects but
may also cause non-pathological infections of insects or other animals
including humans. The virus is stable in the soil for long periods but
when a susceptible insect succumbs to the virus infection it 'melts' on
the surfaces of the plant leaving an infectious scum on the plant
surface. Commercial Baculovirus spray mixtures are available under trade
names such as Cyd-X, Mamestrin, Spodoteran, Gemstar, Gypchek and
Spod-x. Commercial producers include Novartis (Syngenta) Corporation,
Natural Plant Protection of France and USDA Forest Service. The
commercial production of virus sprays does not seem to have been
considered a conflict of interest with the regulatory functions(3).
Baculoviruses are often applied as an ìocclusion bodyî a protein
overcoat containing several virus particles. The occlusion bodies are
registered as the pesticide (4). Combining baculovirus with a natural
neurotoxin , Spinosad, produced from fermenting actinomycetes bacteria
was found to be more effective in controlling tropical corn pests (5).

Many transgenic Baculoviruses have been produced in the laboratory and
field-tested. The Gulf ecology division field-tested a number of
Baculoviruses (nuclear polyhedrosis viruses) using marker gene inserts
to identify host range and both full infections and symptom less
infections (6). A gypsy moth Baculovirus modified with a marker gene and
modified for non persistence was released in a forest plot (7). Patents
have been granted on agicultural applications of recombinant
Baculoviruses. These US patent 5,770,192 covering Baculovirus with
insecticidal toxins such as scorpion and spider venom genes (. US
patent 6,096,304 granted a Baculovirus with a synthetically enhanced
scorpion neurotoxin (9). US patent 6,596,271 grants use of a recombinant
Baculovirus (usually with synthetic scorpion neurotoxin) in combination
with pyrethroid, carbamate or organophosphate chemical insecticides; the
combination is directed towards insects resistant to chemical
insecticides (10). Recently it has been found that more than one
scorpion toxin genes could be pyramided in a Baculovirus creating more
effective control of insect pests (11). The thrust of current research
seems to be use of recombinant Baculovirus with more synthetic
neurotoxins toxins in each virus. None of the above recombinant
Baculovirus insecticides has discussed the consequences of genetic
recombination and the well know tendency of Baculovirus to mutate
(through small deletions) frequently to extend host range for the virus
nor has the consequences of mammalian infection been considered either
by proponents or regulators.

It has been repetedly claimed both by proponents of Baculovirus
insecticides and their regulators in EPA that the viruses are not known
to effect mammals. Such comments are spectacularly deceptive. As
indicated earlier (1) and following that there is a deluge of hundreds
of publications dealing with Baculovirus vectors in gene transduction
and gene therapy of mammals. The virus infects mammalian cells but the
virus does not replicate yielding a desirable vector for delivering
genes to mammalian cells. One complication has been that the healthy
immune compliment inhibits virus entry in the intact animal. Recently
that problem was overcome using synthetic inhibitors of compliment to
enhance gene transfer by Baculovirus vectors (12). Notwithstanding that
there are significant deficiencies in compliment among the members of
the human population. The symptomless Baculovirus infections of cells
described frequently are beginning to be overturned by findings that the
infections do create significant impacts. The most striking impacts are
those of enhanced promoter activity and inhibition of apoptosis (13).
Apoptosis (programmed cell death) is, among other important effects, a
major defense against virus infection through the suicide of virus laden
cells, the Baculovirus infection aids proliferation of any virus in the
bearing the vector (14).

It is very distressing that the proponents of Baculovirus insecticides
and the proponents of Baculovirus human gene therapy vectors have never
gotten together to make a full and truthful risk evaluation on the
commercial use of the virus. EPA regulators of the virus-based
pesticides seem to be suffering from tunnel vision and seem to prefer to
ignore the innate genetic instability of the virus. Such tunnel vision
will have disastrous consequences. USDA who produce Baculovirus
commercially seem to have a clear conflict of interest in regulating
recombinant viruses.

References

1.Cummins,J. ìWitness statementî 2001 http://www.i-sis.org.uk/

2. Lopez-Ferber,M,Oihane,S.,Williams,T. and Caballero,P. ìDefective or
effective? Mutualistic interactions between virus genotypesî 2003 Proc.
R.Soc. Lond. B 270,2249-55

3.DíAmico,V. ìBaculovirusesî 1997 pp1-7

http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/ent/biocontrol/pathogens/baculoviruses.html

4. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ìOcclusion bodies of
nucleopolyhedrovirus (NPV) of various moths (PC codes 107300; 107302;
107303; 127885; 12907 Occlusion bodies of granulovirus (GV) of codling
moth and Indian meal moth (PC codes 129090 and 108896,respectively)î
Fact Sheet pp 1-5

http://www.epa.gov/oppbppd1/biopesticides/ingredients/factsheets/factsheet_10730
0.htm

5. Mendez,W.,Valle,J.,Ibarra,J.,Cisneros,J. and Penagos,D. ìSpinosad and
nucleopolyhedrovirus mixtures for control spondotera frugiperda in
maizeî 2002 Biological control 25,195-206

6. Xin-Pei,H.Davis,T, Hughes,P. and Wood,A. ìPotential Replication of
Recombinant Baculoviruses in Nontarget Insect Species: Report Gene
Products as Indicators of Infection.î 1997 J. Invertebr. Pathol. 69,234-45

7. DíAmico,V,Elkinton,J.,Podgwaite,J.,Slavicek,J., McManus,M. Burand,J.
ìA Field Release of Genetically Engineered Gypsy Moth ( Lymantria
disparL.) Nuclear Polyhedrosis Virus (LdNPV)î 1999 Journal of
Invertebrate Pathology 73, 260ñ8

8. Cayley,P.,DyetStewart,L.,Possee,R. and LopezFerber,M. ìBiological
control Agentsî 1998 United States patent 5,770,192 pp 1-52

9. McCutchen, B.. ìRecombinant baculovirus insecticidesî 2000 United
Sates patent 6,096,304 pp 1-33

10. Hammock,B. and McCuchen,B.,ìInsect control methods with genetically
engineered biopesticidesî 2003 United States patent 6,596,271 pp1-216

11. Regeva,A.,Rivkina,H. Inceogluc,B., Gershburga,E.,Hammock,B.,
Gurevitzb,M., Chejanovskya,N., ìFurther enhancement of baculovirus
insecticidal efficacy with scorpion toxins that interact cooperativelyî
2003 FEBS Letters 537 , 106-10

12. Tani,H,
imn,K,Yap,C.,Onishi,M.,Nozaki,M.,Nishimune,Y.,Okahashi,N.,Kitagawa,Y.,
Watanabe,R. Mochizuki,R.,Moriishi,K. and Matsuura1,Y ìIn Vitro and In
Vivo Gene Delivery by Recombinant Baculovirusesî 2003 J.Virology 77,
9799ñ9808

13. Takramah,D.,Seiffert,B.,Schaller,S., Vigneron,M.,and Hacker,G.
ìBaculovirus P35 interacts with a subunit of human RNA polymerase II and
can enhance promoter activity in human cellsî 2003 Journal of General
Virology 84, 3011ñ19

14. HAWKINS,C.,UREN,A. HACKER,G.,MEDCALF,R. AND VAUX,D. ìInhibition of
interleukin 1b-converting enzyme-mediated apoptosis of mammalian cells
by baculovirus IAP (interleukin 1b-converting enzymeyinterleukin
1b-converting enzyme-Lap3yICH-1yFADD)î 1996 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA
93, 13786ñ90

It seems so easy to transfer genes to flowers that we should perhaps
change the don't pick the flowers signs to don't touch, fondle, grope or
otherwise transfer genes to the flowers!

Plant Biotechnology Journal
Volume 1 Issue 4 Page 301 - July 2003
doi:10.1046/j.1467-7652.2003.00028.x

Seed-expressed fluorescent proteins as versatile tools for easy
(co)transformation and high-throughput functional genomics in Arabidopsis

Antoine R. Stuitje1,*, Elizabeth C. Verbree1, Karin H. van der Linden1,
Elzbieta M. Mietkiewska2,, Jan-Peter Nap2 and Tarcies J. A. Kneppers1

Summary

We demonstrate that fluorescent proteins can be used as visual selection
markers for the transformation of Arabidopsis thaliana by the floral dip
method. Seed-specific expression of green fluorescent protein (GFP)
variants, as well as DsRed, permits the identification of mature
transformed seeds in a large background of untransformed seeds by
fluorescence microscopy. In planta visualization of transformed seeds in
siliques shows that susceptibility to floral dip transformation is
limited to a small, defined window in flower development. In the
competent stage, the random transformation of up to 25% of the seeds
within a single silique may occur. The use of fluorescent proteins with
different spectral characteristics allows a rapid identification and
genetic analysis of seeds that have received multiple genes-of-interest
in co-transformation experiments. The data reveal that co-transformation
does not occur at random, since the co-transformed genes are integrated
at a single genetic locus in 70% of the cases. This genetic linkage of
the co-transformed genes greatly simplifies metabolic pathway
engineering by reverse genetics in Arabidopsis. Additional advantages of
using visual selection instead of antibiotic resistance include a rapid
identification of the effect of the T-DNA insertion or the transgene on
seed development and/or germination. This technology, of tagging and
identifying transformed seeds by fluorescence provides a novel
high-throughput screening system with many potential applications in
plant biotechnology.

S P E C I A L A D V E R T I S I N G S E C T I O N

Biotech

Moving from experimentation into profitable
business, this active segment is now exploring
next-generation research approaches.

Biotech Comes of Age

After 25 years of experimentation and discoveries,
the biotechnology industry has morphed into
a maturing business. Some two-dozen years
since the founding of global biotech company
Amgen, a handful of companies beyond that power-house
are showing actual profits. And numerous others
are developing innovative partnerships and business
models to achieve profitability.

"Companies that portrayed themselves as 'genomics'
or 'proteomics' discovery enterprises were high fliers
in the late 1990s," explains George Farmer, Ph.D., senior
biotech analyst with worldwide financial institution
Fortis Securities Inc. "But all that have survived now
regard themselves as 'drug development' companies.
'Genomics' and 'proteomics' are barely uttered during
company presentations."

Now, the buzzword gracing PowerPoint presentations
and reports is "systems biology." Although there are
as many monikers and definitions for systems biology
as there are fruit-fly genes, the term can be defined fairly
simply as the integration of various sciences - including
mathematics, biology, physics and IT - to create
models of biological systems that consider not only the
individual parts but also how they react to each other
and to changes in their environment.

In other words, instead of focusing on a gene, a protein
or an enzyme, systems biology forces researchers
to focus on the entire cell or immune system. It asks
scientists to consider each part as it relates to the
whole, much as an automotive engineer must consider
every part of the engine in relation to the entire engine.
"We have a clear and strong interest in systems
biology and apply principles of genomics, pathway
engineering, biodiversity screening and molecular
evolution in a 'systems' approach," says Chief Technology
Officer Mike Arbige of Genencor International
Inc., a 21-year-old biotech company with $350 million
in total 2002 revenues.

"The models that will come out of biological systems
will be the most complicated models that have ever
been built," predicts Peter Sorger, Ph.D., co-chair of MIT's
Computational and Systems Biology Initiative. "So it's
not the application of run-of-the mill engineering to
biology. It's going to be the development of fundamentally
new paradigms and approaches to modeling
that we've never seen before."

The shift to systems biology from individual targets
won't come overnight, researchers and analysts warn.
"One problem of biotech is that it has tended to
promise the golden bullet," Sorger says.

Promise Brings Momentum

Systems biology has the potential to turn the way companies
currently do business upside down, adds Carol
Cherkis, Ph.D., vice president of business development
for global pharmaceutical development company Gene
Networks Inc. "There's the issue of 'Why should I
start with a whole new way of doing this when I've been
doing it this way for so long?'"

Stephen Ober, M.D., president of the systems
biology company Beyond Genomics, looks to the future.
"Within 10 years, every big pharma will have a department
of systems biology within its discovery and early
development groups," he says.

Companies already are taking the first steps. Thirteen
of the 16 major pharmaceutical companies say they
plan to increase spending on systems biology during
the next two years, according to a survey conducted by
Cambridge Healthtech Advisors. The data included nine
of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies by revenue, all
of which, notes survey author Andrew F. Branca, agreed
that "systems biology, while still largely unproven,
holds great promise for breaking the R&D logjam."
Indeed, several systems biology vendors have
sprung up in the past couple of years. These companies
not only offer the computational tools to perform the
complex analysis required, but, in many cases, pursue
their own drug discovery efforts even as they partner
with big pharma to enhance its systems biology efforts.
And major universities, including MIT, Harvard and
Princeton, are pouring millions into the development
of systems biology departments and Ph.D. programs.

A More Informed Approach

Even the venture capitalists are intrigued. "I've spoken
with a number of VC investors who feel that systems
biology will be one of the most profitable areas of
biotech research in the future, so they're getting
involved now," says Katherine Austin, a technology
analyst for the Technical Insights division of consultants
Frost & Sullivan.

For instance, Bioseek, a startup systems biology
company spun off from the non-profit Institute for Systems
Biology, has raised over $8 million in VC funding.
Everyone in the industry recognizes that, to
survive, biotech must embrace a new approach. The
traditional hit-and-miss method of drug development
simply isn't working anymore. In 2002, just 17 new
molecular entities were approved, the lowest level
since 1983.

"If you look at the drug discovery process now, where
you put half a million molecules through high-through-put
screening and slam them against a target and hope you
get a hit, that's not what systems biology is," Beyond Genomics'
Ober says. "It's a much more deliberate, more rational and more informed
approach to discovery and development."

The idea is to take a cell or system and computationally
analyze it, creating a model _in silico_. But
unlike the entirely "dry" labs that have been envisioned
in the past, systems biology advocates say
their approach requires both computational and
experimental biology to ensure the validity of the model.
Once the model is designed, it can be manipulated
in countless ways through changes in its environment.
This, say researches, will take a great deal of the
expense and risk out of today's clinical trial system.
"What we have found is, it's too soon to screen
against single targets without comprehensively understanding
the network these targets work in," says Ulrik
B. Nielsen, Ph.D., director of research at Merrimack
Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Simply Good Sense

Another active area of interest is nutraceuticals, some-times
dubbed phytochemicals. This is the study of
natural, bioactive chemical compounds that have health-promoting,
disease-preventing or medicinal properties.
Mainstream food ingredient companies such as ADM
are developing products that increase the benefit of ce-reals
and other "natural" foods.

But it is mostly through systems biology, say its
advocates, that some of the most intriguing capabilities
promised by the genomic revolution - like predictive
medicine and personalized treatments - will come into
being. "The bottom line is that by looking at patterns
of molecular activity we can better predict certain outcomes,
such as whether or not you have a disease and
whether or not you're going to respond to a particular
drug," Ober says. His company is developing the tools
to identify these biomarkers in blood, urine and tissue.
One reason analysts are so optimistic about the
potential of systems biology has to do with the leaders
in this field, including biotech superstar Leroy Hood,
who co-founded numerous biotech companies (including
Amgen) and invented the first gene sequencing
machine. "These guys tend to know when something is
worth their time to pursue and they're very excited about
the potential of systems biology," Frost & Sullivan's
Austin says.

Plus, she notes, the approach "simply makes good
sense." Austin and others compare systems biology
to the way cars are designed today. Before a prototype
is built (the equivalent of a clinical trial) the entire
vehicle is computationally tested to determine whether
or not it will run. Given that about 75 percent of all
drug candidates fail after Phase I trials, "the hope is that
systems biology will be to drug design what CAD/CAM
is to cars," she says.

Genencor provides a compelling example of how
systems biology works today. "We have been studying
in our labs the interaction of all the genes of a microbe
when placed in a certain environment (such as a fermentation
process) or the effect of single or multiple
mutations on those thousands of genes in that microbe,"
Arbige says. "We have examples where we
have knitted together three distinct biochemical pathways
from three distinct and divergent organisms into
a single microbe to make something new."
Systems biology likely will spur the growth of nanotechnology,
which are miniscule, life-based machines
that rapidly complete the sequencing and analysis of
human tissue, Hood says. Within the next decade, he
predicts, this will lead to the ability to sequence the
entire genome of an individual in a single day at a cost
of less than $10,000, compared to the $50 million or
so it would cost today.

Using systems biology then, Hood says, "we'll be able
to find the networks within which the relevant defect
genes or pathogenic stimuli operate, and we will come
to understand the networks well enough to manipulate
genomal points and circumvent them by creating drugs
that will reengineer the networks so they behave dif-ferently.
That's why systems biology is literally central
to this idea of preventive medicine." *

www.triangle-publishing.com *617-244-0698
Biotechnology Section writer: Debra Gordon
For more information on Special Advertising Section
opportunities, please contact Stacy Sass McAnulty at
212-512-6296 or stacy_sass-mcanulty@businessweek.com.
Please visit www.businessweek.com/adsections

Biotech Resources
ADM
http://www.admworld.com
Genencor International Inc.
http://www.genencor.com

"The models that will come out of biological systems will be the
most complicated models that have ever been built."
-Peter Sorger,

MIT's Computational and Systems Biology Initiative

L R B Mann
Oct 2003

Can you imagine what offence is achieved on scientists who are
Christians by the persistent lying of "creationism"? The fanatics make
aggressive insolent public attacks on evolution, insisting on the moronic,
indeed demonic axiom " EITHER the book of scripture OR the book of
nature". Indeed these demonic agents promulgate fanatically the idea that
to read the book of nature honestly is to contradict, even to insult, the
book of scripture. Devout scholars such as John Morton are in effect
called liars or fools for their reading the book of nature; and the
fanatics who do so misrepresent science with a persistent wickedness that
is particularly offensive to one brought up in science.

This sectarian tendency, intellectually headquartered near
Disneyland and bankrolled out of (so far as I've traced it) Lubbock, Tex.,
is more active in NZ than ever; DayStar® carried an advertorial 'interview'
of which the leading fanatic then has the cheek to complain in the next
issue; a large colour advertisement is placed near the advertorial
interview. This is a form of corruption I've seen before with other
editors.

Intelligent Design Theory is only a small part of natural theology,
and is being blown far out of proportion by huge funding linked quietly to
"creationist" fanatics thru Johnson & Wells. It relies basically on lack
of knowledge - e.g lack of any current explanation how the bacterial
flagellum could have evolved in a Darwinian, Steve Jones fashion. This is
'God of the gaps' reasoning, dangerous because the gap may be filled
tomorrow by new facts &/or reasoning. Why not reason more directly from
the macroscopic observables of ecology? A child can see, without education
or instruments, that ecology is wonderfully planned. At an early age
Morton's "claret cameo" should be intelligible; all 4 causes are needed in
biology, not just the 2 with which Dawkins tries to make out biology can be
explained. I believe microstructures needing instruments & theory to
imagine - e.g the bacterial flagellum, or a DNA secondary structure - are
inferior as main examples of Paley timepieces. They're not wrong, but they
are to a degree obscurantist.

It is murky - annoyingly, and I suppose deliberately - but we
have to read the picture as best we can. As H Turner said, creationism is
a waste of time; and I would add that IDT is at best a drag, pedantically
OK but not worth much time. I infer from the glimpses that have come my
way that they're connected, organisationally and to a degree intellectually
thru e.g Wells, to creationism®.

Meanwhile, Sheldrake & Morton, spearhead of the mainstream thrust
thru Temple, are ignored by IDT entrepreneurs.

The IDT site www.iscid.org controllers Sparacio & Dembski have
repeatedly refused to allow me to contribute criticisms - e.g the following
item.

==========

"Creationism" is a significant cross-current within Christianity,
distracting efforts from real issues. And it presents to ignorant, lazy
or dishonest outsiders a very misleading image of the logic & honesty of
Christians. A target is thus created, which is nothing better than a
caricature, for atheists to mock.

IDT is essentially Paley 1802 - fine as far as it goes. Broom's
book 'How Blind Is the Watchmaker?' is the best IDT I know of - and fully
acknowledging not only a billions-of-years biosphere but also evolution.
The IDT 'wedge' however has become to some extent a front for
"creationism".

Full 28 year ago a leading local statistician (now a prof.), George
Seber, tried to get me to debate publicly against Duane Gish. The notion
was in some ways attractive, not least because we're both Berkeley Ph.D
biochemists; but I declined, saying I would not dignify his cause by
sharing a stage with him. This reticence, uncharacteristic for me, I have
never regretted.

Much more recently, I gave a talk on Creationism to our local
Christian Academics Group. In moving the vote of thanks, George insisted
on ignoring my main point by expressing hope that there will be tolerance
of Creationism alongside the mainstream position which I had advocated.

My own position is similar to that of our leading emeritus zoology
prof John Morton (see his 'Man, Science and God', Collins 1972). Although
generally critical of the Vatican, I think its doctrine on evolution is
hard to fault, and I credit it for the fact that Rome has had little
trouble regarding evolution. On this issue if no others, general Christian
doctrine should learn from the Vatican.

Around 2 decade ago Creationists tried to tamper with school book
holdings in Hamilton N.Z. I have not learned whether this attempt
persisted.

In 1983 I photographed in the Science Museum, Kensington, an
exhibit which asserted the axiom that *either* organisms have evolved
*or* God has created them. This lie, not normally so clearly enunciated,
seems to me to be not only the fundamental error of the Creationist
fanaticism but also typical in its illogic of most if not all
fundamentalisms. I suggest the racket common to them is the requirement of
assent to a proposition which is not subtly but flagrantly false. This is
not ancillary or accidental: I believe it is essential, in that once a
person has overtly signalled switching-off of God-given reason in favour of
a pointedly false slogan from the sect leader(s), obedience can be
thereafter required much more generally. This is in the nature of
totalitarian systems' social psychology. "The Slavs are sub-human" is a
prototypical modern example of a blatantly false slogan which you had to
assent to overtly if you were to attain the temporary social security of
the National Socialist Party. "The first 3 chapters of the Bible, plus the
Noah story, must be taken literally" is similar mischief. I don't see why
this racket is not more widely & vigorously condemned. Those who propound
it do not in fact advocate that other parts of the Bible be read literally;
Broom & I point to John the Baptist's hailing "the Lamb of God" - why do
fundamentalists not try to insist that Christ assumed ovine form for that
occasion on the banks of the Jordan?

As a scientist active in natural theology, I support the general
gist of IDT as such but fear that it functions on the edge of a
"creationist" whirlpool.

===========

In defence of the persistent lying of creationism®, I've received
impassioned slogans 'Jesus died for them too', to which I replied "yes -
and for Himmler & Stalin also". A senior Presbyterian minister, Rev Bruce
Nicholls, defends the deceivers by claiming they're not proven liars. Prof
Don Nield has shown in detail that hevi-doodi creationist J Wells has
falsified standard biology texbooks in order to create straw men to knock
down. The version of creation presented by main aggressive creationists H
Morris, D Gish, J Sarfati, Wells, etc relies on falsifying evidence and on
misinterpreting facts grossly, as well as wholesale ignoring of most facts
(because they imply a 10^9 y evolution).

The real issues of the day is how to convert the billions who have
never heard the Good News, as well as the approx 1 billion overdeveloped
who have gone for "Enlightenment"®, Noo Eege, or just nihilism.
Christianity has much to offer the children of atheism & agnosticism,
starting for many educated in science by a careful exposition of all 4
Causes, a review of facts on evolution, and an honest presentation of
natural theology as in Temple, Hardy, Morton & Sheldrake. The USA sects
I've been criticising do little or nothing to meet these needs. Their
conduct is variously devious, dishonest and mind-buggering. They are
distracting lay folk away from what science has to tell them.

I am advocating a non-denominational speakers' bureau to take
science & natl theol to church groups. Who will help?

R

Teaching Math in 1950: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His
cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?

Teaching math in 1960: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His
cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

Teaching Math in 1970: A logger exchanges a set "L" of lumber for a set "M"
of money. The cardinality of set "M" is 100. Each element is worth one
dollar. Make 100 dots representing the elements of the set "M". The set
"C", the cost of production contains 20 fewer points than set "M."
Represent the set "C" as a subset of set "M" and answer the following
question: What is the cardinality of the set "P" for profits?

Teaching Math in 1980: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. Her
cost of production is $80 and her profit is $20. Your assignment:
Underline the number 20.

Teaching Math in 1990: By cutting down beautiful forest trees, the logger
makes $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for
class participation after answering the question: How did the forest birds
and squirrels feel as the logger cut down the trees? There are no wrong
answers.

Teaching Math in 1996: By laying off 40% of its loggers, a company improves
its stock price from $80 to $100. How much capital gain per share does the
CEO make by exercising his stock options at $80? Assume capital gains are
no longer taxed, because this encourages investment.

Teaching Math in 1997: A company outsources all of its loggers. The firm
saves on benefits, and when demand for its product is down, the logging
work force can easily be cut back. The average logger employed by the
company earned $50,000, had three weeks vacation, a nice retirement plan
and medical insurance. The contracted logger charges $50 an hour. Was
outsourcing a good move?

Teaching Math in 1998: A laid-off logger with four kids at home and a
ridiculous alimony due to his first wife comes into the logging-company
corporate offices and goes postal, mowing down 16 executives and a couple
secretaries, and gets lucky when he nails a politician on the premises
collecting his kickback. Was outsourcing the loggers a good move for the
company?

Teaching Math in 1999: A laid-off logger serving time in Folsom for blowing
away several people is being trained as a COBOL programmer in order to work
on Y2K projects. What is the probability that the computer-controlled cell
doors will open on their own as of 00:01, 01/01/2000?

Teaching Math in 2002: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His
cost of production is $120. How does Arthur Andersen Corp determine that
his profit margin is $60?

Universities have grown addicted to the process of grants from
corporations and government (both of which are dominated by corporate
interests). The British Royal society subscribed to the corporate
ideology as did the US National Academy. Consequently full and truthful
reporting was replaced by public relations. The old dictum "publish or
perish" is replaced with "public relations for corporations or perish".

Nature 426, 591 - 5914 (11 December 2003);
doi:10.1038/426591a
REX DALTON

Berkeley accused of biotech bias as ecologist is denied tenure

[SAN FRANCISCO] An ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley,
best known for his outspoken criticism of genetically modified crops and
of the university's links with the biotech industry, has been denied
tenure. But some of his colleagues are now questioning the integrity of
the decision-making process.

The Berkeley campus has been wracked by dissent ever since it signed a
lucrative deal in 1998 with the Swiss-based firm Novartis, giving the
company privileged access to the university's plant scientists. Ignacio
Chapela was prominent among a group of vocal protesters against the
deal. Subsequently, he became embroiled in controversy after publishing
disputed research suggesting that transgenes flowed from modified crops
into natural maize in his native Mexico.

Chapela's supporters now charge that his denial of tenure calls into
question the prestigious university's willingness to back academics who
challenge powerful agricultural industrial interests. But university
administrators argue that Chapela's publishing record in the seven years
since he arrived at Berkeley is too weak to justify tenure.

One Berkeley scientist involved in the tenure review was so upset at the
handling of the case that he has broken the strict confidentiality of
the process to complain. Population biologist Wayne Getz, who sat on an
ad hoc faculty committee that recommended giving Chapela tenure, says
that the ecologist received overwhelming faculty support, but alleges
that the review then was "hijacked" by Chapela's opponents in the
university.

"The process was so irregular; it is illegitimate," asserts Chapela, who
received notice on 26 November from Berkeley's chancellor Robert Berdahl
that his academic contract will expire next June. University officials
won't comment on the specifics of Chapela's case, but a spokesman says:
"We stand by our tenure process; it is the most strenuous in the country."

Documents from the chancellor's office raise a number of concerns about
Chapela's performance, including the disputed maize article and his
research publications. "The overall assessment of reviewers was that
Chapela's good record of teaching and excellent service stood in sharp
contrast to a disappointingly modest publication record," says the
document rejecting tenure.

Chapela works for the university's Department of Environmental Science,
Policy, and Management. Shortly after arriving at Berkeley, he became
embroiled in the row over the deal with Novartis - now known as
Syngenta. Then, in 2001, Chapela and a student published a paper in
Nature reporting that transgenes had flowed into native maize in the
southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, fragmenting and integrating across the
genome (D. Quist and I. H. Chapela Nature 414, 541-543; 2001). The
article stirred international debate and, after additional review,
Nature issued a statement saying that it would not have been published
had certain technical issues been uncovered during the paper's initial
review. Chapela and his student acknowledged some flaws, but stood by
their main findings (D. Quist and I. H. Chapela Nature 416, 602; 2002).

Chapela's tenure at Berkeley has been under review since November 2000.
As part of the process, in his department, 32 faculty members voted for
tenure and one against, with three abstentions. And in summer 2002, an
ad hoc committee of five colleagues familiar with Chapela's field voted
unanimously in favour of tenure.

But the review then took an unusual course. The chair of the ad hoc
committee was quizzed by the university hierarchy about his committee's
report and its membership; questions were raised about whether two
members were biased. The chair, whose identity has not been revealed,
then resigned in the autumn of 2002, disavowing his committee's report.
But committee members weren't told that this had occurred.

Getz, a tenured professor in Chapela's department, only learned of what
happened to the report of the committee he had served on in June this
year. He immediately wrote to the chancellor's office: "I am concerned
that the process of tenure evaluation, that works so well in almost all
cases, has somehow been tainted or corrupted by those on our campus who
belong to the camp that believes Chapela should not be tenured."

Another faculty member involved in the review says: "The process clearly
failed when the chairman resigned. This sort of case sends a chill
through the community of researchers."

A university spokesman claims that the ad hoc committee's chair resigned
after realizing that his committee didn't have the required expertise to
analyse Chapela's research, and argues that these actions were
compatible with Berkeley's normal tenure-review process.

Chapela and other faculty members were this week planning to hold a
meeting on academic freedom at the Berkeley campus. His tenure battle is
likely to take centre stage. "I just can't walk away," Chapela says. "I
have to fight."

The Institute of Science in Society
Science Society Sustainability http://www.i-sis.org.uk
General Enquiries sam@i-sis.org.uk Website/Mailing List
press-release@i-sis.org.uk ISIS Director m.w.ho@i-sis.org.uk

ISIS Press Release 11/12/03

GM Crops Increase Pesticide Use

Proponents claim that GM crops substantially reduce pesticide use, but
new evidence shows otherwise.
Lim Li Ching reports.

A new report from Dr. Charles Benbrook, director of the Northwest
Science and Environmental Policy Center, Idaho, concludes that the 550
million acres of GM corn, soybeans and cotton planted in the US since
1996 has increased pesticide use (herbicides and insecticides) by about
50 million pounds. Benbrook is a respected agricultural economist and
was Executive Director of the US National Academy of Sciences Board on
Agriculture from 1984 to 1990.

The report is the first comprehensive study of the impact of all major
commercial GM crops on pesticide use in the US over the first eight
years of commercial use, 1996-2003. Most studies to date have only
focused on the first three years of GM crop adoption (1996-199, and no
study has estimated impacts in 2002 and 2003.

Benbrook draws on official US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data on
pesticide use by crop and state to calculate the overall impact of GM
crops on the volume of pesticides applied on corn, soybean and cotton.
These three crops account for nearly all the area planted to GM crops in
the US. The analysis focuses on herbicide tolerant (HT) corn, soybeans
and cotton; and corn and cotton genetically engineered to produce the
natural insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt).

HT crops allow broad-spectrum herbicides to be sprayed over growing
plants, controlling weeds while leaving crops unharmed, making them
popular with farmers. Despite increased seed prices, HT systems have
become less expensive, largely because the price of herbicides
containing glyphosate (Roundup) has fallen by half since HT crops were
first introduced. (Crops tolerant to glyphosate - known as Roundup Ready
varieties - are the largest share of acreage planted to HT crops).

But the fall in price has meant farmers can spray more herbicides
without feeling the economic pinch. In particular, farmers are spraying
substantially more herbicides on HT soybean. Soybean accounts for about
75% of the 400 million acres of HT crops and 54% of all GM acres that
have been planted since 1996. While total pounds of pesticides applied
to Bt corn and cotton have fallen modestly (see later), the increase in
herbicides applied on HT soybeans has been far greater. This, combined
with the dominance of HT soybean, has led to dramatic change in overall
impact of GM crops on pesticide use.

Benbrook calculates the difference between the average pounds of
pesticides applied on acres planted to GM crops, compared to the pounds
applied to otherwise similar conventional crops. In their first three
years of commercial sale (1996-199, GM crops reduced pesticide use by
about 25.4 million pounds, but in the last three years (2001-2003), over
73 million more pounds of pesticides were applied on GM acres.

The increase in overall pounds of pesticides applied across the three
crops is due mainly to the need to apply more herbicides per acre
planted to HT soybeans. USDA data show a marked increase in the per acre
rate of glyphosate applied to HT soybeans between 2001 and 2002 ñ about
a 22% increase, from 0.85 pounds per acre to 1.04 pounds.

This 22% jump was caused by a major price reduction in glyphosate, the
need to control more difficult weeds, and the emergence of resistance
and/or lessened sensitivity in weed species that were once fully
controlled by one glyphosate application. So for HT soybeans, the
difference in average herbicide pounds applied per acre between GM and
conventional crops shifted from a reduction of 0.36 pounds per acre in
1996 to an increase of 0.47 pounds per acre in 2003.

Pesticide use estimates for 2003 in the report are preliminary, since
USDA will not release these data until May 2004. However, estimates for
2003 are based on 2002 levels and trends in recent years. Benbrook is of
no doubt that average glyphosate application rates per acre of HT
soybeans continued rising in 2003 due to:

* Spread of glyphosate-tolerant marestail (horseweed);
* Shifts in composition of weed communities toward species not as
sensitive to glyphosate;
* Early-stage resistance in some major weeds; and
* Substantial price reductions and volume-based marketing incentives
from competing manufacturers of glyphosate-based herbicides.

HT corn technology reduced herbicide use per acre from 1996 through
2001, but increased use thereafter. The difference in average herbicide
pounds applied per acre between GM and conventional crops shifted from a
reduction of 0.8 pounds per acre in 1996 to an increase of 0.58 pounds
per acre in 2003, due to:

* Increases in the rate of glyphosate applied per acre driven largely by
shifts in weed communities, resistance, changes in tillage and planting
systems, and significant reductions in the price of herbicides
containing glyphosate;
* Incremental increases in reliance of farmers on herbicides other than
glyphosate to assure season-long control of grasses in HT corn; and
* Downward trend in average rate of application of herbicides on non-HT
acres.

The difference in herbicide application rates on HT and conventional
cotton changed much like that of HT corn and soybeans, shifting from a
reduction of 0.64 pounds per acre in 1996 to an increase of 0.17 pounds
per acre in 2003.

The report acknowledges that the other major category of GM crops ñ Bt
corn and cotton ñ continues to reduce insecticide use by 2 million to
2.5 million pounds annually. The reduction in insecticide pounds applied
per acre planted to Bt corn and cotton ranges from 0.33 pounds in 1996
to 0.06 pounds in 2003, and from 0.38 pounds in 1996 to 0.2 pounds in
2001-2003, respectively.

However, the increase in herbicide use on HT crops far exceeds the
modest reductions in insecticide use on Bt crops, especially since 2001.
The calculations also donít take into account the volume of Bt toxin
that is continuously expressed in the Bt cropsí plant cells. This amount
is significant compared to the rates of application in todayís low-dose
pesticides.

In short, over the last eight years, HT crops have increased pesticide
use an estimated 70.2 million pounds, while Bt transgenic varieties have
reduced pesticide use an estimated 19.6 million pounds. Thus, total
pesticide use has risen some 50.6 million pounds over the eight-year period.

The increase in pesticide use, largely due to increased use in HT crops,
especially HT soybean, is of no surprise, given that scientists had
warned that heavy reliance on HT crops and a single herbicide (in this
case, glyphosate) for weed management might lead to changes in weed
communities and resistance. This triggers the need to apply additional
herbicides and/or increase application rates to achieve the same level
of weed control.

Many farmers have had to spray more herbicides on GM acres in order to
keep up with shifts in weeds toward tougher-to-control species, coupled
with the emergence of genetic resistance in certain weed populations.

"For years weed scientists have warned that heavy reliance on herbicide
tolerant crops would trigger ecological changes in farm fields that
would incrementally erode the technologyís effectiveness. It now appears
that this process began in 2001 in the United States in the case of
herbicide tolerant crops," said Benbrook.

According to Prof. Bob Hartzler, an extension weed management specialist
>from Iowa State University, glyphosate-resistant marestail in Roundup
Ready soybeans first appeared in Delaware in 2000, spreading since as
far west as Indiana, and identified in the Southeastern US where Roundup
Ready cotton is grown. Other records of glyphosate- resistant weeds (not
necessarily linked to HT crops) are rigid ryegrass in an orchard in
Australia and in wheat production systems in Australia and California,
Italian ryegrass in Chile and goosegrass in Malaysia.

Furthermore, waterhemp populations with individuals capable of surviving
ënormalí user rates were identified in Iowa and Missouri the first year
Roundup Ready soybeans were marketed. While Hartzler doesnít think that
waterhemp can as yet be considered glyphosate resistant, the potential
exists and should be closely monitored.

Since the first report of glyphosate resistant rigid ryegrass in 1996,
four additional resistant species with this trait have been identified.
According to Harztler, this rate of development suggests that new
resistant biotypes will continue to arise.

Prospects for GM crops leading to reduced pesticide use in the long-term
donít bode well either. The pounds of herbicides required to achieve
acceptable weed control is rising on most farms planting HT varieties,
compared to the rates of application common between 1996-1998. In
contrast, the amount of herbicides and insecticides applied per acre on
conventional farms continue to trend downward as a result of incremental
shifts toward newer low-dose pesticides and regulatory restrictions
phasing out high-dose herbicides.

As a result, the difference in total pounds of herbicides applied on HT
versus conventional acres has increased steadily since 2000. Given the
emergence and spread of weeds resistant or less sensitive to glyphosate,
this difference is likely to widen further if HT technology continues to
be relied on as heavily as in recent years.

Sources:

Benbrook CM (2003) Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide
Use in the United States: The First Eight Years, BioTech InfoNet,
Technical Paper No 6, Nov 2003,
http://wwww.biotech-info.net/technicalpaper6.html

Hartzler B Are Roundup Ready weeds in your future II, Submission to UK
GM Science Review, 28 February 2003,
http://www.gmsciencedebate.org.uk/topics/forum/0051.htm

http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/contents.htm

It brings me considerable pleasure that (after many years of
struggle) the late Gordon Rodley's good idea again gets some coverage in a
scientific journal.

Those who have suppressed such discussions over the past decade -
Brian Shorland, David Penny, Viki Hyde - I conspue. The
quasi-totalitarian role of "the" Double Helix is anti-scientific.

Also I claim this illegitimate ikon looms over gene-jiggering in a
baneful fashion.

To be positive, I point out that there is easy cream to be skimmed
off, especially in Langmuir trough expts as we hint. Once you admit DNA
secondary structure varies, discovering the different structures, and the
conditions that interchange them, is an alluring vista. I wish I were 30 y
younger!

I ask my fellow scientists to do what they readily can to spread
awareness of this paper.

R

Auckland, NZ 11-12-03 -- The ikonic status of "the" Double Helix model
for DNA has been challenged anew by scientists of New Zealand, India, and
England in the latest issue of Current Science:

http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/contents.htm

An author of one of the new papers, New Zealand biochemist Dr
Robert Mann, said in Auckland today "A couple of dozen other structures
have been proposed during the half-century since the 1953 model of Watson &
Crick. The quasi-totalitarian role of 'the' Double Helix is
anti-scientific.

" One of the most interesting models, which we reproduce in our
Current Science paper, was invented by the late Dr Gordon Rodley, dean of
science at the University of Canterbury. I have found increasing
suppression within New Zealand over the past decade of scientific
discussion of this improved structure for DNA, so it is pleasing that it is
now brought to renewed attention in the scientific world."

Dr Mann said he was particularly glad that Current Science had
published yet another DNA structure, proposed by his co-author Clive
Delmonte of England.

Dr Mann commented "Once you admit DNA secondary structure varies,
discovering the different structures, and the conditions that interchange
them, is an alluring vista. I wish I were 30 y younger!"

A further paper discussing yet other DNA structures appears in the
same issue of Current Science.

(Ed. Note - Will this counteract the Wal-Mart effect?)

Consumers embrace ethical sales, costing firms £2.6bn a year

By Danielle Demetriou

09 December 2003

A new generation of consumer activists is emerging in Britain, with more
than one in two people boycotting the products of
companies that they regard as unethical, according to a study.

From Nestle to Esso, multinationals have been the subject of
high-profile consumer boycotts in recent years. In the first
study to examine the extent of brand boycotting, published yesterday, it
emerged that the cost of consumers switching
brands for ethical reasons last year was £2.6bn in lost business.

While 52 per cent of consumers have boycotted at least one product
during the same period, two-thirds claimed that they
would never return to a product once it had been associated with
unethical practices.

The figures came to light as part of The Co-operative Bank's Ethical
Purchasing Index, which has annually analysed the
extent of ethical consumerism over the past four years. This year's
report incorporated an additional study involving 1,000
consumers that aimed to gauge the extent of ethical boycotting and its
impact on industry.

The high level of boycotts was consistent with a continued increase in
the overall growth of ethical consumption in the UK, according to the report.

The value of ethical consumption in the UK - including the sale of
products, banking and financial services, and products
that are boycotted - peaked last year at £19.9bn. The total sales of
ethical products rose by 44 per cent from £4.8bn to
£6.9bn between 1999 and 2002. During the same period, the market share
of the products rose by 30 per cent.

Simon Williams, the director of corporate affairs at The Co-operative
Bank, said: "The research enables us to drill down and
look at people's motivations and we have discovered that many consumers
are driven by ethical concerns.

"For instance, many people shop locally for convenience, but for others
the overriding consideration is to buy from local
stores in order to support their community."

He added: "The full extent of ethical consumerism will always be
difficult to gauge, given that it is about the motivation
behind a particular purchase as much as the product or service itself.

Boycotting big brands, shopping locally, recycling and using public
transport cost consumers a combined total of about
£5.6bn during 2002, the study revealed.

Food, household appliances, cosmetics and tourism were among the most
frequent choices of purchases for ethically
minded consumers. Around £1.77bn was spent last year on Fairtrade and
organic products. Free-range eggs, for example,
accounted for 40 per cent of all eggs sold. A further £1.47bn was spent
on "green" household products, including
environmentally friendly cleaning products and energy-efficient
appliances.

Consumers spent £187m on cosmetics that were not tested on animals.
Despite the fact that eight out of ten people are
opposed to testing cosmetics on animals, less than two per cent of all
sales comply with the Humane Cosmetics Standard.

A further £107m was spent on "responsible" tourism, according to the
report, which was compiled by The Co-operative
Bank in partnership with the think-tanks the New Economics Foundation
and the Future Foundation.

Melanie Howard, director of the Future Foundation, said: "The use of
boycotting, recycling and second-hand purchasing as
a way to express personal values is in line with trends towards greater
social engagement. This application of "ethical"
behaviour when shopping highlights the need to assess the wider economic
impact of this activity to the UK."

The growth of consumer awareness has gone hand in hand with an increase
in the pressure applied to big businesses to
conduct themselves in an ethical and transparent manner. Earlier this
year, Linda Perham, the Labour MP, tabled a private
member's Bill demanding greater social and environmental accountability
from big businesses.

The Corporate Responsibility Bill, which was backed by 293 MPs, would
make it mandatory for companies to provide
reports on their social, environmental and economic impacts and
establish a new regulator for corporate standards.

It coincided with findings of a Mori poll in June last year revealing 92
per cent of people believed "multinational
companies should meet the highest human health, animal welfare and
environmental standards wherever they are
operating". The Queen's Speech subsequently included proposals for a
Companies Bill, which would require businesses to
produce environmental and social reviews.

Ms Perham, MP for Ilford North, said: "The latest report shows that
consumers are becoming increasingly intolerant of
companies that are less aware of their corporate responsibilities. We
hope that the new Companies Bill will oblige companies
to uphold the ethical demands of consumers."

The findings of the report complemented a growing trend among companies
to examine their corporate responsibility,
according to the Ethical Trading Initiative, an organisation devoted to
the promotion of good working practices.

Man-Kwun Chan, the ETI's head of communication and research, said: "It
is very encouraging to hear that consumers are
becoming ethically aware. We have experienced an increase in terms of
companies becoming more concerned about their
responsibilities.

"But the question is whether it can be sustained. There is quite
frequently a difference between intention and practice
among consumers."

'I'm a fairly ordinary consumer'

Penny Fraser is one of a growing number of ethically minded shoppers.

As well as buying as many of her family groceries as possible from
organisations such as Fairtrade and the local Co-op, she
has boycotted companies whose business practices she believes are
ethically unsound. NestlÈ has long been dropped from
her shopping list because of its controversial associations with baby
milk in Third World countries. Gap clothes have more
recently become out of bounds as a result of the US company's alleged
exploitation of sweatshop workers across the world.
McDonald's is also avoided.

"I'm what you would describe as a fairly ordinary consumer, but the
avoidance of unethical products is important to me,"
said Ms Fraser, 37, from South Manchester, who conducts social research
for a charity.

"I've been boycotting Nestle products for a long time now. Wherever
possible, I buy alternative products. But as a family,
we would sooner go without certain products than eat Nestle's."

For Ms Fraser, shopping with ethical preferences has become
significantly easier in recent years because of the
ever-increasing choice of alternative products available in
supermarkets.

Fair trade?

NESTLE

For the past 20 years, the Swiss-based multinational has been condemned
for promoting powdered breast-milk substitutes
in the Third World, which critics claim contributes to the death of
babies. Germaine Greer was among a number of authors
who boycotted the Hay-on-Wye Literature Festival because it was
sponsored by NestlÈ. Last year, the company retracted a
demand that Ethiopia repay its £3.75m debts.

GAP

The anti-Gap movement was galvanised when a demonstrator set a pair of
Gap trousers alight four years ago at the World
Trade Organisation conference in Seattle in protest against working
conditions at factories in Cambodia, Indonesia,
Bangladesh and Mexico. The actress Minnie Driver plans to highlight the
plight of sweatshop workers by joining one in Cambodia.

ESSO

The oil giant and its Texas-based parent company ExxonMobil have long
been targeted over its environmental policies and
its alleged funding of the election campaign of the US President George
Bush. From Mr Bush's withdrawal of the Kyoto
Protocol to his foreign policy in Iraq, activists have expressed their
opposition by boycotting its stations.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=471510

*** China becomes one of the top transgenic planting countries

People's Daily, December 07, 2003

The Chinese government attaches great importance to the research on
biotechnology and over 130 transgenic species involving more than 100
kinds of genes are under research. China has been among the world's
front ranks in terms of research achievements in the fields of
transgenic insect-resistant cotton, transgenic rice and gene
engineering vaccines. In 2002, China became a leading transgenic
planting country following the United States, Canada, Brazil and
Argentina with a total cultivation area exceeding 2.1 million
hectares for transgenic crops.

The Chinese government attaches great importance to the research on
biotechnology and over 130 transgenic species involving more than 100
kinds of genes are under research. China has been among the world's
front ranks in terms of research achievements in the fields of
transgenic insect-resistant cotton, transgenic rice and gene
engineering vaccines. In 2002, China became a leading transgenic
planting country following the United States, Canada, Brazil and
Argentina with a total cultivation area exceeding 2.1 million
hectares for transgenic crops.

This is learnt from the 7th APEC Seminar on Agricultural Biological
Technology and Biological Safety held on December 2 in Beijing. Zhang
Fengtong, director of the department of science and education under
the Ministry of Agriculture, said in an address made on behalf of
China that China, while energetically developing biotechnology,
attaches great importance to its influence on the eco-environment and
human health. As early as 1993, China had published relevant laws and
regulations on the safety management of gene engineering. In 2001,
the State Council issued "Rules on Safety Management of Agricultural
Transgenic Plants". According to the rules, the Ministry of
Agriculture released three associated regulations on safety
assessment, import and export and symbol early last year for
comprehensive management of the research, experiment, production,
processing, operation and import and export of agricultural
transgenic crops.

From 1997 to September 2003, the said Ministry, based an a safety
appraisal, approved that over 10 kinds of transgenic plants such as
rice, corn, cotton, soybean, rape and potato are to be released in
farm, and that plants including transgenic cotton, tomato and
pimiento and microorganism gene engineering vaccines for animals to
be put into commercial production.

From: Wuerthele.Suzanne@epamail.epa.gov

The reason that FDA will not likely regulate the glofish is complex.
Perhaps a bit of the history of the fractionated and incomplete (but
evolving) regulation of genetically engineered organisms in the USA may
be useful for the listserve readers:

In the mid-1980s the government became aware that the biotech industry
would be commercializing products in the future, but it had only a vague
idea of what might be created. It wanted to protect the emerging
industry both from any financial consequences of regulation and from the
kind of X-File stigma which genetic engineering immediately conjures up
in people's minds. They didn't want to inhibit it, but they needed to
assure people it was safe. They needed at least some regulation. The
problem of how to regulate the industry was studied by Vice President
Dan Quayle's Council on Competitiveness. As a result of what they
learned, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP, which is
part of the Executive Branch of gevernment) directed a number of federal
agencies (also in the Executive Branch) to convene and to agree on how
products of biotechnology should be regulated. In 1986 they produced a
document (the Coordinated Framework on Regulation of Biotechnology;
51Federal Register23303) that explained the philosophy of the regulation
as well as how such products would be regulated and which government
agency would regulate them. Much of the "challenge" of regulating GEOs
we see today derives from the basic ideology and directives of this
document.

The Coordinated Framework stated that
(1) GEOs are essentially the same as non-GE organisms;
(2) products of biotechnology would be be
regulated based on intended use;
(3) no new law would be passed
specifically to regulate products made by rDNA ("the process") - this
was to prevent stigmatizing genetic engineering per se - but rather
such products would be regulated on a case-by-case basis; and
(4) there would be no new laws.
Products of biotechnology would be regulated under existing laws, although
the agencies could write new regulations if necessary (regulations are the
specific actions the agencies take to
administer a law).

Note that in 1986 no one considered the possibility of GE animals, let
alone GE animals intended to be used as pets.

So, it was determined that FDA would regulate GE foods, drugs cosmetics
and medical devices under the authority of the Federal Food Drug and
Cosmetic Act. They approved BGH as a veterinary drug, and human drugs
like insulin made in bacteria (humulin). Since they declared GEOs
"substantially equivalent" to their non-engineered counterparts, they
consider transgenes and their transgenic products in food to be "GRAS"
or "Generally Regarded As Safe," and therefore food that contain them
need no long-term testing or labelling. They have only taken on review
of the transgenic salmon because they consider the transgenic growth
hormones it produces to be veterinary drugs. It is not clear if they
would regulate a salmon that was engineered to produce pink flesh
(farmed salmon must be fed dyes to appeal to consumers because they
don't eat a natural diet and their flesh is gray).

FDA has no obvious authority under FFDCA to regulate pets, genetically
engineered or otherwise. However, lawyers can surprise us with
interesting interpretations of the law, so we will have to stay tuned.
If a GE pet is commercialized which presents obvious environmental or
health hazards, political pressure may make some federal agency claim
authority over it. The glofish may be that organism, but note that FDA
has said it sees "no evidence" that the fish "pose any more threat to
the environment than their unmodified counterparts." Perhaps the
limitations of their authority prevent them from commanding data to be
collected. Whatever the reason, they obviously consider it someone
else's duty to collect those data.

The Coordinated Framework directed USDA to regulate GE plants under the
authority of the Plant Protection Act and the Plant Quarantine Act.
They therefore regulate RR soybeans, and will review RR wheat and GE
trees. They would presumably regulate plants made to glow when in need
of watering, or other similar new organisms. They recently took on
regulation of plants making drugs and industrial chemicals
("biopharming").

Because USDA regulates ordinary meat and poultry under the Federal Food
Drug and Cosmetic Act, it would presumably also regulate GE food animals
like the featherless chicken and the "enviropig" (which has been given
bacterial genes, causing it to express enzymes in its saliva which break
down phosphates in the animal's feed. It is hoped this will result in
low-phosphate manure which in turn will make sewage lagoons less
environmentally destructive). But the intended use of glofish isn't
food, so USDA likely wouldn't regulate it.

EPA regulates pesticidal substances made in GEOs under the authority of
the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, as well as GE
microorganisms making industrial chemicals under the Toxic Substances
Control Act. So they regulate crops that make the Bt toxin (although
they actually don't have any authority to directly tell farmers how to
plant these crops - they are responsible only for the transgenic
pesticide and genes necessary for its production. Any other transgenes
in the plant would be regulated by USDA). EPA also regulates many GE
microorganisms making industrial chemicals (those used in fermentation
systems) under the Toxic Substances Control Act. It also regulates
such microorganisms if released to the environment, but so far, there
are no GE animals making industrial chemicals. Perhaps if the glo fish
were considered to produce an industrial chemical, and EPA expanded its
authority under TSCA to regulate animals, it could regulate the glofish.

Since the laws under which the agencies operate were never intended for
GEOs, and some weren't even intended for living things, they can present
interesting legal challenges. For example, the Plant Pest and Plant
Quarantine Acts only give USDA authority to evaluate GE plants for their
potential to be agricutural pests, not environmental or health hazards.
Theoretically USDA evaluates environmental and health hazards under
NEPA, but so far it has not issued EIS's with detailed evaluations.
Rather it has issued FONSIs (Finding of No Significant Impact) and it is
being sued over its failure to issue a program-wide EIS on the planting
of biopharm crops.

THE ILLOGIC OF THE GENE-JOCKEY

R Mann Dec 2003

From an expert gene-jockey who has been warning that current versions of
gene-jockeying are too unpredictable to be turned loose:-

Subject: Re: CumminsGram of the Year: regulatory sham on GM crops

It is extraordinary that a new product can simultaneously be
sufficiently new to warrant the issuance of a patent based on its broader
spectrum, greater effectiveness (sic toxicity) and novelty, while at the
same time being viewed as 'Substantially Equivalent' by the government
agencies regulating its use!

-----------

This reminds me of what I said 3 y ago in a lecture to the Auckland
branch RSNZ:-

One tawdry old argument we have heard since 1974 and can expect to hear
again in all its flagrant deceit is the claim that gene transfers occur
naturally so GM is only hastening them. This line of talk is a
smoke-screen designed to obscure the fact that GM usually performs
artificial transfers which are not believed to occur in nature. This fact
is denied when possible harm is suggested, but is acknowledged, indeed
emphasised, for claims of benefit.

------------

I am gravely concerned that this logical point has not yet
penetrated to the higher levels of the RSNZ.

At least the nookluhluh fanatics refrained from such illogic. They
understated, indeed misrepresented, the hazards of nuclear reactors and of
other parts of the nuclear fuel "cycle". They concealed the propensity of
reactor-made plutonium to be used for nuclear bombs. They lied about the
costs & unreliability of nuclear power. But they didn't say anything like
"nuclear power reactors entail many patentable new developments in
technology, but are just another way of raising steam to slap thru a
turbine and therefore a nuclear power station is substantially equivalent
to a coal-fired steam electric power station and will need no independent
sceptical risk assessment". They took the trouble to set up advisory
cttees, dominated for many y by fanatics like Teller who reckoned Queens
N.Y would be an OK site because the risks were so tiny. These charade
cttees were slowly supplanted by feebly critical cttees (H W Lewis would be
a good specimen of the first minor scepticism in official nuclear
regulatory science.) I mention more of this history in my
http://www.psrast.org/selfshgen.htm .

To bring nuclear reactors under something like the current
regulatory system - which I do not consider nearly tough enough - took
3 decade.

Are we to accept GM must follow a similar historical time-scale -
that decades of slowly-retreating smoke-screens of PR will be allowed to
protect Conner, l'Huillier, etc etc as they conduct experiments capable of
unprecedented pandemic harm? In somewhat the same way that Churchill may
have wanted Germans to sink the Lusitania (not that it had the desired
effect for over a year), one becomes familiar with the feeling 'roll on the
Chernobyl of GM'. If the GM-tryptophan killings weren't enough, what will
it take to evoke a genuine regulatory system?

The clock started toward control of GM soon after the key
techniques were invented in the mid-1970s. Are we, to keep pace, 3 decades
later about to see a startling burst of progress?

The most helpful argument may be in attacking the illogic of the
gene-jiggerers. It is not merely that the factoids they spout are often
false ('we just put in one gene', etc), nor even that the science their
expts are based on is well known to be falsified theory, but worse they can
reach their sooting conclusions only by blatant illogic. They are not only
liars but also fools, or such radical twisters as are painful to imagine;
either way, they should be disqualified from conduct of dangerous expts.

R

http://www.scoop.co.nz/

The 10-11-03 rave on Scoop 'GE witch hunts ' by Lance Kennedy,
promulgated by the NZ "Life Sciences" propaganda agency
http://www.lifesciencenz.com/news-detail.asp?newsID=5295, sets new records
for misleading promotion of GM food (GMF). I correct some of LK's worst
errors.

" ... in recent years one of the most successful witch-hunts
targeted an innocent technology. It all began in 1997 with a piece of
incredibly shoddy science." LK omits to mention that this work, by British
experts Ewen & Pusztai, was published in _The Lancet_. LK's purported
summary of the results is thoroughly misleading. Actually, Pusztai's
preliminary mention on TV of his results was largely ignored at the time by
the media. The facts of the case have been widely published; see e.g
;
;
;
WEBCAST Dec 10

LK asserts "The GM potatoes were harmless ... All raw potatoes, GM
or not, are toxic to rats." This is thoroughly false. Rats generally
thrive OK on raw (or cooked) potatoes; and the Ewen/Pusztai tests showed
specific harm to those eating a particular GM-potato, harm not found in the
control rats eating Desiree (the parent strain). LK shows no regard for
fact.

LK asserts all government approved GM crops and foods "are totally
safe". Not one for moderation, is he? The simple, big lie beloved of
Goebbels is his stock-in-trade. The truth is that only a handful of
short-term animal tests have been conducted on GM foods - Pusztai's being
still among the best. Medical observation of humans eating GM foods has
been shunned by governments. A colossal unmonitored ill-planned experiment
is being permitted. When LK says "Americans have been eaten [varieties of
GM-food] for years with no harm", this cannot be proven, since no studies
have been done to compare the health of the dupes with that of otherwise
similar populations not eating GMF. Lack of evidence is not proof of
safety.

LK's version of the experience to date is: "over 2 billion people
have eaten GM foods for over a decade and there is not one single
scientifically confirmed case of any harm, no matter how slight, arising
from the genetic modification of these foods". It would be misleading to
exclude food supplements from such a statement. Indeed, the Showa Denko
GM-tryptophan probably killed a few hundred and injured thousands: see < http://www.connectotel.com/gmfood/trypto.html >

Are GMFs useful? LK's answer is in his usual vein of extremism:
"Absolutely". Not even moderately? In fact, hardly at all. In a typical
GM-fantasy, LK says GM sweet potatoes in Africa will feed an extra ten
million starving Africans. How will they afford it (poverty being the main
reason why the present surplus of food is not reaching the starving) ?

LK rolls out a common PR deceit: "Golden rice is a GM variety with
extra vitamin A. It has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of
children from going blind." The content of pro-vitamin A in this yellow
rice is too low to make much difference at any feasible rice-ingestion
rate. And far better ways of getting vitamin A, along with many other
nutrients e.g folate, are known: green vegetables grown by gardening.

"Some proponents suspect this is because Golden rice is especially
useful and if it were seen to have dramatic benefits it would undermine the
entire anti-GM crusade." If this rice had indeed proven useful, which is
not the case, that conclusion would apply to that 'event' only. All other
GMF would remain to be appraised.

LK says "anti-GM lobby groups ... increased their earnings from
under $50 million to over $150 million US per year". I have no idea where
such figures come from, but judging by the lurid falsehoods with which LK
makes so reckless, he is most likely making these up. The idea that any of
those working for control of GM have got much money from it is without
foundation to the best of my knowledge. Those I know work for little or
nothing.

More offensively, LK says these unnamed groups "rely upon lies,
wild speculation and
emotionalistic propaganda". This is a classic of the very important human
characteristic (recognised if under-rated by Freud) PROJECTION. LK is
attributing to others what are in fact the main mental characteristics of
his own subculture - PR for GM.

"Anti-GM witch-hunters are causing enormous human suffering."
Again we see LK's habit of projection, unjustly accusing others of
spreading "fear & paranoia" while it is he who does so.

LK's paroxysm reaches white heat in this assertion: "Much damage
has already been done and the lives of thousands have been lost by these
ill advised attacks". No basis has been suggested for this wild claim.
Even the pro-nuclear fanatics were rarely this reckless with the truth.

LK's extremely misleading rant was "provided as a public® service
by the Institute for Liberal© Values". It is one of the most inaccurate
pieces of propaganda I have ever seen.

For more information we are told to "contact peron@orcon.net.nz".
What a charming sobriquet! Neither Juan nor Eva would be admired by most
decent folk.

LK predicts: "From now on we can expect to see the rational
elements growing stronger". The media will have to tell a lot more truth
about GM crops If such a welcome trend is to emerge, increasing the
resistance to GM crops.

GM includes some valuable techniques in contained laboratories.
But it also includes the most dangerous technology ever. These techniques
are in their infancy. The Prince of Wales, and the Sustainability Council,
led by many careful scientists, are correct in urging "keep it in the lab".

ISIS Press Release 01/12/03

Regulatory Sham on Bt-Crops

Prof. Joe Cummins exposes the regulatory sham involved in GM crops
containing a range of biopesticides

At 80 million planted acres, corn is the largest crop grown in the US
and accounts for one fifth of total agricultural cropland. Over the past
years, conventional insecticides have been applied to between 14 to18
million acres of corn to control corn root worm (CRW). This single corn
pest accounts for over 14% of insecticide applications to agricultural
crops. Infested acreage is increasing due to extended diapause and
change in the insectís behaviour as the CRW lays its eggs in soybean
fields, which are planted in rotation with corn.

Currently, the main genetically modified (GM) corn contains the Bacillus
thuringiensis (Bt) toxin gene Cry1Ab to control corn borer, but does not
control CRW. CRW control has been the recent focus among the
corporations developing GM crops. All candidate crops are being raced to
market with the cooperation of regulatory authoritatives in the USA and
Canada. The emphasis is on speedy evaluation and keeping down costs
rather than to ensure safety to consumers and to the environment. Safety
testing is done using toxins produced in bacteria acknowledged to be
somewhat different from those produced in the corn plants. This is
deemed to be "sound science" by the regulators.

GM corn with genes providing protection against CRW will soon reach the
market. Monsanto corporation has focused on the Bt toxin Cry3Bb and has
recently developed synthetic Bt toxins that combine amino acid sequences
>from native Cry1Ac and Cry1F crystal protein, which have enhanced broad
range specificity lacking in either toxin individually. Dow corporation
has been developing corn with Cry34Ab/Cry 35Ab combined toxin.
Monsantoís Cry3Bb-corn is ready for commercial release and the others
will soon follow.

Patents describing the production of Bt-Cry3Bb describe the production
of the synthetic Bt genes both used to produce the toxin produced in
bacteria and the toxin produced in corn plants. The synthetic Bt-cry3Bb
is altered from the bacterial gene by insertion of the cauliflower
mosaic virus (CaMV) promoter and enhancers, the leader sequence of wheat
chlorophyll a/b binding protein, the rice actin intron, and the 3'
transcription terminator sequence of wheat heat shock protein 17.3.
Along with the sequences above, many code words for amino acids were
altered to enhance translation in the plant cell, and some amino acids
were changed to enhance performance in the plant cell. An antibiotic
resistance marker nptII, also with the CaMV promoter and the NOS
transcription terminator from Agrobacterium tumefaciens nopaline
synthetase gene was inserted into the corn chromosome along with the
Bt-cry3Bb construct The genetic insert in corn was called MON 863. The
US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) noted that the Bt toxin in Mon 863
differed from the bacterial toxin by seven amino acids and by an
additional amino acid, alanine in the second position from the start of
the protein.

US Environment Protection Agency has considered a large number of
documents on human health and environmental impacts of Mon 863 corn. The
petition to establish a tolerance exemption for Bt-Cry3Bb argued that it
was not necessary to set a tolerance level because the toxin was not
toxic to mammals. But the studies supporting the exemption were done
with toxin produced in bacteria that are not identical to the product in
Mon 863 corn. The biopesticides registration action document for event
MON863 Bt-Cry3Bb1 corn provided information on product characterization.
The action document on environmental assessment included evidence on
non-target wildlife, but reviewed data from the bacterial Bt- Cry3Bb1
toxin, and not the toxin produced in MON863 corn. EPA has also provided
a fact sheet on Bt-Cry3Bb1 protein and the genetic material necessary
for its production.

Canada approved MON863 corn for livestock feed on March 5, 2003. Limited
information was provided in the Canadian decision document, and the fact
that the safety investigations had been based on a product significantly
different from the toxin in MON863 corn was not mentioned. The approval
of GM crops bearing toxins whose safety tests have been based on tests
of surrogate products appears to have grown so commonplace among
regulators that it is not worthy of mention.

Dow Agroscience Corporation has been developing a binary toxin mixture
containing Bt- Cry34Ab1 and Bt-cry35Ab1 effective against CRW. Initial
safety tests using toxins produced in bacteria showed that the mixture
was digestible by mammals and for that reason unlikely to be allergenic.
The petition to EPA for tolerance exemption, and the granted temporary
exemption noted that the proteins were obtained from bacteria but
believed to be similar to the proteins produced in corn (the product
being regulated) because the products had similar gel electrophoresis
mobility. The actual differences between the synthetic genes in corn and
the protein they produce and the protein toxins produced in bacteria
>from the native gene have not yet been disclosed.

Monsanto recently (Nov. 11,2003) disclosed methods for the construction
of B. thuringiensis hybrid delta-endotoxins comprising amino acid
sequences from native Cry1Ac and Cry1F crystal proteins. These hybrid
proteins, in which all or a portion of Cry1Ac domain 2, all or a portion
of Cry1Ac domain 3, and all or a portion of the Cry1Ac protoxin segment
is replaced by the corresponding portions of Cry1F, possess not only the
insecticidal characteristics of the parent delta-endotoxins, but also
have the unexpected and remarkable properties of enhanced broad-range
specificity not displayed by either of the native delta-endotoxins. The
hybrid toxins incorporated into transgenic plants express broad-spectrum
insecticidal activity against a variety of coleopteran, dipteran, and
lepidopteran insects. Presumably, the deployment of the synthetic genes,
described above, is meant to provide protection against all of the major
insect pests of corn. It seems likely that the mammalian toxicity tests
and the test of impact on non-target animals will be done with the
protein produced in bacteria not the one produced in corn plants.

In spite of the clear differences between the genes and the insecticide
toxin proteins produced in bacteria and those produced in transgenic
plants the US and Canadian regulators have agreed with the corporations
manufacturing the GM crops that the products are substantially
equivalent. So long as the final toxins are similar the bacterial toxins
can be used as surrogates for the crop toxin in safety testing. The
regulators made little or no effort to directly test the validity of
their presumptions. They are placing the burden of proof that the toxins
in the GM crops are unsafe for mammals and the environment on the
shoulders of the public, not the corporations who profit from the GM
crops. In the final analysis, the regulators are providing essential
public relations benefits for the corporations but not adequately
protecting the public. And so long as GM crops are not labeled in the
market, the errors of the regulators will go undetected.

The Ethics of Belief
by Simon Blackburn

A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love
By Richard Dawkins
(Houghton Mifflin, 263 pp., $24)

Dawkins unashamedly and gloriously delights in science. If anything is
sacred to him, it is truth and the patient road to it. He loves the
methods of science and its self-correcting nature. He loves the amazing
world that it reveals--a world far more amazing than any that human
beings could invent out of their own heads. A quotation that he provides
from Douglas Adams fits him exactly: "I'd take the awe of understanding
over the awe of ignorance any day." In the last essay in the book he
expresses this love in a moving letter to his ten-year-old daughter,
extolling science's reliance on observation, evidence, and the testing
of hypotheses, and contrasting them with the ways by which falsehoods
come to grip the human mind: by authority, and tradition, and the inner
conviction called revelation.

Still, Dawkins can seem surprisingly unperturbed by the forces that
unsettle public confidence in science. Writing to Tony Blair about the
furor over genetically modified crops, he contrasts the "gut reactions"
of the green movement, which he despises, with a "rational plea for
rigorously safe testing," which he endorses. But he thereby bypasses the
Greens' fear that in a world where universities are beholden to big
agriculture, there is no such thing as rigorously safe testing, or at
least no way for the rest of us to know if it ever takes place. Dawkins
does not write as if distorted observations, bent peer review, the
demand for results from industrial sponsors, and the corruption of the
medical profession by pharmaceutical companies are much of a problem. He
reminds his daughter that even if we take scientific facts on trust, we
can in principle go and look for ourselves, repeating whatever
experiments are necessary. But he is, perhaps, a little too quiet about
the practical impossibility of doing any such thing.

The betrayal of science that does arouse him to fury comes from
religion. Dawkins is an atheist, a strenuous and militant and proud one.
He thinks religious belief is a dangerous virus, and that it is a crime
to infect the mind of a child with it. He believes that "only the
willfully blind could fail to implicate the divisive force of religion
in most, if not all, of the violent enmities in the world today." He
calls religions "dangerous collective delusions," and he thinks that
they are sinks of falsehood (most of them have to be, since only one can
be true). He especially regrets their public influence. He is made
apoplectic by the pontifications of religious "leaders" on such
questions as whether human clones would be fully human, made in blissful
ignorance of the fact that identical twins are clones of each other.

Religion in England is not terribly demanding. It is not typically to be
thought of in terms of, say, the Kansas School Board or the teaching of
"creationist science," things about which any educated person should be
deeply disturbed. Nor in its native form is English religion a matter of
clerics telling you what you can eat or whom you can marry. It is not
even a matter of oily frauds on television fleecing the poor and the
stupid of their savings. It is seen largely as a set of marginal but
aesthetically pleasing rituals: the King's College carol service, a
stroll around Salisbury or York, watercress sandwiches and a bit of
Elgar. And so it is not really done to dump on English religion too
heavily; better to raise your hat to a vicar than raise your fists to
him. This puts Dawkins in the somewhat paradoxical position of being an
evangelical atheist in a country where evangelicals of any kind are
largely mistrusted. At least until recently, his crusading seemed to
many people in England a little bit over the top, a touch embarrassing.
Surtout, pas de zèle: Talleyrand's excellent motto, goes down well in
England, yet Dawkins is zealous.

But he has a good excuse. The religious virus is a cunning enemy, and
recent years have actually seen creationist schools creeping into the
United Kingdom, while our prime minister, who together with his wife is
the beneficiary of a marvelous gene that enables him to believe
absolutely whatever he would like to believe, has set up an influential
committee for increasing religiosity in the workings of government.
(Although nominally a Catholic, Cherie Blair goes in more for New Age
nonsense, but as far as I am aware the government has not yet been
instructed to consult crystal balls.) Dawkins thinks, and I agree with
him, that we cannot afford to be complacent. Even if we have little
religious zealotry at home, we do not have to go as far as America or
the Middle East to find it. We only need to look across the sea to
Northern Ireland to be reminded of what happens once the religious virus
takes hold. And Dawkins has a further reason for his zeal: evolution and
biology have been and still are frequent targets of those infected by
religion. They are areas where what we are--large primates--conflicts
most sharply with what such people would like to think of us as being:
children of God, little lower than angels, specially anointed. When
wishful thinking collides with science, it is generally wishful thinking
that wins, and Dawkins is right to be driven wild by it.

II.

Yet I wonder whether religion and science relate to each other in quite
the way that Dawkins envisages. He thinks of religious belief as simply
true or false, like other beliefs, and then overwhelmingly likely to be
false, since they are either inconsistent with or unsupported by our
best evidence about the way the world works. Religion is superstition,
like astrology, alternative medicine, and the rest. He likes an example
of Bertrand Russell's in which we consider the hypothesis that there is
a china teapot in its own orbit around the sun. Someone might believe
it, but there are many reasons for supposing it false and none at all
for supposing it true. Dawkins is right that it would be simply silly to
set store by the fact that the belief cannot be disproved. It may depend
on your standards of proof, but in any event the hypothesis is as
unlikely as can be, and as unlikely as any of the infinite number of
equally outlandish possible beliefs that we all ignore all the time.

It might seem not to matter if someone convinces himself that there is
such a teapot. But Dawkins might side, as I would, with the Victorian
mathematician W.K. Clifford, whose famous essay "The Ethics of Belief"
excoriated our "right" to believe pretty much what we like:
In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient
evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be
true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward
acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make
myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should
believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should
become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring
into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.

But the real and present danger lies not so much here but in what the
belief in the teapot waits to do. To become anything worth calling a
religious belief, a belief needs to connect with our form of life, our
way of being in the world. Perhaps out of its spout come instructions on
how to behave, whom to shun and whom to persecute, how to eat and what
to wear. Now the teapot becomes an object of veneration, and of
controversy. It needs interpreting. It needs a dedicated class of people
(usually men) to give authoritative renderings of its texts and their
meanings. In short, it has become a religious icon, and dangerous.

It has also stopped being a teapot, or merely a teapot (just as
Duchamp's urinal stops being merely a urinal: it is the audience's
interpretation of it that matters). It will have started to be a sin not
to believe in this teapot, although normally it is no sin to doubt the
existence of anything. The teapot may have become eternal, although
natural teapots are not. In fact, at this point we can forget the teapot
qua teapot, and look straight at the institutions that it supports and
the instructions and the way of life into which it gets woven. The
factual component is not the bit that does the work. The teapot is
merely a prop in the game, and an imaginary teapot serves just as well.

The same is true of the great or wise Architect of the eighteenth
century, or the Intelligent Designer who is so important to the good
people in Kansas. If you use evidence from the wonderful contrivances of
nature to ascend to a designer, what then? There is no immediate
practical difference between living in a world with such-and-such
natural stuff in it and living in a world with the same natural stuff in
it that some supernatural being created, or even occasionally tweaks in
unpredictable ways. The more extravagant account offers no new
scientific predictions, and certainly no inferences as to how to behave,
whom to admire, or what to fight for or against. You have to import all
that yourself, from your culture or your morality. If you marvel long
enough at the adaptation of bees and orchids to start thinking of
intelligent design, that is just a barren scientific mistake; but if, as
a next step, you begin to think that the designer has given you
satisfactory authority to persecute people with bare heads or red
beards, you have become religious, but you are no longer in the world of
fact at all.

On this way of thinking, religious activity becomes more like dance,
song, drama, or ritual. Its essence lies in what religious people do,
not what they believe or say that they believe. And the question of
whether it is good to go in for these dances and dramas stops being a
scientific question. It becomes a political or an ethical or an
aesthetic question.

For Dawkins, a sentence such as "I know that my redeemer liveth"
expresses a superstitious and false belief that someone who lived two
thousand years ago goes on living still, contrary to all the known
processes of biology. On the Wittgensteinian view that I have just
outlined, it is more like an expression of awe or fear or
self-righteousness or humility. It is the saying of someone who is
trying to articulate certain emotions, and who has been given this
particular repertoire of expressions of them, just as he might have been
given a waltz or a minuet. It is not a saying that is contradicted by
the scientific truth that people do not live that long.

It is a good question whether the Wittgensteinian account chimes very
well with the self-understanding of believers, and whether it matters if
it does not chime with it at all. It has consequences for one problem
that troubles Dawkins, which is the extent to which even atheists seem
drawn to "respect" the attitudes and the beliefs of religious people.
Why should anyone "respect" the belief that there is a china teapot
orbiting the sun? It is just dotty, and that is the end of it. But if we
see a religious tradition as a record of a culture's ongoing attempts to
cope with fear and hope, life and death, gain and loss, then it
certainly becomes a candidate for respect, just as much as the artistic
and literary traditions of our ancestors. I recall reading somewhere
that the doughty Enlightenment spirit Edward Gibbon recounted journeying
past the cathedral of Chartres with words like these: "Pausing only to
dart a look of contempt at the stately pile of superstition, we passed
on." It is important that atheists do not have to share this attitude of
Gibbon's, and I am sure that Dawkins does not share it. It is religious
people, after all, who deface and destroy religious buildings.

Becoming a possible object of respect, a religious tradition also
becomes a target for criticism, and Dawkins is quite capable of mounting
the true criticism of most current religiosities, including that of all
the monotheistic religions of the desert, which is that they are
frequently cruel, misogynistic, divisive, intolerant, and life-denying,
and that they warp for the worse the emotions and the practices of
countless people across the globe. The function of these religions is to
regulate how people behave and think, and unfortunately people regulate
how they behave in the most awful ways and think the most awful things.
There is no skyhook, so our teapots are no better than we are, and often
bring out the worst in us.

GM WATCH daily
http://www.gmwatch.org
---
George Monbiot exposes how a bizarre and cultish political network has
become the public face of the scientific establishment, at the heart
of its media attacks against critics of biotechnology.

"Far from rebuilding public trust in science and medicine, this
group's repugnant philosophy could finally destroy it."

Note the new GM Watch database referred to in the article:
http://www.gmwatch.org

---

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1102753,00.html

Invasion of the entryists

How did a cultish political network become the public face of the
scientific establishment?

George Monbiot
Tuesday December 9, 2003
The Guardian

One of strangest aspects of modern politics is the dominance of former
left-wingers who have swung to the right. The "neo-cons" pretty well
run the White House and the Pentagon, the Labour party and key
departments of the British government. But there is a group which has
travelled even further, from the most distant fringes of the left to
the extremities of the pro-corporate libertarian right. While its
politics have swung around 180 degrees, its tactics - entering
organisations and taking them over - appear unchanged. Research
published for the first time today suggests that the members of this
group have colonised a crucial section of the British establishment.

The organisation began in the late 1970s as a Trotskyist splinter
called the Revolutionary Communist party. It immediately set out to
destroy competing oppositionist movements. When nurses and cleaners
marched for better pay, it picketed their demonstrations. It moved
into the gay rights group Outrage and sought to shut it down. It tried
to disrupt the miners' strike, undermined the Anti-Nazi League and
nearly destroyed the radical Polytechnic of North London. On at least
two occasions RCP activists physically attacked members of opposing
factions.

In 1988, it set up a magazine called Living Marxism, later LM. By this
time, the organisation, led by the academic Frank Furedi, the
journalist Mick Hume and the teacher Claire Fox, had moved overtly to
the far right. LM described its mission as promoting a "confident
individualism" without social constraint. It campaigned against gun
control, against banning tobacco advertising and child pornography,
and in favour of global warming, human cloning and freedom for
corporations. It defended the Tory MP Neil Hamilton and the Bosnian
Serb ethnic cleansers. It provided a platform for writers from the
corporate thinktanks the Institute for Economic Affairs and the Center
for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Frank Furedi started writing for
the Centre for Policy Studies (founded by Keith Joseph and Margaret
Thatcher) and contacting the supermarket chains, offering, for
GBP7,500, to educate their customers "about complex scientific
issues".

In the late 1990s, the group began infiltrating the media, with
remarkable success. For a while, it seemed to dominate scientific and
environmental broadcasting on Channel 4 and the BBC. It used these
platforms (Equinox, Against Nature, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes,
Counterblast, Zeitgeist) to argue that environmentalists were Nazi
sympathisers who were preventing human beings from fulfilling their
potential. In 2000, LM magazine was sued by ITN, after falsely
claiming that the news organisation's journalists had fabricated
evidence of Serb atrocities against Bosnian Muslims. LM closed, and
was resurrected as the web magazine Spiked and the thinktank the
Institute of Ideas.

All this is already in the public domain. But now, thanks to the work
of the researcher and activist Jonathan Matthews (published today on
his database www.gmwatch.org), what seems to be a new front in this
group's campaign for individuation has come to light. Its participants
have taken on key roles in the formal infrastructure of public
communication used by the science and medical establishment.

Let us begin with the Association for Sense About Science (SAS), the
lobby group chaired by the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Taverne, and
whose board contains such prominent scientists as Professor Sir Brian
Heap, Professor Dame Bridget Ogilvie and Sir John Maddox. In October
it organised a letter to the Times by 114 scientists, complaining that
the government had failed to make the case for genetic engineering. In
response, Tony Blair told the Commons that he had not ruled out the
commercialisation of GM crops in Britain. The phone number for Sense
About Science is shared by the "publishing house" Global Futures. One
of its two trustees is Phil Mullan, a former RCP activist and LM
contributor who is listed as the registrant of Spiked magazine's
website. The only publication on the Global Futures site is a paper by
Frank Furedi, the godfather of the cult. The assistant director of
Sense About Science, Ellen Raphael, is the contact person for Global
Futures. The director of SAS, Tracey Brown, has written for both LM
and Spiked and has published a book with the Institute of Ideas: all
of them RCP spin-offs. Both Brown and Raphael studied under Frank
Furedi at the University of Kent, before working for the PR firm
Regester Larkin, which defends companies such as the biotech giants
Aventis CropScience, Bayer and Pfizer against consumer and
environmental campaigners. Brown's address is shared by Adam
Burgess, also a contributor to LM. LM's health writer, Dr Michael Fitzpatrick,
is a trustee of both Global Futures and Sense About Science.

SAS has set up a working party on peer review, which is chaired and
hosted by the Royal Society. One of its members is Tony Gilland, who
is science and society director at the Institute of Ideas, a
contributor to both LM and Spiked and the joint author of the proposal
Frank Furedi made to the supermarkets. Another is Fiona Fox, the
sister of Claire Fox, who runs the Institute of Ideas. Fiona Fox was a
frequent contributor to LM. One of her articles generated outrage
among human rights campaigners by denying that there had been a
genocide in Rwanda.

Fiona Fox is also the director of the Science Media Centre, the public
relations body set up by Baroness Susan Greenfield of the Royal
Institution. It is funded, among others, by the pharmaceutical
companies Astra Zeneca, Dupont and Pfizer. Fox has used the Science
Media Centre to promote the views of industry and to launch fierce
attacks against those who question them. She ran the campaign, for
example, to rubbish last year's BBC drama Fields of Gold.

The list goes on and on. The policy officer of the Genetic Interest
Group, which represents the interests of people with genetic
disorders, is now John Gillott, formerly science editor of LM and a
regular contributor to Spiked. The director of the Progress
Educational Trust, which campaigns for research on human embryos, is
Juliet Tizzard, a contributor to LM, Spiked and the Institute of
Ideas. Gillott and Tizzard also help to run Genepool, the online
clinical genetics library. The chief executive of the British
Pregnancy Advisory Service is Ann Furedi, the wife of Frank Furedi and
a regular contributor to LM and Spiked. Until last year she was
communications director for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology
Authority. The coordinator of the Pro-Choice Forum, which publicises
abortion issues, is Ellie Lee, a regular writer for LM and Spiked and
now series editor for the Institute of Ideas.

Is all this a coincidence? I don't think so. But it's not easy to
understand why it is happening. Are we looking at a group which wants
power for its own sake, or one following a political design, of which
this is an intermediate step? What I can say is that the scientific
establishment, always politically naive, appears unwittingly to have
permitted its interests to be represented to the public by the members
of a bizarre and cultish political network. Far from rebuilding public
trust in science and medicine, this group's repugnant philosophy could
finally destroy it.

… The sources for this and all George Monbiot's recent articles can be
found at www.monbiot.com.

The precautionary principle has gained a strong foothold in Europe. The
American chemical industry now plans to conduct a covert campaign
attacking the growing movement in California for more chemical safety
testing, with tactics including the creation of phony front groups and
spying on activists, according to an internal American Chemistry Council
(ACC) memo obtained by Environmental Working Group (EWG). The ACC
comprises more than 100 companies - among them Dow, Du Pont, Bayer, BASF
and Monsanto.

CHEMICAL INDUSTRY'S SECRET PLAN TO ATTACK CALIFORNIA'S ANTI-TOXICS TREND

Memo Calls for Phony Front Groups, Spying on Activists

The memo, available at www.ewg.org, offers a rare inside glimpse of the
deceptive and underhanded tactics used by some corporations and public
relations firms to lobby against tougher environmental regulations. It
recommends that ACC, the lobbying association for U.S. chemical companies,
hire a crisis communications firm that promotes itself as the attack dog
of the public relations industry to fight back against California's
adoption of laws and regulations that embrace the "precautionary
principle."

The precautionary principle, a policy that says new chemicals should not
be allowed on the market unless they're proven safe, has gained a strong
foothold in Europe, and in recent years California has enacted measures
applying the principle to several pollutants including, most recently,
chemical flame retardants. Despite the fact that two-thirds of the public
believes that such protections are in place already, the Bush
Administration has opposed their realization here in the U.S.

The memo warns that the state's embrace of the precautionary principle is
a threat to the entire U.S. chemical industry because "California's
political climate makes the state more susceptible to policy and thinking
inspired by the PP [precautionary principle] than other geographic
region... California is a bellwether state, and any success enjoyed here
could readily spill over to other parts of the country."

It recommends to ACC members that they pay $120,000 a year to
Nichols-Dezenhall, a Washington-based firm that hires former FBI and CIA
agents, to conduct "selective intelligence gathering ... about the plans,
motivations and allies of opposition activists... Focus on the PP
'movement leadership' in the U.S., and in particular, California."

The memo says Nichols-Dezenhall would also "create an independent PP
watchdog group to act as an information clearinghouse and criticize the PP
in public and media forums... The group could be structured as a
tax-exempt organization."

EWG obtained the document from a confidential source outside the chemical
industry who received it from ACC, which was recruiting other industries
as allies in the campaign. Microsoft Word data embedded in the document
confirms that it was written in July by Tim W. Shestek, an ACC lobbyist in
Sacramento.

In a Nov. 19 letter to ACC's President Greg Lebedev and Vice President for
State Governmental Affairs Roger Bernstein, EWG asked if the association
had hired the firm to execute the plan. Among Nichols -Dezenhall's
reported tactics are digging through the trash of its' clients opponents.
(The letter is available at www.ewg.org/briefings/acc/index.php)

Creating phony front groups is "patently deceptive in its effort to use
third parties to carry the message because, understandably, the ACC lacks
credibility and trust in any discussion of the safety of its members'
products," said the letter from Bill Walker, EWG's vice president for the
West Coast. "However, the third tactic, "selective intelligence
gathering," pushes the ethical envelope toward dirty tricks, given
Nichols-Dezenhall's reputation for such techniques."

"As someone whose trash might be searched," Walker said today, "I'd at
least like to know the lengths ACC is planning on going to in order to
stop common-sense public protections in the State of California. ACC has
spent millions on advertising and corporate PR to position itself as a
solid corporate citizen, with nothing to hide from the public."

Environmental Working Group.

Headquarters: 1436 U St. N.W., Suite 100 | Washington, DC 20009 ||
info@ewg.org

California Office: 1904 Franklin St. Suite 703 | Oakland, CA 94612 ||
california@ewg.org

This event takes place in the context of biotech money distorting
University policy, takes place on a campus where Ignacio Chapela has
recently been denied tenure, and brings together outstanding scientists who
have first-hand knowledge of how industry money and PR distort scientific
discourse.

Details below.
Dr. Pusztai will also be giving a separate lecture "The Human Health
Effects of GM Food" at 3:00 PM in 159 Mulford Hall.

- - - - -

The Pulse of Scientific Freedom In the Age of the Biotech Industry

A public conversation

Arpad Pusztai, Norwegian Food Sciences Institute, formerly Principal
Scientific Officer, Rowett Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland.
John Losey, Associate Professor, Cornell University.
Tyrone Hayes, Associate Professor, UC Berkeley.
Ignacio Chapela, Assistant Professor, UC Berkeley.

December 10, 2003
7-9 pm
155 Dwinelle Hall
University of California, Berkeley

Introduced by Michael Pollan
Moderated by Mark Dowie

WEBCAST

The four participants in this conversation have performed simple, yet
dramatic discoveries that question the wisdom of a quarter century of
commitment to an agenda of agricultural development based on intensive
technological dependence.

The publication of their research brought these researchers world-wide
attention, but made them into urgent targets for suppression from an ailing
but still powerful Biotech industry. As a consequence, each of the
participants has encountered not only controversy, but also threats to
their research, reputations, and livelihoods. Behind their research lies a
commitment to make their best knowledge available for the public. Behind
the hurdles they have faced lies one of the greatest challenges to public,
democratic discourse in our century: the growing influence of private
interests in the scientific enterprise.

The commonalities of their stories and the peculiarities of their personal
histories provide a unique window into the mechanisms through which this
threat operates. This will be the first time that a meeting between these
scientists will take place, providing a unique opportunity for the public
to gain insight into the bizantine workings of the academic-industrial
complex. Beyond the discussion of technicalities of their discoveries,
this evening of conversation should provide the opportunity to reflect upon
the challenges to scientific freedom and dissent at a time when these basic
principles are under attack.

Participant Details:

Arpad Pusztai - Consultant, Norwegian Food Sciences Institute, formerly
Principal Scientific Officer, Rowett Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland.
Discovery. Cytological and histological damage to rodents fed with
transgenically-modified potatoes.

Suppression. Dr Pusztai was fired from his position of 30 years as a
scientist at the Rowett Institute in Scotland. His research files were
seized, including in a break-in at his home. Major campaign of
discreditation.

Further references. http://plab.ku.dk/tcbh/Pusztaitcbh.htm,
http://www.psrast.org/pusztai.htm

John Losey - Associate Professor, Cornell University.
Discovery. Damage and death in Monarch butterfly caterpillars fed with
pollen from transgenically-modified corn.

Suppression: Promotion of research targetted towards discreditation of his
discoveries. Media campaign.

Further references. http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/5_22_99/fob1.htm,
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/May99/Butterflies.bpf.html,

Tyrone Hayes - Associate Professor, UC Berkeley
Discovery. Damage to tissues, organs and ecology of amphibian reproduction
due to low levels of Atrazine, the most widely-used chemical in US
agriculture.

Suppression. Attempts at suppressing, delaying and derailing research.
Targetted research to discredit his findings. Discreditation campaign.

Further references. Blumestyk, G. The Price of Research. The Chronicle of
Higher Education, October 31, 2003: A26.
http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/2003/Syngenta-Tyrone-Hayes31oct03.htm

Ignacio Chapela - Assistant Professor, UC Berkeley
Discovery. Genetic contamination of maize by transgenic (GMO) DNA in its
center of origin in Oaxaca, México.

Suppression. Attempts at suppressing, delaying and derailing research.
Direct threats. Coordinated, industry-funded international discreditation
campaign.

Further references. http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/03/press.htm,
http://www.mindfully.org/GE/2003/Ignacio-Chapela30jun03.htm,
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021028&s=schapiro,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/1871216.stm

Moderator
Mark Dowie is an investigative reporter and award-winning writer on
technology and the environment. His work has received, among others an
unprecedented four National Magazine Awards. He was editor and publisher
of Mother Jones. Two relevant books by Mark Dowie are "American
Foundations: an investigative history" (MIT Press, 2002), and "Losing
Ground: American environmentalism at the end of the Twentieth Century".
(MIT Press, 1996).

Michael Pollan is Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism
at the Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley. He is a contributing
writer for The New York Times Sunday Magazine and a celebrated writer on
food and the environment. Some of his relevant writings include: "The
Botany of Desire", "Power Steer", "Playing God in the Garden" and "The
(Agri)Culture of Obesity".

Here is the actual text of the short paper delivered by Roland Lesseps and
Peter Henriot (Jesuit priests resident in Zambia) at the recent Vatican
conference on GM food and farming. I believe this was the only anti-GM
submission that Cardinal Martino allowed there.

R



THE CHURCH'S SOCIAL TEACHING AND THE ETHICS OF GMOs

by Roland Lesseps SJ and Peter Henriot SJ


Before opening our remarks on this topic, let us make four brief points
that set the tone for our intervention.

1. We appreciate very much the invitation from Cardinal Martino to
participate in this Study Seminar, since we have been exploring this issue
for a long time. We approach the topic not primarily as academics but as
practitioners, coming from a very poor African country that has made a
political decision, based on scientific advice, to delay importation of GM
foods and the implementation of GMO agriculture. Our perspective arises
>from daily involvement in the lives of small-scale farmers and regular
policy analysis of agricultural and food security issues.

2. I am very happy that Cardinal Martino in his opening remarks
stressed the importance for us to inform our reflections on GMOs by what
our faith tells us about creation and that he and several other speakers
spoke about the ethical issues of using GMOs in agriculture. In fact, it
might have been better if a session on theological and ethical perspectives
of GMOs had been placed in the opening position, so that the issues of
scientific research, trade, health, environment, etc., could have been
evaluated from that perspective, guided by the social teaching of the Church.

3. We are concerned that several voices of church leaders around the
world are not represented on these panels. We think, for example, of
recent statements made about GMOs by the bishops and other church leaders
of the Philippines, of Brazil and of South Africa, statements expressing
deep concerns based upon practical experiences.

4. We are committed to a very open dialogue on this topic, ready to
learn from others, and eager to have others learn from us. This Study
Seminar is being closely watched by governments, church groups, civil
society and academics around the world - especially in the developing world
in countries like Zambia. For it is in Zambia and other poor countries
that this topic is not abstract but very concrete, not discussed primarily
in economic terms but in ethical terms.


THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

We think it is important to situate our ethical reflections about GMOs in a
larger theological framework, so we begin our paper with a brief
presentation about creation. We begin with creation because any ethical
study of a human technology is also a study of our relationship with the
created order here on earth. In this approach we follow the lead of Pope
John Paul II, who, in his message for World Day of Peace in 1990, begins
his consideration of the ecological crisis (which, he says, threatens world
peace) with a reflection on creation.

It is crucial that we recognize that human well being must be attained in
harmony with our whole, single earth community. Since we are an integral
part of this created order, “we must take into account the nature of each
being and of its mutual connection in an ordered system which is precisely
the ‘cosmos.’” (Pope John Paul II, The Social Concern of the Church, #34,
1987)

A fundamental theological principle to guide us in our reflection about
GMOs is that all of God’s creatures have intrinsic value, in and of
themselves. Nature is not just useful to us humans, but is valued and
loved in itself, for itself, by God in Christ. One scriptural basis for
this appreciation of all creatures is in the first chapter of Genesis: “God
saw that it was good…God saw everything that God had made, and indeed, it
was very good.” God does not say that creatures are good for human beings,
but simply says that creatures are good, in fact, very good!

An example of this same appreciation of creatures, coming from an early
Father of the Church, is this surprisingly modern prayer of St. Basil: “O
God, enlarge within us a sense of fellowship with all living things, our
brothers and sisters the animals, to whom you gave the earth as their home
in common with us. We remember with shame that in the past we have
exercised high dominion with ruthless cruelty, so that the voice of the
earth, which should have gone up to you in song, has been a groan of
travail. May we realize that they live not for us alone but for themselves
and for you, and that they love the sweetness of life.”

St. Basil’s mention of human dominion of the earth arises, of course, from
the statement in the same first chapter of Genesis that portrays God giving
humans dominion over all earth creatures. The earth, however, remains the
Lord’s, and human dominion is to be exercised in ways that are in accord
with God’s plan for the earth. In the present context it is crucial to
note that God also gives “to all wild beasts … all the foliage of plants
for food” (Gen 1: 30). The right to use other creatures does not give us
the right to abuse them. Pope John Paul II makes this very clear in The
Social Concern of the Church (# 34): “The way in which resources are used
must include respect for moral demands. One of the latter undoubtedly
imposes limits on the use of the natural world. The dominion granted to
man (sic) by the Creator is not an absolute power, nor can one speak of a
freedom to ‘use and misuse’, or to dispose of things as one pleases.”

Another theological affirmation about creation is that it is
sacred. Why? God dwells in all creation, and all creatures participate in
the Divine Goodness. “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” wrote
the poet Gerald Manley Hopkins. St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa
Theologiae (Part I, Question 47, Art 1), put it this way: “God brought
things into being in order that the divine goodness might be communicated
to creatures…The whole universe together participates in divine goodness
more perfectly, and represents it better, than any single creature
whatever.” God labours in all creatures, continually calling them out of
chaos and nothingness. God dwells in all creatures and reveals Himself to
us in them, so they are all sacred, holy. “Take off your shoes, for the
place where you stand in holy ground” (Exodus 3:5).

Realization of this sacredness and intrinsic value of creatures leads to
the “respect for nature” that the Pope calls for in that same 1990 message
for World Peace Day. The Pope goes on to say that “certain elements of
today’s ecological crisis reveal its moral character. First among these is
the indiscriminate application of advances in science and technology…The
application of these discoveries in the fields of industry and agriculture
have produced harmful long-term effects. This has led to the painful
realization that we cannot interfere in one area of the ecosystem without
paying due attention both to the consequences of such interference in other
areas and to the well-being of future generations.”

In the next section of his message, Pope John Paul II makes this powerful
statement: “We can only look with deep concern at the enormous
possibilities of biological research. We are not yet in a position to
assess the biological disturbance that could result from indiscriminate
genetic manipulation and from the unscrupulous development of new forms of
plant and animal life, to say nothing of unacceptable experimentation
regarding the origins of human life itself. It is evident that in any area
as delicate as this, indifference to fundamental ethical norms, or their
rejection, would lead humankind to the very threshold of self-destruction.”

What are some “fundamental ethical norms” that can guide our evaluation of
genetic engineering? One such norm is the precautionary principle that Our
Holy Father used when he said: “We are not yet in a position to assess the
biological disturbance that could result from indiscriminate genetic
manipulation and from the unscrupulous development of new forms of plant
and animal life.” We should, at the very least, follow this precautionary
principle and not adopt a technology that is still inadequately tested.

We already have many examples of serious problems brought about by our not
being able to see the undesirable consequences caused by our use of what
seemed to be a wonderful benefit. Sad examples include: the insecticide
DDT was later found to lead to death of bird embryos by thinning the egg
shells, the refrigerant gas chlorofluorocarbon was found to be destroying
the ozone layer, and the tranquilizer thalidomide caused severe
abnormalities in over 7,000 children born of women who took the drug during
pregnancy.


CHURCH’S SOCIAL TEACHING PERSPECTIVES

In speaking of the Church’s social teaching (CST), we refer to that body of
social wisdom about the human person in the community of creation that
describes and prescribes the values and structures of society that enable
the human person to become fully alive. It is found in scripture, in
theological reflection, in ecclesial documents and in the witness of
individuals and communities.

We strongly feel that there is a value-added dimension that the CST brings
to policy discussions, debates and decisions. This dimension is necessary
for both efficiency and equity. This is especially true when the topic
under discussion is something as basic to human life as food.

An example of how CST principles can illuminate an ethical principle is
found in developing the meaning of the oft-cited “precautionary
principle.” As mentioned above, this principle plays a key role in
deciding policies about GMOs. We believe that the precautionary principle
is strengthened by two key emphases found in the church’s social teaching:

1. Respect for human rights: the social teaching makes very clear that
the economy is for the human person, the human person is not for the
economy. Therefore any economic intervention in the social order must be
evaluated in terms of its impact on the well being of human persons in
community. In the face of serious questions about the impact on that well
being raised by introduction of GMOs, respect for human rights demands
application of the precautionary principle.

2. Respect for the natural world: the social teaching emphasises, to
again cite Pope John Paul II, that “one cannot use with impunity the
different categories of beings, whether living or inanimate - animals,
plants, the natural elements - as one wishes, according to one’s own
economic needs.” (The Social Concern of the Church, # 34, 1987) When there
is serious question regarding the consequences of GMOs on other elements in
the created order, then the precautionary principle must be invoked.

A full treatment of the CST in relation to GMOs demands a book-length
review of these CST principles as they have evolved over the centuries and
have been applied in various circumstances. For our purposes here, let us
be brief and simply highlight four principles that are valuable in
evaluating the use of GMOs in agriculture and that we have seen have direct
relevance to the Zambian situation we come from.

Common good: The oft-repeated calls for promotion of the national common
good have in recent years been supplemented by calls for the global common
good. The common good has been defined as the sum total of the structures
and practices of society that make possible the fullness of human life and
the integrity of creation. It is a principle with political
implications. Thus promotion of the common good demands the subordination
of economic interests (e.g., profit maximisation, protection of proprietary
rights) to the overall improvement of human life.

What this means in practice, for example, is that corporations coming into
Zambia with GMOs must take as their primary responsibility the promotion of
the common good and not simply a return to their shareholders. The ethic
of the common good is recognized in the social teaching as a restraint on
the operations of the free market. It raises questions such as: can seeds
of life be patented or subjected to “terminator” processes if this
endangers the common good? The CST says no!

Option for the poor: Our CST emphasises clearly that the political
decisions governing policies in and between countries must always be made
on the basis of answering a priority question: what impact does this have
on the poor in our society? And that impact must be measured in both
short-term ways and in long-term ways.

Here the introduction of GMOs faces two important challenges. First, the
current design of commercially promoted GMOs is based on an industrial
model of agriculture that favors large farms and high external inputs at
the expense of smaller family farms. This introduces a serious dependency
of small-scale and mostly poor farmers on large multinational corporations
for seeds and complementary necessities. The ability to practice
alternative agricultural approaches- e.g., organic farming - is severely
limited. The ancient tradition of saving seeds each year for replanting is
abrogated. In Zambia, it threatens the continued existence of the
small-scale farmers that we daily work with.

Secondly, the frequently advanced grounds for introducing GMO crops - that
its supposed increase in productivity will lessen the problems of hunger -
is open to direct challenge. From the case of Zambia and other poor
countries, it is clear that hunger is not primarily a matter of scarce food
resources but of the economic structures of distribution and accessibility
and the social structures of traditional practices and education. In
short, hunger is directly related to poverty. We all know the figures that
tell us there is no shortage of actually produced food in the world today,
and no shortage of potential food production. Referring to the latter, a
statement from the Justice and Peace Environment Desk of the Southern
African Catholic Bishops Conference noted the untapped potential within the
wealth of existing crop varieties. “In Africa, for instance, more than two
thousand native grains, roots, fruits and other plants are found. These
have been feeding people for thousands of years, but most are receiving no
scientific attention whatsoever today.”

Subsidiarity: This CST principle states that decisions that can be made
responsibly and effectively at the local level should not be taken by a
higher level. The presumption is that those closer to the issues will have
both the wisdom and the concern to make the best decisions. Even with ever
increasing international interdependencies, this principle still has
political and ethical value. Indeed, in the age of globalisation, it
assumes a fundamental importance relating to the legal conditions of
national sovereignty.

Look at the case of Zambia, a nation faced in 2002 with a food shortage
because of poor weather conditions. The President had to resist very
strong international pressures, primarily coming from the USA, to introduce
GMO crops before any adequate bio-safety policy was in place. And after a
thorough study about the safety of the GMOs was conducted - paid for by the
USA - the President was ridiculed for accepting the results of that study
and maintaining policy based upon the “precautionary principle.”

Solidarity: Something new in the CST and very dear to the current Pope is
the principle of solidarity. This is the recognition of the
interconnectedness -- ethical as well as empirical -- of personal and
institutional activities that make up the social fabric of human
existence. In the church’s social teaching, solidarity is promoted in
conscious acts that build community. Solidarity among humans is not vague
compassion for the less privileged but active structuring of a society of
mutual and socially just sharing. When economic activity undercuts
community -- e.g., creating the great gaps between rich and poor that exist
throughout the world today -- then solidarity is destroyed.

This understanding of solidarity is what drives the recent papal concerns
about the dynamics of globalisation. The case of Zambia’s resistance to
GMOs is a classic example of the geo-political and neo-liberal forces of
globalisation that would trivialize Zambian concerns and marginalize
Zambian decisions. We believe that this is why the Pope has so eloquently
spoken of the need for a “globalisation with solidarity, a globalisation of
solidarity.” The exclusive political and economic dynamics of a
non-solidarity-oriented globalisation has been strongly criticised by the
Vatican at international gatherings such as the recently concluded WTO
meeting in Cancun. Surely the outcome of this Study Seminar should echo
the same position.


CONCLUSION: AN ETHICAL WAY FORWARD

In the letter of invitation to this Study Seminar, we were reminded that
the duties of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace include the
“assembly and evaluation of various types of information and the results of
research on justice and peace, the development of peoples and violations of
human rights.”

Our paper has attempted to address the most important kind of research that
can be done by this Pontifical Council, namely, the theological and ethical
perspectives informed by the Church’s social teaching.

Our theological perspective stressed the respect due to all of God’s
creation, a respect that recognises the sacredness and inherent value of
the cosmic order. As a consequence, genetic modification can never be
viewed simply as a technological or economic tool in the hands of
humans. This enables us to see that the so-called “precautionary
principle” invoked, for example, by Zambia, is more than a temporary
scientific safeguard. It is a fundamental call to humility before the
awesome goodness of God’s creation.

Our CST perspective demonstrated the value-added dimension given to GMO
discussions by the principles of the common good, option for the poor,
subsidiarity and solidarity. These principles provide fundamental
challenges to the geo-political and neo-liberal forces that are promoting
GMOs in agriculture today. Certainly they should guide any church
responses to GMO policies.

We feel that these two perspectives both broaden our vision and deepen our
compassion when we look at the way the question of GMOs is frequently - and
mistakenly - put: an either-or choice of feeding a hungry world. There are
other and more suitable ways to feed a hungry world than adopting genetic
engineering of crops. These are the ways that are revealed when we look
seriously, as Pontifical Council and as concerned members of the human
community, at the issues of “justice and peace, the development of peoples
and violations of human rights.”

This is all the more obvious when we remember that food is not merely
another economic commodity governed in its production and distribution by
the laws of the market. Since it is essential to life, it is both a sacred
entity and a global common good.

The conclusions of our presentation here are therefore clear:

1. Theological and ethical concerns must be primary in any discussion
promoted by church groups.
2. Genetic modification does not meet the tests of the social teaching
of the church for genuine integral development that respects human rights
and the order of creation.
3. The church has the responsibility to educate its members to the
religious values essential in evaluating use of GMOs in agriculture.
4. Political pressures should be brought by Justice and Peace groups
across the world to promote non-GMO approaches to meeting problems of hunger.

To conclude on a personal note, when we return to Zambia after this Study
Seminar, we will be asked by fellow church members, government officials,
civil society groups, citizens and the farmers we work with: does the
Church support the stand of the Zambian government on not accepting the
introduction of GMOs into our agriculture?

We pray that our paper and the intelligent and prayerful deliberations of
this Study Seminar will enable us to answer that question with an
unequivocal Yes!

Thank you.


This paper was presented by Fr Roland Lesseps SJ at the International
Symposium on "Genetically Modified Organisms, Threat or Hope?", held in
Rome 10-11 November 2003. It was organized by the Pontifical Council for
Justice and Peace and presided by Council Prefect Cardinal Renato Martino.

Fr Roland Lesseps SJ is Instructor at the Kasisi Agricultural Training
Centre and Fr Peter Henriot SJ is Director of the Jesuit Centre for
Theological Reflection, both in Luska, Zambia.

from Prof Joe Cummins

I frequently point out the danger of cancer in use of embryonic stem
cells in therapy. The fact that stem cell advocates from major US
universities do not mention cancer only means that such company
promotors are practising traditional american "pump and dump" -
stock promotion intending to take advantage of gullible investors.

December 3, 2003
Embryos and cancer
Early embryonic pluripotency gene controls malignant phenotype in germ
cells | By Cathy Holding

The POU transcription factor Oct3/4 maintains the pluripotent state of
inner cell mass cells "at the blastocyst stage of preimplantation
development" that develop into the fetus after implantation. Different
levels of Oct3/4 expression result in altered potential for a given
embryonic cell, and the more pluripotent a cell, the less ìmatureî it
appears in terms of epigenetic programming and gene expression profile.
Oct3/4 is also expressed in spermatogonia in the adult male, and levels
of expression again are correlated with the ìmaturityî of that cell.

Germ cell tumors (GCTs) account for a high proportion of malignancy in
young men, and in the November issue of Cancer Cell, Sharon Gidekel and
colleagues at the Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School report not
only that Oct3/4 expression is found almost exclusively in GCTs, but
also that the level of expression is related to the immaturity "and hence
the malignancy" of the tumor. They also demonstrated for the first time
that overexpression of Oct3/4 in a heterologous cell system confers
tumorigenicity to that line when it is subsequently injected into nude
mice, again with malignancy related to immaturity. Finally, tumor
regression was observed when expression levels of Oct3/4 were inhibited.
This suggests that Oct3/4 acts as an oncogene and could be a potential
therapeutic target for this type of germ cell malignancy (Cancer Cell,
4:361-370, November 2003).

Gidekel et al. used immunohistochemistry and demonstrated the expression
of Oct3/4 in all of 45 primary human GCTs and absence in all of 182
solid tumors from other sources. Embryonic stem cell lines previously
engineered to have differing inducible levels of Oct3/4 expression were
injected into nude mice to assess the effects of varying levels of the
gene on tumorigenicity and of induction and repression of expression.
Cells were transfected with Oct3/4 expression construct, and
tumor-associated properties such as anchorage dependence were tested in
the resultant lines.

"These results fit well with the growing body of evidence that links
cancer with genes and pathways that are required for normal embryonic
patterning. In many cases, cancer seems to be caused by the deregulation
of transcription factors that affect cell fate and proliferation...
These findings support the view that many molecular pathways that
underlie carcinogenesis represent aberrations of the normal processes
that control embryogenesis," the authors conclude.

"This study provides further evidence that deregulated expression of
homeobox genes, which occurs in many solid tumors, is functionally
relevant for carcinogenesis and highlights unique features that
distinguish homeobox genes from other cancer-promoting genes," writes
Cory Abate-Shen at the UMDNJ Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in an
accompanying Previews article in the same journal.

Links for this article
F. Cavaleri, H.R. Scholer, ìNanog: a new recruit to the embryonic stem
cell orchestra,î Cell, 113:551-552, 2003.
[PubMed Abstract]

H. Niwa et al., ìQuantitative expression of Oct-3/4 defines
differentiation, dedifferentiation or self-renewal of ES cells,î Nature
Genetics, 24:372-376, April 2000.
[PubMed Abstract]

S. Gidekel et al., ìOct3/4 is a dose-dependent oncogenic fate
determinant,î Cancer Cell, 4:361-370, November 2003.
http://www.cancercell.org/content/article/abstract?uid=PIIS1535610803002708

Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School
http://www.md.huji.ac.il/

UMDNJ Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
http://www4.umdnj.edu/rwjcweb/

C. Abate-Shen, ìHomeobox genes and cancer: New OCTaves for an old tune,î
Cancer Cell, 4:329-330, November 2003.
http://www.cancercell.org/content/article/abstract?uid=PIIS1535610803002770

California blocks first genetically altered pet

DON THOMPSON

Associated Press

SACRAMENTO - California regulators blocked sales of the first
bio-engineered household pet Wednesday, closing the door to glowing
zebra fish in a state that buys a quarter of the nation's ornamental
fish.

California is the only state with a ban on transgenic species, and
sales of the fluorescent GloFish® are expected everywhere else next
month.

The state Fish and Game Commission rejected an exemption from the ban
on ethical grounds, despite accepting recommendations from scientists
and the California Fish and Game Department that there is no danger to
state waterways even if the fish escaped.

"For me it's a question of values, it's not a question of science,"
said commissioner Sam Schuchat. "I think selling genetically modified
fish as pets is wrong."

Given California's extensive review, proponents had looked to its
approval to dampen any concerns from other states or consumers that
the fish might be harmful to the environment or if consumed by wayward
pets or children.

Opponents view the decision as precedent-setting as they lobby for
regulation on the national level. Without federal regulation, said the
Center for Food Safety's Rebecca Spector, the nation may be facing "a
new era of unregulated transgenic pets."

The 3-1 vote came moments after commissioners approved the state's
14th license for research into genetically modified fish. But
commissioners drew the line on permitting widespread sales of a
biotech fish that was developed by Singapore researchers but which
would be sold for pure visual pleasure.

Environmental, public interest and commercial fishermen fought the
exemption, arguing that the fish have been found to survive in
nonnative tropical waters. They hailed commissioners' decision, which
comes after federal agencies decided they have no jurisdiction over a
bio-engineered household pet that is not intended for consumption.

"That's why the rest of the country has its eyes on California today,"
said commissioner Jim Kellogg, who raised the first objections to
approving a pet with no medical or research value.

Yorktown Technologies of Austin, Texas, which has the license to
market the fish, and the state of Florida, in which the fish are
grown, convinced the department and the commissioners that the altered
fish are even more cold-intolerant than the natural zebra fish and
could not survive in California waters.

California adopted its regulations for fear transgenic farmed fish,
such as salmon, could get loose and devastate the state's wild
populations. The normally black-and-silver zebra fish were inserted
with genes from sea anemones or jellyfish to turn them red or green,
and glow under black or ultraviolet lights.

Despite the distinction, commissioners balked even after acknowledging
Californians could readily buy the fish in any neighboring state and
bring them home.

"We might be the only state that doesn't do it because we're the only
smart ones," mused commissioner Bob Hattoy. "We're trying to regulate
a whole new field of science."

Schuchat and Hattoy said they were lobbied more heavily by GloFish
opponents and proponents than on virtually any other issue before the
commission.

"Welcome to the future. Here we are, playing around with the genetic
bases of life," said Schuchat, who consulted his rabbi among others
before reaching his decision. "At the end of the day, I just don't
think it's right to produce a new organism just to be a pet.

"To me, this seems like an abuse of the power we have over life, and
I'm not prepared to go there today."

Yorktown President Alan Blake and commission President Michael Flores,
the only commissioner to support the exemption, noted the fish was
developed to provide visual markers in the presence of pollution, with
a portion of GloFish profits going to the Singapore scientists for
more research.

California residents buy 25 million ornamental fish a year, a quarter
of the 200 million sold across the nation, Blake said. He estimated
that Californians might have purchased two million of the genetically
altered fish each year.

"They made a decision today that's going to impact millions of
California consumers," Blake said. "It's unfortunate the consumers of
California will not be able to make their own decisions."

ON THE NET

Yorktown Technologies: www.glofish.com

The Center for Food Safety: http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org

Posted on Wed, Dec. 03, 2003

Science Society Sustainability http://www.i-sis.org.uk
General Enquiries sam@i-sis.org.uk Website/Mailing List
press-release@i-sis.org.uk ISIS Director m.w.ho@i-sis.org.uk

ISIS Press Release 04/12/03

Nanotox

As nanotechnology is moving into producing tonnes of nanoparticles, Dr.
Vyvyan Howard explains why harmless materials become dangerous when
shrunk to the nanoscale.

A more technical fully referenced version of this article is posted on
ISIS membersí website. Details here.

Introduction

The nano-technology industry has begun the bulk production of
nanoparticles, especially ultrafine particles for a range of commercial
applications, from titanium dioxide in sunscreens to carbon nanotubes
for molecular electronics (see "Nanotubes highly toxic" and "Nanoshells
cure or curse?" this series). Manufacturers are moving into production
levels in excess of 100 tonnes per annum.

Particles that can be breathed in are classified as: coarse (average
diameter less than 10micron); fine (average diameter less than 2.5
micron); and ultrafine (average diameter less than one micron). One
micron (m) is one millionth of a metre and 1 000 nanometres (nm).

We have two defence mechanisms in the lung to deal with particles
breathed in. The first is a carpet of mucus that lines all but the most
peripheral parts of the lung. This carpet moves slowly upwards, carrying
particles that have landed on it, and is then swallowed. Particles that
make it through this carpet of mucus, which tend to be fine and
ultrafine, get into the air sacs where gas exchange between the air and
the blood takes place. The surfaces of the air sacs are patrolled by
macrophages, scavenger cells that mop up particles. However, macrophages
appear to have difficulty recognising particles less than 70nm in
diameter, and in addition, they can be easily overwhelmed by too many
particles.

It is illuminating to consider the types of particles we were exposed to
throughout the course of evolution. These consisted mainly of suspended
sand and soil particles and pollen grains; most of which are relatively
coarse and are trapped in the mucus before getting to the alveoli. There
have always been ultrafine particles (UFPs), mainly consisting of minute
crystals of salt, which become airborne through the action of the sea
waves. These salt particles are not toxic, however, because they are
soluble in water. For particles less than 70 nm in diameter, there was
nothing much in the air throughout our prehistory of particular concern
until we harnessed fire for use in our everyday life.

Research is revealing that when normally harmless bulk materials are
made into UFPs, they tend to become toxic. Generally, the smaller the
particle, the more reactive and toxic it becomes. This should come as no
surprise, because that is exactly how catalysts are prepared to enhance
industrial chemical reactions. By making particles of just a few hundred
atoms, you create an enormous amount of surface, which tends to become
electrically charged and thus chemically reactive. The upper size limit
for the toxicity of UFPs is not fully known, but is thought to lie
between 65 and 200nm.

There is evidence that chronic exposure to particulate aerosols leads to
long-term health effects, primarily on the cardiovascular system. Most
of these studies have used coarse particles to assess the effects. More
studies are now using fine particles, though the question of whether it
is more predictive of harm than coarse particles is till being debated.
There is also evidence that short term effects from poor air quality is
due to particle overloading. The number of studies that have used UFPs
is low, but there are indications that UFPs are more hazardous than fine
particles.

The main questions on the safety of nanoparticles are:

1. By what routes do UFPs get into the body and then where do they
travel to?
2. What is the mechanism of toxic action and how does the reactive
surface of UFPs interact with the "wet biochemistry" in the body?
3. What is the relative contribution of particle size versus particle
composition in the overall toxicity of UFPs?

Evidence of potential harm associated with UFPs comes from studies on
toxicology and absorption and fate of UFPs in whole animals and studies
on mechanisms of toxicity in cells and tissues.

Question 1. Routes of access into, and travel around, the body

First, it should be noted that there appears to be a natural
"passageway" for nanoparticles to get into and subsequently around the
body. This is through the openings in the natural membranes, which
separate body compartments. These openings are between 40 and 100 nm in
size and are thought to be involved in the transport of macromolecules
such as proteins, and on occasion, viruses. They also happen to be about
the right size for transporting UFPs. Most of the research on that has
been performed by the pharmaceutical industry interested in finding ways
of improving drug delivery to target organs. This is particularly so for
the brain, protected by the ëblood brain barrierí. It appears that
chemists are able to design UFPs that can hoodwink certain membranes
into allowing "piggybacking" of novel chemicals across membranes that
would not be possible otherwise, and UFPs have already been made that
can enhance drug delivery to the brain.

Although this can offer clear advantages, the obverse of this particular
coin needs to be considered. When environmental UFPs (as from traffic
pollution) gain unintentional entry to the body, it appears that there
is a mechanism that can deliver them to vital organs. The body is then
ëwide opení to any toxic effects that they can exert. The probable
reason why we have not built up any defences is that such environmental
UFPs were not part of the prehistoric environment in which we evolved
and therefore there was no need to develop defensive mechanisms against
them.

There is considerable evidence that inhaled UFPs can gain access to the
blood stream and are then distributed to other organs in the body. This
has been shown for synthetically produced UFPs such as bucky-balls ñ a
form of carbon in which 60 carbon atoms are arranged like a football -
which accumulate in the liver.

Another possible portal of entry into the body is via the skin. A number
of sunscreen preparations now available have incorporated nanoparticle
titanium dioxide. Recent studies have shown that particles of up to 1 m
in diameter (within the category of UFPs) can get deep enough into the
skin to be taken up into the lymphatic system, while particles larger
than that were excluded. The implication is that UFPs can and will be
assimilated into the body through the skin. The exact proportion of
those deposited on the skin, which will be absorbed, remains unknown.
Using post mortem human skin, it has been shown that dextran beads 0.5
to 1m can penetrate the rough outer layer (stratum corneum) of the skin
when flexed. The penetration occurred in over 50 % of the samples if
flexing was continued for 1 hour. In a small proportion of cases, the
beads got as far as the dermis (inner layer of the skin).
Question 2. The mechanism of toxic action

Studies on laboratory animals have looked at the ability of UFPS to
produce inflammation in lungs after exposure to UFP aerosols. The degree
to which UFPs appear to be able to produce inflammation is related to
the smallness of the particles, the ëageí of the aerosol and the level
of previous exposure. It has been proposed that the chronic inhalation
of particles can set up a low grade inflammatory process that can damage
the lining of the blood vessels, leading to arterial disease.

Studies on cells have confirmed the increased ability of UFPs to produce
free radicals that cause cellular damage. This damage can be manifested
in different ways, including genotoxicity and altered rates of cell death.
Question 3. Particle size versus particle composition

Early indications were that certain metals might be more toxic as UFPs
than other materials. Since then, other studies have shown very similar
toxicities between different materials when presented as UFPs, for
example latex and titanium dioxide. More recently, attention is being
concentrated on the effects of ultrafine carbon black. What seems clear
>from all the papers is that exposure of living systems to UFPs tends to
increase oxidative stress, and therefore, the effect of small size is
considerably more important for UFP toxicity than the actual composition
of the material.

Conclusions

There is evidence that UFPs can gain entry to the body by a number of
routes, including inhalation, ingestion and across the skin. There is
considerable evidence that UFPs are toxic and therefore potentially
hazardous. The basis of this toxicity is not fully established but a
prime candidate for consideration is the increased reactivity associated
with very small size. The toxicity of UFPs does not appear to be very
closely dependent on the type of material from which the particles are
made, although there is still much research to be done before this
question is fully answered.

Dr. Vyvyan Howard is histo-toxicologist at University of Liverpool. A
version of this article first appeared as annex to "No Small Matter II:
The Case for a Global Moratorium" www.etcgroup.og

This article can be found on the I-SIS website at
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Nanotox.php

Genetic modification was invented in about 1972. Selection for crop
improvement was invented about 14,000 years ago. Development of maize
was unique in that human intervention was required in order to separate
seeds from the cobs. The requirement for humans to evolve maize remains
until the present.

Selection is not genetic modification!
Science magazine lies!

November 14, 2003 the scientist

Ancient 'GM' corn
Allelic selection established in ancient crops maintained in modern-day
maize | By C L Bishop

The ancestor of modern-day maize (Zea mays) has been the subject of
fevered debate since the 1920s, with the most likely candidate being the
wild grass teosinte. It is thought that contemporary maize arose from a
single domestication event of teosinte parviglumis in the Balsas River
Basin, Mexico, as early as 9000 years ago. What is remarkable is that
the seeds required dispersal by prehistoric man. Previous work
established that only five genomic regions were responsible for the
phenotypic differences between teosinte and maize. Subsequently, three
genes contributing to these differences have been cloned and
characterized - the tb1 and pbf gene products control levels of kernel
storage protein, while the su1 gene encodes a starch debranching enzyme
that is involved in corn tortilla texture. In the November 14 Science,
Viviane Jaenicke-DesprÈs and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology compared DNA sequences of the tb1, pbf, and
su1 from maize landraces from the Americas with those isolated from
teosinte parviglumis. The authors identified modern corn alleles present
within archaeological samples from 4000 years ago, suggesting that the
genetic modification giving rise to these ancient plants resulted in
superior crops that have been maintained as such for millennia (Science,
302:1206-1208, November 14, 2003).

Jaenicke-DesprÈs et al. selected short DNA fragments (~50 bp) suitable
for the comparison of allelic frequency from archaeological remains. DNA
was extracted from cob samples ranging from 4000 to 650 years old and
cloned. Reconstruction of each gene was achieved by sequencing of
multiple clones. Comparison of these sequences with those from modern
day maize and teosinte samples confirmed modern alleles were present in
Mexican maize some 4400 years ago. The phenotypic role of the three
genes investigated suggests that cob size and kernel quality were used
by prehistoric farmers to select next generation plants.

"By 4400 years ago, early farmers had already had a substantial
homogenizing effect on allelic diversity at three genes associated with
maize morphology and biochemical properties of the corn cob As more
genes involved in selected features become identified in maize as well
as other crops, the ability to determine nuclear gene sequences from
domesticated plants recovered from archaeological excavations will make
it possible to follow comprehensively the genetic consequences of
domestication over time," conclude the authors.

"The apparent loss of genetic diversity following the introduction of
high-yielding Green Revolution wheat and rice varieties in the 1960s and
1970s, and attending the rapid adoption of superior GM [genetically
modified] crops today, is far from a new phenomenon," comments Nina V.
Fedoroff from the Huck Institute for Life Sciences in an accompanying
article.

Links for this article

Y. Matsuoka et al., ìA single domestication for maize shown by
multilocus microsatellite genotyping,î PNAS, 99:6080-6084, April 30, 2002.
[PubMed Abstract]

J. Doebley, ìMapping the genes that made maize,î Trends in Genetics,
8:302-307, September 1992.
[PubMed Abstract]

V. Jaenicke-DesprÈs et al., ìEarly allelic selection in maize as
revealed by ancient DNA,î Science, 302:1206-1208, November 14, 2003.
http://www.sciencemag.org

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
http://www.eva.mpg.de

Huck Institute for Life Sciences
http://www.lsc.psu.edu/

N.V. Fedoroff, ìPrehistoric GM corn,î Science, November 14, 2003.
http://www.sciencemag.org