ACTION ALERT: Stop Monsanto's wheat contaminating our food

Monsanto have made an application to Food Standards Australia New Zealand
(FSANZ) to have their genetically modified wheat, MON 71800, approved for
the Australian and New Zealand food supplies.

The wheat has been engineered to be resistant to the herbicide
glyphosate, by the addition of the bacterial gene cp4 epsps. It will
therefore contain residues of glyphosate as well as GE material.

The wheat has been developed by Monsanto Australia. Currently none is
grown in New Zealand or Australia, but it is obvious from this attempt to
include it in our food supply that they also want it grown in Australia
and probably New Zealand too. If this happens it will be impossible to
keep genetic contaminants out of our food supply.

FSANZ's assessment of the application, A524, can be found at
www.foodstandards.govt.au

The application is open to submissions from the public until March 31st.

Submissions can be sent to FSANZ, PO Box 10559, The Terrace, Wgtn 6036; or
submitted via the FSANZ website - email: slo@foodstandards.gov.au or
info@foodstandards.govt.nz

Application A524 - food derived from herbicide - tolerant wheat MON 71800

Initial Assessment Report - 18 February 2004 [ pdf 289kb ] [ word

http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/standardsdevelopment/applications/applicationa524foodd2349.cfm

http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/_srcfiles/A524_RR_Wheat_IAR.pdf

http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/standardsdevelopment/applications/applicationa525foodd2350.cfm

Application A525  Food derived from Herbicide-tolerant Sugar Beet H7-1:
to permit the use in food of sugar beet genetically modified to provide
resistance to glyphosate. [Received 12 January 2004]

http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/_srcfiles/A525_RR_Sugarbeet_IAR.pdf

Scientists Suspect Health Threat From GM Corn
By John Vidal
Environment Editor

The Guardian - UK

2-28-04

Scientists investigating a spate of illnesses among people living close
to GM maize fields in the Philippines believe that the crop may have
triggered fevers, respiratory illnesses and skin reactions.

If preliminary results are confirmed, it would be one of the first
recorded cases of serious health problems associated with GM crops, and
could damage the reputation of the biotech agriculture industry, which
is rapidly expanding in developing countries.

The scientists' findings were immediately challenged by Monsanto, the
world's leading GM company, and by the Philippine government.

The concern surrounds an unnamed village in northern Mindanao, where 39
people living near a field of Bt maize - which contains a pesticide in
the gene - started suffering last autumn when the crop was producing
pollen.

Doctors thought they had an infectious disease, but when four families
left the village and recovered, and then showed the same symptoms on
return, an environmental cause was suspected.

Terje Traavik, scientific director of the Norwegian Institute of Gene
Ecology, was asked to investigate. Blood tests showed the villagers had
developed antibodies to the maize's inbuilt pesticide.

Professor Traavik, who issued a summary of his results yesterday, said
more tests were needed but felt his preliminary findings were reliable.

His studies suggest that a virus promoter - which is like a motor
driving the production of the genetic message - was unexpectedly found
intact in human cells.

His team also said it had found that genetically engineered viruses used
in the GM process recombined with natural viruses to create new hybrid
viruses with unpredictable characteristics. If confirmed, this could
suggest that they could cause new diseases.

Prof Traavik said tests so far showed evidence of an immune reaction. He
will return to the Philippines this week to continue the research before
publishing full results in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

But he rejected accusations that he was trying to scare people with data
not yet reviewed by other scientists. "Publication of results typically
requires a waiting period of up to one year or more," he said in Kuala
Lumpur.

"With such evidence of possible human
health impacts of foods already on the market, we believed that waiting
to report our findings through publication would not be in the public's
interest."

Monsanto said it was "extremely unlikely" that the limited production of
the GM crop in the Philippines would have produced such results.

"There have been no documented cases of allergic reactions to Bt maize
after seven years of broad commercial use on millions of hectares in the
US, Canada, Argentina, Spain and South Africa, starting in 1996," a
spokesman said.

The company was backed by the government in Manila, which approved GM
cultivation last year.

"It's absurd - no biology student will believe it," said Artemio
Salazar, the director of the maize programme of the Philippine
department of agriculture.

"The implication of the study is that the resistant gene got inserted
into the human gene, which is impossible."

Greenpeace called for more research. "There is such a huge amount of
uncertainty around these crops," a spokesman said.

But Willy de Greef, a biotech law consultant formerly employed by the
Swiss agrochemicals company Syngenta, expressed surprise at Prof
Traavik's findings, saying research showed Bt maize pollen did not carry
the toxin so no reaction should occur. "One would want a scientific
panel to look at Traavik's results," he told Reuters .

Guardian Unlimited C Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

http://www.forestresearch.co.nz/topic.asp?navlevel=2&topic=Cell%20Wall%20Biotechnology&contenttype=summary&docid=1546&title=Cell%20Wall%20Biotechnology%20Centre&cat1=BioMaterials%20Science&cat2=Cell%20Wall%20Biotechnology

Wall Biotechnology
Cell Wall Biotechnology
Cell Wall Biotechnology Centre

Research Areas
Genetic Engineering
Genomic Science
Gene Discovery

Cell Wall Biotechnology Centre
The full potential of plant-derived biomaterial to supply the world's
chemical, material and energy needs will be realised through advanced
biotechnologies. The Cell Wall Biotechnology Centre (CBC) seeks to unlock
the possibilities in plants through understanding the fundamental molecular
and biochemical processes of cell wall development.

Knowledge gained from fundamental research on cell wall biochemistry and
genetics will enable the development of plant cells that provide the first
step in manufacturing useful, valuable and environmentally sustainable
products. This will be achieved through the creation of plants that will
engineer their own fibres to meet specific manufacturing and product
requirements. In future, this means that most newly planted plantation
forests and crops will be genetically designed for specific purposes.
Potential examples include structural durability, high calorific value etc.

The CBC is committed to identifying the control points affecting variation
in the basic patterns of key characteristics of cell walls, ultimately
leading to development of new products and services for forestry and
non-forestry applications.

Contact: Christian Walter
email:
Christian.Walter@forestresearch.co.nz

http://www.forestresearch.co.nz/topic.asp?topic=Genetic%20Engineering&title=Genetic%20Engineering%20for%20Future%20Forests

Genetic Engineering for Future Forests

Genetic Engineering (GE) or genetic modification (GM), like many other new
technologies has become an issue of intensive public concern and discussion.
While Gene Technologies may benefit areas such as medicine, agriculture and
forestry, there are still concerns that if the technology is not used
carefully, this might present threats to the environment or human health.
In addition, there is debate whether these technologies are acceptable for
religious or cultural reasons.

Forest Research sees genetic engineering as a tool to achieve significant
value gains for the forestry industry. We also recognise the need to proceed
with this technology in a way that is responsible and in no way detrimental
to public or environmental health. Our expert team is committed to obtaining
more scientific data on the risk potential of engineered plants, before any
commercial use is considered.

http://www.forestresearch.co.nz/topic.asp?docid=189&contenttype=general&topic=Genetic%20Engineering&title=Potential%20Risks

Potential Risks

HOW CAN WE UNDERSTAND THE RISKS OF GENETIC ENGINEERING?
It is human nature to be somewhat skeptical of new technologies and to
question its relevance in society. Never before has this been more true of
the questions being addressed by gene technologies. However in any debate we
must ask "what are the key issues of concern and where do they come from. Is
there any information that may enable a better understanding of the risks
associated with these technologies?"

FEAR: GE IS A NEW TECHNOLOGY
Fact: Microorganisms have been genetically engineered for 30 years. GM
plants, although first produced a decade ago, have only been commercially
planted (although never in NZ) for only six years.

FEAR: GE MAY CAUSE ILLNESS, CANCER OR EVEN DEATH
Fact: 300 million people over six years have been eating GM products. There
have been no reports of illness or death attributed to GE.

FEAR: GM PRODUCTS CONTAIN DNA
Fact: True. However all cells of all organisms (GM or not) contain DNA. So
inside every cell of that tomato, apple or potato you eat are billions of
particles of DNA. GM products contain one or two additional pieces of DNA to
encode a special trait (eg. Flavour, nutritional property, frost tolerance
etc).

FEAR: FRESH GM FOOD PRODUCTS ARE READILY AVAILABLE IN NZ
Fact: False. GM meat, fish, fruit, vegetables or milk not for sale in New
Zealand.

Our supermarkets will contain some GM foods, but these are commonly
restricted to processed food containing GM soy and corn (rather than fresh
produce).

FEAR: THERE MAY BE UNEXPECTED REACTIONS.
Fact: True, but as much as practicable, these reactions are identified,
analysed and characterised in the laboratory.

Contact: Julia Charity
email: julia.charity@forestresearch.co.nz

Many of you have probably seen some news coverage of the recent Union of
Concerned Scientists' 80 page report detailing GM contamination of
conventional seed varieties. The PDF takes a while to download if, like
me, you have only a 56K modem, but if you've got the time you can get it
from
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_environment/biotechnology/seedreport_fullreport.pdf

Written by Margaret Mellon and Jane Rissler, this is a great reference to
have. UCS bought commercial seed and had it tested by two different labs.
The results confirm what we've all been saying. If you don't need the
full report yet want a little more than I've written here, there's a story
at http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994709

> generating 5 to 10 mega-watts per hour
>of electricity

Should alone serve warning that this is not a genuine technology or
a reliable corporation. And there is vastly more evidence to similar
effect in the spam.

Both the "technology" outfit and the touting front "Wall Street
Financial Times" are blatant furphies. If the figures are within an order
of mag, this is worrying evidence of the lack of skill in technology
assessment, and makes it somewhat easier to understand how $10^11 has been
syphoned out of venture-drongos by gene-jockeys and some large total (a few
orders less?) by nanowankers.

At least one can get a few hollow laughs, e.g from that first
headline/motto/mission statement.

R

====
From: "Miles Lundy"

Subject: Subscribers benefit from our special stock updates vfryizxlcmzf [sic]
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 04

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The unique proprietary technology of the Biosphere fills an urgent
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LETH is an alliance partner with Tetra Tech, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTEK, $20) a
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permitting, installation and continuous worldwide monitoring of the
Biosphere Process System for LETH. Tetra Tech is now in the process of
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Required LETH information: Certain statements contained in this
newsletter may be forward looking statements within the meaning of The
Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such terms as "expect",
"believe", "may", "will", and "intend" or similar terms may identify
these statements. We are not a registered investment advisor or a broker
dealer. This is not an offer to buy or sell securities. No recommendation
that the securities of the companies profiled should be purchased, sold or
held by individuals or entities that learn of the profiled companies. This
is an independent electronic publication that was paid five thousand dollars
by an unaffiliated third party for the preparation of this company information.
Be advised that investments in companies profiled are considered to be high-
risk and use of the content provided is for information purposes only. If
anyone decides to
act as an investor they are advised not to invest without the proper
guidance from a financial advisor or a registered financial broker. If any
party decides to participate as an investor then it will be that investor's
sole risk. Be advised that the purchase of such high-risk securities may result
in the loss of some or all of the investment. Investors should not rely solely
on the information presented. Rather, investors should use the information
provided in this newsletter as a starting point for doing additional
independent
research on the profiled companies in order to allow the investor to form their
own opinion regarding investing in the profiled companies. Factual statements
made about the profiled companies are made as of the date
stated and are subject to change without notice. Investing in micro-cap
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All information provided about the profiled companies may include information
provided by outside sources, such as research reports, public filings, and
information provided by management of the profiled company.

Content-Location: "http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16951"

Volume 51, Number 4 · March 11, 2004

Review

The Trauma Trap

By Frederick C. Crews

Remembering Trauma

by Richard J. McNally

Belknap/Harvard University Press, 420 pp., $35

http://barnesandnoble.bfast.com/booklink/click?sourceid=119949&ISBN=0393702545

Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law

by Daniel Brown, Alan W. Scheflin, and D. Corydon Hammond

W. W. Norton, 768 pp., $100.00

1. Every now and then a book appears that can be instantly recognized as
essential for its field--a work that must become standard reading if that
field is to be purged of needless confusion and fortified against future
errors of the same general kind. Such a book is Remembering Trauma, by the
Harvard psychology professor Richard J. McNally. To be sure, the author's
intention is not revolutionary but only consolidating; he wants to show
what has already been learned, through well-designed experiments and
analyses of records, about the effects that psychological trauma typically
exerts on our memory. But what has been learned is not what is widely
believed, and McNally is obliged to clear away a heap of junk theory. In
doing so, he provides a brilliant object lesson in the exercise of rational
standards that are common to every science deserving of the name.

McNally's title Remembering Trauma neatly encapsulates the opposing views
that, for a whole generation now, have made the study of trauma into
psychology's most fiercely contested ground. Are scarring experiences well
remembered in the usual sense of the term, or can some of them be
remembered only much later, after the grip of a self-protective
psychological mechanism has been relaxed? This is the pivotal issue that
McNally decisively resolves. In the process, he also sheds light on a
number of related questions. Does memory of trauma stand apart
neurologically from normal memory? Does a certain kind of traumatic
experience leave recognizable long-term effects that can vouch for its
historical reality? What memory problems typify post-traumatic stress
disorder, and does the disorder itself "occur in nature" or is it a
cultural construct? And is memory retrieval a well-tested and effective
means of helping adults to shed depression, anxiety, and other
psychological afflictions?

One extended trauma, a public one, that won't be soon forgotten by the
involved parties is central to McNally's argument. I refer to the great
sex panic that gripped this continent from about 1985 to 1994. It wasn't
just an epidemic of runaway fear, rumor, and persecution but a grimly
practical test of the theories whose currency made it possible. And the
theories at issue were precisely those that are exhaustively reviewed in
Remembering Trauma. McNally uses that chapter of our history to show just
how much damage can be done when mistaken ideas about the mind get infused
with ideological zeal.

In the 1980s, as McNally relates, day care workers risked prosecution and
imprisonment on the coerced testimony of bewildered and intimidated
three-year-olds who were prodded to "remember" nonexistent molestations.
Meanwhile, poorly trained social workers, reasoning that signs of sexual
curiosity in children must be "behavioral memories" of rape, were charging
parents with incest and consigning their stunned offspring to foster homes.
And most remarkably, whole communities were frantically attempting to
expose envisioned covens of Satan worshipers who were said, largely on the
basis of hypnotically unlocked "memories," to be raising babies for sexual
torture, ritual murder, and cannibal feasts around the patio grill.

In the same period many psychotherapists, employing hypnosis, dream
analysis, "guided imagery," "age regression," and other
suggestion-amplifying devices, persuaded their mostly female patients to
"remember" having been molested by their fathers or stepfathers through
much of their childhood, in some cases with the active participation of
their mothers. The "perpetrators" thus fingered were devastated,
embittered, and often publicly shamed, and only a minority of their
accusers eventually recanted. Many, in fact, fell in with their
therapists' belief that young victims of sexual trauma, instead of
consciously recalling what was done to them, are likely to develop multiple
personalities. Disintegrating further, those unfortunates were then sent
off to costly "dissociative identity" wards, where their fantasies of
containing five, a dozen, or even hundreds of inner selves were humored
until their insurance coverage expired and they were abandoned in a crazed
condition. At the height of the scare, influential traumatologists were
opining that "between twenty and fifty percent of psychiatric patients
suffer from dissociative disorders" disorders whose reported
incidence plummeted toward zero as soon as some of the quacks who had
promoted them began to be sued for malpractice.

What we experienced, McNally shows, was a perfect storm, with forces for
mischief converging from every side. The fraudulent 1973 bestseller Sybil
had already helped to relaunch the long-dormant fad of multiple personality
and to link it to childhood sexual abuse.< #fn3>[3] Beginning in the early
1980s, the maverick Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller taught many American
readers what Sigmund Freud had once believed, that memories of early abuse
are typically repressed and must be therapeutically unlocked if the
resultant neuroses are to be cured. Jeffrey Masson's melodramatic book The
Assault on Truth (1984), misrepresenting Freud's "seduction" patients as
self-aware incest victims rather than as the doubters that they remained,
fanned the feminist anger that Miller had aroused, encouraging women to
believe that molestation by fathers must be pervasive.< #fn4>[4] Self-help
manuals such as The Courage to Heal (198 then equipped scientifically
ignorant psychotherapists with open-ended "symptom checklists," ensuring
that their patients would be diagnosed as suffering from buried memories of
violation. And all the while, Geraldo Rivera and less cynical alarmists
were whipping up fear of murderous devil cults.

If the origins of our mass delusion were complex, its dissipation in the
mid-1990s is easily explained. Like the Salem witch hunt three centuries
earlier, the sex panic had no internal brake that could prevent its
accusations from racing beyond all bounds of credibility. The stirring
motto "Believe the children" began to sound hollow when preschoolers who
finally agreed that they must have been inappropriately touched went on to
describe having been dropped into a pool of sharks or turned into a mouse.
The medical records of some alleged rape victims showed that they had still
been virgins at a later period. In one notorious case, influential at
first in promoting recovered memory but later in discrediting it, a woman
who got her father sentenced to life in prison for a murder/rape she had
remembered in hypnotic trances went on to recall his killing of another
person who proved to be wholly imaginary. And many patients, when urged to
dig deeper after producing a vague scene or two, reduced the process to
self-travesty by conjuring surreal orgies with Daddy's bridge partners,
visiting uncles, and the family pets.

One recovered memory case in particular, less absurd than most but
nevertheless lacking in prima facie plausibility, set in motion what the
movement's loyalists now bitterly characterize as "the backlash." In 1991
the future "betrayal trauma" psychologist Jennifer J. Freyd, after her
therapist had pointedly asked her in their second encounter whether she had
ever been abused, suddenly "remembered" that her father had continually
molested her between the ages of three and sixteen. It was Freyd's mother,
Pamela, convinced that she would surely have noticed some effects of
countless domestic sex crimes against her daughter, who then made contact
with other recently accused parents and established the False Memory
Syndrome Foundation. Under Pamela Freyd's leadership, the foundation (on
whose advisory board I serve) gathered and disseminated the most
authoritative scientific judgments about trauma, memory, and suggestive
influence judgments that swayed enough jurists, legislators, and
journalists to bring a healthy skepticism into play.

What put Jennifer Freyd's "memories" in question wasn't just their
dissonance with her mother's close observation. By alleging fourteen
years' worth of molestations that had been unknown to her conscious mind
prior to a therapist's prompting, Freyd was invoking an outlandish new
defense mechanism. Granted, some psychologists still believed in
repression, or the sequestering of a disagreeable thought or memory inside
"the unconscious"; and others subscribed to dissociation, the more radical
knack of "splitting the self" so quickly that no narrative memory of the
trauma gets formed at all. But Freyd's story, like many others that
surfaced during the sex panic, stretched those principles to cover any
number of serial traumatic incidents, as if a person could be subjected to
the same outrage hundreds of times without taking cognitive note of it.

This cumulative forgetting of harmful experience is what the social
psychologist Richard Ofshe disdainfully named robust repression a
startlingly maladaptive behavior that, if actual, ought to have aroused
wonder and consternation from the earliest times until now, if indeed it
didn't lead to the extinction of our species. Before the American 1980s,
however, it had apparently never once been remarked. Could robust
repression itself have been robustly repressed throughout the millennia?

Most recovered memory advocates have ducked the conundrum of robust
repression, and some have dismissed it as an alien notion devised by their
adversaries. But the alleged phenomenon, McNally shows, is nothing other
than the "massive repression" posited by such prominent traumatologists as
Judith Lewis Herman, Judith L. Alpert, Lenore C. Terr, and Jennifer J.
Freyd herself, each of whom understood that claims of sudden access to a
long string of previously unsuspected horrors require a basis in theory.
What could that basis be? McNally makes short work of the only systematic
attempts, Terr's and Freyd's, to maintain that serial traumas are easier to
forget than single ones. Moreover, all such efforts are doomed to be
question begging, because the only evidence favoring robust repression
consists of the very memories whose authenticity hangs in doubt.

The same stricture applies, however, to repression and dissociation per se.
Those notions became current in the 1880s and 1890s when Freud and Pierre
Janet independently attempted to trace the then fashionable complaint of
hysteria to pathogenic hidden memories and to expunge the ailment through
hypnotically induced recall. Freud, by far the more influential figure,
clung to repression though rendering it progressively more elastic and
ambiguous--even while repeatedly distancing himself from the diagnostic and
curative claims he had inferred from its supposed workings.

Before he was finished, Freud had conceived of repression as both a
conscious and an unconscious process acting upon feelings, thoughts, ideas,
and fantasies as well as memories. Such profligacy left repression without
any operational meaning; "the repressed" was simply any material that
Freud, who was given to ascribing his own punning associations to his
patients' minds, chose to identify as having been dismissed from awareness.
Yet the long vogue of psychoanalysis kept the concept alive, enabling it to
be virulently readapted, a century after its formal introduction, to the
same task of recruiting patients to victimhood that had preoccupied its
champion in 1895-96.

As McNally explains through deftly analyzed examples, it isn't just
therapists and their patients who fail to ask prudent questions about the
repression or dissociation of trauma. The body of research purporting to
validate those mechanisms is riddled with procedural errors, most of which
stem from naïve trust in the retrospection of subjects who have already
been led to believe that they must have undergone a trauma that was then
sequestered from memory. Along with such other inquirers as David Holmes
and Harrison G. Pope, Jr., McNally understands that a good test of
repression or dissociation has to be prospective. That is, it must track
down people who are known with certainty to have lived through ordeals
that would be expected to have triggered a self-protective loss of memory,
and it must then ascertain how many of those people are unable to recall
the event.

Holocaust survivors make up the most famous class of such subjects, but
whatever group or trauma is chosen, the upshot of well-conducted research
is always the same. Like Holmes and Pope, McNally finds that no
unanswerable evidence has been adduced to prove that anyone, anywhere, has
ever repressed or dissociated the memory of any occurrence. Traumatic
experiences may not always remain in the forefront of memory, but, unlike
"repressed" ones, they can be readily called to mind again. Unless a
victim received a physical shock to the brain or was so starved or sleep
deprived as to be thoroughly disoriented at the time, those experiences are
typically better remembered than ordinary ones. Thus Judith Herman's
much-quoted maxim, "The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them
>from consciousness," would appear to be exactly opposite to the
truth. And once that fact is understood, the improvised and precarious
edifice of recovered memory theory collapses into rubble.

2. It would be a serious mistake, however, to assume that reckless
traumatology has now been permanently laid to rest. The conviction that
fathers are naturally prone to incestuous rape is still current. In some
academic departments, a dogged literalism about the repression/dissociation
of trauma has become oddly wedded to postmodernist suspicion of
science. Furthermore, most of the "trauma centers" that sprang up
in the 1990s to study and treat psychogenic amnesia are still operating
under the same premises as before. As for the theoreticians of recovered
memory, they continue to use their positions of authority in universities,
hospitals, and professional organizations to advance the views whose
hollowness McNally has exposed, and they can still count on a surprising
level of support from their colleagues.

Consider, in this regard, the following example of deafness to the lessons
of the sex panic. Each year the American Psychiatric Association, the body
that sets the most basic guidelines for sound practice in our mental health
professions, bestows its Manfred S. Guttmacher Award on what it deems to be
the best recent publication on legal psychiatry. The prize for 1999 went
to a 768-page tome by Daniel Brown, Alan W. Scheflin, and D. Corydon
Hammond, Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law. The authors characterize
themselves as "voices of moderation in the middle" opposing "zealots on
both sides" (p. 1). Their book, however, consists largely of sophistical
pleading for already lost causes: the forensic value of therapeutically
retrieved memories, the genuineness of multiple personality disorder, the
likelihood that some reports of ritual abuse cults are accurate, and the
desirability of allowing evidence obtained through hypnosis to be
admissible in court.

Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law isn't just a disingenuous book,
hiding its partisanship behind a screen of sanctimony; it is also a noxious
one. Lightly granting the possibility that therapy may occasionally lead
to pseudomemories, it trivializes the problem, deeming it serious only
"when the patient takes legal action or publically [sic] discloses abuse"
(p. 37)--as if the suffering of privately shattered families counted for
nothing. And the book's strategy of superficially "reviewing the
literature," citing both skeptical and (always more numerous) credulous
studies and then tilting the scales toward the latter, merely simulates
scientific neutrality.

These authors' activism in the cause of recovered memory was well known
long before they collaborated on their prize-winning volume. Daniel Brown
and Alan Scheflin had often served as expert witnesses minimizing the
hazards of memory retrieval, claiming to have found overwhelming
experimental support for the concept of repression, and denying that a
therapist could ever deceive a patient into thinking that she suffered from
multiple personality; and their collaborative papers were similarly
one-sided. In 1995, moreover, Scheflin had delivered a warmly
received address to a Texas conference held by the Society for the
Investigation, Treatment and Prevention of Ritual and Cult Abuse, whose
other speakers asserted, inter alia, that there were 500 Satanic cults in
New York City alone, committing 4000 human sacrifices per year, that Bill
Clinton was serving as the Antichrist in the worldwide Satanic fraternity
of the Illuminati and that the False Memory Syndrome Foundation is "a
Central Intelligence Agency action." Expressing solidarity with the
assembled psychotherapists whose diagnoses of ritual abuse were exposing
them to malpractice suits, Scheflin counseled them on the best means of
foiling the legal machinations of "the false memory people," whom he
characterizes as "the enemy."

But it is hypnotherapist D. Corydon Hammond, well known for his low regard
for experimental research on memory, whose name on the title page
of Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law ought to have prompted especial
wariness among the Guttmacher judges. Like Scheflin, Hammond has affirmed
the reality of both Satanic abuse cults and multiple personality disorder.
But whereas Scheflin stops short of asserting a proven link between those
two phenomena, Hammond is on record as a flamboyant true believer.

In a notorious 1992 lecture at a conference on sexual abuse and MPD,
Hammond revealed his conviction that many MPD sufferers have acquired their
split personalities through subjection, from early childhood onward, to
ritual sexual abuse, sadistic torture, and mind control programming. The
aim of the programmers, he disclosed, has been to produce remotely guided
"alters" who, unbeknownst to their core selves, will be slaves to a
worldwide intergenerational cult that is organized into "Illuminatic
councils." The cult, said Hammond, is headed by a shadowy "Dr. Greenbaum,"
a Hasidic Jewish collaborator with the Nazis who once assisted in death
camp experiments and later used the CIA to further his nefarious ends. "My
best guess," Hammond confided,

. . . is that they want an army of Manchurian Candidates, tens of thousands
of mental robots who will do prostitution, do child pornography, smuggle
drugs, engage in international arms smuggling, do snuff films, . . . and
eventually the megalomaniacs at the top believe they'll create a Satanic
order that will rule the world.

These colorful fantasies are significant, but not because they point to a
failure of reality testing on Hammond's part. Closely related ideas were
voiced in the heyday of the recovered memory movement by other prominent
MPD specialists such as Bennett Braun and Colin Ross. What matters is that
Hammond and the others all claim to have learned about the grand cabal from
their hypnotized patients, who, until they were placed in trances, hadn't
even known they were molestation victims, much less robotic smugglers,
whores, and assassins.< #fn11>[11] As Brown, Scheflin, and Hammond now put
it in arguing in favor of hypnotically obtained evidence in the courtroom,
"for some victims, hypnosis may provide the only avenue to the repressed
memories" (p. 647). Exactly. Without that means of exchanging and
embroidering false beliefs, Hammond himself could never have learned from
his patients about the evil Dr. Greenbaum and his thirst for absolute power
over us all.

The illogicalities and distortions in Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law
do not go unremarked in McNally's Remembering Trauma. Thus, when Brown et
al. cite one study as evidence that "amnesia for Nazi Holocaust camp
experiences has also been reported," McNally quotes that study's rather
different conclusion: "There is no doubt that almost all witnesses remember
Camp Erika in great detail, even after 40 years" (p. 192). And when Brown
et al., again straining to make psychologically motivated amnesia look
commonplace, cite another study to the effect that "two of the 38 children
studied after watching lightning strike and kill a playmate had no memory
of the event," McNally informs us that those two children "had themselves
been struck by side flashes from the main lightning bolt, knocked
unconscious, and nearly killed" (p. 192).

Such corrections, however damning, are peripheral to McNally's fundamental
critique of Brown and his colleagues. The heart of the matter is that
Brown et al. have miscast the entire debate over recovered memory by
marshaling evidence against a straw-man "extreme false memory position."
Supposedly, the extremists hold that all refreshed memories of abuse are
necessarily wrong. Then one could put the extremists in their place just
by citing a few cases of authenticated recall. But as McNally shows,
critics of recovered memory fully allow that a period of forgetfulness can
precede a genuine recollection. Indeed, that pattern is just what we would
expect if the young subject at the time of the act, never having been
warned against sexual predators, was unsure how to regard that act. What
the critics deny is that "memories" of trauma, surfacing for the first time
many years later, are so intrinsically reliable that they can serve as
useful evidence that the experience was real. Brown, Scheflin, and Hammond
want that extremism to be embraced once again by the legal system that has
finally learned to distrust it.

It would be reassuring to think that the the American Psychiatric
Association's Guttmacher jury merely skimmed Memory, Trauma Treatment, and
the Law and misconstrued it as a bland eclectic survey. Already in 1991,
however, another Guttmacher Award had been bestowed on co-author Scheflin
for a work that made several of the same legal arguments.< #fn12>[12] A more
likely explanation for the subsequent prize is that Brown et al., having
mounted a brief for the deep knowledge and expert testimony of
theory-minded clinicians, were gratefully perceived as siding with mental
health providers against their adversaries. If so, a larger question comes
into view. What role did our major societies representing
psychotherapists--the American Psychoanalytic Association, the American
Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric Association
itself--play in condoning or actually facilitating the recovered memory
movement, and how much enlightened guidance can we expect from them in the
future?

3. As I have noted on several occasions, and as McNally confirms,
in the 1990s recovered memory therapy made significant inroads into the
practice of North American psychoanalysis. Even today, feminist clinicians
bearing diplomas from analytic institutes are probing for missing memories
of abuse and vigorously defending that practice in psychoanalytic books and
journals. But the American Psychoanalytic Association, representing over
3,000 members, has turned a blind eye to this trend and one can understand
why. The psychoanalytic movement is already embattled, and too much about
the historical ties between Freudianism and recovered memory would prove
embarrassing if attention were called to it. The elected custodians of
Freud's legacy have no desire to confront his early phase as a
self-deceived abuse detecter; or to admit the precedent he set, during that
phase and thereafter, in treating dreams, tics, obsessional acts, and
agitation in the consulting room as "behavioral memories" of inferrable
traumas; or to revisit the grave doubts that have been raised about
repression; or to be reminded of the way psychoanalysts, until quite
recently, insulted real victims of molestation by telling them that their
"screen memories" covered a repressed desire to have sex with their
fathers. No longer given to excommunicating dissidents, the
tottering Freudian patriarchy has made its peace with "recovered memory
psychoanalysis" by pretending that it doesn't exist.

The largest of the three societies riven by the issue of recovered memory,
the 95,000-member American Psychological Association (hereafter APA), is
nominally responsible for quality control in the administration of therapy
by the nation's clinical psychologists. Hence one APA division's
commendable effort in the 1990s to identify the most effective treatment
methods for specific complaints such as phobias and obsessive-compulsive
disorder. That initiative, however, met with disapproval from APA members
whose favorite regimens had not been found to give superior results. Some
practitioners worried that insurers would use the list of approved
treatments as an excuse to cut off reimbursement for all but the preferred
therapies, and others complained that the association seemed on the verge
of putting soulless experimentation ahead of clinical know-how. For now at
least, the organization as a whole is not recommending treatments, to say
nothing of disavowing dangerous ones. Recovered memory thus gets
the same free pass from the APA as "attachment therapy," "therapeutic
touch," "eye movement desensitization and reprocessing," "facilitated
communication," and the hypnotic debriefing of reincarnated princesses and
UFO abductees.

This reluctance to challenge the judgment of its therapist members is
deeply rooted in the APA's philosophy. Ever since 1971, when the
association gave its blessing to Ph.D. and Psy.D. programs that omitted any
scientific training, the APA has guided its course by reference to studies
indicating that the intuitive competence of clinicians, not their adherence
to one psychological doctrine or another, is what chiefly determines their
effectiveness. Those studies, however, were conducted before
recovered memory practitioners, using a mixture of peremptory guesswork and
unsubstantiated theory, began wrenching patients away from their families
and their remembered past.

In 1995 the APA did publish a brochure, "Questions and Answers about
Memories of Childhood Abuse," which can still be found on the "APA Online"
Web site. The document combined some prudent advice to patients with
soothing reassurance that "the issue of repressed or suggested memories has
been overreported and sensationalized." Further inquiry into the
phenomenon, it said, "will profit from collaborative efforts among
psychologists who specialize in memory research and those clinicians who
specialize in working with trauma and abuse victims."

But the APA directors already knew that such collaboration was impossible.
In 1993 they had established a "task force," the Working Group on the
Investigation of Memories of Childhood Abuse, self-defeatingly composed of
three research psychologists and three clinicians favorably disposed to
retrieval, and the task force had immediately degenerated into caucusing
and wrangling. After years of stalemate, the group predictably submitted
two reports that clashed on every major point; and the abashed APA,
presented with this vivid evidence that "clinical experience" can lead to
scientific heterodoxy, declined to circulate photocopies of the two
documents even to its own members except by individual demand.

Meanwhile, the organization repeatedly compromised its formal neutrality.
In 1994, for example, the APA's publishing house lent its prestigious
imprint to a book that not only recommended recovered memory therapy but
recycled the most heedless advice found in pop-psychological manuals. The
book, Lenore E. A. Walker's Abused Women and Survivor Therapy: A Practical
Guide for the Psychotherapist, touted hypnotism as a legitimate means of
gaining access to "buried memories of incest" and "different personalities"
within the victim (pp. 425-426). Walker provided a list of telltale
symptoms, any one of which might indicate a history of forgotten
molestation. These included "ambivalent or conflict ridden relationships,"
"poor body image," "quiet-voiced," "inability to trust or indiscriminate
trust," "high risk taking or inability to take risks," "fear of losing
control and need for intense control," "great appreciation of small favors
by others," "no sense of humor or constant wisecracking," and "blocking out
early childhood years" (p. 113) years which in fact are not remembered by
anyone.

Then in 1996 the APA published and conspicuously endorsed another book,
Recovered Memories of Abuse, aimed at equipping memory therapists and their
expert witnesses with every argument and precaution that could thwart
malpractice suits. The book's co-authors were well-known
advocates of recovered memory treatment, and one of them, Laura S. Brown,
was actually serving at the time on the deadlocked task force. She had
also supplied a foreword to Lenore Walker's bumbling Abused Women and
Survivor Therapy, calling it "invaluable and long overdue" (p. vii).
Unsurprisingly, then, Recovered Memories of Abuse characterized false
memory as an overrated problem and drew uncritically on much of the
research whose weaknesses Richard McNally has now exposed. The APA's
unabated promotion of that book, even today, suggests that the organization
remains more concerned with shielding its most wayward members than with
warning the public against therapeutic snake oil.

There remains, once again, the American Psychiatric Association "the voice
and conscience of modern psychiatry," as its Web site proclaims. Putting
aside the fiasco of the 1999 Guttmacher Award, we might expect that a
society representing 37,000 physicians, all of whom have been schooled in
the standard of care that requires treatments to be tested for safety and
effectiveness, would be especially vigilant against the dangers of
retrieval therapy. Thus far, however, that expectation has not been
fulfilled.

To be sure, the Psychiatric Association's 1993 "Statement on Memories of
Sexual Abuse" did warn clinicians not to "exert pressure on patients to
believe in events that may not have occurred. . . ." Yet the statement
inadvertently encouraged just such tampering by avowing that the "coping
mechanisms" of molested youngsters can "result in a lack of conscious
awareness of the abuse" and by characterizing "dissociative disorders" as a
typical outcome of that abuse. Those remarks constituted a discreet but
unmistakable vote of confidence in multiple personality disorder and its
imagined sexual etiology. And indeed, a year later the fourth edition of
the Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM-IV) reaffirmed the validity of MPD under the more dignified
and marketable name of dissociative identity disorder.

The Psychiatric Association's 1993 declaration on abuse memories performed
still another service, a subtle one, for the repression/dissociation lobby.
In explaining "implicit" memory the kind that is exercised in the routine
execution of skills or in the coloring of emotions by past impressions that
aren't being explicitly called to mind the statement proffered a curiously
strained example. "In the absence of explicit recall," it said, implicit
memory can torment "a combat veteran who panics when he hears the sound of
a helicopter, but cannot remember that he was in a helicopter crash which
killed his best friend." Here was an elision of the crucial gap between
merely not thinking about a past event, as in the normal operation of
implicit memory, and having total, psychologically motivated amnesia for
that event.

Knowledgeable readers would have seen that in taking this unusual step, the
statement's drafters were lending their authority to one controversial
interpretation of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which the
Psychiatric Association had first stamped as genuine in DSM-III of 1980.
But why should a primarily martial ailment have figured even indirectly in
a position paper on childhood sexual abuse? The mystery vanishes, however,
if we know that the recovered memory movement's favorite means of courting
respectability has been to fold the symptoms of repressed/dissociated abuse
into PTSD.

In 2000 the Psychiatric Association's trustees, eschewing risky flights
into theory, approved a lower-profile "Position Statement on Therapies
Focused on Memories of Childhood Physical and Sexual Abuse." This
declaration, however, was more pussyfooting than its predecessor. The
validity of recovered memory treatment, it whispered, "has been challenged"
in some quarters. While pointing out that memories can be altered as a
result of suggestions from "a trusted person or authority figure," the
drafters tactfully refrained from mentioning that the suggesting party is
usually a therapist. And clinicians were advised to avoid "prejudging the
veracity of the patient's reports" of abuse, as if false reports were
typically delivered to therapists out of the blue, without influence from
confabulation-enhancing devices employed within the treatment. The absence
of any mention of those devices, such as hypnosis and sodium amytal, marked
a step backward from the association's 1993 statement.

These equivocations neither helped nor impeded the already withering
recovered memory movement. As we will now see, however, the movement's
hopes of a comeback have been pinned on the Psychiatric Association's
fateful decision to treat post-traumatic stress disorder as an integral and
historically invariable malady. And that decision was a medically
unwarranted one. As McNally indicates with reference to several recent
studies, PTSD, like Victorian hysteria and like recovered memory itself,
can now be understood as an artifact of its era--a sociopolitical invention
of the post-Vietnam years, meant to replace "shell shock" and "combat
fatigue" with an enduring affliction that would tacitly indict war itself
as a psychological pathogen. However crippling the symptoms
associated with it may be for many individuals, the PTSD diagnosis itself
has proved to be a modern contagion.

Once certified by the American Psychiatric Association as natural and
beyond the sufferer's control, post-traumatic stress disorder began
attracting claimants, both civilian and military, who schooled themselves
in its listed symptoms and forged a new identity around remaining uncured.
By now, as McNally relates, PTSD compensation is demanded for such
complaints as "being fired from a job, one-mile-per-hour fender benders,
age discrimination, living within a few miles of an explosion (although
unaware that it had happened), and being kissed in public" (p. 281).
According to Paula Jones among others, PTSD can even be the outcome of a
consensual love affair. In view of such examples, the attempt to subsume
forgotten abuse under post-traumatic stress makes more cultural than
scientific sense; the same atmosphere of hypersensitivity and victimhood
brought both diagnoses to life.

As McNally shows in his concise and undemonstrative style, the national sex
panic left its mark on each successive version of the Psychiatric
Association's bible, which in turn congealed folklore into dogma. The 1980
DSM-III entry on post-traumatic stress disorder, mindful only of wars and
other shocking disasters, had defined a PTSD-triggering event as one that
falls "generally outside the range of usual human experience" and that
"would evoke significant symptoms of distress in almost everyone." In
1994, however, the fourth edition generously expanded the category of
precipitating causes to include "developmentally inappropriate sexual
experiences without threatened or actual violence or injury." Thus a
single-minded therapeutic sleuth could now place a questionably retrieved
incident of infantile genital fondling on the same etiological plane as the
Bataan death march or an ambush in the Mekong Delta.

It was the diagnostic manual, once again, that removed the largest obstacle
of all to the merger of post-traumatic stress and recovered memory. The
key sign of PTSD, as first conceived, was that accurate recollections of
the trauma keep intruding on the patient's conscious mind; this was just
the opposite of repressed or dissociated memory. But between DSM-III and
its revised edition of 1987, PTSD patients were discovered to have been
harboring a convenient new symptom. In 1980 they had shown only some
incidental "memory impairment or trouble concentrating" on daily affairs,
but the updated edition replaced routine forgetfulness with "inability to
recall an important aspect of the trauma" (emphasis added).

This retroactive infusion of amnesia into the clinical picture of PTSD
explains why the Psychiatric' Association's illustrative helicopter pilot
could have been troubled by a memory that had left no conscious imprint on
his mind. Here, too, was the opening needed to give dissociation an
appearance of hard-scientific concreteness. Post-traumatic stress, it was
now claimed, short-circuits narrative memory and finds another,
precognitive, channel through which it can flood the subject with anxiety.
Accordingly, diehard recovered memory theorists took up a last refuge in
neurobiology, now maintaining that dissociated sexual abuse generates
signature alterations of brain tissue.

With the arrival of McNally's Remembering Trauma, there is no longer any
excuse for such obfuscation. It makes no sense, McNally shows, to count
forgetfulness for some "aspect of the trauma" within the definition of
PTSD, because normal people as well as PTSD sufferers get disoriented by
shocking incidents and fail to memorize everything about the event, even
while knowing for the rest of their lives that it occurred. Likewise, it
has never been established, and it seems quite unbelievable, that people
can be haunted by memories that were never cognitively registered as such.
Nor can specific brain markers vouch for the reality of a long-past sexual
trauma, because, among other reasons, those features could have been
present from birth. "It is ironic," McNally reflects, "that so much has
been written about the biological mechanisms of traumatic psychological
amnesia when the very existence of the phenomenon is in doubt. What we
have here is a set of theories in search of a phenomenon" (p. 182n.).

Remembering Trauma is neither a polemic nor a sermon, and McNally offers
little counsel to psychotherapists beyond warning them against turning
moral disapproval of pedophilia into overconfidence that they can infer its
existence from behavioral clues observed twenty or thirty years after the
fact. But another lesson is implied throughout this important book.
Attention to the chimerical task of divining a patient's early traumas is
attention subtracted from sensible help in the here and now. The reason
why psychotherapists ought to familiarize themselves with actual knowledge
about the workings of memory, and why their professional societies should
stop waffling and promulgating misinformation about it, is not that good
science guarantees good therapy; it is simply that pseudoscience inevitably
leads to harm.

Notes

Bessel A. van der Kolk and Onno van der Hart, "The Intrusive
Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma," American
Imago, vol. 48 (1991), pp. 425-454; the quotation is from p. 432.

The fullest treatment of the recovered memory episode and its
historical antecedents is Mark Pendergrast, Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse
Accusations and Shattered Lives, 2nd ed. (Upper Access, 1996). For a
concise and pointed account of the multiple personality fad, see Joan
Acocella, Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder
(Jossey-Bass, 1999). The best extended discussion is Nicholas P. Spanos,
Multiple Identities and False Memories: A Sociocognitive Perspective
(American Psychological Association, 1996). On Satanic abuse, see Jeffrey
S. Victor, Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend (Open
Court, 1993), and Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker, Satan's Silence:
Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt (Basic Books,
1995). The plight of daycare workers who remain imprisoned even today is
treated by Dorothy Rabinowitz, No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False
Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times (Wall Street Press Books/Free
Press, 2003).

For the current state of knowledge about "Sybil," see Mikkel
Borch-Jacobsen, Folie à plusieurs: De l'hystérie à la dépression (Les
Empêcheurs de penser en rond/Le Seuil, 2002), pp. 111-168.

For Masson's errors about Freud's "seduction" phase, see Allen
Esterson, "Jeffrey Masson and Freud's Seduction Theory: A New Fable Based
on Old Myths," History of the Human Sciences, vol. 11 (199, pp. 1-21. In
his preface to a recently reprinted edition of The Assault on Truth (Random
House, 2003), Masson at last concedes that Freud's patients in 1895-96
resisted the incest stories that he tried to force upon them. Bizarrely,
however, Masson still counts those patients among the likely victims of
sexual abuse in Freud's day.

Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery (Basic Books, 1992), p. 1.

See, in this connection, the final chapter of Ruth Leys's
Trauma: A Genealogy (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2000).

In one paper, for example, Scheflin and Brown addressed the
problem of patients' suggestibility, but the danger they envisioned from
that quarter was only "false litigant syndrome," or surrender to
"pro-false-memory suggestive influences" emanating from "plaintiffs'
attorneys and expert witnesses" brought into malpractice suits against
their former therapists. See Alan W. Scheflin and Daniel Brown, "The False
Litigant Syndrome: ‘Nobody Would Say That Unless It Was the Truth,'"
Journal of Psychiatry and Law, vol. 27 (1999), pp. 649-705. This same
argument surfaces in Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law, which states
that pressures exerted in therapy "pale in comparison" (p. 39 with those
that can turn a patient into a litigious ingrate.

Transcripts of the Texas conference proceedings have been
available from Toronto radio station CKLN. See also Evan Harrington,
"Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia: Notes from a Mind-Control Conference,"
Skeptical Inquirer, vol. 20 (September/October 1996), pp.35-42.

"I think it's time somebody called for an open season on
academicians and researchers," Hammond said in 1997; ". . . it's time for
clinicians to begin bringing ethics charges for scientific malpractice
against researchers and journal editors" who disparage recovered memory
theory. "Investigating False Memory for the Unmemorable: A Critique of
Experimental Hypnosis and Memory Research," 14th International Congress of
Hypnosis and Psychosomatic Medicine, San Diego, June 1997. Tapes of
Hammond's talk have been offered by The Sound of Knowledge, Inc.

D. Corydon Hammond, "Hypnosis in MPD: Ritual Abuse," a paper
delivered at the Fourth Annual Eastern Regional Conference on Abuse and
Multiple Personality, Alexandria, VA, June 25, 1992. Understandably, tapes
of this talk have been withdrawn from sale; but a transcript, which repays
reading from start to finish, can be found at
www.heart7.net/mcf/greenbaum.htm.

Patients of hypnosis-wielding MPD enthusiasts really have
acquired crippling beliefs about their cult participation. That is why
Bennett Braun, in 1997, had his license to practice suspended and why his
insurers paid one of his tormented ex-patients a sobering malpractice
settlement of $10.6 million.

Alan W. Scheflin and Jerrold Lee Shapiro, Trance on Trial
(Guilford Press, 1989).

See, e.g., The Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute (New
York Review Books, 1995), pp. 15-29; Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront
a Legend (Viking, 199, pp. x-xi; and "Forward to 1896? Commentary on
Papers by Harris and Davies," Psychoanalytic Dialogues, vol. 6 (1996), pp.
231-250. That special number of Psychoanalytic Dialogues became a book
edited by Richard B. Gartner, Memories of Sexual Betrayal: Truth, Fantasy,
Repression, and Dissociation (Jason Aronson, 1997). My own contribution,
however, was excised and replaced by an attack on my earlier criticisms of
psychoanalysis.

On this last point, see Bennett Simon, "‘Incest See Under
Oedipus Complex': The History of an Error in Psychoanalysis," Journal of
the American Psychoanalytic Association, vol. 40 (1992), pp. 955-988.

See David Glenn, "Nightmare Scenarios," Chronicle of Higher
Education, Oct. 24, 2003, pp. 14-17.

A welcome new critique of fad therapies is Science and
Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology, ed. Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay
Lynn, and Jeffrey M. Lohr (Guilford Press, 2003).

See Robyn M. Dawes, House of Cards: Psychology and
Psychotherapy Built on Myth (Free Press, 1994), especially pp. 10-22.

Kenneth S. Pope and Laura S. Brown, Recovered Memories of
Abuse: Assessment, Therapy, Forensics (American Psychological Association,
1996).

See especially Allan Young, The Harmony of Illusions:
Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Princeton Univ. Press, 1995), and
Herb Kutchins and Stuart A. Kirk, Making Us Crazy: DSM: The Psychiatric
Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders (Free Press, 1997).

As the Pied Pipers of recovered memory, Ellen Bass and Laura
Davis, told prospective survivors in 1988, "When you first remember your
abuse or acknowledge its effects, you may feel tremendous relief. Finally
there is a reason for your problems. There is someone, and something, to
blame." The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual
Abuse (Harper & Row, 198, p. 173.

MannGram: pseudo-regulation of GM
Feb 2004

A BBC 4-part radio documentary on nanotek includes (episode 4) a
Yank expert intoning confidently

"ATP is synthesised by a mechanically rotating complex of
macromolecules. This biosynthesis is probably the most ubiquitous chemical
reaction in the universe".

This was one of many assertions by a senior nanotek expert in a USA
biochemistry lab. It is misleading. Numerous other biochemical rns are at
least as prevalent as this biosynthesis of ATP. For instance, the large
suite of rns involved in biosynthesis of proteins, or of nucleic acids, are
universal in cells.

But to extrapolate to the whole plurry universe from this
misleading statement about a tiny part of the universe (the biochemical
realm) is a colossal error. The most ubiquitous rns in the universe - by
far - will be non-aqueous, amongst light atoms, e.g H.

The same man outlined some exptl rigs he was using with living
(but not reproducing) cells modified from muscle cells.

Where could such a furphy have arisen?
http://www.google.co.nz/search?q=ATP+synthase+nanotechnology&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&
start=10&sa=N leads promptly to the impression that this particular
biochemical process is favoured by the nanowankers. They seem to think
it's a promising basis for a nanomotor. The lead item of that Google
compilation is: hcs.harvard.edu/~hsr/pdfsspring2002/reed8-10.pdf

which features the statement

>the synthesis of ATP from two precursor
>molecules is the most prevalent
>chemical reaction in the biological
>world.

This version at least limits its claim to biochemistry, whereas the
'expert' rave included the whole universe and was therefore wildly wrong.
But in turn this 'Harvard' statement Is misleading: it conveys an
impression that this rn is unusually prevalent. Even within the tiny
realm of biochemistry, which is the only site of the ATP synthesis referred
to, that rn (or anything like it) is far from uniquely ubiquitous. The
novel title 'most prevalent [i.e. widespread, ubiquitous) rn in metabolism'
has no significance that I know of. As far as is known, hundreds of rns
tie for the title.

But my main complaint is against the expert on the BBC. Is it not
worrying that such blatant rubbish can be made to sound respectable by the
BBC?

And even if it had, how would that legitimize nanotek?!

Some scientific issues arise. ATP synthase is PR'd as a potential
nanomotor but is a less plausible nanomotor than the 10^4 - 10^5 rpm motor
at the base of the bacterial flagellum. Other reasons dismiss nanotek from
any technical promise; but my main point in this note is that the
nanowankers are oddly sloppy regarding actual science, let alone their
fantasies.

It would seem that similar standards of scientific accuracy prevail
among the nanowankers as among the gene-jiggerers - and of course the two
groups overlap. Their "philosophy" also seems similar: A main nanotek
guru said, near the end of the BBC series,

"We're starting to understand how living systems work, and
how to manipulate them. There will be a path to any vision you have."

This glib burbler thus declares anew the philosophy of the
gene-jiggerers, based on dud science and incompetent technology. Note the
blind faith slogan 'we have the technology' - now broadened to 'we hope
to have the technology'.

This is motivated partly by the link to venture-capital thru the
gene-jiggerers who have been conning billions out of surprisingly stupid
merchant bankers etc for gene-tampering capers that never had a significant
chance of working. Even tho' most gene-jiggering/sequencing corporations
have yet to win a dollar of revenue, let alone net a profit, billions keep
getting pumped into the bubble which is now bursting in slow motion.

A cartoon could show a long pole holding garish neon-lit carrots
GENE-TAMPERING and NANOTEK far out in front of a venture-donkey ridden
by a gleeful gene-jiggerer featuring GM-slogans on his garb (The Big Four
Rule OK etc) and wearing, of course, shades. The future's so bright ...
"There will be a path to any vision you have." Keep reading _Genesis 3_ I
entreat you.


What agencies should be regulating this crazy alliance of
gene-jiggerers and nanowankers? Here is one example of how the NZ govt
charade operates.

A few y ago the GM regulatory system in NZ staged an
elaborate crackdown. Main GMO advocate Geo Petersen FRSNZ, who had
presided over the 1990s extra-legal limbo decade, and presided over the
RSNZ, ostentatiously blew the whistle on a few hundred 'contained' lab
gene-tamperers who had apparently been falling short of the letter of the
law which had at last recently come into force. A line manager in the U of
Canterbury (where Rutherford did his master's degree) was told off after
this regulatory stunt to organise the enforcement within the U of Canty of
NZ statutory requirements for gene-manipulated organisms (GMOs). This
manager was interviewed on Radio NZ as a supposed expert on molecular
biology. He gave an account of a slightly famous expt which was so garbled
as to be almost unrecognisable. Only after some persistence was I able to
get him to admit that the expt was Novick's 1957 PNAS demonstration of
Lamarckian inheritance (in a bacterium). An account of this expt - as an
example of pleiotropic effects - which was so garbled as to be
unrecognisable was given (below) by that recently-appointed safety officer
U Canty, aspro of chem Andy Pratt who was managed in to regularize HSNO
licences after Geo Petersen's big geffuffle. Pratt didn't mention in his
Radio NZ interview that two different concentrations of inducer are
involved in the expt of Novick which demonstrates Lamarckian inheritance
(of the induced state of the _lac_ operon in _E. coli_). Indeed it was
impossible to be sure what expt he was talking about (and he didn't mention
Lamarck). I wrote asking him whether it was Novick's 1957 PNAS classic.
He was evasive but later sent me a PDF of that under-rated paper. He
refused to admit that he had utterly garbled the outline.

I found this a depressing experience. When those charged with
regulating a technology do not understand it, the potential for trouble is
large and certainly the deceptive nature of the regulatory charade is
enlarged.

Those purporting to explain science to the public are under a
special duty of care. The nuclear era was bad enough - quite a few
stooges like Profs Poletti & Pat Bergquist tried to mislead the public,
understating hazards, minimising risks ('one in a billion' lives on from
the nookuluh fanatics on down), and maligning alternatives such as sloar
water-heating. Andy misunderstands this rather simple mol biol, yet
purports to OK much more complex, and in some cases potentially dangerous,
gene-tampering expts. At the very least, this alarming situation suggests
there may well be a severe shortage of regulatory functionaries capable of
understanding even the claimed effects of a typical gene-splicing expt, let
alone imagine hazards that haven't been mentioned by the would-be
experimenter.

The RCGM recommended that the system for control of gene-jiggering
labs be reviewed. We now are told by PR channel ("media critic") Russell
Brown that no uncontrolled GMO release was desired by the corporations
anyway during the moratorium on release. (He was probably told this by GM
PR agents.) PM H Clark esq assumed the research questions posed by the
RCGM would be answered by then; but the work to answer them has scarcely
begun. She doesn't care; instead, she spins Radio NZ etc to present as
unreasonable & undemocratic the prudent majority opinion expressed by the
Green party. We are looking at PowerHarpie Gladiatresses - Xena Helen v.
a novel type not yet depicted by Hollywood - a Holmes®ian conflict display
instead of politics.

Helen has a higher degree in Political Studies. The nearest thing
to an informed opponent in the media display has a B.A in French and Music.
The only informed scientific critic of GM to find anywhere near reasonable
media access, Assoc Prof Peter R Wills, has paid a severe price in
obeisance to the politically dominant ideologies of sexism & racism. Dr
David Straton, author of a notable early article on hazards of GM (in The
Ecologist), gets on your media little if at all, notwithstanding his
similar PC politics. Ruth Hubbard, Geo Wald - senior early critics of GM
in the 'first wave' of the mid-1970s reacting in a preliminary way to the
invention of gene-tampering - were allowed v little access to the media.
Jonathan King, of that same first wave, is one of the longest-standing GM
critics, and still a prof at MIT; seen him on your toob lately? What
happened to Francine Simring ?

The aim of the regulatory charade is not hard to infer. The only
serious regulatory nuisance falls upon the lab experimenters, who operate
in one level or another of containment. Many are allowed to operate zero
special measures - the old deceit "containment level 0". Some GMOs in
the highest level of containment required by the NZ government are admitted
to be super-pathogens which must not get loose, and the scientists in
charge of them are, generally, aware and prudent to prevent escapes. (That
leaves largely uncontrolled the escapes caused by natural disaster,
sabotage, or staff incompetence.) But most of the GMOs in lesser
containment are assumed by their creators to be harmless, and containment
is viewed as an unnecessary pain in the budget. Most gene-jockeys have
persuaded themselves that their GMOs are not dangerous. They view as
absurd the concerns vaguely expressed by those politicians who have been
promoted by the media as critics of GM.

This is the context in which ERMA is pretending to have
implemented the govt's promise to review the containment systems (one of
the few good recommendations of the Eichelbaum commission).

The RSNZ is challenged anew to begin its Herculean task of cleaning
the intellectual stables from the piles of crap left over from the Petersen
era and augmented since. RCGM chairman Eichelbaum ignored, and suppressed,
evidence that GM is based on junk science to such an extent that the
properties of GMOs are dangerously unpredictable.

R

letters to editor (maximum 200 words): email: Letters@nzherald.co.nz
full name & residential address,tel no.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3551645&thesection=news&t
hesubsection=general

Bioethics talks 'waste of time'
NZ HERALD
27.02.2004
By RENEE KIRIONA

Meetings being held by the Bioethics Council to discuss humans genes in
other organisms have been described as a waste of time.

The Auckland meeting was the second of 30 the council has organised
throughout the country to get an idea of people's views on cultural, ethical
and spiritual issues arising from the development of biotechnology.

The council's chairman, Sir Paul Reeves, not present at the meeting, said
decisions about biotechnology were too important to be left solely to the
Government, business or science.

However, environmentalist Max Tobin told those gathered the reality was that
those groups did have the power to make such decisions.

He also said the views of New Zealanders had already been expressed in
thousands of submissions, consultation meetings, public protests and
marches.

"Most New Zealanders are against the transfer of human genes, but the
Government has chosen not to listen. How many times do I have to repeat
myself?

"My view is that the Government doesn't pay any attention to the cultural,
spiritual and ethical. All they are concerned about is profit," Mr Tobin
said.

Only seven of the 50 allocated seats at the Portage Peninsula Hotel in
Avondale were filled. Twenty turned out for the Whangarei meeting on
Wednesday.

Environmentalist Marcus Graf and Mere Takoko of Te Waka Kai Ora / the
National Maori Organics Association also questioned the validity of the
meetings.

"The council needs to revisit those submissions then decide whether these
meetings are worth it or not," Mr Graf said.

"It seems like we are going over the same issues. Until the structure of
ERMA [the Environmental Risk Management Authority] has been addressed then
processes like this will continue to fail communities," Miss Takoko said.

Over the next four weeks similar meetings will be held in Whakatane, South
Auckland, Hamilton, New Plymouth, Wellington, Nelson, Gisborne,
Christchurch, Hastings and Dunedin.

Mr Reeves was encouraging South Auckland people to have their say at
tomorrow's hui, which will specifically canvass Maori views on
biotechnology.

GM Thinktank

Q: What is the Bioethics Council?

A: A cultural, ethical and spiritual adviser to the Environmental Risk
Management Authority, which makes decisions on applications to introduce
genetically modified organisms. Five of the eight authority members come
from the science industry.

http://www.comsdev.canterbury.ac.nz/news/2004/040226b.shtml

New Zealand Institute of Gene Ecology to work with UN

Published by the Communications and Development Department

26 February 2004

The New Zealand Institute of Gene Ecology (NZIGE) based at the University of
Canterbury is to work with the United Nations to help improve biosafety and
biotechnology around the world

The Norwegian Institute of Gene Ecology (GenØk), in close collaboration with
NZIGE and the Third World Network, has signed a co-operation agreement with
the United Nations Environmental Programme.

The agreement which deals with biosafety and biotechnology capacity
building, was signed at the Meeting of the Parties to the Cartegena Protocol
on Biosafety in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Wednesday 25 February. The NZIGE
was represented at the meeting by its director Dr Jack Heinemann.

"Signing this agreement is an important step for both the Institute and New
Zealand, who is among the fortunate nations of the world to have a special
responsibility to assist in making the world a better place by addressing
the great maldistribution of scientific capacity between developed and
developing countries," Professor Heinemann said.

The NZIGE will be involved in a series of activities to strengthen the
biosafety and biotechnology competency of developing countries, countries
with economies in transition and Small Island Developing States (SIDs).

"The NZIGE has been working for some time to build a specialist programme of
research that is free of commercial interest in the biotechnology industry.
As government strategic research and for-profit research become increasingly
the norm, finding resources for independent work for the public good on
biosafety remains a struggle," said Professor Heinemann

The activities will involve a theoretical and practical biosafety course,
global and regional/sub-regional training workshops and seminars, an
information database and a book/CR-ROM project. The aim is to build capacity
particularly in nations that have ratified the Cartagena Protocol on
Biosafety, which became international law late last year. That treaty
emphasises the need for informed and competent capacity to evaluate the
potential harms and benefits that could arise from the transboundary
movement of genetically engineered organisms

The first course was trialled last year at the University of Tromsø in
Norway. Invited to be part of the 12-person teaching team were three
University of Canterbury researchers - Professor Heinemann (Biological
Sciences), Dr Joanna Goven (Political Science) and Dr Hamish Cochrane
(Forestry).

"The Course was extremely well-received by the nearly 50 participants from
as many developing countries," said Professor Heinemann.

For more information contact:
Dr Jack Heinemann
Director
New Zealand Institute of Gene Ecology
School of Biological Sciences
University of Canterbury
Christchurch, New Zealand
Phone +64 3 364 2926
Email: jack.heinemann@canterbury.ac.nz

Dr Joanna Goven
Deputy Director
New Zealand Institute of Gene Ecology
School of Political Science and Communication
University of Canterbury
Christchurch, New Zealand
Phone +64 3 364 2106
Email: joanna.goven@canterbury.ac.nz

Is Golden Rice the crop to prove GM's worth?

- It will still take years, if it ever happens, before genetically
modified (GM) Golden Rice reaches the millions of children threatened with
blindness or premature death due to vitamin A deficiency.
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-02-26/s_13486.asp

Science
Feb 27 2004: 1281-1283
AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH:
Lab Network Eyes Closer Ties For Tackling World Hunger

Dennis Normile

A group of 16 research centers is considering centralized labs, pooled
resources, and other arrangements to help feed the developing world

TOKYO--A casual conversation at a coffee break is leading to a major shakeup
of agricultural research throughout the developing world.
Three years ago, Ronald Cantrell and Alexander McCalla shared concerns about
the future of agricultural research for and by developing countries during a
break in a meeting in Durban, South Africa. Both were acutely aware that new
high-yield crop varieties are desperately needed to alleviate hunger among the
poor. They also recognized that the institutes they represent--the
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, the Philippines,
and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) near Mexico
City--were lagging behind private companies and academia in exploiting genetic
techniques. So they agreed to explore closer collaboration, perhaps even a
merger.

IRRI and CIMMYT are the crown jewels of the Consultative Group on
International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), an association of 16 research
centers affiliated with the World Bank. And what is good for these two
institutes, it turns out, may be good for the entire system. Other CGIAR
centers that work on cereals have asked to join the IRRI-CIMMYT talks. The
four CGIAR centers that focus on legumes are exploring their own
collaboration. And a task force is studying the possible consolidation of
four centers in Africa.

The goal of all these deliberations, says William Dar, director of the
International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in
Hyderabad, India, is to have "all the centers working in common on the big
issues for the small farmers of the world." And meeting that goal, predicts
CGIAR Director Francisco Reifschneider, will require a historic realignment of
the entire $370-million-a-year consortium.

Cantrell, a plant breeder who became director of IRRI in 1998, and McCalla, a
professor emeritus of agricultural economics at the University of California,
Davis, and chair of the CIMMYT board, can remember when these two institutions
ignited a Green Revolution that led to a quantum jump in agricultural
productivity for the developing world. CGIAR was formed in 1971 to build on
that progress by fostering greater collaboration, including fundraising, among
agricultural research centers around the world. But Michael Lipton, an
economist at the University of Sussex, U.K., says that the 1980s
witnessed "increasing pressure [from donors] to divert money from basic germ-
plasm research to a whole range of other goals, from improving the
participation of women [in economic activities] to natural resource
management."

The result was a shift in research priorities. A recent evaluation by the
World Bank of some 700 previous reports and studies * notes that CGIAR
spending on improving crop productivity declined by 6.5% annually in real
terms through the 1990s and that training programs for the developing world
decreased by nearly 1% a year (see graphic). At the same time, research into
environmental protection and biodiversity were receiving larger shares of a
shrinking pie.


Multigrain mix. Reduced funding for basic research on new varieties, such as
these rice seedlings developed at IRRI, may stimulate cooperation among
CGIAR's 16 centers.
CREDIT: CGIAR

The resulting fierce competition among centers for scarce funding isolated
research programs at a time when germ-plasm research efforts could have
benefited from greater collaboration, especially in biotechnology. While
private companies and universities in advanced countries invested $8 billion
to $10 billion in agricultural biotechnology in the 1990s, says Uma Lele, an
agricultural economist who led the World Bank review, the CGIAR system spent
just $25 million. "For a billion poor people in the world, that is just
minuscule," she says.

CGIAR already has adopted many of the reforms recommended by the various
reports. The former Technical Advisory Committee has become a Scientific
Advisory Council with broader powers to set systemwide objectives. A new
executive council meets quarterly to expedite decision-making between the
annual meetings. And donors are gradually recognizing the need to give
officials greater leeway in spending their money.

The thorniest issue for CGIAR has been determining the appropriate number of
centers and their mandates. "There have been all kinds of proposals, from
fewer centers to regional centers and commodity centers," says Cantrell. This
year the International Service for National Agricultural Research, based in
The Hague, the Netherlands, will be folded into the Washington, D.C.-based
International Food Policy Research Institute, consolidating CGIAR's policy-
oriented centers. But CGIAR's Reifschneider wants to avoid top-down
restructuring. "The most efficient way to move forward," he says, "is for
the centers to explore how better to do business together."

That's exactly what IRRI and CIMMYT hope to do, in part by building upon the
latest research. "We know now that the major cereals have a majority of their
genes in common," says Cantrell, "and relatively few genes make these
phenotypic differences that we see." Taking advantage of the similarities
among the cereals might lead to a shared genomics laboratory, jointly
appointed researchers, and possibly even a common board.

After Cantrell and McCalla left Durban, they turned to the Rockefeller
Foundation, which had helped establish both institutions in the 1960s. The
foundation has asked four consultants to report to a committee chaired by
Gordon Conway. Conway hopes to complete the process before he retires as
president of the foundation at the end of the year.

IRRI and CIMMYT are the oldest, largest, and most highly regarded of the CGIAR
centers, so it's no surprise that other centers would follow their lead.
ICRISAT's Dar was particularly interested in cereal genomics, because ICRISAT
works on sorghum and millet. But ICRISAT also works on three legumes--peanut,
chickpea, and pigeon pea--leading Dar to reach out to the three other CGIAR
centers involved in legumes.

Although it is too early to predict the shape of a new CGIAR system, most
scientists expect a heightened and more centralized effort to use genomics to
enhance germ plasm. Ren Wang, IRRI deputy director for research, would
personally like to see IRRI and CIMMYT merge with "a new headquarters and a
new laboratory for upstream genomics research located in India or China."
Such
labs could identify genetic markers used in more traditional breeding programs
and develop gene chips to be distributed to regional and national labs.
Similar efficiencies could come from centralizing bioinformatics efforts,
intellectual-property management, and training programs. McCalla says that
recent funding cuts have brought IRRI and CIMMYT "close to being below
critical mass in such areas. So joining forces would make sense."

But restructuring also poses a host of challenges. Genomics might be
universal, but downstream work has to be local. "Wheat doesn't do well in Los
Baños," says Cantrell, "and rice doesn't do well in valleys in Mexico."

Restructuring also raises fundamental questions about priorities and relations
with national agricultural research efforts. The World Bank meta-evaluation
notes that most successful introductions of new crop varieties in Latin
America and Asia relied on local research capabilities. Now some of the
strongest national agricultural research efforts are ahead of CGIAR in
selected areas, says the World Bank's Lele. She points to the development of
no-till planting techniques for soil conservation in Brazil, watershed
management in India, and hybrid rice breeding in China.

At the same time, the Green Revolution never took hold in Africa, and the
continent's agricultural research capabilities are generally weaker than they
were a generation ago due to continuing political and funding instability.
Yujiro Hayami, a development specialist at the Foundation for Advanced Studies
on International Development in Tokyo, thinks that it might be best for IRRI
and CIMMYT to turn responsibility for Asia and the Americas over to local
institutions and shift research staff and resources "to a new food-staple
research institute in Africa." But ICRISAT's Dar disagrees. "There are still
more hungry people in Asia than Africa," he counters.

Perhaps the biggest question is how donors will react. Rockefeller's Conway,
an agricultural ecologist, says that coupling a new functional genomics
program to the existing germ-plasm banks and field-testing expertise of the
two centers will create "a really powerful basis for producing new crop
traits" that might appeal to donors. So, too, might a report from the
Rockefeller Foundation offering a blueprint for a new, improved CGIAR.

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Published in Crop Sci. 44:456-463 (2004)
The article below gives a clear explanation of the legal aspects of
growing or being polluted by GM crops. The article could be quite helpful.

CROP PHYSIOLOGY & METABOLISM
Legal Liability Issues in Agricultural Biotechnology

Drew L. Kershen*

The University of Oklahoma Law Center, Andrew M. Coats Hall, 300
Timberdell Road, Norman, OK 73019-0701

* Corresponding author (dkershen@ou.edu).

This article presents an overview of the legal liability issues in torts
and patent law that arise from the use of transgenic crops produced by
agricultural biotechnology.

Torts

A tort is a civil legal action [really? - RM] whereby
the claimant alleges injury or wrong, arising independent of contract,
to the person or property of the claimant. The article begins with legal
liability claims for damage to property, damage to persons, and damage
to economic interests (markets) that may arise with the use of
transgenic crops. The tort theories discussed include the legal claims
of trespass, strict liability, negligence, private nuisance, and public
nuisance. With respect to each tort theory, the discussion points out
unique legal issues that are likely to exist specifically because the
litigation involves agricultural biotechnology.

Patent Infringement

The article ends by focusing on four patent infringement cases that courts
in Canada and the USA have decided regarding farmers who used patented
seed from agricultural biotechnology without permission of the patent
holder. As of May 2003, these are the only four patent infringement
cases that have resulted in formal legal opinions by courts construing
patent and antitrust laws in the context of farmers saving seeds
protected by patents.

New research on survival of CaMV promoter in rat tissues

Terje Traavik Ph.D

Summary

The cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) promoter was found intact in rat tissues
after a single meal, and was also confirmed to be active in human cells.

The full 1100 base pairs of the CaMV promoter was found:
In stomach cells and in intestinal (mesenteric) lymph nodes two hours after
eating;

In mesenteric lymph nodes, kidney, and liver cells six hours after eating;
and

In mesenteric lymph nodes, spleen, and liver cells three full days after
eating.

Future tests will determine if the CaMV is active.

Seven groups of six rats each were intragastrically intubated (fed through a
tube to the stomach) with a balanced diet. Added to the a small portion of
the diet was a single dose of a genetic construct similar to those used to
create genetically engineered crops. This construct included a gene that
codes for a green fluorescent protein. The negative control group had no
promoter attached to the green fluorescent protein gene at all; the positive
control used human cytomegalovirus promoter known to be active in all
mammalian cells. The test group had the CaMV 35S promoter coupled to the
gene. The design tested the DNA construct in both circular and linear form.
A final control was not fed any DNA at all. About half of the CaMV fed rats
in each of the circular and linear DNA groups were found to contain intact
CaMV.

Tissue samples remaining to be tested will soon determine if the CaMV is
active, causing the expression of the green fluorescent protein.

In a separate but related study, the same three constructs described above
were added directly to human intestinal epithelial cells (both small and
large intestines), rat cells, and fish cells, in vitro. The fluorescent gene
was expressed in all the cells tested.

Implications for human health

The CaMV promoter is attached to inserted foreign genes in nearly all
genetically engineered foods. It overpowers the cellsí own self-regulatory
mechanisms so as to permanently turn on the foreign inserted gene and
produce large amounts of the transgene proteins. Without the promoter, the
gene would likely be dormant in the DNA, unexpressed. Scientists use the
CaMV because it is aggressive and because it works in the DNA of all types
of plants.

The assumptions used by biotech advocates as the basis of safety claims were
that the CaMV:

Is stable

Will only turn on the gene to which it was attached
Is plant specific and will not function in mammals, including humans, and
Will not transfer from food to gut bacteria or internal organs;

Each of these assumptions have been contradicted.

1. Studies also show that the promoter creates a 'hotspot' in the DNA. This
means that the whole chromosome can become unstable. This may cause breaks
in the strand or exchanges of genes with other chromosomes. Research
reported in June 2003 confirmed that genetically engineered crops exhibited
broken DNA sections at the CaMV.

2. The CaMV promoter may turn on native genes over long distances up and
down the strand of DNA. It can even turn genes on in a different chromosome.
This can create a flood of proteins that may create toxins, allergens,
carcinogens, or nutritional changes.

Some scientists believe that the CaMV promoter, in conjunction with other
genetic material, might also create a growth factor that could result in
excessive cell growthóa potentially pre-cancerous condition. A study by Ewen
and Pusztai demonstrated significant cell growth in the stomach and
intestines of rats fed a genetically engineered potato. An Egyptian study
also showed evidence of cell growth in rats fed a Bt potato, and a feeding
study on genetically modified peas showed greater weights of rat intestines,
supporting the possibility of extra cell growth.

While scientists believed that the aggressive nature of the CaMV promoter
might have been responsible for these results, it was not confirmed whether
the CaMV promoter was able to transfer intact to organs and whether it would
be active in human cells.

The new evidence confirms the transfer and potential activity. The new
evidence does not, however, show any specific links to cell growth, nor does
it confirm that unstable hotspots or the turning on of dangerous genes will
occur in mammalian DNA.

Waking Sleeping Viruses

Embedded into the DNA of many organisms, including humans, are ancient
viruses that have worked their way in, perhaps in previous species. While
most of this viral material has eroded, some may be complete but simply not
turned on. In theory, the fact that the promoter can turn on genes up and
down the DNA, combined with the fact that it can transfer to human or animal
organs, means that it may be possible for it to turn on a previously dormant
virus.

Contact
New findings: Terje Traavik PhD, +47 9581 7537, terjet@genok.org
Further discussion: Jeffrey Smith in KL, 012-333-7495,
jeffrey@seedsofdeception.com

New York Review of Books Volume 51, Number 4 · March 11, 2004
Review
The Dawn of McScience
By Richard Horton

Science in the Private Interest: Has the Lure of Profits Corrupted
Biomedical Research?

by Sheldon Krimsky

Rowman and Littlefield, 247 pp., $27.95

One of the most striking aspects of John Paul II's papal leadership has
been his frequent and outspoken forays into science, especially the life
sciences. His positions on abortion, sexuality, and contraception have
alienated vast numbers of Catholics and non-Catholics. Many people had
seen his tenure in the Vatican as an opportunity for progressive leadership
on issues ranging from AIDS in Africa to the reproductive rights of women.
They have been disappointed. But his staunch orthodoxy has had one
unexpected, and some would say beneficial, consequence-a decisive
opposition to the commercial exploitation of science.

In a letter to the apostolic nuncio in Poland on March 25, 2002, John Paul
II condemned the "overriding financial interests" that operate in
biomedical and pharmaceutical research. These forces, he wrote, prompted
"decisions and products which are contrary to truly human values and to the
demands of justice." His particular target was "the medicine of desires,"
by which he meant those drugs and procedures that are "contrary to the
moral good," serving as they do the pursuit of pleasure rather than the
eradication of poverty. In an especially thoughtful passage, he wrote that
the pre-eminence of the profit motive in conducting scientific research
ultimately means that science is deprived of its epistemological character,
according to which its primary goal is discovery of the truth. The risk is
that when research takes a utilitarian turn, its speculative dimension,
which is the inner dynamic of man's intellectual journey, will be
diminished or stifled.

Sheldon Krimsky, a physicist, philosopher, and policy analyst now at the
Tufts University School of Medicine, puts it more bluntly. In Science in
the Private Interest, a strongly argued polemic against the commercial
conditions in which scientific research currently operates, he shows how
universities have become little more than instruments of wealth. This
shift in the mission of academia, Krimsky claims, works against the public
interest. Universities have sacrificed their larger social responsibilities
to accommodate a new purpose-the privatization of knowledge-by engaging in
multimillion-dollar contracts with industries that demand the rights to
negotiate licenses from any subsequent discovery (as Novartis did, Krimsky
reports, in a $25 million deal with the University of California at
Berkeley). Science has long been ripe for industrial colonization. The
traditional norms of disinterested inquiry and free expression of opinion
have been given up in order to harvest new and much-needed revenues. When
the well-known physician David Healy raised concerns about the risks of
suicide among those taking one type of antidepressant, his new appointment
as clinical director of the University of Toronto's Centre for Addiction
and Mental Health was immediately revoked. Universities have reinvented
themselves as corporations. Scientists are coming to accept, and in many
cases enjoy, their enhanced status as entrepreneurs. But these subtle yet
insidious changes to the rules of engagement between science and commerce
are causing, in Krimsky's view, incalculable injury to society, as well as
to science.

Full: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16954

Dear Brian Johonson,

May I offer a few comments on your Heredity essay?
(I've been involved in appraisals of GM since it was invented.)

>GM Debate: No trust, no go!
>
>B Johnson
>
>
>Correspondence to: Dr Brian Johnson, Head of the Biotechnology Advisory
>Unit at English Nature, one of the UK Government's advisors on nature
>conservation, and sits on several advisory committees concerned with
>biological research. Also involved in the GM debate, Dr Johnson
>researched population genetics and ecology before moving into nature
>conservation. e-mail: brian.johnson@english-nature.org.uk
>
>Heredity (2004) 92, 137-138. doi:10.1038/sj.hdy.6800423
>
>After an unprecedented debate involving 600 open meetings and thousands
>of people plus 'narrow and deep' sampling of public opinion on
>transgenic technology, what have we learnt?
>
>The conclusions were predictable: the public are still deeply uneasy
>about the technology, do not trust governments or industry, but
>encouragingly they want to know more,
>arguing that they don't fully
>understand the issues.

This is a slightly odd expression. Your verb implies their
statement is somehow dubious. You suggest they were only arguing, rather
than stating a fact. This is misleading. It is a fact - according to
them, and according to any objective observer. Seeing as how nobody
understands the relevant science, which has in its infancy, the public is
obviously correct in saying

> they don't fully
>>understand the issues.

...

>Why does civil society not know enough about biotechnology? After all,
>they know about IT, another complex technology - they know how it works
>and use it confidently;

that confidence in use does not imply they understand digital
computing - and most of them don't.

> many even make and modify their own computers.

An interesting neglected analogy. I would argue this assembly is
little evidence that the 'kitset' assemblers actually understand digital
computing, esp its rare malfunctions (which the real enthusiasts deny).
Similarly, gene-tampering is usually done by people with v little
understanding of what they're doing, or of the possible rare malfuctions in
their randomly-strewn synthetic DNA.

>What we see in the GM debate is profound ignorance of basic genetics,
>human biology and agriculture;

yes - especially among the gene-jiggerers

> abject failure by government, educators,
>regulators and researchers to explain in straightforward terms what they
>have been doing with nature over the past few centuries.

correct; but why bring in that long period?

> Even worse,
>there has been a general failure to communicate risk and benefit
>assessment in ways that engender trust, because of course assessment has
>failed many times in the past, when there was a perception that the
>process had been hijacked by vested interests and over-confident
>politicians.

Please don't hide behind this term 'a perception'. It is a
well-known fact that the nuclear industry, the oil industry, and their
mercenary deceiver hirelings e.g A D Little, Science Applications Inc,
etc, have systematically downplayed both the hazards and the risks of
dangerous technologies. The gene-tamperers wallow in a sordid tradition of
corruption.

> The public know that only too well and were deeply
>sceptical during the debate, citing the BSE and foot and mouth fiascos,
>nuclear power disasters, and DDT toxicity as examples where scientific
>risk assessment either failed or was ignored.

correct

>If biotechnology, especially when applied to agriculture, is to come to
>fruition, then trust needs to be built. Regulators and academics need to
>have a higher and, dare I say it, a more caring profile, especially in
>the media.

oh how true

> Building trust with journalists is long overdue. To do this,
>the scientific and political community should drop gung-ho attitudes to
>the technology and adopt a more open approach. Using simplistic and
>unsubstantiated propaganda might hit the headlines, but it cannot really
>persuade people, because, in our sophisticated knowledge culture, the
>public can see that issues are much more complex.

yes - and that conclusion is no mere 'perception' or 'argument'.

> Put bluntly,
>propaganda from both sides of the debate harms the image of science and
>risks bringing academia and industry into disrepute; even the greens
>should have learnt that lesson over extravagant claims about rusting
>oilrigs and pollution!

Some of the media-favoured critics of GM are ignorant and say
misleading or wrong things.
Others are more knowledgeable but so intoxicated by publicity that they
make ill-considered exaggerated accusations. But it is not v hard to
discern the real experts - Schubert, Strohman, Brown, David S Williams, R
B Elliott, J Cummins ...

...

> How can you be for or against a
>technology? Technologies are neutral.

This is an odd statement, on its face. Some technologies are
dangerous and require close scrutiny and regulation.

> Having failed to get their
>sincerely held

why this credit to one side? And if sincerity must be raised, what
about PR agents like Moses, Lichtenstein, Beachy, etc?

> arguments across to the public in the debate, we hear
>that 114 scientists wrote to No 10 supporting the technology,
>complaining that nobody understands either it or them. But they should
>look inwardly to explain why they have failed. Why, for example, are
>some of them so stridently pro-GM, pro a technology, rather than
>persistently and patiently explaining that the real issues are about
>what you make with the technology, and how you deal with public
>anxieties about the control and use of the products.

right on

>I apply the same
>criticism to the anti-GM campaigners. As Richard Dawkins so aptly put
>it, if you declared you were pro or anti 'substances', why should anyone
>listen to you?

It is truly dismaying that you could call this fatuous irrelevancy
'apt'.

>If there is one thing that geneticists, breeders and scientists in
>general should learn from the debate, it is to not ignore, or still
>worse, denigrate public opinion. If people say they want to know more,
>then tell them in terms that they understand, without patronising them.

right on Brian

>It's not going to be easy. Most people perceive genetics as a
>'difficult' subject, partly because it has been badly taught in the
>past, and partly because advances in the last 20 years have been both
>rapid and largely unreported in the popular press. "GM Nation?" shows
>that the public are left in the wake of all this, feeling slightly
>queasy. And who can blame them if their reaction is one of caution? It's
>just common sense.
>
>To reassure the public, if we don't know enough about some of the risks,
>then we should say so and gracefully accept that it's time to do more
>science.

right on Brian

>That is what the recently published Farm Scale Evaluations were
>all about.

too glib, Brian; they were also about brutally insisting that
inadequate containment of GMOs is OK, at least under cover of 'research' as
distinct from 'commerce'.

>Rush things forward and civil society will either put on the
>brakes or simply turn their backs on

what is that second course?

> a scientific technique that can be
>just as safe as any other,

This is a drastically extreme claim out of mid-air - a sudden
glimpse of why some who counted you as a comrade in the early 1970s (the
heady days of 'A Blueprint for Survival') have been saddened by your
compromises since the early 1980s.

You really shouldn't make such an extreme statement unsupported by
evidence or refs. I challenge you to justify it, and am confident you will
not get far.

> and can produce real benefits to society and
>the environment, even in agriculture.

ditto

>But there is another lesson from this debate. The meetings were held at
>a time when some of the key scientific and strategic information was not
>publicly available. As a member of the GM Science Review Panel, an
>independent body set up by the UK government to review current
>scientific knowledge on GM issues, I found it frustrating that our
>review (UK GM Science Review Panel, 2003) was published after the Public
>Debate closed.

quite right

>That review is readable, and is the best we have on food
>safety, human health and environmental impacts of GM crops.

This modest claim is hard to reconcile with a careful reading of
Pusztai's reviews of the literature on hazards of GMF, or the Union of
Concerned Scientists comments on environmental impacts.

> The British
>Prime Minister's Strategy Unit also produced a report (Prime Minister's
>Strategy Unit HMSO London, 2003) on the economics of GM cropping, again
>published at the end of the debate, and the biggest and best ecological
>experiment on the impacts on biodiversity of GM herbicide-tolerant
>cropping systems, the UK Farm Scale Evaluations of GM herbicide-tolerant
>crops, (Royal Society, 2003) came to its clear conclusions too late to
>be included. The timing of all these reports was well known within
>Whitehall. No wonder the public felt that they didn't know enough. I
>don't pretend that this flood of knowledge would have changed the
>outcome of the debate

come, come - too modest?

>, but, if a recent large meeting at Winchester is
>anything to go by, the public were not impressed that they didn't have
>access to these reports during the GM debate.
>
>One of the messages from "GM Nation?" is that the public believe
>agricultural biotechnology, if it is done at all, should not be done by
>industry. Public institutions host much of the transgenic research used
>for medical and research purposes, but not in agriculture, where
>multinational companies dominate research and development. Rightly or
>wrongly, the public doesn't trust these companies to deliver products
>that benefit them, and are deeply concerned about multinationals using
>the technology in developing countries. Instinctively, they believe that
>control of the technology by these firms is unlikely to benefit the
>poor.

What do you mean by that crack 'instinctively'? Don't you think
the public have, to some significant extent, studied the evidence on
transnational corporations and come to v reasonable logical conclusions?

> Many within the international food and agricultural development
>community would agree with the view that transgenic technologies should
>be harnessed by public institutions, who are more likely to deliver safe
>and beneficial products to poor farmers.

good one Brian - a re-run of the old USSR/Gensuikyo "nuclear
power is OK as long as it's done by the State'. Tell that to survivors in
Kiev etc.

>That is how the Green
>Revolution stabilised food supplies in Asia.

Isn't it a shame to imply that this was some great victory for the
poor? Or do you really believe it was?

> If the huge sums of money
>lost by industry in agricultural biotechnology had been invested in
>publicly funded research and development worldwide, perhaps public trust
>and support would have taken a different turn over the past 10 years.

I agree it might have been marginally better.

>But let's not give up now - I for one firmly believe that transgenic
>technologies will eventually produce food crops that are, and are seen
>to be, safe and beneficial.

Hope springs eternal. After a couple decade, $10^11 has produced
nothing of that description. Why keep chanting this optimistic mantra?

>They won't be magic bullets to cure world
>hunger, but at least we will have something that could be the first step
>on what will be a long road to public trust.

It shows v little sign indeed of fulfillying this overhyped promise.

I fail to see why you make such key concessions, with no apparent reason.

Regards

R

http://www.rsnz.com.O410E;-}

GM-pusher PR agents 'morally outraged' by unpublished allegations

PR agent Wm Rolleston M.B of industry-funded propaganda Life® Sciences outfit condemned itinerant troublemaker Traavik and Maharishi adherent Smith for 'irresponsible' touting of unpublished results. "All our important PR-images are based on scientific papers in refereed journals" mouthed his fellow propagandist Wevers. "Just like the smeared Pusztai, these stirrers are jumping the gun. The GM trade and its academic buddies maintain the highest standards of truthfulness, e.g the Beachy et bulk response to The Schubert Letter" gushed Rolleston.

CropGen® PR agents Profs Vivian Moses & Conrad Lichtenstein weighed in righteously. "The fact that almost every image we tout is deliberately misleading, based on assiduous confusion of fact with fantasy, leaves us fully free to condemn these stirrers for alleging scientific facts that have yet to undergo review along the lines of Pusztai & Ewen's mysterious claims. Our cronies nearly got that Lancet paper of theirs suppressed; with any luck we can prevent refereed publication of Traavik & Smith's claims" confidently opined the two stooges.

"Furthermore we suspect at least one of them has religious affiliations, whereas we are modern men not under any moral authority and therefore more to be believed" said the two disgraces to the U of London.

New Health Dangers of Genetically Modified Food Discovered

For Immediate Release
Contact: Terje Traavik, PhD - terjet@genok.org
Jeffrey Smith - jeffrey@seedsofdeception.com
February 24, 2004

******
[Three new GM studies:]
1. Inhaled GM maize pollen may cause disease
2. GM food promoter (cauliflower mosaic virus - CaMV) transfers to rat cells
3. GM vaccines recombine into unpredictable hybrid viruses in human and animal cells
******

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 24 February, 2004-Data from three groups of studies currently being conducted by the Norwegian Institute for Gene Ecology, in Tromsö, Norway, reveal potentially serious health dangers of genetically modified (GM) foods and vaccines. Jeffrey M. Smith, Director of the Institute for Responsible
Technology, presented a summary of the findings and their implications for human health to delegates at the UN Cartagena Protocol for Biosafety meeting. Smith also presented additional evidence of health dangers from his recently published book, Seeds of Deception, including new information that incriminates the genetic engineering of the food supplement L-tryptophan as the cause of an epidemic in the U.S. in the 1980s, which took the lives of about 100 Americans and caused 5-10,000 to fall sick or become disabled.

The Norwegian findings are summarized below and are elaborated in accompanying
documents.

1. Bt-maize (Dekalb 818 YG), during pollination, may have triggered disease in people living near the maize field in the Philippines.

2. The cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) promoter, used in most GM foods, was found intact in rat tissues two hours, six hours, and three days after it was mixed into a single meal, and wasalso confirmed to be active in human cells.

3. Genetically engineered pox viruses in cell cultures recombined with natural viruses to create new hybrid viruses with unpredictable and potentially dangerous characteristics.

Terje Traavik, PhD, Director of the Norwegian Institute for Gene Ecology, announced the findings at a meeting held on February 22 in Kuala Lumpur, sponsored by the Third World Network. The studies are ongoing and not yet published, but Traavik says, "Publication of results typically requires a waiting period of up to one year or more. With such evidence of possible human health impacts of foods already on the market, we believed that waiting to report our findings through publication would not be in the public's interest." Traavik acknowledged that unpublished results are considered preliminary, but the findings, he said, are considered reliable and warrant immediate investigation. Traavik presented the data the day before the UN conference on biosafety began so that the results could be taken into consideration when drafting regulatory guidelines.

Smith put the Norwegian findings into context by presenting related findings. He said, "The fact that the CaMV promoter can transfer to mammalian cells might explain the excessive cell growth found in the stomach and intestines of animals from other GM feeding trials, and raises additional concerns that GM foods might encourage genetic instability and mutation, accidental expression of allergens or toxins from non-target genes, and even activation of dormant viruses." Smith said that the link between Bt-maize pollen and disease in the Philippino villagers is supported by other studies on Bt-toxin and the crops genetically engineered to express it. Smith said, "Because Bt-toxin appears to increase the sensitivity of mammals to other allergens or immunogens, we must investigate whether Bt-crops contribute to the unexplained rise of allergies." Smith also provided evidence that the L-tryptophan epidemic had started four years earlier than is generally cited, and was linked to a series of genetically modified bacterial strains used by a Japanese manufacturer between 1984 and 1989. This information undermines the alternative explanation that the epidemic was created as a result of a change in the manufacturing methods introduced in 1989.

The December 2003 issue of GROWER has published (on page 16-1 an
article: "Will GM Onions Be Better Or Worse" that was authored and supplied
by 'Dr' Robert Anderson.

The article's main focus is on doubtful value of herbicide
(Roundup)-resistant onions, transgenic crops, the real worry about HGT, and
"gene silencing", etc. as a personal view. The article comes with
author-biographical info checked out by the editor informing readers that
the author "holds a combined honours degree in physics and chemistry, and
has lectured at tertiary level for 25 years in physics and chemistry. He
has contributed to the book Designer Genes, for the New Zealand Public, and
has published articles on genetic engineering in both international
magazines and news media".

The February 2004 issue of GROWER has an article (page 20-23): "Ecological
Impact of GM Potatoes" by Tony Conner, Jill Reader, Jeanne Jacobs, Melanie
Davidson and Maureen O'Callaghan of Crop&Food®/ AgResearch®.

R

The article below maintains the pr fiction that GM is the same as crop
selection that has gone on for thousands of years. In fact the GM crops
presently marketed are all based on illegitimate recombination while
none of the traditional crop selections were based on illegitimate
recombination. The GM crops are truly bastards. Furthermore, it is easy
enough for a pr guy to dismiss the clear evidence of genetic instability
of the GM crops as mongering. Mongering is more an attribute of bastard
mongrel makers, it makes one almost wish to stoop to name-calling!

Heredity (2004) 92, 135-136. doi:10.1038/sj.hdy.6800422

News and Commentary
GM Debate: Dispelling myths
C Lichtenstein

Correspondence to: Conrad Lichtenstein, Professor of Molecular Biology
at the University of London's Queen Mary and Westfield College, was
among the first to use RNA silencing to engineer resistance to viral
infection in GM plants. He was the first to show viral integration into
plant genomes during evolution and is heavily involved in the public
understanding of science within the GM debate

I participated in a number of 'GM Nation?' debates in the early summer
of 2003, both as a plant molecular biologist with relevant research
interests, and as a panel member of Cropgen (www.cropgen.org). Cropgen
is a consumer and media information initiative that makes the case for
GM crops, helping to achieve a greater measure of realism and balance in
the GM debate that has been running these last few years.

Attendees at the debates I spoke at were largely anti-GM; thus it is not
surprising that the government report, which summarised the 37 000
questionnaires returned from the 675 meetings held across the country,
found antipathy to GM to be at odds with other polls of the population
as a whole. A number of other flaws in the analysis were recently shown
by Campbell and Townsend (2003). Nonetheless, the outcome of 'GM
Nation?' still puts the government in an awkward position in deciding on
the future of GM in Britain.

The debates covered a complex web of inter-related issues: (i) alien,
unnatural technology; (ii) food safety; (iii) intensification of
agriculture and its effect on the environment; (iv) genetic pollution;
(v) being driven solely by profits.

As a scientist, I saw the anti-GM 'scientists' as my principal
adversaries, who sought to use their scientific credentials to incite
fear in the hearts of the scientifically ignorant with a series of wild
statements about the dangers of GM. Yet when challenged, they were
unable to supply any peer-reviewed research as evidence to support them.

It was on the first issue of 'alien unnatural technology' that I first
became engaged in the GM debate back in 1999: I led a project to
engineer transgenic virus-resistant plants by expressing a virally
derived antisense transgene that blocked expression of the invading
viral DNA replication machinery (Day et al, 1991). Tobacco was our
original chosen plant model for engineering plant resistance, and we
found that similar 'transgenes' were already present as multiple repeats
of methylated silent DNA on two different tobacco chromosomes (Bejarano
et al, 1996), as well as related species, suggesting an ancient
illegitimate viral DNA recombination event 25 million years ago (Murad
et al, 2004 and references therein). So, GM can happen in nature, I
argued, using this as an illustration because of the poignancy of it
being the same transgene that Mother Nature had 'used'. However, I made
the general point that horizontal gene transfer is natural - the real
driver being selection - citing the spread of antibiotic-resistance
genes in bacterial pathogens by artificial selection on natural plasmid-
and transposon-mediated gene transfer.

Of course, all of agriculture is alien and unnatural and selective
breeding is artificial selection. What GM adds is artificial variation
in place of selection based on variation arising from random natural
mutations or, since the 1960s, from randomly induced variation using
gamma rays: the so-called 'mutation breeding'.

Conventional agriculture is now more productive than ever, with its new
crop varieties, the green revolution, and the use of fertilisers,
herbicides, and pesticides. This reduces biodiversity in the crop field,
but allows us to feed more people, more cheaply, and leaves more land
free of cultivation.

Organic farming is less productive and requires more land, but GM
technology offers organic farmers the opportunity to increase their
productivity organically, that is without the need to spray pesticides.
Future benefits include crop production on marginal lands, high in salt
or low in water. Thus the rejection of GM, an intrinsically organic
process, by the organic movement is puzzling. They are biting the very
hand that could feed them.

I heard an anti-GM scientist say that GM foods cause cancer, that the
herbicide 'round-up' used both generally and on the herbicide-tolerant
GM crops in the recent farm-scale evaluations, causes neurodegenerative
diseases, yet no evidence was presented to support these claims. In any
case, GM is a process and not a product, so no generic statement is
possible on the safety of GM food unless we accept the flawed and
controversial data that Pusztai presented in the Lancet some years ago,
that the process is mysteriously able to make food harmful (Ewen and
Pusztai, 1999).

An anti-GM scientist told us that GM technology was unstable and
unreliable, could cause mutations by inserting into genes, and that GM
transgenes were prone to methylation. It was not made clear why this was
a problem for anyone but the breeder, who might need to screen a number
of transgenic lines for their desired characteristics. The argument was
eclectic in failing to point out that mutation breeding, perhaps to a
even greater extent than GM, causes random unknown DNA damage, yet 70%
of crop varieties currently in use, including those by organic farmers,
were made by this method.

However, this argument generated the fear that these transgenes could
run amok and, due to their instability, leave the host plant escaping
into the wild. There was much vivid imagery and emotive language but no
clear mechanism to account for how such events might occur, nor for the
implication that 'GM DNA' was more dangerous to eat than any of the
other vast quantities of DNA that we eat every day.

Unsubstantiated claims by the fear-mongering anti-GM scientists
highlight a central problem in a high technology society of specialists:
few, if any, of these anti-GM scientists are currently, or have ever
been, actively engaged in experimental research relevant to GM. Such
research could cover the regulation of gene expression; epigenetics and
gene methylation; DNA recombination; and construction and screening of
transgenic plants. No editor of a scientific journal would choose these
individuals as a reviewer. However, how is the layperson to evaluate the
credentials of these experts who present themselves to the media?
Society does currently seem to be moving in the wrong direction: a
distrust of mainstream 'conventional science' in favour of the fringe.

The challenge we face in countering the anti-GM scientists is to reduce
complex scientific principles to persuasive and understandable morsels
for the layperson, in the face of quasiscientific scare-mongering. One's
immediate instincts are to rebut with a reasoned, coherent scientific
argument that invalidates this techno-babble; the danger exists,
however, that only a scientist would realise the strength of your
argument, and that the lay audience is left as frightened as before.
Scare-mongers can use science to promote fear far more easily than
scientists can use science to reduce anxiety. Twas ever thus.

Among all this, what most worried people at these debates was
capitalism. There were conspiracy theories that GM technology, driven
solely by profits, was leading to global control of food production by
large multinational companies in collusion with governments, thus
exploiting poor farmers with expensive GM seed and doing nothing for the
needs of the developing world. Yet, with the collapse of communism, this
grievance against capitalism was not countered by any presentation of an
alternative.

With no training in economics, I found myself having to defend
capitalism by quoting from The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith: 'It is
not from benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we
expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest¼(Man is)
led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part his
intention¼" I pointed out that all economies need industry to be
profitable; that industry has to operate with profit in mind; that we
all have a stake in this profit as holders of ISAs and pension funds;
that new technologies increase capital value and benefit the whole of
society, without stealing from the poor to give to the rich: and that if
capitalism really was their concern, there were far bigger fish to fry
than GM.

References

Bejarano ER, Khashoggi A, Witty M, Lichtenstein CP (1996). Integration
of multiple repeats of geminiviral DNA into the nuclear genome of
tobacco during evolution. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 93: 759-764. Article PubMed

Campbell S, Townsend E (2003). Flaws undermine resuts of UK biotech
debate. Nature 425: 559. Article PubMed

Day AG, Bejarano E, Buck KW, Burrell M, Lichtenstein CP (1991).
Expression of an antisense viral gene in transgenic tobacco confers
resistance to the DNA virus tomato golden mosaic virus. Proc Natl Acad
Sci USA 88: 6711-6715. PubMed

Ewen SWB, Pusztai A (1999). Effect of diets containing genetically
modified potatoes expressing Galanthus nivalis lectin on rat small
intestine. Lancet 354: 1353-1354. Article PubMed

Murad M, Bielawski J, Lim Y, Matyasek R, Kovarik A, Nichols RA, Leitch
AR, Lichtenstein CP (2004). The origin and evolution of
geminivirus-related DNA sequences in Nicotiana. Heredity, (in press).

>News and Commentary
>GM Debate: Dispelling myths
>Conrad Lichtenstein, Professor of Molecular Biology
>at the University of London's Queen Mary and Westfield College
>
>Heredity (2004) 92, 135-136. doi:10.1038/sj.hdy.6800422


>when challenged, they were
>unable to supply any peer-reviewed research as evidence to support them.

This is the height of hypocrisy. Lichtenstein must know that only
a handful of peer-reviewed papers exist in support of his beliefs that GMF
is OK. Talk about a double standard !

> GM can happen in nature, I argued

This is just bullshit. GM plants as produced by current methods
are bastards, by illegitimate recombination, expected to show different
properties from hybrids that result by cross-breeding. Lichtenstein must
know that.

>In any
>case, GM is a process and not a product, so no generic statement is
>possible on the safety of GM food unless we accept the flawed and
>controversial data that Pusztai presented in the Lancet some years ago,
>that the process is mysteriously able to make food harmful (Ewen and
>Pusztai, 1999).

Lichtenstein commits an objectionable violation of the scientific method.
Science studies the facts of nature, and reports them, whether or not any
mechanism has been proposed at the time for how the particular facts could
have been caused. Pusztai & Ewen in no way implied mystery. They were not
able in that first paper to pursue the mechanism(s) whereby the rat gut was
damaged within 10 d by the particular GM-potato; this is in no way
objectonable. If British science-funding were honest, they or others would
have been funded to investigate how the particular GM-potato caused the
damage. Meanwhile, the facts of damage stand. Lack of proven mechanism,
as alluded to in Lichtenstein's wisecrack 'mysteriously able to make food
harmful', in no way derogates from the reality of the facts whose impact
Lichtenstein wishes to blunt.

Just to make the issue concrete: the mechanism of action of the
'phenoxy' herbicides 2,4-D & 2,4,5-T was not understood when their use in
chemical warfare on Viet Nam became a moral issue. Leading scientists such
as Prof John Edsall of Harvard advocated, successfully, that the USA should
stop aerial spraying of 2,4,5-T on Viet Nam because of the known - plus
the reasonably inferred - harmful effects. Nobody said "the mechanisms
of harm are mysterious, so we'll imply the facts of damage are not real".

>70% of crop varieties currently in use, including those by organic farmers,
>were made by this method [mutation by ionizing radiation].

I haven't seen any such huge figure before, and seriously doubt it.
Who can check it for us?

>Unsubstantiated claims by the fear-mongering anti-GM scientists
>highlight a central problem in a high technology society of specialists:
>few, if any, of these anti-GM scientists are currently, or have ever
>been, actively engaged in experimental research relevant to GM.

This is another burst of lavish hypocrisy.
Most of the proponents of GM are not actively engaged in
experimental research relevant to GM. Lichtenstein does not indicate that
*advocacy* of GM is weakened by lack of involvement in gene-tampering. His
buddy in CropGen Vivian Moses is not doing it, but Lichtenstein doesn't
hint that his promotion of GM is any less valid for that. Yet he tries to
make out that, in order to be a valid critic, one has to be involved in the
racket (or some research relevant to GM).

The first answer is that some actual gene-manipulators have
expressed grave reservations about gene-tampering as conducted to date.
Professor Patrick Brown's article at www.psrast.org is a v good start; the
Schubert Letter in Nat Biotek (which Lichtenstein ignores) is another good
example.

The second answer is of course that many other scientists
understand enough about GM to discuss it properly.

The general tone of Lichtenstein's tract is in the region of moral
outrage. He poses as a moralistic condemnator. This is preposterous. The
PR agency in which he & Moses promote GMF assiduously misleads, month after
month. Their qualifications & experience in relevant science make their
deceit all the more wicked. They really do know better, but utter
systematic deceit.

R

Unsafe or Savior? GM Crops Debate Associated Press
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,62382,00.html

08:01 AM Feb. 21, 2004 PT

BRUSSELS -- The global sowing of genetically modified, or GM, crops will
continue rising in the next few years, gaining more of a foothold in the
world's food supply, but millions still need convincing that the food is
safe to eat.

For once, green groups can agree with the biotech industry on one thing:
with Brazil and China now part of the growing family of major GM producers,
the area of land devoted to gene-spliced crops across the world must
inevitably rise.

The United States, Argentina, Canada and China are the world's leading
growers of biotech crops. More than half of China's cotton crop, for
example, is now genetically modified.

But there are doubts about how far the expansion can go, with questions
lingering on China's commitment to GM crops and whether famine-hit Third
World nations really want GM food aid.

In 2003, six countries grew 99 percent of the world's transgenic crop area,
according to ISAAA, a non-profit group that backs biotechnology's role in
the war on hunger.

"In the next five years, biotech crops are expected to grow to 100 million
hectares planted by 10 million farmers in 25 or more countries," said Clive
James, ISAAA's chairman and founder.

Most of those using the technology would be small Third World farmers.
Maize and cotton would drive the growth, with soy production likely to rise
after Brazil's recent approval of herbicide-tolerant beans.

ISAAA's estimate for the global GM crop area in 2003 was 167.3 million
acres, 15 percent higher than in 2002.

"There is a need for more acreages of grain," said Christian Verschueren,
director general of CropLife International, a Brussels-based network
representing the plant science industry. "That will come from Asia to some
extent, but also Latin America, Africa and Australia possibly as well."

Australia, which does not regulate GMO use in animal feed, approved its
first GM food crop, canola, in July. Commercial GM crops are blocked by
short-term bans by state governments.

India approved three varieties of Bt cotton in 2002 for commercial
production and is conducting field trials for several crops including
mustard, rice, potatoes and cauliflower.

International environment group Greenpeace broadly agreed with the likely
rise in global plantings, but said they would continue to be dominated by
just a handful of countries.

"The acreage is probably going to rise," said Dan Hindsgaul of Greenpeace's
Genetic Engineering Campaign. "On the whole, I think there will be a slight
increase."

One problem is what to do with the extra production, which will add to the
world supply of maize, soy and cotton -- not a food crop as such, but its
seeds can be crushed for animal feed.

The biotech industry insists that, with crops genetically altered to resist
disease and insects, much of this can be used to help feed hungry people in
the world's poorest countries.

Green groups disagree, citing corporate greed as the reason behind the
industry's push to raise GM crop sowings and point to the reluctance of
several African nations to accept GM food aid.

Last June, Zambia's government rejected thousands of tons of GM maize,
while millions of its people faced food shortages.

The European Union, a bastion of anti-biotech sentiment with strong
consumer antipathy to GM crops, has been drawn into the row. Biotech
companies say EU policy is to blame for some Third World reluctance to
accept GM grain for fear that GM material might appear in those countries'
own exports to Europe.

"What drives some of these (skeptical) countries is the European policy
toward biotechnology," Verschueren said. "It is restricting the freedom of
choice of farmers in developing countries. It has a domino effect," he told
Reuters.

Washington has accused Europe of undermining efforts to combat famine and
poverty in Africa by blocking the use of GM crops on unfounded and
unscientific fears.

"Europe has been very vocal in its skepticism about GMOs and of course that
travels everywhere. This is what the industry is afraid of, that this will
spread," Greenpeace's Hindsgaul said.

China, a major producer of traditional and biotech crops such as cotton and
tomato, may now be hesitating on how to proceed with its GM capability as a
result of the EU's policies, industry observers say. Some provinces want to
remain GM-free.

"There is growing concern among policymakers about the impact of the
ongoing global biotechnology debate on China's agricultural trade,
particularly import restrictions in EU countries," said Jikun Huang at the
Chinese Academy of Sciences.

China faced a dilemma on how to proceed on further commercialization of GM
crops, he said.

The key question now is whether to grow large-scale GM food crops,
particularly soybeans. As the world's leading soy importer, China's
decisions will have an immediate impact on exporters such as Brazil, where
China was the top buyer in 2003.

"When it comes to soy imports, they (China) have been playing the GM card a
couple of times ... and we've also seen a genuine concern on some of the
biosafety issues," Greenpeace's Hindsgaul said. "Consumers are starting to
react."

© Copyright 2004, Lycos, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

http ://www.rsnz.org/news/date/2004/2/23

Is biomedical research too dangerous to pursue?

An opinion piece by US bioethicist, Arthur Caplan, reviews the
objections that have been made against the ethical stance of
utilitarianism - the moral argument that investing in science and
technology extends life and improves quality of life, despite
exacting a toll in harms and risks. Caplan asserts that he does not
believe there is a case for slowing or stopping the biomedical
research enterprise.

Science http://www.sciencemag.org 303 20 February 2004 p.1142

http://www.rsnz.org/news/date/2004/2/23

New Swedish owner of BSSL technology says NZ out of running
AgResearch® subsidiary Celentis loses out after new owner decides against
the use of animals to develop a treatment for pancreatic dysfunction

This was the least implausible of their GM capers. What hope can
there be for the others (e.g human-type myelin basic protein in boving
milk? How many of those latter cows still exist - 2, 1, or none?

World awaits more GM crops as safety debate rages
Group forecasts 100 million hectares of transgenic crops by 2008

Genetically engineered foods a failure - environmental activists
Friends of the Earth say polluters should pay for the genetic
contamination they make

Wheat at forefront of battle over genetically modified organisms
Because of its complex nature, wheat is one of the last major crops to
undergo genetic manipulation

**Overseas items********

Charity makes cancer gene freely available across Europe
Cancer Research UK announced last week that it had obtained a
Europe-wide patent on the hereditary breast cancer gene BRCA2. It
will allow publicly owned laboratories and hospitals to use the gene
free of charge across Europe. BMJ http://www.bmj.com 328 21
February 2004 p.423

GM crops to get go-ahead
Despite public opposition to genetically modified (GM) crops revealed
by the recent GM debate, some leaked cabinet committee papers have
revealed that the Government intends to press ahead with growing GM
maize. Although the papers admit that there is still no clear-cut
method of avoiding contamination with non-GM crops, the cabinet feels
that if it doesn't back GM technology it could damage UK science.
Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk 19 February 2004 p.1,4
See also: Daily Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk 20 February 2004 p.13

Balancing act is main bar to women in science
The struggle to balance work and family is the main challenge faced
by female scientists and engineers in academe, according to a study
presented at the American Association for the Advancement of
Science's annual meeting. THES http://www.thesis.co.uk 1628 20
February 2004 p.13

Is biomedical research too dangerous to pursue?
An opinion piece by US bioethicist, Arthur Caplan, reviews the
objections that have been made against the ethical stance of
utilitarianism - the moral argument that investing in science and
technology extends life and improves quality of life, despite
exacting a toll in harms and risks. Caplan asserts that he does not
believe there is a case for slowing or stopping the biomedical
research enterprise.

Science http://www.sciencemag.org 303 20 February 2004 p.1142

Beyond clones
The breakthrough by South Korean scientists in cloning human embryos
has been welcomed by some as an achievement that will finally unlock
the medical potential of embryonic stem cells, whilst others are
enraged, arguing that it will encourage reproductive cloning and lead
to a world in which human embryos are routinely destroyed to supply
"spare part" tissues.
New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com/ 181 21 February 2004 p.1, 16-17

Nipah virus (or a cousin) strikes again
More than 40 people in central Bangladesh appear to have fallen ill
with encephalitis and 14 have died. Tests indicate that the Nipah
virus, or a close relative, is responsible. This family of viruses
has been responsible for a number of recent, serious outbreaks.
Science http://www.sciencemag.org 303 20 February 2004 p.1121

Bush 'bending science to his political needs'
In an open letter, the independent Union of Concerned Scientists
(UCS) have claimed that the Bush administration is guilty of
"misrepresenting scientific knowledge and misleading the public" in
key political issues from climate change to the potential presence of
nuclear weapons in Iraq. The letter, signed by 60 senior US
scientists including 20 Nobel Prize winners, makes clear that the
scientific community has taken issue on the administration's
"distortion of the process with which science enters into its
decisions". Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk 19 February 2004 p.13

http://www.theage.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2004
/02/23/1077497511307.html

How stupid white men helped Bush win the presidency

February 24, 2004

Michael Moore wants George Bush to lose the presidency. Yet he helped him
win it, writes Gerard Henderson.

Michael Moore, the American pamphleteering humourist, is angry that George
Bush is President of the United States. Very angry. So much so that, in
the concluding remarks of his book Dude, Where's My Country? (Allen Lane,
2003), Moore proclaims: "There is probably no greater imperative facing the
nation than the defeat of George W. Bush in the 2004 election."

What's missing from Moore's polemic is a recognition that he is
responsible, in part at least, for Bush's presence in the White House. In
Dude, Where's My Country?, Moore acknowledges that in the 2000 US
presidential election, "the combined vote for Al Gore and Ralph Nader was
over 51 per cent, enough to win any election".

It's just that, unlike Australia, the US does not have preferential voting.
In other words, in 2000 an anti-Bush elector could support Gore or Nader -
but the vote for the least successful candidate would not pass to the
other.

In 2000 Nader, standing as a Greens candidate, won just under 3 per cent
of the total vote. As an unsuccessful candidate, his votes were eliminated
from the count.

Nader's role in the 2000 election was primarily that of a spoiler. The
evidence indicates that two-thirds of Nader voters preferred the Democrat
Gore to the Republican Bush. If the leftist Nader had not taken votes from
the liberal Gore, then it is unlikely that the conservative Bush would have
won. In the crucial state of Florida, Nader won 97,000 votes and Gore lost
by about 600 votes. Even if only 1 per cent of Nader voters had supported
Gore instead, then the Democrats would have taken Florida and the
presidency.

In his most recent book Moore writes that after November 2000, "the
Democrats wasted two years whining and moaning about the Greens, declaring
Nader and Co the enemy". He continued: "That's the sure sign of a real
loser - blame somebody else for your mistakes." Yet there is no
recognition that Moore himself made a mistake in 2000 - the consequences of
which he has been complaining about ever since.

Any fracture in the liberal or left vote can only assist Bush and harm
Kerry or Edwards.

In his balanced biography Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon (Basic Books,
2002), Justin Martin documents that although Nader ran the line that Bush
and Gore were like "Tweedledum and Tweedledee", in fact close observers of
his campaign "could not help but notice that he was rougher on Gore".

The key feature of Nader's campaign was the holding of large public rallies
at which high-profile entertainment types did the warm-up acts. They
included TV host Phil Donahue, actors Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon (who
on occasions wore a cute "Babes for Nader" button), singer Ani DiFranco -
and Michael Moore. Moore liked to advise audiences that it would make more
sense for them to vote for pot plants than Bush or Gore. The joke was
that, unlike either candidate, plants generated oxygen. Really.

It seems that Nader's dislike for the Democrats was founded in a belief
that he was not taken sufficiently seriously by Bill Clinton or Gore. In
any event, the likes of Moore and Sarandon gave considerable publicity and
credibility to Nader's campaign. Nowadays, Moore, Sarandon and friends can
be heard condemning the consequences of an event they helped determine just
over three years ago. Still, Bush's victory has been good for their
careers (no conspiracy implied).

It was not as if Nader supporters should have been surprised by the outcome
of the 2000 election. After all, the strong showing by the right-wing
populist Ross Perot had taken votes from George Bush snr in 1992 and made
possible Clinton's victory. Such educated Americans as Moore and Sarandon
should have been aware of the possible consequences of supporting Nader.

And now, it might happen again. At the weekend Nader announced that he
would run for the presidency in November. He will be an independent,
rather than a Greens candidate. It's possible that, this time round, Nader
may have difficulties getting his name on the ballot paper in some states.
However, his candidacy has sent shock waves through the Democratic Party -
and with reason.

Nader has already indicated that he will campaign against Washington - with
the line that Republicans and Democrats alike take their orders from what
he terms their "corporate paymasters". It's the "Tweedledum and
Tweedledee" theme again. This despite the fact that, on any objective
analysis, Nader's policies seem closer to a John Kerry or a John Edwards
than to Bush - in such areas as economic issues, the environment and
foreign policy, among others.

It's far too early to suggest who might start favourite in November.
Despite his present difficulties, what Bush has going for him is that he
presides over a relatively strong economy (the problems stemming from the
large US budget deficit need not have a political impact any time soon).
What's more, the Republicans are united. Any fracture in the liberal or
left vote can only assist Bush and harm Kerry or Edwards.

Clearly, Nader is an ethic-of-ultimate-ends (read ideological) political
activist and, as such, is interested only in attaining his idea of policy
purity. However, most liberals - in the American sense of the term - are
into instrumental (read pragmatic) politics and they want a Democrats
victory above all.

In 2000, a narrow majority of Americans preferred Gore to Bush. Yet Bush
won - due primarily to the actions of Nader (rather than the Florida voting
system or the ruling of the US Supreme Court). Michael Moore, as a major
Nader advocate and a principal Gore critic, played a part in Bush's entry
to the White House. Yet, after the election, Moore had the effrontery to
write the book Stupid White Men - directed at others, of course. Funny,
really.

Gerard Henderson is executive director of the Sydney Institute.

http://www.newscientist.com/

21 February 2004- issue no. 2435 NEW SCIENTIST

WHAT MAKES US HUMAN

We have roughly the same number of genes as mice and only five times as many
genes as the average bacterium. Furthermore, most of our genes are virtually
identical to those of chimps. If we have so much in common with the rest of
the animal kingdom, what makes us so unique? The answer may lie in the vast
regions of the genome that do not code for proteins, but instead control
gene expression - in particular so-called cis-regulatory sequences which
regulate when, where and how much a gene is expressed. The emerging
conclusion seems to be it is not so much what you've got, as the way that
you use it ... more

(can't access this online without subscription)

next item:

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994709

Crops 'widely contaminated' by genetically modified DNA

16:43 23 February 04

NewScientist.com news service

US scientists are warning of a potentially "serious risk to human health"
after the discovery that traditional varieties of major American food crops
are widely contaminated by DNA sequences from GM crops.

Crops engineered to produce industrial chemicals and drugs - so-called
"pharm" crops - could already be poisoning ostensibly GM-free crops grown
for food, warns the study by the Washington-based Union for Concerned
Scientists, released on Monday.

"If genes find their way from pharm crops to ordinary corn, they or their
products could wind up in drug-laced corn flakes," says the report's
co-author, UCS microbiologist Margaret Mellon.

In trials, crops have been genetically engineered to manufacture proteins
for healing wounds and treating conditions such as cystic fibrosis,
cirrhosis of the liver and anaemia; antibodies to fight cancer and vaccines
against rabies, cholera and foot-and-mouth disease. Conventional drugs
manufacture is subject to stringent controls to prevent them entering the
food chain or contaminating the natural environment. But there are currently
no such controls to prevent the spread of DNA sequences from pharm crops.

The UCS asked two commercial laboratories to test traditional varieties of
three crops - maize, soybeans and canola or oil-seed rape - for specific
sequences of DNA that have been introduced into GM varieties currently grown
on US farms. The sequences studied mostly give resistance to proprietary
pesticides.

The labs reported that the seeds were "pervasively contaminated with low
levels of DNA sequences from GM varieties". Up to 1 per cent of individual
seeds, and more than half the batches of seeds, contained one or more of the
GM sequences.

Union of Concerned Scientists

GM Foods, New Scientist

There is no evidence that the crops tested were unsafe, say the authors. But
they fear this may not be true for second-generation GM crops that contain
DNA sequences that manufacture drugs and industrial chemicals.

"Seed contamination is the back door to the food supply," says Mellon. "The
realisation that some seeds may already have been contaminated [by pharm
crops] is alarming" and could pose a "serious risk to human health".

Until now concern about GM contamination has focused on cross-pollination in
the field. But the authors guess that much of the contamination has arisen
from a failure to keep GM and traditional seeds apart during manufacture and
distribution.

The tests did not discover any crops contaminated with sequences from pharm
or industrial crops because there are no current tests for them. But
co-author and plant pathologist Jane Rissler warns: "Until we know
otherwise, it is prudent to assume that engineered sequences originating in
any crop - including genes from crops engineered to produce drugs, plastics
and vaccines - could potentially contaminate the seed supply."

Fred Pearce

Three dangerous little pigs

By PAT VENDITTI
the Globe & Mail Oronto Tont
Friday, February 20, 2004 - Page A21

This week, the government agency that's responsible for Canada's
food safety quietly slipped out an announcement that three little
pigs had gone to market by mistake in Quebec. The animals were
genetically engineered as part of a program to produce
pharmaceutical proteins, and their safety for use in the human food
chain has never been assessed.

This is a major breach of Canada's food-safety program, which
explicitly prohibits the release of genetically engineered animal
material into the environment or food system. The government
announcement stated that officials were taking "action to control"
this situation.

Unfortunately, this is precisely what the same agency said in a
virtually identical announcement made two years ago, when 11
little genetically engineered (GE) pigs accidentally went to market
in Ontario. The steps taken were either not fast enough, or they
have simply failed. What is happening to Canada's food safety, and
can the government be counted on to protect us?

The government department that is supposed to make sure our
food is safe is the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or CFIA. This
body oversees the approval process for GE ingredients in the
human food chain -- foods that we eat directly or foods fed to
livestock. It is the CFIA that is in the frame for failing to act early or
comprehensively enough to keep mad-cow disease at bay. It is this
agency that failed to prevent the import and use in food production
of GE "Starlink" corn -- a grain that is not legal in Canada. And it is
this agency that is currently responsible for considering whether to
approve GE wheat -- a crop that Canadian farmers fear would
destroy their markets.

But back to the three little piggies. They were the property of TGN
Biotech -- a research firm based in Ste-Foy, Quebec. TGN has
altered the fundamental genetic makeup of these animals, so that
the semen of the male pigs contains some form of pharmaceutical
protein.

The litters of pigs contain both genetically engineered and "normal"
animals, and the non-engineered pigs are sent to market.
Naturally, the female gene-altered pigs do not have semen to
harvest for pharmaceutical ingredients, but they are genetically
altered in the same way as the male animals. Neither male nor
female GE pigs are approved for release into the environment or
use in the human food chain -- in fact no GE animals have been
approved for this purpose anywhere in the world.

In this case it appears that, through human error, three of the
genetically engineered female pigs were confused with their
conventional sisters, and sent off to a rendering plant in Quebec.

From there they were further distributed to feed mills and farms in
Quebec and Ontario, for use as livestock feed.

The biotech company realized its mistake and the CFIA has been
scrambling to control this event. They have also been trying to
hose down the issue, claiming that these pigs are probably safe for
the human food chain, when the reality is that their safety has
never been tested. Such releases are illegal, and have unknown
consequences for human health and the environment. It is unclear
if meat from animals fed this contaminated feed has been sold to
consumers.

What with mad-cow disease, trans fats, and toxins in farmed fish,
Canadians have had their confidence in Canada's food-safety
system shaken of late. Canadian wheat farmers are in a state of
alarm over the potential approval of GE wheat, as 80 per cent of the
markets for that product say they don't want it, and may reject all
Canadian wheat if any GE variety is grown. Well, given that the
CFIA can't keep whole pigs out of the system, why should buyers
expect that GE wheat won't end up in conventional shipments?

It's time for Parliament to step in. First of all, it has to find out what
the consequences are for this apparent flagrant disregard of the
food-safety system. After all, as far as Greenpeace can find out,
there have been no prosecutions or penalties from previous
incidents. It appears that food safety at the CFIA depends more on
good fortune than precaution.

Parliament needs to look beyond its current scandals to an issue
that directly affects every one of us -- the safety of our food. We
need a parliamentary inquiry into how these repeated breaches of
the system keep occurring, and specifically into how GE life-forms
are handled.

Meanwhile, there should be a moratorium on the development of
new GE products in Canada. We should take concrete steps -- not
to pacify public opinion, but to assure Canadians and our
international markets that our food supply is, as our government
likes to claim, the safest in the world.

Pat Venditti is a specialist in genetic engineering for Greenpeace,
Canada.

Andrew Male
Communications Co-ordinator
Greenpeace Canada
(416) 597-8408 x3030
cell (416) 880-2757
ICQ 269561833
andrew.male@yto.greenpeace.org

Eric Darier
Political Advisor
Genetic Engineering Campaign
Greenpeace International
454, ave. Laurier Est, 3rd floor
Montreal H2J 1E7
Quebec (Canada)
Email: eric.darier@yto.greenpeace.org
Tel. +1 514 933-0021 ext. 15
Cell. +1 514 605-6497

This disgustingly biased agency outdoes itself in fantasising GM
benefits even beyond those of the gene-jockeys' propaganda.

The most claimed by the most pro-GM touts for yellow rice is that
it could relieve vitamin A deficiency. Its potential for this is
notoriously feeble. But the idea that it could be "a panacea for world
hunger" is just raving idiocy.

Is RNSZ-paid propagandist Owen Watson not subject to any ethical
standards?

R

http ://www.rsnz.org/news/date/2004/2/20

The battle for GE in Australia

While farmers are becoming more comfortable with planting and growing GE
crops, consumer opposition is growing

Britain to approve commercial GE crop, despite public opposition
A decision to approve GE maize is imminent

Is Golden Rice the crop to prove GM's worth?
The vitamin A-enriched grain seen by some as a panacea for world hunger,
includes three new genes, including two from daffodil and a bacterium

Monsanto cultivates GE-crop bonanza despite critics
The Reuters article coincides with the first meeting of parties to the UN
Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, the legal agreement intended to
regulate international trade in genetically modified organisms

http://www.rsnz.org/news/date/2004/2/21

http://www.rsnz.org/news/date/2004/2/22

Britain may give green light to gene-changed maize
For use as cattle feed

Corner Post #319
Farm & Countryside Commentary by Elbert van Donkersgoed
January 26, 2003

When the United States Department of Agriculture announced North America's
second animal with mad cow disease, the first news was all about borders
slamming shut and the consequent impact on markets. McDonald's shares fell
five percent. U.S. Cattle prices tumbled almost 18 percent as a $3 billion
export market blinked out. There was talk that growth in U.S. fast food
outlets was at risk.

Within days the U.S. media coverage shifted dramatically. Almost every
non-government organization with peripheral connections to the U.S. food
system published essays; wrote letters to the editor or appeared on talk
shows. Their issue was not the market impact of one cow with a fatal
disease. It was not a business story. It was a food, health and environment
story. Even the would-be presidents in the race for the Democratic
nomination made pronouncements about the food system.

Incidentally this was quite different from the Canadian experience with one
sick cow seven months earlier. Most Canadian stories were based on official
information from government agencies, spokespeople for farm and food
businesses and key politicians like Albert's Premier Ralph Klein. To this
day, BSE is a business story in Canada but not in the U.S.

What makes one sick cow in the U.S. a food story?

First, conventional U.S. agriculture is a long way down the road to
industrialization - considerably further than Canada. The U.S. food system
is becoming a throughput machine where the dominant values are technology,
growth and the abandonment of restraint. It is a system that prizes
efficiency, competitiveness and maximum production above all else. It is a
system that, internally, lacks the ability to see the risks of taking cow
parts and rendering them into meat and bone meal as feed for the next
generation of livestock.

Second, we eat our environment. Food is the result of a complex system that
involves feedback loops, where nutrition is more important than quantity,
where unintended consequences and unpredictable developments are
commonplace. Think drought or grasshoppers or mealybugs or mad cow disease.
We eat in a complex relationship with creation. The discovery of one sick
cow in Washington drives home just how complex our food system has become.

Third, consumers are enabled to be more risk-averse because of the very
nature of our modern food system. We tend to be blasé about the risks that
we choose to take. Give us some control and many of us are risk-takers. Our
modern food system delivers abundant choice, but choice is not a substitute
for control. Choice allows consumers to abandon any product that has a whiff
of risk associated with it.

Industrialization, complexity and choice make one sick cow a food story.

===============

Elbert van Donkersgoed (P. Ag. Hon.) is the Strategic Policy Advisor of the
Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, Canada. Corner Post has been heard
weekly on CFCO Radio, Chatham and CKNX Radio, Wingham, Ontario since 1997.
Corner Post has an email subscriber list of more than 3,000 and appears
regularly on @g Worldwide Correspondents at
www.agriculture.com/worldwide/correspondents/index.html. Copyright 2004
Terra Coeur. Send requests to print, post on a website or circulate
electronically to elbert@terracoeur.com.

EXCERPT: "in three and a half decades of rummaging around the darker corners
of the environmental policies of some pretty disreputable governments, I
have rarely come across so breathtakingly cynical a document."

GM - The Great Betrayal

by Geoffrey Lean

Daily Mail Friday 20 February, 2004

LET US get one thing straight, before the spinning torrent of misinformation
being prepared by ministers is unleashed on the long-suffering British
public.

Despite what we will be told, the Government's decision to allow the
planting of GM maize is far from the rational, science-based assessment of
the risks and benefits that we have the right to demand from our rulers.

No. The leaked Cabinet minutes show this to be an entirely political act,
taken in defiance of the scientific evidence and public concern, by a
Government desperate to curry favour with big business, appease President
George Bush and, above all, to save the face of a Prime Minister.

It is also bound to backfire, further damaging what little is left of public
trust in the Government and casting the long term future of GM agriculture
into jeopardy. For both Tony Blair and the biotechnology industry, the
victory will be Pyrrhic indeed.

Once again, the Prime Minister's credibility is bang in the centre of the
controversy. Back in October he promised the House of Commons he would
'proceed only according to the science' in making a decision on GM. 'To be
frank about it, the Government has got no interest in this one way or
another, other than to do the right thing,' he said.

Cynical

Frankly, to use Mr Blair's expression, this was, hard to credit even at the
time, given his long, evangelical espousal of GM and his desire not to cross
President Bush.

The U.S. administration has close connections with Monsanto and other
biotech companies and Bush has not hidden his fury at Europe's refusal to
import American GM food. He expects Mr Blair's unthinking support.

It is clear that he has got it and I am afraid to say that it is now
downright impossible to believe that Mr Blair has done 'the right thing'.

For despite the presence of 13 ministers at the crucial meets of the Cabinet
Office ministerial sub committee on biotechnology on February 11, when the
GM crops go ahead was discussed, it records no consideration whatsoever of
the pros and cons.

Instead, the meeting was devoted to debating how best to spin the decision.

Ministers discussed how public apposition could be 'worn down', how 'key
MPs' could be persuaded to 'prepare the ground' before the decision is
announced, and how important 'careful presentation' would be.

In their desperation to find a sellable 'line' on GM, they plumped for
trying to persuade the public of the dubious proposition that growing GM
crops in Britain would help feed hungry people in the Third World.

(This is despite the fact that surplus food already produced by Western
countries is routinely dumped in the Third World.)

Margot Wallström, the EU environment commissioner, scornfully demolished
that fallacy last autumn, saying that U.S. biotech companies had introduced
them 'to solve starvation among shareholders, not the developing world'.

In practice, introducing the crops will almost certainly worsen the plight
of the poor, enabling wealthy farmers to undercut smaller producers.

True, ministers went on to discuss measures to limit GM contamination of
neighbouring crops and to compensate those affected, but even this was
presented as putting such concerns 'into perspective'.

Ethics

During all this the controversial Science Minister, Lord Sainsbury, properly
absented himself. But he joined the meeting for what was, if anything, an
even more cynical discussion of 'a strategy to promote the effectiveness of
the biotechnology industry'.

At this point, ministers said that raising ethical issues 'could be counter
productive' and advocated 'making the public aware of clearly beneficial
aspects of biotechnology', such as new drugs, as 'a useful way of creating a
rational environment for debate on the more controversial aspects'.

Well, if the spin obsessed ministers chose to ignore the facts about GM; let
us remind them.

First, the Prime Minister's own strategy unit found little economic benefit
in GM technology for Britain.

Next, a review chaired by his own chief scientist concluded that genes from
GM crops would contaminate organic and conventional produce, and that GM.
food could cause future health hazards.

This evidence confirmed points made repeatedly by the Daily Mail over the
past five years.

Finally, the Government's own field trials let the Prime Minister down. They
were specifically designed to give GM crops the all clear, so they ignored
the main hazards, such as contamination of other crops and wildlife by stray
genes.

Instead, the trials concentrated in artificially favourable circumstances
merely on the effects of the weedkillers used on the crops.

But, much to ministers' consternation, the weedkillers sprayed on GM beet
and oilseed rape so damaged wildlife they had to be abandoned.

This left drowning ministers clutching at just one straw: growing GM maize
had proved better for wildlife in the trials than cultivating traditional
crops.

But this was only because the weedkiller used on the conventional crops was
particularly devastating when compared with the type used on the GM crops.

Top officials privately admit the overriding considerations in reaching the
decision were to avoid handing a victory to environmentalists and critical
newspapers such as the Daily Mail, to avoid displeasing President Bush and
to save Mr Blair from embarrassment. Since the problem weedkiller is now
going to be banned, the results are invalid anyway.

Defeat

In truth, it's not much of a victory. Just one crop out of the three is to
be approved, and then only for one year.

But still, the GM industry will be able to boast of having Britain's
backing. It should be careful: for this decision sows the seeds of future
defeat. Biotech firms are likely to make it worthwhile for a few farmers to
grow GM maize here.

Protesters will then pull it up, with public support. Hostility to the
technology will grow, making it impossible to introduce GM crops that might
in years to come be proven safe and have real benefits.

But none of this nor public opinion, protecting the countryside or
safeguarding future health, seems to matter to ministers so much as trying
to show that, like some tinpot tyrant, Mr Blair, America's poodle, is always
right.

MannGram®: ignoring the potential of natural theology

Feb 04

"Design teaches me power, skill and goodness - not sanctity, not
mercy, not a future judgment, which three are of the essence of religion."
- J H Newman (quoted in M Ruse 'Darwin & Design' pp.72-3).

Newman states just before this "I believe in design because I believe in
God, not in a God because I see design."

This strikes me as an unfortunate extremism. To say that natl
theol is only a tiny part of comprehensive theol is in my opinion accurate,
certainly fair, and doubtless closely related to actual reasons for belief
in the way indicated by Newman; but none of that implies that natl theol is
worthless or negligible.

A believer's reasons for believing will in most cases be along
Newman's lines - based on revealed theol and such personal religious
experience as has been vouchsafed to the individual. But what of those
millions who have little idea of the spiritual realm, no idea of final
cause, yet feel a vague interest - at first perhaps no clearer than a Noo
Eege yearning for 'spirituality'? Your typical modern atheist or agnostic
claims some scientific understanding of the universe; good - let us start
with that approach to knowledge, taking full account of where they're
*coming from*. Let us pursue natl theol for what it may turn out to be
worth. They will be readily dazzled by biology's complexity and Paley
timepieces; indeed they may already have realised that nature is much more
complex than we can understand. I see little evangelical power in that
preliminary point. I fail to understand why Dembski denies that his IDT is
natl theol (using modern more arcane timepieces than Paley's). I can see
no good reason to loiter in IDT; it is OK as far as it goes, but is merely
a start on natl theol, using arcane submicroscopic examples rather than the
macroscopic examples in ecology intelligible to a child without instruments
or education. I see where Dembski says I "maintain an email list on the
internet critical of IDT", citing only the criticism that IDT is 'God of
the gaps' reasoning; to that I would add the sheer triviality of this
loquacious tendency.

Now we have Ruse making an allegedly crucial distinction between
'argument to complexity' and 'argument to design'. Can 'argument to chaos'
and 'argument to catastrophe' be far behind?

Broom's book is approx sufficient natl theol. How much more could
be really needed? The serious inquirer should be directed to Broom -
does Dembski do so properly thru his well-funded ISCID? Anyhow, Paley
up-to-date is a good start to natl theol, and not refuted by Dawkins,
Dennett, or other crude atheist asserters.

After a lead-in thru natl theol, as soon as we judge our modern
inquirers to have become ready for some concept of final cause, introduce
Big Ari's greatest hit.

When then to introduce spirituality will vary greatly from one
inquirer to the next. I deny that _only_ the route thru revelation is
useful in evangelism among modern atheists & agnostics. The route starting
in natl theol has a worthwhile role, say I.

Newman is doubtless correct: holiness, mercy, and future judgement
are more important to religion than power, skill and even goodness. That
does not prove the latter triad to be insignificant, nor natl theol to be
worthless or negligible. To say that spiritual processes are much more
important than natl theol in conversion or in the religious development of
Newman or of myself, is not to say that we should confine theol to only
revealed theol, ignoring the potential of natl theol to introduce the
children of atheism & agnosticism to Christian philosophy. It may well be
a tiny part of total theol, and of minor statistical importance in
evangelism; please do not suggest, as Newman is presented by Ruse as doing,
that natl theol is therefore negligible. It is a simple logical error
which should not persist.

What I am trying to point out in this note is that natl theol &
revealed religion are not mutually exclusive but will be synergistic in a
mature theology & evangelism. To insinuate, as Ruse apparently wishes to
do, that there's some conflict between them, that they are logical
alternatives rather than reinforcing one another, is reminiscent of the
recent media mischief (exemplified by TVNZ's loathsome cynic Holmes®) -
reducing each issue to a one-dimensional bipolar gladiatorial conflict.
The worst example of this racket is of course Creationism®: posing creation
as opposite to evolution. Is there a comparable furphy 'revealed "versus"
natural theology' ?

R

ORGANIC BYTES #28
Food and Consumer News Tidbits with an Edge!
2/19/2004 By Organic Consumers Association

GE-related Excerpts-

MONSANTO BIOPIRATES STEALING INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE
The European Patent Office (EPO) has approved a patent which gives the
Monsanto Corporation "ownership" rights over a traditional variety of
wheat cultivated in rural communities in India for generations. Rainer
Osterwalder of the EPO claims that authorities don't have the legal
power to be able to stop corporations from committing "biopiracy".
"Sometimes the office cannot prevent that indigenous knowledge is used
for a patent, and then the indigenous people can not use it anymore.
Science is often one step ahead of the laws."
http://www.organicconsumers.org/Patent/biopirates.cfm

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

MENDOCINO JUST DAYS AWAY FROM LANDMARK VOTE
March 2 marks the day when voters in Mendocino County (CA) will choose
whether or not their county will become the first in the U.S. to legally
ban genetically engineered crops. The biotech industry is using its
financial and political clout to try to stifle the voices of Mendocino
consumers and farmers, but the OCA predicts a victory for the people.
Stay tuned for the vote results...
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/mendocino-gmos.cfm

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

GENETICALLY ENGINEERED WHEAT GENERATES GRASSROOTS RESISTANCE
Monsanto, the corporation that brought us Agent Orange, DDT, Bovine
Growth Hormone and PCBs, has engineered wheat to withstand applications
of the company's toxic Roundup herbicide. Scientists from the University
of Manitoba recently released a report stating that "Under current
conditions the release of Roundup Ready wheat in Western Canada would be
environmentally unsafe." Monsanto's GE wheat would lead to an increase
in the use of glyphosate herbicide, a widely-used chemical now being
linked to increased growth of fungal plant pathogens, known as fusarium
head blight (FHB). FHB has already caused tens of millions of dollars in
losses for wheat farmers on the eastern prairies of Canada. Consumers in
Japan, South Korea and Europe - some of the biggest international
consumers of wheat - have indicated they do not want an engineered
version of the crop. http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.html

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

KRAFT & GE WHEAT
FDA officials are completing their perfunctory review of Monsanto's
application for Roundup Ready wheat. Food companies, especially Kraft,
have publicly expressed concerns about consumers rejecting products with
engineered ingredients, especially the new engineered wheat. If Kraft,
the largest food company in the U.S., rejects wheat, it will send a
clear message to farmers not to grow it. Call Kraft CEO Roger Deromedi
at Kraft Foods Headquarters at 1-847-646-2000 or their consumer hotline
at 1-800-323-0768.

Please tell Kraft:
-You are concerned about the health, environmental and economic risks
posed by the new genetically engineered wheat and other genetically
engineered food, and -You'll avoid Kraft products that have genetically
engineered ingredients

Please ask Kraft to:
-Pledge not to use the new genetically engineered wheat
-Stop using genetically engineered ingredients in its products -Live up
to its promise to do more to ensure a safe food supply
http://www.Krafty.org

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

WE NEED TO TALK
Interested in sharing your thoughts and ideas with thousands of other
like-minded folks locally and around the world? Register free for OCA's
new online web forum and chat center. The OCA website has been getting
4-6 million hits every month, so we decided it's time to open up the
communication channels and let everyone share their ideas, post
articles, comment on related issues, and come together with others who
share your concerns. Start talking with others in the organic consumers
community right now! http://www.organicconsumers.org/chat/index.php

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

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a link on YOUR website to http://OrganicConsumers.org Banners for your
use http://OrganicConsumers.org/logos.htm

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

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Chapter pp. 154-160 in 'The God factor: 50 scientists & academics explain why they believe in God'
ed. John F. Ashton
Sydney: Thorsons an imprint of HarperCollins 379pp. June 2001

Robert Mann

My personal history is somewhat unusual: I am a returned Christian. I was one of the many (a majority, I suspect) of my generation who drifted away in the 1960s into vague modernism. But then after a quarter-century I was jolted into realising that the Church needs only to be the least bad organisation for it to command my loyalty.

I was baptised as a baby, and began school in church [I was not allowed by the editor to mention Rome] institutions where guilt-racketeering and brutality gave a sensitive child many nightmares. My mother got locked up when I was 5 but this disruption was compensated by the blessing that my father soon married again so that a devout Christian stepmother taught me to love hymnody & prayer; and I was moved into a State school which was far better.

When a student I contemplated for some years a career in the ministry, but my faith was not then strong enough. Instead I made a career in academic biochemistry while trying to become the Linus Pauling of the S. Pacific in public campaigning against nuclear weapons, nuclear reactors, some poisons such as 2,4,5-T and leaded petrol, gene-tampering, and other technological evils. In the mid-1970s I moved full-time into Environmental Studies, in the recent tradition of Rachel Carson, Paul & Anne Ehrlich, John Holdren, Edward Goldsmith, and others who had been warning that the biosphere is in unprecedented trouble. Amid all this moralising I remained away from regular worship, on the ill-examined assumption that constructive social engineering can be achieved on no declared moral basis.

Today I interpret the downward slide of civilisation over the past few decades as evidence that the attempt to maintain a system of ethics & law based historically & logically in Christianity is doomed if the religion which gave rise to it is not suitably active in its continuance.

What jolted me into this realisation was the funeral of my stepmother. She was 94 so most of her contemporaries had passed on; but scores of people showed up, several clergy jostled for position in helping to conduct the funeral, and I was much moved to find strangers telling me she had saved their marriage by simple counselling e.g. "she told me 'if you want to save your marriage you will have to forgive - we are commanded to do so'". Her star Sunday-school pupil from six decades before, now a bishop, was openly weeping as we left the service which he had led.

This funeral moved me to realise that the embarrassing feebleness & decadence of the church which had repelled me in 1965 was actually all the more reason to pitch in and work.

I must add that the 7 years since that moving funeral have brought me enormous frustrations as I find myself surrounded by politically-correct ideologues using the church for their political purposes, notably a novel racism misrepresenting the relatively honourable history of New Zealand to induce an astonishing scale of guilt & confusion. [I was of course not allowed to mention WimminsLib which I consider an even more harmful ideology.] But I have also found an ineffable calm, and stronger faith than I ever imagined.

The general practical lesson from these experiences of mine is that Christianity should reassert itself as the only known basis for a decent society. In so doing, it will have to confront that impostor scientism.

Science and Christianity

It has been widely agreed during almost all human history (and, we can confidently presume, all prehistory) that the human mind can never grasp more than a tiny fraction of all the compositions & transformations of matter & energy, the physical workings of life. It is easy to be impressed with the surge of scientific knowledge, especially in the 20th century, but in biochemistry let alone ecology we have discovered at an even faster rate unsolved scientific puzzles.

Even more evident is that the non-physical aspects of reality are, to a yet greater extent, beyond our ken - inaccessible in principle to science, and difficult of apprehension to even refined scholars and sages.

Severe incompleteness of knowledge is, we thus humbly remind ourselves, the normal situation. Not until a few centuries ago did the trend arise of pretending that human comprehension & reasoning can, unaided, discern how things are and judge how they ought to be. Since the period now termed "the Enlightenment" it has even become a dominant fashion to say, or at any rate to assume, that non-physical reality does not exist at all: scientism - the assumption that scientific knowledge is the only kind - has become an increasingly influential axiom.

Anti-religion attitudes had several causes, including revulsion at decadence & corruption in religion. The resultant overswing of fashion's pendulum carried away surprisingly intelligent people who became over-impressed with science and with their own autonomy. A prominent proponent of these ideas was Bertrand Russell "the most influential philosopher of the 20th century" (according to his biographer Ray Monk)1, who most admired a faith that the human species would, without religion, become progressively more humane, more tolerant, and more enlightened; in this beneficent process rational knowledge was to be the chief agent, and mathematics, as the most completely rational kind of knowledge, was to be in the van. I contend this 'enlightenment' assumption has proven disastrous.

The model of the universe as a clock, a mechanism which has been mechanically evolving in accordance with deterministic laws of nature, is sometimes lately attributed to Newton, but that is incorrect. Descartes & Laplace were the main advocates. Newton's God certainly transcended the laws of nature. Indeed, Newton came in for some (misconceived) criticism for invoking in his scheme of things too much intervention by God in the running (not merely the original making) of the universe.

Systematic, objective but also respectful study of nature became possible only when the Judaic and then Christian religions placed God firmly outside nature. It is not widely enough known that science has never thrived except in Christian societies - with the minor exception of a couple of centuries in some Islamic centres and the millennium of early science in China which did not lead on to modern science. To dismiss this fact as a coincidence, without looking into the main characteristics of Christianity and of science, would be ignorant and specifically unscientific2.

The 'enlightment' assumption that science can, and soon will, give an essentially complete description of the physical & biological world had become widely influential, though little discussed, when I was a science student. More politically influential was the notion that science-based technology would indefinitely improve housing, health, education etc. The State was studiedly secular. The mainstream New Zealand culture, though then composed of churchgoers to a considerable extent, had very largely lost confidence in the church, which was no longer viewed as a main source of wisdom. Science as saviour had been popularised by not only Marxists (a minor influence in NZ) but more importantly the dazzling successes of Rutherford and many lesser scientific & engineering lights. It was probably among scientists, mathematicians & engineers that atheism had made its most important inroads. A professor of applied maths said on national radio, upon the award of the Nobel prize in 1962 to the originators of "the" double-helix structure for DNA, that it obviated God; and I do not recall any expressions of outrage at his nonsense. The anthem 'God Defend New Zealand' seemed unpopular as if embarrassing. The feebleness of the church was in effect (though not very logically) a reason for my generation's drift away from religion. Ideas which had been cherished above all others for the vast majority of the Christian era seemed somehow passé. Indeed, the whole category in which belong the main ideas of Christianity was ignored by not only vigorous proponents of scientism but even many typical Christians of the period; metaphysics was in drastic retreat.

In the "enlightenment" attempt to implement Christian ethics in a secular state, it has been widely assumed that secular educated leaders would apply wiser ethics than had ever prevailed, in order that secular social engineering would build a better society utilising science for investigation & implementation of policy. The value system on which all this would be done was very little discussed - just vaguely assumed. Huge organisations, capitalist as well as socialist, would be managed in a religious vacuum. Politics, and life generally, was to proceed as if no organisational care, let alone enforcement, were needed to safeguard & refine ethics.

That vague vision has, to put it mildly, not worked out. The "Enlightenment" having failed by very wide margins to deliver on its grandiose promises, its adherents have few options. They can go on as if nothing is wrong, perhaps cooing "all is one"; or they can revise their axioms and reconsider religion; or they can say, subconsciously, "if rationality can't suffice, nothing can", and adopt existentialism, post-modernism, post-structuralism, hermeneutics, constructivism, deconstructionism, or other nihilistic cynical defeatism, as if all reliable beliefs are inaccessible or unidentifiable. These track-covering smokescreens of relativism grandly - "oh, that may be your reality" - waive arguments against ideologies whose axioms and dogmas do entail belief. That the main "philosophers" advocating these nihilisms are French (e.g. Foucault, Derrida) is I think no coincidence but the logical end of the stupendously wrong fork taken by Descartes & Laplace.

Today the modernist trend deriving from Descartes dominates in science. It is puzzling that so few church people take part in counter-attacking the crude materialism rife among scientists, exemplified by Dawkins. One of the more penetrating, terse discussions has been recently offered by a Jew, Teddy Goldsmith, tackling the atheist Lewis Wolpert more effectively than Christian scholars have yet done3.

After straying much of my life in vague modernism, I find ineffable benefit in having returned to the church. This has put me in touch with the finest humans I know of - as well as a dismaying extent of white-anting by the dominant political ideologies of the day. The church is often frustratingly human!

As far as I can see, the Christian Way goes something like the following. God came to us in the person of the Perfect Man, who arrived in Palestine two millennia ago to inaugurate the Kingdom of God on Earth. He leads us to build a better world, toward the perfection of The Millennium - but even He cannot lead us unless we exert our free will to follow him. The first step is to acknowledge that we cannot of ourselves stop our evil-doing. We are to turn away from it by putting our faith not in money or even in science but in God as revealed in human form. His teachings, though predictably misused in various ways by some, have been safeguarded in the precious cultural strand traceable back through Temple, Aquinas, and others, cherishing and interpreting the inspired Scriptures.

I believe modernism has failed, any way you look at it. Postmodernism is even worse. The field is ripe for harvest, if the church will regain confidence, secure in the belief that one prayer guaranteed always to be answered is the prayer for stronger faith.

†ï†††ï

1 see Monk, Ray Bertrand Russell 1872-1921: The Spirit of Solitude London: Jonathan Cape 1996
2 see Turner, Harold The Roots of Science chs 3, 8, 11 Auckland: The DeepSight Trust 1998
3 Goldsmith E, & Wolpert L, Exchange of Letters The Ecologist 30 (3) May 2000

* * *

Real World (U. of Auckland chaplains' magazine) 3 1993

A NOTE ON FEMINISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Robert Mann

'God-Talk and the Liberation of Women', Susana Carryer's feminist article in Real World 2, deserves some comments. Of Ms Carryer's key statements I quote and comment briefly upon a half-dozen. Then, I offer a glimpse of useful literature on 'the liberation of women'.

(1) "Biblical images of God as a mother . . . point to Mother as a viable and biblically correct option as a name for God."

If that is so, should not a scholarly article give references to those biblical images? Readers who do not know their Bible well enough, such as myself, cannot readily find these neglected passages. This comment is no mere pedantry; readers are entitled to wonder whether the Bible does actually contain passages to the effect (when read in context, as we would all like to do) claimed by Ms Carryer.

(2) " . . . the association of God with Father has become normative in our tradition . . . a cycle that is very difficult to break out of".

In one of God's central disclosures to us about his nature and how we should behave toward him, he has instructed us to address him as "Our Father". That key revelation of the Bible is of course reinforced by many others. This instruction presumably implies that, insofar as our feeble human minds can grasp and briefly refer in human terms to our relationship with God, it is most like that of a human child (male or female) with its father. Calling God 'Father' is no fleeting fashion or mere social construction; ironically, calling him anything else is.

(3) "the maleness of Christ has been converted from an historical accident . . . to being an ontological necessity".

Why God chose to reveal himself in a male rather than a female human constitutes something of a mystery which we may think about (while not hoping to understand fully). But the fact that he did thus choose remains a sheer fact.

To read into this historical given a universal ontological necessity that Christ (or any adequate manifestation of God) had to be masculine would be to go further than the Church has ever officially sought to. But to go to the other extreme and term it a mere accident entails an arrogant posture toward God of criticism which I, for one, find preposterous. God's choice within his creative process to make Jesus male really is a God-given fact not up for questioning. If the world is as God made it, trammelled by us sinners, we are faced with the sufficiently large task of discerning truly what are the facts of providence; speculation about whether Jesus could have been female seems, at best, peculiarly vacuous and evasive of reality.

Any thinking of God as personal entails the model of the human species, which happens to be male or female, as the only mode in which we can understand personality. To abandon gender must mean all too soon to lose personality. Doubtless God is unimaginably more than personal; but in our human apprehending he must be at least personal. The pronoun It would
leave him sub-personal, no more to be found responding to us as I to Thou.

But the colossal recent mistake has been to think of sexuality as the primary and divisive category among us. We are first of all human. It is out of our humanity and His that we acclaim in Christ the human being to gather up and re-present before the Father a whole redeemed humanity.

(4) "Terms promoting a linear rather than hierarchical relationship need to take their rightful place alongside the others . . ."

That Nature is inherently thoroughly and profoundly hierarchical has been detailed in Goldsmith's recent magnum opus 'The Way'. As well speak of an animal body without organs, or a cell without organelles, as babble of a non-hierarchical ecosystem or society. It is vacuous, futile, and confusing.

A further criticism, on the level of logic: to present "linear" and hierarchical as tolerantly co-existing characteristics is woolly-minded. Even if we were not stuck by providence with inherently hierarchical biology and society - that is, if we had a real possibility of supplanting hierarchy with "linearity" - it would indeed be a supplanting that Ms Carryer promotes. Any impression that she is advocating kindly addition 'alongside', not replacement, is at best confused.

(5) "Female images of God . . . are necessary to affirm the goodness and legitimacy of female sexuality and identity." [my emphasis]

I hope the falsity of this assertion will need little exposition. Goodness and legitimacy abound in many aspects of humanity without any necessity of being projected onto God himself. Female sexuality has been affirmed as not merely good but glorious in a colossal mass of literature, song, and art; female images of God have evidently not been necessary for the production of these affirmations.

(6) " . . . women are [represented as] the descendants of Eve, the cause of all the evil in the world . . ."

For many years, readers of the Listener were subjected to endless weekly accusations by feminist Marilyn Waring to the effect that men are to blame for the world's ills. The interpretation of Genesis of which Ms Carryer complains has, I submit, had far less (relatively negligible) influence during the past half-century at least.

Having pointed out these rather obvious comments, one can nevertheless expect that they will be ignored by the political ideology of women's lib, which diligently avoids critical discussion. Christians should be clear-eyed about the nature of this irrational political trend which has already made severe inroads on language, reasoning, politics and religion. (The extent of the latter inroads is glimpsed in the very fact that the article on which I have commented was accepted for publication.) Feminists, while differing amongst many sundering camps, are generally gaining political power (overtly or deviously) on the basis of misrepresentations of providence. I wish therefore to take this opportunity to point out some cogent facts about the way God has actually set up the world. Similar summaries have appeared elsewhere.

Ms Carryer, like most if not all feminists, complains repeatedly about patriarchy as if it were obviously evil and as if social rearrangements can do away with it. The book (Goldberg 1979) which first summarised the findings in the societies that have been studied on the subject of male dominance tells us that in all 1400 societies, men occupy the positions of apparent power. (The Amazons turn out to be a forgery.) Similarly, Keesing's (1976) textbook on cultural anthropology, in its section "womens' worlds", says:-

As 16 women social anthropologists compellingly argue inWoman, Culture, and Society (Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974), there is no evidence that matriarchal societies have ever existed. The apparent universality of male dominance - at least in public and political realms - must be a starting point for an anthropology of women.

The second edition of this book enlarges in very helpful ways, emphasising the need for both empathy and some measure of detached judgement regarding inferences of 'exploitation'.

Confusion often arises among people who have not looked up the meaning of the term patriarchy. Its characteristics relate merely to the formal, public arenas and social hierarchies, in which men brandish weapons, sometimes use them, march around in uniform, deliver loudly the decisions of society, defend and enforce them, etc. The very different forms of power exerted by women, mostly in private, in the formation of those decisions, are by their nature far less amenable to historical research; but it is a serious error to claim that patriarchy entails a lack of power for women. A particular case is that of many Maori women who are content not to speak on the marae because they do in fact speak through their menfolk, more effectively.

The latest and in many ways the best relevant textbook is Dr Anne Moir's 'Brain Sex' (1989). Like her predecessor Goldberg, Moir is rigorously blacked out, as is Illich's key book 'Gender', by feminist "scholar"s, of whom Margarita Levin (1986) makes some stinging criticisms.

Lisa Tuttle's 'Encyclopedia of Feminism' (1987) records the universality of patriarchy but asserts "alternatives to patriarchy may at least be imagined". I however contend that no such fantasy has actually been formulated, and that we cannot regenerate community on the basis of the erroneous notion - the axiom of feminism - that closely similar ways of life should be led by women and men. That such a notion needs to be pointed out as not only unrealistic but also highly undesirable illustrates how many have strayed, especially during this last quarter-century, from well-founded traditional understandings of gender.

Paul's words about the subjection of women (1 Cor. 7; 1 Tim. 2,8ff.) have not endeared that apostle to radical feminists. To be reconciled with Paul's whole evident position, those passages need to be understood as contingent upon and conditioned by the society Paul lived in. We need the same understanding of Jesus' oft-cited decision to enlist no women in the intimate fellowship of the Twelve. In his human life Jesus, with his disciples, was a Jew faithful in daily matters to the social perceptions of his culture and time. Over and over again in his ministry we find Jesus following these, working "with the grain". Only thus could his mission be accomplished among the people into whom (very oddly as the rhymster says) God chose to become incarnate.

If we want to find Paul's convictions on the plane that counts eternally, we must go to the splendid Gal. iii 28-9: "There is no such thing as Jew and Greek, slave and freeman, male and female, for you are all one person in Christ Jesus". Through the centuries this has been the normative text of conduct for any society to be called decently Christian. The first couple - Jew and Gentile - was given recognition in Christian practice during the first century; 'bond and free' took longer, until the 19th century. Let us work to see that 'male and female' become reconciled in the full Galatians sense in our time. Feminism is, on the whole, antagonistic to that Christian challenge.

Much more needs to be written about this important topic. To my mind the real question is, what is the appropriate division of labour between men and women? What, especially, is the meaning for today's men and women of the Bible's first three chapters? Have readers of Real World some thoughtful suggestions on that?

SOME GOOD SOURCES

Goldberg S (1979) 'Male Dominance: the Inevitability of Patriarchy'. Abacus
Goldsmith E R D (1992) 'The Way'. Century
Greer G (1983) 'Sex & Destiny'. Secker & Warburg
Illich I (1982) 'Gender'. Pantheon
Keesing R M (1976; 1981) 'Cultural Anthropology'. Holt Rinehart
Levin M (1986) 'Caring New World: Feminism and Science' Amer. Scholar 57 (winter) 100-106
Lyndon N (1992) 'No More Sex War'. Sinclair-Stevenson
Moir A, Jessel D (1989) 'Brain Sex: the real difference between men and women'. Michael Joseph; see also the epilogue to the American edition (Lyle Stuart 1991).
Tuttle L (1987) 'Encyclopedia of Feminism'. London: Arrow
addendum 2003 :
Hosie, Dorothea 'Jesus and Woman'. Hodder & Stoughton 1946; rev. edn 1956.

In distributing the NYT story similar to this one, the excellent Joe
Cummins commented:

>Corporations are eager to use humans in experiments. Paradoxically ,
>neither human nor animal chronic tests are required for the
>biopesticides in GM crops.

Unca Joe makes an important point.
The details make the comparison more dismaying. The mass
"experiment" on Yanks with GM food is unmonitored, and the experimental
foods are not labelled as GMF, so there will be no hope of proving that
this or that GMF 'event' caused this or that epidemic. And of course, if
the harm happens to fall in a category already common - say, asthma or
diabetes or prostate cancer, or severe mental retardation in children of
those who ate the GMF, it would likely escape detection in epidemiology,
being a relatively small expansion of a total that was already large.
Those same expansions could total 10^5 or 10^6 persons, within a few
decades. Large, but statistically insignificant - a category
epidemiologists often overlook.

At this rate, bring back the jailbird volunteers! In comparison,
those capers were more ethical than what is now being foisted on millions
of unsuspecting Yanks.

R

This article proves that a v good grasp on the significance of GM
can be attained by an author who doesn't know much about GM (to judge by
his saying Potrykus' rice has been fitted with "a gene" - an unwitting
Connerism when several genes are entailed in transgenizing a metabolic
pathway as Potrykus did).

The 'people's papaya' in Brazil needs investigation. I doubt it is
of anything like the origin he claims. In much the same way as the Mark
Chase et 99 classification of the flowering families removes science from
the people, so too does gene-tampering as distinct from traditional
breeding (speeded perhaps by identification of DNA markers).

R

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1152102,00.html

Bad for the poor and bad for science

Genetically modified crops will not help the developing world

Colin Tudge
Friday February 20, 2004

The Guardian

As revealed in this week's leaked minutes, the government's commitment to
GM crops is unswerving. Revealed once more, too, is its arrogance; for it
acknowledges public resistance but hopes that "opposition might eventually
be worn down by solid, authoritative scientific argument". Most worrying
of all, though, is the truly astonishing ignorance of people in high
places.

The arguments for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that have been
dinned into us for 15 years are based on an almost sublime misreading of
the world's food problems. Indeed, GMOs are part of a political and
economic trend that is threatening all humanity.

The crucial claim for GM crops is that they are necessary. They can
out-yield traditional varieties, and can be made especially rich in protein
and vitamins. The world's population is rising fast and without GM, the
story has it, famine and increasing deficiency are inevitable. To oppose
their development is to be effete to the point of wickedness.

But this is not the whole picture. The world population stands at 6
billion, and the UN says it will reach 10 billion by 2050 - but then should
level out. Present productivity could be doubled by improving traditional
breeding and husbandry, so whatever the virtues of GMOs, necessity is not
among them.

Present-day deficiencies are almost never caused by an inability to
produce enough. Angola is a good example: it is always bordering on
disaster, yet it has two-and-a-half times the area of France and every kind
of climate, and only 12.5 million people. Its farmers are highly
accomplished. Famines result not from inability but from the civil war
that raged for 30 years.

Behind the claim that GMOs are necessary lies a deep - and racist -
failure to appreciate traditional farming. It's assumed that farmers of
the developing world, with their small farms, cannot cope. But all who
have looked closely know that traditional farmers are remarkably adept.
Their greatest need is for financial security: especially small loans with
regulated rates of interest. Technological innovation becomes pertinent
only when the traditional ways have been given half a chance, and shown to
be lacking.

But, say the enthusiasts, GMOs are part of the transition from
peasant-based, low-output subsistence to industrialised production based on
biotech, modern chemistry and machines. This is "progress". It
"liberates" the peasants, enabling them to migrate to the cities, to work
for proper wages. We see the transition in India, home (with China) to the
world's fastest-growing IT industry. Even more to the point, modern
farming is profitable, as traditional farming is not. The profits
contribute to GDP, and everyone benefits.

But extra productivity can be harmful, while profit is achieved primarily
by cutting labour, which is the most expensive input. In Britain and the
USA, only about 1% of the labour force works on the land. In India, as in
the third world as a whole, it's 60%. If India farmed as the British do,
594 million people would be out of work. India's IT industry, flaunted as
the hope for the future, employs 60,000 - which falls short of what would
be required by 10,000 to one. To replace the status quo with hi-tech,
low-labour, industrialised agriculture would create social problems on a
scale that mercifully has not yet been seen. For the foreseeable future
the world's economy has to be primarily agrarian.

Ironically, one victim of the GM madness is science itself, for in
principle GMOs could be of real use. I saw an example in Brazil: GM
papaya, designed to resist local diseases. This is hi-tech as it should
be: designed by the people for the people. Contrast this with GM "golden
rice", widely presented as an unequivocal triumph. It is is fitted with a
gene that produces carotene, which in effect is vitamin A - lack of which
causes blindness in tens of millions of children.

But carotene is one of the commonest organic compounds in nature. People
who practise horticulture have no fear of vitamin A deficiency; and
traditionally, horticulture was universal. Modern, corporate farming -
monocultural rice, or maize grown for export as cattle feed - is a prime
cause of the deficiency that leads to blindness. It's all good for the GDP
but not for people.

The prime task for people seriously interested in humanity's food problems
is to help the world's small farmers. Technical up-grading is desirable,
and could include GM. But wholesale transition of the kind now in process,
in which GM has become a key player, is a disaster. GMOs have drawn
attention to the disaster, and for this perhaps we should be grateful.
They are also drawing attention to the shortcomings of government and of
experts in general. That needs urgent attention, too.

· Colin Tudge is the author of So Shall We Reap, an analysis of world food
production colintudge@supanet.com

Corporations are eager to use humans in experiments. Paradoxically ,
neither human nor animal chronic tests are required for the
biopesticides in GM crops.

NY Times
Study Clears Pesticide Tests With Humans

By JENNIFER 8. LEE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 19 - The Environmental Protection Agency should be
allowed to use data from studies in which humans are intentionally
doused with pesticides and other toxic substances, as long as strict
scientific and ethical standards are met, a National Academy of Sciences
report has concluded.

The report, released on Thursday, was requested by the Bush
administration in 2001 after environmental advocacy groups revealed in
the late 1990's that companies were testing pesticides on humans.

Michael R. Taylor, a chairman of the academy's scientific panel, said
that if human studies would increase the accuracy of the agency's
decisions, they should be conducted, "but only if we have an assurance
that the participants of the study will not be harmed."

The environmental agency initially imposed a moratorium on human
pesticide studies, but it later accepted such studies case by case in
making decisions on regulating chemicals.

The academy's report lays out criteria for what types of human pesticide
studies the environmental agency should be allowed to accept. While
initially prompted by pesticides testing, the panel said that the
recommendations were more broadly directed at all the agency's toxic
regulations, including air pollutants and water pollutants.

The report recommended that the agency accept only studies grounded in
animal research, indicating that the procedures were safe. The agency
should also establish an advisory board to review the studies, it said.

The report also addressed the delicate issue of paying human subjects,
recommending that the payments should neither be so high as to entice
subjects unduly or so low that only the poor were willing to
participate. It also recommended that the environmental agency study
whether additional compensation should be given to human subjects
injured in studies.

Industry groups, including the one representing pesticide companies,
said they were pleased by the panel's findings.

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23897/story.htm

World Treaty May Become New Focus for GMO Debate
-------------------------------------------------

BELGIUM: February 20, 2004

BRUSSELS - Bitter transatlantic divisions over the safety of genetically
modified foods may soon be smoothed over, but the gradual enforcement of a
global treaty on importing GM products may throw up new barriers to future
trade.

In the United States, at least 70 percent of supermarket foods contain GM
organisms (GMOs) and most consumers shrug off claims from green groups that
these products may be harmful.

But in Europe, they are widely regarded as "Frankenstein Foods" and are
shunned by an overwhelming number of consumers.

Diplomats say developing nations, mostly those in Asia and Africa that need
food aid, are caught between the two powers. Washington says it is helping
feed the Third World with its GM grain, but Brussels says the Americans are
dumping surpluses.

At loggerheads for years with EU nations over GM foods, the United States
has now chosen the World Trade Organization (WTO) as its battleground.

Last year, Washington made good on repeated threats to retaliate over EU
biotech policy, which it says has no scientific justification. It filed a
WTO suit claiming its farmers were losing some $300 million a year due to
lost sales.

The EU may soon lift its unofficial five-year ban on new GM crops and
products with the expected approval in the next few months for imports of a
engineered sweet maize known as Bt-11.

While this might be enough to pacify Washington in the short term and stave
off the immediate WTO threat, the acid test will be for the EU to allow new
GM seeds for planting in its fields.

U.S. biotech firms will watch this closely, diplomats say, and view any EU
authorization of "live" GMOs as a chance to market their products in
Europe - adding to the likely rise in trade if the EU allows imports of new
GMO products like Bt-11.

"They (European Commission) will want to give a positive signal across the
Atlantic that we take this seriously," said one diplomat. "Bt-11 will help,
but (Washington) will want to see a proper commitment to getting live GMOs
for planting."

PROTOCOL MAY SQUEEZE TRADE

While a main U.S. concern is to resume shipping GM grain to Europe, this
trade could be squeezed by the rules of the U.N. Cartagena Protocol, which
aims for transparency in GMO trade. Signatory countries now number more than
80 and will meet this month in Malaysia to discuss how to implement the
protocol, their first meeting since it came into force in September.

The protocol obliges exporters to provide more information about GM products
like maize and soybeans before any shipment to recipient countries, to help
them decide whether to accept it.

Under its provisions, a nation may reject GMO imports or donations - even
without scientific proof - if it fears they pose a danger to traditional
crops, undermine local cultures or cut the value of biodiversity to
indigenous communities.

U.S. officials say they want to see proper implementation of the protocol by
its signatories, in line with WTO rules. If not, this would harm trade and
could be challenged.

"We are certainly very concerned that there could be disruption of trade if
the implementation of the protocol isn't done properly," a U.S. government
official said.

"If there is some way that the parties implement the protocol that is
inconsistent with the provisions of the WTO, then we would certainly want to
have that addressed at the WTO."

Although many African nations are prone to food shortages, countries like
Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique have voiced concerns about accepting GM
maize donations - saying GMOs have not been fully tested for environmental
or health effects.

CAN U.S. EXPORTERS COMPLY?

The United States, where most GMOs originate, has not signed the Cartagena
agreement and looks unlikely to do so in the short term, insisting GMOs are
no different from natural organisms.

Along with major GMO exporters Canada, Australia and Argentina, the United
States says GM crops are safe, can increase yields and resist destructive
pests.

But the EU takes a diametrically opposed view and has introduced tough rules
on traceability and labeling of GMOs in foods and animal feed that go beyond
the Cartagena requirements.

The question is: if the EU does lift its ban, will U.S. exporters be able to
comply with Europe's stringent new rules? "It's our hope that we can come to
an agreement with all the parties on documentation that would give all
countries, including the African countries, the information that they need
and the ability for them to assess the risk of these products, in an
intelligent fashion," the U.S. government official said.

EU diplomats are not so sure, since GM products have long been sold in the
United States without special labels - making it difficult for U.S.
exporters to comply with EU regulations.

"There would be no way of telling what was in any particular grain
shipment," the diplomat said. "If they start re-shipping, which must be the
game plan with GM...then they would have to confront it (traceability and
labeling) in some way."

EU consumers themselves might hold the key. Given their high degree of
opposition to GM foods, supermarkets are already reluctant to ramp up their
small ranges of GM produce - so U.S. exporters might struggle to find much
of a market in Europe.

Story by Jeremy Smith

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

next item:

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23884/story.htm

Monsanto optimistic despite EU blow to GM corn
---------------------------------------------------------------------
USA: February 20, 2004

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Monsanto Co. (MON.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said this
week it remained optimistic the European Union would lower its barriers to
genetically modified crops, despite another setback in efforts to lift the
bloc's five-year ban on new biotech products, officials said.

"We are hopeful that this product should be approved when they take it up
for consideration in the next phase of the regulatory process," Monsanto
Executive Vice President Brett Begemann said in a statement.
Monsanto has been seeking approval for the importation of a type of its
genetically modified corn that is resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide.

But the proposal failed this week to get majority support among committee
members representing the EU countries.

In December, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) gave the product a
favorable assessment, leaving it to the European Union member states to vote
on the matter. Now the issue goes to EU ministers, who will have three
months to debate the proposal.

There are currently about 24 genetically modified plants and products
awaiting approval by the EU, half of which are Monsanto products.

Monsanto shares were down 11 cents at $31.63 in afternoon trading on the New
York Stock Exchange.

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994688

Study raises fears of genetically modified athletes

11:00 17 February 04

NewScientist.com news service

A study showing that gene therapy can make muscles respond much better to
exercise has raised the prospect of genetically modified athletes.

"Half of the emails I get are from patients," says Lee Sweeney, at the
University of Pennsylvania, and leader of the research. "And the other half
are from athletes."

The researchers injected rats with a modified virus that transported a gene
to their hind leg muscles. The gene triggered increased production of a
growth hormone called IGF-I.

Combined with an intensive exercise regime of ladder climbing, this caused
the rats' muscles become 15 to 30 percent stronger than would be expected
with exercise alone. Even without exercise, the genetically modified rats'
muscles grew by 15 to 20 per cent, Sweeney says.

The research is aimed at developing treatments for diseases such as muscular
dystrophy. Such therapies are not yet ready for use in humans and such
genetic enhancement is likely to remain beyond the reach of athletes for
some time. But the prospect of genetically modified athletes is already
alarming drug testers.

Muscle biopsy

"It's a matter of some concern," says Dick Pound, chairman of the World
Anti-Doping Agency. "What's most disturbing is that some of the first
inquiries have come from trainers."

Genetic enhancements are already banned under international sporting rules.
But, unlike many of the drugs used to enhance performance, genetic
modifications would leave no trace in the blood or urine. A muscle biopsy
would be the only means of detection.

Sweeney says genetic researchers may therefore need to design their
treatments to be susceptible to discovery. "Given current testing, athletes
would be able to get away with it," he says. "They would have to change the
testing mechanism."

Subscribe to New Scientist for more news and features

Related Stories

Sports supplements to be screened for drugs
3 November 2003

Gene variant linked to athletic performance
27 August 2003

Scientists raise spectre of genetically modified athletes
30 November 2001

For more related stories
search the print edition Archive

Weblinks

Pennsylvania Muscle Institute

World Anti-Doping Agency

Journal of Applied Physiology

American Association for the Advancement of Science

There is also concern that athletes will put their health at risk by using
untested genetic technologies. Gene therapies used to correct illnesses have
had only limited success and two patients treated with gene therapy for
"bubble boy syndrome" in France developed leukaemia as a result.

It is also possible that genetic modifications targeting IGF-I could make
muscles so strong that they could damage the recipient's bones, Sweeney
says.

The research was presented at the annual meeting of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science in Seattle, Washington.

Journal reference: Journal of Applied Physiology (vol 96 p 1)

Will Knight, Seattle

> Editorials
>
> Leapfrogging the power grid 661
>
>The desire to mitigate climate change, and opportunities to empower
>consumers in the developed and developing worlds, all point towards a need
>for less-centralized energy generation.

So far so good. But if you think this organ is about to give
due coverage of wind power, small-scale biogas, SWH, solar aircond,
photovoltaic, etc 'less-centralized energy generation', let alone criteria
for improved storage of energy, you'll be disappointed:

> It's time to further boost hydrogen research.

doi:10.1038/427661a
Full Text

Drugs in crops - the unpalatable truth
Editorial

Nature Biotechnology

doi:10.1038/nbt0204-133
February 2004 Volume 22 Number 2 p 133
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nbt/journal/v22/n2/full/nbt0204
-133.html

In the United States, genetically modified (GM) wheat (containing
predictably a gene for resistance to a proprietary herbicide) is on the
verge of approval. In Europe, having come unscathed through the UK
farm-scale trials, GM maize has received the go-ahead from both ACRE, the UK
government advisory group on GM crops, and from English Nature, the UK
government's advisor on the environment. And yet, despite the progress with
these crops, biotech companies seem determined to embark on another suicidal
tussle with the anti-biotech lobby, in the process exposing their businesses
not only to accusations of high-handedness and negligence but to unnecessary
commercial risks. It seems that an industry in which the PhD is the
intellectual norm is either incapable of learning a simple lesson from the
past or cannot bring itself to act appropriately, despite what it has
learned previously.

This time around, the tussle concerns the production of pharmaceuticals in
GM food crops. Many companies, among them Diversa, Dow, Epicyte, Samyang
Genex, Meristem Therapeutics, Maxygen and ProdiGene are exploring the
expression of biopharmaceuticals in corn (maize);130 acres of which
were grown in the United States in 2002 (of a total transgenic acreage of
31.1 million). Other organizations are looking at other major crops: rice,
potatoes, alfalfa. One might expect; and some in the industry
obviously - that drug production in plants could be good for the image of GM
crops. After all, new/cheaper medicines are the sort of thing that consumers
want.

The problem is - as anti-GM lobbyists have argued already - that the
production of drugs or drug intermediates in food or feed crop species bears
the potential danger that pharmaceutical substances could find their way
into the food chain through grain admixture, or pollen-borne gene flow (in
maize, at least) or some other accidental mix-up because of the excusably
human inability to distinguish between crops for food and crops for drugs.
The 'contamination' of soybeans and non-GM corn in 2002 with a corn
engineered by Prodigene to produce an experimental pig vaccine shows just
how plausible this is (Nat. Biotechnol. 21, 3, 2003). This position is not
anti-GM (something industry should appreciate) - we should be concerned
about the presence of a potentially toxic substance in food plants. After
all, is this really so different from a conventional pharmaceutical or
biopharmaceutical manufacturer packaging its pills in candy wrappers or
flour bags or storing its compounds or production batches untended outside
the perimeter fence?

The difficulty is that, when it comes to pharming, the biotech industry and
some of its supporters seem to be taking a stand that is principled and
libertarian, rather than sensible. They argue there is an unalienable right
for every corporate entity to develop whichever technology it wants and to
undertake that development wherever it wants (as long as it is safe to do
so, of course). The specific right in question is the right to grow
drug-containing corn crops in the US Corn Belt. After a shift in position at
the beginning of 2003, the US Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) is
now firmly in this libertarian camp.

But if an industry association has a role - and BIO certainly does - then it
should be to represent the longer-term interests of its broad membership.
It should be trying to ensure that in the not-too-distant future, the
commercial prospects for pharma plants are unhindered by predictable and
avoidable political and social concerns. BIO's role ought to be to steer its
membership past the obstacles, rather than plotting a course for a head-on
collision.

The predictable obstacles are: that regulatory oversight will become more
stringent and exhaustive because of the juxtaposition of drug crop and food
crop; that protest lobbies will obstruct the drugs-in-food-crops companies
directly through the legal system; that they will also obstruct them
indirectly by applying pressure on corn producers generally; that producers
and farmers' interest groups will run away very quickly from the fight as
soon as any of their markets are threatened; that European corn producers
will decry the potential commingling of food-corn and drug-corn; that a
consignment of drug-corn will find its way into bird-feed mix and, by an
amazing coincidence, be picked up by random tests conducted by Friends of
the Earth; that 'Pigeon Fanciers [Twitchers] Against GM' will mobilize
celebrity ornithologists against drug-corn; that politicians in
technologically lagging nations will introduce trade barriers, such as
traceability, that have little technical merit but much populist appeal. In
short, the whole farce of GM food could play out again, only this time with
much greater justification.

It is possible to preempt such a mess. The key is to put in place some form
of foolproof segregation between food crops and drug crops. And that does
not mean increased fallow zones, special cleaning routines for farm
machinery, increased frequency of inspections or any other of the measures
introduced last year by the US Department of Agriculture.

Instead, there are two rather obvious and nontechnical levels at which that
segregation could work effectively. The first is geographical. If drugs must
be produced in food crops, then those crops should be grown away from
non-drug food crops. Drug crops are not commodities; it shouldn't be
necessary to use the highest yielding strains of corn under the climatic
conditions for which that strain has been designed (a back-of-the-envelope
calculation suggests that even with present low yields, only 0.19% of total
US corn production would be required to supply every insulin-dependent
diabetic on the planet). So don't grow your drug-corn in the Corn Belt -
grow it in California or New England. Better still, if you want to segregate
geographically, grow the crop on an island where that crop is not grown for
food or feed. There is already a company, for instance, that is planning to
develop pharmaceutical barley and grow it in Iceland, a country that can
grow the crop, but doesn't.

The second and possibly more effective form of segregation would be culture.
Simply don't use food plants for producing drugs. Why not? Precisely because
they are food plants. This is not a biological distinction, it is a cultural
one, but it is the source of most of the anxiety that the public is likely
to feel and which the lobby groups are likely to mobilize. In essence, the
only reasons that the major food crops are attractive as pharming hosts are
we know how to grow/harvest them efficiently and we know how to manipulate
these species genetically. Let's grow pharma plants, but let those plants be
Arabidopsis, or flax, or duckweed.

Published online before print February 19, 2004
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.0306285101

Ecology

Transgenic male mating advantage provides opportunity for Trojan gene
effect in a fish

( genetically modified organism | alternative mating tactics | sperm
competition | medaka )

Richard D. Howard *, J. Andrew DeWoody , and William M. Muir
Departments of *Biological Sciences, Forestry and Natural Resources, and
Animal Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907

Edited by M. T. Clegg, University of California, Riverside, CA, and
approved December 8, 2003 (received for review September 29, 2003)

Genetically modified (GM) strains now exist for many organisms,
producing significant promise for agricultural production. However, if
these organisms have some fitness advantage, they may also pose an
environmental harm when released. High mating success of GM males
relative to WT males provides such an important fitness advantage. Here,
we provide documentation that GM male medaka fish modified with salmon
growth hormone possess an overwhelming mating advantage. GM medaka
offspring possess a survival disadvantage relative to WT, however. When
both of these fitness components are included in our model, the
transgene is predicted to spread if GM individuals enter wild
populations (because of the mating advantage) and ultimately lead to
population extinction (because of the viability disadvantage). Mating
trials indicate that WT males use alternative mating tactics in an
effort to counter the mating advantage of GM males, and we use genetic
markers to ascertain the success of these alternative strategies.
Finally, we model the impact of alternative mating tactics by WT males
on transgene spread. Such tactics may reduce the rate of transgene
spread, but not the outcome.

At 4:41 AM +1200 20/2/04, Wuerthele.Suzanne@epamail.epa.gov wrote:

>There are important agricultural and regulatory issues not addressed in
>this article.

yes indeedy

>The obvious agricultural issue is that GE sheep might end up in the food
>supply, or might inadvertently be bred with normal sheep, perpetuating
>the human gene and protein in New Zealand flocks. That would be a
>disaster for the NZ lamb industry. So the experimental sheep have to
>be destroyed.

This *is* 'addressed' in the article:

>Animals with human genes have been incinerated and "normal"
>sheep have been buried on site.

I doubt PPL + the NZ govt would lie about this - if only because
some staff might blow the whistle.

>But even had the drug been a success, the risk of contamination of the
>food supply or breeding stock rises with the number of GE animals.
>Since there were over 3,000 of them, it appears that the creators of the
>GE sheep were either conducting a huge experiment, or were prematurely
>ramping up for commercial production.

They always said the latter - viz. production of AAT, a protein
of no known use.

I have previously commented on Ho's adoption of PPL's claim that AAT is
used in treating emphysema. It's all bullshit.

Since PPL was bankrolled (for v surprisingly long) by Bayer, who
have conducted years of off-the-record trials with genuine human AAT on USA
emphysemics, the puzzle arises of how incompetent Bayer must be to go on
pouring millions of dollars down this obvious rathole. AAT is of - at
the outside - truly marginal, difficult-to-detect effect on emphysema or
any other lung disorder. Bayer know this better than anyone, as they've
been hoping for many y to sell AAT as a drug. They must also know that it
would take more y to get registered recombinant AAT purified from sheep
milk; or more likely it would fail to get registered.

That Bayer finally quit bankrolling PPL is not at all surprising;
the puzzle is why they ever started, and even more, why they went on a
half-decade.

We can only speculate - perhaps Bayer hoped to gain ownership of
some imagined new patents from the techniques of producing the transgenic
sheep.

> So the regulators who allow such
>experiments to go forward should be asking just how FEW animals are
>necessary - either to determine if a project is feasible, or if it is
>successful, to produce the product.

>letters to editor (maximum 200 words): email: Letters@nzherald.co.nz
>full name & residential address,tel no.
>
>http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?reportID=53009
>
>Bolger attacks GM sheep killing
>NZ HERALD
>19.02.2004
>
>
>New Zealand scientists are on the verge of losing a significant
>scientific
>resource through the slaughter and incineration of the nation's biggest
>flock of genetically engineered sheep, says former Prime Minister Jim
>Bolger.
>

>The company has said this protein, refined from GM milk, could be used
>to research treatments for conditions such as cystic fibrosis and acute
>respiratory problems, although a vocal critic of the PPL project, New
>Zealand scientist Robert Mann, told regulators that preliminary trials
>overseas had proved very little.

>Dr. A. Neil Macgregor
>Institute of Natural Resources
>Massey University
>PALMERSTON NORTH
>
>E-mail: < a.n.macgregor@massey.ac.nz >

17-2-04

Last evening Paul Hutchison (PH) addressed a small group of about 20
local Palmerston North RSNZ members. His talk was titled "The Value of
Science to NZ and National's Plans for Science". He was introduced as Nats
spokeperson on Science, CRI's, with associate involvement in ACC and Health
(did an stint in O&G at National Womens). The small audience contained a
number of seasoned CRI (Landcare) and university scientists who are about
to quit the science scene through redundancy or retirement. There is
little prospect of positions being filled by active recruitment.

The drift of his presentation was to get feedback on some issues for
NZ-science as he goes about the business of putting together in the next 2
months a forthcoming Nat policy statement about science for the next
general election.

PH identified (recited) the "issues" being addressed - those we know so
well, recently aired in the Knowledge Wave (he says): education and growth
are linked; NZ is lower down the OECD ladder of living standards than it
used to be; R & D is not given the national priority that is needed;
business/private sector funding support of science remains low by
international norms; etc.; and funding and the level of public funding in
science (he favours the use of "payback grants", but no details at this
point). As an aside, Paul Hutchison expressed a belief that Local
authorities are currently too autonomous (?) when it comes to science
funding.

He appears to be a devotee/ disciple of the BRT (Business Round Table) who
recently advised him to take on board the mantra of one Terence Kealey:
should government fund science? and of Adam Smith: "Wealth of Nations". Of
course the breaking up of DSIR as policy advisor/funding allocator/and
provider of outcomes viv-a-vis Simon Uptons CRI plans was raised as
"steering science in a necessary direction". [Nothing new here!]. He is
also, it seems, a mentee of Peter Gluckman who is alleged by Paul Hutchison
to be one of the architects of the present Science/R&D system operating in
NZ.

So, on what issues did Paul Hutchison (PH) want feedback? We never really
found out! Any forthcoming Nat science policy statement will be the
product of an about-to be-assembled group of Nat selected persons (any
practising scientists with sound reputations included?) and have something
to say about science : (1) with a NZ-base but with global relevance, (2) a
clear role of government (Nats) role in R&D, (3) the importance of links
involving education and business in science, (4) Nats view on how R&D can
be funded. PH proposed the forthcoming Nat Sci Policy statement will be
made available through RSNZ channels.

PH's talk/powerpoint presentation concluded with a view of a dog-sled team
pulling away through the snow etc with the caption: "When you are not the
first dog in the sled team, the view never changes".

Small though the audience was, sharp comments came from those who were
currently experiencing the demise of research teams from the drying-up
(reallocation) of FoRST funding, round after round. There was open
scepticism about the frequently used term "consultation" (it actually
doesn't mean that!) and PH was urged to get rid of it and seriously
introduce"dialogue". PH seems to have the extremely narrow
understanding/notion that "tenure", as exists in the USA for example, can
mistakenly mean only a "guaranteed job for life", and he does not seem to
have any real grasp of the needs of talented persons presently considering
science as a NZ career. He was appraised of the use of successful
project-funding to justify continuing employment in some CRI's. PH was
also appraised of the significance of research in the public interest, such
as hazard monitoring systems, effects of global warming, flood and erosion
control, environmental quality/didasters etc. that will continue to fall
outside the business model and private sector funding. He had little to
say on this. Few would have been convinced we had been listening to a
sharp and perceptive mind.

Who is included on his "think tank" of Nat sci advisors?

The article below reaches interesting conclusions about GM corn, clearly
stating that GM corn is economic when it is not identified in the market
and un-economic in markets where it is identified. That certainly
explains why countries operated by corporations do not require labeling.
The point about farmers not employing refuge seems unaware that USDA APHIS
allows chemical insecticide treatment of the "refuge". In USA the refuge
is a symbolic public relations device to pacify NGOs and the press.

Ecological Modelling
Volume 171, Issue 3 , 15 January 2004, Pages 271-278
Dynamics of insect resistance in Bt-corn

Nicholas A. Linacre, , and Colin J. Thompson

Abstract
The development of genetically modified Bt-corn, incorporating various
toxin genes from Bacillus thuringiensis that act as a chemical defense
against insect pests, such as the European Corn Borer, provides farmers
with a new pest management option. However, the emergence of insect
resistance is a threat to the continued use of Bt-corn. The United
States Environment Protection Agency (US EPA) has developed planting
strategies, for preventing insect resistance by planting a mixture of
Bt- and non-Bt-corn. Decisions about the exact proportion of Bt- and
non-Bt-corn are based on complex spatially explicit mathematical models
using detailed biological assumptions about the population genetics and
life history of the European Corn Borer. We develop an alternative
simpler model for the spread of resistance based on the logistic growth
model, which we believe has utility in situations where it is impossible
or impractical to estimate the different life history and genetics
parameters required by more detailed models. We use our model to
investigate the US EPA's planting rules for Bt-corn and find that
short-term economic behavior is likely to lead to these rules not being
followed. Our results add weight to existing work on this problem. We
also investigate the economics of planting Bt-corn in markets where
consumers do and do not differentiate between the modes of production
for the corn. We find that Bt-corn appears to be economic in markets
that do not differentiate and uneconomic in markets where consumers do
differentiate.

Hilary Rose
The Guardian
February 16, 2004

Here we go again. Reading the excited claims for the medical benefits
likely to accrue from the Korean veterinary researchers' success in
growing cloned human pre-embryos, one is entitled to feeling a certain
deja vu. Heading the list were those old favourites, treatments for
Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. There really needs to be a phrase
to describe this researchers' equivalent of the old charge against
doctors of shroud waving.

After all, only a few weeks back we were told that the planned primate
research centre in Cambridge was crucial in the search for treatments
for just the same diseases. The truth is that no one knows if stem cells
- the intended end product of therapeutic cloning - will have such
curative powers, still less the solution to the spinal injuries
Christopher Reeve was hoping for in Friday's Guardian. The right way to
find out - the way biomedical research normally proceeds - is to try the
methods first with laboratory animals. And so far their success, even
for the best-understood condition - Parkinson's - has been limited. This
isn't to say that stem cells aren't a promising technology. But even
then one would need to be very sure that the same results could not be
carried out with adult stem cells without the need to clone embryos.

What is clear is that the rush to experiment with human embryos is, to
say the least, premature, driven more by the lust for scientific glory
than a clear sense of the medical imperatives. As the procedures
involved in therapeutic cloning are almost identical to those needed for
reproductive cloning, the Korean achievement brings that closer, too.
This inexorably opens the doors to those whom Suzi Leather, the
chairwoman of the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Authority, calls
"cowboy cloners". It is this weakness in the medical case for human
therapeutic cloning that throws the moral issues into such sharp relief.
So why shouldn't we be reassured when she tells us that the Korean
research was "ethical"?

The project was accepted by the Korean ethical committee, but ethical
standards are by no means uniform, so for the one American member of the
team such work would be illegal in several US states. And then there is
the special problem of Britain, which pushed earlier and harder for stem
cell research than most other countries and now has the most liberal
research regime. Just how ethical are we? The Human Genetics Commission
has wide public representation, but on the hot issue of cloning the
government was certainly not risking such public debate. Instead, it set
up a separate expert committee that concluded that stem cell research on
specially created embryos was acceptable.

W here are the embryos to come from? In the US, discussion about the
risks to women is transparent. But the UK experts' report on stem cell
research speaks blandly of "individuals whose eggs or sperm are used to
create the embryos" to mask the differential bodily risk for women and
men. When a woman and her partner go for IVF, she has to decide if the
discomfort and risk involved in having the hormonal treatment and
surgery are worth the chance of a child; all he has to do is masturbate
into a test tube. Deciding to accept some risk for clear benefit is at
the heart of medical ethics. It is a little harder to see how
researchers asking women to accept such invasive procedures for no
personal benefit are acting ethically. If things go wrong (and they do
in up to 20% of cases) IVF procedures can result in severe health problems.

How did our British experts manage to ignore this gender problem? The
answer is embarrassingly obvious - the stem cell committee of 14
included only one woman. By contrast, the House of Lords select
committee discussion of stem cells was both less dominated by technical
experts and much more cautious. It wrote: "The committee believes that
embryos should not be created specifically for research purposes unless
there is a demonstrable need." The Lords committee consisted of six
women and four men, and at least one of them knew her way around nursing
and midwifery.

When is British public discussion going to face the fact that
reproductive engineering does not impact evenly on the genders, and that
the ethical discussion of bioethics demands fair gender representation
on advisory committees? There is a minister who is supposed to look
after women's interests, but it seems that she has either gone to sleep
on the job or doesn't see that the direction of biomedical research
could be part of it.

Complacency about British ethical standards is no substitute for
effective control. The government thought that it had ruled out
reproductive cloning, and it took a legal challenge from the Pro- Life
Alliance to demonstrate otherwise. The problem of medical tourism by
would-be parents is trivial compared with the need to control the search
by biomedical researchers for countries with soft standards - whether
Britain or Korea.

-
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 524 2949

GE FREE NORTHLAND (in Food & Environment)
Press Release

19 February 2004

NORTHLAND COUNCILS AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT NZ SUPPORT INDEPENDENT GE REPORT

Northland Regional Council has joined Kaipara, Far North, Rodney District
Council and Local Government NZ in supporting the Whangarei District Council
initiative to commission an independent GE report and legal opinion by Dr.
Royden Somerville, QC.

The report and legal opinion will explore two broad policy initiatives to
address the concerns of local government over the release of genetically
engineered organisms into the environment.

The initiatives include how the Northland local authorities could best
protect their interests under existing legislation and what changes could be
made to legislation to allow the councils to protect their interests
regarding the release of GMOs.

GE FREE NORTHLAND spokesperson Zelka Grammer said today she applauded the
commitment of local government to address the critical GE issue, as the
Labour - led government continues to ignore the concerns of many eminent
scientists, territorial authorities and our key markets, as well as the
majority of New Zealanders.

"It is critical that the interests of local government are protected and the
wishes of their communities are addressed."

Zelka Grammer said genetic engineering has galvanised Northlanders, with the
issue being one the most contentious during the annual plan process of
Northland's councils.

Councils concerns about GE relate mainly to uncertainties over the economic
risks to conventional and organic food producers, the uncertainties over who
should bear liability relating to these risks, and uncertainties over the
role of local government under current legislation.

The report is expected to be released before the end of the month.

GE FREE NORTHLAND is Encouraging the public to get involved with their local
council Long Term Council Community Plan (LTCCP) to ensure sound
environmental outcomes, and work to ensure their region is declared an
enforceable GE free zone and to declare their own properties as such.

ENDS

Contact: Zelka Grammer, Chairperson
GE FREE NORTHLAND (in Food & Environment)
09 432 2155

GE FREE NORTHLAND (in Food & Environment)
www.gefreenorthland.org.nz

GE FREE REGISTER
Chris Bone 4344066
www.gefreeregister.co.nz

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

Bolger attacks GM sheep killing
NZ HERALD
19.02.2004

New Zealand scientists are on the verge of losing a significant scientific
resource through the slaughter and incineration of the nation's biggest
flock of genetically engineered sheep, says former Prime Minister Jim
Bolger.

Mr Bolger, who chairs the Bioscience Policy Institute, a biotechnology
"think tank", said yesterday there had been an apparent failure to consider
the strategic value of an approval to create a flock of GM sheep in New
Zealand.

Failed Scottish biotechnology company PPL Therapeutics had on June 22 last
year 2482 transgenic sheep, plus 581 unconfirmed transgenic, out of a total
flock of 4186 animals on its 170ha Whakamaru research farm, 37km southwest
of Tokoroa.

Mr Bolger said more than 3500 transgenic sheep had been bred when PPL
collapsed.

"Most of those sheep have now been put down and only a small number of
two-tooth ewes and lambs remain," he said.

PPL, which created Dolly the cloned sheep in 1997, has been slaughtering the
sheep. Animals with human genes have been incinerated and "normal" sheep
have been buried on site.

The company said nine months ago it was pulling the plug for at least three
years on New Zealand's first transgenic livestock field trial, but would try
to retain the flock's genetics. But last September, PPL's board put the
company up for sale.

The transgenic sheep have been modified with copies of human genes from a
Danish woman to produce the human protein alpha-1-antitrypsin, a project for
which PPL received Environmental Risk Management Authority approval in 1998.

The company has said this protein, refined from GM milk, could be used to
research treatments for conditions such as cystic fibrosis and acute
respiratory problems, although a vocal critic of the PPL project, New
Zealand scientist Robert Mann, told regulators that preliminary trials
overseas had proved very little.

"In hindsight, the problem with this decision [to slaughter the sheep] is
that it does not acknowledge the strategic value of having a
multi-generation flock of sheep which has been genetically modified and
which will therefore be able to provide valuable information on the impact
of modification of large animals," said Mr Bolger.

"Unfortunately the absence of a control group and lack of funding for
retention of the sheep means there is no compelling reason not to let the
remainder be disposed of."

A trustee of the institute, Genesis Research chief executive Jim Watson, who
is also president of the national science academy, the Royal Society, said
the institute regretted the opportunities which had been lost through the
decision to terminate the research.

"The sheep flock was an opportunity to study, over a long term, the effect
of genetic transformation on large animals - and in particular an animal
which has huge strategic importance for New Zealand," Dr Watson said.

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

Tailor-made fruit on research menu
NZ HERALD
18.02.2004
By SIMON COLLINS

State-owned HortResearch is genetically modifying a standard plant to work
out which genes produce better flavours, shapes or colours in fruit.

HortResearch scientist Dr Robin MacDiarmid told the NZ Bioethics Conference
in Dunedin that genetic research offered the promise of foods specifically
tailored to each person's genetic makeup.

Eventually, fruit and other foods could be developed to express the proteins
that each person needed to stay healthy.

She said the first step was to genetically modify bacteria and a "model
plant" - arabidopsis, or Thale cress, a small weed found alongside railway
lines and the like.

It is one of the first species to have had its full genetic structure
mapped.

Dr MacDiarmid's gene function technology team is injecting genes into the
plant, or "knocking them out", to see the effects in contained glasshouses
at HortResearch's Mt Albert research centre.

Genes that have useful effects on flavour or other factors are then used as
"markers" to speed up conventional breeding of new fruit varieties. Only
fruit trees containing the key "marker genes" are planted in the field.

The fruit trees themselves are technically, not genetically, modified, but
their conventional breeding is enhanced by genetic knowledge gained from
arabidopsis.

Dr MacDiarmid said HortResearch had no immediate plans for field trials of
any genetically modified fruit, and had carried out only one such trial - a
project for her own doctoral thesis to grow GM tamarillos in her home town
of Kerikeri.

HortResearch chief scientist Dr Ian Ferguson said arabidopsis was a standard
plant used in virtually every plant molecular biology laboratory to work out
gene functions.

"The whole genome is available publicly, so when we sequence, say, an apple
and try to work out what the genes might be coding for, we compare it to
arabidopsis," he said.

"It's never perfect, but it's good enough to suggest that it might be the
same gene. So arabidopsis has been like the gene standard for comparing gene
sequences."

He said HortResearch, Auckland University and other collaborators were
bidding for public research funds both to test the effects of certain genes
in plants, and then to test the effects of foods containing the modified
plant on animals and eventually on humans.

"If you eat something, it has an effect on your physiology and perhaps an
enzyme goes up, and you have to have some response at a genetic level," said
Dr Ferguson.

New technology will allow the researchers to identify every gene that
changes when a rat or a human eats a particular food.

The research programme, if approved, will start in the middle of this year.

How it works

* Scientists use a test plant to work out which genes improve a fruit's
flavour, shape and colour.

* Fruit with the same marker genes are then planted commercially.

* The test plant will be genetically modified - but the fruit itself will
not.

Death domains and sequences are late entries into crop genetic
manipulation

17 February 2004
Prof. Joe Cummins
e-mail: jcummins@uwo.ca

Death domains and sequences have begun to be a major area of research
in drug development and in cancer research. The death domains and
sequences are key regulators of the process called apoptosis (programmed
cell death). Apoptosis (meaning petals falling from a flower) is a
crucial process in development of tissues such as the tissues of the
central nervous system where cells are programmed to die as the tissues
form. It is also an important defense against virus invaders , a cell
will frequently suicide to save the tissue, virulent viruses sometimes
acquire tools for silencing the cell suicide response. The genomes of
all the organisms whose cells have nuclei (eukaryotes) contain gene
sequences called death sequences that are a part of the network
triggering apoptosis and a number of proteins have death domains. The
gene regulatory network managing programmed cell death are described in
a recent review (1).

Cell death regulators have been studied using mutational analysis (2)

The death effector domains of proteins have been
studied in detail (3,4). The findings related to programmed cell death
have stimulated extensive research in control of cancer and infectious
disease along with morphogenesis in embryos and adults. It is not
surprising that research on apoptosis has begun to be extended to crop
pest control (5).

The bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) has proven to be a rich
source of toxins for killing insect pests. Most of the toxin genes now
being used in genetic engineering are produced in sporulating Bt.
These genes are designated Cry 1, Cry 2 etc. up to at least Cry 41.
The Cry genes are further designated Cry 1 A, Cry 1 B etc. for
sequence variations in the gene and protein toxin, then further refined
to Cry 1 Aa etc. for very small differences in sequence(1). The Cry
gene toxins target specific insect cell receptor proteins and create
pores that lead to osmotic lysis of the insect gut cells. Only a few Cry
genes have found favor in the genetically modified (GM) crops business.

Along with the Cry genes Cyt genes have been characterized that are
genetically distinct from Cry genes and act by hemolysis of the insect blood
cells(2). In recent years vegetative insecticidal proteins (VIP) have
been found to have potent broad spectrum activity against insects.
VIP genes are not homologous to Cry and Cyt genes and bind to cell
membrane proteins different from the other toxins (reviewed in reference 5).

Syngenta corporation, producers of chemical and biological
pesticides, has patented the VIP genes for use in transgenic crop
plants and microbes. Syngenta United states patent 6,429,360 covers the
use of Bt VIP genes and their synthesis and alteration to improve
performance in crop plants. The Syngenta patent provided evidence that
VIP3 A toxin produced apoptotic type of cell death, including a
series of cytological changes including production of membrane bound
apoptotic bodies and activate endonuclease enzymes that cleave
chromatin into discrete fragments. Apoptosis is a part of normal
development of organisms but the VIP3A toxin uses programmed cell death
to destroy the cells of the insect gut. In order to function fully in
the plant cells the Bt VIP3A gene is modified in its coding sequence
and by the addition of a strong promoter, an intron to facilitate
transfer of the pre-messenger RNA from nucleus to cytoplasm, and
transcription terminator and polyA addition sequences. The insect VIP3A
receptor was identified and its characteristic "death" recognition
sequence was characterized. Organisms whose cells have nuclei
generally have receptors with death signals and the insect VIP3A
receptor is a unique member of the class of sequences (reviewed in
reference 5).

Syngenta has petitioned the United States Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) for commercial release of event COT102 cotton containing
a synthetic VIPA3 gene. Presumably corn containing the VIP3A gene will
be proposed for commercial release. The EPA report of the Syngenta
petition for tolerance in or near food reported that the VIPA3 toxin
was homologous to the VIP3A toxin in numerous Bt strains. However, the
petition failed to mention the numerous changes in DNA sequence
including promoter, introns , terminator and polyA signal. Many changes
in the code for the VIPA3 toxin were reported in the Syngenta patent
for VIP genes. Mammalian acute toxicity studies were done using the
VIPA3 toxin produced in bacteria not the toxin produced in modified
corn or cotton. The VIPA3 toxin in cotton is assumed to be substantially
equivalent to the toxin produced in bacteria but, as in the case of
most other commercial Bt cry toxins, the toxin protein is allowed to
diverge significantly from the bacterial toxin so long as the protein
remains active against insect cells and is immunologically similar to
the toxin produced in cotton. The toxin tested by Syngenta showed no
overt acute toxicity and there was no indication that it was allergenic.
Sequence analysis showed no overt similarity to known toxins (reviewed
in reference 5). The practice of putting forward Bt toxins produced in
bacteria as equivalent to the Bt toxins produced in crops was discussed
earlier (6). The practice is unsound and should, at least, be made very
clear in the government announcements on the safety testing of GM crops
bearing genes for Bt toxins.

The EPA report notes "Once in the insect gut, the VIPA3 protein binds
to specific receptors (different from those by Cry 1A proteins) and
forms ion specific pores." There was no discussion, in the EPA report
of the apoptosis and binding to death sequences receptors mentioned in
the Syngenta patent. Indeed, the claim that the VIP3A toxin had no
obvious homology to mammalian toxins seems to have ignored the relative
homology of apoptosis receptor death sequences. The difference in
fundamental processes between the Syngenta patent and the EPA report
is perplexing because the patent document was well supported with
experiments while the EPA report provided little scientific evidence for
its claims. Since death sequences and domains have evolved in all
eukaryotes, the best hypothesis is that they are related. It seems very
suspicious that a major regulatory agency chooses to ignore crucial
findings from the patent for a process they are regulating. Some level
of toxicity to mammals should be expected and the acceptance of
regulatory data from VIP toxin produced in bacteria as a surrogate for
the extensively altered synthetic product is a dangerous practice.

The manner in which EPA ignored the significance of apoptosis
in regulating the toxins suggest that the regulatory agency should be
more critical in evaluation the impact of toxins on the millions of people
and farm animals soon to be exposed
to the toxin. It seems that regulation has grown slovenly because the
products are not labeled in the marketplac

In conclusion, the Bt toxins of the VIP gene family provide potent
broad spectrum insect control. The toxins have been reported to act by
binding to death sequences and triggering apoptosis in insect cells. The
potential impact of such toxins on the receptors and death sequences in
mammalian cells should be fully evaluated before GM crops bearing the
toxins enter the mammalian food chain and the chance of
detecting regulatory mistakes is slim.

References

1. Gozani,O.,Boyce,M.,Yoo,L.,Karuman,P and Yuan,J. ìLife and death in
paradiseî 2002 Nature Cell Biology 4,E159-E163
2. Ottilie,S. , Wang,Y. , Banks,S. , Chang ,J Vigna,N., Weeks,S.,
Armstrong,R., Fritz,F. and Oltersdorf,T. ìMutational analysis of the interacting
cell death regulators CED-9 and CED-4î 1997 Cell Death and Differentiation 4, 526 -33
3. Eberstadt,M., Huang,B., Chen,Z., Meadows,R., Ng,S., Zheng,L.,
Lenardo (Mort1) death-effectordomainî 1999 Nature Nature 392, 941-6
4. Liepinsh,E., Barbals,R., Dahl,E., Sharipo,A. Staub,E. and
Otting,G. ìThe Death-domain Fold of the ASC PYRIN Domain,Presenting a
Basis for PYRIN/PYRIN Recognitionî 2003 J. Mol. Biol. 332, 1155ñ63
5. Cummins,J. ìA new Bt toxin looming over out foodî 2003
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/
6. Cummins,J. ìMore on Bt Resistanceî 2003 http://www.i-sis.org.uk/

Fish farms are pointing the way to GM fish. The problems of a polluting
industry will be magnified by the use of GM fish.

American Association for the Advancement of Science, Nature News Service
17 Feb. 2004
Seattle, February, 2004

Fish farms still ravage the sea
Sustainable aquaculture takes one step forward, two steps back.
17 February 2004

PETER ALDHOUS

Farmed fish such as salmon eat more than their own weight in wild-caught
fish.

Fish farms are in danger of losing any ground they may have gained over
the past few years to becoming a sustainable industry, according to
Rebecca Goldburg, a senior scientist with Environmental Defense in New York.

While aquaculture is proving less wasteful now than in the late 1990s,
it is using up more resources than ever before. And recent US policies
could be set to make things worse.

Environmental Defense is concerned about the sustainability of
aquaculture primarily because farmed fish are frequently fed on meal
made from wild-caught fish. In 2000, Goldburg co-authored a paper
revealing that 1.9 kilograms of wild fish were on average required to
produce every 1 kg of fish farmed in 1997.

Goldburg has now recalculated these figures with more recent data, and
has come up with some good news. In 2001, each kilo of farmed fish
consumed only 1.36 kg of wild-caught fish.

This increase in efficiency is due in large part to an expansion of
freshwater aquaculture in China, says Goldburg. Fish farmers there tend
to raise carp or tilapia, which are vegetarians, and so don't consume
any wild fish stocks.

Efforts are also being made to coax carnivorous fish, such as salmon,
into eating feed based on vegetable protein. "They're going to have to
figure out how to use less fishmeal in the long run," says Claude Boyd,
an expert on aquaculture at Auburn University in Alabama.

Claude Boyd
Auburn University, Alabama

But it's not all good news. The expansion of aquaculture has meant that
the total catch going towards fish food has continued to increase, from
10 million tonnes in 1997 to 12 million tonnes in 2001. As aquaculture
continues to boom, it will exact a growing toll on species such as
sardines and herring, Goldburg says.

The situation could be made worse by a new policy from the US National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which aims to promote
offshore farming of species such as red snapper and cod. By growing
these fish in cages held almost 5 kilometres off the coast, NOAA wants
to expand the worth of the US aquaculture industry from $1 billion to $5
billion per year.

The problem is that these fish are carnivores, which could reverse the
trend to use feed containing a lower proportion of fishmeal. "An
explosion in growing carnivorous fish can easily override these
efficiency gains," says Goldburg.

References

1. Naylor, R. L. et al. Effect of aquaculture on world fish
supplies. Nature, 405, 1017 - 1024, doi:10.1038/35016500 (2000).
2. Powell, K.. Fish farming: eat your veg. Nature, 426, 378 - 379 ,
doi:10.1038/426378a (2003).

The article below confirms that human cloning is not likely to be viable
at present.

However, the problems with stem cells from clones are
obfuscated and the cancers and other problems ignored.

February 17, 2004 NY times
Specter of Cloning May Prove a Mirage
By STEPHEN S. HALL

A rose is a rose is a rose, even if - like many commercial plants - it
is essentially a clone. But is a normal human blastocyst, a microscopic
bubble of proto-life that forms about five days after sperm meets egg,
the same as a cloned blastocyst?

That may seem an arcane technical question in the debate about human
cloning, reignited last week with the announcement by South Korean
scientists that they had cloned a human embryo and harvested embryonic
stem cells from it. But scientists, politicians and bioethicists have
been grappling for years with the biological and moral subtleties
encapsulated by that tiny dot of tissue.

The future of human therapeutic cloning in this country ó the laws
governing it, the knowledge to be gained from it, the ethical costs of
doing it and the medicines it might eventually bestow ó may hinge on how
society views that question.

In last week's report in the journal Science, researchers at Seoul
National University described how they had created some 30 cloned human
blastocysts in order to harvest human embryonic stem cells. Such a
procedure has raised moral concerns, not only because it requires the
destruction of the embryo to gather the cells, but because its mere
publication may provide technical guidance to several well-known
"cloning entrepreneurs" who have vowed to try human cloning, despite
widespread safety and moral concerns.

In response to the South Korean experiment, Dr. Leon R. Kass, chairman
of the President's Council of Bioethics, said, "The age of human cloning
has apparently arrived: today, cloned blastocysts for research;
tomorrow, cloned blastocysts for baby-making." Dr. Kass urged Congress
to pass a ban or moratorium on all forms of human cloning. Several
lawmakers called for just such a ban on all human cloning research.

But it's unclear how imminent that "tomorrow" actually is. While the
South Korean paper offers a new technical trick for creating a cloned
human blastocyst, it does not resolve any questions about how robust
that blastocyst may be for generating a healthy, normal human being.

"There's no doubt that there's still an awful lot of work to be done
before anybody would feel comfortable that it could be done safely,"
said Dr. George Daley, a stem cell researcher at Children's Hospital in
Boston.

The South Korean group did not try to create a baby. The promise of
therapeutic cloning, still theoretical, derives from the following
premise. By introducing the DNA of an adult human cell into a human egg
whose nucleus has been removed, the resulting hybrid cell can be induced
to behave like a fertilized egg. Like a normal embryo, it begins its
development as a single cell, but it contains the genetic payload ó and,
presumably, the immunological identity ó of the adult patient.
Treatment, not children, is the ultimate point of the exercise.

But cloned embryos may not be genetically equivalent to normal embryos.
Dr. Rudolf Jaenisch, an expert on the genetics of animal cloning at the
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., has
published studies showing that cloned mice are riddled with genetic
abnormalities. Those glitches suggest that a cloned embryo would have
"little if any potential to ever develop into a normal human being."

When an egg cell reprograms the DNA of an adult cell during a cloning
experiment, Dr. Jaenisch said, the process is probably incomplete ó
raising the possibility that genes in the cloned embryo are not
activated (or "expressed") at the right time, in the right amount, and
properly suppressed when not needed.

Gene regulation of this sort is especially significant in a class of
genes known as imprinting genes, which play a crucial role in fetal
development. "We think that 30 to 50 percent of imprinted genes are not
properly expressed in clones," Dr. Jaenisch said, "and imprinting genes
are mostly important for pre-natal development."

As a result, he said, the South Korean approach may be "useful for
therapy, but not useful for cloning." Dr. Daley, who with Dr. Jaenisch
published one of the first animal experiments suggesting the promise of
therapeutic cloning, said, "All of the concerns and risks of mammalian
reproductive cloning have not changed with this paper."

Paradoxically, however, scientists working in the area believe that the
same genetic glitches that might prevent an embryo from growing into a
genetically normal organism are unlikely to compromise the quality of
stem cells that might be harvested for medical use. "Cloned tissues are
not likely to have the same problems," Dr. Daley said, "but that's yet
to be proven."

In addition to being a notoriously inefficient procedure, animal cloning
has produced many animals with conspicuous developmental problems, like
respiratory illnesses and overly large placentas. Dolly the cloned sheep
suffered from premature arthritis before dying last year. Such genetic
dysfunction is one reason for nearly unanimous scientific opposition to
reproductive cloning. As Dr. Daley put it: "As a scientist, I would be
willing to support a ban on reproductive cloning, if it allows us to
pursue legitimate therapeutic research. That is the most rational way of
approaching the debate."

But Dr. Jaenisch also made a distinction between cloned embryos and the
kind of blastocysts formed during normal reproduction, including embryos
fertilized in vitro. "When you really think about an I.V.F. embryo that
rests in a deep freeze, it only has three fates," he said. "It can be
destroyed, it can be implanted into a woman or it can be converted into
embryonic stem cells. When you make embryonic stem cells, you do destroy
an embryo, and that is an ethical issue.

"Cloned embryos also have three fates. "They can be destroyed, they can
be used to make normal embryonic stem cells tailored to the needs of
patients, but they cannot make a normal baby. In my opinion, the
destruction of a cloned embryo to make embryonic stem cells poses less
ethical problems than the destruction of frozen embryos in the I.V.F.
clinic."

Dr. Thomas H. Murray, president of the Hastings Center in Garrison,
N.Y., says this scientific distinction has moral import. "What are the
ethical implications if embryos created in this way are not viable, or
severely impaired?" he asked. "If Rudy Jaenisch is right, if embryos
created by cloning are a fairly abnormal ball of cells, that would
compel us to think very hard about what moral meaning to attach to such
an entity."

Such a scientific distinction, Dr. Murray also noted, could "complicate"
a split in the anti-abortion movement that emerged several years ago
during the debate over stem cell research and cloning. Several prominent
abortion opponents, including Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of
Utah, supported federal financing for stem cell research; Mr. Hatch has
also co-sponsored legislation allowing therapeutic cloning while
prohibiting reproductive cloning.

In fact, the biological distinction between cloned embryos and normal
embryos came up for discussion two years ago at the President's Council
on Bioethics. Dr. Paul McHugh, the former head of psychiatry at Johns
Hopkins University School of Medicine, floated the notion that a cloned
embryo was distinct ó in creation, composition and reproductive intent ó
>from a normally formed embryo. He coined the word "clonote" to
distinguish it from "zygote," the single-celled embryo that results from
fertilization.

"If you take the point that the clonote is something different, it's
something manufactured rather than begotten, then you would want to
study, use its best potentials for humankind and not let its potentials
for error and slavery appear," he said at the time.

Despite the renewed calls last week for a ban on all forms of cloning,
including therapeutic cloning for medical research, even the Bush
bioethics council split sharply on the issue. In discussions leading up
to the panel's July 2002 report, "Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An
Ethical Inquiry," the committee failed to muster a majority in favor of
a blanket ban on both therapeutic and reproductive cloning. Only 7 of 17
voting members supported a complete ban; 3 others supported a
moratorium. Indeed, the panel's public discussion leading up to the
report revealed considerable sentiment in favor of therapeutic cloning,
as long as it was properly regulated.

The most provocative aspect of the South Korean research, in Dr. Daley's
opinion, was something that was not even included in the paper, but was
revealed by several of the scientists at a news conference last
Thursday. Dr. Woo Suk Hwang and Dr. Shin Yong Moon said that when the
researchers tried to use the DNA from male adult cells or cells from
females unrelated to the egg donors, they failed to create any embryos.
The only successes in their cloning experiments came from the use of
so-called cumulus cells, the adult cells that typically surround a
maturing egg cell in a woman's ovarian follicles.

The failure of the other cells to work, Dr. Jaenisch said, merely
underscores how much research remains to figure out the best adult cells
to use for therapeutic cloning. Whether making human medicines or human
babies through cloning, in other words, "tomorrow" may still be a long
way off.

http://www.rsnz.org/news/date/2004/2/16

News release: Forest Research defends biosecurity decision
Systems in place to detect pine pitch canker are working

Three cloned mules healthy and normal, researchers say
Vets manipulate calcium concentrations around embryo to achieve first
success in equine cloning

**Overseas items*****

Royal Society split over merits of 'popularizer'
Fellows of the Royal Society have threatened to resign following a
leak that neuroscientist Susan Greenfield has been nominated for a
fellowship. Some fellows feel that the science of Professor
Greenfield, one of the most recognisable public faces of British
science, is not of sufficient stature for the Royal Society. Nature
http://www.nature.com 427 12 February 2004 p.578

A right Royal rumpus
Following the public row over Susan Greenfield's merits as a
scientist and whether she deserves a fellowship of the Royal Society,
an article addresses the reluctance of many scientists to praise
their colleagues who can "do media". There is an acceptance of those
who speak to the media on their own subjects, but those, like
Greenfield, whose views are sought out on a variety of scientific
subjects, often lose the respect of their peers. Guardian 'Life' 12
February 2004 p.8-9

Too few women at the top is not just a science problem
An article marks the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Dorothy
Hodgkin's Nobel Prize, still Britain's only female winner, by
examining the current status of women in science. Although there are
still too few women working in the field, and schemes such as the
Royal Society's Hodgkin fellowships recognise this and try to remedy
the problem, it is argued that the situation is not unique to
science, with women also under-represented in humanities and social
science university departments. Guardian 'Life' 12 February 2004 p.9

European genetics plan
A European institute is to be created to help scientists interpret
the floods of data emerging from genetic research, with a EUR12
million grant from the European Commission's Sixth Framework
Programme. THES http://www.thesis.co.uk 1627 13 February 2004 p.4

Incyte throws in the towel on genomics, trims workforce
Gene discovery firm, Incyte, last week announced that it will close
its genomics headquarters in Palo Alto, California and eliminate 257
jobs, 57% of its total workforce.
Science http://www.sciencemag.org 303 13 February 2004 p.941

Bioprospectors hunt for fair share of profits
Representatives of almost 200 countries are meeting in Malaysia this
week to update the ten-year old Convention on Biological Diversity.
The meeting aims to agree terms for sharing profits from natural
organisms and molecules between governments, indigenous peoples,
scientists and drug companies.

Nature http://www.nature.com 427 12 February 2004 p.576

In the old days beer used to be made with barley and hops. Corn beer
does not seem appealing; GM corn beer even less. When it arrives in
UK the pubs serving the guck should be identified. In Canada GM beer
need not be labeled while in USA all the beer tastes like it is GM or
something worse.

GM beer eyes UK

- The Grocer, February 14, 2004

A Swedish microbrewer is looking to launch what it claims is the first
beer to be made with genetically modified ingredients.

Kenth lager is made with a GM version of maize called Bt maize, which
brewer Kenth Persson claims is as safe and healthy as conventional maize.

The beer is already sold in Sweden and now the brewer is understood to be
keen on bringing it to the UK.

Samples of the beer will be available at next months Food & Drink Expo
where it is hoped that retailers will respond as enthusiastically as it is
claimed the Swedish public have.

However, one influential beer buyer said: Consumers are very reluctant to
eat food containing GM products and I don't think beer will be any
different.

The paper below shows Bt toxins make herbicides more persistent in soil.
Some GM crops contain stacked herbicide and Bt genes and those crops may
cause the herbicides to persist or carry over.

doi:10.1016/j.agee.2003.11.002
Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment

Influence of insecticidal toxins from Bacillus thuringiensis subsp.
kurstaki on the degradation of glyphosate and glufosinate-ammonium in
soil samples

Cesare Accinelli, , Claudio Screpanti, Alberto Vicari and Pietro Catizone

Department of Agro-Environmental Science and Technology, University of
Bologna, Viale G. Fanin 44, 40127, Bologna, Italy

Received 2 June 2003; revised 25 November 2003; accepted 27 November
2003. ; Available online 13 January 2004.

Abstract
Investigations dealing with the persistence in soil of glyphosate
[N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine] (GLYP) and glufosinate-ammonium [the
ammonium salt of -homoalanin-4-yl(methyl)phosphinic acid] (GLUF)
herbicides and of insecticidal toxins produced by Bacillus thuringiensis
subsp. kurstaki (Berliner) are largely reported in the literature.
However, no information on the influence of these insecticidal toxins on
the persistence in soil of herbicides is available. Preliminary results
regarding the influence of insecticidal toxins extracted from a
commercial formulation of B. thuringiensis subsp. kurstaki (Berliner)
(Btk) on the degradation of the herbicides glyphosate and
glufosinate-ammonium in a loam and a sandy loam soil, under laboratory
conditions, were obtained. Soil microbial carbon (SMC) and insecticidal
activity of incubated soil samples were also estimated. In both soil
types, persistence of GLYP was significantly higher with respect to
GLUF. Average GLYP and GLUF half-life was 14.4 and 8.0 days,
respectively. Addition of Btk toxins lead to a significant increase of
GLYP and GLUP persistence in both soil types. More specifically, average
GLYP and GLUF half-life in soil samples receiving the Btk treatment was
24.3 and 14.2 days, respectively. In contrast to herbicide persistence
in soil, Btk toxins did not influence microbial carbon content of
incubated soil samples. The insecticidal activity of Btk toxins in soil
rapidly decreased during the 28-day incubation time. Considering that
degradation of GLYP and GLUF was mainly a microbial process, the absence
of effects of Btk toxins on the soil microbial carbon and the rapid
decrease of insecticidal activity of Btk toxins in the soil suggest a
possible effect of the Btk toxins on other soil properties and/or
mechanisms influencing herbicide degradation. The present preliminary
investigation permitted to highlight the possibility of the Btk toxins
to enhance the persistence of GLYP and GLUF in soil, under laboratory
conditions. However, further studies are necessary to investigate
whether or not the effects observed in this study under artificial and
controlled conditions can be extrapolated to field conditions.

The persistence of GLYP and GLUF was enhanced
by the addition of a high rate of Btk
insecticidal crystal toxins extracted and purified
from the commercial formulation Dipel 2×.
Since no influence of Btk toxins on SMC of the
two soils was observed and a rapid decrease of
the insecticidal activity of the added Btk toxins
was estimated during the 28-day incubation period,
the observed increase of GLYP and GLUF
persistence was presumably due to the reduction
of bio-availability of the two herbicides,
modification of the soil nutritive status or other
not measured properties, such as soil microbial
activity.

(ii) The significant increase of the persistence of the
two employed herbicides should be considered
in investigations dealing with the environmental
impact of GM crops.

A practical NZ response to this scientific info would be revival of
CNG as promised by the "co"leader of the Green Party the year before last.

Also an 8 - 10 km drilling in Taranaki would test whether Gold's
theory of deep natural gas applies to that province. If, as is v likely,
this pays off, then I would advocate a similar hole near Christchurch (the
biggest S. Is. concentration of energy consumption).

And meanwhile, offshore drilling should cease, as it's too risky
for the marine environment.

R

http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2004/jf04/jf04cavallo.html
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
January/February 2004, Volume 60, No. 1, pp. 20-22, 70

Oil: The illusion of plenty

By Alfred Cavallo


One hundred and twelve billion of anything sounds like a limitless quantity.
But in terms of barrels of oil, it's just a drop in the gas tank. The world
uses about 27 billion barrels of oil per year, meaning that 112 billion
barrels--the proven oil reserves of Iraq, the second largest proven oil
reserves in the world--would last a little more than four years at today's
usage rates.

In the future, 112 billion barrels will likely prove even shorter-lived. In
the United States, gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles and larger homes are
deemed essential. As the underdeveloped world industrializes, demand for oil
by billions of people increases; China and India are building superhighways
and automobile factories. Energy demand is expected to rise by about 50
percent over the next 20 years, with about 40 percent of that demand to be
supplied by petroleum.

Ever-increasing supplies of low-cost petroleum are thought to be vital to
the U.S. and world economies, which is why the invasion of Iraq and the
belief that controlling its 112-billion-barrel reserve would give the United
States a limitless pipeline to cheap oil were so dangerous. The war in Iraq
will definitely have an effect on the U.S. and world economies, but not a
positive one. The invasion, occupation, and rebuilding of Iraq will cost the
people of the United States both blood and treasure. But more to the point,
Iraq could be a fatal distraction from many fundamental and extremely
unpleasant facts that actually threaten the United States--one of which is
the finite nature of petroleum resources.

Petroleum reserves are limited. Petroleum is not a renewable resource and
production cannot continue to increase indefinitely. A day of reckoning will
come sometime in the future. The point at which production can no longer
keep up with increasing demand will mean a radical and painful readjustment
globally to everyday life.

In spite of that indisputable fact, people behave as if the global petroleum
supply is unending. Predictions of the exhaustion of oil reserves seem to
have lost all credibility. The public assumes that inexpensive oil will be
available essentially forever. The idea that petroleum resources are finite
and that petroleum production might peak in the near future seems to have
vanished from all discussions of energy policy in Congress, in the press,
and even among public interest groups.

This surreal situation is due to several factors. One, certainly, is that
pessimists have cried wolf too often. Forecasts of imminent shortages of
oil, food, and other natural resources are confounded by the enormous
display of material goods that envelops consumers in the West.
For most people, the market price of any commodity is what signals shortage or
plenty. Time and again, collapsing oil prices have succeeded rising oil
prices, leading to the belief that oil will always become cheap again. That
oil supplies are currently abundant and inexpensive and have been for nearly
20 years, and that the models used to predict peak oil production are not
easy to understand, appear to ignore economic factors, and are based on
proprietary data, explain to some degree the present feeling of permanent
abundance.

In reality, the differential between petroleum production cost and market
price is so large that market price cannot be used as a measure of resource
depletion. For example, the variation in the average price of oil between
1998 ($10 per barrel) and 2000 ($24 per barrel) had nothing to do with
depletion of reserves and everything to do with an attempt to exercise
"market discipline" by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
OPEC).

But the most important reason there seems to be an unending supply of oil is
the activity of non-OPEC producers. Oil production is immensely lucrative.
Large amounts of petroleum have been and will continue to be produced
outside the Middle East at costs that are very low, $5-$10 per barrel,
compared to the desired OPEC price range of $22-$28 per barrel. The
opportunity to realize extraordinary profits provides irresistible pressure
to produce as much oil as possible, as soon as possible.

Yet oil is a finite resource, and there are only so many places to look for
it. Sooner or later petroleum production will decline, so sooner or later
the prophets of depletion will be correct. The question then becomes: Can a
peak oil forecast be made that is useful to the petroleum industry and to
consumers, one that will alert them to the problems and allow for a
redeployment of resources?

Answering that question requires an understanding of why the world's rising
petroleum needs are being met without skyrocketing prices or supply
shortages.

Everyone knows that the science and technology underpinning computers,
telecommunications, and medicine have advanced dramatically over the last 20
years. The proof is everywhere, from ever more powerful personal computers,
to increasingly sophisticated cell phones, to new medical imaging
technologies and pharmaceuticals.

Unknown to most people, however, advances in geological sciences and
petroleum technologies have been equally profound and dramatic. Since the
1970s, plate tectonics has been providing a uniform framework for
understanding the geology of the Earth's surface (including petroleum
formation). Much as X-ray and nuclear magnetic resonance tomography examine
structures within the human body non-invasively, three-dimensional
seismography now allows potential oil-bearing formations to be evaluated in
great detail. Nuclear magnetic resonance probes are used to determine
porosity and hydrocarbon content as well as to estimate the permeability of
these formations. Petroleum deposits are being brought into production on
the continental shelves off Texas, Brazil, and West Africa in water up to
8,000 feet deep--areas that were, until recently, inaccessible.
Technological advances like sub-sea terminals, directional drilling, and
floating production, storage, and offloading ships have been developed to
exploit smaller, previously uneconomic or unreachable deposits.
Sophisticated science and technology coupled with unparalleled profitability
has provided the foundation for the wide availability of oil.

Yet the same advances in geology and engineering that have provided
consumers with seemingly limitless petroleum also allow much better
estimates to be made of how much oil may ultimately be recovered. After a
five-year collaboration with representatives from the petroleum industry and
other U.S. government agencies, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) completed
a comprehensive study of oil resources. The "USGS World Petroleum Assessment
2000" is the first study to use modern science to estimate ultimate oil
resources. [1]

The importance of this assessment is difficult to overstate.
revious world oil resource evaluations have ranged from crude
back-of-the-envelope"
calculations to estimates based on proprietary databases, and have often
lacked enough detail to allow a comparison between production and estimated
reserves. We now have credible, easily accessible long-term production
records and science-based resource estimates for all of the important oil
producing regions in the world--crucial for understanding how oil production
might evolve over time.

The USGS assessment allocates reserves to three separate and distinct
categories. The first is "proven reserves," or petroleum that can be
produced using current technology. The second category is "undiscovered
reserves"--oil deposits that are highly likely to exist based on similar
areas already producing oil. The third category is "reserve growth" and
represents possible production from extensions of existing fields,
application of new technology, and decreased well spacing in existing fields.
Oil in this last category can be extracted much less rapidly than
oil in the proven and undiscovered categories. (For purposes of determining
the approximate year of peak or constant output, the best that can be hoped
for is that all proven reserves are produced and all undiscovered reserves
are found and produced as rapidly as needed. Petroleum from reserve growth,
produced at much lower rates, can be ignored. According to the USGS, it is
available only to lengthen the period of peak production or to reduce the
decline in a field's output.)

As of January 1, 1996, OPEC's proven and undiscovered reserves amounted to
about 853 billion barrels, while similar non-OPEC reserves were 769 billion
barrels, according to the USGS assessment. Based on actual production
patterns in many non-OPEC oil producers, output can increase until there
remains between 10 and 20 years of proven plus undiscovered reserves (as
determined by the USGS), at which point a production plateau or decline sets
in, depending on the reserve growth that is actually available.

Given that non-OPEC production rates are nearly twice as great as OPEC
rates, and assuming stable prices and 2 percent per year market growth,
non-OPEC production will reach a maximum sometime between 2010 and 2018
based on resource limitations alone (assuming complete cooperation of
producers and that all undiscovered oil is actually found and produced as
rapidly as needed). [2] Once this happens, OPEC will control the market
completely, and it is unlikely that production will increase much longer.

Yet this simplistic analysis is too optimistic. There is no such thing as
"non-OPEC oil," but rather U.S. oil, Norwegian oil, and oil produced by
various other countries. In particular, about 39 percent of non-OPEC proven
plus undiscovered reserves are located in the former Soviet Union. It is
only a matter of time before these countries reach an agreement with OPEC on
how to divide the oil market, at which point the current illusion of
unlimited oil resources will end, not due to resource constraints but to
political factors.

Yet the U.S. public, industrial and political leaders, environmentalists,
and policy-makers in general do not believe that they need to be concerned
with the finite supply of oil and its unfavorable (from the U.S.
perspective) geographic distribution. As noted earlier, the overwhelming
majority behaves as if inexpensive oil will be readily available far into
the distant future.

This attitude is reflected in U.S. policy toward Iraq. One might expect that
a major consequence of the U.S. conquest of Iraq would have been full
control of Iraqi oil reserves, reducing or eliminating the ability of OPEC
to set prices, and giving the United States a permanent--because oil is
forever--overwhelming strategic advantage. It would allow the United States
to dictate production rates and lower prices, which would serve two
important aims. Reduced prices would reward consumers in the West, buying
their support for U.S. policies. It would also deprive oil producers of the
revenues with which they could challenge the U.S. domination of the Middle
East.

Oil prices could be expected to drop to between $15 and $20 per barrel
once existing Iraqi fields were refurbished and large new deposits were
developed.

However, lower prices would stimulate consumption and decrease the incentive
to develop more inaccessible reserves, essentially those of the non-OPEC
producers. If non-OPEC producers fail to develop those harder-to-get-at
reserves, peak oil production will more likely occur earlier, at the front
end of the 2010-2018 forecast. So the very success of the current effort to
seize control of the Middle East would doom U.S. imperial ambition to
failure within the next 10 years, from an oil supply standpoint.

This scenario is now implausible given the bitter Iraqi resistance to U.S.
occupation, and it is not clear when Iraqi production might reach, much less
significantly exceed, its pre-invasion level.

To understand what may unfold, given current levels of sabotage and chaos
in Iraq, one must examine how the petroleum marketing system has changed
over the past year, and in particular the role that OPEC producers have played.

In 2002, Iraqi oil production averaged two million barrels per day. The
United States must have understood that an attack might interrupt
production, which would in turn cause a large increase in the price of oil.
Since this would have a severe negative impact on the world economy, it
would further inflame anti-American sentiment throughout the world and even
turn U.S. voters against the enterprise. The conclusion: Lost Iraqi
production had to be replaced. Thus, an agreement was reached with OPEC to
stabilize the markets by increasing production levels as needed.

In March 2003, the Saudi oil minister reassured the International Energy
Agency of Saudi Arabia's longstanding policy and practice of supplying the
oil markets reliably and promptly, and highlighted the collective
responsibility that producing countries have shown in addressing the
concerns of world oil markets. This was most likely viewed as a temporary
measure, as it was assumed that Iraqi production would be restored and
expanded rapidly after the United States took charge.

In addition to the impending interruption of Iraqi production, in early 2003
Venezuelan oil production was far below its OPEC quota due to a conflict
between populist president Hugo Chavez and the business community; Nigerian
production was also depressed by civil strife.

OPEC rose to the occasion (or, more likely, felt compelled to rise to the
occasion, given the huge U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf in
preparation for war) and increased production by about 3.2 million barrels
per day--equivalent to the production of the Norwegian North Sea
sector--virtually overnight, more than compensating for lost Iraqi,
Venezuelan, and Nigerian production.

About 65 percent of the increase came from just two countries, Saudi Arabia
and Kuwait; Saudi Arabia alone contributed more than half and probably
controls what remains of any spare production capacity.

The critical role that OPEC, in particular Saudi Arabia, plays as the swing
producer for the world oil market is clearly evident from this episode,
which allows one to quantify the ability of the Saudis to affect the world
oil market and the world economy.

The U.S. assault on Iraq has not undermined the power of OPEC and Saudi
Arabia. On the contrary, it has if anything enhanced that power. This will
not change until Iraqi oil production significantly exceeds its pre-invasion
level. Thus, even in the short term, and on the most cynical level, U.S.
Iraq policy vis-à-vis oil has been a failure.

Oil supplies are finite and will soon be controlled by a handful of nations;
the invasion of Iraq and control of its supplies will do little to change
that. One can only hope that an informed electorate and its principled
representatives will realize that the facts do matter, and that nature--not
military might--will soon dictate the ultimate availability of petroleum.

####

Alfred Cavallo is an energy consultant based in Princeton, New Jersey.


1. T. Ahlbrandt (project leader), "The USGS World Petroleum Assessment
2000." The assessment is available at www.usgs.gov and on compact disc. A
detailed analysis using the assessment appears in Alfred Cavallo,
"Predicting the Peak in World Oil Production," Natural Resources Research,
2002, vol. 11, pp. 187-195. Production statistics, based on data from the
International Energy Agency, are available in a variety of trade
publications, including Oil and Gas Journal, World Oil, and Petroleum
Economist.

2. The most popular method used to predict a peak in oil production is in M.
King Hubbert's monograph, Energy Resources: A Report to the Committee on
Natural Resources, National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council,
Publication 1000-D, December 1962. Hubbert noted that resource production
often (but not always) could be described by a logistic growth curve, and
used oil production records and estimates of proven oil reserves made by the
American Petroleum Institute's Committee on Petroleum Reserves to estimate
the year of U.S. peak production. Hubbert does not discuss the assumptions
implicit in his model, among which are stable markets, excellent
profitability, and affordable prices for oil. See also Colin Campbell and J.
H. Laherrere, "The End of Cheap Oil," Scientific American, March 1998, pp.
78-83. The Oil and Gas Journal has also recently published a series of
articles discussing the future of petroleum and its alternatives. See Bob
Williams, "Special Report: Debate Over Peak Oil Issue Boiling Over, With
Major Implications For Industry, Society," Oil and Gas Journal, July 14,
2003.

© 2004 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

http ://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,1147866,00.html

EU races to thwart influx of GM food from east

Biotech giants accused of using new member states as 'trojan horse'

Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Saturday February 14, 2004
http ://www.guardian.co.uk/
The Grauniad

The EU is racing against time to stop genetically modified foodstuffs
entering western Europe from the east after the community's enlargement on
May 1, the Guardian has learned. Some of the 10 new member states have been
growing GM crops for some time, but recent checks have shown that the
testing facilities to monitor their spread to neighbouring crops are either
flawed or non-existent.

The biggest agricultural country in eastern Europe, Poland, which has been
growing GM crops for several years, has had no testing facilities at all.

Environmental groups accuse biotech companies such as Monsanto and Pioneer
of using the former eastern bloc as a "trojan horse" to get GM products
into the EU. However, these companies have been legitimately marketing
their seed varieties there since 1996.

The problem is not lack of legal regulation. The EU has ensured that all
the new members have rules on GM similar to those in the rest of the
community. The difficulty is enforcement. Some of the newcomers have no
idea whether their crops contain GM organisms since their testing regimes
are inadequate. Where tests have been carried out by green groups some
samples have been clear but others found to contain GMOs well above the EU
legal limit for labelling.

The EU has recognised this as a problem and has been helping those
countries without facilities to set up laboratories that can detect genetic
modification in crops and foodstuffs.

Iza Kruszewska, a researcher for the Northern Alliance for Sustainability,
an environment and development group, believes that by asking countries
such as the Czech Republic and Poland to permit the commercialisation of GM
maize before May "the biotech industry is trying to use the enlargement
process to introduce GM by the back door of EU accession".

Beate Gminder, a spokeswoman for the health and consumer protection
directorate of the European commission, disagrees. She says she is sure
the problem of detection will be solved by May 1.

Each country will be responsible for certifying its own products.

"According to the law, all products containing GM will have to be
labelled," said Ms Gminder. "If countries did not have the testing
facilities or expertise to check their products they could contract the
work to countries and laboratories that could do the work. I am sure
everyone understands that."

She said the rules were clear. Some GM crops had been approved in the EU.
If a food product contained more than 0.9% of an approved GM crop then it
would have to be clearly labelled. Products containing more than 0.5% of
crops - such as GM potatoes - that were not approved in the EU would have
to be labelled as containing GM ingredients.

This second provision is an added hurdle for some of the 10 new member
states because they have been growing crops not yet approved in the EU.
Some of these may never be approved because they have been superseded by
other varieties and have fallen out of fashion.

Geert Ritsema, the Friends of the Earth GM campaigner for Europe, said:
"These regulations are all about the consumer's right to choose whether to
eat GM or not. Poland has allowed growing of GM soya but without any
regulations being implemented. People can buy and sell these things and
plant contaminated seed with out fear of prosecution or detection because
there is no method of doing so.

"After May 1 all edible oils will have to be labelled if they contain GM.
Soya and maize oil would require a GM-free certificate. But in an
unregulated country who knows whether the certificate means anything? If
supermarkets want to be sure what they're selling to consumers they'll have
to test the products themselves."

Besides the internal EU rules, he said the bio-safety protocol, which EU
countries had ratified, made it illegal to export and import GM seeds
without prior informed consent. Because of the history of growing GM in an
unregulated fashion seed from eastern Europe needed to be tested to make
sure it did not contain some contamination.

A second problem for Europe concerns some of the countries farther east,
such as Ukraine, which have been growing GM potatoes since 1997, and
candidate countries like Romania and Bulgaria, which wish to join the union
in 2007. Romania, anxious to please the US, has grown GM crops on a large
scale. Neighbouring Serbia accuses Romania of contaminating its supposedly
GM-free crops as a result of grain smuggling across the border.

This is a particularly sensitive issue for countries such as Hungary, which
has taken a strong GM-free stance to protect its seed-growing industry. EU
states have been increasingly turning to Hungary as a source of GM-free
seed. Remaining uncontaminated is a key to this continuing export trade.
Hungary, along with the Czech Republic, is fully equipped with laboratories
that can certify seed and food as GM-free. Most other new member states,
while believing that their grain is GM-free, have no way of being sure.

Tony Combes, director of corporate affairs for Monsanto UK, rejected
accusations of using eastern Europe as a trojan horse. He said: "Each
accession country must comply with all aspects of EU rules and regulations
to be full members - this includes the enforcement of product labelling in
every industry. Equally, existing EU-approved GM crops may be marketed in
accession countries once they have joined."

He added: "It is more a case of the EU being used as the standard to which
the accession countries have to comply."

Every Thursday, The Guardian "life" section includes a column
http ://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience
called "Bad Science" which reports strange not to say downright silly news of
scientific "facts".

Recent examples have included magnetic aging of wine (you can allegedly
bring a wine to maturity by using magnetism - "several years in only 45
minutes") and a soap which "... effectively removes the bad bacteria on
hands, whilst gently protecting the good".

A v recent column brings the news that " .... because the brain works by
transmitting electricity through water, drinking more water will improve
mental performance."

Scary when you consider how many people actually believe this sort of thing.

Can we look fw to the Thursday when this Grauniad section will feature such
standard GM-PR lulus as

"there are only 4 kinds of base in DNA"
"it matters not how or where transgenes are inserted"
"biolistics is substantially equivalent to Burbank's cross that produced
the nectarine"
"GMOs are substantially equivalent to proper organisms, no matter how
different their properties"
"GM crops use less herbicide"
"GM crops yield more"
etc etc

Va'll be ve foggy Fursday, you may say; but what is the
alternative? Either science is ceded permanently to the gene-tamperers and
their junk slogans, or science will recover its hard-won criteria.

R

To: Steve.Thompson@rsnz.org

CEO RSNZ
30-1-04

Dear Steve,

Your little lament appears to be very naive to me. Have you not read
what I, as a well-informed scientist, wrote for the Bioethics Council
on this topic? Can you fault my science? My logic? My ethics?

Would you like to inform your readers that my piece gives a coherent,
well-founded justification for the feelings that many non-scientific
people are reported to have?

You may not feel you are doing enough. I feel I am doing more than
enough, but I just cannot get through to you and your type. Your
attitude smacks of the usual arrogance of the scientific community
thinking it knows what is best for the world while managing to deny
all the side effects and implications of its actions.

The scientific community is not unified in thinking that we will be
"winning" if people accept unspecified "therapeutic" uses of GM.
Think again. Think harder. Think more broadly.

All the risk analysis and so on from ERMA fails because it is based
on a scientifically unrealistic model of people and society, what
they believe and what they value. Have you never thought that to see
the world solely through the eyes of the standard scientist is
perhaps to severely limit one's existence and to contribute to the
misery of other people rather than to general happiness and good?

I find it sad that an official body like the RSNZ puts out this sort
of thing regularly and that is why I am not a member and have no
medals with which to further my career.

Peter Wills

PS. You are permitted to publish this note in full as a way of
stimulating really engaging debate in the RSNZ instead of the usual
"ra ra ra, we are all scientists and know" stuff.


Peter R Wills tel: +64 - 9 - 373 7599 ext 88889
Associate Professor fax: 373 7445
Department of Physics
University of Auckland email: p.wills@auckland.ac.nz
Private Bag 92 019
Auckland http://www.phy.auckland.ac.nz/staff/prw/
New Zealand http://www.physics.auckland.ac.nz/html/wills.html

*************


>R O Y A L S O C I E T Y O F N E W Z E A L A N D
>
>Royal Society Alert® 307 29 January, 2004
>
>
>
>1. SCIENCE ON THE RUN
>
>Comment by Royal Society CEO Dr Steve Thompson Steve.Thompson@rsnz.org)
>
>I'm sorry to start so early in the year on a downward note, but my eye was
>taken by a report from the Bioethics Council (www.bioethics.org.nz/) on
>some work with focus groups of New Zealanders which revealed strong
>opposition to projects such as AgResearch's plan to make human
>proteins in cow's milk to help people suffering from multiple sclerosis.
>Comments included "repulsive" and "the product of a sick mind".
>
>That surprised me because I was beginning to conclude, following a
>veritable flood of debate in New Zealand, that therapeutic uses for GM were
>generally accepted, while views remained polarised on GM food. After all,
>we accept insulin produced by GM bacteria. Also, as Lord May told us a
>couple of years ago, we share most of our genes with other species. Does
>that mean we mind if a uniquely human gene is transplanted, but wouldn't
>mind if the gene were also found in some other species?
>
>The Bioethics Council distilled some key views from the survey:
>1) There is a potential for damage to humans by using unnatural means.
>2) There is a spiritual dimension that science alone does not account for.
>3) In the wrong hands the concept could be used to deliberately harm humans.
>The Council also found a low understanding about genetic modification, a lack
>of trust in governments and scientists and/or a perceived lack of a
>suitable watchdog. Overall, the key fear is fear of the unknown, and
>providing additional scientific information can actually exacerbate
>participants' fears rather than overcome and them.
>
>Psychologists have known for many years that it's easy to prove people
>irrational and illogical in an objective sense when they make choices.
>Emotion plays a great part in our choices, and our decision may vary
>widely, depending on our mindset and intuition. Incoming President, Dr Jim
>Watson, recently noted the challenge faced by the Royal Society and
>scientists at large in responding to suspicion, scepticism and occasional
>hostility towards science.
>
>You and I are simply not doing enough. Whatever views we wish to express,
>we must make our voices heard in this debate. We have to dig deeper, beyond
>the surface reactions of survey respondents, into why they feel as they do,
>and how does their view fit with their views on other developments in
>science (such as GM insulin) which they have come to accept?

Bird Flu Found in Several Vietnam Pigs - FAO

HANOI - A deadly strain of bird flu has been detected in initial tests
of several Vietnamese pigs, the Food and Agriculture Organization said
Friday, but a Vietnamese government official said they were unaware of
any such finding.

"The H5N1 virus was in the nasal cavities of the pigs," said Anton
Rychener, Vietnam representative of the U.N. agency. He added that blood
tests on the pigs had been sent to Hong Kong and results were not yet
returned. The pigs had not fallen ill with the virus that has killed at
least 18 humans.

WHO spokesman in Hanoi Robert Dietz said in an emailed response Friday
that the U.N. body was contacting the FAO about the comments.

If the FAO remarks were accurately reported, "these would be very
preliminary results, and they are not confirmation that the virus is in
pigs," Dietz said.

The finding is alarming because pigs can become a "mixing vessel" for
the flu virus. The immune system of pigs is similar to that in humans
and the animals suffer from a wide variety of diseases that also infect
people.

Scientists say the bird flu pathogen could swap genes with a human
influenza virus inside a pig.


NO IMMUNITY

The World Health Organization has said this could result in the
emergence of a new subtype of virus for which humans would have no immunity.

Rychener said three or four pigs were initially positive for the virus
and that he did not recall how many swine in total had been tested. "It
complicates the matter," Rychener said, when asked what this meant for
the current outbreak.

He said he was asking for an FAO veterinary epidemiologist to be sent to
the Southeast Asian country to investigate further.

Animal health experts have been taking samples from pigs as a routine
procedure where they find them raised alongside chickens.

Asked about the FAO comment, an official at the Department of Animal
Health said: "We are not informed of any such finding. We know that the
H5N1 is not found in the tested pigs from Vietnam.

The official added: "If FAO puts out that statement, they must make
clear where the tests have been conducted."

State media in the communist country ran articles Friday saying samples
taken from 179 pigs in Vietnam's northern provinces were found to be
free from bird flu.

The Nhan Dan (People) daily, the official paper of the Communist Party,
said that according to a WHO lab in Hong Kong, no H5N1 virus was found
in the pig samples.

Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper quoted Truong Van Dung, director of the
Veterinary Institute, as saying that nasal fluid samples from 179 pigs
tested negative for H5N1.

The article said Dung contacted the WHO lab in Hong Kong by telephone
and was given the results.

More than 14 million of Vietnam's 250 million poultry have been
destroyed so far to try to halt the spread of the virus, which has
ravaged poultry flocks across Asia.

(Additional reporting by Ho Binh Minh in Hanoi)

Story by Christina Toh-Pantin

Check out Planet Ark on the web at www.planetark.com

GM WATCH daily
http://www.gmwatch.org
---
GM crops: If it can't work, fake it
By Devinder Sharma
BioSpectrum (vol 2 Issue 2), Feb 2004

For years, they made us believe that genetically modified (GM) crops
reduce pesticide applications and thereby help in protecting the
environment. For years, they worked hard, manipulating scientific
data, to justify the increasing public investment in a risky
technology. For several years now, they have succeeded in diverting
the public attention from the more pressing problems of hunger and
malnutrition for the sake of private profit.

The citadel of scientific fraud has now begun to crumble.

Amidst reports that the pesticide applications on GM crops in the
United States have actually multiplied, comes the damming indictment
of the faulty technology from the crop fields of Africa. Trials to
develop a virus-resistant sweet potato, launched in Kenya in 2001 by
the US special envoy, Dr Andrew Young, have failed. The much-hyped
GM technology, that was claimed to usher in a green revolution in Africa,
has finally turned out to be scientific crap.

The virus-resistant sweet potato, donated by Monsanto to Kenya
Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), has been found to be
susceptible to viral attacks. This is the same sweet potato that a
black African woman, in her colourful traditional dress, has used in
her non-stop global sermons on feeding the hungry in Africa. Sponsored
by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and
Monsanto, Dr Florence Wambugu of KARI, has gone around the world telling us
how the transgenic potato could raise the crop yield from four to ten
tonnes per hectare.

The media loved her. The media, in fact, adores everyone who speaks
in favour of GM crops. After all, the future of the world lies only in
increasing corporate profits, which in turn benefits the media. So
whether it was The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, or the
discredited Fox TV, they all clamoured around her. Forbes magazine
even went to the extent of naming her among the 15 people from all
over the world who will 'reinvent the future'.

Reports now indicate that the transgenic sweet potato yields less than
the traditional varieties. In other words, knowing that the transgenic
sweet potato would'ít work, Dr Florence Wambugu, had faked it.

Earlier, Aaron deGrassi of the Institute of Development Studies at
Sussex (UK) too had picked up on the holes in Dr Florence Wambugu's
claims. In a detailed report on GM crops in Africa, he had said:
"Accounts of the transgenic sweet potato have used low figures on
average yields in Kenya to paint a picture of stagnation. An early
article stated 6 tons per hectare - without mentioning the data source
- which was then reproduced in subsequent analyses. However, FAO
statistics indicate 9.7 tons, and official statistics report 10.4." In
simple words, the transgenic sweet potato that was being presented as
the answer to Africa's food security was no improvement at all.

His warning went unheard. Meanwhile, the World Bank, USAID and
Monsanto continued to sponsor her research project - running for over
12 years now, involving 19 researchers, 16 of them with PhDs,
something unusual for Africa. If only the US $6 million that has been
incurred on her research project had been used for fighting hunger,
more than six million impoverished Africans could have been fed
adequately for as many as six years.

No one is however keen to remove hunger. Not only the World Bank,
USAID and the private companies, but even agricultural scientists are
looking forward to any and every possibility of latching on to hunger
and malnutrition.

The sweet potato debacle is the latest in the series of flops that
have tumbled out from the GM industry laboratories, and that too in
the name of ameliorating hunger and building food security. Ever since
the days of the Flavr Savr tomato, the magic bullets of this
technology have failed to enthuse the farmers and the consumers alike.
The 'golden rice', the protein-rich potato in India -- 'protato', and
now the fall of the transgenic sweet potato in Africa, are all classic
examples of the great exercise in public deception.

At the same time, the GM industry finds itself in a terrible fix over
reports that the cultivation of transgenic crops in the United States
has actually led to an increase in the application and use of
pesticides. This negates the only saving grace that the industry had
so far successfully used ñ GM crops reduce the use of pesticides
thereby leading not only to sustainable farming systems but also to a
safe environment. Drawing on the official records of the US Department
of Agriculture, Dr Charles Benbrook of the Northwest Science and
Environment Policy Centre at Idaho (USA), concludes that the planting
of 55 million acres of genetically engineered (GE) corn, soybeans and
cotton in the United States since 1996 has increased pesticide use by
about 50 million pounds.

Substantial increases in herbicide use on "herbicide tolerant" crops,
especially soybeans, was cited as the main reason that accounted for
the increase in pesticide use on GM crops compared to acres planted to
conventional plant varieties. 'Herbicide tolerant' plants are
genetically modified to ensure that those who grow these crops have no
other option but to also use the herbicides of the same companies. For
the agribusiness companies, 'herbicide tolerant' crops are the sure
means of profit security. That the American farmers have complied with
the profit motive of the companies is quite obvious.

Benbrook says that many farmers have had to spray incrementally more
herbicides on GM crops 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 the developing countries,
the implications of this study are enormous and of course serious.
Agribusiness companies will exploit the small farmers pushing them
more into a debt trap and at the same time do more damage to the
environment and crop sustainability.

Whether it is chemical pesticides or the pest-resistant GM crops, the
effectiveness against the target pest lasts only for a couple of
years. In the case of cotton, for instance, the agribusiness industry
is exhorting farmers to adopt Bt cotton, which has the inbuilt ability
to produce a toxin that kills the pink bollworms. In India, in the
very first year of commercial planting, Mahyco-Monsanto priced the
seed four times more than the existing price, thereby earning its
pound of flesh in the very first year. The Bt gene has been further
licensed to half a dozen companies from which a substantial royalty
has also been drawn.

The Bt cotton crop has, meanwhile, failed in the very first year of
planting in large parts of the country. While the farmers suffered,
the company that sold the seed has gone scot-free. By the time the
farmers wake up to the damage done by the Bt crop to the environment
as well as the economy, the seed companies will bring in the next
generation of transgenics. Agribusiness industry had done exactly the
same in the past five decades, bringing in more potent chemicals each
time the insect developed resistance to the pesticides. In the
bargain, the number of problem insects in cotton that the farmers are
now confronted with has multiplied to 70. In the 1960s, only seven
crop pests worried the farmers. In three decades, the problem pests
have multiplied by ten times.

All over the world, Bt cotton is now losing its resistance to the
pests as a result of which the pesticides consumption is going up. In
China, where over 7 million hectares are under Bt cotton cultivation,
pesticide usage has once again reverted back to almost what existed
before its commercialization in 1999. Scientists are therefore
refraining from conducting studies on pesticides saving four years
later, knowing that such an analysis would be damning for the
industry.

For India, the failure of the GM crop technology elsewhere should
serve as an eye-opener. We cannot afford to operate like the five
blind men for the simple reason that Indian agriculture is faced with
a severe crisis in sustainability. Already more than 16,000 farmers
have committed suicide, and several thousand more end up each year
selling their body organs. At the same time, 320 million continue to
go hungry. The national priority should be to feed the hungry now
rather than spend the same money for producing GM crops that feed the
hunger of a handful of private companies.

-----------------------
SUBSCRIPTIONS
-----------------------
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http://www.gmwatch.org/sub.asp

The article below gives the Monsanto line on wheat "substantial
equivalence". In the full paper the Glyphosate-tolerant wheat MON 71800
did diverge markedly from literature values for the parameters acid
detergent fraction and neutral detergent fraction but did not diverge as
markedly from "controls" provided on site in the field plots. The acid
and neutral detergent fraction are used to measure the quality of fodder
and they are considered important parameters. Significant divergence
from literature values should have raised alarm bells among regulators
but regulators seem overly agreeable when dealing with corporations.

Agric. Food Chem., ASAP Article 10.1021/jf035218u
S0021-8561(03)05218-X 2004

The Composition of Grain and Forage from Glyphosate Tolerant Wheat MON
71800 Is Equivalent to That of Conventional Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Janet C. Obert,* William P. Ridley, Ronald W. Schneider, Susan G.
Riordan, Margaret A. Nemeth, William A. Trujillo, Matthew L. Breeze, Roy
Sorbet, and James D. Astwood

Monsanto Company, 800 North Lindbergh Boulevard, St. Louis, Missouri
63167, Covance Laboratories, Inc., 3301 Kinsman Boulevard, Madison,
Wisconsin 53704, and Certus International, Inc., 1422 Elbridge Payne
Road, Suite 200, Chesterfield, Missouri 63017

Abstract:

Glyphosate tolerant wheat MON 71800, simply referred to as MON 71800,
contains a 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS) protein
from Agrobacterium sp. strain CP4 (CP4 EPSPS) that has a reduced
affinity for glyphosate as compared to the endogenous plant EPSPS
enzyme. The purpose of this work was to evaluate the compositional
equivalence of MON 71800 to its nontransgenic parent as well as to
conventional wheat varieties. The compositional assessment evaluated the
levels of proximates, amino acids, fatty acids, minerals, vitamins,
secondary metabolites, and antinutrients in wheat forage and grain grown
during two field seasons across a total of eight sites in the United
States and Canada. These data demonstrated that with respect to these
important nutritional components, the forage and grain from MON 71800
were equivalent to those of its nontransgenic parent and commercial
wheat varieties. These data, together with the previously established
safety of the CP4 EPSPS protein, support the conclusion that glyphosate
tolerant wheat MON 71800 is as safe and nutritious as commercial wheat
varieties.

ISIS Press Release 10/02/04

Austria Raises Hell over GM Safety

"ISP members, Susan Bardocz, Mae-Wan Ho and Arpad Pusztai
among others, briefed representatives of the Austrian government and
Austrian ngos in a workshop held in Vienna last November. One of the
Austrian government representatives, Josef Hoppichler, subsequently
breifed the US-Embassy in Austria. The US Embassy staff were so
impressed that Hoppichler's briefing was translated and circulated by
the USDA Foreign Agriculture Service under Global Agriculture
Information Network (GAIN). This circular is reproduced below."

####

Voluntary Report - public distribution

Date: 2/2/2004
GAIN Report Number: AU4002

Austria Biotechnology
Austrian Observations on Biotechnology in Food and
Agriculture

2004

Approved by: Robert H. Curtis, U.S. Embassy, Vienna

Prepared by: Josef Hoppichler

Report Highlights:
Following is a summary of the criticisms and questions
Austrian consumers and scientists raise while discussing Biotechnology. This
was translated from an Austrian Power Point presentation. The
Austrians are proud and protective of their mountain agriculture and
their organic crop production. Until we can answer these questions, or
sell Biotech products that provide immediate consumer benefits, the
Biotech promotion issue in Austria, and neighboring countries, will be
frustrated. Answers or replies to any of these observations, official
or unofficial, are welcomed. Biotech opponents believe that the
Biotech industry is unable to adequately respond to these
observations.

Critical Observations Regarding the Use of Genetic
Engineering in Agriculture and Food
By Josef Hoppichler, Federal Institute for Less-Favored
and Mountainous Areas

Our knowledge of Biotechnology does not even amount to one
pico-percent ...

DID YOU KNOW ...

a.. ... that all in all, only 10 scientific (peer-reviewed)
studies have been published on the health effects of GM-food and feed
(4 articles among these publications were published by the group
around Arpad Pusztai and S. Ewen)?

(Pryme I, 2003. In-vivo studies on possible health consequences
of GM-Food a. Feed, Nutrition and Health, 2003, Vol. 17, pp. 1-8.
Despite the fact that the world is full of scientific opinions on the
non-hazardous nature of GM-food, "there is only very limited data on
the safety of GM-food." (Domingo JL (2000), Health risks of
genetically modified foods: many opinions but few data, Science, 288,
1748-1749)

a.. ... that in many cases, the form of integration of
the various synthetic genetic constructions as well as their integration
frequencies into the various different plant genomes are not exactly
known, and that the stability of integration is more than questionable
(e.g. jumping genes)?

(Mae-Wan Ho, Transgenic Lines Proven Unstable,
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/TLPU.php Collonier C. et al., Characterization
of commercial GMO inserts: a source of useful material to study genome
fluidity. www.crii-gen.org)

a.. ... that we do not know the exact composition of
the new proteins, let alone their folding, and that feeding attempts or
various allergenicity tests have been carried out on the basis of the
bacterial proteins only?

(Cf. e.g. Kawata M., Pacific Ecologist, Nov. 2003:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0311/SOO113.htm)

a.. Regarding the evaluation of EU authorization dossiers:
"Experimental toxicological investigations have only been carried out
sporadically .... In none of the cases, potential toxicology-relevant
effects of the insertion of genes were considered .... In none of the
applications (for authorization) was the direct examination of the
potentially allergenic properties of the genetically modified plant
and/or the genetically modified plant product supported by experiments
...."

(SP÷K A., HOFER H., VALENTA R., KIENZL-PLOCHBERGER K., LEHNER P.,
GAUGITSCH H.: Toxikologie und Allergologie von GVO-Produkten
(Toxicology and Allergology of GMO-products), Monographien Band
109, UBA (Federal Environment Agency), Wien (Vienna) 2002.

a.. ... that particularly in connection with the use
of herbicide-resistant plants such as the Roundup Ready
soybean, Roundup has a toxic effect upon sperm in mammals and has a potential of
damaging the hormone balance?

(Yousef MI. et al., J Environ Sci Health B. 1995, July 30(4):
513-34; Walsh LP. et al., Roundup inhibits steroidogenesis by
disrupting steroidogenic acute regulatory (StAR) protein expression,
Environ Health Perspect. 2000, Aug. 108(: 769-76)

a.. ... that 43 % of children reported by their parents as
showing severe attention deficit disorders (ADD/ADHD) had fathers who
applied "Phosphonamino" herbicide?

(Garry VF. et al, Birth Defects, Season of Conception, and
Sex of Children Born to Pesticide Applicators Living in the Red
River Valley of Minnesota, USA, Environ Health Perspect. 2002, 110 Suppl. 3:441-9)

a.. ... that analyses of the Danish "Pesticide Leaching
Assessment Programme" found glyphosate and its degradation products
in groundwater above the warning concentration of 0.1µg/l? Denmark has
thus restricted the application of Roundup.
GMOs cannot be contained - coexistence is impossible in
small-scale farming structures!

DID YOU KNOW ...

a.. ... that in Western Canada, approximately 2.25
million hectares of Roundup oilseed rape (Canola) are cultivated randomly in
terms of geographic distribution, and that on account of the broad
application of Roundup by way of ploughless cultivation, the entire
second growth as well as ruderal populations are extremely
contaminated with GM-oilseed rape, and that double resistances
(glyphosate, gluphosinate) are not uncommon?

(Cf. e.g. R.C. Van Acker et al, GM/non-GM what
co-existence in Canada: Roundup Ready wheat as a case study.
http://www.agrsci.dk/gmcc-03/gmcc_proceedings.pdf)

a.. If politics were to establish a threshold of 0.1%
of GMO-contamination, coexistence of GM and non-GM cultivation would
not be possible. The consumer is practically expected to accept a constant
minimum GMO-share in food of up to 0.09% percent without being
aware of it.

(Cf. e.g. AEBC (2003), Coexistence and Liability Report,

http://www.aebc.gov.uk/aebc/coexistence_liability.shtml)

The Precautionary Principle:

a.. Open questions: Effects upon food: toxicology,
nutritional physiology, immunology, allergenic potential, endocrine
effect?

a.. Open questions: Effects upon the environment: e.g.
outcrossings, non-target organisms?

a.. Result: There is no safe model of prognosis:
Scientific opinions are extremely weakly founded, "...
there is no evidence to indicate that the placing on the market
... is (not)likely to cause adverse effects on human and animal health and the
environment."

Even opinions of leading scientific bodies contain mistakes:

The opinion on T25 maize of the EU-SCP, for example, has been corrected:

"... and the herbicide tolerance trait should not transfer
to any other varieties of cultivated maize" had to be removed,
which is why the opinion was published twice. ("To err is human")

a.. Approaches: Rio Declaration of Principles, CBD,
Biosafety Protocol, SPS Agreement

a.. Criteria contained also in the EU Treaty (Article 174) - Precaution and
Prevention:

In developing its environmental policy, the Community takes into account

1.. the available scientific and technical data; 2..
the environmental conditions of the individual regions
of the Community;

3.. the economic and social development of the
Community on the whole as well as the balanced development
of its regions.

Further Demands: proportionate; non-discriminating; harmonized
with measures previously taken; based on cost-benefit evaluations;
constantly examined as to the scientific background; clear regulations
regarding the burden of proof; questions as to reversibility.

a.. Backgrounds - other criteria:
Hormone administration to farm animals, rBST, BSE (mad cow
disease), ... but also the multi-dimensional structure of European
agriculture and the multi-functional requirements, i.e. strong
overlapping of agricultural and living spaces.

Prospects for non-GM Areas
a.. Non-GM areas are necessary

1.. in order to link the protection of biodiversity
with sustainable agriculture (no release in nature
protection zones; cf.
FSE in GB)

2.. in order to provide development areas for organic
farming

3.. in order to make available consolidated
areas for non-GM seed production

4.. in order to guarantee a non-GM preservation of
plant genetic resources

5.. as balancing and regeneration areas in case of
unforeseen developments

a.. "Polluter Pays" Principle has to apply to GMO-contamination:
Letter by Tom Daschle (U.S. Senate Democratic Majority
Leader, November, 2001) in the course of the ITPGR negotiations:

"Finally, any damages caused to farmers through lower
prices, lost markets or contamination due to genetically modified products
should be reimbursed by the company producing any such product."

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

> information recently sent by Julie Watson of ERMA to GE FREE NORTHLAND in
>response to info requested about govt action on RCGM recommendations

"l. Can you (or the appropriate ERMA staff member) advise on what
steps have been taken to implement Recommendation 6.2 of the
Royal Commission on Genetic Modification

(see p. 352 of the RCGM July 2001 Report)

"Recommendation 6.2
that all approval forms, standards and regulations relating to
the development of genetically modified organisms in containment
be reviewed and updated."

her response:

What steps have taken to implement recommendation 6.2 of the Royal
Commission on Genetic Modification Ö..î that all approval forms, standards
and regulations relating to the development of genetically modified
organisms in containment be reviewed and updated.î

In its response to the recommendations of the Royal Commission for Genetic
Modification, the government accepted the intent of recommendation 6.2,
which was to ensure that administrative and regulatory processes are kept up
to date, are appropriate and able to respond to new developments in GM
technology. Specific actions have included:

1. Approval forms: The Royal Commission noted that there was (in 2001) a
single application form for approval to develop in containment any
genetically modified organism covering all research from PC 1 (the lowest
level of containment) through to field test. ERMA has gone through an
extensive review of all its application forms and updated them or created
new forms in line with the RCGM recommendation. Note that ERMA will continue
to review and amend its application forms as required.

2. Standards and Regulations: The Royal Commission heard evidence that
while the regulations applying in 2001 for containment facilities were
appropriate, there were some anomalies. These reflected the fact that the
regulations had originally been written for microbiological laboratories.
As a result they did not always differentiate between classes of organisms
such as mammals, plants, viruses, bacteria and fungi, with their differing
methods of reproduction and dispersal.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Biosecurity Authority Standard for
contained laboratories for genetic modification work has been reviewed in
the light of those comments and have been updated (please note review dates
on the listed standards).

These standards can be accessed from the MAF web-site through the following
URLs
Animals & microorganisms:
http://www.maf.govt.nz/biosecurity/border/transitional-facilities/animals/index.htm
Plants:
http://www.maf.govt.nz/biosecurity/border/transitional-facilities/plants/index.htm
Note that the standards are subject to review and amendment at any time to
ensure that they continue to meet current needs.

Zelka: "I am also interested in clarification on progress made on the
following three points in the RCGM report:

Recommendation 8.2

that Government facilitate the development of a voluntary label indicating a
food has not been genetically modified, contains no genetically modified
ingredients and has not been manufactured using a process involving genetic
modification

Recommendation 8.3

that, as a matter of priority, the food Adminstration Authority disseminate
information on the labelling regime for genetically modified foods and
consumer rights in relation to foods made available for consumption in
restaurants and takeaway bars.

Recommendation 8.4
that the Food Administration Authority produce and distribute consumer
information on the use of gene technology in the production of food."


Your questions re the items above are within the jurisdiction of the New
Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA). I am currently waiting for
information from them which I will forward to you.


Julie Watson
Group Manager, Public Awareness
Environmental Risk Management Authority
P O Box 131
Wellington
Phone 04 918 4824 or mobile 021 674 954
www.ermanz.govt.nz

"It seems that an industry in which the PhD is the intellectual norm is
either incapable of learning a simple lesson from the past or cannot bring
itself to act appropriately, despite what it has learned previously".

Could this be a small landmark for'Nature Biotechnology'?

Editorial

Nature Biotechnology
doi:10.1038/nbt0204-133
February 2004 Volume 22 Number 2 p 133

http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nbt/journal/v22/n2/full/nbt0204-133.html

Drugs in crops - the unpalatable truth

In the United States, genetically modified (GM) wheat (containing predictably a gene for resistance to a proprietary herbicide) is on the verge of approval. In Europe, having come unscathed through the UK farm-scale trials, GM maize has received the go-ahead from both ACRE, the UK government advisory group on GM crops, and from English Nature, the UK government's advisor on the environment. And yet, despite the progress with these crops, biotech companies seem determined to embark on another suicidal tussle with the anti-biotech lobby, in the process exposing their businesses not only to accusations of high-handedness and negligence but to unnecessary commercial risks. It seems that an industry in which the PhD is the intellectual norm is either incapable of learning a simple lesson from the past or cannot bring itself to act appropriately, despite what it has learned previously.

This time around, the tussle concerns the production of pharmaceuticals in GM food crops. Many companies, among them Diversa, Dow, Epicyte, Samyang, Genex, Meristem Therapeutics, Maxygen and ProdiGene are exploring the expression of biopharmaceuticals in corn (maize)—130 acres of which were grown in the United States in 2002 (of a total transgenic acreage of 31.1 million). Other organizations are looking at other major crops: rice, potatoes, alfalfa. One might expect - and some in the industry obviously do—that drug production in plants could be good for the image of GM crops. After all, new/cheaper medicines are the sort of thing that consumers want.

The problem is—as anti-GM lobbyists have argued already—that the production of drugs or drug intermediates in food or feed crop species bears the potential danger that pharmaceutical substances could find their way into the food chain through grain admixture, or pollen-borne gene flow (in maize, at least) or some other accidental mix-up because of the excusably human inability to distinguish between crops for food and crops for drugs. The 'contamination' of soybeans and non-GM corn in 2002 with a corn engineered by Prodigene to produce an experimental pig vaccine shows just how plausible this is (Nat.Biotechnol. 21, 3, 2003). This position is not anti-GM (something industry should appreciate)—we should be concerned about the presence of a potentially toxic substance in food plants. After all, is this really so different from a conventional pharmaceutical or biopharmaceutical manufacturer packaging its pills in candy wrappers or flour bags or storing its compounds or production batches untended outside the perimeter fence?

The difficulty is that, when it comes to pharming, the biotech industry and some of its supporters seem to be taking a stand that is principled and libertarian, rather than sensible. They argue there is an unalienable right for every corporate entity to develop whichever technology it wants and to undertake that development wherever it wants (as long as it is safe to do so, of course).

The specific right in question is the right to grow drug-containing corn crops in the US Corn Belt. After a shift in position at the beginning of 2003, the US Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) is now firmly in this libertarian camp.

But if an industry association has a role—and BIO certainly does—then it should be to represent the longer-term interests of its broad membership. It should be trying to ensure that in the not-too-distant future, the commercial prospects for pharma plants are unhindered by predictable and avoidable political and social concerns. BIO's role ought to be to steer its membership past the obstacles, rather than plotting a course for a head-on collision.

The predictable obstacles are: that regulatory oversight will become more stringent and exhaustive because of the juxtaposition of drug crop and food crop; that protest lobbies will obstruct the drugs-in-food-crops companies directly through the legal system; that they will also obstruct them indirectly by applying pressure on corn producers generally; that producers and farmers' interest groups will run away very quickly from the fight as soon as any of their markets are threatened; that European corn producers will decry the potential commingling of food-corn and drug-corn; that a consignment of drug-corn will find its way into bird-feed mix and, by an amazing coincidence, be picked up by random tests conducted by Friends of the Earth; that 'Pigeon Fanciers [Twitchers] Against GM' will mobilize celebrity ornithologists against drug-corn; that politicians in technologically lagging nations will introduce trade barriers, such as traceability, that have little technical merit but much populist appeal.
In short, the whole farce of GM food could play out again, only this time with much greater justification.

It is possible to preempt such a mess. The key is to put in place some form of foolproof segregation between food crops and drug crops. And that does not mean increased fallow zones, special cleaning routines for farm machinery, increased frequency of inspections or any other of the measures introduced last year by the US Department of Agriculture.

Instead, there are two rather obvious and nontechnical levels at which that segregation could work effectively. The first is geographical. If drugs must be produced in food crops, then those crops should be grown away from non-drug food crops. Drug crops are not commodities; it shouldn't be necessary to use the highest yielding strains of corn under the climatic conditions for which that strain has been designed (a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that even with present low yields, only 0.19% of total US corn production would be required to supply every insulin-dependent diabetic on the planet). So don't grow your drug-corn in the Corn Belt—grow it in California or New England. Better still, if you want to segregate geographically, grow the crop on an island where that crop is not grown for food or feed. There is already a company, for instance, that is planning to develop pharmaceutical barley and grow it in Iceland, a country that can grow the crop, but doesn't.

The second and possibly more effective form of segregation would be culture. Simply don't use food plants for producing drugs. Why not? Precisely because they are food plants. This is not a biological distinction, it is a cultural one, but it is the source of most of the anxiety that the public is likely to feel and which the lobby groups are likely to mobilize. In essence, the only reasons that the major food crops are attractive as pharming hosts are we know how to grow/harvest them efficiently and we know how to manipulate these species genetically. Let's grow pharma plants, but let those plants be Arabidopsis, or flax, or duckweed.

Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 17:37:21 -0000
From: "Brian Marshall"
Subject: Information : Molecular Farming - World patent list

http://www.molecularfarming.com/molecular-farming-patents.html

Gives a complete list of every patent ever granted or applied for,
right up to the end of 2003, in the future industry of Molecular
Farming / Plant Biopharming. This will give anyone interested an
insight into what's developing worldwide with all the various aspects
of genetically engineering plants to produce recombinant proteins -
from edible vaccines to biodegradable plastics.

Please feel free to link from your website to this, or to
www.MolecularFarming.com .

I was recently asked

> could you please tell me in a nutshell why 'they' are
>wanting GM in the world?

It now occurs to me that my answer may be of wider interest:

It's usually dangerous to infer others' motives, but I can speculate:-

1 Most of the big pushers are our old friends the chemical giants -
Monsanto etc - whose standards of ethics have been for many decades
notorious.

2 Within the GM-labs with ostensibly commercial goals are some scientists
who dream of a Nobel ... The excellent Liebe Cavalieri suggested in his
early landmark criticism 'The Double-Edged Helix' that the Nobel Cttee
should declare they wouldn't give any NP for GM ...

3 There is a lust for power which can tempt those who are in a position to
create novel organisms. Re-read Genesis 3 with this in mind.

4 GM happened along in a period of history when governmental ethics had
been severely weakened by Christianity's deepening & widening loss of
confidence, and increasing white-anting by evil secular ideologies. The
attempt was doomed within decades to implement Christian ethics in legal
regimes lacking any suitable role for Christian leaders to impinge on the
state within legislation, regulations, judicial doctrines, etc. Greed &
selfishness will prevail if no transcendental authority for ethics is
widely believed in. Not only communist but also mixed-economy democracies
e.g NZ have been failing for many decades now to enforce ethics in business
and in technology assessment for this main reason.

5 Once huge investments have been sunk - hundreds of billions in GM -
it is difficult for the offenders to admit they've been wrong all along.
They fail to see that the sooner they come clean about their errors the
less extremely stupid they will look in admitting their failures.
Meanwhile, hope springs persistently within a given corporation that
they'll develop at least one or two saleable items (which nearly all such
corporations have yet to produce) to give the impression their hype was not
entirely misleading.

I would add that puzzles remain! Why, for instance, are the
venture-drongos so very easy to dupe with grossly implausible GM-capers?
Why could such an experienced gang of crooks as Bayer be so readily duped
by the small Scots gang "Pharmaceutical" Proteins Ltd with their rhAAT
furphy (and others in their "prdkt pipeline")? Why are the science
guardians - RSNZ, RS, USNAS, etc - so dismally incompetent regarding GM
(Baron Robt M May, notably)? Why is biology so neglected, ousted
extensively from universities by gene-jiggerers?

R

Well at last it's caught the Pentagon's interest! It took more than 35
years for them to acknowledge the facts, which they were given, and are
just now paying attention too - maybe? Vindicated, yes, . . . but without
any joy.

CLIMATE COLLAPSE

The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare
The climate could change radically, and fast.
That would be the mother of all national security issues.

FORTUNE Monday, January 26, 2004

By David Stipp

Global warming may be bad news for future generations, but let's face it,
most of us spend as little time worrying about it as we did about al Qaeda
before 9/11. Like the terrorists, though, the seemingly remote climate risk
may hit home sooner and harder than we ever imagined. In fact, the
prospect has become so real that the Pentagon's strategic planners are
grappling with it.

The threat that has riveted their attention is this: Global warming, rather
than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate
to a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system
that controls the world's climate can lurch from one state to another in
less than a decadeólike a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it
flips over. Scientists don't know how close the system is to a critical
threshold. But abrupt climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant
future. If it does, the need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many
societiesóthereby upsetting the geopolitical balance of power.

Though triggered by warming, such change would probably cause cooling in
the Northern Hemisphere, leading to longer, harsher winters in much of the
U.S. and Europe. Worse, it would cause massive droughts, turning farmland
to dust bowls and forests to ashes. Picture last fall's California
wildfires as a regular thing. Or imagine similar disasters destabilizing
nuclear powers such as Pakistan or Russiaóit's easy to see why the Pentagon
has become interested in abrupt climate change.

Climate researchers began getting seriously concerned about it a decade
ago, after studying temperature indicators embedded in ancient layers of
Arctic ice. The data show that a number of dramatic shifts in average
temperature took place in the past with shocking speedóin some cases, just
a few years.

The case for angst was buttressed by a theory regarded as the most likely
explanation for the abrupt changes. The eastern U.S. and northern Europe,
it seems, are warmed by a huge Atlantic Ocean current that flows north from
the tropicsóthat's why Britain, at Labrador's latitude, is relatively
temperate. Pumping out warm, moist air, this "great conveyor" current gets
cooler and denser as it moves north. That causes the current to sink in the
North Atlantic, where it heads south again in the ocean depths. The sinking
process draws more water from the south, keeping the roughly circular
current on the go.

But when the climate warms, according to the theory, fresh water from
melting Arctic glaciers flows into the North Atlantic, lowering the
current's salinityóand its density and tendency to sink. A warmer climate
also increases rainfall and runoff into the current, further lowering its
saltiness. As a result, the conveyor loses its main motive force and can
rapidly collapse, turning off the huge heat pump and altering the climate
over much of the Northern Hemisphere.

Scientists aren't sure what caused the warming that triggered such
collapses in the remote past. (Clearly it wasn't humans and their
factories.) But the data from Arctic ice and other sources suggest the
atmospheric changes that preceded earlier collapses were dismayingly
similar to today's global warming. As the Ice Age began drawing to a close
about 13,000 years ago, for example, temperatures in Greenland rose to
levels near those of recent decades. Then they abruptly plunged as the
conveyor apparently shut down, ushering in the "Younger Dryas" period, a
1,300-year reversion to ice-age conditions. (A dryas is an Arctic flower
that flourished in Europe at the time.)

Though Mother Nature caused past abrupt climate changes, the one that may
be shaping up today probably has more to do with us. In 2001 an
international panel of climate experts concluded that there is increasingly
strong evidence that most of the global warming observed over the past 50
years is attributable to human activitiesómainly the burning of fossil
fuels such as oil and coal, which release heat-trapping carbon dioxide.
Indicators of the warming include shrinking Arctic ice, melting alpine
glaciers, and markedly earlier springs at northerly latitudes. A few years
ago such changes seemed signs of possible trouble for our kids or
grandkids. Today they seem portents of a cataclysm that may not
conveniently wait until we're history.

Accordingly, the spotlight in climate research is shifting from gradual to
rapid change. In 2002 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report
concluding that human activities could trigger abrupt change. Last year the
World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, included a session at which
Robert Gagosian, director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in
Massachusetts, urged policymakers to consider the implications of possible
abrupt climate change within two decades.

Such jeremiads are beginning to reverberate more widely. Billionaire Gary
Comer, founder of Lands' End, has adopted abrupt climate change as a
philanthropic cause. Hollywood has also discovered the issueónext summer
20th Century Fox is expected to release The Day After Tomorrow, a
big-budget disaster movie starring Dennis Quaid as a scientist trying to
save the world from an ice age precipitated by global warming.

Fox's flick will doubtless be apocalyptically edifying. But what would
abrupt climate change really be like?

Scientists generally refuse to say much about that, citing a data deficit.
But recently, renowned Department of Defense planner Andrew Marshall
sponsored a groundbreaking effort to come to grips with the question. A
Pentagon legend, Marshall, 82, is known as the Defense Department's
"Yoda" balding, bespectacled sage whose pronouncements on looming risks
have long had an outsized influence on defense policy. Since 1973 he has
headed a secretive think tank whose role is to envision future threats to
national security. The Department of Defense's push on ballistic-missile
defense is known as his brainchild. Three years ago Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld picked him to lead a sweeping review on military
"transformation," the shift toward nimble forces and smart weapons.

When scientists' work on abrupt climate change popped onto his radar
screen, Marshall tapped another eminent visionary, Peter Schwartz, to write
a report on the national-security implications of the threat. Schwartz
formerly headed planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group and has since consulted
with organizations ranging from the CIA to DreamWorksóhe helped create
futuristic scenarios for Steven Spielberg's film Minority Report. Schwartz
and co-author Doug Randall at the Monitor Group's Global Business Network,
a scenario-planning think tank in Emeryville, Calif., contacted top climate
experts and pushed them to talk about what-ifs that they usually shy away
fromóat least in public.

The result is an unclassified report, completed late last year, that the
Pentagon has agreed to share with FORTUNE. It doesn't pretend to be a
forecast. Rather, it sketches a dramatic but plausible scenario to help
planners think about coping strategies. Here is an abridged version:

A total shutdown of the ocean conveyor might lead to a big chill like the
Younger Dryas, when icebergs appeared as far south as the coast of
Portugal. Or the conveyor might only temporarily slow down, potentially
causing an era like the "Little Ice Age," a time of hard winters, violent
storms, and droughts between 1300 and 1850. That period's weather extremes
caused horrific famines, but it was mild compared with the Younger Dryas.

For planning purposes, it makes sense to focus on a midrange case of abrupt
change. A century of cold, dry, windy weather across the Northern
Hemisphere that suddenly came on 8,200 years ago fits the bill - its severity
fell between that of the Younger Dryas and the Little Ice Age. The event is
thought to have been triggered by a conveyor collapse after a time of
rising temperatures not unlike today's global warming. Suppose it recurred,
beginning in 2010. Here are some of the things that might happen by 2020:

At first the changes are easily mistaken for normal weather
variation - allowing skeptics to dismiss them as a "blip" of little
importance and leaving policymakers and the public paralyzed with
uncertainty. But by 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is
happening. The average temperature has fallen by up to five degrees
Fahrenheit in some regions of North America and Asia and up to six degrees
in parts of Europe. (By comparison, the average temperature over the North
Atlantic during the last ice age was ten to 15 degrees lower than it is
today.) Massive droughts have begun in key agricultural regions. The
average annual rainfall has dropped by nearly 30% in northern Europe, and
its climate has become more like Siberia's.

Violent storms are increasingly common as the conveyor becomes wobbly on
its way to collapse. A particularly severe storm causes the ocean to break
through levees in the Netherlands, making coastal cities such as the Hague
unlivable. In California the delta island levees in the Sacramento River
area are breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from
north to south.

Megadroughts afflict the U.S., especially in the southern states, along
with winds that are 15% stronger on average than they are now, causing
widespread dust storms and soil loss. The U.S. is better positioned to cope
than most nations, however, thanks to its diverse growing climates, wealth,
technology, and abundant resources. That has a downside, though: It
magnifies the haves-vs.-have-nots gap and fosters bellicose finger-pointing
at America.

Turning inward, the U.S. effectively seeks to build a fortress around
itself to preserve resources. Borders are strengthened to hold back
starving immigrants from Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean
islandsówaves of boat people pose especially grim problems. Tension between
the U.S. and Mexico rises as the U.S. reneges on a 1944 treaty that
guarantees water flow from the Colorado River into Mexico. America is
forced to meet its rising energy demand with options that are costly both
economically and politically, including nuclear power and onerous Middle
Eastern contracts. Yet it survives without catastrophic losses.

Europe, hardest hit by its temperature drop, struggles to deal with
immigrants from Scandinavia seeking warmer climes to the south. Southern
Europe is beleaguered by refugees from hard-hit countries in Africa and
elsewhere. But Western Europe's wealth helps buffer it from catastrophe.

Australia's size and resources help it cope, as does its locationóthe
conveyor shutdown mainly affects the Northern Hemisphere. Japan has fewer
resources but is able to draw on its social cohesion to copeóits government
is able to induce population-wide behavior changes to conserve resources.

China's huge population and food demand make it particularly vulnerable. It
is hit by increasingly unpredictable monsoon rains, which cause devastating
floods in drought-denuded areas. Other parts of Asia and East Africa are
similarly stressed. Much of Bangladesh becomes nearly uninhabitable because
of a rising sea level, which contaminates inland water supplies. Countries
whose diversity already produces conflict, such as India and Indonesia, are
hard-pressed to maintain internal order while coping with the unfolding
changes.

As the decade progresses, pressures to act become irresistible - history
shows that whenever humans have faced a choice between starving or raiding,
they raid. Imagine Eastern European countries, struggling to feed their
populations, invading Russiaówhich is weakened by a population that is
already in declineófor access to its minerals and energy supplies. Or
picture Japan eyeing nearby Russian oil and gas reserves to power
desalination plants and energy-intensive farming. Envision nuclear-armed
Pakistan, India, and China skirmishing at their borders over refugees,
access to shared rivers, and arable land. Or Spain and Portugal fighting
over fishing rightsófisheries are disrupted around the world as water
temperatures change, causing fish to migrate to new habitats.

Growing tensions engender novel alliances. Canada joins fortress America in
a North American bloc. (Alternatively, Canada may seek to keep its abundant
hydropower for itself, straining its ties with the energy-hungry U.S.)
North and South Korea align to create a technically savvy, nuclear-armed
entity. Europe forms a truly unified bloc to curb its immigration problems
and protect against aggressors. Russia, threatened by impoverished
neighbors in dire straits, may join the European bloc.

Nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable. Oil supplies are stretched thin
as climate cooling drives up demand. Many countries seek to shore up their
energy supplies with nuclear energy, accelerating nuclear proliferation.
Japan, South Korea, and Germany develop nuclear-weapons capabilities, as do
Iran, Egypt, and North Korea. Israel, China, India, and Pakistan also are
poised to use the bomb.

The changes relentlessly hammer the world's "carrying capacity"óthe natural
resources, social organizations, and economic networks that support the
population. Technological progress and market forces, which have long
helped boost Earth's carrying capacity, can do little to offset the
crisisóit is too widespread and unfolds too fast.

As the planet's carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern reemerges:
the eruption of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy
supplies. As Harvard archeologist Steven LeBlanc has noted, wars over
resources were the norm until about three centuries ago. When such
conflicts broke out, 25% of a population's adult males usually died. As
abrupt climate change hits home, warfare may again come to define human
life.

Over the past decade, data have accumulated suggesting that the
plausibility of abrupt climate change is higher than most of the scientific
community, and perhaps all of the political community, are prepared to
accept. In light of such findings, we should be asking when abrupt change
will happen, what the impacts will be, and how we can prepareónot whether
it will really happen. In fact, the climate record suggests that abrupt
change is inevitable at some point, regardless of human activity. Among
other things, we should:

- Speed research on the forces that can trigger abrupt climate change, how
it unfolds, and how we'll know it's occurring.

- Sponsor studies on the scenarios that might play out, including
ecological, social, economic, and political fallout on key food-producing
regions.

- Identify "no regrets" strategies to ensure reliable access to food and
water and to ensure our national security.

- Form teams to prepare responses to possible massive migration, and food
and water shortages.

- Explore ways to offset abrupt coolingótoday it appears easier to warm
than to cool the climate via human activities, so there may be
"geo-engineering" options available to prevent a catastrophic temperature
drop.

In sum, the risk of abrupt climate change remains uncertain, and it is
quite possibly small. But given its dire consequences, it should be
elevated beyond a scientific debate. Action now matters, because we may be
able to reduce its likelihood of happening, and we can certainly be better
prepared if it does. It is time to recognize it as a national security
concern.

The Pentagon's reaction to this sobering report isn't knownóin keeping with
his reputation for reticence, Andy Marshall declined to be interviewed. But
the fact that he's concerned may signal a sea change in the debate about
global warming. At least some federal thought leaders may be starting to
perceive climate change less as a political annoyance and more as an issue
demanding action.

If so, the case for acting now to address climate change, long a hard sell
in Washington, may be gaining influential support, if only behind the
scenes. Policymakers may even be emboldened to take steps such as
tightening fuel-economy standards for new passenger vehicles, a measure
that would simultaneously lower emissions of greenhouse gases, reduce
America's perilous reliance on OPEC oil, cut its trade deficit, and put
money in consumers' pockets. Oh, yesóand give the Pentagon's fretful Yoda a
little less to worry about.

Feedback: HYPERLINK "mailto:dstipp@fortunemail.com"

The severe consequence of virus jump between species should have been a
warning to genetic engineers who use virus vectors in attempted gene therapy.

R

February 6, 2004 The Scientist

Flu virulence linked to species jump
Structural information on the 1918 influenza virus could help control a
future pandemic

By Cathy Holding

The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 killed more people than died in the
First World War - at least 20 million - but why this strain of the disease
was so virulent has remained a mystery. Analysis of the crystal
structure of viral hemagglutinin (HA) - a major surface antigen that
mediates binding to the host cell - shows the 1918 virus antigen is
related to the avian antigen, suggesting that the virulence resulted
from a recent chicken/human cross-species jump.

Alan Hay, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre
for Reference and Research on Influenza at the National Institute for
Medical Research (NIMR) and who was not involved in the studies, told
The Scientist, "All this information helps us to understand what sort of
changes may facilitate human infection by an avian virus. The
accumulated data that we have on the structural detail helps us to look
for changes which might have an impact on the ability of these viruses
to spread within the [human] population."

In the first of two papers published in February 6 Science, Steve
Gamblin and colleagues, also at the NIMR, determined the structures of
HA expressed from DNA recovered from tissues infected with the virus in
1918 together with those of the 1934 human and the 1930 swine HAs in
complex with analogs of avian and human receptors. The structures were
solved by molecular replacement and crystallographic statistics. The
authord found the H1 HAs to be most similar to those of the H5 subtype
(as are most avian viruses) (Science, DOI:10.1126/science.1093155,
February 6, 2004).

James Stevens and coworkers at the Scripps Institute cloned the
ectodomain of the HA gene from the 1918 influenza virus A/South
Carolina/1/18 (18HA0) in a baculovirus expression system. Its structure
was determined by molecular replacement to 3 Å resolution. By
superimposing other published HAs onto the 18HA0 monomer via their HA2
domains, the authors showed that 18HA0 is most closely related to the
avian H5 subtype, while the human H3 subtype is the most divergent
(Science, DOI:10.1126/science.1093373, February 6, 2004).

ìIf it [the 1918 subtype] was an avian-like virus, it would have to be
adapted to some extent to get into human cells because avian virus
receptors are different from the human viral receptors. There seem to be
some differences around the [HA precursor] cleavage site that had not
appeared on human viruses before and which we think are worth
investigating to see whether that might be some reason why this virus
was more effective,î said Ian Wilson, coauthor of the second paper.

John Skehel, coauthor of the first paper, believes they have the answer.
ìBy comparison with other avian binding sites that we've analyzed, this
1918 binding site has a slightly different shape, and that shape allows
particular residues in the site to bind to human receptors.î

Hay said the Thailand outbreak is very serious because it is not clear
how easy it will be to contain or control it. He believes that the
longer it persists and the greater it spreads, the more likely it is
that, with more human cases, the virus will acquire some adaptation to
the human host.

Carol Cardona, an extension poultry veterinarian in California, told The
Scientist, "This is a virus that is spreading very easily in chickens.
Chickens are kept in very large numbers and flocks in every country.
This is an explosive chicken disease, so even if it doesn't spread from
human to human, it's a very big problem. It's out of control in the
chickens right now. It's not out of control in other countries, but it
is across Asia."

"Influenza is an annual problem that kills millions of people, and the
more information we have, particularly with more distant strains that
are likely to cause pandemics [the better], and that's really the
concern: as to whether we can actually look at these structures and get
information that will ultimately be able to help us when a new pandemic
arises," said Wilson.

Links for this article

Worldwide flu pandemic strikes, 1918ñ1919
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dm18fl.html

Hay Group, National Institute for Medical Research
http://www.nimr.mrc.ac.uk/virology/hay/

Gamblin Group, National Institute for Medical Research
http://www.nimr.mrc.ac.uk/protstruct/gamblin/

S. Gamblin et al., ìThe structure and receptor-binding properties of the
1918 influenza hemagglutinin,î Science, DOI:10.1126/science.1093155,
February 6, 2004.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1093155

J. Stevens et al., ìStructure of human H1 hemagglutinin precursor from
the extinct 1918 influenza virus,î Science, DOI:10.1126/science.1093373,
February 6, 2004.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1093373

Research Projects in the Wilson Laboratory, Scripps Research Institute
http://www.scripps.edu/mb/wilson/aug2001/frames/wl_research_fra me.html

ìAvian influenza A(H5N1)óUpdate 15,î World Health Organization Disease
Outbreak News, February 2, 2004
http://www.who.int/csr/don/2004_02_02/en/

http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200401/lol1.asp
Sierra magazine Jan/Feb 2004 p13

A Better Way

Biosafety Takes Root

The Bush administration has berated the European Union as "Luddite" and
"antiscientific" for raising concerns about genetically modified organisms,
but it's actually the United States that's not keeping up with the times.

In September, the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety went into effect, with
the backing of 57 nations and the European Community. The landmark
agreement sets up disclosure standards for exporters and allows nations to
reject biotech shipments from other signatory countries. Genes from
bioengineered crops can mix with other plants, a process that could disrupt
ecosystems by introducing varieties invulnerable to pests and herbicides.
Genetically modified food may also plague humans with new allergens and
make antibiotics less effective, though studies of these problems remain
inconclusive.

The Cartagena treaty covers genetically modified seeds, animals, and crops,
but not processed food made from the same sources, an exclusion made under
pressure by the United States - a major biotech exporter - and its allies
Canada, Australia, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. Despite the concession,
the United States has not signed the protocol.

- Jennifer Hattam

ALSO NOTE: More about biotech at

from the flying pig dept !

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=487945

Council warns on questions about GM-crop arguments
Feb 3 2004
Steve Dube, The Western Mail

A NEW case study by the UK's largest research funding council says
science is not yet ready to answer all the questions about
genetically-modified crops.

The Economic Social Research Council warns that crucial questions on
potential benefits and risks to human health and the environment remained
unanswered, despite the fact that ministers are planning to make major
decisions.

Dr Ruth Levitt, senior visiting research fellow at the ESRC, Queen Mary
College, University of London, says many questions are not about hard facts but about values andarguments that are viewed differently by the interested parties.

Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett is expected to make an announcement
this month on whether the Government will allow GM oil seed rape, sugar beet
and maize to be grown commercially in the UK.

But Dr Levitt says the implications of the Government's decision go far
beyond the particular fate of these crops.

"The underlying question, what are the potential benefits of GM crops and
foods and the possible risks to human health and to the environment, cannot
yet be answered factually because the necessary evidence simply does not
exist," she said.

Dr Levitt added that, even where policy and practice have been developed
over many generations, such as for health care, education or conventional
farming, there may still be little in the way of reliable facts.

Her study backs the claims of the campaign group GM Free Cymru, which has
repeatedly warned of the lack of scientific evidence over the safety of GM
crops.

"We have repeatedly asked the UK Food Standards Agency, the Royal
Society and the European Food Safety Authority for any scientific proof to
support the premise that GM food is safe to eat and we have been given nothing
whatsoever," said Ian Panton of GM Free Cymru.

"The reason is that no such proof exists."

Dr Levitt's study questions whether the Government can genuinely uphold the
conflicting interests of those involved in the controversy, so that people
can be assured that the food they eat is safe at the same time as
scientists, industry and farmers can pursue the types of work and rewards
they choose.

Dr Levitt says that if the Government relies on scientific facts to make a
decision it does not appear to have sufficient grounds to support
commercialising the three test crops.

Her study says that in order to build consumer confidence for future
approvals, the Government must work to resolve various doubts and ensure
that decisions on future GM crops and foods are assessed in a collaborative EU
wide case-by-case approach.

As for the wider question, Dr Levitt says, "Public debate may be a
fashionable approach but it does not guarantee that good policy-making
will result."

She says it might be easier to spot the gaps in factual evidence sooner if
there was more clarity about the tasks that policies are required to
perform.

For instance, she said, people were relatively ignorant of the true risks or
benefits of conventional farming.

"The Government says it wants to protect the environment and human health,
uphold farmers' and consumers' choices and play a full part in Europe's
precautionary approach to regulation," she says.

"It claims it can do all these things, particularly using evidence provided
by sound science.

"Mrs Beckett now has a chance to offer a fresh approach."

http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/content_objectid=13908218_m
ethod=full_siteid=50082_headline=-Council-warns-on-questions-about-GM-crop-ar
guments-name_page.html

R O Y A L S O C I E T Y O F N E W Z E A L A N D

Royal Society Alert 308 5 February, 2004

BIOTECHNOLOGY DEBATE TO MOVE BEYOND GM

New Zealand's biotechnology debate is set to move beyond GM when Toi te
Taiao: the Bioethics Council begins its first nationwide dialogue this
month and asks New Zealanders for their views on the use of human genes in
other organisms.

The Council was set up to after the Royal Commission on Genetic
Modification to promote and participate in public dialogue on the cultural,
ethical and spiritual aspects of biotechnology.

Sir Paul Reeves, Chair of the Bioethics Council, said the process would
include facilitated workshops and hui; providing background information and
resources to assist dialogue; online discussion and a more traditional
submission process.

The Bioethics Council's job is to provide the information and the forum for
ordinary New Zealanders to think about and discuss these issues and to make
sure that government takes New Zealanders' views into account when it makes
decisions about how these technologies are regulated.

Sir Paul said "New developments in biotechnology have the ability to bring
huge benefits, but may also pose significant risks and frequently challenge
the way in which we think about our humanity and values. These are 'big
issues' and its crucial that we discuss them as a nation. Toi te Taiao:
the Bioethics Council exists to help that happen."

Toi te Taiao: the Bioethics Council reports to the Government through the
Minister for the Environment, but has a high degree of independence,
including setting its own work programme and priorities. The main outcome
of the dialogue will be advice to the Government on the cultural, ethical
and spiritual issues surrounding the use of human genes in other organisms.

Michigan State Researchers Find Companion Crops Control Weeds
Organically.

Traditionally, organic soybean growers have used only
mechanical cultivation to control weeds. This can cause soil erosion and
lead to poor soil structure. Researchers at the Michigan Agricultural
Experiment Station (MAES) have shown that organic soybean producers may
be able to use winter cereal rye as an inter-seeded companion crop to
control weeds. MAES researchers found that inter-seeded winter cereal
rye decreases the amount of weeds in soybeans and increases organic
soybean yield in years when soil moisture was not a yield-limiting
factor.

The research is published in the January-February 2004 issue of
Agronomy Journal. (Global Technoscan, Jan. 28 - Feb. 3, 2004,
http://www.globaltechnoscan.com/28thJan-3rdFeb04/crop.htm )

African labs win major role in tsetse-fly genome project

The International Glossina Genomics Initiative has been formed to
sequence the genome of the tsetse-fly, which carries disease to
millions of people and cattle in Africa. African scientists will
have a prominent role in the international consortium, which aims to
sequence and annotate the complete genome by 2006.

Nature http://www.nature.com 427 29 January 2004 p.384

GM rice spreads transgenes to nearby conventional rice and to weeds.

Molecular Breeding
13 (1): 103-112, January 2004

A field study of pollen-mediated gene flow from Mediterranean GM rice to
conventional rice and the red rice weed
J. Messeguer V. Marfà M.M. Català E. Guiderdoni E. Melé

Abstract

The objective of this study was to assess the frequency of
pollen-mediated gene flow from a transgenic rice line, harbouring the
gusA and the bar genes encoding respectively, ?-glucuronidase and
phosphinothricin acetyl transferase as markers, to the red rice weed and
conventional rice in the Spanish japonica cultivar Senia. A circular
field trial design was set up to investigate the influence of the wind
on the frequency of pollination of red rice and conventional rice
recipient plants with the transgenic pollen. Frequencies of gene flow
based on detection of herbicide resistant, GUS positive seedlings among
seed progenies of recipient plants averaged over all wind directions
were 0.036 ± 0.006% and 0.086 ± 0.007 for red rice and conventional
rice, respectively. However, for both red rice and conventional rice, a
clear asymmetric distribution was observed with pollination frequency
favoured in plants placed under the local prevailing winds. Southern
analyses confirmed the hemizygous status and the origin of the
transgenes in progenies of surviving, GUS positive plants. Gene flow
detected in conventional rice planted at 1, 2, 5 and 10 m distance
revealed a clear decrease with increasing distance which was less
dramatic under the prevailing wind direction. Consequences of these
findings for containment of gene flow from transgenic rice crops to the
red rice weed are discussed. The precise determination of the local wind
conditions at flowering time and pollination day time appear to be of
primary importance for setting up suitable isolation distances.

CpG DNA chronic treatment damages immune system

GM food is enriched in CpG DNA from the numerous bacterial genes inserted in it.

The experiment below suggests that eating too much bacterial DNA will damage
the immune system. It is likely that eating too much GM food will
injure the immune system. However, the impact will be impossible to
ascribe to GM food so long as the food is unlabeled.

Nature Medicine
February 2004 Volume 10 Number 2 pp 187 - 192

Lymphoid follicle destruction and immunosuppression after repeated CpG
oligodeoxynucleotide administration

Mathias Heikenwalder, Magdalini Polymenidou1, Tobias Junt, Christina
Sigurdson, Hermann Wagner, Shizuo Akira, Rolf Zinkernagel & Adriano Aguzzi

DNA containing unmethylated cytidyl guanosyl (CpG) sequences, which are
underrepresented in mammalian genomes but prevalent in prokaryotes, is
endocytosed by cells of the innate immune system, including macrophages,
monocytes and dendritic cells1, and activates a pathway involving
Toll-like receptor-9 (TLR9)2. CpG-containing oligodeoxynucleotides
(CpG-ODN) are potent stimulators of innate immunity, and are currently
being tested as adjuvants of antimicrobial, antiallergic, anticancer and
antiprion immunotherapy. Little is known, however, about the
consequences of repeated CpG-ODN administration, which is advocated for
some of these applications. Here we report that daily injection of 60 g
CpG-ODN dramatically alters the morphology and functionality of mouse
lymphoid organs. By day 7, lymphoid follicles were poorly defined;
follicular dendritic cells (FDC) and germinal center B lymphocytes were
suppressed. Accordingly, CpG-ODN treatment for 7 d strongly reduced
primary humoral immune responses and immunoglobulin class switching. By
day 20, mice developed multifocal liver necrosis and hemorrhagic
ascites. All untoward effects were strictly dependent on CpG and TLR9,
as neither the CpG-ODN treatment of Tlr9-/- mice nor the repetitive
challenge of wild-type mice with nonstimulatory ODN (AT-ODN) or with the
TLR3 agonist polyinosinic:cytidylic acid (polyI:C) were immunotoxic or
hepatotoxic.

This article from the ISB News Report typifies the prevailing mindless,
gung-ho "genetic-engineering-at-any-cost" attitude.

After telling us how important roots are for plants, these technicians
immediately proceed to think up ways to alter this critical plant feature. Of
course, they will let someone else worry about how genetic engineering
of roots might create ecological problems.

BIOENGINEERING OF THE ROOT-SOIL INTERFACE: A HAIRY STORY

Marcel Bucher

Terrestrial plants are sessile organisms that stay at the same habitat
during their entire life cycle, and as such, their survival is crucially
dependent on rapid adaptation to environmental changes. The root system
serves many tasks - it anchors the plant, absorbs water and minerals from
the soil, and delivers certain growth regulators. Despite its importance for
plant productivity, the root is a largely unexplored frontier for
genetic engineering. Engineered roots may be better adapted to nutrient
poor or saline soils, be better hosts to beneficial organisms, resist soil-borne
pathogens more effectively, exhibit increased competitiveness with
weeds, remediate toxic waste from contaminated locations, or be a
cost-effective alternative for the production of bioactive metabolites
and proteins for molecular farming. We are interested in
investigating whether root hair cells (also called trichoblasts) are
suitable target cells for genetic
engineering of the root secretory machinery to improve attributes such
as plant nutrition.

Complete article:
web: http://www.isb.vt.edu/news/2004/news04.feb.html#feb0403
pdf: http://www.isb.vt.edu/news/2004/artspdf/feb0403.pdfs

This note from 5 y ago outlnes some of the worst scientific
bullshit in a long time. I was trying to work up a more discursive note
with a leading biologist but she died on me so I set aside the project.
I'm prompted to circulate these jottings now as the same 'Independent'
publishes its Science Editor, Steve Connor, talking about "an Antarctic
bacteria".

The science of botany has been turned upside down.

Thus Michael McCarthy, Environment Correspondent of The
Independent, announced in November 1998 a new classification of the world's
flowering plants based on their DNA rather than
their anatomy & physiology. The substance in question is believed to be
around 90% junk by these DNA-worshippers but they are so mesmerised by its
'Master Molekule' fad status that they wish some analysis of it to supplant
the accumulated wisdom of biologists. Science at this rate is not only
irrational but also removed from the people - students could no longer
classify flowering plants in the field but would instead have to pay some
DNA lab to sequence DNA of non-coding sections in 3 genes.

Worked out by a team led by scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens at
Kew, south-west London, it has caused a complete rethink of the
relationships between many plant families - according to McCarthy -
showing for example that the closest relative of the lotus, the sacred
flower of Buddhism, is not the water lily it so much resembles but the
smog-resistant plane tree of London's squares.

This sensation was to be detailed in the next month's Annals of the
Missouri Botanical Garden, which might sound to a non-scientific foreigner
like an obscure organ but is actually a respectable scientific journal
expected to arrive in the Auckland Museum library the following February.
Why the claim emerged first through an obviously dazzled journalist remains
to be explained.

The classification, according to McCarthy, for the first time establishes
the relationships of all plant families through their genetic material,
doing away with 200 years of previous plant taxonomy dating back to
Linnaeus. This has hitherto been based on flowers' and trees' morphology
- their appearance and visual characteristics, such as how many leaves or
petals they have.

But the ability to examine plants at the molecular level, which has become
available on a large scale only in the 1990s, makes clear that many of the
relationships botanists previously assumed from morphology are wrong.

There are many surprises in the new classification. The papaya is not
related to the passion flower, as was previously thought - its closest
relative is the cabbage family; roses are closely related to blackthorns,
nettles and figs; and peonies are not related to buttercups but to the
saxifrage family.

The classification is the work of nearly 100 scientists led by Mark Chase,
head of the molecular systematic section of Kew's Jodrell laboratory, and
two colleagues, Kare Bremer of the University of Uppsala in Sweden and
Peter Stevens of Harvard. It has taken more than seven years and involved
the detailed comparison of three genes for each of 565 representatives of
all the families of flowering plants. Most of the work has been done at
Kew.

"I think you would have to say it is a breakthrough," Dr Chase allowed.
"There has never been such a focused effort at sorting out a major group of
organisms as has been done here with the flowering plants, which are of
course critical for life on earth, so its importance is economic as well as
scientific."

####

Comments by RM

The immediate objection, which is far more than pedantry, is that
this is a bad way to announce important science. Those few who can
understand exactly what is being reported by the Chase group, and thus
interpret its meaning, have to wait until the Missouri journal arrives.
Informed criticism is severely hampered by this type of sensationalist
premature journalism.

Nevertheless, previous publications by Chase and colleagues lead us
to suppose the broad outlines of what is about to be reported. The method
of Chase's big team reads the sequence of bases in the DNA of non-coding
sections of the 3 genes examined. Computer programs are then used to find
and compare patterns in these strings of hundreds of bases.

More widely if vaguely known among the public is the partial
fragmentation of DNA by arbitrary uses of enzymes (from other organisms).
The resulting fragments run at different speeds in special gel sheets, and
are then stained to reveal the sets of bands glimpsed on TV (e.g. in
attempts to identify criminals).

The two methods are not as different in logic as might be supposed.
The set of saws in the Chase approach is much more versatile, and the
patterns of 'fragments' that can be produced by this method is far more
flexible, but in both approaches the patterns produced are of no known
biological significance. We would not classify car engines according to
the sets of patterns that can be arranged from the fragments after
breaking-up with a set of saws, even if that set was virtually totally
adjustable.

This analysis of just 3 genes (out of many thousands in each plant)
represents for the first time an evolutionary tree of plants which is
certain to be accurate, gushes McCarthy. This is sensationalism rarely
exceeded in the sad record of premature publicity in mass media ahead of
proper scientific scrutiny.

It is an interesting irony that the sections of DNA sequenced in
this project are NON-coding - often called 'junk DNA', termed by J Celera
Venter 'of more forensic than physiological significance'. The biological
function of the majority of DNA is unclear. The coding sections - called
exons - carry the blueprints specifying the sequence of amino-acids in
whichever protein the gene codes for, through the famous genetic code of
triplets of bases. School textbooks have been depicting simplified
versions of protein synthesis, but far less often mentioned is that about
90% of DNA is thought not to be involved in this function, and has
routinely been called 'junk' - a regrettable term tending to confuse what
we don't understand with what doesn't matter.

A further reason to reject this novel approach to biology is merely
practical but substantial: the sequencing of DNA is not a technique
accessible to most biologists, let alone those in remote high-schools or in
the third world. The existing system of classifying the flowering plants
into familes based on the geometry of their flowers is able to be taught
and used by a large fraction of the world's people, whereas DNA sequencing
is not foreseeably accessible to most. Only if there were overwhelming
logical grounds to claim that the novel system is superior could we
consider the overthrow of two centuries of biology in favour of a system
based on high-tech biochemistry and computers.

>> The Independent, Monday, 23 November 1998 NEWS
>>
>>A rose is still a rose, but everything else in botany is turned on its head
>>
>>By Michael McCarthy, Environment Correspondent
>>
>>It began seven years ago, when scientists at Kew Gardens started comparing
>>the plants of the world through their DNA, their genetic blueprint, on a
>>large scale for the first time. What they found will cause a botanical
>>revolution.
>>
>>Comparison of individual genes showed that the relationships between
>>plant families, which had hitherto been widely assumed, were in some
>>cases wildly inaccurate; more than that, the most surprising kinships
>>existed between the most unlikely flowers and trees.
>>
>>Gazing on the red blooms of the Asian lotus as they emerge from the still
>>waters of a pool, for example, you are not immediately put in mind of
>>Berkeley Square. But you might well be, Kew's molecular biologists have
>>discovered.
>>
>>The huge flowers of Nelumbo nucifera, for thousands of years a sacred
>>plant in India, China and Tibet, are not related to the waterlily family
>>which
>>they resemble, and with which botanists have long and naturally associated
>>them. Their closest relative, it turns out, is Platanus hybrida - the
>>familiar and hardy plane tree of London's squares, so common because until
>>the Clean Air Act got rid of London's smog more than 40 years ago, they
>>were the only things that would grow there. The sacred water flower of the
>>East and the giant tree of Britain's capital are first cousins.
>>
>>In revealing many more such unusual relationships, the exploding science
>>of genetics has made possible a complete - and now accurate -
>>reclassification
>>of all the families of the world's flowering plants and trees, which the
>>scientists at Kew have led and which has just been completed.
>>
>>It has been based on comparing their DNA, their genetic code, rather than
>>their morphology - their appearance and physical characteristics, which is
>>all that plant taxonomists have hitherto had available to them.
>>
>>People have been classifying plants since prehistorical times, of course:
>>which ones provided food, which were poisonous, which were medicinal.
>>
>>Medieval herbalists made bigger classifications, but it was not until the
>>Age of Enlightenment at the end of the 18th century that a complete and
>>systematic classification of plant families was first attempted, by the
>>Swedish Naturalist Carl von Linne, known as Linnaeus.
>>
>>His classification was considerably improved by 19th- century French
>>botanists, such as Decandolle and Jussieu, who established the families
>>with which we are now familiar, such as the compositae, the daisy family,
>>the brassicae, the cabbages or mustards, the rosaceae, the rose family, and
>>the orchidaceae, the orchids.
>>
>>Twentieth century botanists have continually refined these classifications.
>>The trouble has been, says Dr Mark Chase, the man who has led the Kew DNA
>>team, that no two of them have been exactly the same.
>>
>>"There have been three major classifications of the world's plants in the
>>last 20 years and each of them has had different ideas, not only between
>>each other, but between different versions of the same classification," he
>>said.
>>
>>For example, in 1981, the American Arthur Cronquist divided all plants into
>>321 families; the next year, his fellow American Robert Thorne divided
>>them into 440 families; and in 1997, the Russian Armen Takhtajan divided
>>all
>>plants into 598 families.
>>
>>"These men were trying to assess the plants' genetic information from what
>>they could see with the naked eye," Dr Chase said. But he and his fellow
>>scientists from Kew and from around the world have now done something new:
>>they have gone to the genetic information directly.
>>
>>New techniques of molecular biology that became available in the past
>>decade have allowed them to sequence, or identify, individual genes in
>>plants' DNA and then assess them for similarities across species.
>>
>>They have done this with three genes for each of 565 plants representing
>>all the world's flowering plant families, the first and most important
>>being the gene responsible for rubisco, the enzyme that controls
>>photosynthesis, the essential process by which plants convert sunlight into
>>energy.
>>
>>The relationships between plant families indicated by the rubisco gene has
>>been exactly repeated with the next two genes, convincing Dr Chase and his
>>colleagues that at last, 200 years after Linnaeus, they have the true
>>picture of how all the world's plants are related.
>>
>>They now class them in 464 families. Botanists will have to rewrite their
>>floras as a result. Not only is the lotus related to the plane tree rather
>>than the water lily. Roses are not related to saxifrages or the bean
>>family, as had been thought, but to the buckthorns, the nettles and the
>>figs. Orchids are not related to lillies, as once thought, but to the
>>yellow star-grasses.
>>
>>So from next month, when the new classification is published, a rose will
>>still be a rose; but much else in the plant kingdom will be very different.
>>
>>Family Trees
>>
>>It was an 18th-century Swedish botanist who first developed a scientific
>>system for classifying all plants, and subsequently all living things.
>>
>>Linnaeus was born in 1707 as Carl von Linne, the son of a country curate,
>>and was obsessed with flowers from the age of eight. As a research student
>>at the University of Uppsala in 1730 he realised that the scientific
>>arrangement of plant species was inadequate, and began to sketch out his own.
>>
>>Linnaeus invented binomial nomenclature - the system of using two Latin
>>names to describe plants and animals, the first describing the genus, or
>>related group, and the second the species itself.
>>
>>Thus herb robert, the common pink flower of English woodlands, is
>>(Geranium robertyianum: it is a member of the Geranium genus, like many
>>others, but robertyianum describes this particular one. This naming
>>system is now in universal use for all living organisms.
>>
>>The criterion of classification Linnaeus used for plants has been
>>superseded. He classified them according to their sexual parts, such at the
>>stamens or anthers (the male parts), and how many each had: a plant with
>>five anthers would be in the pentandriae. The modern division of the plant
>>kingdom into large related families, such as the cabbages (brassicae) or
>>the daisy family (compositae) is a product of 19th-century botanists.
>>
>>The new classification supersedes both: it divides the plant world into
>>families, but for the first time does it with precision.