02/27/05
Having been challenged more than once to avoid 'extremism' in my utterances
on GM, I have at last got around to writing some considered responses to
that challenge. The particular latest challenger is a well known
personage. My reply below is excerpted to prevent his identification.
>Robert, you talk of the "extreme bias" of the 600 who issued in mid-2002
>the PR declaration in general support of GM.
This was on the basis of their own extreme statements which are
contrary to fact and to reason, and have been known for many years to be of
that shocking quality.
>But read yourself: "Never has science been so suddenly, drastically degraded
>as it is in the gene-jiggering racket. The 'science' on which current
>gene-tampering relies is junk. An enormous range of unimagined mutants are
>certain to surprise."
It does not follow that those statements result from bias. They
result from far far more detailed scientific analysis than any of the
Gallant 600 Declarers has ever pubd on the subject.
My friend the late Rev Dr Harold Turner felt called upon to state
from time to time that 'extreme' does not necessarily equal 'false', or
even 'imprudent'. He was right, wasn't he?
As I remarked to John Morton today - I'm extreme about nuclear
power, having explained in sufficient detail the reasons why it's a bad
idea. You can't infer from my statements which you quote that they are
wrong because they are extreme. They are conclusions from analyses which
I've made widely available and which have evoked no purported correction,
even when delivered in the presence of main gene-tamperers. For instance,
ace gene-jockey Dangerous Dan Cohen, main PR man for HortResearch®
gene-tampering, was present when I said what you now quote, in a RSNZ Ak
branch public lecture (attached - with comments inserted on what has
happened since). He said nothing, and has written nothing I know of that
would purport to correct me.
I have to remind you that the internal evidence of a given
utterance can not, generally, suffice to assess its reliability. You
should apply tests along these lines:-
* is the author experienced in the field?
* are the terms used in conventional ways, or if rare defined by refs to
authorities?
* are the facts from identified sources?
* are the conclusions reached by overt, correct reasoning from the facts?
* has the author a good record in accurate analysing of dangerous
technologies ?
Modesty impedes my answering these q's for you regarding myself - but let
me know if you want some reminders of my record.
A major difficulty is that the strands of cultural memory are now
as short as ca. 1 decade. PC media & bureaucracy operatives have
blacklisted me lo, these bulk years, and my status thru the 1970s as the
leading NZ academic analyst of dangerous technologies is now largely
forgotten. Jeanette list-MP and others exult in their replacing me in the
media; but is it too vain of me to believe public policy was better served
when the 'pop' media comments on GM were by experts rather than arts types
such as her, Susan Kitschley list-MP, Fiddler Bunkum list-MP, ignoramus
Claire Bleakley who has brought 2 stupidly-conceived suits against ERMA,
etc?
>This is scarcely dispassionate langauge.
It did not purport to be. It is language of moral suasion. Just
because you can't handle it, don't assume others can't.
>After years I am naturally sceptical of people
>who say there are no risks.
good; and the best reason for that attitude is not the extreme
position of their "reassurances" but the overwhelming evidence that their
claim is false. Not implausible, but positively false on evidence such as
one would love to present to Sir Th McCarthy or similar. In the absence of
that excellent old jurist, I've been exposing my extremism to as many
scientists as I can.
>But I believe you would have much more influence
>if you kept away from langauge of this nature.
How do you reach this prediction? Is it just that you're
discomforted by your failure to act on it while unable to refute it?
>You probably don't want to hear this.
Only in the sense that I've heard it many times before over several
decade.
> Neither do you want to hear this:
>that you are living in a world where the genie is out of its bottle - and if
>it isn't in NZ (yet) you can bet it will be elsewhere - so we will have to
>face its consequences.
I am not at all afraid to face this truth. What to do about it is
a q. you show little sign of tackling.
> I don't have the scientific expertise to say that
>there will be consequences but I'd be respectful of those (like you) who
>claim there will be. I feel much the same way about climate change. However
>much I believe we have a real problem, I have no shadow of doubt that the
>global community will fail to act prudentially
That may be a realistic prediction. It is irrelevant to your
attempt to denigrate my style of exposition & advocacy. That I may not
prevent all the potential damage is a reasonable belief; that I should
cease my version of advocacy does not follow. My assumption is that I can
prevent some of the damage; any objections?
> and that we will run the risks
>whatever they are.
What defeatism or quietism is this? I have no inclination to join
you in it. I've not tackled you about it, realising you have your own
style; why do you assume your way is better than mine, or something like
the only way?
>None of this is palatable, but we have to decide how we behave given the
>inevitability that there will be (as you put it) things that will "surprise".
>Saying shrilly I told you so won't help. There is a moral responsibility to
>cast arguments in terms that will, if not change minds that don't want to be
>changed, at least provide them with the means to think problems through
>should they arise.
I couldn't agree more; you've been doing so regarding GM, have you?
So far from helping people to cope with the potential harm from GM, which
you now assert to be a main duty, you were part of the attempt to make out
that large benefits could result from what (as proven by analysts such as
Prof Elliott, Prof Wills, Dr Lees, etc) are most unlikely to yield any
benefit. And didn't you fail to mention the possibility of harm? Doesn't
sound like a promising start to planning to cope with the harm, which you
now depict as a main duty.
Regarding what terms to cast arguments in, you appear to be unaware
of the definitive research of Prof Ph Zimbardo (L Stanford Jr U) - if you
want to change attitudes, the most powerful types of communication are
those which initially challenge to the biggest change. (This excludes
those which are unintelligible - Chinese characters etc.) You wish to
continue to be heavily paid by the same sorts of bureaucracy that have lied
about GM; I have no such pressure on me. I've not previously criticised
you for cowardice, but since you now tackle me in this patronising way, I
now do so.
More importantly, isn't it a case of "live and let live"? I intend
to continue to speak truth to power, in a style that I have developed over
4 decade. I don't quite know what you're up to; but it has not yet reached
me as a more successful style. Anyhow, you hew to your way. I will
continue to expound & exhort in ways which you are (in more ways than one)
incapable of. Isn't there room for both? I have a long record of success
(nuclear weapons, nuclear reactors, 245-T, leaded petrol, etc) as well as
some failures (e.g such GM genies as are already out of their respective
bottles; Maiden's Mobil/Bechtel synfuels factory; etc). What has your
style to show for itself?
But by all means keep trying in your own way which suits your
temperament & talents; and leave me to my different way.
I'm helped in this clarity by visiting this afternoon John E
Morton, 80. We expressed our mutual satisfaction at our expressions in
defence of Ngataringa Bay, Whirinaki forest, etc (some of his successes),
and my role instrumental in stopping the NZED nuclear programme. I hope
you will be able to have a similar session with him. Meanwhile, kindly
leave me to my modus operandi (which does, as you say, from time to time
issue more moderate-toned items such as on the Showa Denko GM-tryptophan.
I at least show versatility, being able to adopt a moderate style when I
deem it suitable. My judgement is that there are enough moderates on GM
and their success is v limited e.g. www.ucsusa.org.
You were wrong in supposing I wouldn't consider your compromises.
I have been considering them for most of my life, and have (I believe) a
more realistic analysis than you have of these v important issues. You are
hardly in a position to condescend to me.
Kind regards
R
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Robt Mann [mailto:robtm@maxnet.co.nz]
>Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2005 10:13 PM
>Subject: handy copy: know your gallant 600
>
>3-7-2002
>This list is mentioned today by Labour®'s GM PR man Pete
>Hodgson in response to Sir Peter Elworthy's Sustainability Council
>declaration for a 5y moratorium on release of GMOs.
>This LSN list, from a couple y ago, was re-launched yesterday -
>probably they heard the Elworthy announcement was coming. It has apparently
>been updated, e.g J Luxton is listed as an ex-MP.
>
>The 'Communiqué' you can safely assume to have been v carefully spun
>by Wevers + other PR twisters. They say economic, health, environmental and
>social benefits exist - indeed are "identified in the Royal Commission's
>Report" - but they don't allude to any hazards. In this extreme bias they
>join Gluckman's IBAC brochure.
>They "wholeheartedly support the process undertaken by the Royal
>Commission" e.g they're glad that oaths were quietly dispensed with, allowing
>PR agents to lie to the Commission without fear of getting gaoled for
>perjury.
>They are apparently unaware of the significant falsehoods in the RCGM
>report e.g on the GM-tryptophan poisonings.
>I have to admit it's an appalling experience to read this list of
>dupes for the gene-tampering trade.
... [etc etc]
THE SELFISH COMMERCIAL GENE
Robert Mann
invited lecture, RSNZ Auckland branch Auckland Museum 13 Sep 2000
[additions Sep 2004]
Introduction
Genetic manipulation (GM) or genetic engineering (GE) mean artificial transfer of genes - pieces of DNA - to produce a transgenic organism, e.g. jellyfish genes into sugarcane or human genes into cows. The methods of artificially joining pieces of DNA from different organisms' genes were invented as recently as the mid-1970s and are collectively called recombinant-DNA technology.
The abbreviations are Hobson's choice between pairs of letters already taken by huge USA corporations - GM and GE - but I'll use them interchangeably.
Technologies for cloning animals are, wholly or largely, different. But many concepts for cloning mammals involve not merely trying to copy existing animals but also splicing-in recombinant DNA from other species. Often the idea is to produce some foreign protein in milk.
These techniques no more entail a uniform degree of hazard than does nuclear science. As in nuclear technology, so with genetic engineering: the tag 'nuclear' does not necessarily connote any serious degree of hazard, and some versions of GM or of cloning may well be quite OK.
But some versions are not OK. You do therefore have to perform sceptical analyses of GM proposals if you want to assess their hazards. This is one of many similarities between the two technologies. I wish to point out other similarities - and some differences.
Do not equate GM with the larger category 'biotechnology'. GM is one kind of biotechnology but there are others too. Any attempt to equate GM with the yet wider category 'Life Sciences' is PR deceit (and illustrates how unpopular GM has become).
Genetic engineering's brief two-decade history has been characterised by exaggerated claims of benefit, confusing hope with fact in attempt to allay natural fears (and to stimulate stock-market ramps).
What can it do for you? Here's some typical PR hype:
Multi-billion dollar new life science industry for the region
It was MAF men Keith Steele and Neil Richardson promoting cows "not as milk producers but as 'biological reactors' producing a vast range of products which could open up multibillion dollar international marketing opportunities for the benefit of the region and the country. Treatment for multiple sclerosis could be only a glass of special milk away. The Waikato is ideally situated as the centre for this unlimited new industry based around the world-famous Ruakura research centre and the excellent [sic] University . . . . "
Technology using nuclear fission was procured by scientists. It was not initiated by elected representatives. The technical enthusiasts procured the funding for A-bombs and the nuclear reactors which were first created for the sole purpose of making plutonium for A-bombs. Similarly, billions of dollars have been procured for gene splicing by enthusiasts who say they are going to produce organisms, improved on commercial criteria, which could not occur in nature. In our little country, around $120M so far - $18M/y lately - has been procured by gene-manipulators from the government to subsidise a wide variety of GM which the public know little of. (This is one glimpse, by the way, of how sincere is the belief in leaving allocation of resources to 'market forces'.)
The monstrous blind alley of nuclear power stations should teach us how far astray society can be led by technical enthusiasts who act something like a priesthood presiding over an arcane speciality which they naturally don't want obstructed by any who don't understand the technical details. This attitude fits ill with democracy.
Nuclear fission is scientifically understood, and we have the technology based on that science - nuclear power reactors - commercially mature. Electricity from nuclear power stations will be reliable, clean, and so cheap we often won't bother to meter it. Not one reputable scientist disputes these claims by the enthusiasts for this modern, hi-tech wonder technology.
Such euphoric claims went practically unchallenged for as long as a decade from the late 1950s. Then in the late 1960s a few scientists began to tell the public that nuclear reactors could devastate areas about the size of our island, and that even if nothing goes wrong at the reactor the spent fuel poses grave hazards. Fortunately for our little country, other sources of electricity (hydro and geothermal) were obviously cheaper so that it was not until the 1960s that our government's nuclear power programme began. The same New Zealand bureaucrats who in 1966 proudly paraded foreign experts planning a nuclear station at Baring Head (12 miles from Parliament) were by 1974 bitterly defensive when the Campaign for Non-nuclear Futures - a terminating ad hoc coalition - got going. By 1979 a Royal Commission had laid the programme gently to rest; nobody respectable has tried to revive it.
But let us never forget that several hundred nuclear power reactors were foisted on the world, and many thousands of people doomed by the 1986 Chernobyl accident, as a result of that disgraceful decade when sheer lack of interest among scientists, suppression of the few critics, and stunting of alternatives, left the public crucially ignorant.
I need hardly add that the media almost entirely failed to reveal any significant facts about the hazards of nuclear power, at least until the late 1970s. Today the media are failing in their duty, far more culpably in that they can easily find out the arguments for increased caution on GM but are nearly all too lazy &/or too craven to do so. The best website is www.psrast.org.
Today the smug status of genetic engineering eerily recalls that period in the early 1960s when nuclear reactors were "commercialised" on the basis of enthusiasts' claims of understanding & control. New ranks of enthusiastic experts now tell us there's no significant threat from artificial gene transfers: no great harm could result, and any minor mishaps are (they claim) so unlikely that you can forget these hypothetical notions. "The hazards imagined in the mid-'70s have turned out to be unreal" is a typical recent expert quote.
Alongside airy dismissal of the dangers, the promised benefits are wildly exaggerated - for example, millions of venture-capital dollars have been procured by claims of imminent production of "pharmaceutical proteins" which in truth are nowhere near medical use and can in one case be already obtained free! The actual list of real benefits from GE organisms is very short, after a quarter-century of 'jam tomorrow' hype thru the media. In our parliament MPs have given lists of what they believed to be actual accomplishments of GE which are however still not real. [ I have upbraided Rt. Hon. S Upton in person for this.]
The Doubts
Many scientific and moral leaders have queried GE. The science upon which GM technology is founded - neo-Darwinism and the 'master molekule' idol status for DNA - are under strenuous criticism from scientific thinkers. Genes are not Lego modules which can be blithely slotted into very different organisms free from unintended effects. Rogue diseases are a genuine concern arising from detailed, sceptical appraisal of some GE projects. But global ecological damage is the gravest threat.
One tawdry old argument we have heard since 1974 and can expect to hear again in all its flagrant deceit is the claim that gene transfers occur naturally so GM is only hastening them. This line of talk is a smoke-screen designed to obscure the fact that GM usually performs artificial transfers which are not believed to occur in nature. This fact is denied when possible harm is suggested, but is acknowledged, indeed emphasised, for claims of benefit.
If we change the rates, or even worse the specificities, with which genes can jump around in infectious manners, we may wreak biological havoc on a global scale. Go back to Ovid's Metamorphoses to glimpse what might go wrong.
But the gene-jockeys claim they can, godlike, foresee the evolutionary results of their artificial transposings of human genes into sheep, bovine genes into tomatoes, etc. This is extreme, deluded arrogance; for the theologically inclined, I commend one chapter: Genesis 3.
The science these gamblers hawk is, on several levels, junk. I haven't space here to detail this contention, only to mention a few aspects of their junkiness.
* Gene-jockeys often work on the assumption there are only 4 letters in the 'alphabet' of DNA (called for short G, C, T, and A); for example, "DNA is a very long molecule built of only 4 letters" - Dr Andy Shenk, Genesis R&D Corp (Auckland, N.Z.) TV1 'Holmes' show 00-6-27, and Prof Ros Macintosh of Massey U, TV1 this Monday. But it has been known for several decades that other 'letters' exist in DNA. The functions of the 'odd' bases - methyl-C, methyl-G, and others - are largely unknown, but that does not mean they're equivalent to 'The Big Four'. They are often ignored by genetic engineers sequencing DNA "copied" by systems that produce only 'Big 4' polymers. This is junk science.
* They pretend that the effects of genes inserted by radically unnatural methods are predictable, when they are known to be extremely variable (usually lethal).
* They pretend that a cell surviving such genes-insertion processes, and then selected on just one property - resistance to an antibiotic - and then grown into a whole organism, e.g. a potato, will have all properties at least as good as those of a normal organism.
Never since the Nazi attempts to legitimize racism has science been so rapidly & severely degraded. Apologists for GM posing as defenders of true science - e.g. ACT - are taking up an untenable, indeed ludicrous, stance.
The Commerce
Doubts have been swept aside by the thrust of transnational corporations funding university and 'crown' GM labs, as well as small groups of academics starting GE firms (a far cheaper image to erect than that of a nuclear reactor manufacturer).
A further subtle commercial lure is the relative difficulty of tracing the offender when the 'one in a million' mishap occurs. The Swedes in April 1986 only briefly thought the unusual radioactivity in one of their nuclear stations was from another of their own - it was traced to Chernobyl within days; but if an epidemic of this or that disease breaks out amongst cows or humans in the Hamilton district, the fact that the nearby government research station at Ruakura has been largely given over to GM for foreign purchasers will not suffice to sheet home any blame. Any ensuing inquiry would elicit much closing of ranks as most of the scientists able to understand such arcane matters covered up for each other. Ronald Reagan's favourite criterion - deniability - is all too easily arranged in the GM business.
How Much Harm; How Often?
In appraising dangerous technologies, it is best to estimate the hazard - the scale of harm in the event of a major mishap - as a separate question, and then analyse if possible the risk - the probability that the major mishap will occur. Much confusion between these two aspects of danger has been created by language-tampering, even in such formal arenas as the Journal of Risk Analysis. Some ERMA staff are trying to organise a pseudo-professional club on Risk Assessment to feed them what they want to hear for their purpose of rubber-stamping; they did not invite any sceptical speaker for their Dec 13 2000 inaugural meeting.
The hazards of GM rival even nuclear war. Biology is so much more complex than technology that we should not pretend we can imagine all the horror scenarios, but it is suspected that some artificial genetic manipulations create the potential to derange the biosphere for longer than any civilisation could survive. If only enthusiasts are consulted in appraisal of GE proposals, such scenarios will not be thought of.
The nuclear parallel is again cogent. Not until the AEC's 'Rasmussen/Levine' report of 1974 were sceptical analysts such as Kendall and Lovins asked for their opinions (and then they were ignored).
The hazard certainly includes some mortality: dozens of people were killed in the 1980s by impurities in L-tryptophan (a natural amino acid, sold as a 'dietary supplement' to avoid medicine regulations) made by Showa Denko using GE'd bacterial cultures. By early 1991, Showa Denko had paid $4.6M in out-of-court settlements amongst lawsuits for over $810M. By now, the totals are roughly U$2,000,000,000 and 80 - 120 deaths, possibly more. Thousands continue maimed. This actual damage by GE is one basis of the campaign for labelling as such any GE'd foods which may be permitted.
Eating a certain GE potato damaged internal organs of rats in the pioneering test of GE food by Dr Pusztai. He was vilified and sacked.
Damage to non-human organisms is a real concern. Monarch-butterfly caterpillars eating leaves dusted with a GM-maize pollen were - nearly 50% - killed, and the survivors stunted, compared with the identical experiment using ordinary maize pollen.
The role of emotion is often misrepresented by enthusiasts for dangerous technologies. They decry as 'emotive' any argument or fact inconvenient to their cause, but their own enthusiasm does not count as undesirable emotion; indeed they pretend to be 'objective' - devoid of emotion - when in fact they're ruled by emotion, against reason.
A spectacular double standard prevails: benefits of GE are stated as fact when they are no more than fantasies, e.g. AAT treating emphysema,
[ PPL have continued this furphy, unchallenged by the media, only admitting last year that their thousands of transgenic sheep near Whakamaru are a flop. The company has now gone bust. ERMA failed to require autopsies.] whereas any suggestion of harm is ruthlessly rejected, usually by personal vilifications and always by an ultra-stringent standard, e.g. the outrageous purging of Dr Pusztai.
Professor Peter Bergquist coined the term 'the Liberia of GM' in the mid-70s as he feared NZ would be used by foreign gene-technologists for experiments that wouldn't be permitted in their homeland. He assessed the benefits and the hazards at that early stage as "equally speculative". The experiments in the intervening quarter-century have revealed some actual harm; many potential forms of damage have been pointed out, but the gamblers roar on cheerfully; and the benefits - from crops and animals, as distinct from contained microbial cultures - remain speculative (except for Monsanto who sell the cloned seeds resistant to their main herbicide Roundup® and also sell some seeds for crops containing modified Bt insecticide). No benefit to farmers has yet been shown. The yields of RoundupReady® soybeans are 4 -7% lower than those from proper soybeans, except in drought districts where the GE yield is 30% lower. Monsanto's NuLeaf® Bt-potato reached 5% of the USA potato crop but already sales are dropping [and now the brand has been withdrawn from sale]. One of the most respected science reporters, Nicholas Wade, pointed out in the New York Times recently that almost all GM corporations have yet to win a cent of revenue, let alone net a profit.
Law
In 1977 the N.Z. Association of Scientists proposed a moratorium on GE pending a full public inquiry. This policy was taken up then, two decades ago, by a few politicians. But the genetic engineers had one or two rabid advocates in Parliament, notably Jim Sutton's brother Bill, and avoided hostile scrutiny. Only now, two decades later, the Royal Commission has been formed; but how much GM can proceed during its inquiry remains to be determined. [ new permits for field trials were suspended during the RCGM's proceedings. Pre-existing trials were allowed to continue. Special legislation was passed to allow release of GMOs; but none has yet been legally permitted in NZ.]
At last, a form of legal regulation of novel organisms emerged - the ERMA. In its first 22 field-trial decisions, ERMA has issued 22 approvals. This is a biased, secretive, even obstructive agency, which collects a lot of money from both the gene-jockeys and the government to maintain an expensive rubber-stamp. It is chaired by Mr W J Falconer, a main pusher of the Mobil/Bechtel synfuels factory (at Motunui) which has not made any petrol for several years and was always an inferior plan. Several other members have no obvious qualification. It was National Party cronyism at its worst, and these stooges may go on issuing legal permits while the Royal Commission examines for the first time which GM experiments should be permitted. The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard. [ ERMA has continued unsatisfactory; some scathing criticisms by G Nahkies' cttee have evoked no clear progress.]
Having taught on environmental health hazards for many years in science & medical faculties, and having served as an adviser to successive Ministers of Health in the first dozen years of the Toxic Substances Board, I know all too well how overloaded government staff, even when backed by statutory powers, get subverted by not only the specific claims but more importantly the whole value-system of the industries which they are supposed to regulate. The imbalance is particularly severe for such pathetic pretences as have been staged to regulate GE. A pro-GM ERMA staff member has been transferred to the Royal Commission staff; she should be removed. [ this operative did go back to ERMA, but not before a lot of harm had been done.]
Laboratory experiments have been approved by local safety committees wielding legal powers completely delegated by the ERMA which however still collects a hefty fee. Over a hundred such GM experiments have been exposed as illegal. No penalties are proposed. [ RCGM recommendation 6.2, for a review of the containment systems, has been ignored by the Clark regime.] Misuse of the legal system for such a pseudo-regulatory charade undermines the rule of law. Little wonder then that direct action has been resorted to, in Britain, the USA, and here, to uproot experimental GM crops.
GE and the Dairy Industry
What then of the "multi-billion dollar new life science industry for the region" alleged by Keith Steele and Neil Richardson ?
The NZ Dairy Board declared its intention to pour $150M into GM experiments over the coming 5y. They said they were spending $60M/y on R&D and GM is taking $30M/y extra. [ Media fail to report on the corporations e.g. Gluckman's ViaLactia® that procured dozens of millions of this budget for dairy-GM after the Dairy Board was abolished. Main proximal procurer Kevin Marshall is down the road.]
You can reasonably assume that most of the $42B/y mirage projected for the NZ dairy industry relies on GE fantasies which are far from reality and may never be feasible let alone profitable. It is not extremely safe to assume they would all gain legal permission, after the Royal Commission on GM has performed the first sceptical investigation, by public hearings. There have been many flops in GM. Let me give a few examples of how dairy GE can go wrong.
A relatively early example was the mid-1990s attempt to make a human protein in goats' milk by Lincoln University biochemistry professor Bullock, funded by Genzyme Corp of Framingham, Massachusetts. This case came & went entirely within the never-never period when no legal regulatory regime existed in our country but Prof Petersen of Otago presided over a pseudo-regulatory Interim Assessment Group (IAG) administered by the Ministry for the Environment.
The project was to raise and study a herd of goats GEd to contain in their milk the human protein CFTR - cystic fibrosis transmembrane-conductance regulator. The professor's formal proposal was written, and ancillary mass-media propaganda was slanted, so as to create the impression that the Genzyme/Lincoln work is based on some scientific hypothesis which could well lead to therapy for cystic fibrosis. This is a misleading impression. Even if it proves feasible to insert the gene for the human lung protein CFTR into goat embryos or zygotes, leading to goats' milk containing significant quantities of human CFTR, there will still remain the difficulty that no therapy is in prospect using any concentrated preparation of CFTR. The proposal's phrase "the drug produced" was therefore false and deceptive.
The leading medical experts on cystic fibrosis have found themselves in the unpleasant role of breaking the news to the parents of CF sufferers that, contrary to the Genzyme/Bullock/NZ Herald image, no therapy is in prospect. It is cruel to raise hopes which must thus be dashed by others.
The public should also learn that permission was denied for Prof Bullock's conjoint proposal to produce similarly in goats' milk a second human protein, AAT, which has even less prospect of utility or market value but which he termed a "pharmaceutical protein" - of which more soon. The IAG, to its credit, recommended against the inclusion of AAT in this CFTR caper.
The results, reported in a couple of sentences by the Ministry for the Environment, were a complete flop, the goats were destroyed, what was done with their remains is unclear, and Prof. Bullock went overseas.
Which media were not too lazy or too craven to report this caper?
A more important and interesting example is the current attempt to genetically engineer that human protein called AAT in N.Z. sheep. A small Scottish company ("Pharmaceutical" Proteins Ltd - the 'Dolly' procreators & impresarios - financed by the large German multi-national Bayer) wanted to field-test in New Zealand ewes GE'd to make in their milk a human protein called by the unhelpful name alpha-1 antitrypsin (abbreviated AAT). The only reason stated for doing such experiments in N.Z. was this country's scrapie-free status. The Ministry for the Environment's Interim Assessment Group (IAG), although devoid of experts on prions (scrapie, mad cow disease, CJD, etc.) and dominated by GE enthusiasts who appear to think that fears of GE are absurd, advised their Minister to refuse - which he did. Reasons, when reluctantly disclosed, turned out to be mere econobabble; prions were not mentioned.
Prevalent misinformation tending to favour the AAT project, due partly to an anonymous 'news' report in Science , requires correction in at least the following respects.
(a) AAT-deficiency is equated with congenital emphysema, an unjustified jump beyond the evidence. Most of those born AAT-deficient do not develop lung disorders. Reports on N.Z. TV and in newspapers have credited AAT as a treatment for emphysema; the public would take this to mean the common smoking-induced illness, greatly exaggerating the claim of usefulness. The congenital version is very much rarer, if a proper diagnostic category at all.
(b) AAT is asserted to be in use now to treat congenital emphysema, whereas such crude preliminary trials as have been done prove very little. In fact there exists no use, let alone a market, for genuine human AAT which is routinely purified as a by-product and discarded in standard blood-bank fractionations of pooled human plasma.
(c) AAT is implied to be very valuable ("U$100,000/y per ewe"), which factoid is then used to justify attempted production by genetic engineering. All this "future earnings" is intended to stimulate a stock-market ramp before anything saleable has actually been produced. That at least is the intention. But of course such a bubble must burst after enough time without selling anything. This is the fate of nearly all such capers.
The then Minister 'for' the Environment, ex-Rhodes Scholar & lawyer Mr Simon Upton, solicited a modified application, which was approved - on economic grounds.
Then the ERMA, flying in the face of the facts, approved expansion of PPL's flock to 10,000. Nothing was to go offsite except the milk (for processing by a Tainui enterprise in Hamilton). But then, the ERMA has never rejected a GE field trial. It stages some dramatic delays - on that I sympathise with applicants.
This PPL caper is only one of many similar. The standards of truthfulness in the GE trade are reminiscent of those prevailing in the computer trade, with which it has intimate links.
That is the context in which the AgResearch® Ruakura group l'Huillier, Wells et al. claim they might make a cow whose milk could simply be drunk to treat the demylinating illness multiple sclerosis. There is some evidence this might work; but it could go badly wrong, in the people and perhaps in the cows. Demyelination can be induced by injecting the protein in question, and we know little about what it will do by mouth. The more likely motive for this project is to get patents on new cloning techniques, as have been issued to the 'Dolly' impresarios. The Waikato Times bills these enthusiasts as 'The Geniuses'. Most cloned mammals to date have aged prematurely and died young, so there's room for improvement in the exactitude of these "exact" copies.
Phil l'Huillier had a go at me in public so I asked him whether he really believed the milk he plans is likely to help MS sufferers. His answer was only that he HOPED it would.
We haven't time today to discuss GM-trees, for which a main world research centre is the corporation called Genesis® in Parnell. Also I must largely leave you to read up on GM-crops, which are the main GE organisms outside containment - mainly in N. Amer. and Argentina. One practitioner of GM-plants, Prof Patrick Brown, has expressed severe misgivings about the current versions, on the PSRAST website.
The depraved trade of mercenary deception, commonly called PR, has enormous influence in the suppression and distortion of information about GM. This has been feasible largely because the NZ media have almost totally failed to tell key facts about GM. The NZ Herald's Yoke Har Lee, for instance, largely just laundered PR claims from the gene-jockeys, with no balancing comment from critics. Radio NZ's 'Eureka' operatives Alan Coukell & Veronika Meduna have promoted GM by very uncritical biased reporting.
Global Reach
Government, gutted & starved by the ideological hatred of public enterprise (Rogernomics, Ruthanasia, and then Jenocide - our versions of Thatcherism), is largely warped to the commercial service of foreign corporations, and is almost totally unable, so far, to regulate GE. The charade of pseudoregulation - the expensive rubber stamp called ERMA, and the even less regulatory ANZFA - fails to control anything much, even labels. [ A 'Food Standards Authority' dominated by Australia appears to represent no progress.]
GE Products
A few biochemicals are being made commercially by GM in microbes. One which looms over New Zealand is recombinant bovine growth hormone, also known as bovine somatotropin. Canada rejected this, mainly because it is cruel to the cows. But there are other drawbacks.
I excerpt from a recent summary by Samuel S. Epstein M.D., Professor of
Environmental Medicine, University of Illinois School of Public Health:
The GM milk hormone, rBST, is exclusively manufactured in Austria by Biochemie Kundl, a Novartis plant under license to Monsanto; in 1998, over 100 million doses of the GM hormone were exported to the U.S. and also to 16 Third World Countries. While the administration of rBST to cows in Europe was banned (very recently) on unarguable animal health and welfare grounds, there are no restrictions yet on the import of GM dairy products, nor any requirements for their being labelled GM. GM milk, produced by injecting cows with the hormone rBST, is qualitatively and quantitatively different from natural milk. These differences include:
contamination of milk by the GM hormone rBST;
contamination by pus and antibiotics resulting from the high incidence of mastitis in rBST injected cows;
contamination with illegal antibiotics and drugs used to treat mastitis and other rBST-induced disease;
increased concentration of the thyroid hormone enzyme thyroxin-5'-monodeiodinase;
increased concentration of long-chain and decreased concentration of short-chain fatty acids;
reduction in casein levels;
and major excess levels of Insulin-like Growth Factor, IGF-1, including its highly potent variant, in the milk and, surprisingly, in the blood of people who drink it. IGF-1 is under strong suspicion of causing cancer, notably breast and prostate.
Monsanto have tried to register their Posilac® rBGH in this country, but late in 2002 the impression emerged that this had been rejected. Its exact legal status could be usefully clarified by a good law student.
Wake Up!
It is now a quarter-century since genetic engineering was identified in the same league as nuclear weapons among major threats to the biosphere. During this period, market forces have prevailed instead of informed democracy.
Genetic engineering is by now more popular - more widely practised - than dangerous versions of nuclear science ever were. But it is in general an imprudent gamble and profoundly wrong.
Corruption of scientific institutions is one of the offences of this gene-tampering fad. The Royal Society of NZ was manipulated by the then president of the NZ PR Institute, Ms Norrie Simmons, in her private trust GenePool, funded partly by Monsanto - a front for the GE trade, touring Dr Richard Bellamy & Professor Sir John Scott to say there's little to worry about. GenePool also maintained an extremely biased website claiming benefits of GM but minimising hazards. Has science ever been so warped by PR? [Simmons features prominently in the corruption documented by Hager in his book on GM corn permitted by Hobbs/Clark. She issued gagging writs on Jeanette Fitzsimons list-MP and RadioNZ for reporting her role in the King Salmon field trial PR. Why has that phoney suit not been brought on for trial while years passed? ]
Biologists are being purged from our universities to make room for gene-manipulators expected to bring in venture capital. The head of the Massey University black suit gang stated in writing and on TV that his "repositioning" is to promote computing and gene-tampering. This is being done by purging proper academics. Some of his darling gene-tamperers have been promoting GM with false claims. [He has now moved back overseas.]
Misallocation of money, and more importantly of scientific talent seduced by GM, are among the reasons why the duty to care for natural ecosystems is so disgracefully neglected. Greedy nerds applying the hacker mentality to life itself is the ultimate decadent technomania. The prostitution of science is most complete and most dangerous in the selfish commercial gene. When will we muster the ethical power to wake up from this sleepwalking?
How much GE should be allowed to continue during the public inquiry?
I suggest
1 do not permit new field trials
2 shut down existing field trials
3 review laboratory GE precautions
4 of course, receive no applications for release of any GM organisms
5 abolish the "Independent" Biotechnology Advisory Council which was set up by the previous government with several gung-ho GM advocates but no known scientific critic. [this Maurice Williamson brainchild was quietly allowed to die, without any condemnation for its uselessness & bias. It has been approximately replaced by new biased qangos.]
What To Do Instead of GE
We did not just campaign against nuclear power. People want to know what to do instead. The Campaign for Non-nuclear Futures took every opportunity to point out better technology & ideas.
Instead of GE, and agribusiness more generally, the only real hope for feeding the world is organic agriculture - as advocated & practised by Prince Charles. If we can do it with apples, as is being achieved very profitably in NZ now, we can do it much more generally. The lower costs more than compensate for the cases of slightly lower yields; in general the yields of organic gardening are several times those achieved in agribusiness.
* * * *
The two best websites on GE are:
http://www.psrast.org
http://www.ucsusa.org
* * *
Dr Mann was Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry in the University of Auckland and then became its first (and last) Senior Lecturer in Environmental Studies. In retirement he works mainly on solar-thermal and motorcycling inventions, as well as helping to bring recombinant DNA under control.
on GM, I have at last got around to writing some considered responses to
that challenge. The particular latest challenger is a well known
personage. My reply below is excerpted to prevent his identification.
>Robert, you talk of the "extreme bias" of the 600 who issued in mid-2002
>the PR declaration in general support of GM.
This was on the basis of their own extreme statements which are
contrary to fact and to reason, and have been known for many years to be of
that shocking quality.
>But read yourself: "Never has science been so suddenly, drastically degraded
>as it is in the gene-jiggering racket. The 'science' on which current
>gene-tampering relies is junk. An enormous range of unimagined mutants are
>certain to surprise."
It does not follow that those statements result from bias. They
result from far far more detailed scientific analysis than any of the
Gallant 600 Declarers has ever pubd on the subject.
My friend the late Rev Dr Harold Turner felt called upon to state
from time to time that 'extreme' does not necessarily equal 'false', or
even 'imprudent'. He was right, wasn't he?
As I remarked to John Morton today - I'm extreme about nuclear
power, having explained in sufficient detail the reasons why it's a bad
idea. You can't infer from my statements which you quote that they are
wrong because they are extreme. They are conclusions from analyses which
I've made widely available and which have evoked no purported correction,
even when delivered in the presence of main gene-tamperers. For instance,
ace gene-jockey Dangerous Dan Cohen, main PR man for HortResearch®
gene-tampering, was present when I said what you now quote, in a RSNZ Ak
branch public lecture (attached - with comments inserted on what has
happened since). He said nothing, and has written nothing I know of that
would purport to correct me.
I have to remind you that the internal evidence of a given
utterance can not, generally, suffice to assess its reliability. You
should apply tests along these lines:-
* is the author experienced in the field?
* are the terms used in conventional ways, or if rare defined by refs to
authorities?
* are the facts from identified sources?
* are the conclusions reached by overt, correct reasoning from the facts?
* has the author a good record in accurate analysing of dangerous
technologies ?
Modesty impedes my answering these q's for you regarding myself - but let
me know if you want some reminders of my record.
A major difficulty is that the strands of cultural memory are now
as short as ca. 1 decade. PC media & bureaucracy operatives have
blacklisted me lo, these bulk years, and my status thru the 1970s as the
leading NZ academic analyst of dangerous technologies is now largely
forgotten. Jeanette list-MP and others exult in their replacing me in the
media; but is it too vain of me to believe public policy was better served
when the 'pop' media comments on GM were by experts rather than arts types
such as her, Susan Kitschley list-MP, Fiddler Bunkum list-MP, ignoramus
Claire Bleakley who has brought 2 stupidly-conceived suits against ERMA,
etc?
>This is scarcely dispassionate langauge.
It did not purport to be. It is language of moral suasion. Just
because you can't handle it, don't assume others can't.
>After years I am naturally sceptical of people
>who say there are no risks.
good; and the best reason for that attitude is not the extreme
position of their "reassurances" but the overwhelming evidence that their
claim is false. Not implausible, but positively false on evidence such as
one would love to present to Sir Th McCarthy or similar. In the absence of
that excellent old jurist, I've been exposing my extremism to as many
scientists as I can.
>But I believe you would have much more influence
>if you kept away from langauge of this nature.
How do you reach this prediction? Is it just that you're
discomforted by your failure to act on it while unable to refute it?
>You probably don't want to hear this.
Only in the sense that I've heard it many times before over several
decade.
> Neither do you want to hear this:
>that you are living in a world where the genie is out of its bottle - and if
>it isn't in NZ (yet) you can bet it will be elsewhere - so we will have to
>face its consequences.
I am not at all afraid to face this truth. What to do about it is
a q. you show little sign of tackling.
> I don't have the scientific expertise to say that
>there will be consequences but I'd be respectful of those (like you) who
>claim there will be. I feel much the same way about climate change. However
>much I believe we have a real problem, I have no shadow of doubt that the
>global community will fail to act prudentially
That may be a realistic prediction. It is irrelevant to your
attempt to denigrate my style of exposition & advocacy. That I may not
prevent all the potential damage is a reasonable belief; that I should
cease my version of advocacy does not follow. My assumption is that I can
prevent some of the damage; any objections?
> and that we will run the risks
>whatever they are.
What defeatism or quietism is this? I have no inclination to join
you in it. I've not tackled you about it, realising you have your own
style; why do you assume your way is better than mine, or something like
the only way?
>None of this is palatable, but we have to decide how we behave given the
>inevitability that there will be (as you put it) things that will "surprise".
>Saying shrilly I told you so won't help. There is a moral responsibility to
>cast arguments in terms that will, if not change minds that don't want to be
>changed, at least provide them with the means to think problems through
>should they arise.
I couldn't agree more; you've been doing so regarding GM, have you?
So far from helping people to cope with the potential harm from GM, which
you now assert to be a main duty, you were part of the attempt to make out
that large benefits could result from what (as proven by analysts such as
Prof Elliott, Prof Wills, Dr Lees, etc) are most unlikely to yield any
benefit. And didn't you fail to mention the possibility of harm? Doesn't
sound like a promising start to planning to cope with the harm, which you
now depict as a main duty.
Regarding what terms to cast arguments in, you appear to be unaware
of the definitive research of Prof Ph Zimbardo (L Stanford Jr U) - if you
want to change attitudes, the most powerful types of communication are
those which initially challenge to the biggest change. (This excludes
those which are unintelligible - Chinese characters etc.) You wish to
continue to be heavily paid by the same sorts of bureaucracy that have lied
about GM; I have no such pressure on me. I've not previously criticised
you for cowardice, but since you now tackle me in this patronising way, I
now do so.
More importantly, isn't it a case of "live and let live"? I intend
to continue to speak truth to power, in a style that I have developed over
4 decade. I don't quite know what you're up to; but it has not yet reached
me as a more successful style. Anyhow, you hew to your way. I will
continue to expound & exhort in ways which you are (in more ways than one)
incapable of. Isn't there room for both? I have a long record of success
(nuclear weapons, nuclear reactors, 245-T, leaded petrol, etc) as well as
some failures (e.g such GM genies as are already out of their respective
bottles; Maiden's Mobil/Bechtel synfuels factory; etc). What has your
style to show for itself?
But by all means keep trying in your own way which suits your
temperament & talents; and leave me to my different way.
I'm helped in this clarity by visiting this afternoon John E
Morton, 80. We expressed our mutual satisfaction at our expressions in
defence of Ngataringa Bay, Whirinaki forest, etc (some of his successes),
and my role instrumental in stopping the NZED nuclear programme. I hope
you will be able to have a similar session with him. Meanwhile, kindly
leave me to my modus operandi (which does, as you say, from time to time
issue more moderate-toned items such as on the Showa Denko GM-tryptophan.
I at least show versatility, being able to adopt a moderate style when I
deem it suitable. My judgement is that there are enough moderates on GM
and their success is v limited e.g. www.ucsusa.org.
You were wrong in supposing I wouldn't consider your compromises.
I have been considering them for most of my life, and have (I believe) a
more realistic analysis than you have of these v important issues. You are
hardly in a position to condescend to me.
Kind regards
R
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Robt Mann [mailto:robtm@maxnet.co.nz]
>Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2005 10:13 PM
>Subject: handy copy: know your gallant 600
>
>3-7-2002
>This list is mentioned today by Labour®'s GM PR man Pete
>Hodgson in response to Sir Peter Elworthy's Sustainability Council
>declaration for a 5y moratorium on release of GMOs.
>This LSN list, from a couple y ago, was re-launched yesterday -
>probably they heard the Elworthy announcement was coming. It has apparently
>been updated, e.g J Luxton is listed as an ex-MP.
>
>The 'Communiqué' you can safely assume to have been v carefully spun
>by Wevers + other PR twisters. They say economic, health, environmental and
>social benefits exist - indeed are "identified in the Royal Commission's
>Report" - but they don't allude to any hazards. In this extreme bias they
>join Gluckman's IBAC brochure.
>They "wholeheartedly support the process undertaken by the Royal
>Commission" e.g they're glad that oaths were quietly dispensed with, allowing
>PR agents to lie to the Commission without fear of getting gaoled for
>perjury.
>They are apparently unaware of the significant falsehoods in the RCGM
>report e.g on the GM-tryptophan poisonings.
>I have to admit it's an appalling experience to read this list of
>dupes for the gene-tampering trade.
... [etc etc]
THE SELFISH COMMERCIAL GENE
Robert Mann
invited lecture, RSNZ Auckland branch Auckland Museum 13 Sep 2000
[additions Sep 2004]
Introduction
Genetic manipulation (GM) or genetic engineering (GE) mean artificial transfer of genes - pieces of DNA - to produce a transgenic organism, e.g. jellyfish genes into sugarcane or human genes into cows. The methods of artificially joining pieces of DNA from different organisms' genes were invented as recently as the mid-1970s and are collectively called recombinant-DNA technology.
The abbreviations are Hobson's choice between pairs of letters already taken by huge USA corporations - GM and GE - but I'll use them interchangeably.
Technologies for cloning animals are, wholly or largely, different. But many concepts for cloning mammals involve not merely trying to copy existing animals but also splicing-in recombinant DNA from other species. Often the idea is to produce some foreign protein in milk.
These techniques no more entail a uniform degree of hazard than does nuclear science. As in nuclear technology, so with genetic engineering: the tag 'nuclear' does not necessarily connote any serious degree of hazard, and some versions of GM or of cloning may well be quite OK.
But some versions are not OK. You do therefore have to perform sceptical analyses of GM proposals if you want to assess their hazards. This is one of many similarities between the two technologies. I wish to point out other similarities - and some differences.
Do not equate GM with the larger category 'biotechnology'. GM is one kind of biotechnology but there are others too. Any attempt to equate GM with the yet wider category 'Life Sciences' is PR deceit (and illustrates how unpopular GM has become).
Genetic engineering's brief two-decade history has been characterised by exaggerated claims of benefit, confusing hope with fact in attempt to allay natural fears (and to stimulate stock-market ramps).
What can it do for you? Here's some typical PR hype:
Multi-billion dollar new life science industry for the region
It was MAF men Keith Steele and Neil Richardson promoting cows "not as milk producers but as 'biological reactors' producing a vast range of products which could open up multibillion dollar international marketing opportunities for the benefit of the region and the country. Treatment for multiple sclerosis could be only a glass of special milk away. The Waikato is ideally situated as the centre for this unlimited new industry based around the world-famous Ruakura research centre and the excellent [sic] University . . . . "
Technology using nuclear fission was procured by scientists. It was not initiated by elected representatives. The technical enthusiasts procured the funding for A-bombs and the nuclear reactors which were first created for the sole purpose of making plutonium for A-bombs. Similarly, billions of dollars have been procured for gene splicing by enthusiasts who say they are going to produce organisms, improved on commercial criteria, which could not occur in nature. In our little country, around $120M so far - $18M/y lately - has been procured by gene-manipulators from the government to subsidise a wide variety of GM which the public know little of. (This is one glimpse, by the way, of how sincere is the belief in leaving allocation of resources to 'market forces'.)
The monstrous blind alley of nuclear power stations should teach us how far astray society can be led by technical enthusiasts who act something like a priesthood presiding over an arcane speciality which they naturally don't want obstructed by any who don't understand the technical details. This attitude fits ill with democracy.
Nuclear fission is scientifically understood, and we have the technology based on that science - nuclear power reactors - commercially mature. Electricity from nuclear power stations will be reliable, clean, and so cheap we often won't bother to meter it. Not one reputable scientist disputes these claims by the enthusiasts for this modern, hi-tech wonder technology.
Such euphoric claims went practically unchallenged for as long as a decade from the late 1950s. Then in the late 1960s a few scientists began to tell the public that nuclear reactors could devastate areas about the size of our island, and that even if nothing goes wrong at the reactor the spent fuel poses grave hazards. Fortunately for our little country, other sources of electricity (hydro and geothermal) were obviously cheaper so that it was not until the 1960s that our government's nuclear power programme began. The same New Zealand bureaucrats who in 1966 proudly paraded foreign experts planning a nuclear station at Baring Head (12 miles from Parliament) were by 1974 bitterly defensive when the Campaign for Non-nuclear Futures - a terminating ad hoc coalition - got going. By 1979 a Royal Commission had laid the programme gently to rest; nobody respectable has tried to revive it.
But let us never forget that several hundred nuclear power reactors were foisted on the world, and many thousands of people doomed by the 1986 Chernobyl accident, as a result of that disgraceful decade when sheer lack of interest among scientists, suppression of the few critics, and stunting of alternatives, left the public crucially ignorant.
I need hardly add that the media almost entirely failed to reveal any significant facts about the hazards of nuclear power, at least until the late 1970s. Today the media are failing in their duty, far more culpably in that they can easily find out the arguments for increased caution on GM but are nearly all too lazy &/or too craven to do so. The best website is www.psrast.org.
Today the smug status of genetic engineering eerily recalls that period in the early 1960s when nuclear reactors were "commercialised" on the basis of enthusiasts' claims of understanding & control. New ranks of enthusiastic experts now tell us there's no significant threat from artificial gene transfers: no great harm could result, and any minor mishaps are (they claim) so unlikely that you can forget these hypothetical notions. "The hazards imagined in the mid-'70s have turned out to be unreal" is a typical recent expert quote.
Alongside airy dismissal of the dangers, the promised benefits are wildly exaggerated - for example, millions of venture-capital dollars have been procured by claims of imminent production of "pharmaceutical proteins" which in truth are nowhere near medical use and can in one case be already obtained free! The actual list of real benefits from GE organisms is very short, after a quarter-century of 'jam tomorrow' hype thru the media. In our parliament MPs have given lists of what they believed to be actual accomplishments of GE which are however still not real. [ I have upbraided Rt. Hon. S Upton in person for this.]
The Doubts
Many scientific and moral leaders have queried GE. The science upon which GM technology is founded - neo-Darwinism and the 'master molekule' idol status for DNA - are under strenuous criticism from scientific thinkers. Genes are not Lego modules which can be blithely slotted into very different organisms free from unintended effects. Rogue diseases are a genuine concern arising from detailed, sceptical appraisal of some GE projects. But global ecological damage is the gravest threat.
One tawdry old argument we have heard since 1974 and can expect to hear again in all its flagrant deceit is the claim that gene transfers occur naturally so GM is only hastening them. This line of talk is a smoke-screen designed to obscure the fact that GM usually performs artificial transfers which are not believed to occur in nature. This fact is denied when possible harm is suggested, but is acknowledged, indeed emphasised, for claims of benefit.
If we change the rates, or even worse the specificities, with which genes can jump around in infectious manners, we may wreak biological havoc on a global scale. Go back to Ovid's Metamorphoses to glimpse what might go wrong.
But the gene-jockeys claim they can, godlike, foresee the evolutionary results of their artificial transposings of human genes into sheep, bovine genes into tomatoes, etc. This is extreme, deluded arrogance; for the theologically inclined, I commend one chapter: Genesis 3.
The science these gamblers hawk is, on several levels, junk. I haven't space here to detail this contention, only to mention a few aspects of their junkiness.
* Gene-jockeys often work on the assumption there are only 4 letters in the 'alphabet' of DNA (called for short G, C, T, and A); for example, "DNA is a very long molecule built of only 4 letters" - Dr Andy Shenk, Genesis R&D Corp (Auckland, N.Z.) TV1 'Holmes' show 00-6-27, and Prof Ros Macintosh of Massey U, TV1 this Monday. But it has been known for several decades that other 'letters' exist in DNA. The functions of the 'odd' bases - methyl-C, methyl-G, and others - are largely unknown, but that does not mean they're equivalent to 'The Big Four'. They are often ignored by genetic engineers sequencing DNA "copied" by systems that produce only 'Big 4' polymers. This is junk science.
* They pretend that the effects of genes inserted by radically unnatural methods are predictable, when they are known to be extremely variable (usually lethal).
* They pretend that a cell surviving such genes-insertion processes, and then selected on just one property - resistance to an antibiotic - and then grown into a whole organism, e.g. a potato, will have all properties at least as good as those of a normal organism.
Never since the Nazi attempts to legitimize racism has science been so rapidly & severely degraded. Apologists for GM posing as defenders of true science - e.g. ACT - are taking up an untenable, indeed ludicrous, stance.
The Commerce
Doubts have been swept aside by the thrust of transnational corporations funding university and 'crown' GM labs, as well as small groups of academics starting GE firms (a far cheaper image to erect than that of a nuclear reactor manufacturer).
A further subtle commercial lure is the relative difficulty of tracing the offender when the 'one in a million' mishap occurs. The Swedes in April 1986 only briefly thought the unusual radioactivity in one of their nuclear stations was from another of their own - it was traced to Chernobyl within days; but if an epidemic of this or that disease breaks out amongst cows or humans in the Hamilton district, the fact that the nearby government research station at Ruakura has been largely given over to GM for foreign purchasers will not suffice to sheet home any blame. Any ensuing inquiry would elicit much closing of ranks as most of the scientists able to understand such arcane matters covered up for each other. Ronald Reagan's favourite criterion - deniability - is all too easily arranged in the GM business.
How Much Harm; How Often?
In appraising dangerous technologies, it is best to estimate the hazard - the scale of harm in the event of a major mishap - as a separate question, and then analyse if possible the risk - the probability that the major mishap will occur. Much confusion between these two aspects of danger has been created by language-tampering, even in such formal arenas as the Journal of Risk Analysis. Some ERMA staff are trying to organise a pseudo-professional club on Risk Assessment to feed them what they want to hear for their purpose of rubber-stamping; they did not invite any sceptical speaker for their Dec 13 2000 inaugural meeting.
The hazards of GM rival even nuclear war. Biology is so much more complex than technology that we should not pretend we can imagine all the horror scenarios, but it is suspected that some artificial genetic manipulations create the potential to derange the biosphere for longer than any civilisation could survive. If only enthusiasts are consulted in appraisal of GE proposals, such scenarios will not be thought of.
The nuclear parallel is again cogent. Not until the AEC's 'Rasmussen/Levine' report of 1974 were sceptical analysts such as Kendall and Lovins asked for their opinions (and then they were ignored).
The hazard certainly includes some mortality: dozens of people were killed in the 1980s by impurities in L-tryptophan (a natural amino acid, sold as a 'dietary supplement' to avoid medicine regulations) made by Showa Denko using GE'd bacterial cultures. By early 1991, Showa Denko had paid $4.6M in out-of-court settlements amongst lawsuits for over $810M. By now, the totals are roughly U$2,000,000,000 and 80 - 120 deaths, possibly more. Thousands continue maimed. This actual damage by GE
Eating a certain GE potato damaged internal organs of rats in the pioneering test of GE food by Dr Pusztai. He was vilified and sacked.
Damage to non-human organisms is a real concern. Monarch-butterfly caterpillars eating leaves dusted with a GM-maize pollen were - nearly 50% - killed, and the survivors stunted, compared with the identical experiment using ordinary maize pollen.
The role of emotion is often misrepresented by enthusiasts for dangerous technologies. They decry as 'emotive' any argument or fact inconvenient to their cause, but their own enthusiasm does not count as undesirable emotion; indeed they pretend to be 'objective' - devoid of emotion - when in fact they're ruled by emotion, against reason.
A spectacular double standard prevails: benefits of GE are stated as fact when they are no more than fantasies, e.g. AAT treating emphysema,
[ PPL have continued this furphy, unchallenged by the media, only admitting last year that their thousands of transgenic sheep near Whakamaru are a flop. The company has now gone bust. ERMA failed to require autopsies.] whereas any suggestion of harm is ruthlessly rejected, usually by personal vilifications and always by an ultra-stringent standard, e.g. the outrageous purging of Dr Pusztai.
Professor Peter Bergquist coined the term 'the Liberia of GM' in the mid-70s as he feared NZ would be used by foreign gene-technologists for experiments that wouldn't be permitted in their homeland. He assessed the benefits and the hazards at that early stage as "equally speculative". The experiments in the intervening quarter-century have revealed some actual harm; many potential forms of damage have been pointed out, but the gamblers roar on cheerfully; and the benefits - from crops and animals, as distinct from contained microbial cultures - remain speculative (except for Monsanto who sell the cloned seeds resistant to their main herbicide Roundup® and also sell some seeds for crops containing modified Bt insecticide). No benefit to farmers has yet been shown. The yields of RoundupReady® soybeans are 4 -7% lower than those from proper soybeans, except in drought districts where the GE yield is 30% lower. Monsanto's NuLeaf® Bt-potato reached 5% of the USA potato crop but already sales are dropping [and now the brand has been withdrawn from sale]. One of the most respected science reporters, Nicholas Wade, pointed out in the New York Times recently that almost all GM corporations have yet to win a cent of revenue, let alone net a profit.
Law
In 1977 the N.Z. Association of Scientists proposed a moratorium on GE pending a full public inquiry. This policy was taken up then, two decades ago, by a few politicians. But the genetic engineers had one or two rabid advocates in Parliament, notably Jim Sutton's brother Bill, and avoided hostile scrutiny. Only now, two decades later, the Royal Commission has been formed; but how much GM can proceed during its inquiry remains to be determined. [ new permits for field trials were suspended during the RCGM's proceedings. Pre-existing trials were allowed to continue. Special legislation was passed to allow release of GMOs; but none has yet been legally permitted in NZ.]
At last, a form of legal regulation of novel organisms emerged - the ERMA. In its first 22 field-trial decisions, ERMA has issued 22 approvals. This is a biased, secretive, even obstructive agency, which collects a lot of money from both the gene-jockeys and the government to maintain an expensive rubber-stamp. It is chaired by Mr W J Falconer, a main pusher of the Mobil/Bechtel synfuels factory (at Motunui) which has not made any petrol for several years and was always an inferior plan. Several other members have no obvious qualification. It was National Party cronyism at its worst, and these stooges may go on issuing legal permits while the Royal Commission examines for the first time which GM experiments should be permitted. The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard. [ ERMA has continued unsatisfactory; some scathing criticisms by G Nahkies' cttee have evoked no clear progress.]
Having taught on environmental health hazards for many years in science & medical faculties, and having served as an adviser to successive Ministers of Health in the first dozen years of the Toxic Substances Board, I know all too well how overloaded government staff, even when backed by statutory powers, get subverted by not only the specific claims but more importantly the whole value-system of the industries which they are supposed to regulate. The imbalance is particularly severe for such pathetic pretences as have been staged to regulate GE. A pro-GM ERMA staff member has been transferred to the Royal Commission staff; she should be removed. [ this operative did go back to ERMA, but not before a lot of harm had been done.]
Laboratory experiments have been approved by local safety committees wielding legal powers completely delegated by the ERMA which however still collects a hefty fee. Over a hundred such GM experiments have been exposed as illegal. No penalties are proposed. [ RCGM recommendation 6.2, for a review of the containment systems, has been ignored by the Clark regime.] Misuse of the legal system for such a pseudo-regulatory charade undermines the rule of law. Little wonder then that direct action has been resorted to, in Britain, the USA, and here, to uproot experimental GM crops.
GE and the Dairy Industry
What then of the "multi-billion dollar new life science industry for the region" alleged by Keith Steele and Neil Richardson ?
The NZ Dairy Board declared its intention to pour $150M into GM experiments over the coming 5y. They said they were spending $60M/y on R&D and GM is taking $30M/y extra. [ Media fail to report on the corporations e.g. Gluckman's ViaLactia® that procured dozens of millions of this budget for dairy-GM after the Dairy Board was abolished. Main proximal procurer Kevin Marshall is down the road.]
You can reasonably assume that most of the $42B/y mirage projected for the NZ dairy industry relies on GE fantasies which are far from reality and may never be feasible let alone profitable. It is not extremely safe to assume they would all gain legal permission, after the Royal Commission on GM has performed the first sceptical investigation, by public hearings. There have been many flops in GM. Let me give a few examples of how dairy GE can go wrong.
A relatively early example was the mid-1990s attempt to make a human protein in goats' milk by Lincoln University biochemistry professor Bullock, funded by Genzyme Corp of Framingham, Massachusetts. This case came & went entirely within the never-never period when no legal regulatory regime existed in our country but Prof Petersen of Otago presided over a pseudo-regulatory Interim Assessment Group (IAG) administered by the Ministry for the Environment.
The project was to raise and study a herd of goats GEd to contain in their milk the human protein CFTR - cystic fibrosis transmembrane-conductance regulator. The professor's formal proposal was written, and ancillary mass-media propaganda was slanted, so as to create the impression that the Genzyme/Lincoln work is based on some scientific hypothesis which could well lead to therapy for cystic fibrosis. This is a misleading impression. Even if it proves feasible to insert the gene for the human lung protein CFTR into goat embryos or zygotes, leading to goats' milk containing significant quantities of human CFTR, there will still remain the difficulty that no therapy is in prospect using any concentrated preparation of CFTR. The proposal's phrase "the drug produced" was therefore false and deceptive.
The leading medical experts on cystic fibrosis have found themselves in the unpleasant role of breaking the news to the parents of CF sufferers that, contrary to the Genzyme/Bullock/NZ Herald image, no therapy is in prospect. It is cruel to raise hopes which must thus be dashed by others.
The public should also learn that permission was denied for Prof Bullock's conjoint proposal to produce similarly in goats' milk a second human protein, AAT, which has even less prospect of utility or market value but which he termed a "pharmaceutical protein" - of which more soon. The IAG, to its credit, recommended against the inclusion of AAT in this CFTR caper.
The results, reported in a couple of sentences by the Ministry for the Environment, were a complete flop, the goats were destroyed, what was done with their remains is unclear, and Prof. Bullock went overseas.
Which media were not too lazy or too craven to report this caper?
A more important and interesting example is the current attempt to genetically engineer that human protein called AAT in N.Z. sheep. A small Scottish company ("Pharmaceutical" Proteins Ltd - the 'Dolly' procreators & impresarios - financed by the large German multi-national Bayer) wanted to field-test in New Zealand ewes GE'd to make in their milk a human protein called by the unhelpful name alpha-1 antitrypsin (abbreviated AAT). The only reason stated for doing such experiments in N.Z. was this country's scrapie-free status. The Ministry for the Environment's Interim Assessment Group (IAG), although devoid of experts on prions (scrapie, mad cow disease, CJD, etc.) and dominated by GE enthusiasts who appear to think that fears of GE are absurd, advised their Minister to refuse - which he did. Reasons, when reluctantly disclosed, turned out to be mere econobabble; prions were not mentioned.
Prevalent misinformation tending to favour the AAT project, due partly to an anonymous 'news' report in Science , requires correction in at least the following respects.
(a) AAT-deficiency is equated with congenital emphysema, an unjustified jump beyond the evidence. Most of those born AAT-deficient do not develop lung disorders. Reports on N.Z. TV and in newspapers have credited AAT as a treatment for emphysema; the public would take this to mean the common smoking-induced illness, greatly exaggerating the claim of usefulness. The congenital version is very much rarer, if a proper diagnostic category at all.
(b) AAT is asserted to be in use now to treat congenital emphysema, whereas such crude preliminary trials as have been done prove very little. In fact there exists no use, let alone a market, for genuine human AAT which is routinely purified as a by-product and discarded in standard blood-bank fractionations of pooled human plasma.
(c) AAT is implied to be very valuable ("U$100,000/y per ewe"), which factoid is then used to justify attempted production by genetic engineering. All this "future earnings" is intended to stimulate a stock-market ramp before anything saleable has actually been produced. That at least is the intention. But of course such a bubble must burst after enough time without selling anything. This is the fate of nearly all such capers.
The then Minister 'for' the Environment, ex-Rhodes Scholar & lawyer Mr Simon Upton, solicited a modified application, which was approved - on economic grounds.
Then the ERMA, flying in the face of the facts, approved expansion of PPL's flock to 10,000. Nothing was to go offsite except the milk (for processing by a Tainui enterprise in Hamilton). But then, the ERMA has never rejected a GE field trial. It stages some dramatic delays - on that I sympathise with applicants.
This PPL caper is only one of many similar. The standards of truthfulness in the GE trade are reminiscent of those prevailing in the computer trade, with which it has intimate links.
That is the context in which the AgResearch® Ruakura group l'Huillier, Wells et al. claim they might make a cow whose milk could simply be drunk to treat the demylinating illness multiple sclerosis. There is some evidence this might work; but it could go badly wrong, in the people and perhaps in the cows. Demyelination can be induced by injecting the protein in question, and we know little about what it will do by mouth. The more likely motive for this project is to get patents on new cloning techniques, as have been issued to the 'Dolly' impresarios. The Waikato Times bills these enthusiasts as 'The Geniuses'. Most cloned mammals to date have aged prematurely and died young, so there's room for improvement in the exactitude of these "exact" copies.
Phil l'Huillier had a go at me in public so I asked him whether he really believed the milk he plans is likely to help MS sufferers. His answer was only that he HOPED it would.
We haven't time today to discuss GM-trees, for which a main world research centre is the corporation called Genesis® in Parnell. Also I must largely leave you to read up on GM-crops, which are the main GE organisms outside containment - mainly in N. Amer. and Argentina. One practitioner of GM-plants, Prof Patrick Brown, has expressed severe misgivings about the current versions, on the PSRAST website.
The depraved trade of mercenary deception, commonly called PR, has enormous influence in the suppression and distortion of information about GM. This has been feasible largely because the NZ media have almost totally failed to tell key facts about GM. The NZ Herald's Yoke Har Lee, for instance, largely just laundered PR claims from the gene-jockeys, with no balancing comment from critics. Radio NZ's 'Eureka' operatives Alan Coukell & Veronika Meduna have promoted GM by very uncritical biased reporting.
Global Reach
Government, gutted & starved by the ideological hatred of public enterprise (Rogernomics, Ruthanasia, and then Jenocide - our versions of Thatcherism), is largely warped to the commercial service of foreign corporations, and is almost totally unable, so far, to regulate GE. The charade of pseudoregulation - the expensive rubber stamp called ERMA, and the even less regulatory ANZFA - fails to control anything much, even labels. [ A 'Food Standards Authority' dominated by Australia appears to represent no progress.]
GE Products
A few biochemicals are being made commercially by GM in microbes. One which looms over New Zealand is recombinant bovine growth hormone, also known as bovine somatotropin. Canada rejected this, mainly because it is cruel to the cows. But there are other drawbacks.
I excerpt from a recent summary by Samuel S. Epstein M.D., Professor of
Environmental Medicine, University of Illinois School of Public Health:
The GM milk hormone, rBST, is exclusively manufactured in Austria by Biochemie Kundl, a Novartis plant under license to Monsanto; in 1998, over 100 million doses of the GM hormone were exported to the U.S. and also to 16 Third World Countries. While the administration of rBST to cows in Europe was banned (very recently) on unarguable animal health and welfare grounds, there are no restrictions yet on the import of GM dairy products, nor any requirements for their being labelled GM. GM milk, produced by injecting cows with the hormone rBST, is qualitatively and quantitatively different from natural milk. These differences include:
contamination of milk by the GM hormone rBST;
contamination by pus and antibiotics resulting from the high incidence of mastitis in rBST injected cows;
contamination with illegal antibiotics and drugs used to treat mastitis and other rBST-induced disease;
increased concentration of the thyroid hormone enzyme thyroxin-5'-monodeiodinase;
increased concentration of long-chain and decreased concentration of short-chain fatty acids;
reduction in casein levels;
and major excess levels of Insulin-like Growth Factor, IGF-1, including its highly potent variant, in the milk and, surprisingly, in the blood of people who drink it. IGF-1 is under strong suspicion of causing cancer, notably breast and prostate.
Monsanto have tried to register their Posilac® rBGH in this country, but late in 2002 the impression emerged that this had been rejected. Its exact legal status could be usefully clarified by a good law student.
Wake Up!
It is now a quarter-century since genetic engineering was identified in the same league as nuclear weapons among major threats to the biosphere. During this period, market forces have prevailed instead of informed democracy.
Genetic engineering is by now more popular - more widely practised - than dangerous versions of nuclear science ever were. But it is in general an imprudent gamble and profoundly wrong.
Corruption of scientific institutions is one of the offences of this gene-tampering fad. The Royal Society of NZ was manipulated by the then president of the NZ PR Institute, Ms Norrie Simmons, in her private trust GenePool, funded partly by Monsanto - a front for the GE trade, touring Dr Richard Bellamy & Professor Sir John Scott to say there's little to worry about. GenePool also maintained an extremely biased website claiming benefits of GM but minimising hazards. Has science ever been so warped by PR? [Simmons features prominently in the corruption documented by Hager in his book on GM corn permitted by Hobbs/Clark. She issued gagging writs on Jeanette Fitzsimons list-MP and RadioNZ for reporting her role in the King Salmon field trial PR. Why has that phoney suit not been brought on for trial while years passed? ]
Biologists are being purged from our universities to make room for gene-manipulators expected to bring in venture capital. The head of the Massey University black suit gang stated in writing and on TV that his "repositioning" is to promote computing and gene-tampering. This is being done by purging proper academics. Some of his darling gene-tamperers have been promoting GM with false claims. [He has now moved back overseas.]
Misallocation of money, and more importantly of scientific talent seduced by GM, are among the reasons why the duty to care for natural ecosystems is so disgracefully neglected. Greedy nerds applying the hacker mentality to life itself is the ultimate decadent technomania. The prostitution of science is most complete and most dangerous in the selfish commercial gene. When will we muster the ethical power to wake up from this sleepwalking?
How much GE should be allowed to continue during the public inquiry?
I suggest
1 do not permit new field trials
2 shut down existing field trials
3 review laboratory GE precautions
4 of course, receive no applications for release of any GM organisms
5 abolish the "Independent" Biotechnology Advisory Council which was set up by the previous government with several gung-ho GM advocates but no known scientific critic. [this Maurice Williamson brainchild was quietly allowed to die, without any condemnation for its uselessness & bias. It has been approximately replaced by new biased qangos.]
What To Do Instead of GE
We did not just campaign against nuclear power. People want to know what to do instead. The Campaign for Non-nuclear Futures took every opportunity to point out better technology & ideas.
Instead of GE, and agribusiness more generally, the only real hope for feeding the world is organic agriculture - as advocated & practised by Prince Charles. If we can do it with apples, as is being achieved very profitably in NZ now, we can do it much more generally. The lower costs more than compensate for the cases of slightly lower yields; in general the yields of organic gardening are several times those achieved in agribusiness.
* * * *
The two best websites on GE are:
http://www.psrast.org
http://www.ucsusa.org
* * *
Dr Mann was Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry in the University of Auckland and then became its first (and last) Senior Lecturer in Environmental Studies. In retirement he works mainly on solar-thermal and motorcycling inventions, as well as helping to bring recombinant DNA under control.
02/13/05
Outstanding NYT article: Biology's New Forbidden Fruit [GMO] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 02:55:14 PM
This article concludes:
"After Hiroshima, Robert Oppenheimer told an audience at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology that "in some sort of crude sense,
which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the
physicists have known sin." Biologists have yet to taste that knowledge,
and it is not a foregone conclusion that they will. But before the trees
of knowledge in their synthetic garden bear their strange fruit, the
gardeners should heed the lessons of history. They should start talking
to one another, and to the rest of us, about what to do when the serpent
turns up."
Not only do NZ journos not write anything nearly so well informed
or wise as this NYT article, but also they don't reprint such articles from
overseas. As the gene-jockey trade has yet to produce anything that could
bring the media advertising revenue, this bias is difficult to explain.
R
February 11, 2005 ny times
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Biology's New Forbidden Fruit
By OLIVER MORTON
Lewes, England
IN the early 19th century, received chemical wisdom held that organic
compounds were beyond the creative powers of the laboratory's furnaces
and alembics - that they could be fashioned only by the vital forces in
living beings. Then, in 1828, while trying to do something else,
Friedrich Wöhler discovered that urea, an organic compound of carbon,
hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, could be made from inorganic ingredients.
His successors found that this new synthetic chemistry could produce not
only all the organic molecules used in nature, but also organic
molecules of which nature had never dreamed. Artificial dyes became a
major industry; in World War I, so did poison gases. From plastics to
detergents to fabrics to fertilizers, synthetic chemistry went on to
change the world.
A similar transition is now under way in biology. Until recently
biologists worked with the components they found in nature. They might
swap genes from creature to creature, but they did it by cutting and
pasting nature's originals, rather as an editor might move bits of prose
with a click and a drag. Now the biologists are getting keyboards to go
with their metaphorical mice - technologies that allow them to write
genes and genomes from scratch, to alter and surpass nature's
vocabulary. The scientific, commercial and destructive possibilities of
this synthetic biology are easily as great as those once offered by the
transformation of chemistry. But they will make themselves felt far more
quickly, raising ethical and moral questions that many biologists have
been poorly trained to handle.
The ability to design genomes and their components holds great practical
promise. Late last year the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave $42.6
million to a project at the University of California, Berkeley, that is
rewriting bacterial genomes in an effort to produce the malaria drug
artemisinin at a small fraction of today's costs. Companies that
synthesize genes to order - send them a sequence and a credit card
number and they'll mail you a gene - look to have a rosy future. To keep
things safe, they check the sequences requested against databases of
pathogenic genes, to make sure nobody is building anything nasty. But as
the technology drops in price and spreads in availability, the
possibility that someone, somewhere, will synthesize something like
smallpox will grow ever greater. The genome sequences of pathogens, as
of all sorts of other organisms, are piling up on the Internet.
It's a frightening prospect. But the fear needs some perspective. First,
the ability to make biological weapons with cut-and-paste technologies
is already widespread: diseases can easily have drug resistance
engineered into them, or susceptibility to vaccines engineered out. This
is hardly reassuring, especially since there is still no clear, cohesive
strategy for defending ourselves against such weapons.
But synthetic biology could also make us safer. Last month, shortly
after the journal Nature published an article by Dr. George M. Church of
the Harvard Medical School and Dr. Xiaolian Gao of the University of
Houston on a technique that makes gene synthesis considerably easier,
its sister journal Nature Methods published a paper by Dr. Rob Carlson
at the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley on a new technology
endearingly known as the tadpole. Tadpoles are little bits of protein
with synthetic DNA tails that promise to make the detection of all sorts
of biological molecules much easier, including novel pathogens that
could be used in an attack.
Both Dr. Church and the tadpole team are aware of the security
implications of their work. So is the United States government. The
Pentagon's research shop, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,
is supporting various synthetic biology initiatives. There has been some
discussion of how the dangers inherent in this technology can be
contained: Dr. Church, for example, has suggested that it might be
possible to sequester the most powerful genome synthesis programs in a
few research institutions. But the small group of people thinking about
the issue has reached no consensus.
At this stage, the most important thing to do is to widen that
discussion. The best basis for oversight is a concerned citizenry that
wants to keep up with what is possible and discuss what is desirable.
But to spur such debates in the wider public, biologists themselves will
have to become more willing to think and talk about the ever more
powerful technologies that they increasingly take for granted in the lab.
Biologists tend to assume that their studies are inherently, if
indirectly, beneficial; they think that knowing how life works is the
foundation of all medical progress, and thus a pursuit that deserves
more or less unquestioning support from society at large. The dark side
of their force - the potential for interrupting and subverting life that
flows from biological research - rarely receives their attention. Tara
O'Toole, who runs the Center for Biosecurity at the University of
Pittsburgh Medical Center, remembers seeing a room full of Harvard
biologists asked whether they could design a weapon that would kill
people in their thousands. Their looks of bemusement - few had ever
thought of such a thing - turned to looks of calculation, then to
understanding, appreciation and even a touch of shock. That awareness
has to be spread as wide as possible if biologists are to assume the
crucial role they need to take in discussions about the future.
Suggested ways of spreading this awareness range from a Hippocratic oath
for researchers to more and better courses in ethics and history. As in
so much education about danger, though, the best results will come from
intense conversations with peers. These concerns need to be the drivers
of late-night bull sessions as much as they need to be on the syllabus.
After Hiroshima, Robert Oppenheimer told an audience at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology that "in some sort of crude sense,
which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the
physicists have known sin." Biologists have yet to taste that knowledge,
and it is not a foregone conclusion that they will. But before the trees
of knowledge in their synthetic garden bear their strange fruit, the
gardeners should heed the lessons of history. They should start talking
to one another, and to the rest of us, about what to do when the serpent
turns up.
"After Hiroshima, Robert Oppenheimer told an audience at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology that "in some sort of crude sense,
which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the
physicists have known sin." Biologists have yet to taste that knowledge,
and it is not a foregone conclusion that they will. But before the trees
of knowledge in their synthetic garden bear their strange fruit, the
gardeners should heed the lessons of history. They should start talking
to one another, and to the rest of us, about what to do when the serpent
turns up."
Not only do NZ journos not write anything nearly so well informed
or wise as this NYT article, but also they don't reprint such articles from
overseas. As the gene-jockey trade has yet to produce anything that could
bring the media advertising revenue, this bias is difficult to explain.
R
February 11, 2005 ny times
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Biology's New Forbidden Fruit
By OLIVER MORTON
Lewes, England
IN the early 19th century, received chemical wisdom held that organic
compounds were beyond the creative powers of the laboratory's furnaces
and alembics - that they could be fashioned only by the vital forces in
living beings. Then, in 1828, while trying to do something else,
Friedrich Wöhler discovered that urea, an organic compound of carbon,
hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, could be made from inorganic ingredients.
His successors found that this new synthetic chemistry could produce not
only all the organic molecules used in nature, but also organic
molecules of which nature had never dreamed. Artificial dyes became a
major industry; in World War I, so did poison gases. From plastics to
detergents to fabrics to fertilizers, synthetic chemistry went on to
change the world.
A similar transition is now under way in biology. Until recently
biologists worked with the components they found in nature. They might
swap genes from creature to creature, but they did it by cutting and
pasting nature's originals, rather as an editor might move bits of prose
with a click and a drag. Now the biologists are getting keyboards to go
with their metaphorical mice - technologies that allow them to write
genes and genomes from scratch, to alter and surpass nature's
vocabulary. The scientific, commercial and destructive possibilities of
this synthetic biology are easily as great as those once offered by the
transformation of chemistry. But they will make themselves felt far more
quickly, raising ethical and moral questions that many biologists have
been poorly trained to handle.
The ability to design genomes and their components holds great practical
promise. Late last year the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave $42.6
million to a project at the University of California, Berkeley, that is
rewriting bacterial genomes in an effort to produce the malaria drug
artemisinin at a small fraction of today's costs. Companies that
synthesize genes to order - send them a sequence and a credit card
number and they'll mail you a gene - look to have a rosy future. To keep
things safe, they check the sequences requested against databases of
pathogenic genes, to make sure nobody is building anything nasty. But as
the technology drops in price and spreads in availability, the
possibility that someone, somewhere, will synthesize something like
smallpox will grow ever greater. The genome sequences of pathogens, as
of all sorts of other organisms, are piling up on the Internet.
It's a frightening prospect. But the fear needs some perspective. First,
the ability to make biological weapons with cut-and-paste technologies
is already widespread: diseases can easily have drug resistance
engineered into them, or susceptibility to vaccines engineered out. This
is hardly reassuring, especially since there is still no clear, cohesive
strategy for defending ourselves against such weapons.
But synthetic biology could also make us safer. Last month, shortly
after the journal Nature published an article by Dr. George M. Church of
the Harvard Medical School and Dr. Xiaolian Gao of the University of
Houston on a technique that makes gene synthesis considerably easier,
its sister journal Nature Methods published a paper by Dr. Rob Carlson
at the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley on a new technology
endearingly known as the tadpole. Tadpoles are little bits of protein
with synthetic DNA tails that promise to make the detection of all sorts
of biological molecules much easier, including novel pathogens that
could be used in an attack.
Both Dr. Church and the tadpole team are aware of the security
implications of their work. So is the United States government. The
Pentagon's research shop, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,
is supporting various synthetic biology initiatives. There has been some
discussion of how the dangers inherent in this technology can be
contained: Dr. Church, for example, has suggested that it might be
possible to sequester the most powerful genome synthesis programs in a
few research institutions. But the small group of people thinking about
the issue has reached no consensus.
At this stage, the most important thing to do is to widen that
discussion. The best basis for oversight is a concerned citizenry that
wants to keep up with what is possible and discuss what is desirable.
But to spur such debates in the wider public, biologists themselves will
have to become more willing to think and talk about the ever more
powerful technologies that they increasingly take for granted in the lab.
Biologists tend to assume that their studies are inherently, if
indirectly, beneficial; they think that knowing how life works is the
foundation of all medical progress, and thus a pursuit that deserves
more or less unquestioning support from society at large. The dark side
of their force - the potential for interrupting and subverting life that
flows from biological research - rarely receives their attention. Tara
O'Toole, who runs the Center for Biosecurity at the University of
Pittsburgh Medical Center, remembers seeing a room full of Harvard
biologists asked whether they could design a weapon that would kill
people in their thousands. Their looks of bemusement - few had ever
thought of such a thing - turned to looks of calculation, then to
understanding, appreciation and even a touch of shock. That awareness
has to be spread as wide as possible if biologists are to assume the
crucial role they need to take in discussions about the future.
Suggested ways of spreading this awareness range from a Hippocratic oath
for researchers to more and better courses in ethics and history. As in
so much education about danger, though, the best results will come from
intense conversations with peers. These concerns need to be the drivers
of late-night bull sessions as much as they need to be on the syllabus.
After Hiroshima, Robert Oppenheimer told an audience at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology that "in some sort of crude sense,
which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the
physicists have known sin." Biologists have yet to taste that knowledge,
and it is not a foregone conclusion that they will. But before the trees
of knowledge in their synthetic garden bear their strange fruit, the
gardeners should heed the lessons of history. They should start talking
to one another, and to the rest of us, about what to do when the serpent
turns up.
A man walked in the Women's Department of Macy's in New York City. He tells the sales person, "I would like a Jewish bra for my wife, size 34B."
With a quizzical look the sales person asked, "What kind of bra??"
He repeated, "A Jewish bra - she said to tell you that she wanted a Jewish bra and that you would know what she wanted."
"Ah, now I remember," the sales lady replied. "We don't get as many requests for them as we used to. Mostly our customers lately want the Catholic bra, or the Salvation Army bra, or the Presbyterian type."
Confused, and a bit flustered, the man asked, "So, what are the differences?"
The lady behind the counter responded, "It's really quite simple. The Catholic type supports the masses, the Salvation Army lifts the fallen, and the Presbyterian type keeps them staunch and upright."
He mused on that information for a minute, then asked, "So what is the Jewish type for?"
"They," she replied, "make mountains out of molehills."
With a quizzical look the sales person asked, "What kind of bra??"
He repeated, "A Jewish bra - she said to tell you that she wanted a Jewish bra and that you would know what she wanted."
"Ah, now I remember," the sales lady replied. "We don't get as many requests for them as we used to. Mostly our customers lately want the Catholic bra, or the Salvation Army bra, or the Presbyterian type."
Confused, and a bit flustered, the man asked, "So, what are the differences?"
The lady behind the counter responded, "It's really quite simple. The Catholic type supports the masses, the Salvation Army lifts the fallen, and the Presbyterian type keeps them staunch and upright."
He mused on that information for a minute, then asked, "So what is the Jewish type for?"
"They," she replied, "make mountains out of molehills."
02/12/05
Archbishop tells Church to help save the planet with green policies [Religion] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 08:08:37 PM
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=607235&host=3&dir=58
Archbishop tells Church to help save the planet with green policies
By Robert Verkaik
03 February 2005
The Church of England is embarking on a green revolution, rolling out an
eco-friendly policy under which organic bread and wine will be served for
Holy Communion, clergy will recycle waste products and fair trade products
will be sold at fêtes.
Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, will set out his vision of
a greener world at a meeting of the General Synod of the Church of England
later this month that will challenge Britain to tackle global warming.
In a discussion document being circulated among Synod members, the Church of
England says that the world's climate is close to a "tipping point". The
Church warns: "The sudden changes that would occur in weather systems, the
fertility of the soil, the water and the world of living creatures if this
tipping point were reached could be devastating." It points out that even if
"ecological devastation" is not on the horizon "it has to be realised that
growth without limit has to be curtailed".
The report, entitled Sharing God's Planet, argues:
"Furthermore, the injustices spawned by massive growth already exist.
Two-thirds of the world does not have enough to eat while the other third is
trying to lose weight."
Dr Williams will introduce the report that also backs the widespread claim
that industrialisation has damaged the environment by global warming. He
recommends that Christians adopt "sustainable consumption", recognising
their duty "to celebrate and care for every part of God's creation".
The Synod will debate the issue on 17 February, the day after the Kyoto
protocol to reduce greenhouse gases comes into force. The Church is critical
of countries such as the United States which have dragged their feet over
the protocol.
In a second discussion document on the environmental debate, the Synod is
asked to recognise that Kyoto is not enough. "It has taken far too long to
be ratified as each country fights for its own
interests (the US is notable among countries which have declined to
sign); its targets fall very far short of what is necessary."
At the same time, Christians will be asked to praise the work of the Body
Shop which is described as a "brave exception" for getting people to
consider the ethics of their shopping choices.
The Synod will also be asked to support the principle of introducing a
system of quotas for CO2 emissions that take account of a country's size of
population rather than its industrial strength.
But the Church of England will begin its own campaign by introducing
eco-friendly policies in its churches. Among practical ideas for local
churches are schemes such as recycling, car pooling and selling fairly
traded products at church fêtes. Clergy will also be encouraged to use
natural materials in worship such as organic bread and wine. In his foreword
to Sharing God's Planet, Dr Williams calls on each parish to undertake an
"ecological audit". He adds: "Such local internal responses are vital if our
voice as a church is to have integrity."
The Synod has not debated the environment since 1992 and the only other
debate took place in 1986. The discussion document adds: "A Synod debate on
the environment is timely. There is increasing awareness of the urgent need
to address the developing ecological crisis. It is politically opportune as
one of the Government's declared priorities for its current presidency of
the G8 is climate change and that concern will be carried into its
priorities for its chairing of the European Union.
P.S. The Archbishop's full report and a briefing for an associated Synod
motion may be had from
http://www.cofe.anglican.org/about/gensynod/agendas/feb05.html.
but beware, the report is 72 pages and the briefing 15.
Archbishop tells Church to help save the planet with green policies
By Robert Verkaik
03 February 2005
The Church of England is embarking on a green revolution, rolling out an
eco-friendly policy under which organic bread and wine will be served for
Holy Communion, clergy will recycle waste products and fair trade products
will be sold at fêtes.
Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, will set out his vision of
a greener world at a meeting of the General Synod of the Church of England
later this month that will challenge Britain to tackle global warming.
In a discussion document being circulated among Synod members, the Church of
England says that the world's climate is close to a "tipping point". The
Church warns: "The sudden changes that would occur in weather systems, the
fertility of the soil, the water and the world of living creatures if this
tipping point were reached could be devastating." It points out that even if
"ecological devastation" is not on the horizon "it has to be realised that
growth without limit has to be curtailed".
The report, entitled Sharing God's Planet, argues:
"Furthermore, the injustices spawned by massive growth already exist.
Two-thirds of the world does not have enough to eat while the other third is
trying to lose weight."
Dr Williams will introduce the report that also backs the widespread claim
that industrialisation has damaged the environment by global warming. He
recommends that Christians adopt "sustainable consumption", recognising
their duty "to celebrate and care for every part of God's creation".
The Synod will debate the issue on 17 February, the day after the Kyoto
protocol to reduce greenhouse gases comes into force. The Church is critical
of countries such as the United States which have dragged their feet over
the protocol.
In a second discussion document on the environmental debate, the Synod is
asked to recognise that Kyoto is not enough. "It has taken far too long to
be ratified as each country fights for its own
interests (the US is notable among countries which have declined to
sign); its targets fall very far short of what is necessary."
At the same time, Christians will be asked to praise the work of the Body
Shop which is described as a "brave exception" for getting people to
consider the ethics of their shopping choices.
The Synod will also be asked to support the principle of introducing a
system of quotas for CO2 emissions that take account of a country's size of
population rather than its industrial strength.
But the Church of England will begin its own campaign by introducing
eco-friendly policies in its churches. Among practical ideas for local
churches are schemes such as recycling, car pooling and selling fairly
traded products at church fêtes. Clergy will also be encouraged to use
natural materials in worship such as organic bread and wine. In his foreword
to Sharing God's Planet, Dr Williams calls on each parish to undertake an
"ecological audit". He adds: "Such local internal responses are vital if our
voice as a church is to have integrity."
The Synod has not debated the environment since 1992 and the only other
debate took place in 1986. The discussion document adds: "A Synod debate on
the environment is timely. There is increasing awareness of the urgent need
to address the developing ecological crisis. It is politically opportune as
one of the Government's declared priorities for its current presidency of
the G8 is climate change and that concern will be carried into its
priorities for its chairing of the European Union.
P.S. The Archbishop's full report and a briefing for an associated Synod
motion may be had from
http://www.cofe.anglican.org/about/gensynod/agendas/feb05.html.
but beware, the report is 72 pages and the briefing 15.
"A day without sunshine is like night.
"On the other hand you have different fingers.
"He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
"Borrow money from a pessimist -- they don't expect it back.
"The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
"No-one is listening until you make a mistake.
"If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving isn't for you.
-----
This batch of quips - of unknown provenance, as with so much
email - prompts some analysis of language.
I suspect no. 4 has been slipped into the package of quips more
recently than the main set of cynical slogans. This slogan
"The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard"
seems to me dubious. It has been propounded for a decade by Bob Phelps,
who has operated under the umbrella of the Australian Conservation
Foundation .
The depraved trade of PR - mercenary deceit - dominates GM as a
process of business, investment, and marketing. Language-tampering is a
key weapon for the PR trade, and this has spilled over to pollute
GM-science, let alone GM-entrepreneurism, somefink chronic.
I take it the Phelps slogan is meant to say, cutely, "the problem
with the GM trade is that there is no regulatory authority". As a
political slogan, this is near enough to the truth and I've said so myself,
with a small but growing number of scientists & medicos, since GM was
invented.
But please inspect the actual wording. The term 'the gene pool'
may be intended to mean something like 'the commercial game playing with
genes'. But the actual term 'gene pool' is a precious concept -
notwithstanding its glorious vagueness. It is not available for other
meanings.
GM is in general wrong because it threatens to harm the human gene
pool, and the gene pools of many other taxa, and even the ecological
interactions of different kingdoms in biology. It has already killed a
hundred or so, and maimed thousands: deviant metabolism caused novel trace
poisons in a food supplement (>99% pure tryptophan) biosynthesised, at
improved yield, in a series of GM-bacilli. Yet PR agents have been able to
feed into the report of the NZ Royal Commission on GM a pack of lies about
this exceedingly important epidemic. More recently, relevant Australian
agencies of the crown have similarly purveyed PR lies about this notorious
series of GM expts by Showa Denko. These lies are used as an excuse for
not requring proper testing of GMOs - not only chronic toxicity etc but
also ecological implications of the GMO itself. The science-based approach
traceable back to Sinsheimer, Cavalieri, Chargaff, and yes I will even work
in Roy H Curtiss III, put into popular form by Straton in The Ecologist
(1977), has now largely dissipated. UCS lives on, but has low media
profile (at least from the distance of the S. Pac.); Francine Simring's
excellent comparison of GM with nookuluh - as technologies and
subcultures - hasn't been expanded much, has it?
Some varieties of gene-jiggering are very hazardous, and the risk
entailed is poorly estimated if at all. PR has overwhelmed science. Nero
would have loved it.
I therefore insist that the gene pool des have a lifeguard. The
same creator who designed the universe including the one biosphere we know
of, also guides the unfolding of life by evolution. The natural barriers
to gene-transfers (in e.g pollination) are poorly understood, but many
wonderful protective barriers insulate each gene pool from insertions
except as filtered through God-given mechanisms. The gulf between the
reasonable fears of the main GM-critics and the relatively small numbers of
identified damages by GMOs - not negligible, but relatively small
compared with the disasters that could be evoked - is difficult to
explain fully in materialistic terms.
Lewontin remarked a half-decade ago that he'd be very surprised if
GM didn't throw a series of nasty surprises. I fully agree, and I ascribe
the surprisingly small apparent scale of harm from GMOs only partly to the
esteemed Chargaff, Pusztai, Strohman, King, Schubert, Brown, Rissler,
Mellon, Cummins, etc. I also invite respect for The Lifeguard and entreat
those so inclined to pray for continued protection from the harm that can
be done by GMOs.
But we cannot rely purely on providence. J H Newman urged us to
pray as if all depended on God but work as if all depended on man, which is
a far wiser slogan than any of this mysterious set quoted above.
I have worked 3 decade for control of GM, and can claim little
success. PR has white-anted science - some Monsanto PR agents have PhDs
in gene-tampering technology, and many gene-jiggerers apply the standards
of truth from the PR trade in spreading false hopes, under-stating dangers,
and lying about the Showa Denko GM-tryptophan. Language-tampering is so
intimately tied up with gene-tampering that we must redouble our vigilance
against confusing language.
R
"On the other hand you have different fingers.
"He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
"Borrow money from a pessimist -- they don't expect it back.
"The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
"No-one is listening until you make a mistake.
"If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving isn't for you.
-----
This batch of quips - of unknown provenance, as with so much
email - prompts some analysis of language.
I suspect no. 4 has been slipped into the package of quips more
recently than the main set of cynical slogans. This slogan
"The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard"
seems to me dubious. It has been propounded for a decade by Bob Phelps,
who has operated under the umbrella of the Australian Conservation
Foundation .
The depraved trade of PR - mercenary deceit - dominates GM as a
process of business, investment, and marketing. Language-tampering is a
key weapon for the PR trade, and this has spilled over to pollute
GM-science, let alone GM-entrepreneurism, somefink chronic.
I take it the Phelps slogan is meant to say, cutely, "the problem
with the GM trade is that there is no regulatory authority". As a
political slogan, this is near enough to the truth and I've said so myself,
with a small but growing number of scientists & medicos, since GM was
invented.
But please inspect the actual wording. The term 'the gene pool'
may be intended to mean something like 'the commercial game playing with
genes'. But the actual term 'gene pool' is a precious concept -
notwithstanding its glorious vagueness. It is not available for other
meanings.
GM is in general wrong because it threatens to harm the human gene
pool, and the gene pools of many other taxa, and even the ecological
interactions of different kingdoms in biology. It has already killed a
hundred or so, and maimed thousands: deviant metabolism caused novel trace
poisons in a food supplement (>99% pure tryptophan) biosynthesised, at
improved yield, in a series of GM-bacilli. Yet PR agents have been able to
feed into the report of the NZ Royal Commission on GM a pack of lies about
this exceedingly important epidemic. More recently, relevant Australian
agencies of the crown have similarly purveyed PR lies about this notorious
series of GM expts by Showa Denko. These lies are used as an excuse for
not requring proper testing of GMOs - not only chronic toxicity etc but
also ecological implications of the GMO itself. The science-based approach
traceable back to Sinsheimer, Cavalieri, Chargaff, and yes I will even work
in Roy H Curtiss III, put into popular form by Straton in The Ecologist
(1977), has now largely dissipated. UCS lives on, but has low media
profile (at least from the distance of the S. Pac.); Francine Simring's
excellent comparison of GM with nookuluh - as technologies and
subcultures - hasn't been expanded much, has it?
Some varieties of gene-jiggering are very hazardous, and the risk
entailed is poorly estimated if at all. PR has overwhelmed science. Nero
would have loved it.
I therefore insist that the gene pool des have a lifeguard. The
same creator who designed the universe including the one biosphere we know
of, also guides the unfolding of life by evolution. The natural barriers
to gene-transfers (in e.g pollination) are poorly understood, but many
wonderful protective barriers insulate each gene pool from insertions
except as filtered through God-given mechanisms. The gulf between the
reasonable fears of the main GM-critics and the relatively small numbers of
identified damages by GMOs - not negligible, but relatively small
compared with the disasters that could be evoked - is difficult to
explain fully in materialistic terms.
Lewontin remarked a half-decade ago that he'd be very surprised if
GM didn't throw a series of nasty surprises. I fully agree, and I ascribe
the surprisingly small apparent scale of harm from GMOs only partly to the
esteemed Chargaff, Pusztai, Strohman, King, Schubert, Brown, Rissler,
Mellon, Cummins, etc. I also invite respect for The Lifeguard and entreat
those so inclined to pray for continued protection from the harm that can
be done by GMOs.
But we cannot rely purely on providence. J H Newman urged us to
pray as if all depended on God but work as if all depended on man, which is
a far wiser slogan than any of this mysterious set quoted above.
I have worked 3 decade for control of GM, and can claim little
success. PR has white-anted science - some Monsanto PR agents have PhDs
in gene-tampering technology, and many gene-jiggerers apply the standards
of truth from the PR trade in spreading false hopes, under-stating dangers,
and lying about the Showa Denko GM-tryptophan. Language-tampering is so
intimately tied up with gene-tampering that we must redouble our vigilance
against confusing language.
R
Just in case you ever got the two mixed up. This should make things a bit clearer.
IN PRISON... you spend the majority of your time in an 8X10 cell.
AT WORK... you spend the majority of your time in a 6X8 cubicle.
IN PRISON...you get three meals a day.
AT WORK...you only get a break for one meal and you pay for it.
IN PRISON...you get time off for good behavior.
AT WORK...you get more work for good behavior.
IN PRISON...the guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you.
AT WORK...you must carry around a security card and open all the doors for yourself.
IN PRISON...you can watch TV and play games.
AT WORK...you get fired for watching TV and playing games.
IN PRISON...you get your own toilet.
AT WORK...you have to share with some idiot who pees on the seat.
IN PRISON...they allow your family and friends to visit.
AT WORK...you can't even speak to your family.
IN PRISON...the taxpayers pay all expenses with no work required.
AT WORK...you get to pay all the expenses to go to work and then they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners.
IN PRISON...you spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out.
AT WORK...you spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside bars.
IN PRISON...you must deal with sadistic wardens.
AT WORK...they are called managers
Have a Great Day at WORK!!
IN PRISON... you spend the majority of your time in an 8X10 cell.
AT WORK... you spend the majority of your time in a 6X8 cubicle.
IN PRISON...you get three meals a day.
AT WORK...you only get a break for one meal and you pay for it.
IN PRISON...you get time off for good behavior.
AT WORK...you get more work for good behavior.
IN PRISON...the guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you.
AT WORK...you must carry around a security card and open all the doors for yourself.
IN PRISON...you can watch TV and play games.
AT WORK...you get fired for watching TV and playing games.
IN PRISON...you get your own toilet.
AT WORK...you have to share with some idiot who pees on the seat.
IN PRISON...they allow your family and friends to visit.
AT WORK...you can't even speak to your family.
IN PRISON...the taxpayers pay all expenses with no work required.
AT WORK...you get to pay all the expenses to go to work and then they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners.
IN PRISON...you spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out.
AT WORK...you spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside bars.
IN PRISON...you must deal with sadistic wardens.
AT WORK...they are called managers
Have a Great Day at WORK!!
'They Want Transgenic Crops, Whether They Are Good or Bad'
Diego Cevallos*
Inter Press Service
http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=27393
MEXICO CITY, Feb 10 (IPS) - Ignacio Chapela, a Mexican biologist who
rose to fame in 2001 when he discovered that native Mexican maize had
been contaminated by transgenic corn varieties, announced in a
Tierramerica interview that he is going on the offensive in a war that
he says biotechnology transnational corporations have been waging
against him.
After what he describes as "three years of attacks against my
reputation," which have him on the verge of losing his job as microbial
ecology professor [assistant prof - RM] and researcher at the prestigious
U.S. University of
California-Berkeley, Chapela, 45, says he will turn to the U.S. courts
to protect himself.
Chapela says he has been pressured and threatened by many, including
officials of the Mexican government under President Vicente Fox, in
attempts to convince him not to publish a report in the British magazine
Nature on the contamination of local Mexican corn varieties by
genetically modified varieties of this food crop.
The genetic contamination that he found, and which was later
acknowledged by the Mexican government, occurred despite the fact that
Mexico -- the birthplace of corn -- bans cultivation of transgenic maize.
Chapela says the biotech transnationals that are leading the campaign to
discredit him are the same ones that are lobbying for what he describes
as a weak bill on biosafety that Mexico's lower house of Congress
approved last year, and which could become law in the next few weeks if
it makes it through the Senate.
The biologist, who says he feels like a "persona non grata" in Mexico's
scientific circles, spoke with Tierramerica by phone from his offices at
the University of California-Berkeley.
Q: You claim that because of your stance against transgenics you are on
the verge of losing your job at the university, where you have worked
since 1997. Do you blame the biotech corporations?
A: My job has been on tenterhooks for at least three years, during which
I have suffered many attacks on my reputation. Normally the evaluation
that I requested in order to be granted a tenured professorship would
take six months, but in my case it has taken years, and it is possible
that they'll fire me. All because of pressure from the transnational
corporations and from Mexican researchers who are in favour of genetic
modification, like Luis Herrera (considered one of the founders of
transgenic technology).
Q: All of this happened because you published your findings on the
genetic contamination of Mexican corn?
A: There are really two motives. One is for having denounced the
presence of transgenic corn in Mexico, for which I received threats even
from some officials of the Mexican government, who said my study hurt
the country; the other is that in 1998 I spoke out against the proposals
for the biotech firm Novartis to take control of our department
(Environmental Sciences) at Berkeley.
Q: What will you do to avoid getting dismissed by the university?
A: The battle we are waging is through an internal complaint in the
university, and we are about to file a lawsuit in (U.S.) courts about
the coercion and threats. The lawsuit is against the university regents,
but it will also target the transnationals and some Mexicans. Also, in
November we created the Pulse of Science Foundation, to study the role
of big corporations.
Q: There are several Mexican scientists, among them Luis Herrera, who
don't share your ideas, and who support transgenic research. Do you
think there are shadowy interests behind these scientists?
A: What do exist are obvious reasons like money. Much of the money they
receive comes from those same companies, so it is not convenient that
there are people like me who question what they are doing. Another
reason is that many of these people have been staking their bets on
biotechnology for more than 20 years and they want it to work, good or bad.
Q: Are transgenic crops really that bad?
A: Biotechnology is a series of genetic manipulations that hold great
potential, of that there is no doubt. The problem is the potential
effect of the massive scale release of transgenic organisms, which
should not be allowed as long as their environmental safety is not
clear, and as long as other cheaper and acceptable alternatives have not
been evaluated.
Q: What do you think of the biosafety law on transgenics that could take
effect this year in Mexico?
A: You can see the problem in the name itself. It is a law that is going
to declare these organisms as biologically safe. It is a law that
legalises transgenic contamination and prevents holding anyone
responsible if problems occur, if there are accidents or damages caused
by releasing transgenics into the environment. I hope that in the end
the law is not passed.
(*Originally published Jan. 29 by Latin American newspapers that are
part of the Tierramerica network. Tierramerica is a specialised news
service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations
Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)
Diego Cevallos*
Inter Press Service
http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=27393
MEXICO CITY, Feb 10 (IPS) - Ignacio Chapela, a Mexican biologist who
rose to fame in 2001 when he discovered that native Mexican maize had
been contaminated by transgenic corn varieties, announced in a
Tierramerica interview that he is going on the offensive in a war that
he says biotechnology transnational corporations have been waging
against him.
After what he describes as "three years of attacks against my
reputation," which have him on the verge of losing his job as microbial
ecology professor [assistant prof - RM] and researcher at the prestigious
U.S. University of
California-Berkeley, Chapela, 45, says he will turn to the U.S. courts
to protect himself.
Chapela says he has been pressured and threatened by many, including
officials of the Mexican government under President Vicente Fox, in
attempts to convince him not to publish a report in the British magazine
Nature on the contamination of local Mexican corn varieties by
genetically modified varieties of this food crop.
The genetic contamination that he found, and which was later
acknowledged by the Mexican government, occurred despite the fact that
Mexico -- the birthplace of corn -- bans cultivation of transgenic maize.
Chapela says the biotech transnationals that are leading the campaign to
discredit him are the same ones that are lobbying for what he describes
as a weak bill on biosafety that Mexico's lower house of Congress
approved last year, and which could become law in the next few weeks if
it makes it through the Senate.
The biologist, who says he feels like a "persona non grata" in Mexico's
scientific circles, spoke with Tierramerica by phone from his offices at
the University of California-Berkeley.
Q: You claim that because of your stance against transgenics you are on
the verge of losing your job at the university, where you have worked
since 1997. Do you blame the biotech corporations?
A: My job has been on tenterhooks for at least three years, during which
I have suffered many attacks on my reputation. Normally the evaluation
that I requested in order to be granted a tenured professorship would
take six months, but in my case it has taken years, and it is possible
that they'll fire me. All because of pressure from the transnational
corporations and from Mexican researchers who are in favour of genetic
modification, like Luis Herrera (considered one of the founders of
transgenic technology).
Q: All of this happened because you published your findings on the
genetic contamination of Mexican corn?
A: There are really two motives. One is for having denounced the
presence of transgenic corn in Mexico, for which I received threats even
from some officials of the Mexican government, who said my study hurt
the country; the other is that in 1998 I spoke out against the proposals
for the biotech firm Novartis to take control of our department
(Environmental Sciences) at Berkeley.
Q: What will you do to avoid getting dismissed by the university?
A: The battle we are waging is through an internal complaint in the
university, and we are about to file a lawsuit in (U.S.) courts about
the coercion and threats. The lawsuit is against the university regents,
but it will also target the transnationals and some Mexicans. Also, in
November we created the Pulse of Science Foundation, to study the role
of big corporations.
Q: There are several Mexican scientists, among them Luis Herrera, who
don't share your ideas, and who support transgenic research. Do you
think there are shadowy interests behind these scientists?
A: What do exist are obvious reasons like money. Much of the money they
receive comes from those same companies, so it is not convenient that
there are people like me who question what they are doing. Another
reason is that many of these people have been staking their bets on
biotechnology for more than 20 years and they want it to work, good or bad.
Q: Are transgenic crops really that bad?
A: Biotechnology is a series of genetic manipulations that hold great
potential, of that there is no doubt. The problem is the potential
effect of the massive scale release of transgenic organisms, which
should not be allowed as long as their environmental safety is not
clear, and as long as other cheaper and acceptable alternatives have not
been evaluated.
Q: What do you think of the biosafety law on transgenics that could take
effect this year in Mexico?
A: You can see the problem in the name itself. It is a law that is going
to declare these organisms as biologically safe. It is a law that
legalises transgenic contamination and prevents holding anyone
responsible if problems occur, if there are accidents or damages caused
by releasing transgenics into the environment. I hope that in the end
the law is not passed.
(*Originally published Jan. 29 by Latin American newspapers that are
part of the Tierramerica network. Tierramerica is a specialised news
service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations
Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)
You can safely assume max play will be made of the alleged
similarity to these unique royal ceremonies of NZ's new 'civil union'
same-sex ceremony, which homX clergy and allies will be wanting to bless.
Canon Bob Lowe sure started some trouble!
Any denomination that could promote the most intelligent man in
England (according to G B Shaw!) to no. 2 and soon to top
professional/political rank - the great Wm Temple - is worth saving
from the passive-aggressive PC invasion against which I have increasingly
inveighed. In the dioceses of Auckland and Waiapu, few if any arenas have
been permitted for genuine discussion of the disputes & disturbances raised
by the militant homosexualist movement.
Fanatics have been ordained recently who, as soon as you try to
discuss whether to ordain known homosexuals, or whether to 'bless' civil
unions, promptly insult you and may even intone "May God have mercy on your
soul". This is a new, relatively gentle variety of totalitarianism -
but make no mistake, it is totalitarian.
R
>Thursday 10 February 2005
>
>The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has welcomed the
>announcement that HRH Prince of Wales and Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles
>are to marry.
>
>In a statement from Lambeth Palace, Dr Williams said:
>
>"I am pleased that Prince Charles and Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles
>have decided to take this important step. I hope and pray that it will
>prove a source of comfort and strength to them and to those who are
>closest to them."
>
>Dr Williams has accepted an invitation to preside at a service of
>prayer and dedication following the civil ceremony. Dr Williams said:
>"These arrangements have my strong support and are consistent with
>Church of England guidelines concerning remarriage which the Prince of
>Wales fully accepts as a committed Anglican and as prospective Supreme
>Governor of the Church of England."
similarity to these unique royal ceremonies of NZ's new 'civil union'
same-sex ceremony, which homX clergy and allies will be wanting to bless.
Canon Bob Lowe sure started some trouble!
Any denomination that could promote the most intelligent man in
England (according to G B Shaw!) to no. 2 and soon to top
professional/political rank - the great Wm Temple - is worth saving
from the passive-aggressive PC invasion against which I have increasingly
inveighed. In the dioceses of Auckland and Waiapu, few if any arenas have
been permitted for genuine discussion of the disputes & disturbances raised
by the militant homosexualist movement.
Fanatics have been ordained recently who, as soon as you try to
discuss whether to ordain known homosexuals, or whether to 'bless' civil
unions, promptly insult you and may even intone "May God have mercy on your
soul". This is a new, relatively gentle variety of totalitarianism -
but make no mistake, it is totalitarian.
R
>Thursday 10 February 2005
>
>The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has welcomed the
>announcement that HRH Prince of Wales and Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles
>are to marry.
>
>In a statement from Lambeth Palace, Dr Williams said:
>
>"I am pleased that Prince Charles and Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles
>have decided to take this important step. I hope and pray that it will
>prove a source of comfort and strength to them and to those who are
>closest to them."
>
>Dr Williams has accepted an invitation to preside at a service of
>prayer and dedication following the civil ceremony. Dr Williams said:
>"These arrangements have my strong support and are consistent with
>Church of England guidelines concerning remarriage which the Prince of
>Wales fully accepts as a committed Anglican and as prospective Supreme
>Governor of the Church of England."
Open Letter to New Zealand cabinet ministers
I refer to the report glimpsed at the bottom of this msg and
ancillary posturings about 'Terminator' images.
The concept of 'mule' Terminator® plants is thoroughly obnoxious,
in principle, and should be strongly opposed.
However, let's not go overboard in assuming that the particular
GURT commonly called The Terminator is real. The Terminator has been
critiqued most thoroughly by Martha Crouch, assoc prof Indiana U. Her
analysis, admittedly several y ago, was of the quality UCS used to provide,
and showed it was far from reality. I too studied the main patent for it
and agreed the complex processes envisaged were far from practicality. I
found her discussion wholly convincing, as did Peter R Wills, one of my
most successful former students and closer to practising mol biol than I
now am. The concept of sterile GE plants exemplified by the 'Terminator'
image has not yet - AFAIK - been realised in practice and will be very
difficult to work.
I'm all for denouncing the immoral intention, but it's a
distraction to behave as if it's about to be deployed - if it still isn't
real.
I fear it's no fluke that the outfit raising this latest fuss is
the same as originally coined the cute name 'Terminator' for this type of
GURT concept. The desire to manipulate minds by PR tricks is not wholly
confined to Burpston Marseller, ERMA, Heather Simpson, etc.
Could this notorious 'Terminator' get anywhere near commercial
deployment without being detected by the many GM-sceptic scientists in many
lands? I don't think so.
I copy here a note I wrote during the penultimate flareup of this
Terminator® furphy.
> 27-11-98 J M Fitzsimons list MP has accused Monsanto and Hon. John
>'Satchmo jr' Luxton (Minister of Food Fibre & Furphies) of trying to import
>Terminator® seed which would cause difficulties for organic growers. Satch
>responds that market forces would allow organic horticulture to prosper
>notwithstanding availability of Terminator® seed. Monsanto Australasian
>PR chief Nik Tydens said two days earlier, but Radio NZ now excerpts the
>tape as if it were a response to Fitzimons' accusation today, that Terminator
>crops will simply be a 'single-use' item which nobody is forced to buy and
>which cannot biologically affect other crops.
>What nobody has mentioned in the media these few days - or any
>other time that I know of - is that the Terminator® patent does not entail
>any evidence that such a seed exists or could exist.
>Patents are granted without regard to whether the invention would work.
>My university classmate more recently the New Zealand Commissioner of
>Patents explained to me in person that, unless the application describes a
>blatant violation of scientific law - e.g. perpetual motion machines -
>a patent may be issued for what the examiner is convinced will not work.
>He showed me a few lulus, and I found a few more - patents for devices
>which, as a practical certainty, could never work. Most people are
>surprised when they learn this fact about patent law, but the reasons for
>it are not hard to see.
>It occurs to me that such criticisms could perhaps be levelled
>against some aspects of the Terminator patent. They may be no more than
>wishful thinking.
>If so, that of course has no bearing on the moral status of the Terminator
>concept.
>It does envisage a racket - but at the moment, so far as we know,
>it is only a vision. Sordid, warped, wicked - yes, all those, but if it
>is not real let us refrain from amplifying the paranoia which is all
>too readily generated around GE.
>To denounce the intention of the Terminator concept is a main
>duty; to warn that it might not work as tidily as claimed is also urgent;
>but to credit anyone with having it incipiently on sale is worse than
>saying Windows 98© really works as claimed. We must not accord power to
>lying creeps when they have not actually achieved what they desire and
>perhaps cannot. Let us not make them look more technically competent than
>they really are!
Today I would only add:-
1. Monsanto's PR image of abandoning The Terminator is not to be believed.
You can safely assume they're still pouring millions into trying to
procreate something commercial, or for a start something "terminating" when
treated with a Monsanto chemical. If they had succeeded, don't you think
we'd have heard of it?
2 The pollen from a "Terminator" tree could well be harmful in a variety
of ways including actively crossing with wild or cultivated relatives to
produce fertile progeny of unknown harmfulness, or novel pathogens. The
prospects for damage are so many, varied, and dismaying that no Minister
for the Environment should condone the notion of field-testing such a
rotten idea. The drongo Hobbs should be ashamed of her ignorant illogical
self.
3 It is tiresome that ignorant attention-cravers can draw attention aside
yet again to this receding monster mirage 'The Terminator' while some real,
genuinely menacing GM field trials, e.g with GM-pines, are actually being
done without proper regulatory oversight.
4 The overdeveloped world has already been largely taken over, for main
crops, by "hybridity" i.e. got hooked on buying annually Pioneer Hi-bred®
or similar corporate hybrid seed which grows into plants bearing seed that,
while not literally sterile, give such enormous variation that nobody tries
to get a crop from those F2 hybrid seed.
This, and much more, is brilliantly expounded by the famous Harvard
geneticist Richard Lewontin, with a French agresearch leader Berlan, in
.
I hope these clarifications are useful.
I may perhaps be permitted some ruminations on science policy. The
Labour govt 1972-75 used my published analyses verbatim in the World Court,
and I was sometimes startled to hear e.g Mike Moore MP quoting me at length
on health hazards of fallout. No prior permission nor thanks afterwards
attached to these quotes, but I felt useful. The policy excluding nuclear
weapons, and the policy & law excluding power reactors, were perhaps my
'greatest hits' in that antinuclear era. My advice was heeded, even if I
didn't usually get acknowledged.
Today, as NZ's senior scientific critic of gene-tampering, I can't
look fw to any such back-handed compliments as those Kirk-era uses of my
advice. My statement to the Royal Commission on GM was suppressed. I get
no ackn when I proffer advice on GM to the Prime Minister's unelected
lesbian comptroller Heather Simpson who, for all I know, filters out all I
send because of my anti-PC politics. Do I flatter myself too far in
fearing that this trend of biased science-policy channels greatly increases
the dangers of major blunders?
Hobbs should be told to condemn not only The Terminator but also
all uncontained GMOs. New Zealand showed the world a good example in
excluding nuclear reactors; let us not only ban GMOs except in strict
containment, but also show the world again some moral leadership.
R
-----
>l http://www.etcgroup.org/article.asp?newsid=498
>ETC Group
>News Release
>7 February 2005
>www.etcgroup.org
>
>Canadian Government to Unleash Terminator Bombshell at UN Meeting:
>All-out push for commercialisation of Sterile Seed Technology
>
>A confidential document leaked today to ETC Group reveals that the
>Canadian government, at a United Nations meeting in Bangkok (Feb 7-11),
>will attempt to overturn an international moratorium on genetic seed
>sterilisation technology (known universally as Terminator). Even worse,
>the Canadian government has instructed its negotiators to "block
>consensus" on any other option.
I refer to the report glimpsed at the bottom of this msg and
ancillary posturings about 'Terminator' images.
The concept of 'mule' Terminator® plants is thoroughly obnoxious,
in principle, and should be strongly opposed.
However, let's not go overboard in assuming that the particular
GURT commonly called The Terminator is real. The Terminator has been
critiqued most thoroughly by Martha Crouch, assoc prof Indiana U. Her
analysis, admittedly several y ago, was of the quality UCS used to provide,
and showed it was far from reality. I too studied the main patent for it
and agreed the complex processes envisaged were far from practicality. I
found her discussion wholly convincing, as did Peter R Wills, one of my
most successful former students and closer to practising mol biol than I
now am. The concept of sterile GE plants exemplified by the 'Terminator'
image has not yet - AFAIK - been realised in practice and will be very
difficult to work.
I'm all for denouncing the immoral intention, but it's a
distraction to behave as if it's about to be deployed - if it still isn't
real.
I fear it's no fluke that the outfit raising this latest fuss is
the same as originally coined the cute name 'Terminator' for this type of
GURT concept. The desire to manipulate minds by PR tricks is not wholly
confined to Burpston Marseller, ERMA, Heather Simpson, etc.
Could this notorious 'Terminator' get anywhere near commercial
deployment without being detected by the many GM-sceptic scientists in many
lands? I don't think so.
I copy here a note I wrote during the penultimate flareup of this
Terminator® furphy.
> 27-11-98 J M Fitzsimons list MP has accused Monsanto and Hon. John
>'Satchmo jr' Luxton (Minister of Food Fibre & Furphies) of trying to import
>Terminator® seed which would cause difficulties for organic growers. Satch
>responds that market forces would allow organic horticulture to prosper
>notwithstanding availability of Terminator® seed. Monsanto Australasian
>PR chief Nik Tydens said two days earlier, but Radio NZ now excerpts the
>tape as if it were a response to Fitzimons' accusation today, that Terminator
>crops will simply be a 'single-use' item which nobody is forced to buy and
>which cannot biologically affect other crops.
>What nobody has mentioned in the media these few days - or any
>other time that I know of - is that the Terminator® patent does not entail
>any evidence that such a seed exists or could exist.
>Patents are granted without regard to whether the invention would work.
>My university classmate more recently the New Zealand Commissioner of
>Patents explained to me in person that, unless the application describes a
>blatant violation of scientific law - e.g. perpetual motion machines -
>a patent may be issued for what the examiner is convinced will not work.
>He showed me a few lulus, and I found a few more - patents for devices
>which, as a practical certainty, could never work. Most people are
>surprised when they learn this fact about patent law, but the reasons for
>it are not hard to see.
>It occurs to me that such criticisms could perhaps be levelled
>against some aspects of the Terminator patent. They may be no more than
>wishful thinking.
>If so, that of course has no bearing on the moral status of the Terminator
>concept.
>It does envisage a racket - but at the moment, so far as we know,
>it is only a vision. Sordid, warped, wicked - yes, all those, but if it
>is not real let us refrain from amplifying the paranoia which is all
>too readily generated around GE.
>To denounce the intention of the Terminator concept is a main
>duty; to warn that it might not work as tidily as claimed is also urgent;
>but to credit anyone with having it incipiently on sale is worse than
>saying Windows 98© really works as claimed. We must not accord power to
>lying creeps when they have not actually achieved what they desire and
>perhaps cannot. Let us not make them look more technically competent than
>they really are!
Today I would only add:-
1. Monsanto's PR image of abandoning The Terminator is not to be believed.
You can safely assume they're still pouring millions into trying to
procreate something commercial, or for a start something "terminating" when
treated with a Monsanto chemical. If they had succeeded, don't you think
we'd have heard of it?
2 The pollen from a "Terminator" tree could well be harmful in a variety
of ways including actively crossing with wild or cultivated relatives to
produce fertile progeny of unknown harmfulness, or novel pathogens. The
prospects for damage are so many, varied, and dismaying that no Minister
for the Environment should condone the notion of field-testing such a
rotten idea. The drongo Hobbs should be ashamed of her ignorant illogical
self.
3 It is tiresome that ignorant attention-cravers can draw attention aside
yet again to this receding monster mirage 'The Terminator' while some real,
genuinely menacing GM field trials, e.g with GM-pines, are actually being
done without proper regulatory oversight.
4 The overdeveloped world has already been largely taken over, for main
crops, by "hybridity" i.e. got hooked on buying annually Pioneer Hi-bred®
or similar corporate hybrid seed which grows into plants bearing seed that,
while not literally sterile, give such enormous variation that nobody tries
to get a crop from those F2 hybrid seed.
This, and much more, is brilliantly expounded by the famous Harvard
geneticist Richard Lewontin, with a French agresearch leader Berlan, in
I hope these clarifications are useful.
I may perhaps be permitted some ruminations on science policy. The
Labour govt 1972-75 used my published analyses verbatim in the World Court,
and I was sometimes startled to hear e.g Mike Moore MP quoting me at length
on health hazards of fallout. No prior permission nor thanks afterwards
attached to these quotes, but I felt useful. The policy excluding nuclear
weapons, and the policy & law excluding power reactors, were perhaps my
'greatest hits' in that antinuclear era. My advice was heeded, even if I
didn't usually get acknowledged.
Today, as NZ's senior scientific critic of gene-tampering, I can't
look fw to any such back-handed compliments as those Kirk-era uses of my
advice. My statement to the Royal Commission on GM was suppressed. I get
no ackn when I proffer advice on GM to the Prime Minister's unelected
lesbian comptroller Heather Simpson who, for all I know, filters out all I
send because of my anti-PC politics. Do I flatter myself too far in
fearing that this trend of biased science-policy channels greatly increases
the dangers of major blunders?
Hobbs should be told to condemn not only The Terminator but also
all uncontained GMOs. New Zealand showed the world a good example in
excluding nuclear reactors; let us not only ban GMOs except in strict
containment, but also show the world again some moral leadership.
R
-----
>l http://www.etcgroup.org/article.asp?newsid=498
>ETC Group
>News Release
>7 February 2005
>www.etcgroup.org
>
>Canadian Government to Unleash Terminator Bombshell at UN Meeting:
>All-out push for commercialisation of Sterile Seed Technology
>
>A confidential document leaked today to ETC Group reveals that the
>Canadian government, at a United Nations meeting in Bangkok (Feb 7-11),
>will attempt to overturn an international moratorium on genetic seed
>sterilisation technology (known universally as Terminator). Even worse,
>the Canadian government has instructed its negotiators to "block
>consensus" on any other option.
02/06/05
http://tinyurl.com/4lk35
The Greening of Evangelicals
Christian Right Turns, Sometimes Warily, to Environmentalism
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 6, 2005; Page A01
SEATTLE -- Thanks to the Rev. Leroy Hedman, the parishioners at Georgetown
Gospel Chapel take their baptismal waters cold. The preacher has unplugged
the electricity-guzzling heater in the immersion baptism tank behind his
pulpit. He has also installed energy-saving fluorescent light bulbs
throughout the church and has placed water barrels beneath its gutter pipes
-- using runoff to irrigate the congregation's all-organic gardens.
Such "creation care" should be at the heart of evangelical life, Hedman
says, along with condemning abortion, protecting family and loving Jesus.
He uses the term "creation care" because, he says, it does not annoy
conservative Christians for whom the word "environmentalism" connotes
liberals, secularists and Democrats.
"It's amazing to me that evangelicals haven't gone quicker for the green,"
Hedman said. "But as creation care spreads, evangelicals will demand
different behavior from politicians. The Republicans should not take us
for granted."
There is growing evidence -- in polling and in public statements of church
leaders -- that evangelicals are beginning to go for the green. Despite
wariness toward mainstream environmental groups, a growing number of
evangelicals view stewardship of the environment as a responsibility
mandated by God in the Bible.
"The environment is a values issue," said the Rev. Ted Haggard, president
of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals. "There are
significant and compelling theological reasons why it should be a banner
issue for the Christian right."
In October, the association's leaders adopted an "Evangelical Call to Civic
Responsibility" that, for the first time, emphasized every Christian's duty
to care for the planet and the role of government in safeguarding a
sustainable environment.
"We affirm that God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward
the earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part,"
said the statement, which has been distributed to 50,000 member churches.
"Because clean air, pure water, and adequate resources are crucial to
public health and civic order, government has an obligation to protect its
citizens from the effects of environmental degradation."
Signatories included highly visible, opinion-swaying evangelical leaders
such as Haggard, James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Chuck Colson of
Prison Fellowship Ministries. Some of the signatories are to meet in March
in Washington to develop a position on global warming, which could place
them at odds with the policies of the Bush administration, according to
Richard Cizik, the association's vice president for governmental affairs.
Also last fall, Christianity Today, an influential evangelical magazine,
weighed in for the first time on global warming. It said that "Christians
should make it clear to governments and businesses that we are willing to
adapt our lifestyles and support steps towards changes that protect our
environment."
The magazine came out in favor of a global warming bill -- sponsored by
Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) -- that the
Bush administration opposed and the Republican-controlled Senate defeated.
Polling has found a strengthening consensus among evangelicals for strict
environmental rules, even if they cost jobs and higher prices, said John C.
Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the
University of Akron. In 2000, about 45 percent of evangelicals supported
strict environmental regulations, according to Green's polling. That
jumped to 52 percent last year.
"It has changed slowly, but it has changed," Green said. "There is now a
lot of ferment out there."
Such ferment matters because evangelicals are politically active. Nearly
four out of five white evangelical Christians voted last year for President
Bush, constituting more than a third of all votes cast for him, according
to the Pew Research Center. The analysis found that the political clout of
evangelicals has increased as their cohesiveness in backing the Republican
Party has grown. Republicans outnumber Democrats within the group by more
than 2 to 1.
There is little to suggest in recent elections that environmental concerns
influenced the evangelical vote -- indeed, many members of Congress who
receive 100 percent approval ratings from Christian advocacy groups get
failing grades from environmental groups. But the latest statements and
polls have caught the eye of established environmental organizations.
Several are attempting to make alliances with the Christian right on
specific issues, such as global warming and the presence of mercury and
other dangerous toxins in the blood of newborn children.
After the election last fall, leaders of the country's major environmental
groups spent an entire day at a meeting in Washington trying to figure out
how to talk to evangelicals, according to Larry Schweiger, president of the
National Wildlife Federation. For decades, he said, environmentalists have
failed to make that connection.
"There is a lot of suspicion," said Schweiger, who describes himself as a
conservationist and a person of faith. "There are a lot of questions about
what are our real intentions."
Green said the evangelicals' deep suspicion about environmentalists has
theological roots.
"While evangelicals are open to being good stewards of God's creation, they
believe people should only worship God, not creation," Green said. "This
may sound like splitting hairs. But evangelicals don't see it that way.
Their stereotype of environmentalists would be Druids who worship trees."
Another reason that evangelicals are suspicious of environmental groups is
cultural and has its origins in how conservative Christians view themselves
in American society, according to the Rev. Jim Ball, executive director of
the Evangelical Environmental Network. The group made its name with the
"What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign against gas-guzzling cars but recently
shifted its focus to reducing global warming.
"Evangelicals feel besieged by the culture at large," Ball said. "They
don't know many environmentalists, but they have the idea they are pretty
weird -- with strange liberal, pantheist views."
Ball said that the way to bring large numbers of evangelicals on board as
political players in environmental issues is to make persuasive arguments
that, for instance, tie problems of global warming and mercury pollution to
family health and the health of unborn children. He adds that evangelicals
themselves -- not such groups as the Sierra Club or Friends of the Earth,
with their liberal Democratic baggage -- are the only ones who can do the
persuading.
"Environmental groups are always going to be viewed in a wary fashion,"
Ball said. "They just don't have a good enough feel for the evangelical
community. There are landmines from the past, and they will hit them
without knowing it."
Even for green activists within the evangelical movement, there are
landmines. One faction in the movement, called dispensationalism, argues
that the return of Jesus and the end of the world are near, so it is
pointless to fret about environmental degradation.
James G. Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first interior secretary, famously
made this argument before Congress in 1981, saying: "God gave us these
things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back." The
enduring appeal of End Time musings among evangelicals is reflected in the
phenomenal success of the Left Behind series of apocalyptic potboilers,
which have sold more than 60 million copies and are the best-selling novels
in the country.
Haggard, the leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, concedes
that this thinking "is a problem that I do have to address regularly in
talking to the common man on the street. I tell them to live your life as
if Jesus is coming back tomorrow, but plan your life as if he is not coming
back in your lifetime. I also tell them that the authors of the Left
Behind books have life insurance policies."
This argument is apparently resonating. Green said the notion that an
imminent Judgment Day absolves people of environmental responsibility is
now a "fringe" belief.
Unusual weather phenomena, such as the four hurricanes that battered
Florida last year and the melting of the glaciers around the world, have
captured the attention of evangelicals and made many more willing to listen
to scientific warnings about the dangers of global warming, Haggard said.
At the same time, activists such as Ball from the Evangelical
Environmental Network are trying to show how the most important hot-button
issue of the Christian right -- abortion and the survival of the unborn --
has a green dimension.
"Stop Mercury Poisoning of the Unborn," said a banner that Ball carried in
last month's antiabortion march in Washington. Holding up the other end of
the banner was Cizik, the National Association of Evangelicals' chief
lobbyist.
They handed out carefully footnoted papers that cited federal government
studies showing that 1 in 6 babies is born with harmful levels of mercury.
The fliers urged Christians not to support the "Clear Skies" act, a Bush
administration proposal to regulate coal-burning power plants that are a
primary source of mercury pollution.
Although Cizik carried the banner and handed out literature that implicitly
criticized Bush's policy on regulating mercury, he conceded that many
evangelicals find it difficult to criticize the president.
"It is hard to oppose him when he has the moral authority of the office of
the president and a record of standing with us on moral issues like
abortion," Cizik said.
In Seattle, Hedman says that evangelicals should worry less about the
moral authority of the president and more about their biblical obligation
to care for Earth.
"The Earth is God's body," Hedman said in a recent sermon. "God wants us to
look after it."
The Greening of Evangelicals
Christian Right Turns, Sometimes Warily, to Environmentalism
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 6, 2005; Page A01
SEATTLE -- Thanks to the Rev. Leroy Hedman, the parishioners at Georgetown
Gospel Chapel take their baptismal waters cold. The preacher has unplugged
the electricity-guzzling heater in the immersion baptism tank behind his
pulpit. He has also installed energy-saving fluorescent light bulbs
throughout the church and has placed water barrels beneath its gutter pipes
-- using runoff to irrigate the congregation's all-organic gardens.
Such "creation care" should be at the heart of evangelical life, Hedman
says, along with condemning abortion, protecting family and loving Jesus.
He uses the term "creation care" because, he says, it does not annoy
conservative Christians for whom the word "environmentalism" connotes
liberals, secularists and Democrats.
"It's amazing to me that evangelicals haven't gone quicker for the green,"
Hedman said. "But as creation care spreads, evangelicals will demand
different behavior from politicians. The Republicans should not take us
for granted."
There is growing evidence -- in polling and in public statements of church
leaders -- that evangelicals are beginning to go for the green. Despite
wariness toward mainstream environmental groups, a growing number of
evangelicals view stewardship of the environment as a responsibility
mandated by God in the Bible.
"The environment is a values issue," said the Rev. Ted Haggard, president
of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals. "There are
significant and compelling theological reasons why it should be a banner
issue for the Christian right."
In October, the association's leaders adopted an "Evangelical Call to Civic
Responsibility" that, for the first time, emphasized every Christian's duty
to care for the planet and the role of government in safeguarding a
sustainable environment.
"We affirm that God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward
the earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part,"
said the statement, which has been distributed to 50,000 member churches.
"Because clean air, pure water, and adequate resources are crucial to
public health and civic order, government has an obligation to protect its
citizens from the effects of environmental degradation."
Signatories included highly visible, opinion-swaying evangelical leaders
such as Haggard, James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Chuck Colson of
Prison Fellowship Ministries. Some of the signatories are to meet in March
in Washington to develop a position on global warming, which could place
them at odds with the policies of the Bush administration, according to
Richard Cizik, the association's vice president for governmental affairs.
Also last fall, Christianity Today, an influential evangelical magazine,
weighed in for the first time on global warming. It said that "Christians
should make it clear to governments and businesses that we are willing to
adapt our lifestyles and support steps towards changes that protect our
environment."
The magazine came out in favor of a global warming bill -- sponsored by
Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) -- that the
Bush administration opposed and the Republican-controlled Senate defeated.
Polling has found a strengthening consensus among evangelicals for strict
environmental rules, even if they cost jobs and higher prices, said John C.
Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the
University of Akron. In 2000, about 45 percent of evangelicals supported
strict environmental regulations, according to Green's polling. That
jumped to 52 percent last year.
"It has changed slowly, but it has changed," Green said. "There is now a
lot of ferment out there."
Such ferment matters because evangelicals are politically active. Nearly
four out of five white evangelical Christians voted last year for President
Bush, constituting more than a third of all votes cast for him, according
to the Pew Research Center. The analysis found that the political clout of
evangelicals has increased as their cohesiveness in backing the Republican
Party has grown. Republicans outnumber Democrats within the group by more
than 2 to 1.
There is little to suggest in recent elections that environmental concerns
influenced the evangelical vote -- indeed, many members of Congress who
receive 100 percent approval ratings from Christian advocacy groups get
failing grades from environmental groups. But the latest statements and
polls have caught the eye of established environmental organizations.
Several are attempting to make alliances with the Christian right on
specific issues, such as global warming and the presence of mercury and
other dangerous toxins in the blood of newborn children.
After the election last fall, leaders of the country's major environmental
groups spent an entire day at a meeting in Washington trying to figure out
how to talk to evangelicals, according to Larry Schweiger, president of the
National Wildlife Federation. For decades, he said, environmentalists have
failed to make that connection.
"There is a lot of suspicion," said Schweiger, who describes himself as a
conservationist and a person of faith. "There are a lot of questions about
what are our real intentions."
Green said the evangelicals' deep suspicion about environmentalists has
theological roots.
"While evangelicals are open to being good stewards of God's creation, they
believe people should only worship God, not creation," Green said. "This
may sound like splitting hairs. But evangelicals don't see it that way.
Their stereotype of environmentalists would be Druids who worship trees."
Another reason that evangelicals are suspicious of environmental groups is
cultural and has its origins in how conservative Christians view themselves
in American society, according to the Rev. Jim Ball, executive director of
the Evangelical Environmental Network. The group made its name with the
"What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign against gas-guzzling cars but recently
shifted its focus to reducing global warming.
"Evangelicals feel besieged by the culture at large," Ball said. "They
don't know many environmentalists, but they have the idea they are pretty
weird -- with strange liberal, pantheist views."
Ball said that the way to bring large numbers of evangelicals on board as
political players in environmental issues is to make persuasive arguments
that, for instance, tie problems of global warming and mercury pollution to
family health and the health of unborn children. He adds that evangelicals
themselves -- not such groups as the Sierra Club or Friends of the Earth,
with their liberal Democratic baggage -- are the only ones who can do the
persuading.
"Environmental groups are always going to be viewed in a wary fashion,"
Ball said. "They just don't have a good enough feel for the evangelical
community. There are landmines from the past, and they will hit them
without knowing it."
Even for green activists within the evangelical movement, there are
landmines. One faction in the movement, called dispensationalism, argues
that the return of Jesus and the end of the world are near, so it is
pointless to fret about environmental degradation.
James G. Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first interior secretary, famously
made this argument before Congress in 1981, saying: "God gave us these
things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back." The
enduring appeal of End Time musings among evangelicals is reflected in the
phenomenal success of the Left Behind series of apocalyptic potboilers,
which have sold more than 60 million copies and are the best-selling novels
in the country.
Haggard, the leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, concedes
that this thinking "is a problem that I do have to address regularly in
talking to the common man on the street. I tell them to live your life as
if Jesus is coming back tomorrow, but plan your life as if he is not coming
back in your lifetime. I also tell them that the authors of the Left
Behind books have life insurance policies."
This argument is apparently resonating. Green said the notion that an
imminent Judgment Day absolves people of environmental responsibility is
now a "fringe" belief.
Unusual weather phenomena, such as the four hurricanes that battered
Florida last year and the melting of the glaciers around the world, have
captured the attention of evangelicals and made many more willing to listen
to scientific warnings about the dangers of global warming, Haggard said.
At the same time, activists such as Ball from the Evangelical
Environmental Network are trying to show how the most important hot-button
issue of the Christian right -- abortion and the survival of the unborn --
has a green dimension.
"Stop Mercury Poisoning of the Unborn," said a banner that Ball carried in
last month's antiabortion march in Washington. Holding up the other end of
the banner was Cizik, the National Association of Evangelicals' chief
lobbyist.
They handed out carefully footnoted papers that cited federal government
studies showing that 1 in 6 babies is born with harmful levels of mercury.
The fliers urged Christians not to support the "Clear Skies" act, a Bush
administration proposal to regulate coal-burning power plants that are a
primary source of mercury pollution.
Although Cizik carried the banner and handed out literature that implicitly
criticized Bush's policy on regulating mercury, he conceded that many
evangelicals find it difficult to criticize the president.
"It is hard to oppose him when he has the moral authority of the office of
the president and a record of standing with us on moral issues like
abortion," Cizik said.
In Seattle, Hedman says that evangelicals should worry less about the
moral authority of the president and more about their biblical obligation
to care for Earth.
"The Earth is God's body," Hedman said in a recent sermon. "God wants us to
look after it."
Tomorrow, 6th February, is Accession Day. The Book of Common Prayer
contains the following prayers which might be useful for devotions on the
day:
O GOD, who providest for thy people by thy power, and rulest over them in
love: Vouchsafe so to bless thy Servant our Queen, that under her this
nation may be wisely governed, and thy Church may serve thee in all godly
quietness; and grant that she being devoted to thee with her whole heart,
and persevering in good works unto the end, may, by thy guidance, come to
thine everlasting kingdom; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who
liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy ghost, ever one God, world
without end. Amen.
O LORD our God, who upholdest and governest all things by the word of thy
power: Receive our humble prayers for our Sovereign Lady ELIZABETH, as on
this day, set over us by thy grace and providence to be our Queen; and,
together with her, bless, we beseech thee, Philip Duke of Edinburgh,
Charles Prince of Wales, and all the Royal Family; that they, ever trusting
in thy goodness, protected by thy power, and crowned with thy gracious and
endless favour, may long continue before thee in peace and safety, joy and
honour, and after death may obtain everlasting life and glory, by the
merits and mediation of Christ Jesus our Saviour, who with thee and the
Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth ever one God, world without end. Amen.
ALMIGHTY God, who rulest over all the kingdoms of the world, and dost order
them according to thy good pleasure: We yield thee unfeigned thanks, for
that thou wast pleased, as on this day, to set thy Servant our Sovereign
Lady, Queen ELIZABETH, upon the Throne of this Realm. Let thy wisdom be
her guide, and let thine arm strengthen her; let truth and justice,
holiness and righteousness, peace and charity, abound in her days; direct
all her counsels and endeavours to thy glory, and the welfare of her
subjects; give us grace to obey her cheerfully for conscience sake, and let
her always possess the hearts of her people; let her reign be long and
prosperous, and crown her with everlasting life in the world to come;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
contains the following prayers which might be useful for devotions on the
day:
O GOD, who providest for thy people by thy power, and rulest over them in
love: Vouchsafe so to bless thy Servant our Queen, that under her this
nation may be wisely governed, and thy Church may serve thee in all godly
quietness; and grant that she being devoted to thee with her whole heart,
and persevering in good works unto the end, may, by thy guidance, come to
thine everlasting kingdom; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who
liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy ghost, ever one God, world
without end. Amen.
O LORD our God, who upholdest and governest all things by the word of thy
power: Receive our humble prayers for our Sovereign Lady ELIZABETH, as on
this day, set over us by thy grace and providence to be our Queen; and,
together with her, bless, we beseech thee, Philip Duke of Edinburgh,
Charles Prince of Wales, and all the Royal Family; that they, ever trusting
in thy goodness, protected by thy power, and crowned with thy gracious and
endless favour, may long continue before thee in peace and safety, joy and
honour, and after death may obtain everlasting life and glory, by the
merits and mediation of Christ Jesus our Saviour, who with thee and the
Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth ever one God, world without end. Amen.
ALMIGHTY God, who rulest over all the kingdoms of the world, and dost order
them according to thy good pleasure: We yield thee unfeigned thanks, for
that thou wast pleased, as on this day, to set thy Servant our Sovereign
Lady, Queen ELIZABETH, upon the Throne of this Realm. Let thy wisdom be
her guide, and let thine arm strengthen her; let truth and justice,
holiness and righteousness, peace and charity, abound in her days; direct
all her counsels and endeavours to thy glory, and the welfare of her
subjects; give us grace to obey her cheerfully for conscience sake, and let
her always possess the hearts of her people; let her reign be long and
prosperous, and crown her with everlasting life in the world to come;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The following article is located at:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2005/001/3.8.html
The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience
Why don't Christians live what they preach?
By Ronald J. Sider
Once upon a time there was a great religion that over the centuries had spread all over the world. But in those lands where it had existed for the longest time, its adherents slowly grew complacent, lukewarm, and skeptical. Indeed, many of the leaders of its oldest groups even publicly rejected some of the religion's most basic beliefs.
In response, a renewal movement emerged, passionately championing the historic claims of the old religion and eagerly inviting unbelievers everywhere to embrace the ancient faith. Rejecting the skepticism of leaders who no longer believed in a God who works miracles, members of the renewal movement vigorously argued that their God not only had performed miraculous deeds in the past but still miraculously transforms all who believe. Indeed, a radical, miraculous "new birth" that began a lifetime of sweeping moral renewal and transformation was at the center of their preaching. Over time, the renewal movement flourished to the point of becoming one of the most influential wings of the whole religion.
Not surprisingly, the movement's numbers translated into political influence. And the renewal movement was so confident of its beliefs and claims that it persuaded the nation's top political leader to have the government work more closely with religious social service organizations to solve the nation's horrendous social problems. Members of the renewal movement knew that miraculous moral transformation of character frequently happened when broken persons embraced the great religion. They also lobbied politicians to strengthen the traditional definition of marriage because their ancient texts taught that a lifelong covenant between a man and a woman was at the center of the Creator's design for the family.
Then the pollsters started conducting scientific polls of the general population. In spite of the renewal movement's proud claims to miraculous transformation, the polls showed that members of the movement divorced their spouses just as often as their secular neighbors. They beat their wives as often as their neighbors. They were almost as materialistic and even more racist than their pagan friends. The hard-core skeptics smiled in cynical amusement at this blatant hypocrisy. The general population was puzzled and disgusted. Many of the renewal movement's leaders simply stepped up the tempo of their now enormously successful, highly sophisticated promotional programs. Others wept.
This, alas, is roughly the situation of Western or at least American evangelicalism today.
Scandalous behavior is rapidly destroying American Christianity. By their daily activity, most "Christians" regularly commit treason. With their mouths they claim that Jesus is Lord, but with their actions they demonstrate allegiance to money, sex, and self-fulfillment.
The findings in numerous national polls conducted by highly respected pollsters like The Gallup Organization and The Barna Group are simply shocking. "Gallup and Barna," laments evangelical theologian Michael Horton, "hand us survey after survey demonstrating that evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general."1 Divorce is more common among "born-again" Christians than in the general American population. Only 6 percent of evangelicals tithe. White evangelicals are the most likely people to object to neighbors of another race. Josh McDowell has pointed out that the sexual promiscuity of evangelical youth is only a little less outrageous than that of their nonevangelical peers.
Alan Wolfe, famous contemporary scholar and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, has just published a penetrating study of American religious life. Evangelicals figure prominently in his book. His evaluation? Today's evangelicalism, Wolfe says, exhibits "so strong a desire to copy the culture of hotel chains and popular music that it loses what religious distinctiveness it once had."2 Wolfe argues, "The truth is there is increasingly little difference between an essentially secular activity like the popular entertainment industry and the bring-'em-in-at-any-cost efforts of evangelical megachurches."3
It is not surprising that George Barna concludes, "Every day, the church is becoming more like the world it allegedly seeks to change."4 We have very little time, he believes, to reverse these trends. African Christian and famous missions scholar Professor Lamin Sanneh told Christianity Today recently that "the cultural captivity of Christianity in the West is nearly complete, and with the religion tamed, it is open season on the West's Christian heritage. I worry about a West without a moral center facing a politically resurgent Islam."5
Our first concern, of course, must be internal integrity, not external danger. What a tragedy for evangelicals to declare proudly that personal conversion and new birth in Christ are at the center of their faith and then to defy biblical moral standards by living almost as sinfully as their pagan neighbors.
Graham Cyster, a Christian whom I know from South Africa, recently told me a painful story about a personal experience two decades ago when he was struggling against apartheid as a young South African evangelical. One night, he was smuggled into an underground Communist cell of young people fighting apartheid. "Tell us about the gospel of Jesus Christ," they asked, half hoping for an alternative to the violent communist strategy they were embracing.
Graham gave a clear, powerful presentation of the gospel, showing how personal faith in Christ wonderfully transforms persons and creates one new body of believers where there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, rich nor poor, black nor white. The youth were fascinated. One seventeen-year-old exclaimed, "That is wonderful! Show me where I can see that happening." Graham's face fell as he sadly responded that he could not think of anywhere South African Christians were truly living out the message of the gospel. "Then the whole thing is a piece of sh—," the youth angrily retorted. Within a month he left the country to join the armed struggle against apartheid—and eventually giving his life for his beliefs.
The young man was right. If Christians do not live what they preach, the whole thing is a farce. "American Christianity has largely failed since the middle of the twentieth century," Barna concludes, "because Jesus' modern-day disciples do not act like Jesus."6 This scandalous behavior mocks Christ, undermines evangelism, and destroys Christian credibility.
If vital Christian faith is to survive, we must understand the depth of the crisis, discover why it has happened, and develop obedient, faithful correctives. My prayer is that just as Mark Noll's book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind did much to strengthen evangelical thinking, so a forthright acknowledgment of this sorry state of affairs will renew evangelical resolve to live what we preach.
The Depth of the Scandal
How bad are things? What is the depth of the scandal? Unless we face these questions with ruthless honesty, we can never hope to correct the problem.
Whether the issue is divorce, materialism, sexual promiscuity, racism, physical abuse in marriage, or neglect of a biblical worldview, the polling data point to widespread, blatant disobedience of clear biblical moral demands on the part of people who allegedly are evangelical, born-again Christians. The statistics are devastating.
• Divorce
In a 1999 national survey, George Barna found that the percentage of born-again Christians who had experienced divorce was slightly higher (26 percent) than that of non-Christians (22 percent).7 In Barna's polls since the mid-1990s, that number has remained about the same.8 In August 2001, a new poll found that the divorce rate was about the same for born-again Christians and the population as a whole; 33 percent of all born-again Christians had been divorced compared with 34 percent of non-born-again Americans—a statistically insignificant difference. Barna also found in one study that 90 percent of all divorced born-again folk divorced after they accepted Christ.9
Barna makes a distinction between born-again Christians and evangelicals. Barna classifies as born-again all who say "they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today" and who also indicate that they "believe that when they die they will go to heaven because they have confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior."10 In Barna's polls anywhere from 35 to 43 percent of the total U.S. population meet these criteria for being born-again.
Barna limits the term "evangelical" to a much smaller group—just 7 to 8 percent of the total U.S. population. In addition to meeting the criteria for being born-again, evangelicals must agree with several other things such as the following: Jesus lived a sinless life; eternal salvation is only through grace, not works; Christians have a personal responsibility to evangelize non-Christians; Satan exists. Obviously this definition identifies a much more theologically biblical, orthodox group of Christians.
What is the divorce rate among evangelicals? According to a 1999 poll by Barna, exactly the same as the national average! According to that poll, 25 percent of evangelicals—just like 25 percent of the total population—have gone through a divorce.11 Does it make no difference to evangelicals that their Lord and Savior explicitly, clearly, repeatedly condemned divorce?
"Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."
Matthew 19:4–6 (NRSV)
Professor Brad Wilcox is a Princeton-trained, Christian sociologist who specializes in family issues. Wilcox has studied two sets of national data: The General Social Survey and The National Survey of Families and Households. The result? "Compared with the rest of the population, conservative Protestants are more likely to divorce." He also points out the divorce rates are higher in the southern U.S., where conservative Protestants make up a higher percentage of the population than elsewhere in the country.12
A story in the New York Times in 2001 underlined Wilcox's findings about the unusually high divorce rates in the South. In many parts of the Bible Belt, the divorce rate was discovered to be "roughly 50 percent above the national average" (italics mine).13 Governor Frank Keating of Oklahoma pointed out the irony that these unusually high divorce rates exist in his state, where 70 percent of the people go to church once a week or more. "These divorce rates," Gov. Keating concluded, "are a scalding indictment of what isn't being said behind the pulpit."
• Materialism and the Poor
John and Sylvia Ronsvalle have been carefully analyzing the giving patterns of American Christians for well over a decade. Their annual The State of Christian Giving is the most accurate report for learning how much Christians in the richest nation in human history actually give. In their most recent edition, they provide detailed information about per-member giving patterns of U.S. church members from 1968 to 2001. Over those thirty-plus years, of course, the average income of U.S. Christians has increased enormously. But that did not carry over into their giving. The report showed that the richer we become, the less we give in proportion to our incomes.
In 1968, the average church member gave 3.1 percent of their income—less than a third of a tithe. That figure dropped every year through 1990 and then recovered slightly to 2.66 percent—about one quarter of a tithe.14
Even more interesting is what has happened to evangelical giving. The Ronsvalles compare the giving in seven typical mainline denominations (affiliated with the National Council of Churches) with the giving in eight evangelical denominations (with membership in the National Association of Evangelicals). In 1968 the eight evangelical denominations gave considerably more than the seven mainline denominations. While the mainline denominational members gave 3.3 percent of their income, evangelicals gave 6.15 percent. While this is significantly more, the evangelicals on average still gave less than two-thirds of a tithe. By 1985 mainline folk had dropped their giving to 2.85 percent of their income and evangelicals to 4.74 percent. By 2001, mainline members had recovered slightly to 3.17 percent, but evangelical giving kept dropping and was at a mere 4.27 percent.15
As we got richer and richer, evangelicals chose to spend more and more on themselves and give a smaller and smaller percentage to the church. Today, on average, evangelicals in the U.S. give about two-fifths of a tithe.
In 2002, Barna discovered that only 6 percent of born-again adults tithed—a 50 percent decline from 2000, when 12 percent did. And in 2002, just 9 percent of Barna's narrow class of evangelicals tithed.16
One can see a related problem in another area. Examine the public agenda of prominent evangelical political movements and coalitions. Virtually never does justice for the poor appear as an area of significant concern and effort.
American Christians live in the richest nation on earth and enjoy an average household income of $42,409.17 The World Bank reports that 1.2 billion of the world's poorest people try to survive on just one dollar a day. At least one billion people have never heard the gospel. The Ronsvalles point out that if American Christians just tithed, they would have another $143 billion available to empower the poor and spread the gospel.18 Studies by the United Nations suggest that just an additional $70–$80 billion a year would be enough to provide access to essential services like basic health care and education for all the poor of the earth.19 If they did no more than tithe, American Christians would have the private dollars to foot this entire bill and still have $60–$70 billion more to do evangelism around the world.
As evangelicals we claim to embrace the Bible as our final authority. One of the most common themes in the Scriptures is that God and his faithful people have a special concern for the poor. Why this blatant contradiction between belief and practice?
In the late 1970s, I attended a national conference of evangelical leaders. My small group, as I recall, included prominent persons like Carl Henry, the first editor of Christianity Today; Hudson Armerding, the president of Wheaton College; and Loren Cunningham, the founder of Youth with a Mission. Several times in our small group, different persons referred to the issue of a simple lifestyle, urging its importance. Finally, Loren Cunningham said something like the following: "Yes, I think the evangelical community is ready to live more simply—if we evangelical leaders will model it." That ended the discussion. There were no further recommendations to live more simply!
• Sexual Disobedience
A story in the New York Times reported that, according to census data, in the 1990s the number of unmarried couples living together jumped a lot more in the Bible Belt (where a higher percentage of the total population are evangelicals) than in the nation as a whole. Nationwide, the increase was 72 percent. But in Oklahoma it was 97 percent, in Arkansas 125 percent, and in Tennessee 123 percent.20
Popular evangelical speaker Josh McDowell has been observing and speaking to evangelical youth for several decades. I remember him saying years ago that evangelical youth are only about 10 percent less likely to engage in premarital sex than nonevangelicals.
True Love Waits, a program sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention, is one of the most famous evangelical efforts to reduce premarital sexual activity among our youth. Since 1993, about 2.4 million young people have signed a pledge to wait until marriage to engage in sexual intercourse. Are these young evangelicals keeping their pledges? In March 2004, researchers from Columbia University and Yale University reported on their findings. For seven years they studied 12 thousand teenagers who took the pledge. Sadly, they found that 88 percent of these pledgers reported having sexual intercourse before marriage; just 12 percent kept their promise. The researchers also found that the rates for having sexually transmitted diseases "were almost identical for the teenagers who took pledges and those who did not."21
Barna found from a 2001 poll that cohabitation—living with a member of the opposite sex without marriage—is only a little better among born-again adults than the general public. Nationally, 33 percent of all adults have lived with a member of the opposite sex without being married. The rate is 25 percent for born-again folk.22
Professor John C. Green is an evangelical political scientist and director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. Green is one of the best statisticians in his field and has studied how Americans feel about morals and ethics using several national surveys. He divides those he labels evangelicals into two categories: traditional evangelicals (who have higher church attendance, a higher view of biblical authority, etc.) and nontraditional evangelicals.23 What are their attitudes on premarital and extramarital sex? Fully 26 percent of traditional evangelicals do not think premarital sex is wrong, and 46 percent of nontraditional evangelicals say it is morally okay.24
And extramarital sex? Of traditional evangelicals, 13 percent say it is okay for married persons to have sex with someone other than one's spouse. And 19 percent of nontraditional evangelicals say adultery is morally acceptable.25 Fortunately, Green finds that evangelicals fare better than mainline Protestant and Catholic Christians on these issues, but the number of evangelicals that blatantly reject biblical sexual norms is astonishing.
What about pornography? Citing a recent survey in Leadership magazine, Steve Gallagher says, "Tragically, the percentage of Christian men involved [in pornography] is not much different that that of the unsaved."26
• Racism
In 1989 George Gallup Jr. and James Castelli published the results of a survey to determine which groups in the U.S. were least and most likely to object to having black neighbors—surely a good measure of racism. Catholics and nonevangelical Christians ranked least likely to object to black neighbors; 11 percent objected. Mainline Protestants came next at 16 percent. At 17 percent, Baptists and evangelicals were among the most likely groups to object to black neighbors, and 20 percent of Southern Baptists objected to black neighbors.27
It is common knowledge that during the Civil Rights movement, when mainline Protestants and Jews joined African Americans in their historic struggle for freedom and equality, evangelical leaders were almost entirely absent. Some opposed the movement; others said nothing. When Frank Gaebelein, then a coeditor of Christianity Today, not only covered Martin Luther King's March on Selma but also endorsed and joined the movement, he experienced opposition and hostility from other evangelical leaders.28 My own school, Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, was founded in 1925 as an evangelical alternative to theological liberalism in American Baptist circles. But racism was part of our early history. We always accepted African Americans as students but refused to allow African American men to sleep overnight on campus. One African American student, who much later was elected to the seminary's board of trustees, had to sleep five miles away at Thirtieth Street Train Station. Thank God for Cuthbert Rutenber, who helped the seminary abandon its racist policies in about 1950.
More recently, evangelicals have taken several important steps to confess past racism and call for change. Coach Bill McCartney, the founder of the national evangelical men's movement called Promise Keepers, was one of the outstanding evangelical leaders in this change. McCartney went on a national speaking tour, regularly calling evangelicals to racial reconciliation. In his book Sold Out, McCartney recalls what happened. When he finished speaking, he reports, "There was no response—nothing. . . . In city after city, in church after church, it was the same story—wild enthusiasm while I was being introduced, followed by a morgue-like chill as I stepped away from the microphone."29 McCartney thinks a major reason attendance dropped dramatically in Promise Keepers' stadium events was their stand on racial reconciliation.
Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith have written a crucial book, Divided By Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, exploring ongoing racial attitudes in the evangelical world. Their conclusion? "White evangelicalism likely does more to perpetuate the racialized society than to reduce it."30 White conservative Protestants are more than twice as likely as other whites to blame lack of equality (e.g., income) between blacks and whites on a lack of black motivation rather than discrimination. Conservative Protestants are six times more likely to cite lack of motivation than unequal access to education!31
Evangelicals may have some good biblical theology about the body of Christ, where there is neither Jew nor Greek, black nor white. But if they do not work out this theology in practice, such that white evangelicals welcome black neighbors and work to end racist structures, then, as was made clear by the young South African Communist, the whole thing stinks.
To say there is a crisis of disobedience in the evangelical world today is to dangerously understate the problem. Born-again Christians divorce at about the same rate as everyone else. Self-centered materialism is seducing evangelicals and rapidly destroying our earlier, slightly more generous giving. Only 6 percent of born-again Christians tithe. Born-again Christians justify and engage in sexual promiscuity (both premarital sex and adultery) at astonishing rates. Racism and perhaps physical abuse of wives seems to be worse in evangelical circles than elsewhere. This is scandalous behavior for people who claim to be born-again by the Holy Spirit and to enjoy the very presence of the Risen Lord in their lives.
In light of the foregoing statistics, it is not surprising that born-again Christians spend seven times more hours each week in front of their televisions than they spend in Bible reading, prayer, and worship.32 Only 9 percent of born-again adults and 2 percent of born-again teenagers have a biblical worldview.33
Perhaps it is not surprising either that non-Christians have a very negative view of evangelicals. In a recent poll, Barna asked non-Christians about their attitudes toward different groups of Christians. Only 44 percent have a positive view of Christian clergy. Just 32 percent have a positive view of born-again Christians. And a mere 22 percent have a positive view of evangelicals.34
Evangelicals rightly rejected theological liberalism because it denied the miraculous. In response, we insisted that miracle was central to biblical faith at numerous points including the supernatural moral transformation of broken sinners. Now our very lifestyle as evangelicals is a ringing practical denial of the miraculous in our lives. Satan must laugh in sneerful derision. God's people can only weep.
Rays of Hope
No biblical passage speaks as powerfully to our situation as the message to the church at Laodicea. Like the American church today, the Laodicean church was rich, self-confident—and lukewarm.
The city of Laodicea (in Asia Minor, now Turkey) was famous in the first century. It was a major banking center and proud of its wealth. The city was especially famous for its wool exports and a highly regarded eye salve.35 Apparently the Laodicean church shared their fellow citizens' sense of wealthy self-confidence. But knowing they were half-hearted, lukewarm Christians, the Lord said to them,
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, "I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing." But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.
Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. —Revelation 3:14–20
This passage could just as well have been written to contemporary American evangelicals. Enormously wealthy, and proud of it, we think that most things are going well in spite of our blatant disobedience. But our Lord's word to us is simple: Repent!
Evangelicals have used the image of Christ knocking at the heart's door as a symbol of our vigorous evangelistic programs. But in truth, it is we, by our behavior, who have excluded him from our hearts and lives. He stands at the doors of our hearts, begging us to welcome his total Lordship.
Weeping and repentance are the only faithful responses to the sweeping, scandalous disobedience in the evangelical world today. We have defied the Lord we claim to worship. We have disgraced his holy name by our unholy lives. Yes, we believe he is the Savior. We are Christians, not pagans. But our beliefs are not strong enough to produce righteous lifestyles. We want Jesus and mammon. Unless we repent, our Lord intends to spit us out.
Biblical repentance is more than a brief liturgical phrase or a hasty superficial tear. It is a deep, heartfelt sorrow for offending the Holy Sovereign of the universe and a strong inner resolve to embrace the conversion—the complete reversal of direction—that our forgiving Savior longs to bestow. We cannot manufacture this radical change using our own strength. But we can beg our Holy God not only to forgive but also to change us. Daily, we can pray to the Lord to transform us more and more into the very likeness of Jesus.
Anguished, persistent prayer for revival must become more central in evangelical life. It is true that for a couple of decades, there have been major prayer movements in the evangelical world. But our behavior has not become more holy. The revival tarries. Richard Lovelace has said that we cannot close "the sanctification gap" until "the same fear and trembling, the same prayer to be endued with power from on high that characterized the first apostles" becomes a part of our lives.36 Please God, may that happen.
Facing the depth of the scandal could easily provoke despair. Thank God, belief in the gospel warrants a more hopeful response. At the heart of evangelical belief is the glorious biblical truth that new birth, radical transformation, is possible at any moment. We have regularly promised even the most wretched, most broken sinners that the Lord stands ready to forgive and change them if they will only open their hearts to him. Again and again, we know from our own history, the Savior has done just that. Criminals, adulterers, and murderers have been radically transformed into new persons in Christ Jesus. That is the perennial promise of the gospel.
That is precisely the promise which we must claim for ourselves. The Savior longs to forgive even scandalously unfaithful contemporary evangelicals if we will just repent.
And pray. We need to pray mightily for a sweeping movement of revival. The history of evangelical awakenings in the last three centuries shows that again and again God has responded with powerful movements of revival in the church when God's people united in intense, sustained periods of prayer.37
The incredible promises Jesus attached to his words about prayer strengthen our hope. If we pray for revival and sanctification, the Lord of the universe pledges to hear us. Listen to his reassuring promise:
Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. —Mark 11:24
I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, "Move from here to there" and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. —Matthew 17:20–21
If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. —John 15:7
Does anyone doubt that our Lord longs to answer our pleas for revival? And sanctifying power?
As we pray, we need to remember an important condition that Christ attached to these promises. We must obey. John 15:7 says that Jesus will hear our prayers if we abide in him and his words abide in us. We must make every effort to embrace the righteous way of life that the New Testament commands and promises is possible.
Obedience means unconditional submission to Jesus as Lord as well as Savior. It means abandoning our one-sided, unbiblical conceptions of sin, the gospel, salvation, and conversion, and returning to the full-blown biblical understanding of these glorious truths. It means recovering the biblical reality of the church as community. It means living the truth that orthodoxy and orthopraxis—right theology and right behavior—are equally important.
If we do that, I believe we dare hope and expect that a longing for holiness will sweep through our churches. Our sexual practices will reflect biblical standards much more faithfully. Joyful, lifelong fidelity will make our homes and marriages powerful signs of an attractive alternative to today's brokenness and agony. Biblical Christians will lead the way in more vigorous efforts to reduce dramatically domestic abuse, racism, materialism, and poverty.
Could that really happen? The promise of the gospel is that it can and does—whenever people truly surrender to the biblical Christ. Fortunately, there are even some rays of hope in some of the polling data. When pollsters make careful distinctions between nominal Christians and devout believers, there is evidence that deeply committed Christians do live differently.
In 1992, George Gallup Jr. and Timothy Jones published a book called The Saints Among Us. They used a 12-question survey to identify what they called "heroic and faithful individual" Christians. Some of the questions identified people who believed in the full authority of the Bible and practiced evangelism. But others identified costly behavior: "I do things I don't want to do because I believe it is the will of God" and "I put my religious beliefs into practice in my relations with all people regardless of their backgrounds." They labeled "saints" those who agreed with every question. And they called "super-saints" those who agreed strongly with every question.38
The good news is that the "saints" lived differently. Only 42 percent of the strongly uncommitted spent "a good deal of time" helping people in need, but 73 percent of the "saints" and 85 percent of the "super-saints" did.39 Only 63 percent of the spiritually uncommitted reported that they would not object to having a neighbor of a different race. But 84 percent of the "saints" and 93 percent of the "super-saints" said they would not object.40 Interestingly, a disproportionate share of the saints were women, African Americans, and persons earning less than $25,000 per year.
Sociologist Christian Smith's study comparing the attitudes and behavior of evangelical, fundamentalist, mainline, liberal, and Catholic Christians as well as those of the "non-religious" found that over the previous two years, evangelicals were more than three times more likely to have given "a lot" of money to help the poor and the needy than the non-religious.41 In fact, evangelicals scored higher than any other Christian group. Of all evangelicals, 29 percent gave a lot. But only 23 percent of fundamentalists, 22 percent of mainline churches, 25 percent of liberals, 22 percent of Catholics, and 9 percent of the non-religious gave a lot. Even so, only 29 percent of the evangelicals gave a lot. That means 71 percent of evangelicals did not!
A Pew Center poll in 2001 supported Smith's findings. In this survey, those with a high religious commitment were a little more than three times as likely as those with a low religious commitmentto have volunteered to help poor, sick, and elderly people in the last month (35 percent vs. 11 percent).42 But again only one third (35 percent) of the highly religiously committed had volunteered. Sixty-five percent had not. Another question in the same poll found that those who were "heavily involved in activities at their church or house of worship" were almost four times more likely to volunteer to help the poor, sick, and homeless in settings outside church than were those of low religious commitment (44 percent vs. 12 percent).43
George Barna has developed a set of criteria to identify people with a "biblical worldview." These people believe that "the Bible is the moral standard" and also think that "absolute moral truths exist and are conveyed through the Bible." In addition, they agree with all six of the following additional beliefs: God is the all-knowing, all-powerful Creator who still rules the universe; Jesus Christ lived a sinless life; Satan is a real, living entity; salvation is a free gift, not something we can earn; every Christian has a personal responsibility to evangelize; and the Bible is totally accurate in all it teaches.
Barna's criteria for identifying people with a biblical worldview are not identical to his criteria for identifying evangelicals. Barna's "born-again" category is much broader; about 40 percent of the total population are born-again, but only 7–8 percent are evangelicals. Using his definition of those with a biblical worldview, Barna has discovered that only 9 percent of all born-again adults have a biblical worldview and only 2 percent of born-again teenagers.44 That is the bad news.
The good news is that the small circle of people with a biblical worldview demonstrate genuinely different behavior. They are nine times more likely than all the others to avoid "adult-only" material on the Internet. They are four times more likely than other Christians to boycott objectionable companies and products and twice as likely to choose intentionally not to watch a movie specifically because of its bad content. They are three times more likely than other adults not to use tobacco products and twice as likely to volunteer time to help needy people.45 Forty-nine percent of all born-again Christians with a biblical worldview have volunteered more than an hour in the previous week to an organization serving the poor, whereas only 29 percent of born-again Christians without a biblical worldview and only 22 percent of non-born-again Christians had done so.46
In a 2000 poll Barna discovered that evangelicals are five times less likely than adults generally to report that their "career comes first."47 And there is accumulating evidence that theologically conservative Protestant men who attend church regularly have lower rates of domestic abuse than others.48
Not surprisingly, this better behavior is closely correlated with higher religious activity. Those with a biblical worldview are almost twice as likely as other Christians to read the Bible each week.49 Nationwide, only 19 percent of adults attend Sunday school each week, but 33 percent of all born-again adults do. And the figure jumps to 60 percent for evangelicals.50 While only 17 percent of all adults attend a small group for prayer and Bible study each week, 30 percent of born-again Christians do. And 55 percent of all evangelicals do.51
Other pollsters have discovered a similar correlation between evangelical faith and religious activity. Christian Smith found that evangelicals were much more likely to attend church each week or share the gospel than other Christians.52 The same pattern emerged in a study in 2001 by the Pew Research Center.53
These statistics offer some substantial hope. People with a biblical worldview, and this category largely overlaps with that of evangelical, do exhibit better moral behavior at several points. We cannot be satisfied with studies that show that only 29 percent of all evangelicals gave a lot to help the poor and needy. But that is at least a lot better than the statistics for the non-religious, where only 9 percent do a lot to help the poor. When we can distinguish nominal Christians from deeply committed, theologically orthodox Christians, it is clear that genuine Christianity does lead to better behavior, at least in some areas.
Barna's findings on the different behavior of Christians with a biblical worldview underline the importance of theology. Biblical orthodoxy does matter. One important way to end the scandal of contemporary Christian behavior is to work and pray fervently for the growth of orthodox theological belief in our churches.
Barna reports one final finding that offers additional hope. He discovered that even though 91 percent of all born-again Christians lacked a biblical worldview, they were nonetheless open, even desirous, of spiritual growth. Eighty percent of all born-again Christians said that having a "deep, personal commitment to the Christian faith is a top priority for their future."54 And nine out of ten Christians of every stripe said that if their churches specified things they should personally do to grow spiritually, they would at least listen to the advice and follow most of the recommendations.55 That suggests a lot of openness to more solid biblical discipling.
Things are not quite as hopeless as they first appeared. Biblical faith makes a substantial (though not enough) difference in the lives of deeply committed Christians. Most nominal Christians seem open to spiritual growth.
More importantly, the gospel is true! The carpenter from Nazareth burst from the tomb and now reigns as the Lord of the universe. His promise to transform into his very own likeness all who truly believe in him still stands. The Holy Spirit is still alive and powerful today, radically remaking broken people who unconditionally open their hearts and lives to his mighty presence.
At any time in history, no matter how bad the current mess, no matter how unfaithful the contemporary church, God stands ready to keep his promises. God is eager to do the same mighty deeds today that he has done in the past. All we must do is trust and obey.
The Lord we claim to love and worship stands at the door and knocks. He longs to be truly invited in. We cannot invite only half of him. But if today we dare to embrace and surrender to the full biblical Christ, he will perform mighty deeds that transcend what we dare ask or imagine. He will turn our weeping into joy. He will end the scandal of blatant disobedience in the people who call on his name.
Ronald J. Sider is professor of theology, holistic ministry, and public policy and director of the Sider Center on Ministry and Public Policy at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also president of Evangelicals for Social Action. This article is excerpted from his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience (Baker). Copyright 2004 by Ronald J. Sider. Used by permission of Baker Books.
1. Michael Horton, "Beyond Culture Wars," Modern Reformation (May-June 1993), p. 3.
2. Alan Wolfe, The Transformation of American Religion (Free Press, 2003), p. 257.
3. Ibid., p. 212.
4. Tim Stafford, "The Third Coming of George Barna," Christianity Today, August 8, 2002, p. 34.
5. Christianity Today, October 2003, p. 112.
6. George Barna, Think Like Jesus (Integrity, 2003), p. 40.
7. George Barna, "Family," 2000. Available from Barna Research Online, http://216.87.179/cgi-bin/pagecategory.asp?categoryid=20. See also George Barna and Mark Hatch, Boiling Point: It Only Takes One Degree (Regal, 2001), p. 42.
8. "The statistic has been quite consistent since the mid-90's." Barna and Hatch, Boiling Point, p. 42n29.
9. The Barna Group, The Barna Update, "Born Again Adults Less Likely to Co-Habit, Just As Likely to Divorce," August 6, 2001, http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdate&BarnaUpdateID=95.
10. The Barna Group, The Barna Update, "Annual Study Reveals America is Spiritually Stagnant," March 5, 2001, http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdate&BarnaUpdateID=84.
11. The Barna Group, Evangelical Christians, http://www.barna.org.
12. W. Bradford Wilcox, "Conservative Protestants and the Family," in A Public Faith: Evangelicals and Civic Engagment, ed. Michael Cromartie (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), p. 63.
13. New York Times, May 21, 2001, A14.
14. John L. and Sylvia Ronsvalle, The State of Church Giving Through 2001 (Empty Tomb, 2003), p. 12.
15. Ibid., p. 25.
16. The Barna Group, "Stewardship," http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=Topic&TopicID=36.
17. Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Robert Cleveland, and Bruce H. Webster Jr., U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60-221, Income in the United States: 2002, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2003, available as PDF at http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p60-221.pdf.
18. Ronsvalle, State of Church Giving, p. 52.
19. Carol Bellamy, The State of the World's Children 2001 (UNICEF, 2003), p. 81.
20. New York Times, May 21, 2001, A14.
21. Lawrence K. Altman, "Study Finds That Teenage Virginity Pledges Are Rarely Kept," New York Times, March 10, 2004, A20.
22. The Barna Group, The Barna Update, "Born Again Adults Less Likely to Co-Habit, Just As Likely to Divorce," August 6, 2001, http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdate&BarnaUpdateID=95.
23. John C. Green, "Religion and Politics in the 1990s: Confrontations and Coalitions," in Religion and American Politics: The 2000 Election in Context, ed. Mark Silk (Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, Trinity College, Hartford, 2000), p. 21, available as PDF at http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/csrpl/religame.pdf.
24. Ibid., p. 26.
25. Ibid.
26. Steve Gallagher, "Devastated by Internet Porn," Pure Life Ministries, December 15, 2000, http://www.purelifeministries.org/mensarticle1.htm.
27. George Gallup Jr. and James Castelli, The People's Religion (Macmillan, 1989), p. 188.
28. Personal conversation with Frank Gaebelein's daughter.
29. Bill McCartney with David Halbrook, Sold Out: Becoming Man Enough to Make a Difference (Word, 1997).
30. Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided By Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (Oxford Univ. Press, 2000), p. 170.
31. Michael Emerson, "Faith That Separates: Evangelicals and Black-White Race Relations," in A Public Faith (see note 6), p. 196.
32. Barna and Hatch, Boiling Point, p. 140.
33. Barna, Think Like Jesus, p. 23.
34. See Sally Morgenthaler's foreword to Jonny Baker, Doug Gay, and Jenny Brown, Alternative Worship: Resources from and for the Emerging Church (Baker, 2004).
35. See Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (InterVarsity, 1993), p. 775.
36. Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Renewal (InterVarsity, 1979), p. 237.
37. See, for example, J. Edwin Orr, The Eager Feet: Evangelical Awakenings, 1790–1830 (Moody, 1975), especially pp. 191–200.
38. George H. Gallup Jr. and Timothy Jones, The Saints Among Us (Harrisburg: Morehouse, 1992).
39. Ibid., pp. 63–64.
40. Ibid., p. 41.
41. Christian Smith, American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving (Univ. of Chicago Press, 199
, pp. 41–42.
42. Pew Research Center, American Views on Religion, Politics and Public Policy (2001), pp. 2–3; see also somewhat parallel results in Robert Wuthnow, Acts of Compassion: Caring for Others and Helping Ourselves (Princeton Univ. Press, 1991), p. 51.
43. Pew Research Center, American Views on Religion, Politics and Public Policy (2001), part IV, p. 5.
44. Barna, Think Like Jesus, p. 23.
45. Ibid., p. 24.
46. Ibid., p. 28.
47. The research archive on "Evangelical Christians" at Here Barna reports that evangelicals are just as likely as the general population to be divorced. But in his 2002 report (State of the Church 2002, p. 94), Barna reported that evangelicals are "less likely to have experienced a divorce than any other of the faith segments." It is not clear how these different data fit together.
48. See W. Bradford Wilcox, Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2004).
49. Barna, State of the Church 2002, p. 25.
50. George Barna, "Ministry Involvement," Online, 2001 (accessed March 11, 2001).
51. George Barna, Faith Commitment Online, Barna Research Group, 2001 (accessed March 11, 2001).
52. Smith, American Evangelicalism, pp. 34, 40.
53. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, American Views on Religion, Politics and Public Policy (Pew Research Center, 2001), part IV.
54. George Barna, Growing True Disciples (Issachar Resources, 2000), p. 32.
55. Ibid., p. 41.
Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today International/Books & Culture magazine.
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The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience
Why don't Christians live what they preach?
By Ronald J. Sider
Once upon a time there was a great religion that over the centuries had spread all over the world. But in those lands where it had existed for the longest time, its adherents slowly grew complacent, lukewarm, and skeptical. Indeed, many of the leaders of its oldest groups even publicly rejected some of the religion's most basic beliefs.
In response, a renewal movement emerged, passionately championing the historic claims of the old religion and eagerly inviting unbelievers everywhere to embrace the ancient faith. Rejecting the skepticism of leaders who no longer believed in a God who works miracles, members of the renewal movement vigorously argued that their God not only had performed miraculous deeds in the past but still miraculously transforms all who believe. Indeed, a radical, miraculous "new birth" that began a lifetime of sweeping moral renewal and transformation was at the center of their preaching. Over time, the renewal movement flourished to the point of becoming one of the most influential wings of the whole religion.
Not surprisingly, the movement's numbers translated into political influence. And the renewal movement was so confident of its beliefs and claims that it persuaded the nation's top political leader to have the government work more closely with religious social service organizations to solve the nation's horrendous social problems. Members of the renewal movement knew that miraculous moral transformation of character frequently happened when broken persons embraced the great religion. They also lobbied politicians to strengthen the traditional definition of marriage because their ancient texts taught that a lifelong covenant between a man and a woman was at the center of the Creator's design for the family.
Then the pollsters started conducting scientific polls of the general population. In spite of the renewal movement's proud claims to miraculous transformation, the polls showed that members of the movement divorced their spouses just as often as their secular neighbors. They beat their wives as often as their neighbors. They were almost as materialistic and even more racist than their pagan friends. The hard-core skeptics smiled in cynical amusement at this blatant hypocrisy. The general population was puzzled and disgusted. Many of the renewal movement's leaders simply stepped up the tempo of their now enormously successful, highly sophisticated promotional programs. Others wept.
This, alas, is roughly the situation of Western or at least American evangelicalism today.
Scandalous behavior is rapidly destroying American Christianity. By their daily activity, most "Christians" regularly commit treason. With their mouths they claim that Jesus is Lord, but with their actions they demonstrate allegiance to money, sex, and self-fulfillment.
The findings in numerous national polls conducted by highly respected pollsters like The Gallup Organization and The Barna Group are simply shocking. "Gallup and Barna," laments evangelical theologian Michael Horton, "hand us survey after survey demonstrating that evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general."1 Divorce is more common among "born-again" Christians than in the general American population. Only 6 percent of evangelicals tithe. White evangelicals are the most likely people to object to neighbors of another race. Josh McDowell has pointed out that the sexual promiscuity of evangelical youth is only a little less outrageous than that of their nonevangelical peers.
Alan Wolfe, famous contemporary scholar and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, has just published a penetrating study of American religious life. Evangelicals figure prominently in his book. His evaluation? Today's evangelicalism, Wolfe says, exhibits "so strong a desire to copy the culture of hotel chains and popular music that it loses what religious distinctiveness it once had."2 Wolfe argues, "The truth is there is increasingly little difference between an essentially secular activity like the popular entertainment industry and the bring-'em-in-at-any-cost efforts of evangelical megachurches."3
It is not surprising that George Barna concludes, "Every day, the church is becoming more like the world it allegedly seeks to change."4 We have very little time, he believes, to reverse these trends. African Christian and famous missions scholar Professor Lamin Sanneh told Christianity Today recently that "the cultural captivity of Christianity in the West is nearly complete, and with the religion tamed, it is open season on the West's Christian heritage. I worry about a West without a moral center facing a politically resurgent Islam."5
Our first concern, of course, must be internal integrity, not external danger. What a tragedy for evangelicals to declare proudly that personal conversion and new birth in Christ are at the center of their faith and then to defy biblical moral standards by living almost as sinfully as their pagan neighbors.
Graham Cyster, a Christian whom I know from South Africa, recently told me a painful story about a personal experience two decades ago when he was struggling against apartheid as a young South African evangelical. One night, he was smuggled into an underground Communist cell of young people fighting apartheid. "Tell us about the gospel of Jesus Christ," they asked, half hoping for an alternative to the violent communist strategy they were embracing.
Graham gave a clear, powerful presentation of the gospel, showing how personal faith in Christ wonderfully transforms persons and creates one new body of believers where there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, rich nor poor, black nor white. The youth were fascinated. One seventeen-year-old exclaimed, "That is wonderful! Show me where I can see that happening." Graham's face fell as he sadly responded that he could not think of anywhere South African Christians were truly living out the message of the gospel. "Then the whole thing is a piece of sh—," the youth angrily retorted. Within a month he left the country to join the armed struggle against apartheid—and eventually giving his life for his beliefs.
The young man was right. If Christians do not live what they preach, the whole thing is a farce. "American Christianity has largely failed since the middle of the twentieth century," Barna concludes, "because Jesus' modern-day disciples do not act like Jesus."6 This scandalous behavior mocks Christ, undermines evangelism, and destroys Christian credibility.
If vital Christian faith is to survive, we must understand the depth of the crisis, discover why it has happened, and develop obedient, faithful correctives. My prayer is that just as Mark Noll's book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind did much to strengthen evangelical thinking, so a forthright acknowledgment of this sorry state of affairs will renew evangelical resolve to live what we preach.
The Depth of the Scandal
How bad are things? What is the depth of the scandal? Unless we face these questions with ruthless honesty, we can never hope to correct the problem.
Whether the issue is divorce, materialism, sexual promiscuity, racism, physical abuse in marriage, or neglect of a biblical worldview, the polling data point to widespread, blatant disobedience of clear biblical moral demands on the part of people who allegedly are evangelical, born-again Christians. The statistics are devastating.
• Divorce
In a 1999 national survey, George Barna found that the percentage of born-again Christians who had experienced divorce was slightly higher (26 percent) than that of non-Christians (22 percent).7 In Barna's polls since the mid-1990s, that number has remained about the same.8 In August 2001, a new poll found that the divorce rate was about the same for born-again Christians and the population as a whole; 33 percent of all born-again Christians had been divorced compared with 34 percent of non-born-again Americans—a statistically insignificant difference. Barna also found in one study that 90 percent of all divorced born-again folk divorced after they accepted Christ.9
Barna makes a distinction between born-again Christians and evangelicals. Barna classifies as born-again all who say "they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today" and who also indicate that they "believe that when they die they will go to heaven because they have confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior."10 In Barna's polls anywhere from 35 to 43 percent of the total U.S. population meet these criteria for being born-again.
Barna limits the term "evangelical" to a much smaller group—just 7 to 8 percent of the total U.S. population. In addition to meeting the criteria for being born-again, evangelicals must agree with several other things such as the following: Jesus lived a sinless life; eternal salvation is only through grace, not works; Christians have a personal responsibility to evangelize non-Christians; Satan exists. Obviously this definition identifies a much more theologically biblical, orthodox group of Christians.
What is the divorce rate among evangelicals? According to a 1999 poll by Barna, exactly the same as the national average! According to that poll, 25 percent of evangelicals—just like 25 percent of the total population—have gone through a divorce.11 Does it make no difference to evangelicals that their Lord and Savior explicitly, clearly, repeatedly condemned divorce?
"Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."
Matthew 19:4–6 (NRSV)
Professor Brad Wilcox is a Princeton-trained, Christian sociologist who specializes in family issues. Wilcox has studied two sets of national data: The General Social Survey and The National Survey of Families and Households. The result? "Compared with the rest of the population, conservative Protestants are more likely to divorce." He also points out the divorce rates are higher in the southern U.S., where conservative Protestants make up a higher percentage of the population than elsewhere in the country.12
A story in the New York Times in 2001 underlined Wilcox's findings about the unusually high divorce rates in the South. In many parts of the Bible Belt, the divorce rate was discovered to be "roughly 50 percent above the national average" (italics mine).13 Governor Frank Keating of Oklahoma pointed out the irony that these unusually high divorce rates exist in his state, where 70 percent of the people go to church once a week or more. "These divorce rates," Gov. Keating concluded, "are a scalding indictment of what isn't being said behind the pulpit."
• Materialism and the Poor
John and Sylvia Ronsvalle have been carefully analyzing the giving patterns of American Christians for well over a decade. Their annual The State of Christian Giving is the most accurate report for learning how much Christians in the richest nation in human history actually give. In their most recent edition, they provide detailed information about per-member giving patterns of U.S. church members from 1968 to 2001. Over those thirty-plus years, of course, the average income of U.S. Christians has increased enormously. But that did not carry over into their giving. The report showed that the richer we become, the less we give in proportion to our incomes.
In 1968, the average church member gave 3.1 percent of their income—less than a third of a tithe. That figure dropped every year through 1990 and then recovered slightly to 2.66 percent—about one quarter of a tithe.14
Even more interesting is what has happened to evangelical giving. The Ronsvalles compare the giving in seven typical mainline denominations (affiliated with the National Council of Churches) with the giving in eight evangelical denominations (with membership in the National Association of Evangelicals). In 1968 the eight evangelical denominations gave considerably more than the seven mainline denominations. While the mainline denominational members gave 3.3 percent of their income, evangelicals gave 6.15 percent. While this is significantly more, the evangelicals on average still gave less than two-thirds of a tithe. By 1985 mainline folk had dropped their giving to 2.85 percent of their income and evangelicals to 4.74 percent. By 2001, mainline members had recovered slightly to 3.17 percent, but evangelical giving kept dropping and was at a mere 4.27 percent.15
As we got richer and richer, evangelicals chose to spend more and more on themselves and give a smaller and smaller percentage to the church. Today, on average, evangelicals in the U.S. give about two-fifths of a tithe.
In 2002, Barna discovered that only 6 percent of born-again adults tithed—a 50 percent decline from 2000, when 12 percent did. And in 2002, just 9 percent of Barna's narrow class of evangelicals tithed.16
One can see a related problem in another area. Examine the public agenda of prominent evangelical political movements and coalitions. Virtually never does justice for the poor appear as an area of significant concern and effort.
American Christians live in the richest nation on earth and enjoy an average household income of $42,409.17 The World Bank reports that 1.2 billion of the world's poorest people try to survive on just one dollar a day. At least one billion people have never heard the gospel. The Ronsvalles point out that if American Christians just tithed, they would have another $143 billion available to empower the poor and spread the gospel.18 Studies by the United Nations suggest that just an additional $70–$80 billion a year would be enough to provide access to essential services like basic health care and education for all the poor of the earth.19 If they did no more than tithe, American Christians would have the private dollars to foot this entire bill and still have $60–$70 billion more to do evangelism around the world.
As evangelicals we claim to embrace the Bible as our final authority. One of the most common themes in the Scriptures is that God and his faithful people have a special concern for the poor. Why this blatant contradiction between belief and practice?
In the late 1970s, I attended a national conference of evangelical leaders. My small group, as I recall, included prominent persons like Carl Henry, the first editor of Christianity Today; Hudson Armerding, the president of Wheaton College; and Loren Cunningham, the founder of Youth with a Mission. Several times in our small group, different persons referred to the issue of a simple lifestyle, urging its importance. Finally, Loren Cunningham said something like the following: "Yes, I think the evangelical community is ready to live more simply—if we evangelical leaders will model it." That ended the discussion. There were no further recommendations to live more simply!
• Sexual Disobedience
A story in the New York Times reported that, according to census data, in the 1990s the number of unmarried couples living together jumped a lot more in the Bible Belt (where a higher percentage of the total population are evangelicals) than in the nation as a whole. Nationwide, the increase was 72 percent. But in Oklahoma it was 97 percent, in Arkansas 125 percent, and in Tennessee 123 percent.20
Popular evangelical speaker Josh McDowell has been observing and speaking to evangelical youth for several decades. I remember him saying years ago that evangelical youth are only about 10 percent less likely to engage in premarital sex than nonevangelicals.
True Love Waits, a program sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention, is one of the most famous evangelical efforts to reduce premarital sexual activity among our youth. Since 1993, about 2.4 million young people have signed a pledge to wait until marriage to engage in sexual intercourse. Are these young evangelicals keeping their pledges? In March 2004, researchers from Columbia University and Yale University reported on their findings. For seven years they studied 12 thousand teenagers who took the pledge. Sadly, they found that 88 percent of these pledgers reported having sexual intercourse before marriage; just 12 percent kept their promise. The researchers also found that the rates for having sexually transmitted diseases "were almost identical for the teenagers who took pledges and those who did not."21
Barna found from a 2001 poll that cohabitation—living with a member of the opposite sex without marriage—is only a little better among born-again adults than the general public. Nationally, 33 percent of all adults have lived with a member of the opposite sex without being married. The rate is 25 percent for born-again folk.22
Professor John C. Green is an evangelical political scientist and director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. Green is one of the best statisticians in his field and has studied how Americans feel about morals and ethics using several national surveys. He divides those he labels evangelicals into two categories: traditional evangelicals (who have higher church attendance, a higher view of biblical authority, etc.) and nontraditional evangelicals.23 What are their attitudes on premarital and extramarital sex? Fully 26 percent of traditional evangelicals do not think premarital sex is wrong, and 46 percent of nontraditional evangelicals say it is morally okay.24
And extramarital sex? Of traditional evangelicals, 13 percent say it is okay for married persons to have sex with someone other than one's spouse. And 19 percent of nontraditional evangelicals say adultery is morally acceptable.25 Fortunately, Green finds that evangelicals fare better than mainline Protestant and Catholic Christians on these issues, but the number of evangelicals that blatantly reject biblical sexual norms is astonishing.
What about pornography? Citing a recent survey in Leadership magazine, Steve Gallagher says, "Tragically, the percentage of Christian men involved [in pornography] is not much different that that of the unsaved."26
• Racism
In 1989 George Gallup Jr. and James Castelli published the results of a survey to determine which groups in the U.S. were least and most likely to object to having black neighbors—surely a good measure of racism. Catholics and nonevangelical Christians ranked least likely to object to black neighbors; 11 percent objected. Mainline Protestants came next at 16 percent. At 17 percent, Baptists and evangelicals were among the most likely groups to object to black neighbors, and 20 percent of Southern Baptists objected to black neighbors.27
It is common knowledge that during the Civil Rights movement, when mainline Protestants and Jews joined African Americans in their historic struggle for freedom and equality, evangelical leaders were almost entirely absent. Some opposed the movement; others said nothing. When Frank Gaebelein, then a coeditor of Christianity Today, not only covered Martin Luther King's March on Selma but also endorsed and joined the movement, he experienced opposition and hostility from other evangelical leaders.28 My own school, Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, was founded in 1925 as an evangelical alternative to theological liberalism in American Baptist circles. But racism was part of our early history. We always accepted African Americans as students but refused to allow African American men to sleep overnight on campus. One African American student, who much later was elected to the seminary's board of trustees, had to sleep five miles away at Thirtieth Street Train Station. Thank God for Cuthbert Rutenber, who helped the seminary abandon its racist policies in about 1950.
More recently, evangelicals have taken several important steps to confess past racism and call for change. Coach Bill McCartney, the founder of the national evangelical men's movement called Promise Keepers, was one of the outstanding evangelical leaders in this change. McCartney went on a national speaking tour, regularly calling evangelicals to racial reconciliation. In his book Sold Out, McCartney recalls what happened. When he finished speaking, he reports, "There was no response—nothing. . . . In city after city, in church after church, it was the same story—wild enthusiasm while I was being introduced, followed by a morgue-like chill as I stepped away from the microphone."29 McCartney thinks a major reason attendance dropped dramatically in Promise Keepers' stadium events was their stand on racial reconciliation.
Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith have written a crucial book, Divided By Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, exploring ongoing racial attitudes in the evangelical world. Their conclusion? "White evangelicalism likely does more to perpetuate the racialized society than to reduce it."30 White conservative Protestants are more than twice as likely as other whites to blame lack of equality (e.g., income) between blacks and whites on a lack of black motivation rather than discrimination. Conservative Protestants are six times more likely to cite lack of motivation than unequal access to education!31
Evangelicals may have some good biblical theology about the body of Christ, where there is neither Jew nor Greek, black nor white. But if they do not work out this theology in practice, such that white evangelicals welcome black neighbors and work to end racist structures, then, as was made clear by the young South African Communist, the whole thing stinks.
To say there is a crisis of disobedience in the evangelical world today is to dangerously understate the problem. Born-again Christians divorce at about the same rate as everyone else. Self-centered materialism is seducing evangelicals and rapidly destroying our earlier, slightly more generous giving. Only 6 percent of born-again Christians tithe. Born-again Christians justify and engage in sexual promiscuity (both premarital sex and adultery) at astonishing rates. Racism and perhaps physical abuse of wives seems to be worse in evangelical circles than elsewhere. This is scandalous behavior for people who claim to be born-again by the Holy Spirit and to enjoy the very presence of the Risen Lord in their lives.
In light of the foregoing statistics, it is not surprising that born-again Christians spend seven times more hours each week in front of their televisions than they spend in Bible reading, prayer, and worship.32 Only 9 percent of born-again adults and 2 percent of born-again teenagers have a biblical worldview.33
Perhaps it is not surprising either that non-Christians have a very negative view of evangelicals. In a recent poll, Barna asked non-Christians about their attitudes toward different groups of Christians. Only 44 percent have a positive view of Christian clergy. Just 32 percent have a positive view of born-again Christians. And a mere 22 percent have a positive view of evangelicals.34
Evangelicals rightly rejected theological liberalism because it denied the miraculous. In response, we insisted that miracle was central to biblical faith at numerous points including the supernatural moral transformation of broken sinners. Now our very lifestyle as evangelicals is a ringing practical denial of the miraculous in our lives. Satan must laugh in sneerful derision. God's people can only weep.
Rays of Hope
No biblical passage speaks as powerfully to our situation as the message to the church at Laodicea. Like the American church today, the Laodicean church was rich, self-confident—and lukewarm.
The city of Laodicea (in Asia Minor, now Turkey) was famous in the first century. It was a major banking center and proud of its wealth. The city was especially famous for its wool exports and a highly regarded eye salve.35 Apparently the Laodicean church shared their fellow citizens' sense of wealthy self-confidence. But knowing they were half-hearted, lukewarm Christians, the Lord said to them,
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, "I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing." But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.
Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. —Revelation 3:14–20
This passage could just as well have been written to contemporary American evangelicals. Enormously wealthy, and proud of it, we think that most things are going well in spite of our blatant disobedience. But our Lord's word to us is simple: Repent!
Evangelicals have used the image of Christ knocking at the heart's door as a symbol of our vigorous evangelistic programs. But in truth, it is we, by our behavior, who have excluded him from our hearts and lives. He stands at the doors of our hearts, begging us to welcome his total Lordship.
Weeping and repentance are the only faithful responses to the sweeping, scandalous disobedience in the evangelical world today. We have defied the Lord we claim to worship. We have disgraced his holy name by our unholy lives. Yes, we believe he is the Savior. We are Christians, not pagans. But our beliefs are not strong enough to produce righteous lifestyles. We want Jesus and mammon. Unless we repent, our Lord intends to spit us out.
Biblical repentance is more than a brief liturgical phrase or a hasty superficial tear. It is a deep, heartfelt sorrow for offending the Holy Sovereign of the universe and a strong inner resolve to embrace the conversion—the complete reversal of direction—that our forgiving Savior longs to bestow. We cannot manufacture this radical change using our own strength. But we can beg our Holy God not only to forgive but also to change us. Daily, we can pray to the Lord to transform us more and more into the very likeness of Jesus.
Anguished, persistent prayer for revival must become more central in evangelical life. It is true that for a couple of decades, there have been major prayer movements in the evangelical world. But our behavior has not become more holy. The revival tarries. Richard Lovelace has said that we cannot close "the sanctification gap" until "the same fear and trembling, the same prayer to be endued with power from on high that characterized the first apostles" becomes a part of our lives.36 Please God, may that happen.
Facing the depth of the scandal could easily provoke despair. Thank God, belief in the gospel warrants a more hopeful response. At the heart of evangelical belief is the glorious biblical truth that new birth, radical transformation, is possible at any moment. We have regularly promised even the most wretched, most broken sinners that the Lord stands ready to forgive and change them if they will only open their hearts to him. Again and again, we know from our own history, the Savior has done just that. Criminals, adulterers, and murderers have been radically transformed into new persons in Christ Jesus. That is the perennial promise of the gospel.
That is precisely the promise which we must claim for ourselves. The Savior longs to forgive even scandalously unfaithful contemporary evangelicals if we will just repent.
And pray. We need to pray mightily for a sweeping movement of revival. The history of evangelical awakenings in the last three centuries shows that again and again God has responded with powerful movements of revival in the church when God's people united in intense, sustained periods of prayer.37
The incredible promises Jesus attached to his words about prayer strengthen our hope. If we pray for revival and sanctification, the Lord of the universe pledges to hear us. Listen to his reassuring promise:
Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. —Mark 11:24
I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, "Move from here to there" and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. —Matthew 17:20–21
If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. —John 15:7
Does anyone doubt that our Lord longs to answer our pleas for revival? And sanctifying power?
As we pray, we need to remember an important condition that Christ attached to these promises. We must obey. John 15:7 says that Jesus will hear our prayers if we abide in him and his words abide in us. We must make every effort to embrace the righteous way of life that the New Testament commands and promises is possible.
Obedience means unconditional submission to Jesus as Lord as well as Savior. It means abandoning our one-sided, unbiblical conceptions of sin, the gospel, salvation, and conversion, and returning to the full-blown biblical understanding of these glorious truths. It means recovering the biblical reality of the church as community. It means living the truth that orthodoxy and orthopraxis—right theology and right behavior—are equally important.
If we do that, I believe we dare hope and expect that a longing for holiness will sweep through our churches. Our sexual practices will reflect biblical standards much more faithfully. Joyful, lifelong fidelity will make our homes and marriages powerful signs of an attractive alternative to today's brokenness and agony. Biblical Christians will lead the way in more vigorous efforts to reduce dramatically domestic abuse, racism, materialism, and poverty.
Could that really happen? The promise of the gospel is that it can and does—whenever people truly surrender to the biblical Christ. Fortunately, there are even some rays of hope in some of the polling data. When pollsters make careful distinctions between nominal Christians and devout believers, there is evidence that deeply committed Christians do live differently.
In 1992, George Gallup Jr. and Timothy Jones published a book called The Saints Among Us. They used a 12-question survey to identify what they called "heroic and faithful individual" Christians. Some of the questions identified people who believed in the full authority of the Bible and practiced evangelism. But others identified costly behavior: "I do things I don't want to do because I believe it is the will of God" and "I put my religious beliefs into practice in my relations with all people regardless of their backgrounds." They labeled "saints" those who agreed with every question. And they called "super-saints" those who agreed strongly with every question.38
The good news is that the "saints" lived differently. Only 42 percent of the strongly uncommitted spent "a good deal of time" helping people in need, but 73 percent of the "saints" and 85 percent of the "super-saints" did.39 Only 63 percent of the spiritually uncommitted reported that they would not object to having a neighbor of a different race. But 84 percent of the "saints" and 93 percent of the "super-saints" said they would not object.40 Interestingly, a disproportionate share of the saints were women, African Americans, and persons earning less than $25,000 per year.
Sociologist Christian Smith's study comparing the attitudes and behavior of evangelical, fundamentalist, mainline, liberal, and Catholic Christians as well as those of the "non-religious" found that over the previous two years, evangelicals were more than three times more likely to have given "a lot" of money to help the poor and the needy than the non-religious.41 In fact, evangelicals scored higher than any other Christian group. Of all evangelicals, 29 percent gave a lot. But only 23 percent of fundamentalists, 22 percent of mainline churches, 25 percent of liberals, 22 percent of Catholics, and 9 percent of the non-religious gave a lot. Even so, only 29 percent of the evangelicals gave a lot. That means 71 percent of evangelicals did not!
A Pew Center poll in 2001 supported Smith's findings. In this survey, those with a high religious commitment were a little more than three times as likely as those with a low religious commitmentto have volunteered to help poor, sick, and elderly people in the last month (35 percent vs. 11 percent).42 But again only one third (35 percent) of the highly religiously committed had volunteered. Sixty-five percent had not. Another question in the same poll found that those who were "heavily involved in activities at their church or house of worship" were almost four times more likely to volunteer to help the poor, sick, and homeless in settings outside church than were those of low religious commitment (44 percent vs. 12 percent).43
George Barna has developed a set of criteria to identify people with a "biblical worldview." These people believe that "the Bible is the moral standard" and also think that "absolute moral truths exist and are conveyed through the Bible." In addition, they agree with all six of the following additional beliefs: God is the all-knowing, all-powerful Creator who still rules the universe; Jesus Christ lived a sinless life; Satan is a real, living entity; salvation is a free gift, not something we can earn; every Christian has a personal responsibility to evangelize; and the Bible is totally accurate in all it teaches.
Barna's criteria for identifying people with a biblical worldview are not identical to his criteria for identifying evangelicals. Barna's "born-again" category is much broader; about 40 percent of the total population are born-again, but only 7–8 percent are evangelicals. Using his definition of those with a biblical worldview, Barna has discovered that only 9 percent of all born-again adults have a biblical worldview and only 2 percent of born-again teenagers.44 That is the bad news.
The good news is that the small circle of people with a biblical worldview demonstrate genuinely different behavior. They are nine times more likely than all the others to avoid "adult-only" material on the Internet. They are four times more likely than other Christians to boycott objectionable companies and products and twice as likely to choose intentionally not to watch a movie specifically because of its bad content. They are three times more likely than other adults not to use tobacco products and twice as likely to volunteer time to help needy people.45 Forty-nine percent of all born-again Christians with a biblical worldview have volunteered more than an hour in the previous week to an organization serving the poor, whereas only 29 percent of born-again Christians without a biblical worldview and only 22 percent of non-born-again Christians had done so.46
In a 2000 poll Barna discovered that evangelicals are five times less likely than adults generally to report that their "career comes first."47 And there is accumulating evidence that theologically conservative Protestant men who attend church regularly have lower rates of domestic abuse than others.48
Not surprisingly, this better behavior is closely correlated with higher religious activity. Those with a biblical worldview are almost twice as likely as other Christians to read the Bible each week.49 Nationwide, only 19 percent of adults attend Sunday school each week, but 33 percent of all born-again adults do. And the figure jumps to 60 percent for evangelicals.50 While only 17 percent of all adults attend a small group for prayer and Bible study each week, 30 percent of born-again Christians do. And 55 percent of all evangelicals do.51
Other pollsters have discovered a similar correlation between evangelical faith and religious activity. Christian Smith found that evangelicals were much more likely to attend church each week or share the gospel than other Christians.52 The same pattern emerged in a study in 2001 by the Pew Research Center.53
These statistics offer some substantial hope. People with a biblical worldview, and this category largely overlaps with that of evangelical, do exhibit better moral behavior at several points. We cannot be satisfied with studies that show that only 29 percent of all evangelicals gave a lot to help the poor and needy. But that is at least a lot better than the statistics for the non-religious, where only 9 percent do a lot to help the poor. When we can distinguish nominal Christians from deeply committed, theologically orthodox Christians, it is clear that genuine Christianity does lead to better behavior, at least in some areas.
Barna's findings on the different behavior of Christians with a biblical worldview underline the importance of theology. Biblical orthodoxy does matter. One important way to end the scandal of contemporary Christian behavior is to work and pray fervently for the growth of orthodox theological belief in our churches.
Barna reports one final finding that offers additional hope. He discovered that even though 91 percent of all born-again Christians lacked a biblical worldview, they were nonetheless open, even desirous, of spiritual growth. Eighty percent of all born-again Christians said that having a "deep, personal commitment to the Christian faith is a top priority for their future."54 And nine out of ten Christians of every stripe said that if their churches specified things they should personally do to grow spiritually, they would at least listen to the advice and follow most of the recommendations.55 That suggests a lot of openness to more solid biblical discipling.
Things are not quite as hopeless as they first appeared. Biblical faith makes a substantial (though not enough) difference in the lives of deeply committed Christians. Most nominal Christians seem open to spiritual growth.
More importantly, the gospel is true! The carpenter from Nazareth burst from the tomb and now reigns as the Lord of the universe. His promise to transform into his very own likeness all who truly believe in him still stands. The Holy Spirit is still alive and powerful today, radically remaking broken people who unconditionally open their hearts and lives to his mighty presence.
At any time in history, no matter how bad the current mess, no matter how unfaithful the contemporary church, God stands ready to keep his promises. God is eager to do the same mighty deeds today that he has done in the past. All we must do is trust and obey.
The Lord we claim to love and worship stands at the door and knocks. He longs to be truly invited in. We cannot invite only half of him. But if today we dare to embrace and surrender to the full biblical Christ, he will perform mighty deeds that transcend what we dare ask or imagine. He will turn our weeping into joy. He will end the scandal of blatant disobedience in the people who call on his name.
Ronald J. Sider is professor of theology, holistic ministry, and public policy and director of the Sider Center on Ministry and Public Policy at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also president of Evangelicals for Social Action. This article is excerpted from his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience (Baker). Copyright 2004 by Ronald J. Sider. Used by permission of Baker Books.
1. Michael Horton, "Beyond Culture Wars," Modern Reformation (May-June 1993), p. 3.
2. Alan Wolfe, The Transformation of American Religion (Free Press, 2003), p. 257.
3. Ibid., p. 212.
4. Tim Stafford, "The Third Coming of George Barna," Christianity Today, August 8, 2002, p. 34.
5. Christianity Today, October 2003, p. 112.
6. George Barna, Think Like Jesus (Integrity, 2003), p. 40.
7. George Barna, "Family," 2000. Available from Barna Research Online, http://216.87.179/cgi-bin/pagecategory.asp?categoryid=20. See also George Barna and Mark Hatch, Boiling Point: It Only Takes One Degree (Regal, 2001), p. 42.
8. "The statistic has been quite consistent since the mid-90's." Barna and Hatch, Boiling Point, p. 42n29.
9. The Barna Group, The Barna Update, "Born Again Adults Less Likely to Co-Habit, Just As Likely to Divorce," August 6, 2001, http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdate&BarnaUpdateID=95.
10. The Barna Group, The Barna Update, "Annual Study Reveals America is Spiritually Stagnant," March 5, 2001, http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdate&BarnaUpdateID=84.
11. The Barna Group, Evangelical Christians, http://www.barna.org.
12. W. Bradford Wilcox, "Conservative Protestants and the Family," in A Public Faith: Evangelicals and Civic Engagment, ed. Michael Cromartie (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), p. 63.
13. New York Times, May 21, 2001, A14.
14. John L. and Sylvia Ronsvalle, The State of Church Giving Through 2001 (Empty Tomb, 2003), p. 12.
15. Ibid., p. 25.
16. The Barna Group, "Stewardship," http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=Topic&TopicID=36.
17. Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Robert Cleveland, and Bruce H. Webster Jr., U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60-221, Income in the United States: 2002, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2003, available as PDF at http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p60-221.pdf.
18. Ronsvalle, State of Church Giving, p. 52.
19. Carol Bellamy, The State of the World's Children 2001 (UNICEF, 2003), p. 81.
20. New York Times, May 21, 2001, A14.
21. Lawrence K. Altman, "Study Finds That Teenage Virginity Pledges Are Rarely Kept," New York Times, March 10, 2004, A20.
22. The Barna Group, The Barna Update, "Born Again Adults Less Likely to Co-Habit, Just As Likely to Divorce," August 6, 2001, http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdate&BarnaUpdateID=95.
23. John C. Green, "Religion and Politics in the 1990s: Confrontations and Coalitions," in Religion and American Politics: The 2000 Election in Context, ed. Mark Silk (Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, Trinity College, Hartford, 2000), p. 21, available as PDF at http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/csrpl/religame.pdf.
24. Ibid., p. 26.
25. Ibid.
26. Steve Gallagher, "Devastated by Internet Porn," Pure Life Ministries, December 15, 2000, http://www.purelifeministries.org/mensarticle1.htm.
27. George Gallup Jr. and James Castelli, The People's Religion (Macmillan, 1989), p. 188.
28. Personal conversation with Frank Gaebelein's daughter.
29. Bill McCartney with David Halbrook, Sold Out: Becoming Man Enough to Make a Difference (Word, 1997).
30. Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided By Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (Oxford Univ. Press, 2000), p. 170.
31. Michael Emerson, "Faith That Separates: Evangelicals and Black-White Race Relations," in A Public Faith (see note 6), p. 196.
32. Barna and Hatch, Boiling Point, p. 140.
33. Barna, Think Like Jesus, p. 23.
34. See Sally Morgenthaler's foreword to Jonny Baker, Doug Gay, and Jenny Brown, Alternative Worship: Resources from and for the Emerging Church (Baker, 2004).
35. See Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (InterVarsity, 1993), p. 775.
36. Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Renewal (InterVarsity, 1979), p. 237.
37. See, for example, J. Edwin Orr, The Eager Feet: Evangelical Awakenings, 1790–1830 (Moody, 1975), especially pp. 191–200.
38. George H. Gallup Jr. and Timothy Jones, The Saints Among Us (Harrisburg: Morehouse, 1992).
39. Ibid., pp. 63–64.
40. Ibid., p. 41.
41. Christian Smith, American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving (Univ. of Chicago Press, 199
, pp. 41–42.42. Pew Research Center, American Views on Religion, Politics and Public Policy (2001), pp. 2–3; see also somewhat parallel results in Robert Wuthnow, Acts of Compassion: Caring for Others and Helping Ourselves (Princeton Univ. Press, 1991), p. 51.
43. Pew Research Center, American Views on Religion, Politics and Public Policy (2001), part IV, p. 5.
44. Barna, Think Like Jesus, p. 23.
45. Ibid., p. 24.
46. Ibid., p. 28.
47. The research archive on "Evangelical Christians" at Here Barna reports that evangelicals are just as likely as the general population to be divorced. But in his 2002 report (State of the Church 2002, p. 94), Barna reported that evangelicals are "less likely to have experienced a divorce than any other of the faith segments." It is not clear how these different data fit together.
48. See W. Bradford Wilcox, Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2004).
49. Barna, State of the Church 2002, p. 25.
50. George Barna, "Ministry Involvement," Online, 2001 (accessed March 11, 2001).
51. George Barna, Faith Commitment Online, Barna Research Group, 2001 (accessed March 11, 2001).
52. Smith, American Evangelicalism, pp. 34, 40.
53. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, American Views on Religion, Politics and Public Policy (Pew Research Center, 2001), part IV.
54. George Barna, Growing True Disciples (Issachar Resources, 2000), p. 32.
55. Ibid., p. 41.
Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today International/Books & Culture magazine.
www.ChristianityToday.com
Copyright © 1994–2002 Christianity Today International
One of the most dismal failures by the media in the GM era has been their
consistent non-reporting of the differences between PR claims and actual
performance.
R
Group Claims Biotechs Don't Deliver on Promises
SAN FRANCISCO -- The biotechnology industry has failed to deliver on
promises to revolutionize agriculture with plants genetically engineered to
be healthier, drought resistant and tastier, a consumer interest group said
Wednesday.
consistent non-reporting of the differences between PR claims and actual
performance.
R
Group Claims Biotechs Don't Deliver on Promises
SAN FRANCISCO -- The biotechnology industry has failed to deliver on
promises to revolutionize agriculture with plants genetically engineered to
be healthier, drought resistant and tastier, a consumer interest group said
Wednesday.
Monsanto sues farmer customers over piracy issues
The seed company's efforts to protect its technology often turn farmer
against farmer.
By PAUL ELIAS and ANNE FITZGERALD
Des Moines REGISTER
January 30, 2005
edited
According to this article, Monsanto Co.'s "seed police" caught Bill Quick
in 1998, forcing the Redding, Ia., farmer to settle out of court for a
five-figure sum. Quick's mistake: He saved Roundup Ready soybeans from one
year to plant the next year's crop.
The agribusiness company has won millions in judgments and settlements from
farmers it has accused of technology piracy.
In a case a year ago, Tennessee farmer Kem Ralph was sued by Monsanto and
sentenced to eight months in prison after he was caught lying about a
truckload of cotton seed he had hidden for a friend.
Ralph's prison term is believed to be the first criminal prosecution linked
to Monsanto's crackdown. Ralph has also been ordered to pay Monsanto about
$1.7 million.
Since 1997, Monsanto has filed similar lawsuits 90 times against 147
farmers and 39 agricultural companies from 25 states, according to a report
issued recently by the Center for Food Safety, a Washington, D.C.,
organization that has been critical of biotechnology. Many of the lawsuits
have been settled out of court. The amounts that farmers agreed to pay
Monsanto generally have not been disclosed, although a North Carolina
farmer settled for $1.5 million, the report said.
So far, Monsanto has won more than $15 million in judgments, ranging from
$5,595 to more than $3 million.
Nineteen cases are ongoing, including one filed by Monsanto last summer in
response to a class-action lawsuit brought earlier against the St. Louis
agribusiness by 27 farmers and companies in 13 states, including Iowa.
Monsanto's licensing contracts and litigation tactics are coming under
increased scrutiny as more of the planet's farmland comes under cultivation
for genetically engineered crops.
Many of the farmers Monsanto has sued say that they did not read the
company's technology agreement close enough. Others say they never received
an agreement in the first place. Still others have claimed that their
signatures were forged on agreements with Monsanto, said Joe Mendelson, a
lawyer who works for the Center for Food Safety. "You've got some pretty
angry farmers out there," he said.
... Monsanto's investigative tactics are sowing seeds of fear and mistrust
in some farming communities, company critics say.
The seed company's efforts to protect its technology often turn farmer
against farmer.
By PAUL ELIAS and ANNE FITZGERALD
Des Moines REGISTER
January 30, 2005
edited
According to this article, Monsanto Co.'s "seed police" caught Bill Quick
in 1998, forcing the Redding, Ia., farmer to settle out of court for a
five-figure sum. Quick's mistake: He saved Roundup Ready soybeans from one
year to plant the next year's crop.
The agribusiness company has won millions in judgments and settlements from
farmers it has accused of technology piracy.
In a case a year ago, Tennessee farmer Kem Ralph was sued by Monsanto and
sentenced to eight months in prison after he was caught lying about a
truckload of cotton seed he had hidden for a friend.
Ralph's prison term is believed to be the first criminal prosecution linked
to Monsanto's crackdown. Ralph has also been ordered to pay Monsanto about
$1.7 million.
Since 1997, Monsanto has filed similar lawsuits 90 times against 147
farmers and 39 agricultural companies from 25 states, according to a report
issued recently by the Center for Food Safety, a Washington, D.C.,
organization that has been critical of biotechnology. Many of the lawsuits
have been settled out of court. The amounts that farmers agreed to pay
Monsanto generally have not been disclosed, although a North Carolina
farmer settled for $1.5 million, the report said.
So far, Monsanto has won more than $15 million in judgments, ranging from
$5,595 to more than $3 million.
Nineteen cases are ongoing, including one filed by Monsanto last summer in
response to a class-action lawsuit brought earlier against the St. Louis
agribusiness by 27 farmers and companies in 13 states, including Iowa.
Monsanto's licensing contracts and litigation tactics are coming under
increased scrutiny as more of the planet's farmland comes under cultivation
for genetically engineered crops.
Many of the farmers Monsanto has sued say that they did not read the
company's technology agreement close enough. Others say they never received
an agreement in the first place. Still others have claimed that their
signatures were forged on agreements with Monsanto, said Joe Mendelson, a
lawyer who works for the Center for Food Safety. "You've got some pretty
angry farmers out there," he said.
... Monsanto's investigative tactics are sowing seeds of fear and mistrust
in some farming communities, company critics say.
Once again, The Washington Post has published its annual
word-definition contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate
meanings for various words. And the winners are . . .
1. Coffee (n.), a person who is coughed upon.
2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.
6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly
answer the door in your nightgown.
7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle (n.), an olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence (n.), the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you
are run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a
proctologist immediately before he examines you.
13. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish
expressions.
14. Pokemon (n), a Jamaican proctologist.
15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), the belief that when you die your soul goes
up on the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent (n.), the opening in the front of boxer shorts.
word-definition contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate
meanings for various words. And the winners are . . .
1. Coffee (n.), a person who is coughed upon.
2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.
6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly
answer the door in your nightgown.
7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle (n.), an olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence (n.), the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you
are run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a
proctologist immediately before he examines you.
13. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish
expressions.
14. Pokemon (n), a Jamaican proctologist.
15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), the belief that when you die your soul goes
up on the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent (n.), the opening in the front of boxer shorts.
