Am I really a mass murderer?

Tweet Just a few days ago I referred to the politicians’ trick of presenting only two alternatives and trying to force us to choose between them as though there were no other way forward.  It’s probably a trick learnt from Sir Humphrey.  As if to illustrate the point, the Minister for Agriculture in England came out with a classic this week.

According to Owen Paterson the only options available to us are either that we adopt GM rice on a widespread basis or else millions of people die from vitamin A deficiency.  As if that weren’t enough, he went on to say that anyone opposing GM is thus a “wicked” person who is directly responsible for those avoidable deaths.

It’s a breath-taking piece of hyperbole – almost as if he set out with the intention of discrediting his own arguments.  But no; he is – apparently – entirely serious.

There shouldn’t be any need to point out the basic fallacy, which is that most of us get enough vitamin A from a varied diet and don’t need GM rice.  If people are not getting enough from their diet because they are over-dependent on a single crop, then the problem is that over-dependence - and the solution is to remove the over-dependence, not to tinker with the rice.

The problem with that solution – from his perspective at least – is that the “wicked” people condemning millions to die would then be seen not as the opponents of GM, but as the supporters of a fundamentally unjust and unequal world order.  People rather like Owen Paterson, in effect.

I’m not a fan of GM foods, it’s true.  But my opposition isn’t based on the question of the safety of eating them – the only concern generally recognised by GM fans.  It’s based rather on a belief that we don’t yet know the long-term effects of releasing organisms with exotic gene combinations – which if they ever could develop through evolution or selective breeding would take many generations – into the environment.  That other species will adapt is a given; how and how quickly is one of Rumsfeld’s “known unknowns”.

Supporters of GM always point to the advantages for the poor and hungry in support of their position – although I don’t think I’ve heard one claim, effectively, that anyone disagreeing with is a mass murderer.  Not until this week anyway.  But the main beneficiaries to date have been, and are likely to continue to be, the huge multinational agri-chemical businesses which produce them, not those who grow and consume them. 

In short, it’s the rich who gain most of all.  If it really were the only way of lifting people out of hunger and poverty, it might be a risk worth taking; and it might even be worth accepting that the companies concerned could keep their profits.  But that’s a mighty big – and wholly unsubstantiated – if.

It's our decision, not theirs

Tweet Some of the coverage this week about the cloned cattle, or rather offspring of cloned cattle, which have got into the food chain seems to have shown a degree of confusion between cloning animals and genetically modifying them. And some of it has been somewhat alarmist as well.

There are, in my view, good grounds for continuing to reject the application of both technologies at this stage; but that isn't the same as saying that all laboratory research should be stopped.

In the case of cloning, the evidence is clear. At current levels of knowledge and expertise, many if not most cloned animals suffer developmental problems and lead short and painful lives. Not all the reasons for this are properly understood as of yet, and for me that's adequate reason for keeping cloning in the laboratory for the time being.

In the case of GM products, whilst the techniques for adding single genes which act as 'on-off' switches for single characteristics are well tried and tested, the understanding and control of genes which act in concert is far less well understood. And the long term impact of releasing exotic gene combinations into the natural environment is another huge area of uncertainty. Again, that's adequate reason for me to want to keep the technology in the laboratory at this stage.

There is a danger, though, that fear of the unknown, or just the highly complex, leads to a form of 'anti-science'; and we need to be careful that we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater as it were. I don't oppose continued research in both cases; it's more a question of deciding how much research is enough to give us the degree of certainty which we need.

And that's another point. One of the things that struck me about the coverage this week was that some people were seeking an absolute degree of certainty about the safety of eating cloned cattle. Science just cannot give us those absolute guarantees which we instinctively seek. All it can give us is probabilities based on a mixture of facts, estimates, and assumptions.

Science can do the research, and give us the probabilities. But it is for all of us to decide, through political processes, when that science is to be applied, and what degree of certainty we want to see first. That in turn requires a more informed debate than we often seem to get on subjects which are highly complex.

It also means that we should not allow ourselves to be driven into a too-early application of new technologies by the agri-businesses which are, ultimately, mostly concerned with recovering their investment in the research and delivering value to shareholders.

The real issue is a long way removed from the entry of two cows into the food chain; but that event, apparently based on someone flouting the law for their own gain, will have been of some accidental benefit if it encourages us to deal with the underlying questions.

Mendel and Frankenstein

Tweet The arguments surrounding the adoption of GM crops are complex, with many different aspects to be considered. It is right that we should revisit the arguments periodically, but that should primarily be on the basis of new research or changed circumstances.

Today's suggestion that we should revisit the argument because 'farmers would be disadvantaged if Wales did not embrace GM technology' seems to me to be the wrong basis for a reconsideration. And the suggestion that opposition to GM is based on fear of 'Frankenstein foods', or some sort of anti-science attitude looks more like an attempt to 'play the man' than to deal with the substantive arguments against.

Proponents of GM foods argue that they can help us to produce bigger, pest-resistant, drought-resistant, and disease-free crops. These are significant prizes, and are not to be dismissed lightly in a world where people are dying of starvation, and where climate change may well make it harder for us to feed the world's population in the future.

Of course, there is an argument that there is actually plenty of food available in the world today, and that the problems are more to do with the way we share it than the way we grow it. That's probably true, but it doesn't stop people starving today, and the attractions of GM food for countries which would like to become more self-sufficient in food are surely obvious. (Having said that, part of the problem with the GM lobby is that what they say sounds very idealistic, but what they do is driven by commercial considerations. Their target market for the more expensive seed which they sell is often not the poorer countries which need more food, but the richer ones where they can charge more and make more profit.)

The companies tell us that GM food is safe to eat, as a result of the testing they've done. I have no basis to argue with that, but that has never been the main argument for me. My concern is more about the long term effects of GM crops on the environment.

Genetic change in organisms is a normal, natural event. Mutations happen, genes change over time, and organisms evolve. For millennia, humans have used these facts to 'change' the genetic structure of plants and animals through selective breeding, so as to suit human needs - and that includes improving crops, increasing disease resistance and so on. We have also learnt that when one organism changes, other organisms change in response, in ways which are not always predictable; natural adaptation takes some curious paths.

The two key differences, for me, between selective breeding and genetic modification are, firstly, that the combinations of genes go beyond anything likely to be achievable in nature (selective breeding can't put a jellyfish gene into a wheat plant!), and secondly that the pace of change is much faster - what might take generations of selective breeding to achieve can be achieved in a single generation. These two key differences are, of course, the whole point of GM - but it's the effects which concern me.

The fact that many genes work in combination, as well as singly; the mechanisms by which genes can cross-transfer to other organisms, including horizontal gene transfer; and the effect on other organisms as they seek to adapt are all areas where the consequences are unpredictable. At a genetic level, the biosphere is sufficiently complex that I believe that chaos theory can be said to apply. In simpler terms, a small change made in one organism may lead to larger, unpredictable changes in others. Now, I'm sure that advocates of GM would tell me that this ultimately boils down to a question of probability and risk – and I'd agree.

My conclusion at present is simply that we don't have a good enough handle on the probabilities to be taking the risks which are currently being taken, let alone the higher risks posed by more complex genetic manipulation. And until we do, I want GM to stay safely in the laboratory. It's worthy of continued research, but not release into the natural environment - especially when the motives of those arguing for so doing are more to do with profit than with feeding the world, and the research findings on which they base their assessment of safety are usually those of the companies who have a vested interest in selling their products.