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ANALYSIS
WRONG, SCARY OR THE GREATEST THING?
TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDED DOCUMENTARY

Presenter: Andrew Dilnot
Producer: Nicola Meyrick
Editor: Nicola Meyrick
 
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Broadcast Date: 03.08.00
Repeat Date: 06.08.00
Tape Number: TLN029/00VT1031
Duration: 27’45”

Taking part in order of appearance:

Lord Melchett Executive Director, Greenpeace UK
Sir Robert May Government Chief Scientific Adviser
Professor David Cooper Philosopher, Durham University
Professor Nancy Cartwright Director of the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, LSE
Jim Dunwell Professor of Plant Sciences at Reading University
Professor Brian Wynne Director of the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change, Lancaster University

Dilnot : Rat gene enhanced tomato ate my hamster. Maybe that’s a tabloid headline we haven’t had yet, but the debate about genetically modified food has been pretty fevered. Some people have even dressed up in radiation suits, gone into a farmer’s field, and pulled up his crops. What makes people so angry about a field full of plants? Lord Melchett, executive director of Greenpeace UK was one of the radiation suited crusaders.

Melchett : I’m persuaded that we shouldn’t release genetically engineered organisms into the environment – that the risks are too great because the consequences are such that you wouldn’t be able to reverse this. They would be widespread, possibly global, certainly over very wide areas and possibly very, very serious. So you’re talking about one of those risks where the chances of it happening might be slim but the consequences if it does are really terrible.

May : There are those who would worry that the imprecisely conjectured vague hazards that may arise, of which there are no examples, are just too appalling to contemplate so we shouldn’t even do it.

Dilnot : Sir Robert May, the Government’s chief scientific adviser.

May : Once you start applying the argument that something might go wrong so you shouldn’t do the new, we would still be in caves with people opposing the idea of building a wattle and daub shelter because, who knows it, maybe it’ll fall on your head. Which is not to say when you build wattle and daub shelters you shouldn’t build them carefully so as they don’t fall on your head and probably to build some test ones first to make sure they don’t fall on your head.

Dilnot : So for Peter Melchett the risks are just too great, for Robert May risk is an inescapable part of progress. And May isn’t just any old scientist – as well as being an academic of great distinction he’s got a long history of ecological concern, and is a past trustee of the World Wide Fund for Nature. Melchett and May both know what the science says and yet come to radically different conclusions, evidence that there’s much more than just scientific ‘fact’ at stake. Professor David Cooper, a philosopher from Durham University.

Cooper : Deep down what worries a lot of people about the new world which biotechnology promises is a sort of worry which I think is gestured at by talk of biotechnologists emulating Dr Frankenstein, playing God and so on. I thought it was pretty well expressed by the Prince of Wales in his Reith lecture when he referred to his fear that we’re coming to treat the world as .. as he put it a great laboratory of life to treat living beings in the world as mere mechanical processes to use and exploit and alter as we, or if you like, they please.

Dilnot : There certainly are questions of values raised by genetic modification – how should we value risks that affect future generations, or the possible benefits of vitamin enhanced rice as a response to blindness in a faraway country, how far is it right to tamper with creation? But pointing out the values side of the debate doesn’t give us the answers, just more to think about. And Professor Nancy Cartwright, Director of the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the LSE argues that in debates like this we need to take everything seriously.

Cartwright : You can’t have all your values satisfied at once. You just can’t always do the good thing. So, the question is how do you decide when you can’t maximise all your values at once what you’re going to do about this case. And I think it’s very important to then have the specific case in front of you. So, one of the problems I think we have here is that the discussion is too premature. I want to be told a whole lot more about which foods are going to be genetically modified, how are they going to be genetically modified, where is it going to be sold and so forth. I mean I want … I need much more information not shall we genetically modify foods or shall we not.

Dilnot : Because that’s just too general a question – it’s almost like asking ‘shall we go to war’. For a minority the answer to that question is simply ‘NO’. But for those who are not Quakers or pacifists, the response must be ‘against whom’, and ‘why’, and ‘how’, and ‘with what objective’ – it makes no sense as an abstract question. Genetic modification seems rather like that. You might just say ‘NO’, but in general it seems right at least to look more closely, case by case. We can’t completely separate value from fact, but we do need more facts. And right now, as Robert May recognises, there’s a lot of noise, but not necessarily much information, or rational debate.

May : Against the background of recent events, particularly BSE, people hear various voices telling them it’s OK, it’s not OK – all the voices saying what you’d expect them to say – and there’s no product on the supermarket shelves that motivates you to engage the debate. And there will be outline groups who are simply reflexively in favour of it because they’re enthusiastic about the technology. There will always be groups who are reflexively, unquestioningly critical of it because they have a view of globalisation and big business and that it makes them reflexively hostile. But the great mess of the public, I think - just exhibit common sense at the moment – the moment we actually have something, a golden apple and you eat this apple and you’ll be thin and witty, then people will be motivated to engage the debate.

Dilnot : And what would we call this thin, witty apple? The Angus Deayton, the Frank Muir? We’ve probably got plenty of time to think about it, because there’s no sign of anything that exciting even on the horizon. Now if the mass of the public is to be able to use its common sense on all this, it needs to understand both questions about science and about values. But let’s start with the science. Jim Dunwell is Professor of Plant Sciences at Reading University, and a leading GM practitioner. What does he actually do in his lab?

Dunwell : You can put a piece of DNA, literally now from any organism or you can, in some cases, make the DNA with a machine, into a plant cell or a group of cells and it’s really done by two main processes. One is to use a mechanical device, and this is the so called gene gun which you might have heard about, whereby you take very, very tiny particles of metal – it’s usually gold – and you mix them with a DNA solution so the DNA sticks onto the surface of the gold and then you use a small machine to shoot those particles at very high speed into the plant cell and once the small particle is inside the cell, the DNA comes off the surface of the metal – and is incorporated into the genetic material of that cell. And you then have to use your expertise as a cell biologist to grow a whole new plant back from that single cell. And if you’re successful, and it doesn’t always work of course, then the plant you get back has the original characteristics plus whatever was encoded by that tiny bit of DNA you put on. And that’s one process. Alternatively, which is a more biological one, is to use a naturally occurring bacterium that lives in the soil, that transfers it’s own DNA into the roots or stems of a plant and you can in fact you can take that bacterium, take away the nasty parts of it, and stick in your own gene into the bacterium and use that to do the same kind of thing, and then you grow up a whole new plant that’s had this bit of bacterial DNA attached to it. In most cases the seeds that are produced the next generation include that new introduced gene. You’re adding maybe one, two, three, four genes to a plant that has twenty, thirty, forty thousand so you’re not doing a whole lot of genetic change to it but it’s a real and significant change.

Dilnot : That may be a wonderfully clear description of what’s done, but the truth that we’re adding only a small number of genes to organisms that have many thousands doesn’t seem enough to be sure that there’ll be no unwelcome effects – we’ve all experienced the consequences of viral and bacterial infection, so know that small doesn’t mean harmless. And Jim Dunwell is well aware of some of the fears that uncertainty - and rumour - have created in the popular imagination.

Dunwell : There are various modern myths when it comes to genetic modification technology where people insist that already out there in the market there’s somewhere there’s a tomato with fish genes in and I don’t want my tomatoes to taste of fish and that kind of position. Clearly those are things that you could do but nobody wants to do them and in the cases where they’re testing them they’re not very successful anyway and they certainly haven’t got anywhere near the market place. And the same when it comes to putting rat genes into food – people will say ‘well I’m avoiding GM crops because I think it’s got a bit of an animal protein in it somewhere’. There aren’t any such things.

Dilnot : At least not on sale to the public, although they may be the subject of research in university and commercial laboratories. Now most of us are not really able to assess the results of all that research and testing being done – we have to trust others to help us to do that. And here the role of government and civil service in monitoring, regulating and enforcing standards in the public interest is crucial. Even the most pro GM lobbyist would have to accept that the potential risks in this area mean we can’t just let the private sector get on with it. So what does Robert May, chief scientific adviser for the UK, think the evidence suggests?

May : On food safety, I think it’s reasonably clear by this time that there are no hazards offered that aren’t present in any novel food. So there are obviously things you could do with this technology just are there are things you could do with conventional breeding that would introduce toxins into foods. And, basically, food is dangerous stuff that’s why one has to be careful. There are many natural foods that have to be cooked before you eat them and so on. So we need to be cautious about it and I think at the end of the day it may simply sharpen our scrutiny of all novel foods. I think we should remember there is not a single example from all the consumption of this food all around the world – areas under cultivation roughly one and a half times the size of Britain - of a concrete example and that’s because, I think, precautions for all novel foods are sound.

Dilnot : Not much concern there about eating the stuff, and there’s no doubt that we do now have a great deal of experience from around the world of consumption of genetically modified crops over many years. And Robert May isn’t saying that there are no risks, rather that in the case of food consumption the combination of testing and the evidence to date makes him feel pretty secure. Well what about another risk – killer weeds escaping and driving out pre-existing species?

May : I would say there are questions we ought to ask more rigorously for things sold in garden centres where there’s a more of a real worry than there is the conjectured and imagined worries of which there are no concrete examples of the environmental problems of GM crops. And I would wish us to be doing more work on this. We always knew pollen blows around - is very unlikely to go a long distance - but it can always happen. Get there on the mud on birds’ feet – that’s how plants get to new islands. The real question is what are the conjectured things you’re worried about and if you’re worried about super weeds, it is a very chimerical worry and furthermore a worry that doesn’t stack up.

Dilnot : So, super weeds get short shrift from Robert May, although it’s worth remembering that we now know that pollen has carried much further than the exclusion zones set for early trials of GM crops. But there is a third area where Sir Robert is more concerned, aware that we understand too little and could do damage, which is the impact of change on the whole scale of bio-diversity and how ecological systems work. And this is an area where Professor Brian Wynne, Director of the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change at Lancaster University argues that there may be some problems with how we’re doing the research, once we’re out of the lab and into the fields.

Wynne : The design of the farm scale trials is one where you have, usually split fields sometimes paired field sites, one of which has got the GM crop and one of which has got the same crop but non-GM, with exactly the same application of chemical herbicides and so on, so as to attempt to define the bio- diversity changes which are generated by the introduction of the GM crop. But, the implicit yardstick for defining change is change as compared to existing chemically intensive agriculture.

Dilnot : So, basically what’s happening is that politicians are saying in the end to scientists ‘well we’re quite happy with the amount of damage that we’re doing to the environment with conventional herbicides and pesticides and as long as you don’t do much more damage to the environment and that with GM, then it’s ok’?

Wynne : Effectively, yes, that’s right. But the limitations, particularly, I think, with respect to soil microbiology and soil micro-organisms, are colossal and the scientists themselves well recognise that that’s an area the farm scale trial do not assess. Geneticists who are involved in some of the research on soil micro- organisms would say ‘well there are potentially a lot of changes that could occur there that could be quite drastic in terms of soil fertility and a variety of other ecological changes’. We just don’t know and the honest answer is to say ‘we don’t know’.

Dilnot : The effect of GM crops on the soil seems the area where least is known, and the potential risks are great – just the type of question we should most want scientists to be addressing. So shouldn’t we stiffen our resolve to take great care, go on with the research, tread very carefully when moving on to field and farm scale trials, and inch slowly forward? That would be much more careful than we ever were with electricity, or even nuclear power. But Peter Melchett thinks any release of GM organisms into the environment is dangerous.

Melchett : You can’t march off down the GM route and 15 years later say, whoops we’d rather be organic because by then genetically engineered plants will be ubiquitous in the countryside and hedgerows and roadside verges in the seed bank in fields. Seed banks which last for 50 years or more we know from the effects of sprays and so on that still wild flower seeds will struggle in odd little corners to survive although increasingly few. Or you go down the organic route and you put your time and your effort and your research and your brain power and your intelligence and your wit into making that really work well. And I think this is a clear choice.

Dilnot : Is there any evidence that would persuade you that if there was some very major benefit to some group that it were worth doing this?

Melchett : No, I don’t think there is, not that’s foreseeable.

Dilnot : You might think, along with Peter Melchett, that the possible gains for a country like Britain are so small and the risks so big that it’s just not worth it. And until the thin, witty golden apple comes along that won’t change. But there could still be an argument for using GM crops in parts of the world where hunger and disease are endemic. Unless, of course, you think it’s just wrong and will always be controlled by mad scientists who have no respect for things many of us do care about. Philosopher Professor David Cooper.

Cooper : I think a very important concept most of us work with is the idea of what’s normal and natural. If you can convince somebody that something’s abnormal, unnatural, they don’t like it. I think what a lot of people feel is that the medical interventions they approve of are those which however hi-tech somehow return them or their bodies to normal, natural functioning. Now, in the case of GM foods, I think some people see this as just an intervention in the normal and the natural. It’s not a matter of returning things to normal as certain kinds of medical interventions might be seen.

Cartwright : The whole project of the Enlightenment begins from the assumption that what’s natural is pretty bloody and that one of our big moral duties is to change nature and, in particular, human society, to train, morally educate people so that they don’t behave as people do in a state of nature.

Dilnot : LSE philosopher Nancy Cartwright.

Cartwright : When you let nature run its course, people die younger, their teeth fall out and that’s the obvious scientific progress line and it’s different to think there’s something sacred about nature and to think there’s … there are certain behaviours and ways of proceeding which are natural.

Dilnot : So there’s nothing incoherent in holding creation in very high esteem and even thinking there is something sacred about it and thinking that it’s legitimate to intervene in it in certain ways including, in principle, certain types of genetic modification?

Cartwright : I don’t see any incoherence.

Dilnot : Simply subscribing to a ‘nature is nice’ line, doesn’t get us off the hook of trying to discover, to understand, to engage with the detail and the principles. It’s tempting to say that we can separate the science from the values, and just concentrate on whatever matters to each of us. But that misses the crucial point that although we may be able to study these issues separately, when we come to make a decision we have to bring them together, and expect them to interact. Nancy Cartwright sees this powerfully borne out in a fifty five year old dilemma faced by her husband, the distinguished philosopher Sir Stuart Hampshire.

Cartwright : One way I like to illustrate the importance of filling in the concrete detail to the resolution of the moral conflict where there are conflict of values is a story that Stuart tells of interviewing a young boy – 18 years old student, a French fascist, who was being held by the Free French and Stuart was allowed to interview him to try and extract information about some communication system that could be used fairly immediately to save the lives of British soldiers. And the question was, could Stuart lie to him and tell him that if he gave the information, the Free French wouldn’t execute him. There was no possibility that they wouldn’t execute him. Could he lie? And, of course, there are the two sides to it. One wants to save lives – on the other hand – it’s not just a lie to a person, it’s a way one treats prisoners. I’ve heard Stuart tell this story often and every time he tells this story he puts in different details. He had a very rich French meal with the Free French, he went to the prison, the boy was in a cell, he had chains on his legs, he’d been reading Proust and it was freezing cold and he was hungry. Depending on what facts he puts in, I find my judgement about what ought to be done changes. I think that becomes very clear about a lot of cases that the details about exactly how it’s done, who’s involved, what their motives are, what’s likely to happen given those motives, what’s likely to happen given the social and institutional structure, really, really matter to the trade-off between conflicting values.

Dilnot : So if the lesson here is that in complicated real dilemmas, decision making is hard, and we need facts as well as values, what does that tell us about how to approach the GM debate?

Cartwright : We know some of things people worry about are motives, institutional structure, economic structure is the genetically modified food the actual stuff that’s likely to be developed given we’re doing these tests here - that’s likely to be developed in the reasonably near future. Is it going to be used to make a lot of supermarket stock holders very rich or is it actually going to get to the people for whom it might help agriculturally – is that actually going to get to people whom it might help in such a way that it will help them, what foods are involved – the facts that might make a difference to us needn’t be ones couched in what sounds like moral vocabulary to begin with.

Dilnot : Unless we’re simply going to say ‘NEVER’, believing that no GM development could ever meet out ethical concerns, and have benefits that outweighed the risks even if extensive research had demonstrated no ill effects, we have to inform ourselves, and recognise that the debate is difficult. And one particular area of difficulty is precisely why GM crops are being developed. To paraphrase Nancy Cartwright, is it to generate profit, or to feed the hungry? Professor Brian Wynne.

Wynne : People have noticed the inconsistency, let’s say, between the sound bite sales pitch for GM foods which is feed the starving and the actual trajectories of innovation which have, in fact, been invested in, in the first phase of GM crops and food which have been terminator technology – in other words the technology that doesn’t allow farmers to sow seed which they’ve collected from this years crop because the line is discontinued by GM techniques. So, terminator technology is one – which is about controlling the food chain – it’s got nothing at all to do with feeding the starving and the inconsistency between the sales pitch for GM’s and the actual trajectories of innovation which people have encountered is one of the big reasons why people are actually reacting in a negative fashion to GM crops and foods. We find them incessively asking what’s driving this, what’s the purpose behind it, why are we doing this?

Dunwell : I think there’s no doubt the first GM transgenic products on the market were those that were driven by very strong commercial pressures and, of course, the commercial world had to recoup it’s investment and investment in research is expensive. The major commercial targets came out first and they’re the one’s that are on the market now and the sorts of herbicide resistants, insect resistants that you know about.

Dilnot : GM scientist, Professor Jim Dunwell. And if more herbicide resistant crops, supplied by the makers of the herbicide are all that’s on offer its hardly surprising there isn’t much enthusiasm for GM food. Then the only defence for them would seem to be that these developments might lead to others that really could have an impact for good where it’s most needed.

Dunwell : It is a tool that plant breeders, hopefully, will be able to add so if you want to improve in the vitamin level or you want to improve the levels of iron in basic food stuffs. Millions of people suffer from anaemia and a lot of that is because of low iron in the diet. A large proportion of pregnancies fail because of that type of anaemia. So, I think people in those countries have a responsibility to their populations to use the technologies to the best advantage of their own country. And I think some of them look at the criticism applied from the more developed world as something that’s a fairly patronising view to the extent that we don’t need it therefore we would like to paralyse the whole scientific advances that are possible. As a scientist, I would like to see the technology applied where there is a clear benefit. It’s not going to be the long term panacea to the economic ails of sub-Sahara in Africa. I think everybody knows that and nobody should exaggerate the potential but likewise they shouldn’t remove the potential.

Dilnot : We can’t ignore this. There is the potential for real and substantial improvement in the lives, diet and health of many millions of people. But those gains are not yet even close to being realised, and there’s little incentive for private industry to invest in the technologies that would address the needs of the poor south as opposed to the rich north. Here’s a very clear question of values. If it’s right to seek to produce GM crops that will help the hungry in the developing world, governments and international organisations will have to contribute to the cost – blaming private industry for not doing it is simply passing the buck. But there are those, notably Peter Melchett of Greenpeace, who think there is a still better way.

Melchett : There are solutions working now using sustainable agriculture and low input agriculture, there is a wealth of research, a wealth of market knowledge and it is being opposed. It’s being opposed by the genetic engineering lobby and industry who say ‘no, don’t worry about all of that, don’t put money into that – that is much to complicated, it’s much too diverse, it’s much too complex for a simple, single top down solution which is what I want – let’s introduce this new technology, it will go everywhere, we’ll control it, we’ll make sure it works’. And that’s an anti-progress approach.

Dilnot : And what about the accusations that it’s fine for rich people living in the western world to think, rather beautifully, about former pastoral scenes but actually those scenes often have very high infant mortality rates, a high incidents of poverty, malnutrition and that it may well be very much the quickest and most effective way of helping be to use some of this technology. Don’t you think that we should at least accept that we might be being a little bit sentimental?

Melchett : Well I’m not and I know very few environmentalists who are. I mean yes, of course, agricultural systems in the past were horrific. The conditions in which people worked and lived were appalling and indefensible – nobody wants to turn the clock back and the idea that anyone wants to turn the clock back is just nonsense and it’s absurd and inaccurate propaganda.

Dilnot : But there are plenty of people who disagree with Peter Melchett, who look at the massive growth in world food production in recent decades – the so- called green revolution – and point out that this has flowed not from organic farming, but from use of new technology. They argue that we need more technological progress, not less. Robert May.

May : The difference in life expectancy between the developed and the developing world has shortened from a disgraceful 26 years to a still shameful 12 years, largely as a result of the better nutrition that comes from the green revolution along with other scientific advances. We need a doubly green revolution that further increases food production but does so in a way that works with nature instead of using fossil fuel energy subsidised fertilisers, chemicals, pesticides to do things – and we really need that. There are those who would say let us try and work with organic farm methods that, in principle, maybe could be that efficient and that friendly. It would be nice if that were so, it needs more work, it certainly did not deliver the increase in food production we currently have and there’s a very sad paradox at the heart of much of the current discussion because I think the praiseworthy aims of the organic farming movement, for example, which I completely resonate with - they’re the first and the most to be able to benefit from the proper and target and sensible use of GM techniques to produce the kind of crops they want. What my vision of the future is a vision that is a greener future – a future that realises the dreams and aspirations of the environmental movement, that is sustainable, but this technology is going to be the way to do it - not pie in the sky.

Dilnot : So can we really have our organic cake and eat GM too? That seems unlikely to take off, at least in Britain. But insufficient and inadequate diet is a huge problem in many countries and for millions of people. GM crops really might make a difference here. And for that to happen we need governments in rich countries like ours to pay for science that’s targeted at helping the world’s poor, not simply making money for the worlds rich.