Monday, 14 Aug 2000 | Speech
I welcome the opportunity to speak to scientists about this issue.
Because there hasn't been nearly enough dialogue between consumers like myself and scientists such as yourself on this important issue. From reading the media you could develop the impression that all scientists totally support genetic engineering and that opposition to GE comes from ignorant and emotive luddites who do not properly understand science.
In fact there are real concerns in the scientific community about aspects of genetic modification, about the appropriateness of the technology itself, about its close commercial links with biotechnology companies, the commercial imperative that seeks to shorten the time between discovery and profit, and about the broader relationship between science and those who pay for it. But many scientists are unwilling to voice these concerns, for fear that they will lose their research, or their jobs, or both. In the present climate, to make a stand is to take a great personal risk, which is why those scientists who speak out about genetic engineering tend to be people whose jobs are not on the line.
As Dr Barbara Nicholas, from your own School of Medicine, said in a speech to an ANSCAART conference last October, ---'too many scientists in New Zealand are fearful that if they raise their concerns with some aspects of biotechnology --they are concerned for their research if they ask awkward questions. This fear is generated in part by a climate of threatened funding, and some anxiety among some of their leaders and masters that we will miss the wagon of progress if we hesitate to think about the difficult questions.
Several scientists have contacted me personally --and one anonymously through a third party --to inform me that there are many scientists like them who are worried about some of the developments in genetic engineering that are taking place in New Zealand. But they are afraid that if they voiced their concerns in public they would lose their jobs. They tell me they have received quite clear threats from their bosses who have told them quite explicitly --if you are unhappy about the direction we are going in you may want to think about working in a different place.
Increasingly, the top brass of research agencies are cutting funding deals with big global players and are setting the research agenda for our scientists. Those global players are capable of exerting a lot of pressure on our scientific establishment and influencing the direction of our knowledge economy.
Several scientists have even told me they would welcome the opportunity to speak at the Royal Commission, but only do so if they could do so in secret, for fear of the retribution they could face if their bosses found out.
That is a sad commentary on the state of science today and on its ostensible objectivity.
For science to flourish we need strong independent universities where scientists feel confident to speak out and to push back the frontiers of knowledge; a climate where scientists are encouraged to think for thinkings sake, and above all a climate where scientists have the freedom to speak out as the critic and conscience of society. Instead we have a climate developing where dissent is not tolerated and where scientists are actively discouraged from acting as the critic and conscience of society.
Over the past couple of years I have also observed the frustration of some scientists, at what they perceive as lay interference in their field of expertise. At the ERMA hearings about whether permission should be granted to put human genes into cattle, or to knock out myostatin genes in sheep, you could sense that scientists just wanted to be left alone to get on with their research, far away from the public gaze, and resented lay people like myself questioning the ethics of what they were doing. But the fact is that genetic engineering is not simply a new tool like some new gadget that we might invent to fix and engine. It is a technology which will change our environment, our culture and our health. The fact is too, that while reductionist science invites scientists to work inside a particular paradigm, genetic engineering raises profound ethical, animal welfare and other issues which cannot be answered from inside a box.
Questions such as What is life and do we have the right to alter life and construct, reconstruct and manipulate new life forms through genetic engineering?
Are there any limits on our ability to manipulate and rearrange life forms. Do scientists have a right to treat animals as if they were biological machines, to change their genetic structure, and manipulate them in ways that may cause considerable suffering, just to increase efficiencies and therefore profitability. Do organisations have the right to own -and take out patents on --life forms such as sheep and cattle?
Do we have a right to clone animals for commercial production, to use techniques like xenotransplantation. Is there a difference between using animals for food and using them as factories for medicines?
Do scientists have a right to extend molecular and cellular experimentation to entire animals without knowing the effects?
Should scientists be able to clone embryos for medical and commercial use?
Should we be able to clone a human life for the purpose of tissue banks?
I don't believe scientists, enthusiastic though they may be about the potential of their scientific research, should decide on these questions. For they raise profound and far reaching ethical issues, which are beyond the expertise and domain of scientists to decide. These sorts of issues should be debated and decided upon by society as a whole, and by individuals with training in ethics, not by individual scientists. That is why we welcome the Royal Commission of inquiry. It offers us the opportunity to have that much needed public debate.
Turning to the health issues. The Green party does not oppose genetic research for medical purposes, subject to reasonable animal welfare considerations. We have never asked for a halt to the many medical experiments involving GE currently being conducted in NZ laboratories.
The problem we have with much of the research is that it is being rushed through without sufficient consultation over the potential risks in terms of human safety, ethical concerns or environmental impacts. I would also would point out that there are many diseases that could be prevented without the use of GE, such as heart disease, Type II diabetes and cirrhosis of the liver. We believe we are focussing too much on managing the symptoms of many diseases rather than addressing the cause. In particular, far too little attention is given to nutrition and preventative measures.
But what we do have serious health concerns about are the genetically engineered crops that have been rushed prematurely into our marketplace.
Most biotech companies and scientists are dismissive of any suggestion that genetically engineered food could cause adverse health effects. The argument goes that GE foods are no different to ordinary food, (which is odd because they are able to take out patents on them only because they are unique) and therefore no more risky than traditional food, that they have been extensively tested, and there have been no problems detected in the six or more years they have been in our food supply.
Other scientists and medical doctors point out that GE as a science is only in its infancy; that it is an inherently unstable and unpredictable technology which poses a unique set of risks, in particular the risk of unintended and
unforeseen side-effects. Crops with altered genes in them could lead to the creation of new an unintended disease causing viruses, bacteria, mutations, new allergies and toxins, super-bugs and even cancers.
Professor Jo Cummings, a geneticist from Ontario University, believes the viruses used as promoters in genetically engineered crops pose the greatest threat. He points out that genes have recombined and mutated in laboratory experiments into highly virulent new viruses, and says it is not inconceivable, that viruses such as the Cauliflower Mosaic Viral Promoter, found in virtually all current transgenic crops that have been released commercially or are undergoing field trials, could mutate, reactivate dormant viruses or cause new infections and diseases for which there are no cures.
The antibiotic resistant marker genes found in most genetically engineered food could contribute to the serious and growing problem of antibiotic resistance. Scientists on the British government's advisory committee on Novel Foods and Processes, warn that antibiotic resistant genes that are found in most GE crops jumped species, could transfer their resistance to disease causing bacteria and transform them into potentially untreatable and potentially fatal new strains of disease such as meningitis. Dr John Heritage, a microbiologist who is a member of the committee, says 'it's a huge concern to me. While the risk is small, the consequences of an untreatable, life-threatening infection spreading within the general population are enormous."
Another health risk of genetically engineered food is that they could create new allergies in food that was previously assumed to be safe. Food allergies are hard to predict but can be life threatening. Virtually every gene transfer in ge crops results in some protein production, so genetic engineering has the potential to bring thousands of new proteins into the food supply whose allergenic status is unknown.
Obviously we do not know if we are allergic to scorpions, leeches or genetic material from an African clawed toad because we've never had to eaten it before. We won't find out in pre-market allergenicity testing, because only foods with known allergens, such as Brazil nuts, are required to undergo allergenicity testing. In Britain, food allergies relating to soy increased by 50% in 1998, about the time when genetically engineered Roundup Ready soy infiltrated the food supply there. It is the first time that soy has been one of the top ten foods to cause an allergic reaction in consumers. Nobody could guarantee whether or not the soy that caused the increase in allergies was GE free, so we simply don't know if that was the reason for the significant increase in allergies.
The FAO and WHO have jointly raised concerns about the potential for allergies from GE foods and recommend that all GE foods should be tested for allergenicity before they are released for public consumption. These sorts of health risks are not trivial; nor are they fanciful ones conjured up by scare-mongering consumers. Many doctors share these concerns. 12,000 British doctors, members of the British Medical Association, warn that genetically engineered foods could have a cumulative, invisible, irreversible effect on the food chain, and are calling for a moratorium on the commercial planting of genetically engineered crops until there has been proper, long term research and safety assessments.
Even Britain's Chief Medical Officer says there simply hasn't been enough research to establish whether genetically engineered foods could cause serious health problems in humans, and has called for a moratorium so that the long term effects of these foods can be assessed. Given the potential for these sorts of unexpected side-effects, you would expect any new GE food would be subject to rigorous safety testing and a range of tests that are capable of detecting a wide range of unforeseen health effects -- tests that would be able to screen for a wide range of diverse allergens and toxins, and human clinical trials.
No one is allowed to bring a new drug onto the market without intensive testing even though only a small percentage of the population may use a drug.
Yet, astonishingly, 19 ge commodities have been allowed to enter our food chain in hundreds of processed foods without having undergone pre-market safety testing to see if they are safe --even though all NZers and not just a small percentage of the population, are liable to eat them. The only tests GE foods are required to undergo under our present regulatory system, are compositional tests which compare the nutritional and other composition of a genetically engineered food to its parent food.
Provided there are no significant and glaring differences in the chemical composition of a ge food, compared to its parent food, it is as deemed to be 'substantially equivalent' to its parent food. Once deemed to be substantially equivalent, a ge food is assumed to be as safe as its parent food, and does not therefore have to undergo any traditional safety testing.
Furthermore, the regulatory regime that is in place in the FDA is an entirely voluntary one. Companies may submit their research to the FDA, but it is not made public or peer reviewed. Nor is there any independent testing. Any research that is done is done by the companies themselves, which have a substantial vested interest in getting their product approved and onto the marketplace as quickly as possible. To give you some idea of how funding can influence the outcome of research, a recent survey of 166 studies of aspartame in peer reviewed medical literature found that 74 studies funded by the manufacturer Nutrasweet all supported the safety of aspartame. By contrast, 92% of the independently funded studies found some type of adverse reaction.
Recently, a number of eminent scientists, in particular British scientist Dr Erik Millstone, have questioned the whole basis of the central safety assessment principle of substantial equivalence, and argued that it is fundamentally flawed. Millstone points out that scientists are not yet able to predict the toxicological or biochemical effect of a genetically engineered food from a knowledge of its chemical composition. 'Compositional analysis' is a limited and inadequate tool, he says, to screen for unintended effects such as unknown or natural toxins and anti-nutrients. The tests are so undiscriminating that they are not capable of detecting unsuspected or unintended changes or health risks, such as toxins and allergies, that could be generated by the process of genetic engineering itself.
As a result, he argues, the concept is tantamount to pretending to have adequate grounds on which to judge where or not products are safe, when there are no such grounds. The concept of substantial equivalence is therefore a pseudo-scientific concept, he argues, based on wishful thinking, a commercial and political judgement masquerading as if it were science, to provide an excuse not to require toxicological or biochemical tests.
An American public interest lawyer, Steve Druker, who is taking a class-action case against the FDA for rushing these novel, unpredictable and untested food technology products to the market, goes even further. He says the US FDA is guilty of a "deliberate ploy to deceive the world' by claiming that genetically engineered plants are substantially equivalent to normal plants. In the absence of any proper testing for ge foods, or any long term testing or human clinical trials, we simply don't know whether they are safe.
Dr Vivyan Howard, a British toxicologist, points out that it will be extraordinarily difficult to monitor the public for any ill-effects of genetically engineered food because there is no unexposed population against which to measure it. If problems were to occur in the future, doctors would have great difficulty making a link between any health problems and the intake of genetically engineered food.
It could take decades for health problems to show up, by which time genetically engineered food could have done widespread damage.
This is why, he says, the release of genetically engineered food into the food chain is essentially an uncontrolled experiment. There is a history of science making claims that were wrong and a history of products that scientists assured us were safe which were later withdrawn. Nuclear power is clean and safe; Pesticides are harmless. Thalidomide is safe etc. Similar kinds of disasters could easily occur with genetically engineered food because the technology is inherently unstable and unpredictable.
Without such tests, the full range of allergens and toxins that could be introduced through the process of genetic engineering cannot be detected. And without such tests, it is impossible to assure consumers that genetically engineered food is safe. So let us learn the lessons of the 20th century and take a precautionary approach to GE foods. Lets subject them to rigorous, long term, independent multi-generational research. In the absence of that research no one can assert with confidence that GE foods are safe.
Location
Speech in Christchurch Medical School
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