By Richard Hindmarsh
The challenge to genetic engineering (GE) is meeting strong resistance from corporate agribusiness and its powerful allies within public sector research and development organisations like the CSIRO and pro-biotech government agencies.
A strong challenge is thus needed to bring genetic engineering under public control, so that it can either be shut down, or certain aspects given the nod and others the boot.
Aspects that lack ecological or social viability need to be phased out, such as crops and plantation trees engineered to tolerate herbicides, eugenics research and genetically engineered food. Other areas need to be closely controlled and monitored, such as the threat to the stock of open-pollinated seed, where petrochemical and pharmaceutical corporations are buying up seed and plant breeding companies worldwide. These measures are necessary to protect the earth, society and the organics movements.
'Bioindustry' development
The construction of the global "bioindustry" involves three phases of development. The first set up the infrastructure — funding grants, training programs, science managers — for the development of molecular biology (which underpins GE).
The initial catalyst came from the so-called philanthropic Rockefeller Foundation of the US — it belongs to the same interests that own Exxon (the largest petrochemical empire in the world). The foundation invested US$90 million to support molecular biology from the 1930s to 1959. Further support came from elite US biomedical associations and scientific foundations.
Phase two followed with fundamental scientific discoveries, such as the double helix in 1953, and in the early 1970s gene splicing and genetic engineering techniques. At the same time, popularisation programs established "molecular biology" as the central dogma of biology and, in the process, marginalised ecology.
Phase three — commercialisation or "DNA Incorporated" — began from the late 1970s. With state support for patenting of life forms, the early discoveries led to inventions for industrial application.
Realising the commercial opportunity, proponents of the new biology now include transnational petrochemical, pharmaceutical and agribusiness corporations, and their partners in the bioscientific-industrial complex: new biotechnology firms, politicians, government agencies, media interests, scientists, public sector organisations — all enrolled to the speculative "vision" of biotechnology. One of the first chemical conglomerates involved was Monsanto, which has ambitions to be "the IBM of products from plant molecular biology for agriculture".
To establish "DNA Incorporated International", corporations are deploying a seven-pronged technology strategy: in-house research and development programs; funding of research with, purchase of equity in, or takeover of, new biotechnology firms; contracts with universities; inter-corporate collaboration; takeover of seed (genetic supply) companies; formation of industry and trade associations; policy coalitions that campaign to shape government policy.
Despite the high degree of ecological and social risk, the uncertainty of application and the lack of a track record as durable and employment-generating, OECD governments have targeted biotechnology as an important "sunrise" industry.
Governments have been mesmerised by highly marketed visions of "environmentally benign" technologies, new jobs, increased competitiveness or business growth. Biotechnology is seen as a catalyst for a new round of techno-scientific exploitation and accumulation.
Australia is hooked firmly into this agenda, and is actively allied to the corporate bio-barons through research contracts with many Australian universities and public sector institutions, most notably the CSIRO.
Indeed, the CSIRO, with the Australian Academy of Science, was the vehicle for legitimising and incorporating genetic engineering firmly into government policy processes. Through the late 1970s and early 1980s, these two closely interlinked organisations formed a tight policy network, which also involved allies in the Australian Science and Technology Council (ASTEC) and the Department of Science. These four organisations often presented reports and held events promoting GE and biotechnology. To the public they were seemingly separate, but privately they were intensely networking.
In 1983, the Australian government was enrolled to the biotech vision and initiated the National Biotechnology Program Research Grants Scheme. Biotechnology development now receives over $100 million annually from the state.
The CSIRO's biotechnology research empire now involves half of its divisions using genetic manipulation or engineering techniques. In 1988, with over $30 million in funding allocated for biotech, more than 200 CSIRO scientists were involved in some 120 projects, with 70% involved with agriculture.
Political strategies
To consolidate "DNA Inc.", a central strategy has been to control the definition of biotechnology issues in the scientific community, to make use of its "monopoly over expertise".
Shaping GE primarily as a "techno-revolutionary" solution to important social and environmental problems has contained the controversy over its broader ecological hazards. Genetic engineering is portrayed reassuringly to the public as a precise, reliable technology — despite a mass of contradictory evidence, especially with regard to the potential impacts of releasing genetically engineered products into the open environment.
The regulatory and development policy agenda has been restricted, as much as possible, to supporters of biotechnology. Elite policy networks between corporate, government and bioscientific interests have been forged to control the agenda. These also mediate conflict among members of the biotech coalition, where internal dissent, concerning both the safety and applicability of GE, has been camouflaged.
Issues have been made more and more "technical" in order to enrol and discipline allies, particularly politicians, the media and industrialists. Institutional allies, often prominent bioscientists, have been mobilised to step forward to profess support of biotechnology in the public arena. The broader social and ecological issues are marginalised, as is the public.
Biotechnology interests project themselves as a collective "voice" of shared interests, as a "bioindustry", which is more effective in translating the biotech vision in the political arena. In reality there is no bioindustry established in its own right; instead GE is an "enabling" technology for existing petrochemical, agribusiness and pharmaceutical industries.
Publicity campaigns portray biotech as playing a positive role in domestic economic problems and competitiveness abroad. At the same time major efforts focus on disassociating GE from issues like environmental and social risk, rapid economic change, public participation, or ethics. The CSIRO's "Genetic Engineering: Will Pigs Fly?" 1992-1993 $250,000 travelling exhibition is a case in point.
Opponents and critics suffer discrediting ploys. Particularly targeted is hardline critic Jeremy Rifkin of the US, who is portrayed as both an extremist and leader of the opposition to GE. Less hardline critics, especially mainstream reformists, are then portrayed as the same as Rifkin and thus also as extremists out of step with time or progress, or as well intentioned but wrong. In Australia, leading campaigner Bob Phelps of the Australian Gen-ethics Network has been portrayed as the "Jeremy Rifkin of down under".
"Closure of controversy" strategies are used to close down debate, marginalise the public and induce public acceptance or apathy. For example, in response to controversy over the radical nature of GE, proponents' rhetoric was adjusted. The technology was presented in the 1970s as "a revolutionary discontinuity with the familiar natural order"; suddenly it became, in the 1980s, "a harmonious, evolutionary extension of previous human intervention". This makes it appear less harmful, and also under control.
A parallel ploy has been to progressively replace the disconcerting term (genetic) "engineering" with "manipulation", "modification" and, lately, "gene technology".
Critics' response
Scores of public interest groups, internationally, are lobbying against aspects of genetic engineering. In the US and EC, underground eco-activist groups with catchy names like "Screaming Petunias", "Furious Viruses" or "Seething Potatoes" have claimed at least eight attacks on laboratories, hothouses and test sites of recombinant-DNA plants since the late 1980s.
Other groups have staged sit-ins, occupied field sites and launched legal efforts to prevent genetics experimentation, trialing, and gene-factory construction.
Other environmentalists operate at the policy level. In 1987, the US National Wildlife Federation established its National Biotechnology Centre to oversee federal agency review applications to release genetically engineered organisms, to review existing laws and to carry out public education programs. The Pure Foods Campaign was recently initiated to campaign against genetically engineered food.
In West Germany, the Green Party called for a five-year moratorium on the commercial release of genetically engineered organisms. Similarly, the UK Genetics Forum calls for a ban on environmentally irresponsible GE applications. Its concerns include: the secrecy surrounding much research; the lack of public debate; side effects of animal experimentation; biological warfare; the danger of erosion of civil and individual liberties through human genetic screening techniques; ethical questions relating to eugenics and human/non-human gene transfer; human health risks, patenting of life; and genetic resources exploitation of the Third World.
European activists, such as Friends of the Earth, the Green Alliance, SAG (Swiss Working Group Gene Technology), the Berlin-based Gen-Ethisches Netzwerk and the Green Group in the European Parliament, also focus on the ethical, economic, political and cultural dimensions of gene manipulation and patenting. These dimensions are categorised as the "fourth hurdle" by industry, which bitterly opposes their inclusion in regulatory mechanisms.
In Australia, the Australian Conservation Foundation campaigns for the establishment of stringent laws to be administered by the Commonwealth Environmental Protection Agency (CEPA), to replace the existing system of voluntary self-regulation, and has singled out for outright ban herbicide-tolerant plants.
The Australian Gen-Ethics Network was formed in 1992 to raise public awareness, while FoE Australia completely opposes GE as a new form of pollution. Last year, FoE targeted movie theatres showing Jurassic Park for a public awareness exercise. More recently, the North Queensland Conservation Council opposed the field trial of a genetically engineered organism.
Despite the diverse opposition, political elements of "DNA Inc. International" began to significantly influence the official EC Commission's agenda by the early 1990s. The Green Group in the European Parliament found: "It is as if the biotech industry gave the Commission its wish list, and the Commission turned it into their basic position paper on genetic engineering". Similar success has been found in the USA.
In Australia, the report of the recent parliamentary inquiry into genetic engineering was also profoundly biased to the wishes of industry. Basically, the Australian inquiry amounted to an "absorption of protest" strategy to moderate the critics. Piecemeal gains were made, but business continues as usual for "DNA Inc. Australia".
Proponents have so far blocked the wider issues of genetic engineering. The shortcomings of GE need to be resisted and challenged with effective public participation and action. Concern about genetic engineering needs to voiced strongly in both the political and public arenas.
[This article first appeared in Acres Australia. The Australian Gen-Ethics Network can be reached on (03) 416 2222. Put yourself on the mailing list for the "Gene Report" (free), donations welcome.]