Genes and profits: a deadly mix
By Bob Phelps
Genetic engineering is an experimental technology with no extensive history of safe use outside contained environments in laboratories and some factories. Despite its usefulness as a research tool, many of the biological, medical and ecological risks of gene technology are uncertain. Yet live engineered organisms and products of genetic manipulation are being commercialised for use in agriculture, food and health care without adequate public knowledge or consent.
Human genetic engineering, in particular, raises serious ethical concerns which need urgent public debate and community control.
In theory, genetic engineering can be used to alter any living thing on earth. It is promoted as the solution to many of the world's most pressing problems — famine, pollution, resource depletion — but its development is largely determined by corporate goals, aimed primarily at profit maximisation.
There is still time for everyone to make real choices about whether to accept or reject genetic engineering and its products. Only your active participation is discussing and deciding the issues will ensure outcomes that are beneficial to us all.
Destructive practices
All new technologies and their products have negative impacts as well as potential benefits for society and the environment. Some groups reap the benefits while others bear the costs through the unequal distribution of knowledge, wealth and power.
Many flawed technologies and their products have had disastrous impacts. Obvious examples from various industrial sectors include nuclear power plants, CFCs, asbestos, breast implants and thalidomide. Their legacies are radioactive wastes and pollution, ozone depletion, the incurable lung disease mesothelioma, chronic illness and deformed children.
Chemicals such as DDT and PCBs were also used extensively in industry, agriculture and insect control without regard to their possible adverse effects. In 1962 ecologist Rachel Carson alerted the public in her book, Silent Spring, but her concerns were dismissed. It wasn't until two decades later, after tens of thousands of untested synthetic substances had wreaked havoc on the environment, public health and the social fabric, that any clean up begun and still in the face of industry resistance. The whole community has had to foot the bills.
These tragedies were allowed to occur because industries invested heavily, then rushed their products to market without community knowledge, consent, or control.
Most affected people will never be recompensed. Those who have received some recognition or compensation, in the Wittenoom asbestos case for example, had to fight tooth and nail to show that the companies negligently ignored or suppressed information.
This pattern of premature use is being repeated with genetic engineering by the same drug, food processing, petrochemical and agribusiness companies involved in earlier disasters. Their goals and values have not changed. The technology is being used to reinforce, not reverse, current destructive practices.
For example, herbicide-tolerant crop plants comprise 70% of United States' field trials to date. The plants are designed to survive being sprayed with polluting, persistent herbicides, at several times the recommended strengths. Farmers will be encouraged to spray their fields more heavily and less selectively to kill weeds, knowing their crops will survive.
Industrial genetic engineering has produced one consumer product disaster already. The Japanese petrochemical company Showa Denko secretly produced the food product L-tryptophan, using engineered microbes. In 1989, a faulty batch killed 38 and injured over 1500 people in the US. Whether the organisms, filtration, or a combination of both were responsible is still unclear because the company refuses to supply samples of the micro-organisms to regulatory authorities. Thousands of court cases continue.
Although genetic engineering research has been done in contained laboratories for more than a decade with weakened organisms, those designed for release plants, animals or microbes — have to be hardy enough to survive and achieve their purpose. Such organisms may live on in the environment. Once released, they cannot be recalled and may present similar problems to those caused by feral animals and weed species.
The Genetic Manipulation Advisory Committee (GMAC) itself acknowledges that, "there is a general lack of documented evidence, in Australia and overseas, on the performance of transgenic organisms in open environments, either in terms of their ecology of their genetics. A transgenic organism may not always exhibit the expected characteristics and an unplanned genetic exchange with another species might occur."
Pushing on with commercial genetic engineering in the face of such ignorance is unacceptable. A moratorium on the release of genetically-engineered organisms is needed until a much fuller understanding of our complex and fragile environment is achieved.
Public control
The Australian Gen-Ethics Network, a project of the Australian Conservation Foundation, is campaigning for a comprehensive, ongoing critical discussion of all aspects of genetic engineering and reproductive technologies.
Real choices will only be possible if the necessary resources and processes of democratic control are available to all, not only vested interest groups. Public participation should be funded by small levy on research and development budgets. The Commonwealth government's intention to give all public education resources to the CSIRO, a powerful scientific interest group backed by industry to promote genetic engineering is unacceptable.
Most Australian research is funded, directly or indirectly from public monies. The public therefore has the right to participate in setting the social and environmental priorities of research.
The industry/science agenda for fast-tracking genetic engineering into the market-place is spelt out in the November 1993 report, Gene Technology by the Australian Science and Technology Council (ATSEC). This report recommends to government "a program of action involving communication and public acceptance [our emphasis]; a clear and efficient regulatory system and effective linkages between research and industry". Genetic engineering is seen as the key industrial technology of the future, beyond criticism. This approach should be rejected by government and the community.
ASTEC's program gives no priority to the social goals of research — better health, a cleaner environment, or the sustainable use of resources. It asks the government only for "a supportive environment for reaping the economic benefits of gene technology".
ASTEC's plan would make publicly-funded science the servant of industry and exclude the public. Their proposal for regulation makes no provision for full public participation; "public acceptance" of gene technology is an unacceptable goal for an education strategy.
Links between scientists and the industry are already very close. The co-operative research centres being established by the federal government focus on the commercialisation of scientific knowledge and are required to raise at least 30% of their funds from industry. Many of the genes used are already patented by transnational corporations so they will set the research agenda and reap most the profits.
The Commonwealth Department of Industry, Technology and Regional Development (DITARD) is already talking secretly with state governments, proposing national laws to replace the present voluntary guidelines. DITARD regularly consults scientists and industrialists but ignores public interest groups. It is intended that a "genetic manipulation authority" would be set up in DITARD, creating an unacceptable concentration of power because the department also funds and promotes genetic engineering. A more appropriate location for such an authority would be the Commonwealth Environmental Protection Agency.
Community participation
We are encouraged to believe that because genetic engineering is technically feasible it is inevitable, and to accept without question the purposes for which it is used.
This technology-driven approach ignores the environmental, ethical and social implications of genetic engineering and dissuades us from pursuing other less glamorous options, such as basic changes to our lifestyles and priorities, that might provide more long-term benefits to society and the environment. Despite contrary claims, official decisions are often not based on science alone. For example, the National Registration Authority on Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals recently made a technical assessment that genetically engineered bovine (cow) Growth Hormones (bGH) be used to increase milk production. Nevertheless they denied registration on the grounds that Australia's international dairy markets could be ruined. Economic criteria prevailed over technical ones in this case.
The other broad implications of genetic engineering are also critical factors in any decisions about its use. These issues should be debated by the whole community. By insisting on a comprehensive role for the public, and committing ourselves to participate, we can still influence the progress of this questionable technology. We hope you will join us.
[Bob Phelps is the coordinator of the Australian Gen-Ethics Network.]