Promises and perils

Little is known about the long-term effects of new agrotechnologies on health and environment. With the growing commercialisation of genetically modified crops, public distrust of such products is increasing and people have begun questioning whether technology should tamper with nature. But, asks HARIPRIYA RAMADOSS, should resistance to science and technology be allowed to harden into a rejection of its real future benefits?

WOULD you like your carnation to be violet instead of the conventional rosy-pink? Or maybe even an exotic black? Or, would you prefer roses to be truly blue? These questions are no longer idly speculative. Violet carnations are all set to enter the American and European markets. The flowers have been developed by Melbourne-based Florigene with a gene from petunias that makes them violet. Through genetic engineering, Florigene has produced several flowers with novel bluish violet hues that are impossible to achieve through conventional plant hybridisation. In effect, Florigene has created a new species of carnations and is trying to extend the feat to blue roses as well.

Not everybody is happy about this development. The most vocal protests are expected to come from environmentalists who fear that genetic material from these strange new blooms might pose a danger to other plants in their environment. Of late, scientists and "green" activists have been at loggerheads over the emergence of new agrotechnologies.

Today, with the growing commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) crops, the public is hard put to answer certain crucial questions. Is biotechnology a boon or bane for agriculture? Can GM crops boost food production? Or are they products of a risk technology that should not be allowed to tamper with nature? In Europe the timetable set by government and industry for introducing GM crops is being rescheduled because such questions strongly urge a re-evaluation of the promises and perils of biotechnology.

The impact of new agrotechnologies on the daily life of people lends piquancy to the problem. The last decade of the 20th century saw a spurt in the biotechnology industry, with many genetically engineered foods finding their way to shop shelves. Although this happens only after comprehensive scientific reviews and regulatory measures (such as those under the purview of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration) have pronounced them safe, public distrust of such products is growing. The reason: Too little is known about their long term effects on health and environment.

This was the thrust of a report published in Nature (27 May, 1999) on genetically engineered corn. Researchers at the Department of Entomology, Cornell University, suggest that Monarch butterflies could be at risk from eating transgenic pollen. Because corn pollen from Bt. Corn plants (plants made resistant by transforming with genetic material from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt.) is dispersed over at least 60 metres by wind, they can be ingested by non-target organisms that consume plants on which they are deposited. Although Bt. is considered the farmer's friend, and the spores are used to spray on other plants even in organic farm practice, researchers fear that it might represent a threat to Monarch butterflies in their natural environment. A lab assay showed that Monarch larvae suffer a higher mortality rate when reared on leaves dusted with pollen from Bt. corn than larvae reared on leaves dusted with untransformed corn pollen.

The studies conducted by the Cornell entomologists opened up a veritable Pandora's box of questions. In Britain, the debate over whether GM crops should be grown commercially before the end of a four-year period of research into their environmental effects took a violent turn as Greenpeace activists descended on trial fields and ripped up the maize planted there. With media spotlights focused burningly on the issue, the war on GM crops remained no longer confined to wildlife advisers and environmental groups but spilled over into the public arena.

The media's inflammatory rhetoric as also the industry's vigilant interest in GM crops has raised in the public's mind inchoate images of Frankenstein monstrosities in their daily food. Environmentalists and scientific advisers of Greenpeace, who regard genetic engineering as naturally inimical to organic farming, have also helped to stoke the fires of protest. Their argument that industry's disproportionate influence on research compromises scientific independence indirectly condemns biotechnology for being not just big news but big business as well. The profit motive is an innuendo that can recoil on the environmentalists also. Biotechnologists consider that lobbying for the Soil Association is the real purpose behind many of the objections to genetic engineering. The Soil Association, we must remember, permits the use of approved pesticides in organic farming. But a more persuasive argument by opponents of GM crops is that they can have a negative impact on environment through "genetic pollution." But are such opinions well-founded?

The fear that contamination of other crops and plants through cross-pollination from GM crops is "inevitable and irreversible," to quote Helen Wallace, scientist with Greenpeace, cuts no ice with biotechnologists. John Beringer, a former government adviser in genetically modified releases, likens the targeting of genetic engineering by Greenpeace to medieval witch hunting. Granted that GM crops are risky, "new varieties of conventional crops are riskier," Beringer argues, because "conventional breeders cross crops with distant relatives to produce new hybrids containing thousands of new genes" and "we know almost nothing about them." Why then should the very few genes that are introduced in genetic modification cause irreversible damage?

Seen in this light the reaction against Bt. Corn, now at the heart of the controversy, appears to be hysterical. According to Novartis, the only difference between Bt. Corn and its counterpart lies in the production of two supplementary proteins, both of which have always existed in bacteria and are ingested by humans and animals every time they eat raw vegetables. To stop current genetic modification projects on the grounds that they are "risky" would only serve the cause of even more risky traditional crop breeding programmes.

The aim of breeding is to make crops disease resistant and healthier. Towards this end, genetic engineering offers several advantages over traditional hybridisation techniques. First, it makes crop protection agents superfluous as the plant is equipped to protect itself against pests. The strain on the soil and groundwater is thus reduced, and farmers achieve bigger yields on the same growing area. Also the reduction in chemicals and broad spectrum pesticides reduces the potential to harm non-target and beneficial species. In contrast the use of agrochemicals, which are not entirely eschewed even by organic farmers, makes the produce itself a health risk. Our current experience of foods grown along conventional lines of intensive farming would bear this point out. The vegetables and fruits in our markets these days are so laced with pesticides as to make them practically inedible. And the health hazards in the long run are extremely grave.

We cannot blind ourselves to the fact that 50 years of pesticides and chemical fertilizers in agriculture while increasing crop yields has also made farming look like "a 19th century smokestack industry", as Jim Orson, director of the Morley Research Station in Norfolk, ruefully admits. Such methods did help to heap food on our plates. But as soil and water are stretched to make the planet feed more and more people, the Green revolution, so effective in the short term may end up diminishing the earth's carrying capacity in the long run.

The search for increasing crop yields or even creating new food types is dictated by necessity, by the mind-boggling statistics of demographic growth. In 1950, world population was 2.5 billion; today it is around six billion; by 2050 it could be 12 billion. "Ten billion people cannot be nourished even temporarily unless far greater resources are directed to developing a more productive, environmentally sound agriculture", worries Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, California. The scientist who gave currency to the term "population bomb" warns that the Green revolution has already been used up.

This is the scenario in which the advantages of biotechnology must be dispassionately considered. Intensive farming pollutes water and depletes non-renewable resources such as soil; organic farming cannot boost crop yields to the levels needed to feed earth's burgeoning population. Agricultural research, including research through genetic engineering, is more than ever needed today to stave off famine in the coming decades. To ban gene technology would be like throwing the baby out with the bath water. As Nobel laureate Dr. Richard R. Ernst warned, "One cannot deprive future generations of a tool for their survival" (The Hindu, September 23, 1999). The popular resistance to science and technology should not be allowed to harden into a rejection of its real future benefits.

Unfortunately, the public's attitude seems to be already hardening. A sad outcome of the furore about GM crops is the recent shutting down of a British medical research firm, Axis Genetic of Cambridge. The company's research was mostly in plant- based vaccines for hepatitis B, cholera and two other diarrhoeal diseases. Since no cold storage is needed for the vaccines, and no needles either, the research is of tremendous potential benefit, especially for poor countries. The experience of Axis Genetic is a classic example of how adverse publicity can work havoc with some of the best beneficial applications of biotechnology.

What, one might ask, has all this controversy to do with India? A lot - considering that it is already present in incipient form in this country especially with new liberalisation policies having opened the door to multinational players. In our country where there is tremendous pressure of population on land, a pressure that is predicted only to increase, the sustenance of agricultural growth is crucial to our survival. We can ill-afford any technology that might make the country's agriculture dependent on outside control. The scientific community must be extremely vigilant to prevent this from happening. Clearly the onus is on scientists to ensure without any bias or prejudice that the positive advantages relative to the risks are scrupulously weighed in order to ensure through the right decisions that the benefits of biotechnology are fully utilised even while avoiding the pitfalls.

The future of biotechnology is in the hands of both the scientific community and the common folk. The public is less likely to be hostile to GM crops if these are seen to benefit the consumer as well as the farmer. The fear of biotechnology can also be allayed if scientists could engage in sensible dialogue with the public and show that the processes and products of gene technology have been properly screened to take into account environmental safety as well as consumer benefit.

On their part, the public would have to be more discriminating in scientific matters relating to food and health than they have hitherto shown themselves capable. As the storm over GM crops blows towards developing countries, of one thing we may be certain: In future, the common man will be increasingly called upon to take informed decisions to influence government action for policy directions in his own best interests. Science education to enhance the scientific knowledge of ordinary people has therefore assumed an unprecedented importance today.

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