Posted on 9-7-2003
Social
Engineering Accompanies Genetic Engineering
by Andrew Rowell, The Daily Mail, July 7 2003
EARLY one fine summer morning, a taxi pulled up outside a neat
suburban
terrace house in Aberdeen and took a 68-year-old scientist to
a TV studio.
Shortly afterwards Dr Arpad Pustzai found himself propelled
from a life of
grateful obscurity into the centre of an astonishing political
maelstrom
that would cost him his job, his reputation and his health.
His crime was to question the safety of genetically modified
food. His
interview on ITV's World In Action lasted just 150 seconds,
but that was
long enough to reveal his ground-breaking research suggesting
rats fed
genetically modified potatoes suffered stunted growth and damage
to their
immune systems. It triggered a controversy that put him on a
collision
course with the Government, the biotech industry and the scientific
establishment. The diminutive Hungarian-born scientist, who
had escaped the
terrors of Stalinism to enjoy a brilliant 35-year academic career,
became a
reviled figure: ostracised by colleagues, villified, and gagged.
Now, five years on, there are disturbing claims that this distinguished
scientist was the victim of behind-the-scenes manoeuvring at
the highest
political level. Some of the allegations are truly explosive.
They raise
profound questions about the extraordinary network of relationships
between
senior Labour figures and the biotech companies. They also throw
new light
on why the multi-billion-pound GM industry continues to press
ahead in the
face of huge public opposition.
The World In Action documentary was broadcast on Monday, August
10, 1998.
It was a little over a year since Tony Blair had swept into
Downing Street.
His government was in thrall to the biotech industry, convinced
it could
become a driving force of the British economy. What Dr Pusztai
was saying
threatened to derail those ambitions.
He was based at the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, which conducts
research
into animal nutrition. He had published more than 270 scientific
studies
and three books on lectins, plant proteins that are central
to the GM
controversy. He was the world's leading expert on the subject.
In the TV
interview, he said he believed GM food could be made safe, but
added: 'If I
had the choice I would certainly not eat it. He demanded tighter
rules over
GM foods, and warned: 'I find it's very unfair to use our fellow
citizens
as guinea pigs. We have to find guinea pigs in the laboratory.'
On the
evening the programme went out, the Rowett Institute's director
Professor
Philip James congratulated Dr Pusztai on his appearance, commenting
how
well he had handled the questions.
The following morning a press release from the Institute gave
him further
support, stressing that a 'range of carefully controlled studies
underlie
the basis of Dr Pusztai's concerns'. Yet within 48 hours, everything
had
changed. Dr Pusztai had been suspended by the Institute and
ordered to hand
over all his data. His research team was dispersed and he was
threatened
with legal action if he spoke to anyone. His phone calls and
e-mails were
diverted; his personal assistant was banned from speaking to
him. He read
in a press release issued by the Institute that his contract
would not be
renewed.
What triggered such an extraordinary about-face? How did a respected
scientist become a pariah overnight? The results he claimed
to have found
were certainly worrying. Dr Pusztai maintained that when rats
were fed a
certain kind of GM potato - adapted to produce natural insecticide
- their
livers, hearts and other organs got smaller. He also found that
the size of
their brains was affected, but did not dare publicise this fact
because he
was thought to be alarmist. Clearly, such findings were deeply
threatening
for the GM industry. In Orwellian fashion, the Rowett Institute
gave a
number of conflicting reasons for suddenly disowning them.
First, it claimed Dr Pusztai had simply got confused, muddling
up the
results for two different batches of potatoes. According to
this
explanation, the worrying results came from a 'control' sample
of potatoes
containing a substance known to be poisonous. This was an utterly
astonishing claim - a basic error worthy of a bumbling schoolboy.
Newspapers rightly described it as one of the most embarrassing
blunders
ever admitted by a major scientific institution. The trouble
was, it wasn't
true. Whatever the merits of his results, Dr Pusztai hadn't
mixed them up,
as a subsequent audit of his work confirmed. One of his colleagues,
leading
pathologist Stanley Ewen said: 'Arpad has always had a clear
vision. He is
certainly never muddled. He was on top of the whole business.'
When it became clear the claim was baseless, the Institute shifted
its
ground. First, it said that Dr Pusztai had not carried out the
long-term
tests needed to prove his findings. Then it said he had carried
out the
tests but the results weren't ready. Again, this simply wasn't
so. Later,
when his reputation was in tatters and his research thoroughly
discredited,
the Institute accepted that Dr Pusztai had acted in good faith
and
described him as 'an intense investigative scientist with an
international
reputation'. But by then he was a ruined man who had suffered
two heart
attacks. His wife, who was sacked with him, was on permanent
medication for
high blood pressure. Dr Pusztai has come to believe there is
only one
plausible explanation for his downfall - political pressure
from a
government in fear of his findings.
Breaking his long silence over the affair, he now claims that
he was fired
as a direct consequence of Tony Blair's intervention. The day
after his
World In Action broadcast, he believes that two phone calls
were put
through to his boss, Philip James, from the Prime Minister's
office in
Downing Street. The following day he was fired. He says he was
informed of
the calls by two different employees at the Rowett. Dr Putsztai
and his
wife were also told by a senior manager at the institute that
Blair's
intervention followed a phone call to Downing Street from President
Bill
Clinton, whose administration was spending billions backing
the GM food
industry. To sceptical ears, this sounds scarcely credible.
Would the Prime
Minister really have had any influence over the position of
a respected
scientist?
And yet the story is supported by two other eminent researchers.
Stanley
Ewen, says another senior figure at the institute told him the
same story
at a dinner on September 24, 1999. 'That conversation is sealed
in my
mind,' Ewen says. 'My jaw dropped to the floor. I suddenly saw
it all - it
was the missing link. 'Until then, I couldn't understand how
on Monday
Arpad had made the most wonderful breakthrough, and on Tuesday
it was the
most dreadful piece of work and immediately rejected out of
hand.'
The second source to confirm the story is Professor Robert Orskov
OBE, who
worked at the Rowett for 33 years and is one of Britain's leading
nutrition
experts. He was told that phone calls went from Monsanto, the
American firm
which produces 90% of the world's GM food, to Clinton and then
to Blair.
'Clinton rang Blair and Blair rang James,' says Professor Orskov.
'There is
no doubt he was pushed by Blair to do something. It was damaging
the
relationship between the USA and the UK, because it was going
to be a huge
blow for Monsanto.'
It is no secret that Blair was first persuaded to support GM
by Clinton,
and that the President exerted great pressure on his European
allies to
promote the new technology. But would Professor James, who had
run the
Rowett Institute since 1982 and was one of the world's most
respected
nutritionists, have sacrificed his
own man? At the time, he undoubtedly enjoyed good relations
with Tony
Blair. While Labour was in opposition, he had been chosen to
set up the
blueprint for a new Food Standards Agency.
The storm over Dr Pusztai's findings was to cost him a job as
the agency's
first head. 'You destroyed me,' he later told Dr Pusztai.
Professor James vehemently denies acting on orders from the
Premier,
saying: 'There's no way I talked to anybody in any circumstances.
It's a
pack of lies. I have never talked to Blair since the opening
of Parliament
in 1997.' Downing Street is equally dismissive of the claims.
"This is
total rubbish," said a spoesman. Dr Pusztai, however, remains
convinced he
was punished for following his conscience. 'I obviously spoke
out at a very
sensitive time. Things were coming to a head with the GM debate
and I
just lit the fuse.
'I grew up under the Nazis and the Communists and I understand
that people
are frightened and not willing to jeopardise their future, but
they just
sold me down the river.'
Among the most instructive aspects of the affair is the way
ministers leapt
on criticism of his work and sought to undermine his reputation.
In May
1999, by what seems an impossibly neat coincidence, reports
attacking him
were published on the very same day by the Royal Society - the
voice of the
scientific establishment - and the science and technology select
committee
of the House of Commons. Jack Cunningham, the Government's so-called
Cabinet Enforcer, then poured scorn on Dr Pusztai's 'wholly
misleading
results' and to promise that all GM food on sale in Britain
was safe to
eat. It smacked of a co-ordinated counter-attack, and that is
precisely
what it was. A Government memo reveals that Cunningham and other
senior
ministers had set up a 'Biotechnology Presentation Group'
Then, as now, relationships between senior Labour figures and
the GM food
companies bordered on the incestuous. In Labour's first two
years in
office, GM companies met government officials and ministers
81 times. The
Blair government sees the biotech industry as a new scientific
frontier, an
industry worth GBP75 billion in Europe alone by 2005. Science
minister Lord
Sainsbury is a dedicated GM supporter, though he does not officially
deal
with GM food matters. On being appointed to his post, Lord Sainsbury
held
large share holdings in two biotech companies, Diatech and Innotech;
subsequently they were put in a blind trust. He is also New
Labour's
largest single
donor, having given the party more than GBP8 million since it
first came
into power. The irony of Sainsbury being in charge of a pro-GM
science
policy was highlighted when it emerged he had made a GBP20m
paper profit in
just four years through his investment in Innotech.
There are links too between Labour and the biotech industry's
spin-doctors.
Monsanto's PR company in the UK is Good Relations, whose director
David
Hill ran Labour's media operations for the 1997 and 2001 general
elections.
In such an environment, it is scarcely surprising if dissidents
like Dr
Pusztai find themselves pushed to the fringes and turned into
scapegoats.
The oddest twist of all came in May 1999, when Dr Pusztai and
his wife went
abroad for a few days to escape the controversy surrounding
them. On their
return they discovered there had been a break-in at their house
in
Aberdeen. The only things taken were some bottles of malt whisky,
a bit of
foreign currency - and the bags containing all their research
data.
This was followed by another break-in at the Rowett Institute
at the end of
the year. Only Dr Pusztai's old lab that was broken into. He
remains
baffled about who was behind the raids, and why he was targeted.
But he
continues to defend his controversial findings. 'They picked
the wrong
guy,' he says simply. 'I will kick the bucket before
I give up.'
*Don't Worry (It's Safe to Eat) by Andrew Rowell is published
by Earthscan
on July 10 (£16.99).
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