Science's Unholy Alliance
Posted 11th March 2001
By Stephen L. Tvedten

Applied science is rapidly becoming dependent on commercial interests. As we have witnessed in the biotechnology field, scientists are used to promote industrial interests. We seem to be on the way towards a 'new pseudo-scientific world order' where the short term interests of powerful industrial interests override global long term ecological and health safety considerations. In addition, "Corruption has been going up geometrically over the past 10 years" according to Raghavan Srinivasan, World Bank chief procurement adviser. Multinationals are systematically corrupting governments in the North as well as the South to further their interests. This includes making them decrease the requirements for expensive but necessary investigations of the environmental or health consequences of their products. Also there has been an obvious trend for governments to cooperate with multinationals in suppressing scientific information that is unfavorable to the industry. One of several concrete examples is the suppression in FDA of warnings of their own experts about GE foods. A third trend is the great concentration of media ownership to a few hands. In the US a large part of the media are owned by about ten companies. A similar development has occurred in many countries (for example in Sweden a single owner controls a major part).

Through direct control of the editorial boards as well as by threatening to withdraw advertisements, they are able to control much of the information content. These more and more obvious trends represent a great hazard to the world. We have seen how irresponsibly multinationals have acted in the biotech field, and there are similar examples from other fields. Some argue that there is a wilful plot where multinationals are cooperating to assume control over the world. I don't think it is necessary to incur conspiracy theories and I doubt that the corporations would take the risk that someone might reveal it as this would be devastating to them. However even without conspiracy, the very nature of multinationals is such as to logically yield a similar result. The responsibility of their managements is to increase the profit, and for that end it is inevitable that they will use their power to "optimize cooperation" with key actors like decision-makers and scientists and to reduce obstacles to their growth like unfavorable press, environmental regulations. Managers that don't use all available possibilities to promote the interests of the corporation run a great risk to loose their job.

The result in practice has been that corporations have been successfully acting so as to launch ill-tested if not untested products and new technologies with less and less of independent media and scientist scrutiny and more and more influence over governmental and international regulatory bodies. This is especially serious in a situation where the environmental, health and socio-economical situation of the world is deteriorating with an increasingly rapid pace, without adequate measures taken by the governments to remedy the situation. Some of the problems are:

* Global emissions of CO2 reached a new high.

* Ozone-depletion is increasing with detrimental environmental effects.

* Species extinction is rapidly increasing at a much greater rate than ever before in the history of the world.

* Water-stressed conditions are rapidly increasing.

* More than half the world's coral reefs are potentially threatened by human activities

* Exposure to hazardous chemicals causing adverse effects - from birth defects to cancer.

* Soil degradation induced by humans is putting the livelihoods of more than 1 000 million people at risk.

From a global perspective the environment has continued to degrade during the past decade, and significant environmental problems remain deeply embeded in the socio-economic fabric of nations in all regions." (United Nations Environment Programme, 1997). In several of these problem fields, multinationals have successfully been able to counteract or delay governmental preventive or remedial measures. An actual instance is the recently failed global warming negotiations where the fossil fuel lobby has excerted heavy pressures on especially the US government to resist restrictions. Contributory to this has been the confusing information provided by industry funded scientists denying the severity of the situation. The US National Academy of Science recently has suggested the creation of an International Academy Council (IAC) with the purpose of evaluating new technologies. NAS is an unaccountable body of self-appointed experts that has repeatedly been acting in favour of industrial interests. Their behavior is an inevitable consequence of the problematic commercialization of science. Professor Samuel Epstein together with the Editor of the Ecologist, Edward Goldsmith and Mae-Wan Ho have written a letter to the Editor of Science that was rejected. .