Posted on 16-5-2002

Genetic Engineers Know NotWhat They
Do

By PETER WILLS*



IN extolling the benefits of genetically modified food, William Rolleston
of the Life Sciences Network (S&T guest column, April 18) cited an early
example of technophobia - anxiety that moving in a train at 20 miles per
hour might cause illness. The arguments from opponents of GM food are
actually more sophisticated.


Their concerns spring from the kind of lessons that we have learned over
the intervening years concerning the real side-effects of mass transport
systems: pollution, energy consumption, human hazards and issues of
wealth and poverty. The world's genetic heritage is the result of four
and a half billion years of evolution. It is part of the natural commons
in whose production the human species has so far played very little part.
But if we let our genetically engineered creations loose in the world at
large, that will change. Before we had genetic engineering we could cause
mating between unlikely partners through a variety of techniques making
up the practices of selective breeding. We also learned how to encourage
cells from related species to form hybrids, exploiting combinations of
genes that had become separated during recent evolution.


Now we can put herbicide-neutralising genes from bacteria in soy and
transfer insect-toxin genes into cotton. There is no plausible sequence
of natural processes whereby these transfers could occur during
evolution. But if we build our future food supply on the products of
genetic engineering we need to be sure that the processes of nature are
insensitive to our intervention. We have not yet learned how to predict
in advance the ultimate effects of releasing genetically engineered
organisms into the wild. The relevant studies have not even commenced. I
am not aware of a single attempt to model the novel effects of genetic
modification on a network of interacting species of the kind found in the
open environment.


It is often stated that the regulation of genetically engineered
organisms is the most stringent that has ever been imposed on any human
enterprise, but authorities usually limit their considerations to the
expected immediate effects from a GMO release. They do not require
applicants to present results from network modeling of the sort done
routinely in relation to the assignment of sustainable fishing or logging
quotas. The problem is that we have little idea how to model the effects
of infusing the environment with organisms containing evolutionarily
novel constellations of genes. What will be the consequence of putting
natural selection into overdrive?


Everything we know about the intricacies and complexities at all levels
of biological organisation should warn us that any substantial change we
make today is likely to have far-reaching, unexpected consequences some
time in the future. The motivation for genetically engineering the
world's food supply is to be found in the ambition of scientists and
corporations. It comes down to the desire of the scientist to be the
originator of something permanent and the corporations' struggle to
corner the largest market share.


In the past scientists got satisfaction from creating new ideas or
devices that could be shared with others. Their claim to originality was
either acknowledged or protected through patent. Now it is possible for
them to play God. Molecular biologists can create completely new
organisms that autonomously replicate and enter the process of evolution
out of nowhere. They can legally own entire new species. Corporations
used to make their money by persuading consumers that their goods were
better than those of their competitors. 'Society has allowed science to
give way to commerce without noticing what is happening' Now, with
patents on GMOs they can maintain ownership of seeds even after they have
sold them to farmers.


Commerce is taking control of the growing process and constraining
farmers by contractual arrangements that are reminiscent of serfdom.
Society has allowed science to give way to commerce without noticing what
is happening. The Australia New Zealand Food Authority has listed a
variety of GM food products as scientifically safe for human consumption.
There are virtually no independent and certainly no comprehensive studies
on which ANZFA can base its judgment.


ANZFA relies largely on data supplied by the corporations who apply to
market their GM food products. The results of long term epidemiological
studies cannot be used because there are none. Down what path does
genetic engineering take us into the future? Farming will be even more
intensive, large-scale and monocultural than it has been in the past, but
we will try to overcome dependence on dwindling oil supplies by
genetically engineering some plants to produce fuel and others to pump an
antidote to global warming into the atmosphere. This is the vision of
having Nature properly under human control.


The lesson we should have learned about technology is that its effects on
Nature are hard to foresee even when they are most profound. It would be
better to try and make progress by cooperating with natural processes,
not attempting to harness them on a global scale. The main mistake of
converting our food supply to systems that rely on genetic engineering is
that science cannot yet tell us what we really need to know about
genetics in long-lasting ecosystems. How do natural processes depend on
functional structures within related constellations of genes? The
interacting organisms that constitute ecosystems contain constellations
of genes that have slowly evolved over aeons, but we do not know how
these systems hold together.


We know only that it is a very, very complicated business.


We are at a stage in history when respect for the unfathomed natural
order should override the unreliable ambitions of an already privileged
and inordinately powerful minority of humans.

* Dr Wills, a theoretical biologist in
the Department of Physics at the University of Auckland, is a former
chairperson of Greenpeace New Zealand.
p.wills@auckland.ac.nz