>Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 23:49:58 -0700 >From: MichaelP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (by way of Connie Fogal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>) >Subject: Moments of Shocked Silence About Biotech > >http://iisd.ca/pcdf/meadows/trinity.html > >Donella Meadows' The Global Citizen*, March 16, 2000 >* A bi-weekly column by Donella H. Meadows, director of the >Sustainability Institute and an adjunct professor of environmental >studies at Dartmouth College. > >Moments of Shocked Silence About Biotech > >Biotech stocks plummeted this week as President Clinton and British Prime >Minister Tony Blair requested that companies make their data on the human >genome public. > >Private firms are racing madly to read and patent the genetic code that >makes you you and me me. They are trying to beat publicly funded labs, >which are required as a condition of their grants to publish the gene >sequences they unravel. One company, Celera Genomics, is funded by drug >companies with the understanding that the funders will see the code before >anyone else does. > >If it strikes you as alarming that private investors can patent and keep >secret and sell something that sits within every cell of your body, you >ought to pay much closer attention to the new, jaw-dropping biotech >industry. I have just spent several weeks with my students listening to >biotech enthusiasts, critics, and a lot of folks in between. There were >three particular moments I'd like to tell you about, all of them moments >of stunned silence. > >The first came when we heard from an ecologist who sits on a USDA panel >that approves the release of genetically engineered crop plants. Of the 71 >applications currently pending, one is for the implantation of the gene by >which scorpions make their toxin. Splice that gene into a plant, and >anything that nibbles on a leaf, from woodchucks to bugs, falls down dead. >Of course people who eat the plant fall down dead too, so there must also >be a package of genes to turn the scorpion gene on and off. Turn it on in >the roots and leaves and stems, turn it off in the flower and fruit. > >But what happens to the poison, the students asked, when roots or leaves >decompose in the soil? What happens if the turn-off gene doesn't work >infallibly? Would we have to check every fruit or grain for traces of >scorpion poison? > >Don't know, said the ecologist. > >Silence. > >The second moment came when a geneticist described a new rice with a >pasted-in gene that allows the plant to make and store beta-carotene, the >yellow pigment from which our bodies make vitamin A. Thousands of poor >children in Asia, who eat little but rice, go blind or die for lack of >vitamin A. The "golden rice" could solve that problem. > >A hand went up, and one of the students asked, "Why not just splice the >beta-carotene gene into the child?" > >Silence. Finally another visiting expert said, "Within five years that >could be possible. Fasten your seat belts." > >More silence. I guess everyone's mind was racing as mine was. I was >picturing golden children. Then I thought, why not splice in the gene for >chlorophyll while we're at it, and just send the kids out in the sun to >photosynthesize their lunch? Gold-green children. > >Moment number three came when I showed the students a documentary called >"The Day After Trinity." It's the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the >developer of the atomic bomb, told through interviews with some of the >great physicists who worked with him at Los Alamos during the Second World >War. > >The cause was compelling: to stop Hitler. The science was thrilling. The >effort was tremendous. The bomb was nearing completion when Hitler >surrendered in May, 1945. > >That surrender did not cause any slowdown in the work at Los Alamos. There >was too much excitement. It was nearly time for the first test, called >Trinity, which took place at Alamagordo, New Mexico, on July 16. The >scientists said that on that day, as they watched the first atom bomb >explosion in history, their reaction was joyous. "It worked!" > >Less than a month later, when a similar bomb incinerated 100,000 people at >Hiroshima, one scientist said his first thought was, "Thank goodness it >wasn't a dud." His second thought was, "Oh my God, what have we done?" > >The film ends with Oppenheimer testifying in Washington two decades later. >When asked by a senator how to contain the nuclear arms race, Oppenheimer >answered, "It's 20 years too late. We should have done it the day after >Trinity." > >I turned on the lights. The students just sat there. Didn't move. Didn't >say a word. I couldn't either. > >Geneticists are already cloning sheep and cows and mice and pigs. They can >pick out a trait from almost any creature and paste it into any other, and >they are on the verge of being able to turn a gene on or off at will. We >already plant gene-spliced crops on tens of millions of acres. We can >order genes from catalogs. Within a few years we will be able to read the >code for our very selves and reach in and tinker with it. It is only a >matter of time before hackers appear who think it might be fun, as >computer hackers do, to create and release their own viruses. > >The stock market is speculating on this stuff. National leaders ask >companies, politely, to make their knowledge available to all. We need to >do much more that, more than just fasten our seatbelts and go along for >the ride. We need to slow down and think together about where this >technology is going and who should own it and who should decide. > >For genomics it is still the day after Trinity. We don't want or need to >have to ask, helplessly, "Oh my God, what have we done?"
