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The point, however, is not that science is bad -- but that there can be bad science that ill-serves humanity. Science can often be wrong. The history of science can just as well be written in terms of the mistakes made than as the series of triumphs it is usually made out to be. Science is nothing more, and nothing less, than a system of concepts for understanding nature and for obtaining reliable knowledge that enables us to live sustainably with nature. In that sense, one can ill-afford to give up science, for it is through our proper understanding and knowledge of nature that we can live a satisfying life, that we can ultimately distinguish the good science, which serves humanity, from the bad science that does not. In this view, science is imbued with moral values from the start, and cannot be disentangled from them. Therefore it is bad science that purports to be "neutral" and divorced from moral values, as much as it is bad science that ignores scientific evidence.
--Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, The Unholy Alliance, 1997
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The following files are mirrored with permission
from
their sources
at the
Institute of Science in Society (ISIS)
website.
All works by Mae-Wan Ho with additional authors indicated where present.
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ISIS Titles Listed Topically and
Alphabetically:
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If you want to stay informed on the GM debate why not subscribe to the Institute of Science in Society's free newsletter I-SIS news. All issues are available at www.i-sis.org.uk/isisnews.shtml, but by joining the I-SIS information list you can have new editions, and other press releases sent straight to you.
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History has the habit of creating heroes and anti-heroes, and so Darwin
triumphed while Lamarck bore the brunt of ridicule and obscurity. The
reason is that the theories of the two men are logically
diametrically opposed. Darwin's theory is natural selection, and
selection entails a separation of the organism from its environment. The
organism is thus conceptually closed off from its experience, leading
logically to Weismann's barrier and the central dogma of the
genetic paradigm, which is reductionistic in intent and in actuality.
Lamarck's theory, on the other hand, is of transformation arising
from the organism's own experience of the environment. It requires
a conception of the organism as open to the environment -- which it
actually is -- and invites us to examine the dynamics of transformation, as
well as mechanisms whereby the transformation could become `internalized'.
Hence it leads logically to the epigenetic approach, which embraces the
same holistic, systems thinking that Lamarck exemplifies
(Burkhardt, 1977).
--Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, Evolution, 1998
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Biotechnology / Genetic Engineering
Agriculture
- Terminator insects give wings to genome invaders, 19 Mar 2001
- The `Golden Rice' - An Exercise in How Not to Do Science, with Joe Cummins, 2000
Biomedical applications
- Radical Solutions Needed for Antibiotic Resistance, with Sam Burcher, 25 Jun 2001
- Gene Therapy Oversold by Scientists Who Disregard Risks, by Angela Ryan, 17 May 2001
- First GM Humans Already Created, with Joe Cummins, 2 May 2001
- Xenotransplantation - How Bad Science and Big Business
Put the World at Risk from Viral Pandemics, with Joe Cummins, 2000
- Unregulated Hazards - ‘Naked’ and ‘Free’ Nucleic Acids,
with Angela Ryan, Joe Cummins, & T.Traavik, Jan 2000
- Dr Arpad Pusztai Talks on Food for the 21st Century,
prepared by Angela Ryan, 7 May 1999
- BSE to GMOs - What Have We Learned? / Dr Harash Narang and BSE,
by Angela Ryan & Harash Narang
Biopatents
Conceptual Articles
- More on Terminator and Related Patents, by Joe Cummins, 12 Jul 2001
- Human Genome - The Biggest Sellout in Human History, 18 Oct 2000
- The Biotechnology Bubble, with Hartmut Meyer & Joe Cummins, May 1998
Ethics
- Why Clone At All?, 11 Mar 2001
- The Unnecessary Evil of ‘Therapeutic’ Human Cloning, with Joe Cummins, 23 Jan 2001
- Xenotransplantation - How Bad Science and Big Business
Put the World at Risk from Viral Pandemics, with Joe Cummins, 2000
- Towards a New Ethic of Science, 16 Mar 2000
Legal Briefs and Legislation
- Witness Statement of Mae-Wan Ho, Chardon LL Public Hearing, 26 Oct 2000
Public Debates
- Chief Scientist Bob May Lambastes Human Genetics Panel,
by Nick Papadimitriou and Angela Ryan, 25 Apr 2001
- Taking Science Seriously in the GM Debate, 16 Apr 2001
- Can biotechnology help fight world hunger?, 29 Jun 2000
- GM Food Hazards and the Science War, 12/1/99
- Being Human: Science, Ethics and Our Rights
An ICA/Index Debate, by Angela Ryan
- No to GMO's - Civil Society vs Corporate Empire, 11 Sep 1999
Lectures
- Beyond Bad Science and Big Business, 10 Nov 2000
- Turning the Tide on the Brave New World, revised Apr 2001
Science and Government
- Best Practice in the Design of GM Crops,
with Joe Cummins & Jeremy Bartlett, 6 Dec 2000
- The Scientific Advice that FDA Ignored (A Compilation), by Angela Ryan
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I would like to draw out some of the main lessons the organism teaches us
about the organic whole as opposed to the mechanistic whole. The organic
whole is an ideal democracy of distributed control. It does not work in
terms of a hierarchy of controller versus the controlled, but by
intercommunication. Ultimately, each is as much in control as it is
sensitive and responsive. In the ideal coherent system, local freedom (or
autonomy) and global cohesion are BOTH maximised. That is
impossible within a mechanical system where public and private, local
and global, are always in conflict.
--Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, Thinking again of life’s miracle, 2001
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New Science of the Organism
- Evolution, 1998
Public Lectures
- Thinking again of life’s miracle, 10 April 2000
- The Biology of Free Will, 1996
- Gaia and the Evolution of Coherence, 10 Aug 1993
Scientific Papers
Sustainable Agriculture
Interviews
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The Jungian ideal of the whole person is one whose cell and psyche, body and mind, inner and outer, are fully integrated, and hence completely in tune with nature. Jung's ideas on psychical development show many parallels to those relating to the organism. Similarly, Laszlo's theory of the quantum holographic universe views the universe effectively as a kind of superorganism, constantly becoming, being created through the activities of its constituent organisms at every level. The organism is thus the most universal archetype. I describe a theory of the organism, based on quantum coherence, which is, in some respects, a microcosm of Laszlo's universe. It involves key notions of the maximization of local autonomy and global cohesion, of universal participation, of sensitivity and responsiveness, which have profound implications for our global future.
--Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, Organism and Psyche in a Participatory Universe, 1998
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Science and Society
- The Human Genome - A Big White Elephant, 9 Jun 2001
- Public Subsidy of Failed Corporate Science, 10 Jun 2001
- Big Business = Bad Science?, 29 May 2001
- Towards a New Ethic of Science, 16 Mar 2000
- The New Thought Police - Suppressing Dissent in Science, with Jonathan Mathews, 16 Feb 2001
- The Organic Revolution in Science, 29 Oct 1999
- Use and Abuse of The Precautionary Principle, by Peter Saunders, 13 Jul 2000
- ISIS News #6, September 2000
- ISIS News #5, July 2000
- ISIS News #4, March 2000
- ISIS News #3, December 1999
Science and Commerce
- The `Golden Rice' - An Exercise in How Not to Do Science, with Joe Cummins, 2000
- No to GMO's - Civil Society vs Corporate Empire, 11Sep 1999
Science and Government
- Scientists Against the Brave New World, Jul 2000
World Scientists in US Congress and Special Biotechnology Forum
Science and Art
Sustainable Agriculture
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Public investment was needed to keep the human genome in the public domain, we were told. But that had not prevented any human gene from being patented. On the
contrary, scientists funded by the public have been busy patenting genes and
starting up private companies, with little or no return to the public coffers [8].
Genes and cell lines stolen from indigenous peoples are patented, and governments are selling DNA databases of entire nations to private companies. These patents
and proprietary databases not only violate basic human rights and dignity, they
are seriously distorting healthcare and stifling scientific research and innovation [9]. They should be firmly rejected by the scientific community.
--Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, The Human Genome--A Big White Elephant, 9 Jun 2001
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ISIS Titles Listed Alphabetically and Topically:
See Also: Equivalent listings linked
directly to each work.
Biotechnology / Genetic Engineering
- The Unholy Alliance, A Review of GE Biotech Hazards, Jul 1997
The point . . . is not that science is bad -- but that there can be bad science that ill-serves humanity. Science can often be wrong. The history of science can just as well be written in terms of the mistakes made than as the series of triumphs it is usually made out to be. Science is nothing more, and nothing less, than a system of concepts for understanding nature and for obtaining reliable knowledge that enables us to live sustainably with nature. In that sense, one can ill-afford to give up science, for it is through our proper understanding and knowledge of nature that we can live a satisfying life, that we can ultimately distinguish the good science, which serves humanity, from the bad science that does not. In this view, science is imbued with moral values from the start, and cannot be disentangled from them. Therefore it is bad science that purports to be "neutral" and divorced from moral values, as much as it is bad science that ignores scientific evidence.
It is clear that I part company with perhaps a majority of my scientist colleagues in the mainstream, who believe that science can never be wrong, although it can be misused. Or else they carefully distinguish science, as neutral and value-free, from its application, technology, which can do harm or good.[6] This distinction between science and technology is spurious, especially in the case of an experimental science like genetics, and almost all of biology, where the techniques determine what sorts of question are asked and hence the range of answers that are important, significant and relevant to the science. Where would molecular genetics be without the tools that enable practitioners to recombine and manipulate our destiny? It is an irresistibly heroic view, except that it is totally wrong and misguided.
It is also meaningless, therefore, to set up Ethical Committees which do not question the basic scientific assumptions behind the practice of genetic engineering biotechnology. Their brief is severely limited, often verging on the trivial and banal -- such as whether a pork gene transferred to food plants might be counter to certain religious beliefs -- in comparison with the much more fundamental questions of eugenics, genetic discrimination and, indeed, whether gene transfers should be carried out at all. They can do nothing more than make the unacceptable acceptable to the public.
The debate on genetic engineering biotechnology is dogged by the artificial separation imposed between "pure" science and the issues it gives rise to. "Ethics" is deemed to be socially determined, and therefore negotiable, while the science is seen to be beyond reproach, as it is the "laws" of nature. The same goes for the distinction between "technology" -- the application of science -- from the science. Risk assessments are to do with the technology, leaving the science equally untouched. The technology can be bad for your health, but not the science. In this article, I shall show why science cannot be separated from moral values nor from the technology that shapes our society. In other words, bad science is unquestionably bad for one's health and well-being, and should be avoided at all costs. Science is, above all, fallible and negotiable, because we have the choice, to do or not to do. It should be negotiated for the public good. That is the only ethical position one can take with regard to science. Otherwise, we are in danger of turning science into the most fundamentalist of religions, that, working hand in hand with corporate interests, will surely usher in the brave new world.
Agriculture
- Terminator insects give wings to genome invaders, 19 Mar 2001
The United States Department of Agriculture has approved field release of GM pink bollworm this summer, which are made with a mobile genetic element that can jump many species. This is tantamount to giving wings to the most aggressive genome invaders. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho exposes evidence of instability in these GM insects, and warns of rampant horizontal gene transfer and recombination, should such GM insects become released.
- Horizontal Gene Transfer -
The Hidden Hazards of Genetic Engineering, 18 Aug 2000Horizontal gene transfer is an established phenomenon. It has taken place in our evolutionary past and is continuing today. All the signs are that natural horizontal gene transfer is a regulated process, limited by species barriers and by mechanisms that break down and inactivate foreign genetic material. Unfortunately, genetic engineering has created a huge variety of artificial constructs designed to cross all species barriers and to invade essentially all genomes. Although the basic constructs are the same for all applications, some of the most dangerous may be coming from the waste disposal of contained users of transgenic organisms. These will include constructs containing cancer genes from viruses and cells from laboratories researching and developing cancer and cancer drugs, virulence genes from bacteria and viruses in pathology labs. In short, the biosphere is being exposed to all kinds of novel constructs and gene combinations that did not previously exist in nature, and may never have come into being but for genetic engineering.
- The `Golden Rice' -
An Exercise in How Not to Do Science, with Joe Cummins, 2000The ‘golden rice’ -- a GM rice engineered to produce pro-Vitamin A -- is being offered to the Third World as cure for widespread vitamin A deficiency.
The audit uncovers fundamental deficiencies in all aspects, from the scientific/social rationale to the science and technology involved. It is being promoted in order to salvage a morally as well as financially bankrupt agricultural biotech industry.
The scientific/social rationalization for the project exposes a reductionist self-serving scientific paradigm that fails to see the world beyond its own narrow confines. The ‘golden rice’ is a useless application. Some 70 patents have already been filed on the GM genes and constructs used in making the ‘golden rice’. It is a drain on public resources and a major obstruction to the implementation of sustainable agriculture that can provide the real solutions to world hunger and malnutrition.
‘Golden rice’ is not a ‘second generation’ GM crop as has been claimed. It involves standard first generation technology, and carries some of the worst features in terms of hazards to health and biodiversity. Rockefeller Foundation, the major funder of the project by far has withdrawn support from it. The project should be abandoned altogether.
Biomedical applications
- Radical Solutions Needed for Antibiotic Resistance,
with Sam Burcher, 25 Jun 2001Antibiotic resistant infectious diseases have created a public health crisis worldwide. The conventional reductionist approach is failing to cope. Sam Burcher and Mae-Wan Ho argue for the revival of traditional healthcare systems, and for the many safe and effective anti-microbials now documented among indigenous plants that have been tried and tested for millennia.
- Gene Therapy Oversold by Scientists Who Disregard Risks,
by Angela Ryan, 17 May 2001Gene therapy is targeted at virtually every ill known to human beings, especially those inhabiting the first world, including pain relief, cosmetic hair replacement and muscle building. Massive investment has gone in but no clinical efficacy has ever been proven, despite anecdotal claims of success. . . .
Sir David Weatherall, Professor at the Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford, told The UK Royal Society discussion meeting on Social Responsibility in Science [3] that "scientists have not made efforts to maintain an open and completely honest debate with the public about what they are doing. Part of the problem arose from over ambition or pressures to publish, to attract research funding".
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the NIH responded to widespread concern about risks, especially after the 1999 death of teenager Jesse Gelsinger in a phase I clinical trial. Many laboratories were shut down, public meetings were held, reviews and investigations commissioned and administrative changes have been put in place to deal with the crisis [4]. But the troubles run deep within the heartland of biomedical science, where the most important concern remains the issue of safety. . . .
There are major technical problems with all aspects of gene therapy [7]. Furthermore, few pre-clinical data have been published and toxicological evaluations are seldom found in the literature. The potential for generating new viruses, known as replication – competent viruses (RCV) needs to be thoroughly evaluated, particularly as genetically modified viruses are used in gene therapy. The spread of viral vectors to non-target tissues throughout the host is also a major safety concern. There is no way to predict the virulence or disease potential of recombinant viral vectors, and a case-by-case approach had to be applied. It has been shown, however, that viral vectors can induce toxic shock following administration [8].
- First GM Humans Already Created, with Joe Cummins, 2 May 2001
Germline gene therapy amounts to changing the gene pool of the human species by genetic modification of the gametes produced by individuals. While the pros and cons of GM crops and GM animals are still being debated, genetic modification of human beings has met with almost universal condemnation. The prospect of maniacal dictators trying to produce super races is none too theoretical for those who have lived under the Nazi regime. And all the more abhorrent that academic science should be perverted to such ends. Human germline therapy has been shelved, if not rejected, by most advanced countries, and copious volumes have been generated by ethicists, philosophers and geneticists from ivy league universities, telling us why rushing into human germline therapy is not prudent.
In spite of those academic reservations and widespread public concern, a form of germline therapy has already been performed in New Jersey with little fanfare and no opportunity for public input. A university laboratory completed an experiment that led to the birth of fifteen apparently healthy babies as the result of germline gene therapy [2]. But worldwide, there have already been 30 babies born that have been created in this way. . . .
Now is not the time to bring human germline therapy in through the back door and to promote it through claims of "success" which may be premature and announced after the experiments. Genetic engineering may be proceeding along the lines taken in the development of nuclear weapons. The scientific "elite" may have convinced the political "elite" that the masses need to be led like cattle to the brave new world.
- Xenotransplantation -
How Bad Science and Big Business
Put the World at Risk from Viral Pandemics, with Joe Cummins, 2000Xenotransplantation -- the transplant of animal organs into human beings -- is a multi-billion dollar business venture built on the anticipated sale of patented techniques and organs, as well as drugs to overcome organ-rejection. It has received strong criticism and opposition from scientists warning of the risks of new viruses crossing from animal organs to human subjects and from there to infect the population at large. But regulators are adopting a permissive attitude for clinical trials to go ahead. Scientific reports of virus crossing from pig to human cells and of viral infections in humans subjects transplanted with baboon livers are being ignored or dismissed, while inconclusive, widely faulted papers are taken as evidence that no viruses are found in xenotransplant patients. This audit exposes the shoddy science that puts the world at risk of viral pandemics for the sake of corporate profit, and concludes that xenotranplantation should not be allowed to continue in any form. Instead, effort should be devoted to developing safer, more sustainable and affordable alternatives that are already showing promise and will be more likely to benefit society as a whole in the industrialized west as well as in the Third World.
- Unregulated Hazards - ‘Naked’ and ‘Free’ Nucleic Acids,
with Angela Ryan, Joe Cummins, & T.Traavik, Jan 2000A huge variety of naked/free nucleic acids are being produced in the laboratory and released unregulated into the environment. They are used as research tools, in industrial productions and in medical applications such as gene therapy and vaccines. These nucleic acids range from oligonucleotides consisting of less than 20 nucleotides to artificial constructs thousands or millions of basepairs in length, typically containing a heterogeneous collection of genes from pathogenic bacteria, viruses and other genetic parasites belonging to practically every kingdom of living organisms. Most of the nucleic acids and constructs have either never existed in nature, or if they have, not in such large amounts. They are, by definition, xenobiotics -- substances foreign to nature -- with the potential to cause harm. Some, such as gene therapy vectors and vaccines, have already been shown to elicit toxic and other harmful reactions in preclinical trials.
Nucleic acids are now known to persist in all environments, including the digestive system of animals. Transformation by the uptake of DNA is recognized to be a significant route of horizontal gene transfer among bacteria, and there is overwhelming evidence that horizontal gene transfer and recombination have been responsible for the recent resurgence of drug and antibiotic resistant infectious diseases.
Recent investigations associated with gene therapy and vaccines leave little doubt that naked and free nucleic acids are readily taken up by the cells of all species including human beings, and may become integrated into the cell’s genetic material. There is also abundant evidence that the extraneous nucleic acids taken up can have significant and harmful biological effects including cancers in mammals.
The need to establish regulatory oversight of naked/free nucleic acids at both national and international levels is long overdue. It is irresponsible to continue to exclude them from the scope of the International Biosafety Protocol.
- Dr Arpad Pusztai Talks on Food for the 21st Century,
prepared by Angela Ryan, 7 May 1999I made my 150 sec testimony on World in Action because I had facts the indicated to me there were serious problems with transgenic food. It can sometimes take 2-3 years to get science papers published and these foods were already on the shelves. I did indicate my concern and it cost me my job but I would do it again. Other scientists often ask me why I went against the code of practice and spoke out before publication in a peer reviewed journal? My reply is to say we would be eating these potatoes now and not be discussing the safety of GM food if I would not have done it.
- BSE to GMOs - What Have We Learned? / Dr Harash Narang and BSE,
by Angela Ryan & Harash NarangMost of the world’s 70 million acres of genetically modified crops are being fed to animals or processed into animal feed products. Furthermore, the biotech industry depends upon this market for its future viability. In the UK, the BSE crises has already taught us the lesson of how a change in the composition of animal feed can have a devastating effect on both animal and human health.
In this booklet, Dr Harash Narang, a clinical virologist and BSE expert, adds his voice to the public debate on GMOs. He is especially concerned about the use of specific genes in transgenic crops, namely antibiotic resistance marker genes, insecticide and herbicide-tolerance genes.
The aim of this booklet is to inform the public about some of the major failings in the government’s handling of the BSE crises, and to demonstrate that a similar scenario is now being repeated with GMOs. Dr Narang combines his experience with BSE, with his concerns over food GM foods, to convey an important message to all members of the public. . . .
We are now dependent on a multi-million pound international food industry which has grown ever more powerful with the advent of modern day shopping culture. The GM food industry has its own scientific experts and all these experts speak with one voice and are constantly assuring us that GM food is safe to eat. They will certainly not spend any time, money or effort into research, which may prove otherwise. The fundamental safety issues are not being addressed, but are being swept under the carpet and avoided. . . .
It should be a fundamental human right to know what we are being fed and the effects it will have on our health. We need to understand enough of GM food science so as to grasp the environmental dangers and health risks attached to the products we consume and feed to our livestock.
I am no stranger to GM science. I conducted gene modification experiments from my laboratory as part of an investigation into CJD and BSE. I am very conscious of health and safety, and nothing has ever been used for human or animal consumption or released into the environment from my laboratory. Nevertheless the Public Health Laboratory Service Board ordered me to stop all work on genetic engineering the BSE agent, fearing I might create a ‘super’ bug. I am, therefore, qualified to discuss genetic modification without being guilty of a mere sentimental aversion to the technology.
Biopatents
- Why Biotech Patents Are Patently Absurd -
Scientific Briefing on TRIPs and Related Issues, Feb 2001TRIPs, or Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights, is an agreement between member states of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that seeks to enforce US style patent laws around the world. This agreement covers everything from pharmaceuticals to information technology software and human gene sequences, and is emerging as a major issue dividing North and South.
The TRIPs agreement is controversial in at least two areas. First, it threatens the right of poor countries to manufacture, or to import, cheap generic versions of patented drugs. The AIDs epidemic and other diseases are killing millions every year because people in poor countries cannot afford the exorbitant prices the pharmaceutical giants are charging for the patented drugs.
The existing TRIPs agreement also forces all countries to accept a medley of new biotech patents covering genes, cell lines, organisms and living processes that turn life into commodities. Governments all over the world have been persuaded into accepting these ‘patents on life’ before anyone understood the scientific and ethical implications.
The patenting of life-forms and living processes is covered under Article 27.3(b) of TRIPs. This scientific briefing explains why such patents should be revoked and banned on the following grounds:
All involve biological processes not under the direct control of the scientist. They cannot be regarded as inventions, but expropriations from life.
The hit or miss technologies do not qualify as ‘inventions’, and are inherently hazardous to health and biodiversity.
There is no scientific basis to support the patenting of genes, genomes, cells and microorganisms, which are discoveries at best.
Many patents are unethical; they destroy livelihoods, contravene basic human rights, create unnecessary suffering in animals or are otherwise contrary to public order and morality.
Many patents involve acts of plagiarism of indigenous knowledge and biopiracy of plants (and animals) bred and used by local communities for millenia.
- Why We Should Reject Biotech Patents from TRIPS, 1999
This Report examines the TRIPS Article 27.3(b), currently under review at the WTO, and its counterparts in the EU Patents Directive. We show that the Articles are couched in undefined terms, designed to allow the broadest categories of patents from genetic engineering and other new biotechnologies. We also argue why all classes of new biotech patents should be rejected from inclusion in TRIPs on one or more of the following grounds:
All involve biological processes not under the direct control of the scientist. They cannot be regarded as inventions, but expropriations from life.
The hit or miss technologies associated with many of the ‘inventions’ are inherently hazardous to health and biodiversity.
There is no scientific basis to support the patenting of genes and genomes, which are discoveries at best.
A range of patents are unethical; they destroy livelihoods, contravene basic human rights and dignity, compromise healthcare, impede medical and scientific research, create excessive suffering in animals or are otherwise contrary to public order and morality.
Many patents involve acts of plagiarism of indigenous knowledge and biopiracy of plants (and animals) bred and used by local communities for millennia.
Conceptual Articles
- Terminate the Terminators!, by Joe Cummins, 12 Jul 2001
Terminator technology is a collection of genetic engineering tricks to make seeds sterile, so farmers cannot save and replant the seeds. The sole purpose of this technology, now owned by the big seed corporations in collusion with the US government, is to control seed production at source. It violates the basic human right of people to grow their food from saved seeds, and also introduce some of the most dangerous genes and constructs into crop-plants. This highly immoral and hazardous development must be stopped. All terminator crops that have been released commercially or undergoing field trials must be recalled and destroyed.
- The Human Genome Map,
the Death of Genetic Determinism and Beyond, 14 Feb 2001The project to sequence the entire human genome has cost the public $3 billion in the US and hundreds of millions of pounds in the UK. Now, scientists are telling us this is just the end of the beginning, and much more money is needed before the goods can be delivered in terms of miracle cancer cures, eradication of disease, genetic enhancement, gene therapy, personalised medicine and a prescription of lifestyle based on our genetic makeup. Indeed, the UK Government is investing at least £2.5 billion over the next five years to ‘human genomics’ in a misguided attempt to identify all the genes that predispose the UK population to disease. That, at a time when our National Health is in financial crisis and research and development of other aspects of healthcare has been sorely neglected.
But even if the goods can be delivered against all odds, they will be beyond the means of the average taxpayer because private companies are aggressively staking out their claims on our genome. . . .
Nevertheless, arch genetic determinists and other prominent scientists as well as ‘bioethicists’ are advocating human germline gene therapy and human cloning. They see the creation of a gene-rich class of human beings to be inevitable due to the free reign of the global marketplace. The rich will pay to genetically enhance their offspring, in the same way that they will pay for expensive private education. Consequently, there will be a genetic underclass -- children of the poor -- that will eventually become a separate, inferior species. Social inequity can thereby be translated into genetic inequity and vice versa. Fortunately, this genetic determinist fantasy will never come to pass. Unfortunately, it is fuelling the resurgence of eugenics and genetic discrimination, giving rein to the worst prejudices of our society.
- Human Genome - The Biggest Sellout in Human History, 18 Oct 2000
The genetic determinist approach of the human genome programme is pernicious because it diverts attention and resources away from addressing the real causes of ill-health, while at the same time stigmatizing the victims and fueling eugenic tendencies in society. The health of nations will be infinitely better served by devoting resources to preventing environmental pollution and to phasing out agrochemicals, rather than by identifying all the genes that ‘predispose’ people to ill-health. . . .
But it is the inherent complexity of the human organism and the lack of a concept of the organism as a coherent whole that will continue to frustrate all attempts at understanding health and disease within the dominant, reductionist framework. . . .
To try to understand disease in terms of genes and protein interactions is worse than trying to understand how a machine works in terms of its nuts and bolts, simply because the parts of the organism, unlike those of a machine, are inseparably tangled up with one another. Mechanistic understanding in terms of interacting parts is extremely unlikely to lead to the design of better drugs. For that, we require knowledge of the design of the human organism. And no amount of information on genes and protein interactions will ever add up to the complex, entangled whole that is the organism.
- The Biotechnology Bubble,
with Hartmut Meyer & Joe Cummins, May 1998One sign of big trouble in the biotech industry is when EuropaBio, a non-Government organization representing the interests of the industry, launched its multi-million pound campaign to win over European consumers last summer by engaging the services of Burson Marsteller, the leading consultancy firm for worldwide crisis-management. The clientele of the firm included Babcock and Wilcox during the Three Mile Island nuclear crisis in US in 1979, Union Carbide after the Bhopal disaster in India which killed 15 000, and oppressive regimes in Indonesia, Argentina and South Korea. According to a leaked document from Burson Marsteller, plans drawn up to change perceptions on genetic engineering advised the industry to stay quiet on risks of genetically engineered foods, as they could never win the argument, but to focus instead, on "symbols, that elicit hope, satisfaction and caring". It also advised that the best way of eliciting a favourable response to new products must be to use regulators and food producers to reassure the public. . . .
It is clear that everyone is in it for the money. The risks can be dismissed by appealing to the benefits, and when the benefits are not forthcoming, the promises have to be kept alive. Biotechnology is the South Sea Bubble at the end of the millenium. Billions have already been invested, and companies are desperate to recoup their losses before the whole enterprise collapses. . . .
Ethics
- Why Clone At All?, 11 Mar 2001
Why would anyone clone a sheep or a cow, let alone a human being? None save the genetic determinists who believe an organism is nothing more than the sum total of its genetic makeup and that it is their right to exploit cloned human embryos for spare body parts. . . `clone' is a misnomer. The original Dolly experiment was misguided, and subsequent attempts at cloning many other species have been plagued by the same failures. Far from producing identical copies of individual organisms, fatalities and monstrous abnormalities are generated at high frequencies. It is irresponsible and unethical to continue such gross experiments even for animals.
The science is fundamentally flawed in assuming that an individual is determined entirely by its genetic make-up and that the genetic make-up of adult cells remains unchanged. This is not supported by the results of the nuclear transplantation experiments. Many commentators in newspaper articles have pointed out, in the context of human cloning, that the clone is not identical to the original individual, on account of the different life experiences the clone will have. Even identical twins, which are more ‘clones’ in the strict sense of the word, are different individuals. However, there are other more specific scientific errors involved. . . .
It is clear that cloning experiments are morally reprehensible if only for the suffering they cause, even in animals. We have had four wasted years in which enormous public and private resources have been squandered with no obvious returns in terms of scientific discovery or the health of nations. On the contrary, untold damage is being done to the social and moral fabric of civil society. It is time to draw a curtain over all cloning experiments.
- Why Biotech Patents Are Patently Absurd -
Scientific Briefing on TRIPs and Related Issues, Feb 2001
- The Unnecessary Evil of `Therapeutic' Human Cloning,
with Joe Cummins, 23 Jan 2001The United Kingdom House of Lords voted last night by an overwhelming majority to allow the creation of human embryos to provide embryonic stem cells that can be used for cell and tissue replacement. Britain stands out as the only country in the European Union to approve of this so-called therapeutic human cloning. Drs. Mae-Wan Ho and Joe Cummins explain why ‘therapeutic’ human cloning is both morally unacceptable and scientifically unjustifiable. . . .
We reject research on ES cells created by human ‘therapeutic’ cloning on the following grounds.
- It is totally unnecessary, given the promise of adult stem cells and adult cells from the patients themselves, which can be most effectively used for cell and tissue replacement.
- It is morally unacceptable to create human embryos for providing ES cells.
- It is a slippery slope to human reproductive cloning.
- Nuclear transplant cloning has very low success rates and generates many abnormalities.
- Cloning procedures involving transplanting human nuclei into animal eggs carry even greater risks.
- ES cells are already available using ‘excess’ embryos from in vitro fertilization clinics and aborted fetuses.
- ES cells carry cancer risks on being transplanted.
- ES cells are subject to multiple patents, on cloning and isolation procedures as well as on the cells themselves; this will make their use in cell or tissue replacement therapy very costly.
- Adult stem cells are already showing great promise in cell and tissue replacement; and are likely to be much less costly.
- Xenotransplantation - How Bad Science and Big Business
Put the World at Risk from Viral Pandemics, with Joe Cummins, 2000
- Towards a New Ethic of Science, 16 Mar 2000
One major obstacle to an open democratic debate is that the scientists developing the technology have been almost completely absorbed into the commercial sector. The public are being uncritically informed by scientists consciously or unconsciously serving commercial interest. The social ethos is increasingly hostile to the ethical practice of science itself.
Furthermore, there is a tendency in all debates on technology to leave the science untouched, to consider it separate from technology and from ethics, and to see it in isolation from society as a whole. These separations are artificial and unwarranted, and have served to obscure the most important issues. In this article, I shall put science itself in the spotlight: to examine the social control of science, the nature of the science driving the technology, and the relationship of science to society. I shall argue that there is an urgent need to reinstate independent science, and to define a new holistic ethic of science that can guide us in the safe and sustainable use of increasingly powerful technologies.
Legal Briefs and Legislation
- Witness Statement of Mae-Wan Ho At Chardon LL Hearing, 26 Oct 2000
What I would like to do, first, is to reiterate I-SIS's written objections to placing Chardon LL on the National List, which are contained in our written submission. It was submitted in April.
The first is that the initial EU approval for Chardon LL is unlawful, according to EU's own regulations.
The second objection is that the data submitted by the company fail in important respects to satisfy international agreements on safety of GMOs already reached on the Biosafety Protocol and the Codex Alimentarius Commission of the World Health Organisation.
The third objection is that the transgenic insert contains hazardous DNA.
The fourth, the tests conducted by the company fail to address impacts on health and biodiversity.
Rather than repeat my written objections or our written objection here, I want to take this opportunity to explain why GMOs are different, how they are made, why they are inherently unreliable and unsafe, as you have already heard from Caroline Clarke, and how current regulatory processes fail to protect health and biodiversity, using Chardon LL as a case study.
I am using the Chardon LL as a case study because, precisely as I said, the incompleteness of the data submitted by Aventis really forces us to look at what is available in the scientific literature, on transgenic crops and GMOs in general.
One of the major shortcomings of current regulatory systems is their fragmented state. It reflects the fragmented state of the science itself. Those busy exploiting the technology for biomedicine are unaware of what is happening in agriculture and vice versa. Many applications are not regulated because they fall between the scopes of different directives and regulatory bodies. Regulators pay lip-service to the precautionary principle which is enshrined in the International Biosafety Protocol under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, negotiated in Montreal in January 2000, and to which the United Kingdom is a party.
In practice, however, they have been (our regulators, that is) adopting the anti-precautionary approach, and confusion abounds over how scientific evidence is to be used and interpreted.
Public Debates
- Chief Scientist Bob May Lambastes Human Genetics Panel,
by Nick Papadimitriou and Angela Ryan, 25 Apr 2001Sir Bob May, president of the UK Royal Society, summed up the event when he rose to his feet and expressed dismay at the “First World centredness” of the dialogues. The extent to which anthropocentrism had dominated the proceedings was shocking he said. He was scathing in his criticism of the panel and said he had expected much more. He pointed out how close we are genetically to the nematode worm, reminding us of our interconnectedness to the rest of the living realm. He said we had singularly failed to grasp the most important implication of the findings of the human genome project. . . .
Again and again we heard the panel answer perfectly straight questions with evasions and half–truths. Sir John claimed that democracy renders the genome “safe”, but how?
And what “democratic” principle has been adhered to? The public were not consulted on the human genome project. Neither were they consulted on the health policies following from it. Hundreds of millions in public money have already been spent in supporting the project, and billions more are being poured in to help a biotech industry seriously in trouble.
- Taking Science Seriously in the GM Debate, 16 Apr 2001
If there is one thing that distinguishes the Third World from the industrialised countries, it is that they take science a lot more seriously than we do in the GM debate. . . .
The paradigm change that should have occurred [since the mid-1970s], did not. On the contrary, the scientific establishment remained strongly wedded to genetic determinism, which has misguided genetic engineering, making even the most unethical applications appear compelling, such as ‘therapeutic’ human cloning, for one. Bioethics became a contradiction in terms as rampant commercialisation of science took hold.
Since the 1980s, preoccupation with patenting and start-up companies has compromised the quality of molecular genetics research, stifling basic science and innovation, and failing to serve the public good. Worse still, many scientists are consciously or unconsciously ignoring scientific evidence of the hazards. I got involved in the genetic engineering debate in 1994, to try to inform our policymakers and the public, and to start debate and discussion from within the scientific community.
For the past seven years, I have had to follow developments in genetic engineering science much more carefully and extensively than many of the practitioners, only to find that all my fears concerning the problems and dangers of genetic engineering are being confirmed. I shall highlight some of these before going to discuss what needs to be done. . . .
The new genetics is radically ecological, organic and holistic. That is why genetic engineering, at least in its current form, can never succeed. It is based on misconceptions that organisms are machines, and on a denial of the complexity and flexibility of the organic whole.
The challenge for western scientists is to develop a holistic science to help revitalise all kinds of non-corporate sustainable agriculture and holistic medicine that can truly bring food security and health to the world.
- Can biotechnology help fight world hunger?, 29 Jun 2000
GM constructs consist of genetic material of dangerous bacteria, viruses and other genetic parasites from widely different origins. They are combined in new ways that have never existed, and put into genomes that they have never been part of. They include antibiotic resistance genes that make bacterial infections very difficult to treat. And, you never just put a gene in by itself. It needs a gene switch or a promoter to work. Typically an aggressive promoter from a virus is used to make the gene over-express continuously -- something which never happens in healthy organisms. . . .
GM crops are turning out to be useless as well as unsafe. The bacterial bt-toxins, engineered into many crops, are poisonous for beneficial and endangered species such as lacewings, the Monarch butterfly as well as the black swallowtail [11]. Bt crops encourage new resistant pests to evolve. Stink Bugs in North Carolina and Georgia are eating up the bt-cotton crops [12] and have to be sprayed with deadly pesticides. A study in the University of Nebraska shows that GM Roundup Ready soya yielded 6-11% less than non-GM soya [13], confirming an earlier Univ. of Wisconsin study which also found that the GM soya required 2 to 5 times more herbicides.
The way to fight world hunger is definitely not GM crops. World population figures have been wildly exaggerated. The figure of 10 billion has been bandied about. In fact, figures have had to be revised downwards several times in the late 1990s. By mid-1998, the UN’s estimate was that world population will peak at 7.7 billion in 2040, then go into long term decline to 3.6 billion by 2150, less than two-third of today’s number [14].
Population arguments are based on the ecological concept of carrying capacity. Ecologists are increasingly finding that the more biodiverse the ecosystem, the greater the carrying capacity [15], and hence the more people and wild-life it can support. Biodiverse systems are also more stable and resilient. The same principles have guided traditional indigenous farming systems, and are now being re-applied in holistic approaches that integrate indigenous and western scientific knowledge [16]. Some 12.5 million hectares around the world are already farmed in this way. The yields have doubled and tripled and are still increasing, at the same time reversing some of the worst environmental, social and health impacts of the green revolution.
- GM Crops - How Corporations Rule and Ruin the World, 1 Jun 2000
The proposal that "agricultural biotechnology is vital for the future of the developing world" can immediately be contradicted if we are talking about GM crops. Evidence is building up that they are unsafe, unsound and unsustainable. If they’re not good for us here they can’t be good for the developing world. GM crops allow corporations to tighten their monopoly on agriculture though patented seeds that farmers can’t resow. And that is especially important for the developing world. . . .
GM genetic material is not like ordinary genetic material. Natural genetic material in non-GM food is broken down by special enzymes to provide energy and building-blocks for growth and repair. And should the foreign genetic material get into a cell’s own genetic material -- its genome – other enzymes can still put it out of action. All these are part of the biological barrier that keeps species distinct, so gene exchange across species is held in check.
But along come the genome invaders, genetic engineers and the artificial constructs they make, which are designed to cross all species barriers and to literally invade genomes. Genetic material of dangerous bacteria, viruses and other genetic parasites from widely different origins are combined into new constructs that have never existed in billions of years of evolution. And genes are transferred between species that would never interbreed. These constructs include antibiotic resistance genes that make bacterial infections untreatable. They include aggressive gene-switches or promoters from viruses that make genes over-express continuously – something which never happens in healthy organisms – and are active across a wide range of species. . . .
The way to feed the world is definitely not GM crops. World population figures have been wildly exaggerated. Norman Borlaug, father of the green revolution, claims GM crops are needed to feed 10 billion. In fact, figures have had to be revised downwards several times in the late 1990s. By mid-1998, the UN’s estimate was that world population will peak at 7.7 billion in 2040, then go into long term decline to 3.6 billion by 2150, less than two-third of today.
Population arguments are based on the ecological notion of carrying capacity. But the carrying capacity of an ecosystem depends on its organization. Ecologists are increasingly finding that the more biodiverse the ecosystem, the greater the carrying capacity, and hence the more people and wild-life it can support. Also, biodiverse systems are more stable and resilient. The same principles have guided traditional indigenous farming systems, and are now being re-applied in holistic approaches that integrate indigenous and western scientific knowledge. Some 12.5 million hectares around the world are already farmed in this way. The yields have doubled and tripled and are still increasing. At the same time, these agricultural systems have been reversing some of the worst environmental, social and health impacts of the green revolution.
World market for GM crops has collapsed because people all over the world are rejecting them and opting for organic sustainable agriculture. An organic revolution is rising from the grass-roots and also sweeping across the disciplines within western science. From quantum physics to the ecology of complexity and the new genetics, the message is the same: nature is dynamic, interconnected and interdependent. Proponents of GM technology are stuck in the mechanistic era, it is that above all that makes the technology both futile and dangerous.
- GM Food Hazards and the Science War, 12/1/99
[E]ngineering crops to enhance nutrition ignores the root cause of malnutrition, which is the industrial monoculture crops that have led to a deterioration of the nutritional value of food within the past 50 years, and the destruction of natural and agricultural biodiversity on which a healthy balanced diet depends. We don’t need vitamin A enhanced rice when we can eat carrots with our rice. . . .
Our regulatory system is still based on the old reductionist paradigm . . . [including that] Because they assume there is no difference between genetic engineered crops and those obtained from traditional breeding, regulation is largely based on no need to look, so don’t look, and you don’t see anything. . . .
There is a science war on. It is between a reductionist, mechanistic science and an emerging holistic, organic science which is reaffirming and restoring the deep ecological perspectives of indigenous sciences around the world. Contrary to reductionist western science, these indigenous sciences have enabled people to live sustainably with nature for tens of thousands of years, but they are being destroyed and marginalized. . . .
To really do us good, we have to know that our food is produced, not just without agrochemicals, but also without exploiting our fellow human beings, without cruelty to animals and without destroying the earth. Most of all, we want to know that it is produced with love and creativity of farmers who are poets and artists at heart, who know how to work with nature to make both human beings and nature prosper. That is the real agenda for civil society.
- Being Human: Science, Ethics and Our Rights, An ICA/Index Debate,
by Angela RyanThe ICA/Index debate on being human in a scientific, ethical and human rights context demonstrated a genuine lack of confidence in talking about such a fundamental issue. The speakers did not dare to put forward defining statements on what being human is in our world of scientific and technological advancement. They stood back from it and revealed the general lack of focus and cross talk between the arts and sciences regarding this very important question.
- Genetically Modified (GM) crops are neither needed nor beneficial
The promises to genetic engineer crops to fix nitrogen, resist drought, improve yield and to `feed the world' have been around for at least 30 years. Such promises have built up a multibillion-dollar industry now controlled by a mere handful of corporate giants. But the miracle crops have not materialised. So far, two simple characteristics account for all the GM crops in the world. More than 70% are tolerant to broad-spectrum herbicides, with companies engineering plants to be tolerant to their own brand of herbicide, while the rest are engineered with bt-toxins to kill insect pests. . . .
According to the UN food programme, there is enough food to feed the world one and a half times over. World cereal yields have consistently outstripped population growth since 1980, but one billion are hungry. It is on account of corporate monopolies operating under the globalised economy that the poor are getting poorer and hungrier.
- No to GMO's - Civil Society vs Corporate Empire, 11 Sep 1999
Corporate patents are now preventing farmers from saving and replanting under penalty of heavy fines. This comes at a time when, within the past 10 years, many farmers in the Third World have gone back to cultivating and conserving indigenous varieties in all forms of organic, sustainable agriculture, doubling and tripling their yields and improving their livelihood, health and nutrition. They have been reversing the environmentally and socially destructive trends of the so-called high yielding monocultures of the green revolution, which have brought financial ruin and suicides to thousands in India alone, and for the same reasons it is now happening in US and Europe. The liberalisation of trade and investment under the globalised economy of the World Trade Organisation has effectively allowed corporations to buy when and where it is cheapest and sell at inflated prices, and in addition, undercut farmers by getting the state to subsidise dumping of surpluses. Farmers are reduced to serfs in a feudal system run by corporations.
As a scientist, I have to say that reductionist western science has a lot to answer for. It has been working hand in glove with corporations to bring our planet to the edge of extinction in climate change and a string of ecological disasters. The reason people feel so passionately against genetic engineering biotechnology is because we know, intuitively and intellectually, that living organisms are our last resort, our last remaining hope for regenerating and saving the planet. I saw how organic farmers in India can regenerate land completely laid waste by agrochemicals and industrial chemicals and given up for good. And they did it in just two to three years. In Japan, Takeo Furuno introduced the `one-bird revolution' ten years ago by releasing ducklings into paddy fields which are complex ecosystems of rice plants, nitrogen-fixing duckweed, roach, daphnia, plankton, and innumerable species of so-called weeds and pests including insects and the golden snail on which the ducklings thrive. I am hopeful that we can reverse the destruction, and convinced that nature's harvest is bountiful to all who, instead of engaging in perpetual warfare against nature, learn how to work in partnership with her. . . .
It is symbolic that we have gathered in Washington. We are once again fighting for independence, this time from the transnational feudal lords. When we win, and I am confident we will, it will be the triumph of democracy over feudalism, of reason over stupidity, of love and compassion over exploitation, of life over death. It will be the end of the brave new world of bad science and big business. It will be the triumph of sustainable, responsible science and industry working together for the good of all.
Lectures
- Beyond Bad Science and Big Business, 10 Nov 2000
The mechanistic mindset of western science is all of a piece with the neo-liberal economic theory promoting globalisation -- the removal of all international barriers to trade, investment and finance -- that has enabled corporations to ruthlessly exploit human beings and destroy our planet in their quest for maximum profit. This paradigm has failed us in life as it has within science, but is still perpetrated by the academia and the political mainstream, if only because it serves so well to promote gene biotechnology and to make even unethical uses seem compelling.
- Turning the Tide on the Brave New World, revised Apr 2001
This paper explains the science and technology of genetic engineering to expose the misinformation and disinformation put out by the industry and their supporters, including many of the scientists researching and exploiting the technology. The existing genetic engineering technologies are crude, unreliable, uncontrollable and unpredictable; and they are inherently hazardous. More so because they are misguided by a scientific paradigm that is fundamentally flawed, out of date and in conflict with scientific findings. That is what they are calling `sound science'.
- The Biotechnology Debate
has United the World against Corporate Rule, 27 Nov 1999Genetics has changed out of all recognition, and yet the old paradigm is still dominating the scene. The old paradigm offers a simplistic view that the characteristics or traits of organisms are each tied to specific genes, which are unaffected by one another or by the environment. And that, except for very rare random mutations, the genes are passed on unchanged to the next generation.
Instead, scientific findings within the past 20 years reveal an immense amount of cross-talk between genes. Genes are nothing if not sensitive, dynamic and responsive, to other genes, to the cell or organism in which they find themselves and to the external environment. The layer upon layer of feedback between genes and environment, not only determine whether genes are active or not, but what function and structure they have. Genes can mutate, multiply, rearrange and jump around in response to the environment. They may even jump out of the genome of one organism to infect another one. Geneticists have coined the phrase "the fluid genome" to describe the situation. It is more accurate to see the genes as having a very complicated ecology, and that for genes and genomes to remain constant, you need a balanced ecology. So the new genetics is radically ecological and holistic.
- Genetic Engineering Biotechnology -
Challenges and Opportunities, 28 May 1999... For several years, the media have been full of reports on genes for everything, from homosexuality, criminality, to alcoholism and homelessness. These claims are socially irresponsible, and go counter to all the scientific evidence accumulated within the past 20 years, which gives us the new genetics. What is the new genetics of the present day really like? I can't go into details. For that you have to read my book, Genetic Engineering Dream or Nightmare?
Let me contrast the reality with the mindset here. The mindset is a linear one-way flow of information, from the gene ultimately to the trait of the organism, with each gene acting more or less independently of all others. This is epitomised in the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology due to Francis Crick, co-disoverer of the structure of the genetic material, DNA. Genetic instruction or information is supposed to go strictly in one direction, from DNA to RNA to protein, and by implication, the trait of the organism. And no reverse information flow is allowed.
This reductionist, mechanistic scheme is to be contrasted with the organic reality that indigenous knowledge systems all over the world are all based upon, and which, contemporary western science is actually recovering and reinstating. The new genetics is just the beginning. If you want to know more about that, please read another book, The Rainbow and The Worm the 2nd edition of which also came out last year.
The organic reality is radically ecological. The genes form a thoroughly interonnected network, with influences and instructions going in both directions at once from genes to the environment and environment back to genes, and at many levels. The environment can influence not only where and when certain genes function and how they function, but can also instruct the genetic material to undergo small and large changes.
There is nothing fixed and constant about genes and genomes. The genome is the totality of all the genetic material which is organised in very precise ways. But the organisation is dynamic. The genetic material is so dynamic and flexible that geneticists have invented the term, ‘the fluid genome’ more than 15 years ago. Numerous processes are involved in chopping and changing genes, mutating genes, rearranging them, multiplying or deleting them, correcting them, converting them, or move them around, making them jump in and out of genomes.
The genetic material, furthermore, is not confined within organisms. Genes can escape into the environment and directly infect other organisms. This is called horizontal gene transfer, as opposed to vertical gene transfer, which happens in normal reproduction, from parent to offspring. Horizontal gene transfer is the process exploited by genetic engineers to transfer genes in the laboratory between organisms that would never interbreed in nature.
The new way to think about genes, therefore, is that they have a very complicated ecology, which consists of all other genes in the genome, the particular kind of cell in which the genes find themselves, whether it is a liver cell, a brain cell or a kidney cell, the physiology of the whole organism and the entire ecological environment. Genes are nothing if not sensitive and responsive, ultimately to the whole ecology. The idea that you can patent genes or pieces of genetic material for what it can do is absurd. Because what it does depends on the cellular, physiological and ecological contexts. Furthermore, it is infinitely mutable.
Science and Government
- Best Practice in the Design of GM Crops,
with Joe Cummins & Jeremy Bartlett, 6 Dec 2000The ACRE Subgroup on Best Practice in GM crop Design has invited ISIS to comment on a draft "Guidance on Best Practice in the Design of Genetically Modified Crops". One of the main ‘enabling technologies’ considered in the document is the ‘control of gene expression’, dubbed ‘terminator technology’ by its critics, that genetic engineers seed or pollen to be sterile. A consultation exercise is simultaneously taking place in the United States by the US Department of Agriculture, on ‘terminator’ patents jointly owned by the USDA and Delta and Pine Land Company. . . .
GM crops engineered with terminator technology for seed/pollen sterility are already undergoing government-funded ‘farmscale’ field trials in the UK (Aventis’ spring and winter GM oil seed rape). We question why this ACRE consultation has not taken place before the field trials were approved, especially in view of the serious new hazards introduced by the technology, as we shall describe in detail.
- The Scientific Advice that FDA Ignored (A Compilation), by Angela Ryan
The United States claims to have the most rigorous regulation for GMOs. But the Bio-Integrity lawsuit against the US Food and Drug Administration (See www.biointegrity.org) uncovered secret memoranda showing how the FDA has ignored all the strongly worded advice given by its own scientists;
new and unique risks from GMOs
- unintended effects due to random insertion of foreign DNA
- rearrangements of foreign DNA
- unexpected activation of metabolic pathways to produce toxins and allergens
- horizontal transfer of antibiotic resistance marker genes
The first GMO to be approved, Calgene's Flavr Savr tomato, failed FDA's toxicological tests, and the question of safety was never resolved by the agency.
The records show that the agency has known all along that chemical analysis is inadequate for proving the safety of GMOs. Furthermore, the potential health hazards posed by the use of antibiotic resistance marker genes was also ignored, despite clear warnings from FDA Public Health Services.
These records make scandalous reading and prove that ISIS and other groups of scientists were not the first to highlight GM food safety issues. US Government needs to resolve these safety issues, raised by its own scientists in the first place, and which remain outstanding to this day.
New Science of the Organism
- Evolution, 1998
The following description of evolution concentrates on an approach that most connects with comparative psychology, and therefore differs from standard accounts, which readers may like to consult for a more general picture. The entry in Encyclopedia Brittanica written by Sewell Wright (1965) is especially commendable. It is thought-provoking, balanced and comprehensive, running well over 12 pages of closely printed text. The present account is much more limited in scope, and is mainly concerned to bring out those areas of convergence between contemporary evolutionary theories and comparative psychology that may be fruitfully explored in future. . . .
In reaction to the recent spread of neo-Darwinian genetic determinism into the social sciences, many sociologists and psychologists have argued that the social and psychological are separate and independent of the biological. I have shown how neo-Darwinian genetic determinism is no longer tenable within biology, while an alternative approach explicitly recognizes the mutually dependent, mutually defining and transforming relationship between the biological and the psychosocial.
The epigenetic paradigm has transformed into a contemporary movement in what I shall refer to as the `new organicism'. It attempts to connect biology with non-equilibrium physics, chemistry and mathematics, offering greater precision to ideas of living organization, of organic wholeness and complexity (Nicolis and Prigogine, 1989; Saunders, 1992; Ho, 1993; Kaufman, 1993; Goodwin, 1994). In particular, the organism is seen as a coherent domain thick with activities over all space-time scales which are interlocked and intercommunicating; hence the organism itself has no levels nor preferred levels (Ho, 1993), `levels' being our own construct for making sense of the entangled whole. A new alliance between psychology and organicist biology is timely in presenting a picture of evolution that is consonant with empirical findings as well as with our deepest experience of nature's unity.
Public Lectures
- Thinking again of life’s miracle, 10 April 2000
Th[e] amazing capture of energy by coherent entanglement is what organisms do for a living, day in and day out. Think of coherent entanglement in terms of partners dancing together, perfectly in step, but each doing different movements.
As we face the threats of genetic engineering in the midst of the climate change catastrophe, poet Wendell Berry reminds us, "Thine life is a miracle, think again". Think again, for it is imperative to replace the destructive, mechanistic and instrumental view of life with the truly organic and miraculous. . . .
I would like to draw out some of the main lessons the organism teaches us about the organic whole as opposed to the mechanistic whole. The organic whole is an ideal democracy of distributed control. It does not work in terms of a hierarchy of controller versus the controlled, but by intercommunication. Ultimately, each is as much in control as it is sensitive and responsive. In the ideal coherent system, local freedom (or autonomy) and global cohesion are both maximised. That is impossible within a mechanical system where public and private, local and global, are always in conflict.
Most important of all, the organic whole is quintessentially diverse and pluralistic. The organism is the antithesis of uniformity and homogeneity. We have some 30 000 genes and 300 000 proteins, astronomical numbers of metabolites, cofactors, inorganic ions, in numerous kinds of cells, tissues and organs that make up our body, all of which are necessary for sustaining the whole. In the same way, populations are naturally diverse, and thriving ecosystems are rich in species.
- The Biology of Free Will, 1996
I am making a case for organicist science. It is not yet a conscious movement but a Zeitgeist I personally embrace, so I really mean to persuade you to do likewise by giving it a more tangible shape. The new organicism, like the old, is dedicated to the knowledge of the organic whole, hence, it does not recognize any discipline boundaries. It is to be found between all disciplines. Ultimately, it is an unfragmented knowledge system by which one lives. There is no escape clause allowing one to plead knowledge `pure' or `objective', and hence having nothing to do with life. As with the old organicism, the knowing being participates in knowing as much as in living. Participation implies responsibility, which is consistent with the truism that there can be no freedom without responsibility, and conversely, no responsiblity without freedom. There is no placing mind outside nature as Descartes has done, the knowing being is wholeheartedly within nature: heart and mind, intellect and feeling (Ho, 1994a). It is non-dualist and holistic. In all those respects, its affinities are with the participatory knowledge systems of traditional indigenous cultures all over the world.
From a thorough-going organicist perspective, one does not ask, "What is life?" but, "What is it to be alive?". Indeed, the best way to know life is to live it fully. It must be said that we do not yet have a fully fledged organicist science. But I shall describe some new images of the organism, starting from the more familiar and working up, perhaps to the most sublime, from which a picture of the organism as a free, spontaneous being will begin to emerge. I shall show how the organism succeeds in freeing itself from the `laws' of physics, from mechanical determinism and mechanistic control, thereby becoming a sentient, coherent being that, from moment to moment, freely explores and creates its possible futures. . . .
The organism maximizes both local freedom and global intercommunication. One comes to the startling discovery that the coherent organism is in a very real sense completely free. Nothing is in control, and yet everything is in control. Thus, it is the failure to transcend the mechanistic framework that makes people persist in enquiring which parts are in control, or issuing instructions; or whether free will exists, and who choreographs the dance of molecules. Does "consciousness" control matter or vice versa? These questions are meaningless when one understands what it is to be a coherent, organic whole. An organic whole is an entangled whole, where part and whole, global and local are so thoroughly implicated as to be indistinguishable, and each part is as much in control as it is sensitive and responsive. Choreographer and dancer are one and the same. The `self' is a domain of coherent activities, in the ideal, a pure state that permeates the whole of our being with no definite localizations or boundaries, as Bergson has described. . . .
Freedom in the present context means being true to `self', in other words, being coherent. A free act is a coherent act. Of course not all acts are free, as one is seldom fully coherent. Yet the mere possiblity of being unfree affirms the opposite, that freedom is real,
". . . we are free when our acts spring from our whole personality, when they express it, when they have that indefinable resemblance to it which one sometimes finds between the artist and his work."[14]
The coherent `self' is distributed and nonlocal -- being implicated in a community of other entities with which one is entangled (Whitehead, 1925; see also Ho, 1993). Thus, being true to self does not imply acting against others. On the contrary, sustaining others sustains the self, so being true to others is also being true to self. It is only within a mechanistic Darwinian perspective that freedom becomes perverted into acts against others (see Ho, 1996e). The coherent `self' can also couple coherently to the environment so that one becomes as much in control of the environment as one is responsive. The organism thereby participates in creating its own possible futures as well as those of the entire community of organisms in the universe, much as Whitehead (1925) has envisaged.
I venture to suggest, therefore, that a truly free individual is a coherent being that lives life fully and spontaneously, without fragmentation or hesitation, who is at peace with herself and at ease with the universe as she participates in creating, from moment to moment, its possible futures.
- Coherent Energy, Liquid Crystallinity and Acupuncture, 2 Oct 1999
The only explanation for acupuncture in the west is that the nerves underlying the muscles are stimulated by the needle, which then sends impulses to the limbic system of the brain, the mid-brain and the pituitary, leading to the release of endorphins and monamines, chemicals which block pain perception. This is the accepted basis for anaethesia induced by acupuncture. But it does not explain other effects. It certainly does not explain what connects the acupoints in the foot directly to the visual cortex of the brain.
The meridian theory of traditional Chinese medicine recognizes a vital energy, qi, circulating in nature and in our body. Within the body, qi is said to circulate through channels known as meridians. The meridians interconnecting the viscera and limbs, the deeper and superficial layer of the body in a branching network of increasingly fine mesh. The meridians and their acupoints have no known relationship with anatomical systems in western medicine, despite many attempts to search for correlations.
Until quite recently, I have thought little about acupuncture. Instead, I have been involved, since 1985, in trying to understand living organisation from the perspective of contemporary physics, especially of non-equilibrium thermodynamics and quantum theory. At the same time, I was developing and using new experimental approaches to investigate organisms non-destructively, as they are living and developing. As a result, I have now come to an understanding of the organism that is beginning to connect with the meridian theory, and, I hope, in due course, with holistic health systems of all other cultures. I have outlined a tentative theory of the organism in the second edition of my book, The Rainbow and The Worm, The Physics of Organisms. Let me briefly describe it and then show how it may link up with the meridian theory.
- Bioenergetics and Biocommunication, 1996
Biology today remains dominated by the genetic paradigm. The genome is seen as the repository of genetic information controlling the development of the organism, but otherwise insulated from the environment, and passed on unchanged to the next generation except for rare random mutations. The much publicized Human Genome Project is being promoted on that basis (Ho, 1995e). The genetic paradigm has already been fatally undermined at least ten years ago, when a plethora of `fluid genome' processes were first discovered, and many more have come to light since. These processes destabilize and alter genes and genomes in the course of development, some of the genetic changes are so well correlated with the environment that they are referred to as "directed mutations". Many of the genetic changes are passed on to the next generation. As I pointed out at the time, heredity can no longer be seen to reside solely in the DNA passed on from one generation to the next. Instead, the stability and repeatability of development -- which we recognize as heredity -- is distributed in the whole gamut of dynamic feedback interrelationships between organism and environment from the socioecological to the genetic. All of these may leave imprints that are passed on to subsequent generations: as cultural traditions or artefacts, maternal or cytoplasmic effects, gene expression states, as well as genetic (DNA sequence) changes (see Ho, 1986; 1996). . . .
Thus, the essence of the organic whole is that it is distributed throughout its constituent parts, with no centre of control, no governors, no hierarchical levels of line-managers or regulators processing information down the line of command. Instead, pervasive, moment to moment intercommunication throughout the system renders part and whole, local and global completely indistinguishable. The existing mechanistic framework is most inadequate in coming to grips with the organic whole. In the next Section, I shall present an alternative frame-work based on coherence, in particular, on quantum coherence. . . .
A quantum coherent system maximizes both global cohesion and local freedom (Ho, 1993). This property, technically referred to as factorizability, enables the body to be performing all sorts of different coordinated functions simultaneously (Ho, 1995b). It also enables instantaneous (nonlocal) and noiseless intercommunication to take place throughout the system (Ho 1995f). As I am writing, my digestive system is working independently, my metabolism busily transforming chemical energy in all my cells, putting some away in the longer term stores of fat and glycogen, while converting most of it into readily utilizable forms such as ATP. Similarly, my muscles are keeping in tone and allowing me to work the keyboard, while, hopefully, my neurons are firing in wonderfully coherent patterns in my brain. Nevertheless, if the telephone should ring in the middle of all this, I would turn to pick it up without hesitation.
The importance of factorizability is evoked by the movie character, Dr. Strangelove, portrayed by Peter Sellers as a megalomaniac scientist who wanted to rule the world. He was a wheelchair-bound paraplegiac, who could not speak without raising his arm in the manner of a Nazi salute. That is just the symptom of the loss of factorizability which is the hallmark of quantum coherence. . . .
The main implication of quantum coherence for living organization is that, in maximizing both local freedom and global intercommunication, the organism is in a very real sense completely free. Nothing is in control, and yet everything is in control. Thus, it is the failure to transcend the mechanistic framework that makes people persist in enquiring which parts are in control, or issuing instructions or information. These questions are meaningless when one understands what it is to be a coherent, organic whole. An organic whole is an entangled whole, where part and whole, global and local are so thoroughly implicated as to be indistinguishable, and where each part is as much in control as it is sensitive and responsive. The challenge for us all is to rethink information processing in the context of the coherent organic whole.
- Biosafety, Patents and Biopiracy, 1999
Biopiracy is another burning issue. Gurdial Nijar, legal consultant of the Third World Network, pointed out that "indigenous knowledge has fed, clothed and healed the world for millenia". The concept of patenting and owning life is antithetical to all cultures in the Third World. Furthermore, it denies the "cumulative innovative genius" of farmers over the generations. Marina Silva, Senator of the Federal Government and champion of indigenous rights, spoke passionately of the need to protect local communities and the inextricable link between human and natural biodiversity, adding a plea to western scientists to work together with the deeply reliable indigenous knowledge that has been tested for millenia and tens of millenia, and for "innovative legislation" to make this possible. . . .
Actually, biopiracy is not new. Adalberto Carim Antonio, Judge of the State of Amazonas, points out that 70 000 seeds were taken by Harry Wickham on behalf of the Kew Gardens in Britain. Wickham was subsequently knighted for his efforts, but this act plunged the state of Amazonas into poverty for 50 years.
Dr. Mauro Carneiro, eminent molecular biologist and Chief Coordinator of all the biotechnology research in the Government Research Institutes of South American Countries, is firmly opposed to the new patents on life, and to the commercialisation of science. Actually, the current patenting of genes and cell lines is also denying the cumulative innovative genius of generations of western scientists who have contributed selflessly to the intellectual commons for the public good.
- Gaia and the Evolution of Coherence, 10 Aug 1993
What we want to do in this paper is to present a vision of ecological balance from contemporary Western biophysics which shows just how intimately we are connected with one another and with nature. How all nature is one resonating and intercommunicating whole. We shall be drawing from the work of many, including ourselves, who have derived inspiration from the union of biology and physics. . . .
What does the study of coherence contribute to our understanding of the unity of life? To return to our overview on the cycle of life, we can see that sunlight is the most fundamental source of energy, which is supplied at the high frequency end, and biological systems as a whole display the natural tendency to delay the decay of this high level energy for as long as possible. This is why the earth's natural biosphere is not a monoculture, indeed, it is the very diversity of life that is responsible for delaying the dissipation of the sun's energy for as long as possible by feeding it into ever longer chains and webs and multiple parallel cycles in the course of evolution. But that is not the entire story, for the the most effective way of hanging on to this energy for as long as possible is by the formation of a coherent platform of oscillations which expands the photon field into a coherent state of growing bandwidth. This is the f(l) = const. distribution which allows the sun's energy to spill over into longer and longer wavelengths. This may be why organisms have such different life-spans; the trend in evolution is towards the emergence of organisms with longer and longer life-spans and finally in the case of social organisms and human beings, we see the emergence of social traditions that span many generations. The link with social tradition is the clue to the meaning of this energy flow through a coherent field of ever increasing bandwidth. For it is at the same time a flow and a creation of information. Electromagnetic signals of different frequencies are involved in communication within and between organisms, and between organisms and the environment. The coherent platform is a prerequisite for universal communication.
Thus, it seems that the essence of the living state is to build up and extend the coherent spatio-temporal platform for communication starting from the energy of the sun initially absorbed by green plants. Living systems are thus neither the subjects alone, nor objects isolated, but both subjects and objects in a mutually communicating universe of meaning. In contrast to the neo-Darwinist point of view, their capacity for evolution depends, not on rivalry or on might in the struggle for existence. Rather, it depends on their capacity for communication. So in a sense, it is not individuals as such which are developing but living systems interlinked into a coherent whole. Just as the cells in an organism take on different tasks for the whole, different populations enfold information not only for themselves, but for all other organisms, expanding the consciousness of the whole, while at the same time becoming more and more aware of this collective consciousness. Human consciousness may have its most significant role in the development and creative expression of the collective consciousness of nature.
Scientific Papers
- Quantum Coherence and Conscious Experiience, 1997
I do not think quantum theory per se will lead us through the mechanistic deadlock to further understanding. Instead, we need a thoroughly organicist way of thinking that transcends both conventional thermodynamics and quantum theory. I have focussed on the notion of quantum coherence and the attendant nonlocal intercommunication as the expression of the radical wholeness of the organism, where global and local are mutually entangled, and every part is as much in control as it is sensitive and responsive.
In this paper, I shall briefly summarize the arguments for quantum coherence in the living system, then go on to explore how certain key features of conscious experience may be understood. I suggest that the wholeness of the organism is based on a high degree of quantum coherence. Quantum coherence underlies the "unity of intentionality" and our inner identity of the singular "I". It may account for binding and segmentation in the perceptive act, the distributed, holographic nature of memory, and the distinctive quality of each experienced occasion.
- What is (Schrödinger's) Negentropy?, 1994
I attempt to outline, qualitatively, a `thermodynamics of organized complexity' based on energy storage and mobilization in a coherent space-time structured system maintained far from thermodynamic equilibrium by energy flow. I propose that symmetrically coupled cycles will arise in open systems capable of energy storage, and that for such systems, the equal population of energy over all space-time domains (the 'k = const.' regime) is the extremum state. This regime is characterized by the maximum of the Gibbs entropy function, SG = -kSj pj ln pj, in which the potential degrees of freedom are maximized over all space-time domains, but it is also the state of minimum entropy because the activities in all space-time domains are effectively coupled to a single actual degree of freedom.
- Bioenergetics and the Coherence of Organisms, 1995
The problem of living organization can be stated as follows: how is it that an organism consisting of a multiplicity of tissues and cells and astronomical numbers of molecules of many different kinds can develop and function as a whole? How does the organism manage to have energy at will, whenever and wherever required, and in a perfectly coordinated way? One idea that has emerged over the past 20 years is that it is coherent. While the meaning of coherence is unambiguous within quantum theory, difficulties arise when we try to apply the concept to a complex living system with a highly differentiated space-time structure.
The coherence of the organism can most easily be appreciated by a recently developed noninvasive technique that allows one to see the whole organism down to the details of the molecules that make up its tissues. Brilliant interference colours are produced by recombining plane-polarized light split up into slow and fast rays on passing through birefringent liquid crystalline regimes. The principles involved are the same as those used in identifying mineral crystals in geology. Different tissues appear in different colours and varying in intensity according to the orientation and birefingence of the molecules involved as well as their degree of order. . . .
This image also brings out the wholeness of the organism. The Drosophila larva -- like all other animals from protozoa to vertebrates without exception -- is polarized along the anteroposterior axis, as though the entire organism is one uniaxial crystal. This leaves us in little doubt that the organism is a singular whole, despite the diverse multiplicity of its constituent parts.
I mentioned that the molecules of the tissues maintain their crystalline order when they are actively transforming energy. The evidence suggests that the crystalline order is dependent on energy transformation, so that the more energetic the organism, the more intensely colourful it is, implying that the molecular motions are all the more coherent. This is consistent with ultrasensitive high-speed measurements of contracting muscles which show all the molecular motors cycling in synchronous steps. Similarly, X-ray diffraction reveals that a high degree of supramolecular order is maintained during isometric contraction. The coherence of the organism is therefore closely tied up with its energetic status. To be precise, it is tied up with the way energy is stored and readily mobilized over all its space-time domains.
The problem I address in this paper is how to understand the coherence of organisms in terms of energy relationships as revealed by thermodynamics and quantum theory. Some of the arguments are given elsewhere, though none of them as yet complete or fully coherent. . . .
I have approached the problem of living organization by considering bioenergetic relationships in thermodynamics, where I show how some of the main features of energy mobilization in the living system -- its efficiency and rapidity -- can be explained by symmetrically coupled, cyclical flows of stored energy over all space-time domains. That is where the possibility for coherence emerges as a critical phase transition, thus connecting with Fröhlich's ideas of coherent excitations and finally, with quantum coherence. The thermodynamical description both leads to, and converges with, the description based on quantum coherence. The living system is maximally efficient, communicative, responsive, and most of all, factorizable, in the sense that the maximum correlation of the local to the global is realized simultaneously with the maximum local freedom. When one ceases to see that as a paradox, one has finally grasped the meaning of organic wholeness or the coherence of organisms.
Sustainable Agriculture
- One Bird - Ten Thousand Treasures,
How the Duck in the Paddy Fields Can Feed the World, 1999Tony Boys, my interpreter for the occasion, who teaches English language and does research on how to make Japan sustainable, told me about an organic farmer not far from Fukuoka, who has done wonders introducing ducks into the rice paddy field. . . .
Paddy fields fill every available inch of land that is not built upon, and most of the plots are tiny. That was a real surprise for me, who, like most people, imagine Japan to be a fully industrialized developed nation. Apparently, small-scale rice farming is still the norm. But, according to Tony, the Japanese Government want to change that, to make farming more efficient. Tony also told me that Japan was once self-sufficient in soya beans, but now 98% is imported. Consumers are up in arms as soya is extensively used in Japanese cuisine and a lot of it comes from the United States, the world's biggest grower of transgenic soya. . . .
[T]hey do not mean success in financial terms, they mean success of the farming method, which, since its introduction ten years ago, is now spreading all over Southeast Asia. In Japan, about 10 000 farmers have taken it up. The practice has been adopted by farmers in South Korea, Vietnam, The Phillipines, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia. Farmers have increased their yield 20 to 50 percent or more in the first year. One farmer in Laos increased his income three-fold. It is obviously a boon to Third World farmers.
The paddy field with ducks and all is really a complex, well-balanced, self-maintaining, self-propagating ecosystem. The only external input is the small amount of waste grain for the ducks, and the output? A delicious, nutritious harvest of organic rice, duck and roach. It is amazingly productive. The Furunos' farm is 2 hectares; 1.4 of which are paddy fields, while the rest is devoted to growing organic vegetables. The organic vegetables fields were full of butterflies of all kinds when we visited them the next morning. This small farm yields annually 7 tonnes of rice, 300 ducks, 4000 ducklings, and enough vegetables to supply 100 people. At that rate, no more than 2 percent of the population need to become farmers in order to feed a nation. Tony Boys indeed believes that with proper management, Japan can become self-sufficient once more. So who needs transgenic crops? The choice is clear, not only for Japan, but for all of South East Asia, and the world at large.
Interviews
- The Organic Revolution in Science
and Implications for Science and Spirituality, 4-10 Sep 2000The machine metaphor has dominated the west for at least two thousand years before it was officially toppled by relativity theory and quantum physics at the turn of the 20th century. Einstein's relativity theory shattered the Newtonian universe of absolute space and time into a profusion of space-time frames in which space and time are no longer neatly separable. Furthermore, each space-time is tied to a particular observer, who therefore, not only has a different clock, but also a different map. Stranger still -- for western science, that is, as it comes as little surprise to other knowledge systems, or to the artists in all cultures -- quantum theory demanded that we stop seeing things as separate solid objects with definite (simple) locations in space and time. Instead, they are de-localised, indefinite, mutually entangled entities that change and evolve like organisms.
Leading thinkers of the age such as Henri Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, J.S. Haldane and Joseph Needham were inspired to develop a science of the organism appropriate to the new understanding of nature, that would transform the entire knowledge system of the west. Whitehead, in particular, declared that we cannot understand nature except as an organism that participates fully in knowing. For me, that was perhaps the most significant turning point. It was to re-affirm what we all knew in our heart of hearts: that we are inextricably within nature; and that we participate in shaping and creating nature, for better or for worse.
Science and Society
- The Human Genome - A Big White Elephant, 9 Jun 2001
Genetic engineering, in agriculture as in medicine, uses the same tools and makes the same kinds of artificial constructs, all of which enhance horizontal gene transfer and recombination, precisely the processes that create new pathogens and spread drug and antibiotic resistance genes.
The other big killers are cardiovascular disease, which tops the list at 31%, and cancer at 13%, after infectious diseases. Both cardiovascular disease and cancer are predominantly illnesses of rich industrialised nations. Cancers are linked to ionising radiation [15] and to the hundreds of actual and potential carcinogens among the industrial and agricultural chemicals polluting our air, water and soil [16].
The incidence of cancer is known to increase with industrialisation and pesticide use. Women in non-industrial Asian countries have a much lower incidence of breast cancer compared to women living in the industrialised west. However, when Asian women emigrate to Europe and the United States, their incidence of cancer jumps to that of the white European women within a single generation. Similarly, when DDT and other pesticides were phased out in Israel, breast cancer mortality in pre-menopausal women dropped by 30%. Environmental influences clearly swamp out even large genetic differences [17].
Health genomics research will do nothing to identify or remove the causes of cancer. Instead, it will identify all the genes that ‘predispose’ the victims to cancers, to enable corporations that have made lots of money polluting the environment with carcinogens to make lots more money selling diagnostic tests and ‘miracle cures’. Patients are bankable assets, and terminal cancer patients all the more so.
- Public Subsidy of Failed Corporate Science, 10 Jun 2001
The European Union is about to finalise Framework VI, its new funding programme for public research in member countries for the period 2002-2006. Anyone hoping for support of independent, socially accountable science will be sorely disappointed.
Unfortunately, the agreed draft just published shows all the signs of the corporate agenda. The goals are to enhance Europe’s global "competitiveness", to boost "European added value", and if that were not enough, it explicitly states, "Business should be publicly funded if this provides incentive to carry out high-risk or long-term research which could be unprofitable in the short term. . . .
Nowhere in the entire framework proposal is there any mention of public good or social accountability, and none of the politicians at the Green Research Forum (June 6) thought to speak to them either. . . .
It is in supporting nuclear energy research that the Framework gets the prize for subsidising failed corporate science. Most of the nuclear energy research budget is in fact allocated to EURATOM. This is a hangover from the EURATOM treaty of 1957, widely condemned as anachronistic, and should have been replaced with an agreement on solar energy long ago. Han-Josef Fell, Green MEP leading the critique of Framework VI, pointed out that the money spent on nuclear energy is more than ten times that for all the other energies put together, and yet it is responsible for just 5-7% of our energy supply. "It is the biggest flop!" he said. . . .
Germany legislated for increasing renewable energy cover from 5.9% to 12% by 2010. When it became law in 1999, renewable energy use increased by 1.1% in a single year. At that rate, the target will be reached long before 2010. This shows what governments can do to encourage the industry. . . .
Framework VI as it currently stands, does a lot to subsidise failed corporate science and technologies, and commits us to even more of the same. This is simply intolerable, at a time when we are in such dire need of support for independent science and scientists to protect us from all the failures and to anticipate and repair the damages that have been done.
- Big Business = Bad Science?, 29 May 2001
Commercial pressures are distorting academic science and society is not getting the full benefit from the science it is paying for. Prof. Peter Saunders and Dr. Mae-Wan Ho report on a recent conference in London.
- Towards a New Ethic of Science, 16 Mar 2000
- The New Thought Police - Suppressing Dissent in Science,
with Jonathan Mathews, 16 Feb 2001[A] report on the seamless way in which the corporations, the state and the scientific establishment are co-ordinating their efforts to suppress scientific dissent and force feed the world with GM crops.
. . . Recently, a detailed Code of Practice on Science and Health Communication was launched jointly by the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) and the Royal Institution, to address concerns about the ways in which some issues are covered in the media, unjustified ‘scare stories’ as well as those "which offer false hopes to the seriously ill". It also claims to be in response to the call for such a code by the Select Committee on Science and Technology.
The code is aimed not only at journalists but also at scientists. A draft of the code recommended journalists to consult only with ‘expert contacts’, a secret directory of which will be provided only to "registered journalists with bona fide credentials". It discouraged scientists from disclosing unpublished results even at professional scientific meetings, thus breaking with a time-honoured tradition of open communication among scientists.
The Royal Institution has long been involved in presenting science to the public, but its Director, Susan Greenfield, is also an advisor to the SIRC. The latter, it turns out, is a metamorphosed social research company which boasts of its ability to provide corporate clients with effective public relations via its ‘positive research’. The SIRC is both directly and indirectly funded by the food industry. . . .
We must reject the imposition of any Code of Practice designed to suppress open scientific debate and discussion. Instead, concerted effort must be made by independent journalists and scientists to promote genuine, critical public understanding of science, so that the widest cross-section of civil society may be empowered to participate in making decisions on science and technology. Only then, can we hope to restore democratic control of science to scientists themselves and to civil society at large.
- Prince Charles Speaks for the People - and Scientists Too, May 2000
Prince Charles was speaking for the people when he called for support for organic farming. Who could disagree when he argued that if a fraction of the money currently being invested in developing genetically manipulated crops were applied to understanding and improving traditional systems of agriculture, which have stood the all-important test of time, the results would be "remarkable"? . . .
Prince Charles could have taken heart from the fact that the mechanistic view is rapidly losing ground within contemporary western science. An organic revolution is sweeping across the disciplines, from quantum physics to the ecology of complexity and molecular genetics. In every discipline, the message is the same: nature is dynamic, interconnected and interdependent. Proponents of gene biotechnology are stuck in the mechanistic era, and our mainstream academic institutions are perpetrating the outmoded paradigm if only because it serves so well to promote the genetic engineering of life. The emerging science of the organism reinstates the holistic perspectives of indigenous cultures world wide. It also reveals that the romantic poets' vision of the oneness of nature is the truly rational point of view, while the mechanistic tradition is deeply flawed and irrational.
I was disappointed that he ended by saying that taking a cautious approach or achieving balance in life is never as much fun as the alternatives. He made it sound as if living in a sustainable world means leading a less satisfying life. Yet just the opposite is the case. Instead of being isolated and anxious in a culture dominated by competition and exploitation, we can look forward to experiencing the joy of being connected and sustained. It is like being able to sing and dance in tune and in step with all there is in the universe while we take part in co-creating it.
- The Organic Revolution in Science, 29 Oct 1999
In a very real sense, no person is alone, no man is an island. We are not isolated atoms each jostling and competing against the rest in a Darwinian struggle for survival of the fittest. Instead, each of us is supported and constituted, ultimately, by all there is in the universe. We are at home in the universe. In this entangled universe, we cannot do violence to our fellow human beings or our fellow inhabitants of the earth without doing violence to ourselves. And the most effective way to benefit oneself may be to benefit others.
Most of all, we are not impotent observers outside nature subject to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Instead we are participants in the creation drama which is constantly unfolding. We are constantly co-creating and re-creating ourselves and other organisms in the universe, shaping our common futures, making our dreams come true and realizing our potentials and our ideals.
All this presupposes that each organism is a quantum coherent being that can be described by a wave-function, with the attendant properties of quantum superposition and non-locality. Is there any evidence that organisms are quantum coherent? And what does quantum coherence entail? In my book, The Rainbow and the Worm, I have proposed that the organism is, in the ideal, a quantum superposition of coherent activities, with instantaneous (non-local) noiseless intercommunication throughout the system.
The idea that organisms may be quantum coherent was still beyond the pale in mainstream biology when I proposed it in 1993 [4]. I was inspired by Herbert Fröhlich's [5] original proposal in the 1960s that organisms may store energy as ‘coherent excitations’, and by Fritz Popp, who suggested that organisms are quantum coherent photon fields [6]. Today, mainstream scientists including Roger Penrose [7], are invoking quantum coherence to account for the coherent electrical activities observed by neurophysiologists in widely separated parts of the brain [8].
- Use and Abuse of The Precautionary Principle, by Peter Saunders,
Introduction by Mae-Wan Ho, 13 Jul 2000There has been a lot written and said about the precautionary principle recently, much of it misleading. Some have stated that if the principle were applied it would put an end to technological advance. Others claim to be applying the principle when they are not. From all the confusion, it is easy to mistake it for some deep philosophical idea that is inordinately difficult to grasp.
In fact, the precautionary principle is very simple. All it actually amounts to is this: if one is embarking on something new, one should think very carefully about whether it is safe or not, and should not go ahead until reasonably convinced it is. It is just common sense.
Too many of those who fail to understand or to accept the precautionary principle are pushing forward with untested, inadequately researched technologies, and insisting that it is up to the rest of us to prove them dangerous before they can be stopped. The perpetrators also refuse to accept liability; so if the technologies turn out to be hazardous, as in many cases they have, someone else will have to pay the penalty.
- The Unholy Alliance, A Review of GE Biotech Hazards, Jul 1997
- ISIS News #6, September 2000
- ISIS News #5, July 2000
- ISIS News #4, March 2000
- ISIS News #3, December 1999
Science and Commerce
- The `Golden Rice' - An Exercise in How Not to Do Science,
with Joe Cummins, 2000
- No to GMO's -- Civil Society vs Corporate Empire, 11 Sept 1999
- The Unholy Alliance, A Review of GE Biotech Hazards, Jul 1997
Science and Government
- Scientists Against the Brave New World, Jul 2000
World Scientists in US Congress and Special Biotechnology ForumThere was standing room only when Rev. David Beckmann began his introduction and people were still filing in. The educational forum "Can biotechnology help fight world hunger?" (June 29, 2000) attracted a record number of congressional staff as well as members of the public on Capitol Hill. Our World Scientists Open Letter, updated, and signed by 327 scientists from 38 countries (now 452 scientists from 56 countries), was presented to US Congress on the occasion.
The event was sponsored and organized by Representative Tony Hall, well-known and respected for raising the profile of world hunger in Congress. In his opening remarks, he stressed that he was not interested to know if biotechnology could make money, but in how it could do something for hungry kids and how we can share prosperity with the poor.
Science and Art
- In Search of the Sublime
The experience of the sublime lies at the heart of the aesthetic feeling, which is not exclusively provoked by `works of art' in the conventional sense, but also by `works of science'. . . .
I discovered Bell's idea just as I was becoming quite convinced, through my own activities and experiences, of the symmetry between science and art as ways of getting to know nature intimately. To me, science and art are both creative acts which involve "seeing deeply into reality and drawing seductive patterns from a universal ground of similitude. Seductive because they are communicable to other experiencing consciousness resonating to the same ground, being themselves likewise connected. This actualization of patterns or forms, and the communion of shared experience through a universal ground constitutes the essence of both artistic and scientific creativity. Science, like art, creates the significant form that lies at the basis of all aesthetic experiences.
- Organism and Psyche in a Participatory Universe, 1998
The Jungian ideal of the whole person is one whose cell and psyche, body and mind, inner and outer, are fully integrated, and hence completely in tune with nature. Jung's ideas on psychical development show many parallels to those relating to the organism. Similarly, Laszlo's theory of the quantum holographic universe views the universe effectively as a kind of superorganism, constantly becoming, being created through the activities of its constituent organisms at every level. The organism is thus the most universal archetype. I describe a theory of the organism, based on quantum coherence, which is, in some respects, a microcosm of Laszlo's universe. It involves key notions of the maximization of local autonomy and global cohesion, of universal participation, of sensitivity and responsiveness, which have profound implications for our global future. . . .
The true love of self is also inextricably the love of humanity and of all nature. That is why we feel obliged to serve, to help, to alleviate suffering and pain just as they were our own. Scientists like David Bohm, Ervin Laszlo and others are indeed trying to recover that lost love, the universal wholeness and entanglement that enables us to emphathize and to be compassionate.
The whole is never static, it is constantly dying and reborning, decaying and renewing, breaking down to build up again. The same cycles of disintegration and re-integration occur whether one is looking at the energy metabolism of our body or the stream of consciousness out of which we individuate our psyche. During the normal 'steady state' of our existence, the multitudes of infinitesimal deaths and rebirths are intricately balanced so that the old changes imperceptibly into the new. However, whenever the attracting centre of the new is radically different from the old, a larger, and at times, complete disintegration may be needed before the new can individuate. It is like the caterpillar which must completely dissolve so that the beautiful butterfly can emerge. That is our hope for the approaching millennium.
- Natural Being and a Coherent Society, 1996
Science is a system of concepts and tools for knowing and living with nature. As such, it should be integral to any human society from the most primitive prehistoric culture to the industrialized nations of to-day. But whereas the primitive lived within nature by her knowledge which is the totality of her personal and tribal experience, the civilized man is imprisoned outside nature, of which, therefore, he can have no real knowledge.
Cartesian mind-matter dualism and Newtonian mechanics began a process of the dissolution of our natural being; which Darwin completed by reducing organisms (including humans) to objects, isolated from the environment, and buffeted by blind selective forces. This deep alienation from nature and from our own natural being is the human condition of the modern man. It is his paradise lost. From then on, nature would be opaque to him, condemned as he is, to a knowing from without, to a life alone and devoid of meaning.
In this paper, I wish to deconstruct the myth of the Darwinian man by re-examining the biological roots of human nature to show how it is inextricably bound up with the social. From studies on animal and plant communities to `primitive' human socieities, we see that sociality is at the basis of life: it is the direct consequence and expression of the fundamental unity and interconnectedness of all nature. The unity of nature is itself a universal, intuitive insight that contemporary western science is validating in every aspect, particularly in the new biophysics of coherence in living systems. Authentic knowledge is premised on this coherence and interconnectedness. Social and moral values arise explicitly and naturally in a life coherent with authentic knowledge. From this perspective, culture is the creation of meaning and knowledge in partnership with nature, in which every social being participates. The coherent society is the society of natural beings living in harmony with nature's creative process. . . .
In reacting to the claims of some sociobiolgists that competitiveness, aggression, and worse, the propensity for rape and murder in males are universal human characteristics, Clairborne points out that in reality, the overwhelming majority of human beings readily engage in activities to help or benefit others, whereas only a tiny minority have ever committed criminal acts. Therefore it may be argued that altruism, rather than aggression is the universal human characteristic. He does not regard altruism to be innate, however. Rather, he sees it as a learned behaviour based on the universal human capacity for empathy, that is, for deriving pleasure from other people's pleasure and distress from their distress. And hence, `satisfying the needs of others, and thereby sharing their satisfaction, is intrinsically rewarding.' [12] This empathy, as I shall try to show, comes from the experience of connectedness with kin, with fellow creatures and ultimately with all nature.
Sustainable Agriculture