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Genetic engineering

Bayezid Dawla
Professor Zeba Seraj expressed her sententious reactions to my 'sweeping remarks' against the 'Gene Revolution' in a letter published in your esteemed daily on 9 January 2004. I am afraid Professor Zeba has captured a set of wrong notions about the application and utility of biotechnology. Therefore, I would like to make the following points for her kind attention and judicious consideration.
First of all, the analogy of putting a ban on knives seems to construct a naive argument. True, like any technology, biotechnology too has positive and negative outcomes and impacts. The negative impacts may, however, be dangerous and devastating. The danger occurs when the negative forces outstrip the positive outcomes in a fashion similar to the catastrophes caused by the nuclear bombs, which with their current reserves on earth can destroy this planet so many times. "To me, it signifies dreadful things. The end of imagination" (Arundhati Roy: The Algebra of Infinite Justice, 2002). Therefore, it is important to beware of the disastrous outcomes of technology instead of subscribing blindly to the choices dictated by the multinational companies.
Secondly, the professor argues for a 'need to double our food production in the next 20 years' ... [because the] 'current strategies in yield enhancement have already been exhausted'. This argument implies the unguarded ambition of a scientist reasonably with inadequate understanding of the politics of food and hunger. The thesis that increased ('double our food') food production is the sole panacea for hunger and poverty is, in essence, a myth that has been constructed historically by the western 'developers' who sold their 'Green Revolution' technology to the 'developing countries' to 'grow more food'. The 'Revolution' finally harvested illusion and ended up with ecological disaster. (I tried to reflect on a few issues in an article entitled Questioning the Success of Green Revolution published in The Daily Star on 11 December 2003.) We, however, know that poverty is the result of unequal distribution of resources, so the technological quest for 'yield enhancement' will rather increase inequalities than address the structural causes of poverty and hunger. Winner of Nobel Prize for Economics Amartya Sen argues, "A person may be forced into starvation even when there is plenty of food around if he loses his ability to buy food in the market" (Development As Freedom, 161: 2002 Oxford). "We do not need GMOs [genetically modified organisms] to feed the 800 million people who are hungry," says Jacques Diouf, Director-General of UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). "Food supply is usually enough even in the poorest countries but hungry people often cannot afford to buy. It is poverty, inadequate purchasing power, lack of access to resources, such as land on which to grow food, which are the root causes of hunger. GM technology does not address those causes."
Thirdly, scientists have warned that the technology will bring about environmental wreckage and ecological degradation. I believe that the professor has also been aware of a 'long-awaited field-scale trials [which] showed that the [GM] crops damaged wildlife, and would have a serious long-term effect on bee, butterfly and bird populations' (Paul Brown and John Vidal: The Guardian, 17 October 2003). Biotechnology thus threatens our common access to food safety and food sovereignty.
Finally, the professor argues, "It is of no use citing Europe's aversion to genetically modified crops -- they have plenty of food and their citizens can enjoy the luxury of choosing what they eat." This argument suggests a double-standard principle and judgement giving the rich 'luxury' of choices and exposing the hungry, poor in the 'developing countries' to subhuman realities. This means we have no choice and no freedom indeed! As human beings we are so base and so hungry that we have to gobble anything up without consulting our conscience at a time when the global conscious voices are staging protests against genetic contamination and the 'unethical' consumption of transgenic products.
Hence, the quest of science must consist with the spirit of societal progress towards common interests and welfare. Any innovation of science that fails to respect our human values and that subverts the ethical considerations of our judgement simply becomes a narrow means of pursuing individual passions.
Let us, therefore, hope that scientific investigation be not the pursuit of passion for narrowed interests; that scientists do not run after 'cheap popularity' and strive to heighten their reputation to the global level; and that they do not get 'lured' by an imported notion of 'modernising the mindset' to construct 'the exciting future of biotechnology' by undermining the age-old indigenous cultures and thousands of years of seed-saving tradition. The sudden, dramatic turning point may hit our food chain, which "would be effectively padlocked with the [transnational] corporations [TNCs] the sole owners of the key". It is, therefore, sensible and urgent to stop the profit-obsessed TNCs from taking control of our common destiny. Let us not succumb to the "fatal passion which misled our first parents..." (Bertrand Russell, The Corsican Ordeal of Miss X, In: Horrors Manufactured Here).
Bayezid Dawla works at the Institute for Development Policy Analysis and Advocacy (IDPAA), PROSHIKA, Dhaka.