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The ISIS Report (www.i-sis.org.uk/sapp/php) cites
that genetic engineering further relies on the assumption that the
piece of DNA that is transferred from one organism into a totally
different one—from a fish to a tomato, for example—will have
precisely the same effect in the second organism that it did in the
first, and no other. This flies in the face of our modern
understanding of genetics and of developmental biology. Organisms
are a lot more complicated than that. Molecular biologists have long
since given up defining a gene in terms of a more or less contiguous
stretch of DNA. This alone raises the question of what exactly it is
that is transferred.
We have a long way to go before
we understand how the genome works, except that it is remarkably
fluid and dynamic as it responds to multiple levels of feedback from
the environment, to maintain itself constant or to change as
appropriate to ecological challenges. That may make it an
interesting time to be a biologist, but it also means that in
genetic engineering we are playing with a system we do not
understand.
What are the benefits? We are
often told that we must push ahead with the technology because
otherwise millions of people in the developing world will starve.
But there is easily enough food to feed everyone, and the best
estimates are that using only conventional crops that will remain
the case for at least 25 years and probably far into the future as
well. If people are starving—and millions are—that is not
because there is not enough food but because it is not getting to
them.
The problem of hunger is a
problem not of production but of distribution. And distribution is
not helped if we shift from small scale, local farming, where food
is produced by the people who need it, to large agribusiness. Yet it
is the latter that genetic modification is designed to promote. Monoculture
increases susceptibility to disease and pests, whereas smaller scale
biodiverse farming practices can mitigate the problem to the point
where there is no need even to consider genetic modification as a
solution.
Genetic modification may offer
the opportunity for improving crops at some future time. The
precautionary principle does not rule this out, nor does it exclude
properly contained research to develop new varieties. It does,
however, require that we should not press ahead with commercial
crops until we have carried out the research necessary to establish
that the technology we are using is safe.
The precautionary principle is
neither so weak that it is empty nor so strong that it would halt
all progress in technology. Far from being unscientific, it is based
on science and it generally requires that more good science, not
less, be undertaken so that sweeping assurances of safety can be
replaced by solid evidence. The principle does, however, place more
of the responsibility for safety on those who stand to profit if the
technology goes ahead, rather than on those who will have to bear
the costs if things go wrong.
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