Session Science & Health: Does Science Work Against Nature?
SPEAKERS: Michael Specter, Author on Science & Technology
Suman Sahai, Convenor, Gene Campaign speaks on Science and Genetic Engineering
SESSION CHAIRPERSON: Raj Chengappa, Managing Editor, India Today
SUMAN SAHAI (SPEECH)
Ladies and Gentleman it’s a pleasure to be here and it is not very often that you get an opportunity to discuss science and technology and it’s benefits in a gathering like this. So I particularly appreciate that India Today has put together this agenda. Michael has just laid before you very comprehensively, and in great detail all the classical arguments that are put out in defence of genetic engineering and genetically engineered crops. There are some things that I agree on there are many I don’t, as a practicing laboratory scientist trained in genetic engineering myself there are few things I like to clarify.
The oft-repeated phrase that genetic engineering is very precise it is not true. Genetic engineering so far as we use it today is actually a very imprecise technology. We can neither guide the gene to where we want it nor we can get the number of copies of genes that we want. If I want to put in two genes I can’t. I shoot in genes into a cell and I wait for something to happen. So there is great randomness to this technology.
Which is all right provided you take on that randomness on board and then work with the fact it is not a precise technology, and therefore you have to work with the fact that you will have to deal with safety testing. On the question of whether this is repeated very often, the starving millions, hungry hordes, the growing population and how genetic engineering is one of the important tools to address this problem there is no evidence of this so far.
Whether genetic engineering will also play a role will be seen in the future. Today the technology is very restricted, its application is wide, its offer is very restricted but unfortunately the mythology of genetic engineering is replete with examples that’s are not substantiated by fact and by the reality. So if we really talk about hunger we need to look at the number of things that are happening and technology solutions that many-many social scientist have looked at it already.
Hunger happens when essentially two things happen, one the person does not have access to productive assets like land or water to grow that food or does not have a job and enough money in the pocket to buy that food. We have today in this country and in many other countries in Asia a tremendous amount of genetic potential in the crops that we have that we cannot realize that we are not realizing because farmers don’t afford enough fertilizers, soil health cannot be maintained and a number of question that have been very well understood.
Certainly technology can play a role but to give credence to a technology beyond what the technology has so far shown is perhaps misguided. On the question of whether Bt Brinjal was a misguided decision I would obviously differ not because I think that you should have banned Bt Brinjal but because of all the things had gone wrong with Bt Brinjal.
Ladies and gentleman I present before you the thesis that this a regulated technology, this technology has got to be regulated cautiously because scientists have acknowledged that there are safety concerns. Regulation was asked for not by political leaders, not by civil society, not by NGOs, but by scientists therefore we must take seriously the question of safety of these products and the fact that it is regulated. Bt Brinjal went through a series of processes. There were grave and outstanding questions about the way it had been regulated. This country has a policy on mandatory labeling of GM foods, this is the policy we represented in all of the meetings at Codex Alimentarius internationally.
Yet when we gave permission or GOI for Bt brinjal release, the country has not got it yet – the labeling, infrastructure or mechanism in place so we are in violation of our own rules. We don’t have as yet the liability clause, we don’t have a law that will grant compensation and redress in the event if something goes wrong. There have been huge questions raised about the nature of the testing done.
So this is not to attack the technology it is to attack the fairly atrotious regulation that it was accompanied by. And therefore to say that is was a decision that can’t defended I disagree with. It’s a decision that should be taken at least on account of failure of regulation and paucity of evidence that in fact it had been tested to the extent that it could be proven that it would be safe. Again on the question of hunger, look at India and see how much of India is irrigated. There is 60 to 70 per cent of Indian arable land where crops can grow which is not irrigated.
Before you get into a technology fix all that you need to do is double and trebling of food production in this country is to bring water to these areas. When you bring water to the areas which are growing only one crop a year today and where you can grow two or three crops a year, you will not just double food production, you will probably treble it . The golden rice issue was raised but I want to put before you the fact that India and countries like India have a huge genetic variability in the crops that they grow.
India is the birthplace of rice, we have properties that are in golden rice, in many other varieties of food plants. We have golden millets, we have golden sweet potatoes if you are really wanting an vitamin A fix you don’t have to engineer rice. You have many kinds of rice that are nutritious, there are other kinds staple foods that will deliver vitamin A. And deliver it much more effective ways than perhaps golden rice will. I am not shutting the doors on golden rice but to say that to present the thesis that this technology is central or even exclusive to solving our problems is misplaced.
This technology may play a role but today there are two genes the BT and the herbicide tolerant. I disagree also with the data that Michel put forward on pesticide reduction, those data are controversial, but you can make a case for Bt cotton, but can you make a case for 35 crops with Bt team and that is the point I make about that implementing a technology.
By now you would think that despite being a geneticist I am firmly an anti science or an anti technology person. But I am not and I can’t be. I am trained in science and I done science in the laboratory for the best part of my life, but I have to put before you the fact that neither science nor technology operates in a vacuum. Just as science can do a lot good its application can also do a lot of bad.
You have Einstein’s theory of relativity, how many people know that GPS in the navigation in your car, and GPS in your phone, actually derives from the theory of relativity, that’s how easily you can adopt sophisticated science for human applications and derive benefit from it. That’s the same GPS that’s used in drone aero planes that bomb the hell out of places. When you did nuclear fission, when Enrico Fermi did nuclear fission in his sports field in Chicago and started understanding the atom and fission it led to the nuclear reactor, to the Manhattan project, to the bomb and then to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
So there is a purity about science that I am all for but it may not be a purity in the application of science, when science turns into technology. When you look at genetic engineering it comes from very straight forward work by an Austrian priest called Gregor Mendel. In 1860 when we were roughly wrapping up our first War of Independence, an Austrian priest was working out the principles of heredity and this Austrian priest laid the foundation of Genetics, of understanding heredity which has been of extreme importance in understanding human disease.
We have understood how to make pedigrees to see the transmission of disease. We have understood how to tackle disease but we have also out of that theory of genetics and the understanding of genes and heredity developed amniocentesis, sex determination, the killing of girls’ fetuses. Atrocious gender ratio – like 750 females to 1000 males – exist in many parts of our country and outside.
Therefore science and technology does not operate in vacuum. The onus on us is to take science and technology and to make it work for us. You think we have a seen a lot of genetic engineering? How many of you are aware of the new science which is not even 5 or 6 years old, synthetic biology?
What happens with synthetic biology? You can actually construct new life forms with synthetic biology. You can take DNA, which is essentially a chemical. You can buy it off a shelf and paste it together in the lab and create new life forms. In fact Craig Venter, who is a brilliant scientist, has finished creating an artificial bug called Mycoplasma Laboratorium and what Venter’s group did was to strip this bacterium called mycoplasma genetelium, in this case, and pack it with completely new DNA and he created out of that an artificial organism called mycoplasma laboratorium. Before that the Centre for Disease Control in the US had reconstructed the virus that causes Spanish flu which incidentally killed a 100 million people in 1918, after the First World War. This is the brave new world of science.
As practicing laboratory scientist, let me tell you, accidents will happen. Test tubes will break, Petri-dishes will break, solutions will spill and however technically, organized your laboratory is for safety, accidents happen. Murphy’s law operates and therefore it is also important to realize that not all risks can be contained. So what does it mean?
When you have an artificial organism like one created out of synthetic biology what can you get, think of bio warfare. If you have an anthrax attack what will happen? It will kill some and then you will have antidote but you don’t know what Mycoplasma Laboratorium can do because they have no pedigree. They come form no where. This is novel genetic material that you have put together, you don’t know how it will interact with the environment, you don’t know what damage it can do and not do to human health. You have no idea how to control these things should they run away.
So if you have bio warfare with anthrax you know what to do with it. But should you have a bio warfare or an accidental release with an organism like that you are completely at sea as to how to control this organism. And as against physics and chemistry the brave new world of biology replicates. Bugs have babies, humans have babies, genes have babies, it replicates. If you put a transformer out here or a glass out there it will sit for the next 3000 years and it will not have babies. But if you put cell culture out there it will proliferate, spill out that culture and go places. Therefore, when you are tinkering with biology then the hoverers of man must step back a bit. It is famously said that the 21st century will be the century of biology. It will. All the breakthroughs are going to happen in this field. This is the field out of which you are going to get transformative technologies.
Transformative because they are going to transform the way we live. The way we eat our food, the way the drugs are delivered to us, the way the environment will be. So what do we do when we confront this? Do we step back and say no science, no technology? No, of course not. How can that be anyone’s thesis?
But I think that after destroying the planet to the extent that we have, we have learnt lessons. And we need to make a distinction between science and its application in the form of technology. The difference is human greed. So today as we look and see the potential of science and what it has on offer let us step back with a little modesty, let us agree that it is sufficient to optimize profits not necessarily to maximize them. Nature has a very tolerant and benign presence, you lean on her you hurt her a bit she takes it, you cut down trees it will come back. Bio diversity is not going to be slaughtered but if you push her, if you knock off entire forest, if you release bugs, if you destroy the climate, if you ravage the bio diversity then nature will hit back. And we need to remember that. Nature will give you leeway but will hit back.
So what are the lessons for the application of science- we should certainly forge it but with three words I will leave you with – ethics, regulation and precaution. There is whole field of bio-ethics that is developing, not as fast as it should but its there. And it is scientists who have laid some restraints on themselves, when genetic engineering started the Asilomar conference in 1975, when the scientists got together and said this technology can go places and we don’t want it to go. So we must exercise control. We have control and self imposed bans on human cloning, on human germ life therapy, on human embryonic stem cell so it is not that scientists don’t think about it but when science leaves lab from the pursuit of truth and purity and goes into the field of technology and application, other factors come into play.
You already heard the maverick scientist trying to clone the human embryo then even implanted, you have heard people trying to fool around with germ line therapy in humans beings which is extremely dangerous and you don’t know what the outcome is going to be. So as we confront the brave new world of science, ladies and gentlemen, my thesis is we look at ethics, we look at regulation and we look at the precautionary principles because precautionary principle is now becoming a very important corner stone of all negotiations and transactions in the world of science.
If you are not sufficiently informed and are uncertain step back and be cautious. And don’t rush in where fools fear to tread. So, I think the way ahead is progress but with intelligence, with maturity and with responsibility, working with the approach that we hold this earth only in custody for our children. In legal terms this is being defined in many countries as intergenerational equity but holding the earth and passing it on to our children in particularly intact form is the thesis that I submit should guide the pursuit of science and technology.
Q & A: MICHAEL SPECTER & SUMAN SAHAI
Q. Michael would you like to start with some of the points that Suman had raised? She said there has to be ethics, regulation and precaution but you don’t like it.
A. I like ethics and regulations. There are couple of things which I disagree with, for instance the idea of that making 1918 flu virus from scratches is a bad thing. It is extremely dangerous because do you know how we make vaccines in the world. We make them today the way we made them in 1930s. When we grow vaccines in the 19th century traditions, we will die in the 19th century way. After the precautionary principals, here are a couple of things we wouldn’t have if there was the extensive use of the idea that all the votes should be in before we ever try anything. We wouldn’t have air planes, we wouldn’t have X-rays, we wouldn’t have antibiotics, we wouldn’t have vaccines, we wouldn’t have TVs or radios and we wouldn’t have nuclear power which I think is a great solution to one of the earth’s most pressing problems. So, precaution. Yes, apt but let’s not confuse the greed of a company with the ability of science to accomplish things because I should say synthetic biology to me is not only a break new world, it is the most exciting thing to happen in human history so I guess we disagree on that.
Q. Madam, you mentioned that if water is provided then land, where only one crop is cultivated, two or three crops can be grown but Mr Specter mentioned that on a daily-basis 10,000 people are becoming middle-class right now. How do cope up with it? The percentage of farmers is getting lower day by day. What do you suggest?
Suman Sahai: You have to grow crops because you need food. But we can’t do both things. We can’t say that middle-class is increasing and we can’t say there is growing hunger. These are two contradictory statements. If we have growing hunger and if we have growing population and we need to feed them, then we need to grow crops and the way to grow crops is to get water into areas. If you have GM crop in an area that doesn’t have water, it is not going to grow. The defining lacuna is water. So you need water for crops to grow.
Q. Mr Specter, you spoke of the ban of BT brinjal. My understanding as a layman is that the minister after public hearing found that out of some 22 tests that were supposed to be done, only eight had been completed and that too not by independent bodies but entirely by manufacturers. Therefore, all that they have said is to go back to the drawing board and complete the tests and then do a review.
Michael Specter: I dispute those facts. Thousands of independent tests were done and there were thousands of independent studies elsewhere too. There is a clear safety profile in the question. It is legitimate to ask if the benefit is good enough to let the risk exist. I don’t think those are always clear answers but in this case I think it is a pretty clear answer. As I said, it is something like soyabean or corn, it is not to improve the lot of life for people but there are dozens of new products about to come in the market that will help with drought resistance environments. I couldn’t agree more but getting water to the places where we needed is really tough. It could be done but it can’t be done easily and I think we need to look at other solutions and this is one of those solutions.
Q. The points raised by you Mr Specter are political and fair, sometime the arguments are not rational, they are more emotional and Suman, here a part of a fair comes because of dependency that if we buy seeds from Monsanto. Suman talked of golden rice that if we had, we would then be submitting ourselves to a new form of colonialism where whether it is food, whether it is science, we are depending completely on Western or any other technology and you know the cost of that. The fact that all farmers will have to buy from a single source and then they would have monopolies, I mean these are issues that need to be addressed and Suman, would you like to speak on this matter?
Sahai: Sure, I think that as the debate progressed on genetically-engineered crops, there is a lot of crap being spoken. I think when you are taking a serious view, you are shifting it out, you are shifting out wheat from the chaff but on the question of control over seed, I would say that is socio-political aspect not an emotional fair aspect. Who controls the seeds? We will control to a very large extent that the kind of agriculture that would be grown will be grown cash crop, will be grow export oriented crops so let me tell you some think else, who is entitled to a patent, who is entitled to that control? Here is a new variety of seed that has been created, how many steps it will take. Let us say 100 in the creation of a new variety on which the patent is claimed, if you have 100 steps. 80 to 90 steps have been contributed by farmers and by a range of other scientist, it is the last 5 to 10 steps they are sticking on the gene, they are taking away of the gene. This contribution of the last 5 to 10 steps normally makes the claim for controlling 100 steps and that is what a patent is and that is why it is essentially incorrect, unethical inequities and unjust. There cannot be patent on seed because there are several contributors to it. I would want to put things in prospective and say that there is a question of control on seed if you have a weak legal frame work, if you have not had sufficient training in filing for intellectual property and your scientists and your lawyers are not trained to play that game, it’s a game. Give me patent on biology and I will tell you how to crack it. It is semantics so there is politics.
Specter: First of all on the issue of patent, I couldn’t agree more strongly. In fact, I do agree more strongly but those are the ego issues and I am absolutely, completely convinced that they can be addressed but a lot of people who approached genetically-engineered products use that very legitimate problems as a smoke screen for others and I can give you an example Artemisinin is the most important drug used to treat malaria. It is going mostly to Asia and Africa and it is subject to difficult conditions whether if you don’t get out of the ground quickly the leaves will turns cyanotic. It’s a very touchy drug. Jay Keasling at the University of California invented an artificial synthetic biology version of Artemisinin, its fake, made in a lab. Can we regulate it and can we make them much safer? First thing that Jay and the University of California did was to patent everything they did. Then they could give it away for free and they have said this publicly that anyone can have it and everyone who wants it has taken it for free. One world helped market it for nothing. This is good and great but still you have complaints. The farmers will be put out of the work. Over 5,000 of them.
Sahai: In the United States?
Specter: No, Africa and Asia. Two million people die of malaria every year. Where is the prospective you know every number has a numerator and a denominator, you can’t say just 5,000 farmers would be put out of the work. If they have been put out of work, something horrible has wrong, stupid, greedy. If it has been put out of work because life is moved on to the point where we can cure the agony of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people then let us find those 5,000 people other jobs and move on.
Q. Suman also raised intellectual property rights and there has been this argument for a while now that many things that our farmers and everybody else does, the West comes and takes the profits. Where can we bring equity into this business?
Specter: I am with her on that. You know intellectual property is a very serious issue. We need to solve this problem. It is very important but let us call them what they are, not scientific, not political and not emotional.
Sahai: Just to say that atomism is a good example but bio-pharma is not, edible vaccines are not. You are making genetically-engineered plants with rabies vaccines and cholera vaccines in tomatoes and bananas. These are going to go out in the market. I mean this is hokey stuff is happening there.
Q. Would you have accepted BT brinjal if we did not have a patent issue associated with it and like the Internet, the technology and the processes were thrown open to public use. Is that more acceptable to you for experimentation with genetic engineering? Suman spoke about the laboratory leaks which will always happen and I usually see those science fiction movies that I am very fond of and I am sort of convinced that probably if not in my generation, probably in the next generation or the generation next to that we will actually have a monster which would be created by a genetic mutation. Do you really have a way to prevent it?
Specter. I want to answer that because it is quick. The sure answer is no. It can destroy the world very easily. If we want to make packets of small boxes capable of doing that if we focus on what we are capable of doing with technology. We already have enough technology to destroy the world many times over, cheap technology. So the question is can we use new technology over the technology we have? Better. Safety issues will always exist.
Sahai: The question is has it been done right and the answer to that is no. There are few things that many people don’t know. Was the way in which BT approached controlling the so called pest of Brinjal necessary? The answer is no. The BT gene controls a pest called caterpillar Bora. That’s all it does. The main pest of brinjal and the brinjal family to which tomatoes, chilly and all other stuff belongs is not caterpillar Bora. It’s a disease called bacterial wilt, so you have this disease for which you are trying to find this problem. The issue with the technology is that there are safety concerns etc but that’s the matter of science. I agree with Michael that you have to keep these compartments separate except for the fact that they don’t remain a separate application. If you really wanted to control the pest of brinjal, you should have found a solution to bacterial wilt not the caterpillar and that is how the application went wrong. You don’t have a law for labeling, you don’t have a law on liability, you don’t have any independent verification of the test, protocols are still fairly Neanderthal, test protocols for food safety are very elementary. So these are the things that do not make you an opponent of a science. I think science and technology must go back to the lab where there are questions and clean it up further till you come to your question, till you come to the situation where you can confidently say yes this will work now or no we can’t get the wrinkles out like Australia did. The CSIRO in Australia worked for years on peas and they are trying to make a transgenic pea to control a pest. They were not able to control it because every single time they created this transgenic pea, and they tested it for food safety, there were huge issues. There was inflammation in test animals. Finally they decided this is not going to work so they shut the door on it and that is what honest science should do. Test till you are fairly confident that it is safe and if you can’t get the wrinkles out, shut the door.
Suman Sahai, Convenor, Gene Campaign speaks on Science and Genetic Engineering. She is a member of C-NES Advisory Council