IT鈥橲 BEEN a bad week for biotechnology. First, environmentalists in Britain
were affronted to discover that honey contained genetically modified pollen from
test fields sown with altered varieties. Then it came to light that thousands of
hectares across Europe have been inadvertently planted with oilseed rape
containing a modified variety
(see p 4).
But perhaps the most worrying development came in the form of a radio lecture
given by Britain鈥檚 highest-born organic farmer, Prince Charles. His talk laid
into plant biotechnology on the grounds that it has wandered too far into God鈥檚
territory. Sadly, it also attacked science as a whole.
In doing so, the prince tapped into a deeply felt unease about science. He
is, like many ordinary people, struggling to cope with the implications of a
rapidly changing world in which science is a prime mover. By the end of the
week, British newspapers were warning that we could all end up as 鈥渟acrificial
victims on the altar of science鈥�. These are alarming sentiments. We ignore them
at our peril.
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Some of what the prince proposes makes excellent sense. He argues for
sustainable development and against introducing new technologies until we know
their downside. These are highly sensible, down-to-Earth policies that will give
us and our environment the best chance of surviving. But the prince sees them in
a different light.
Humans, he argues, have a duty to God to be stewards of the Earth. We need to
pay more attention to our intuition, to what nature is telling us, and less to
the rationalism of science. He asks: 鈥淚f literally nothing is held sacred any
more鈥攂ecause it is considered synonymous with superstition or in some
other way `irrational鈥欌�攚hat is there to prevent us treating our entire
world as some `great laboratory of life鈥�?鈥�
The answer is not divine guidance but commonsense. Most developed countries
have commissions and committees designed to set the bounds of research. They
reach their rules and codes of conduct using sensible, everyday reasoning and
values.
The prince singles out genetic modification as a step too far. We should 鈥渦se
science to understand what nature is, not to change what nature is鈥�, he says.
鈥淣ature has come to be regarded as a system that can be engineered for our own
convenience or as a nuisance to be evaded and manipulated and in which anything
that happens can be fixed by technology and human ingenuity.鈥�
If Charles thinks this is some new trend, he is very much mistaken. To take
him at his word, he is attacking not only the past 10 000 years of farming, but
also much of modern science. There is nothing natural about agriculture: people
began manipulating nature鈥檚 fare back in the Stone Age, by selecting those
grasses that yielded the most grain. This process, together with cross-breeding,
has been going on ever since. As the great Victorian agricultural scientist John
Bennett Lawes said: 鈥淎griculture consists in the artificial accumulation of
certain constituents to be employed either as a food for man or other animals,
upon a piece of ground incapable of supporting them in its natural state.鈥�
We alter nature鈥檚 course every time we give someone a life-saving drug. We
have manipulated the genes of microbes to produce human insulin for people with
diabetes. We have changed the genes of children who suffer severe immune
disorders to save their lives. The decision whether or not to re-engineer nature
is one made by a rational exercise in balancing benefit against risk.
Part of the problem perceived by the prince is 鈥渢he prevailing approach that
seeks to reduce the natural world, including ourselves, to the level of nothing
more than a mechanical process鈥�. He seems to have missed the fact that such
reductionism is a primary reason for the success of modern science, and that
without it we wouldn鈥檛 have the internal combustion engine, space flight,
antibiotics or computers.
The prince鈥檚 commitment to sustainable farming is to be applauded and
supported. But his reasons for rejecting genetic manipulation smack of New Age
mysticism. It鈥檚 not science that has lost us control of the crops in our fields.
It鈥檚 the rush for profits by biotech companies chasing new markets, and the
sluggish response of governments in regulating them.
Making sense of this mess will come only through cool, rational analysis of
all the issues. Simply stopping scientists shuffling genes won鈥檛 help. And by
bringing his God into the argument, the prince has only served to confuse the
issue.
