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The survival of indigenous
people, within the U.S. and across the globe, is being directly threatened
by genetic engineering (GE) of food crops.
In September, 2001, scientists
discovered genetically engineered (GE) corn at 15 locations in the state
of Oaxaca, deep in southern Mexico, a country that has outlawed the commercial
use of all genetically engineered crops.[1] No one knows how it got there.
In the US, genetically engineered
corn has been grown commercially since 1996 and 26 percent of all US corn
acreage is now genetically engineered. The remote region of Oaxaca where
the illegal GE corn was discovered is considered the heartland of corn
diversity in the world. Scientists had hoped to keep Oaxaca's rich diversity
of corn uncontaminated by GE strains because Oaxaca retains the wealth
of genetic varieties developed during 5500 years of indigenous corn cultivation.
Scientists now say that aggressive
forms of GE corn, let loose in Oaxaca, may drive native species to extinction,
causing the loss of irreplaceable cultivars.
It is unclear whether the GE
corn was carried deep into Mexico by birds, or was intentionally spread
there by corporations or governments promoting GE crops.
Genetic drift of GE crops to
non-GE fields has, in fact, been well documented and even the GE corporations
and their regulators in government acknowledge that it is a serious problem.
Now, however, Monsanto, a leading
supplier of GE seeds, has cleverly turned the tables on the alleged victims
of genetic pollution by suing them for stealing Monsanto's patented genes.
The purpose of patenting seeds
is to prevent seed saving -- the ancient indigenous practice of keeping
seeds from this year's crop to grow next year's crop. Farmers who purchase
GE seeds sign contracts requiring -- under penalty of law -- that they
not save seed from one crop to the next.
Thus farmers who employ GE
seeds must purchase new seed year after year, making them dependent upon
whatever transnational corporation owns the patent. Farmers who can't
afford to buy seed each year will simply not be allowed to grow a crop.
In free-market societies, such displaced farmers are free to move to a
city where they are free to be unemployed.
Today's GE crops can't guarantee
that farmers won't save seeds. Corporations intent on preventing seed-saving
must hire agents to travel from farm to farm, reporting any unlicensed
crops. Such monitoring is expensive.
To avoid the need for monitoring,
and to gain 100 percent control over farmers, the GE corporations have
developed a new technology -- terminator genes. Terminator genes prevent
a crop from reproducing itself unless certain "protector" chemicals
are applied to the crop.
Any farmer using terminator
seeds must buy the "protector" chemicals each year. As terminator
technology spreads around the world, it will end indigenous agriculture,
and much biodiversity as well. An estimated 1.4 billion indigenous people
currently grow their own crops for subsistence, worldwide.[3] In many
instances, their land is being eyed for corporate "development"
and GE crop technology offers a legal way to separate indigenous people
from their land.
The
ETC Group of Winnipeg, Canada, revealed last week that two of the
world's largest genetic engineering firms -- DuPont and Syngenta (formerly
Astrazeneca) -- during 2001 were awarded new patents on "terminator"
seeds, engineered for sterility.
In 1999, Syngenta's (then Astrazeneca's)
Research and Development Director claimed that all work on terminator
technology had ceased in 1992, but the ETC Group found that the Director
was either mistaken or dissembling: Syngenta's latest terminator patent
was applied for March 22, 1997 and awarded May 8, 2001.
Despite the grim social consequences
that seem likely to follow the widespread adoption of genetically engineered
crops, few scientists have questioned the safety of the technology itself.
The major GE corporations have insisted for 15 years that their technology
is thoroughly understood, reliable, and safe, and government regulators
have agreed (or at least remained silent).
Now a new report, released
this month, asserts that the scientific theory underpinning the genetic
engineering industry is dangerously outdated and wrong.[5]
The new report, by Dr.
Barry Commoner of Queens College, City University of New York, says,
"The genetically engineered crops now being grown represent a massive
uncontrolled experiment whose outcome is inherently unpredictable. The
results could be catastrophic," the report says.
The safety assurances of the
genetic engineering industry are based on the scientific premise that
one gene controls one characteristic. If this is true, then removing a
gene from one species and inserting it into a new species will give the
new species one new characteristic, no more and no less.
Unfortunately the theory that
a single gene controls a single characteristic, while it may have seemed
true 40 years ago, is known to be wrong today:
1) Genes are composed
of segments of DNA, a long molecule coiled up within each cell's nucleus.
2) The 40-year old
theory (developed by Francis Crick, who, with James Watson, discovered
DNA in 1953), says that DNA strictly controls the production of RNA
which in turn strictly controls the creation of proteins which give
rise to specific inherited characteristics.
Because DNA is the same in
all creatures, this theory says that a gene will produce a particular
protein (and a particular characteristic) no matter what species it
finds itself in -- thus making it possible for the genetic engineering
corporations to claim that inserting genes from one species to another
will not lead to any surprises or dangerous side effects.
3) It was -- of all
things -- the Human Genome Project that revealed most starkly that Crick's
theory was wrong. There are about 100,000 different proteins in a human
and, if Crick were right, there should be 100,000 genes to produce these
proteins.
However, the Human Genome
Project announced last February that humans have only about 30,000 genes.
(See many articles in Science Feb. 16, 2001.) Thus there must be something
more than mere genes controlling the development of proteins and the
resulting characteristics.
4) Actually, scientists
had known for many years (since 1981 in the case of human genes) that
after DNA creates RNA, the RNA can split into several parts, giving
rise to several different proteins and several different characteristics.
This is called "alternative splicing." By 1989 more than 200
scientific papers had been published describing alternative splicing.
5) As cells split
and reproduce themselves, their DNA molecule also reproduces itself,
but sometimes errors occur in in DNA reproduction. Special proteins
repair these errors of reproduction, so genetic inheritance is not simply
a matter of genes -- it's a matter of interaction between genes and
repair proteins. Will these complex interactions always work reliably
and identically when a gene is placed into the entirely new environment
of a different species?
6) Proteins function
as they do because of two characteristics: they have a specific chemical
(molecular) make-up, and they are physically folded into a particular
shape. The Crick theory assumes that a particular gene always gives
rise to a single protein that is chemically identical and is identically
folded. However, scientists now know that proteins get folded in a particular
way by the presence of additional "chaperone" proteins. More
protein-gene interactions.
7) Furthermore, during
the 1980s, in searching for the causes of fatal "mad cow"
disease, scientists made the startling discovery that some proteins
can reproduce themselves without involving any DNA whatever -- an impossibility
according to the Crick theory. These proteins are now called "prions"
and, as Dr. Commoner points out, they reveal that processes far removed
from the Crick theory are at work in molecular genetics and can give
rise to fatal disease.
Thus the basic theory underlying
genetic engineering of crops is quite wrong.
Single genes are important,
but they do not invariably give rise to a single characteristic in an
organism. A gene's action is modified by alternative splicing, by proteins
that repair errors in reproduction, and by the chaperones that fold the
final protein into its active shape. In nature, such a system works reliably
within a species because it has been tested and refined for thousands
of years.
But when a single gene is removed
from its familiar surroundings and transplanted into an alien species,
the new host's system is likely to be "disrupted in unspecified,
imprecise, and inherently unpredictable ways," the Commoner report
concludes. In practice these disruptions are revealed by the vast number
of failures that occur whenever a gene transplant is attempted.
Most ominously, the report
points out, Monsanto Corporation acknowledged in 2000 that its genetically
modified soybeans contained some extra fragments of a transferred gene.
Despite this, the company announced that it expected "no new proteins"
to appear in the GE soybeans.
Then during 2001, Belgian researchers
announced that the soybean's own DNA had been scrambled during the insertion
of the new gene. "The abnormal DNA was large enough to produce a
new protein, a potentially harmful protein," Dr. Commoner concludes.
Thus genetically engineered
crops threaten not only the agricultural systems and the cultural survival
of all indigenous people, but also the food security and safety of all
people everywhere.
Rachel.org
February 05, 2002
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