Trespass: Genetic Engineering as the Final Conquest This is a classy and classic must read for all who wish to understand how we got to this place with gmos.

Date:   6/28/2014 8:32:25 AM ( 10 y ago)

Trespass: Genetic Engineering as the Final Conquest

Claire Hope Cummings is a lawyer and environmental journalist. She wrote about genetically modified rice in the May/June 2004 issue of World Watch.

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/568

THIS IS A CLASSY AND CLASSIC MUST READ FOR ALL WHO WISH TO UNDERSTAND HOW WE GOT TO THIS PLACE WITH GMOS

This is a classy and classic must read for all who wish to understand how we got to this place with gmos.


A FEW GEMS FROM THE ARTICLE WRITTEN IN 2005

OPENING

Trespass: Genetic Engineering as the Final Conquest
Trespass

"I have the feeling that science has transgressed a barrier that should have remained inviolate."

-Dr. Erwin Chargaff, biochemist and the father of molecular biology

Hidden inside Hilgard Hall, one of the oldest buildings on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, is a photograph that no one is supposed to see. It's a picture of a crippled and contorted corncob that was not created by nature, or even by agriculture, but by genetic engineering.q The cob is kept in a plastic bin called "the monster box," a collection of biological curiosities put together by someone who works in a secure biotechnology research facility.

What the photo shows is a cob that apparently started growing normally, then turned into another part of the corn plant, then returned to forming kernels, then went back to another form-twisting back and forth as if it could not make up its mind about what it was. It was produced by the same recombinant DNA technology that is used to create the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that are in our everyday foods. When I saw this photo, I knew it was saying something very important about genetic engineering. I thought it should be published. But the person who owns it is frankly afraid of how the biotechnology industry might react, and would not agree. In order to get permission even to describe the photo for this article, I had to promise not to reveal its owner's identity.

What the distorted corncob represents is a mute challenge to the industry's claim that this technology is precise, predictable, and safe. But that this challenge should be kept hidden, and that a scientist who works at a public university should feel too intimidated to discuss it openly, told me that something more than just a scientific question was being raised. After all, if the new agricultural biotech were really safe and effective, why would the industry work so hard-as indeed it does-to keep its critics cowed and the public uninformed? Was there something about the way genetic engineering was developed, about how it works, that was inviting a closer look-a look that the industry would rather we not take? I had gone to Berkeley to see for myself what was going on behind biotechnology.


THE NEW BIOLOGY...

Early in the twentieth century, the new "science" of sociology made its appearance-along with the highly appealing belief that social problems were amenable to scientific solutions. In time, sociology began to combine with genetic science, giving strong impetus to technocratic forms of social control, and particularly to eugenics-the belief that the human race could be improved by selective breeding. Until the 1930s, the science of genetics had not developed much beyond Mendelian principles of heredity, but eugenics was already being promoted as the solution to social problems. As the idea that genes determined traits in people took hold, eugenics twisted it to foster the concept that there were "good" genes and "bad" genes, good and bad traits.

Eugenics…

Eugenics eventually gained a powerful foothold both in the popular imagination and in the U.S. government, as well as in Nazi Germany. Even today, these notions underlie the decisions biotechnologists make about what genes and traits are beneficial, what organisms are engineered, and who gets to decide how this technology will be used.

According to Lily Kay, an assistant professor of the history of science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, genetic engineering came about as the result of the concerted effort of a few scientists, who, along with their academic and philanthropic sponsors, had a shared vision about how they could use genetics to reshape science and society. In her book The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology, Kay writes that this vision was not so much about underlying biological principles as it was about social values. The new biology that evolved from this thinking was founded on a strong belief in "industrial capitalism" and its perceived mandate for "science-based social intervention." The potential for this idea, and the intentional strategy to use it for social purposes was clearly understood from the outset, says Kay. The developers of "molecular biology" (a term coined by the Rockefeller Foundation) were confident that it would offer them a previously unimagined power and control over both nature and society.


[Note the Rockefeller Foundation was big on Eugenics…they invented the word Molecular Biology…

ALSO…A history of Eugenics…
http://hnn.us/article/1796

]


LINKS

http://www.clairehopecummings.com

Uncertain Peril is a powerful reminder that what’s at stake is nothing less than the nature of the future.


"Although the advent of GM foods has been described and criticized before, Uncertain Peril is the most coherent, complete, compelling, and well-written account yet.

Cummings brings to her treatise a wealth of experience with indigenous farmers in Vietnam, Hawaii, and Mexico. She knows the cultural origins and importance of food as well as the hard science.

At the heart of her treatise is a moral conviction that the integrity of the natural world must be respected and that we have a fundamental right to choose what we eat and to know what is in the food we eat."

Chip Ward, "Catalyst", July 2008


Uncertain Peril thumbnail
“A must-read for anyone concerned about plants and what the privatization and manipulation of seeds may mean for the future of food.”
Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Winner of the Mary W. Klinger Award for "Outstanding Book"
From the Society for Economic Botany, June 2009

Click here to read full book reviews

Now in paperback!

Uncertain Peril won the 2009 American Book Award!

http://www.clairehopecummings.com/contact.html


Full review in Publisher’s Weekly:
Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds
Claire Hope Cummings. Beacon Press, $24.95 (240p) ISBN 978-0-8070- 8580-6

Former environmental lawyer and one-time farmer Cummings offers a persuasive account of a lesser-known but potentially apocalyptic threat to the world's ecology and food supply—the privatization of the Earth's seed stock. For almost a century, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has provided seeds at no cost to farmers who then saved seeds from one harvest to another, eventually developing strains best suited to local or regional climates. But Cummings also tells how seeds became lucrative, patentable private properties for some of the nation's most powerful agribusinesses. Cummings bemoans the "plague of sameness" intensified by the advent of such fitfully regulated companies as Monsanto, which now not only own genetically modified seed varieties, but also sue farmers when wind inevitably blows seeds onto their neighboring fields. According to Cummings, this "tyranny of the technological[ly]elite" threatens agricultural diversity and taints food sources. Among the author's many startling statistics is that 97% of 75 vegetables whose seeds were once available from the USDA are now extinct. Cummings heralds plans for a "Doomsday Vault" to shelter existing natural seed stock, and finds comfort in organic farming's growth, but her authoritative portrait of another way in which our planet is at peril provides stark food for thought. (Mar.)


http://www.clairehopecummings.com/book.html#Publishers_Weekly

THE LESSON OF THE SEED IS GENEROSITY--CLAIRE HOPE CUMMINS

Some basics.

"each community has want it needs. Map the resources."



AUG 2, 2009


http://cookingupastory.com/a-conversation-with-claire-hope-cummings

MENTIONS CLAIRE

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-gerendasy/seeds-of-life-hybrids-and_b_495263.html


http://www.ecoliteracy.org/essays/uncertain-peril

LINKED IN


Linked in

corn story

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/525


RELATED

AN INTERVIEW WITH DR CHARLES BENBROOK ON GENETIC ENGINEERING

http://media.bioneers.org/listing/an-interview-with-dr-charles-benbrook-on-genetic-engineering-arty-mangan/

SEE GENETIC ROULETTE

https://www.yekra.com/genetic-roulette/#!/deployment_code=80726265n48021



 

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