Biotech Drama Gone Awry Is Only A Scare
June 17, 2002
CHURCHVILLE, VA—Britain is being treated to a new TV drama about genetic engineering gone horribly wrong—killing old people and wildlife across the English countryside.
“Fields of Gold” produced by BBC 1 television, has already been condemned by one of its own scientific advisers as “ludicrous and inflammatory.” But it’s a politically correct scare.
Here’s the plot:
A scientist engineers a rare—and real—antibiotic-resistant bacterium into a wheat plant as a “marker” gene for plant breeding. No scientist in his right mind would select a trait dangerous to humans as a breeding marker. Nor can a bacterium be genetically transferred, only genes.
The super gene spontaneously spreads to animals from the wheat. Never mind that evidence from the newly mapped genes of people, rice and bacteria says this “horizontal gene transfer” hasn’t happened in the last 600 million years. We don’t know why the new gene would spread at all, since a gene for antibiotic resistance would confer little competitive advantage out in the fields and forests where there are no antibiotics.
The TV super gene is made far more powerful by dust. Dust apparently makes good TV, but in reality couldn’t make the gene more powerful.
Finally, the super gene leaps from animals to pneumonia bacteria and for the first time in history, the world gets an epidemic of contagious pneumonia!
Did you follow all those “scientific firsts”? Matt Ridley, a zoologist and formerly the science editor of the Economist says the BBC scenario makes as much sense as expecting a lighted match to suddenly ignite all the nitrogen in the atmosphere, exploding the entire world. No match has ever done it before, but there could always be a first time.
Mark Tester, who started as one of the show’s science advisers and then revolted, warns that programs such as “Fields of Gold” could help turn the public against a technology that may be vital for countries such as China and India.
“If rich Westerners don’t want (genetically manufactured) crops, frankly, I don’t give a stuff,” he says. “But if in the process we prevent people who really need this technology in the Third World from getting it, then that’s immoral. It’s Western imperialism at its worst, from green activists who claim to be anti-imperialist.”
The female star of the show, Anna Friel, says blithely, ” A lot of this drama is inspired by facts that need public attention drawn to them, and TV is the most powerful medium we have.”
Just what the world needs, another ambitious TV actress to assess our science. One co-author of the drama says he’s not a Luddite, but he’s concerned that biotech crops are being pursued by big corporations. But if that’s the case, he could have written a script that praised the European Union for providing public funds for biotech rice, which promises to prevent half a million Third World kids from going blind each year.
The bottom line is that Europe is well-fed, but much of the world is not, and global demands on farmers will more than double in the next 40 years. To prevent a Hobson’s choice between starving children and turning lands into fields for food, the world will need to shift away from traditional low-yield farming.
If biotechnology can safely raise crop yields, we need to know that. “Fields of Gold” seeks to scare us away from even looking at biotech. As drama, “Fields of Gold” is woodenly pathetic. At the end, its characters sound like speakers at a political rally. As propaganda, inserted into a serious debate about how the world can double its crop yields, it is irresponsible—especially coming from public television.
Matt Ridley says he’s got a much more plausible scare scenario than “Fields of Gold.” His heroine finds that many organic farmers are growing crops bred with mutant genes induced by gamma rays from nuclear power plant waste. The resulting mutant crop varieties are not tested for safety by any government agency, and the safety of their production is overseen by only a self-appointed organic group with a vested financial interest in promoting organic sales.
Shockingly, when she brings these facts to light, they are suppressed by a close-working relationship between the media and the environmental organizations that supply them with daily scare stories. Meantime, through sheer obsessive persistence, organic activists increasingly dominate government committees and agencies.
Ridley’s scenario—unlike BBC’s—has the virtue of being completely true. Don’t expect to turn on your TV and see it anytime soon, however. Reality doesn’t play well on television these days because it is by definition “politically incorrect.”
DENNIS T. AVERY is a senior fellow for Hudson Institute of Indianapolis and the Director of the Center for Global Food Issues. He was formerly a senior policy analyst for the U.S. Department of State. Readers may write him at Post Office Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421
This article was published by Knight Ridder Tribune
Dennis T. Avery is based in Churchville, Va., and is director of global food issues for the Hudson Institute of Indianapolis.
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