The dangers of playing God with our ecosystem

By Carey Knecht

A slow-speaking, unassuming man spoke at the forestry school on Wed., Mar. 24. He seemed well-meaning. He did not seem like a spokesman for the most dangerous "science" of this decade.

But that man, Robert Horsch, is co-president of sustainable development for Monsanto, a company that has provoked international protest. Activists have been arrested in the last month for ripping plants out of Monsanto's fields in England and burning test fields in India. Monsanto, an agricultural megacorporation that is the rapidly expanding leader in genetic engineering, boasts that in two years, 100 percent of American-grown soybeans will be their genetically modified ("GM") variety.

Monsanto is changing the molecular components of our food, and one theme seems clear: poison. Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" plants tolerate massive doses of Roundup, Monsanto's number-one herbicide. Since they can survive more poison, they also contain more poison. Another set of plants, "BT" crops, have been injected with bacteria genes so that they will produce a pesticide in every cell of the plant. Monsanto's method of farming is to kill all that we don't eat.

But in the words of one organic farmer, "Dead soil means dead food." And you are what you eat. What sounds like wordplay is a deeply felt belief of many farmers who live on farms where they treat their plants more like vital members of a living ecosystem than clones from a factory.

I assumed genetic engineering was a precise science, but I was wrong. Scientists isolate a gene with a particular trait—say, the arctic trout's "anti-freeze" gene. They insert that gene into the DNA of, say, a tomato, to pass on this frost-resistance. But insertion methods are so primitive that the gene's ultimate location is unknown. And because a genome contains many instructions triggered only by specific environmental conditions, even plants that appear to be normal can have hidden defects. In early trials, plants with the gene for "red" added to them seemed fine until a bout of hot weather suddenly caused entire fields to turn white.

Tinkering with the very building blocks of organisms suggests danger to many scientists, since the world of genes is still largely a wilderness. They point out that cutting and pasting from one gene pool to another disrupts a harmony created by evolution, a harmony that ensures our survival. Evidence also shows that GM traits are more likely to spread than traits acquired by breeding. We're jumping the guardrails of evolution.

Now, alarming health reports are surfacing about Monsanto's creations. Canadian scientists examined Monsanto's trial summaries of bovine growth hormone (rBGH) and found that the company had misrepresented the data to the Food and Drug Association (FDA). Though rats were developing pre-cancerous cysts, Monsanto told the FDA that there had been no reactions at all. Now, Monsanto trumpets the FDA's approval as proof of its products' safety.

Worse still, these Canadian scientists testify that they were threatened with job loss if they didn't approve rBGH despite this frightening evidence. But bully tactics can't hide the truth. Health and environmental reports continue to pile up, ones with phrases like, "If this study is true, this could be the genetic Chernobyl."

Now Monsanto is beginning the most dangerous experiment of all: the "Terminator" seed, the neutron bomb of agriculture. To "protect" their inventions from other farmers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Monsanto invented plants that grow normally—until the seed suddenly poisons itself. These suicide seeds could spell disaster, both socially and environmentally. Farmers, especially in non-industrialized countries, save seeds from this year's harvest for next season's planting, and life continues in a self-sustaining cycle. But the cycle of nature is not compatible with the cycle of consumption.

You may not believe that this trait will spread. You may not believe that cross-pollination (insects carrying pollen from one plant to another) will sterilize enough nearby farm fields or wild plants to threaten biodiversity. You may not even feel that there's something wrong with implanting secret death within a seed, the very symbol of potential life. But you can't deny this: that the Terminator seed proves Monsanto is not about "feeding the world"—it's about greed. It will sell plants with the suicide seeds simply to ensure its own profits.

But, ignoring the warnings, Monsanto has rushed to put its food in stores. Seventy-five percent of processed grocery store foods contain—unlabeled—genetically engineered products. Now Monsanto is conducting a worldwide experiment with involuntary participants—like you and me.

Carey Knecht is a senior in Calhoun

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