Biotechnology: Scourge or savior?

The heads of the booming biotech industry and their activist arch-nemeses share space but not common ground in Philadelphia.

By Jan Dichter, University of Massachusetts

The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) defines "biotechnology" as "the use of cellular and biomolecular processes to solve problems or make useful products." Proponents claim that bill genetically engineered agriculture and pharmaceuticals are the cure for everything from cancer to world hunger. This would all sound rosy enough if not for the fact that the expansion and development of biotechnology as an industry has been marked by stiff resistance by farmers and voters rejecting genetically engineered (GE) crops through protest and referendum across Europe and Asia, as well as by academics such as esteemed environmental scientist Dr. Vandana Shiva and advocacy groups like Greenpeace, who term the widespread use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) an "environmental crime."

In the U.S., dozens of local governments from Brooklin, Maine, to Marin County, California, have passed resolutions banning GMOs, and the last few BIO conventions have drawn thousands of protestors representing a wide array of activist causes. What is going on here—is biotechnology an unprecedented threat to global biodiversity and community food rights, being forced down our throats by a handful of greedy corporations? Or are a handful of ignorant ideologues blocking access to badly needed innovations in key fields? To listen to the two sides, you’d think they were living in different dimensions. In Philadelphia this past week, those who wished to make up their own minds got a rare chance as the pro- and anti-biotech camps come face to face in a week of dueling get-togethers.

Formed in 1993, BIO is the biotechnology industry’s flagship trade and lobbying group, representing over a thousand companies, research centers and related organizations. The Pennsylvania Convention Center in Center City hosted its annual international convention June 19-22, for which their website boasts record attendance, representing corporate, academic and government sectors. (The Philadelphia area is home to many major pharmaceutical companies.) The convention press release indicated that the increasingly global character of the industry was a key theme, reflected in program items such as the Global Health Symposium (focusing on "biotech innovation for treatment of diseases prevalent in the developing world") and the presentation of a University of Pennsylvania study on "the global commercialization of life sciences." The organization claims many countries around the world are now looking to biotechnology as a means to fuel technological and economic development.

In the other corner, the anti-biotechnology standard is being carried not by one but by a slew of smaller, mostly non-profit organizations, from an environmental college in Vermont, to farmer and consumer advocacy groups, to an anarchist collective promoting "sustainable, post-capitalist urban living." What do they think is so bad about biotechnology anyway? Embracing numerous different agendas, the groups making up a loose coalition called BioDemocracy were sure to each have a different answer, which is why they invited one and all to come out and hear the case against biotech during almost a week’s worth of overlapping counter-conferences and protests, starting one day before BIO’s conference and featuring teach-ins, marches and an outdoor festival for “bio-justice” in Clark Park.

BIO clearly had a large stake in keeping protesters at bay, resulting in very tight security, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Attendees had to go to a separate location to receive a badge, even though nearly a hundred security officers patrolled the convention center. Ray Briscuso, CEO of BIO, was quoted as saying “ We want to make sure that if a protester is even thinking about getting in here, no, it’s just not worth their time." Clearly, there is a history of heated tension that would lead to such enforced polarization, going all the way back to the early nineties.

Genetic engineering, or the direct alteration of an organism’s DNA, first captured controversial attention in the ‘90s with the rejection of GE crops by many public interest groups and regulatory agencies in Europe. The industry claimed that GMO crops such as "BT corn," a form of maize altered to resist herbicides and produce insect-killing bacteria, could provide a miraculous solution to global hunger by increasing food production capabilities to match the growing population. "Biotech crops allow farmers to produce more food for more people," says Dan Eramian, BIO’s vice president for communications. "Farmers in Africa and other developing nations have to fight nature to grow enough food for their families. Biotech crops help these farmers grow more."

An array of scientists and consumer advocates insist that GE crop technologies are not about altruism, but corporate profits and business as usual. "Poverty, not a lack of modern technology, is the fundamental cause of malnourishment," says Anuradha Mittal, author of Voices From the South: The Third World Speaks Out Against Genetic Engineering. A native of India, she notes that the "Green Revolution" of the ‘60s was marketed on similar promises, but resulted only in widespread use of dangerous pesticides and an increasingly corporate-controlled food system. Mittal also gives the example of "golden rice," a GMO developed in 2000 by the Zeneca corporation, as an example of biotech’s failures in the food arena. Daffodil genes allowed the rice to produce beta carotene, a nutrient humans can convert into vitamin A, the deficiency of which contributes to blindness. It was advertised as the cure to suffering for millions in poor countries—until results showed the average adult would need to eat 18 pounds of the rice a day to actually get a sufficient quantity of vitamin A, which is difficult for the body to absorb without a diverse diet anyway.

While boosters of biotech point to its potential benefits, many of them yet to be realized, opposition conventioneers will focus on potential threats, many of them yet to be realized – which, many of them say, is just the point. Too much is unknown about the genetic code to begin tampering with it for a short-sighted profit motive. “There are open questions around positional effects,” says Christie Phillips of the Women’s Environmental Network, referring to the recombination of DNA from different organisms’ genomes. “How do we know that a genetically engineered food plant will not produce new toxins and allergenic substances or increase the level of dormant toxins and allergens?” The Food and Drug Administration, which operates under a long-standing White House directive to “foster” the U.S. biotech industry, does not require GMOs to be tested or labeled any differently than conventional foods. Instead, government regulators merely rely on biotech companies themselves to run safety tests and determine that their products are “generally regarded as safe” (GRAS), the standard for the FDA.

Another bone BioDemocracy has to pick is with the U.S.’s military applications of biotechnology. The “bio-defense” component of the Bush administration’s homeland defense strategy represents the biggest investment of federal funding into new high tech weapons since the Manhattan Project. Military biotechnology isn’t heavily advertised by BIO, but BioDemocracy organizer and Institute for Social Ecology professor Brian Tokar has plenty to say: “There is no functional distinction between ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ bioweapons research. ‘Biodefense’ consists largely of creating new biological weapons, including genetically engineered varieties of virulent disease pathogens, in order to anticipate what unspecified ‘enemies’ might create someday.” Thomas Jefferson University in Center City is the site of one biodefense laboratory, rated “biosafety level 3” (of a possible 4). The Department of Homeland Security, for its part, states that the program has nothing to do with proliferation and everything to do with taking all necessary steps to counteract potential biological terror attacks against the U.S., and is integrated with a strategy of diplomatic arms control and international law enforcement.

Perhaps the most systemic criticism comes from an anarchist organizer calling himself simply "Mouse," a member of the Under the Pavement Collective. "They will tell you, ‘Biotech is going to cure cancer, it’s going to solve world hunger,’ but the thing to remember about biotech is—it’s a product of the same industrial capitalist system which maintains those conditions of hunger, malnutrition, poor public health and pollution that so many people are exposed to," he asserts. "They’re systemic problems. So they give us the problems, now they’re going to sell us the cure? Sorry, but I’m not buying! The theme of our gathering is to draw people’s attention to this, that biotech is not a solution, and to learn and teach ways to replace those systems in our daily lives and in our communities, because that is the real solution."

"For people who make a living out of protesting, and who have never even developed a new aspirin, it’s something for them to be against—go figure," shrugs BIO VP Eramian in response.

The Biotechnology Industry Organization met June 19-22 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. See http://www.bio.org for more info.

BioDemocracy, PhillyRAGE (Resistance Against Genetic Engineering), Food Not Bombs, the Under the Pavement Collective, and others hosted various events around Philly June 18-21. For more information, see http://www.reclaimthecommons.net and http://www.biodev.org .

Illustration: Dennis Hodges

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