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Sir Peter's GM food fight?
MediaWatch, 9 March 2010
http://bangmfood.org/mediawatch/25-mediawatch/40-sir-peters-gm-food-fight
Remember the BBC Horizon programme that used the pin-up pig farmer Jimmy Doherty to front Jimmy's GM Food Fight?
While supposedly investigating the science of GM foods, the TV programme had Jimmy - once a purveyor of all things natural, telling the audience how "simple" and "natural" genetic modification was. And by the end of the programme, Jimmy was enthusing that it would be "madness to turn away from this technology. The science is absolutely amazing. It offers hope."
The producer and director of this prime time soft-sell advertisement was Michael Lachmann. After viewer complaints, the BBC investigated whether the programme was biased. For ages, the BBC refused to answer one viewer's persistent query as to whether the programme's director was in any way related to Sir Peter Lachmann, a notoriously aggressive pro-GM scientist. Eventually, persistence paid off, however, when the BBC finally admitted during the appeal process that: "Sir Peter Lachmann is indeed the father of Michael."
The information provided by the BBC to its Editorial Standards Committee only identifies Sir Peter as "a Cambridge Professor of Immunology of great eminence", who "chaired the Royal Society expert group which produced the Society's first report on GM crops" which concluded it was a potentially beneficial technology. "Since then," it goes on, "Sir Peter has been involved in several heated debates over GM."
This seriously underplays the controversial nature of Sir Peter Lachmann's involvement. A leading GM proponent, Lachmann was at the forefront of the campaign by the Royal Society to discredit the Hungarian-born scientist Arpad Pusztai, after he warned that his research had found GM potatoes harmed rats. In an astonishing revelation at the time, a Guardian front page article reported the editor of the Lancet, Richard Horton, as saying he had been threatened by Lachmann over the Lancet's planned publication of Pusztai's research. Towards the end of what was described as a highly aggressive phone call, Lachmann apparently told Horton that if he published Pusztai's paper, this would 'have implications for his personal position' as editor. (Pro-GM food scientist 'threatened editor')
The information provided to the BBC's Editorial Standards Committee also failed to note Lachmann's links over the years to commercial companies with biotech interests that could be affected by the outcome of the GM debate. It is of course true that just because a close relative strongly holds certain beliefs or has particular professional interests, it doesn't mean his son automatically shares those beliefs or interests. But surely the BBC wouldn't put out a programme on, say, the case for the Iraq war that was produced and directed by the son of Donald Rumsfeld, or by Euan Blair, without owning up to the connection? And wouldn't that be still more the case if the programme was attracting controversy even before it was broadcast?
Dr Pusztai and his partner Dr Susan Bardocz were recently presented with the Stuttgart Peace Prize, in recognition of their "courage and scientific integrity as well as their undaunted insistence on the public's right to know." The BBC, however, does not accept the public's right to know about the Lachmann connection. Its Editorial Standards Committee threw out the complaint.