Julian Morris tells us, in the latest message to be forwarded by Prakash to the SCOPE news group, that with regard to the press release attacking organic food as a danger to children etc, which he and his IEA-sidekick Roger Bate put out in the IEA's name: "If NGIN cannot tell the difference between the views of individuals who work for an organisation and the views of that organisation then that is sad."
But isn't it even sadder if individuals and organisations make no effort to differentiate their various activities and then complain about any resulting confusion?
Just imagine, for example, being asked to believe that a press release had no connection with the White House when it had been put out by Dick Cheney through the White House press office with the administration's name emblazoned across the top of it! And would the White House connection seem any less likely if some two years later that same press release, centering on a survey said to have been "carried out by White House researchers", was still showing up as an official White House document on the White House's own website?
Substitute Morris for Cheney, and the Institute of Economic Affairs for the White House, and the details of the parallel are exact. When individuals and organisations make so little effort to differentiate their activities, it is not so much "sad" as inevitable that there will be confusion. And, of course, if one is dealing with dubious individuals and dubious organisations, that confusion may be very useful, providing a smokescreen behind which they can conveniently disown one another according to circumstance.
A friend recently told me that Morris once went in front of a British parliamentary committee to declare that global warming was not happening, that no one could prove it was happening, and that even if it were, and it could be proved, then Britain might just benefit from a warmer world! When Morris was questioned about whether or not he were there on IEA time, spouting IEA opinions, he apparently persistently denied this, leaving the MPs perhaps to ponder why in that case they were bothering to listen to him any more than you or I or any other private citizen.
I can't vouch for the accuracy of that anecdote though it strikes me as entirely plausible. What is certain is that defending the interests of big corporations, no matter how dubious their activities, is what the likes of Morris and Bate are all about. For how else are we to make sense of Morris singing adorations to "the language of science" while he and Roger Bate attack organic agriculture with Dennis Avery's risible statistics. Or Morris and Bate claiming to support science first and last, while in the case of issues such as climate change and passive smoking playing up every uncertainty about their reality, and in the case of genetic engineering, by contrast, rigidly disallowing every uncertainty. The only common thread is corporate interest.
And sermons on morality come particularly ill from such people. When Roger Bate, Morris's anti-environmental sidekick at the IEA and the co-editor with Morris of "Fearing Food", directed and presented the Counterblast TV programme attacking organic agriculture, in which Morris and various other IEA intimates kept putting in appearances without any indication that they were all part of the same extreme rightwing clique, Bate did so under his title of Director of the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF), an organisation which Bate helped to found.
The European Science and Environment Forum describes itself, predictably, as "a non-partisan group of scientists" but its financial origins are revealing. Documents released by tobacco giant Philip Morris show that ESEF was, in fact, established with money from Big Tobacco as part of a worldwide campaign to undermine industry-critical research. As Big Tobacco's European front organization, ESEF's task was to smuggle tobacco advocacy into a larger bundle of "sound science" issues, including attacking such problematic areas for US corporate interests as "restrictions on the use of biotechnology." [see 'How Big Tobacco Helped Create "the Junkman" ' in PR Watch, Volume 7, No. 3: http://www.prwatch.org]
And Morris tells us that it's "NGIN and all its members" who should be "ashamed of themselves"?
Surely, it's about time that CS Prakash did some serious soul searching about the dubious network of extreme rightwing collaborators he has increasingly made himself and AgBioWorld a part of, and whom he seems so determined to defend.
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"C. S. Prakash" wrote:
This message comes to you from SCOPE through the GMF-news email list. For subscription details and archives, please see: http://scope.educ.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/gmf-news
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Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 22:59:57 +0100
From: julian morris <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Subject: NGIN comments on Julian Morris and IEA
If NGIN cannot tell the difference between the views of individuals who work for an organisation and the views of that organisation then that is sad. Presumably people who work for NGIN have meetings to decide what their members do in their spare time (lest those actions might in some way be construed as the activities of NGIN). Actually, I suppose that is what NGIN does: removing choice and freedom by preventing people from making their own mind up about the merits of new foods. Shame.
The IEA is devoted to educting the public about the institutions of the free society. People who work for the IEA inevitably have considerable freedom to express their views, even if those views are at odds with others within the IEA or with the IEA's trustees. As I explained in my earlier email, the point of the press release which was put out on IEA letterhead (because two of the people who designed and carried out the survey were IEA employees, we were allowed this privilege) was to draw the public's attention to the absuridity of many food scares and the risk that over-reacting to such food scares.
I find it interesting that the same people who are opposed to genetic engineering of food should support organic food. I suppose it says more about the way such people conceptualise the world than anything else. The idea of organic agriculture derives from an assumption that 'natural' is better. Likewise, opposition to genetic engineering derives from an asumption that synthetic or man-made is worse. These two ideas are analogous and they are deeply misanthropic. They are also, from a scientific standpoint, absurd. But they are not scientific -- they are moral. In my view they are morally repugnant.
Science is one of many institutions that humanity has created for its own benefit. Science offers a way of describing the world around us that is outside of culture and language and can therefore cross those cultural and linguistic barriers. Scientists in China, India, Russia, Australia, Japan, Argentina, Spain, Norway, The US and the UK can communicate in the common language of science -- of theorems and equations; of experimental data and statistics. Millions of researchers the world over are constantly discovering new and better ways of explaining the world. Other scientists are using this knowledge and combining it with their own to develop new technologies. In general the new technologies that have been introduced over the past several millennia have benetfited mankind. IN the realm of nutrition, these include (but are not limited to):
Cooking (originally wood fires were used, which, whilst dangerous in themselves helped our ancestors to kill bacteria, which might otherwise have killed them; nowadays we use less dangerous technologies such as gas and electric stoves, but still many people die and are injured in fires caused during cooking)
Cultivation (which probably reduced biodiversity -- but enabled our ancestors to feed themselves)
Pesticides (some early ones used highly toxic substances such as arsenic, but with the development of organochlorine, organophosphate and more recently synthetic pyrethroids, which are far less harmful to mammals)
Fertilisers (which replace nutrients that are lost during cultivation far more efficiently than earlier technologies, such as manure and compost -- and they are less likely to lead to contamination with bacteria, heavy metals and other unknown compounds)
Genetic modification (early attempts at GM were rather inefficient, often taking years to produce a new hybrid; in the mid-part of the last century, with the introduction of radiation-generated random mutation, the process was improved slightly; now with modern biotechnology and improved understanding of genomics, we are able to produce new varieties that are more nutritious, require fewer pesticides, are less likely to lead to allergic responses, and are higher-yielding so that less land is needed to produce the same amount of food)
Opposition to modern technology is morally repugnant because of the enormous opportunities that such technolgies offer the human race. Of course these technologies will not by themselves solve the problem of malnutrition in poor countries. That requires political solutions -- and in particular it requires that people in those countries be free to own land and manage that land themselves, and to be able to sell their produce to people in other countries. But new technologies can be part of the process by which poor people escape from poverty. Groups that oppose new technologies, even where that opposition is primarily local, often have effects far beyond their borders. Opposition to GM crops in Europe has made the governments of poor countries wary about allowing their people to introduce GM crops. That is not something of which to be proud. NGIN and all its members it should be ashamed of themselves.
Those people who really believe in going back to nature should be more consistent: go to Borneo, Brazil or Papua New Guinea and try living amongst the wild animals without using any tools.
Julian Morris (whose views do not necessarily represent those of the IEA, its Directors, Advisors or Trustees)
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Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 16:19:36 +0100
From: ngin <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
To: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Subject: [SCOPE:GMF-news] Re: Response on NGIN comments from IEA
Norfolk Genetic Information Network (ngin),
http://www.ngin.org.uk
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Re Response on NGIN comments from IEA
Prakash has forwarded to SCOPE a "Response on NGIN comments from IEA" in which Julian Morris of the Institute of Economic Affairs states that, "nearly everything he [ie NGIN] says about the IEA is wrong ...".
Morris tells us, for example, that a press release attributed to the IEA, which stated that organic food "may well present a danger to children, the elderly and the sick" and which suggested such people should be discouraged from eating organic food, did not actually come from the Institute of Economic Affairs:
"That press release was put out by Roger Bate and myself", he says. But Roger Bate and Julian Morris both work for the IEA, co-directing its Environment & Technology Programme, and as even Morris admits, "we did use the IEA's fax machine and letterhead..."
The press release, in fact, not only went out from the IEA's press office in the IEA's name but it centered on a survey said to have been "carried out by researchers from the Institute of Economic Affairs". For anyone wanting to check it out, the press release can be found on the IEA website amongst the IEA's other press releases: http://www.iea.org.uk/press/butter.htm
It would, however, be quite wrong to conclude that this press release had anything to do with the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Yeah, right...
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