Group targets UK GM scientists
GM Watch publishes list of researchers and others who 'force feed us GMOs'
By Jon Hurdle
The Scientist, January 8, 2004
http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20040108/01

GM Watch, a British group opposed to genetically modified organisms (GMOs), has published a list of life scientists and others who it says are playing an active role in the "massive and deceptive [public relations] push" to promote GM foods.

Calling the list a "Who's who in the fight to force feed us GMOs," the Norwich, UK-based group names 72 individuals and organizations that are seeking to persuade policymakers and the public that GMOs offer a safe way of solving the world's food supply problems.

The group accuses scientists such as Derek Burke and Cambridge University Emeritus Professor of Immunology Peter Lachmann of participating in a campaign to mislead the public into believing GM foods are safe and to promote the interests of major corporations such as Monsanto with a stake in the GM industry.

Other prominent scientists on the list include Chris Leaver, head of the Department of Plant Sciences at Oxford University; Michael Wilson, chief executive of Horticulture Research International, the UK government's main testing and development unit for market gardening; and Dennis Avery, director of the Center for Global Food Issues, part of the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

The scientists, together with named lobbyists, public relations (PR) firms, politicians, and other pro-GM campaigners, are also charged with suppressing dissent, seeking to inhibit media coverage of news that is unhelpful to the biotech industry, and attacking alternatives to GM such as organic agriculture.

Jonathan Matthews, editor of the group's Web site, said the list was published with the intention of unveiling a pro-GM public relations campaign whose methods may not be immediately clear to the press and the public. "There's a lot of PR activity that isn't presented as such," Matthews told The Scientist. "It's therefore quite hard to understand what the real agenda is."

GM Watch calls Burke a "keen propagandist for GM foods" and says he presided over two institutions-the University of East Anglia and the John Innes Centre-that have attracted financial support from agribusinesses such as Syngenta. But Burke said he had no corporate ties during his tenure as vice chancellor of the University of East Anglia from 1987 to 1995.

In that post, "I had to have complete integrity," Burke told The Scientist. "I had no connection with any company at all. It was absolutely imperative that I was seen to be squeaky clean."

Burke also argued it would have been impossible for him to have courted corporate money for the John Innes Centre, a leading plant and microbial research organization based in Norwich, UK, because he stepped down from the center's governing council before Syngenta got involved. "There are no grounds for implying corruption," he said.

Burke, who has worked with the UK government on how science can contribute to economic competitiveness, called GM foods a "perfectly reasonable logical development of science."

The GM Watch list, published in mid-December, won't change the substance of the GM debate, Burke said, but will probably lower its tone. "It makes the debate very unpleasant," he said.

Burke called GM Watch's case an "expression of opinion" rather than "argued evidence" and said that the lack of supporting argument in its accusations explains the tone of some of its material. "When people run short of arguments, they throw mud," he said.

Lachmann echoed Burke's comments, calling GM Watch a "rude and aggressive" organization that bends the truth to suit its agenda. "Most of these lobby organizations are unscrupulous and quite well organized. Telling the unvarnished truth would not seem to be their first priority," he told The Scientist.

Lachmann dismissed a report-originally made in the UK's Guardian newspaper and repeated by GM Watch's directory-that he had threatened the editor of The Lancet for publishing a paper claiming GM potatoes had a bad effect on rats. "The idea that I would threaten him in any way or that he would lose his job is rubbish," Lachmann said.

GM Watch, he said, typifies an antiscientific movement that fights advances despite their benefits and is also shown in recent accusations that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine causes autism in children. "There is a big movement away from the enlightenment that looks back towards a nonexistent, golden past," he said. "It's a bit of a tragedy. In the end, there are dead people and starving populations-though not in the developed world."

Links for this article
GM Watch
http://www.gmwatch.org

The Biotech Brigade: An Introduction
http://www.lobbywatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=26&page=1

Chris Leaver
http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/academicstaff/academics/leaver.html

Michael Wilson
http://www2.hri.ac.uk/person_finder.php?viewstaff=692

Dennis Avery
http://www.cgfi.org/about/davery_bio.htm

Syngenta
http://www.syngenta.com/en/index.aspx

The Lancet
http://www.thelancet.com/