Here's Lord Taverne, Chairman of Sense About Science, waxing lyrical about how GM will save the world - Nuffield report, Golden Rice, Bt cotton in South Africa, etc. - plus the usual attacks on "green activists". He somehow fails to mention the concerns of the development agencies, like Christian Aid, Action Aid, Save the Children, CAFOD, Oxfam etc.
1.The huge benefits of GM are being blocked by blind opposition
2.Lord Dick Taverne - GM WATCH profile
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1.The huge benefits of GM are being blocked by blind opposition
Dick Taverne
Wednesday March 3, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,1160749,00.html
Many green activists oppose GM crops on principle. It is difficult to understand what the principle is, since they do not campaign against the production of drugs by genetic modification. Yet the same technique is used to transfer a gene from one species to another to make human insulin for people with diabetes, for instance, as to modify a GM crop.
By what principle is it right to make better drugs to protect us from disease, but not to modify plants to make them resistant to insect pests? Why is there such a violent reaction against the genetic modification of plants?
The strongest argument in favour of developing GM crops is the contribution they can make to reducing world poverty, hunger and disease. As the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, an independent body of experts and lay representatives, declared in 1999: "The moral imperative for making GM crops readily and economically available to developing countries who want them is compelling." The council's recent update of its report confirmed this view. No one argues that all problems can be solved by the wave of a magic GM wand. The question is: can GM crops help? On the evidence we have, it seems they can.
Most new technologies take root slowly and take time to prove their worth. What is remarkable about the application of GM technology to plants is how quickly it has been adopted and how much benefit it has already shown in poorer parts of the world.
Last year GM crops were cultivated over 70m hectares in 18 countries, covering more than twice the area of Britain. Nearly 5 million small farmers in China, India, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico now grow cotton genetically modified to protect it against the boll weevil. In China, this saves farmers as much as $500 per hectare, mainly through a 60-80% reduction in the use of pesticides. In KwaZulu, 92% of cotton farmers, mainly women, now grow GM cotton and some have seen their income nearly double, mainly because savings on pesticides greatly exceed the extra cost of the seeds. In India, when an infestation of pink bollworm devastated the cotton harvest, except where farmers had (illegally) planted GM cotton, farmers marched on Delhi demanding that GM cotton should be licensed, which it was in 2002.
The story of cotton shows actual financial benefit, here and now, mainly to small farmers in the developing world, contrary to the allegation frequently made by some NGOs that agricultural biotechnology only promotes industrial farming. But the greatest contribution of GM technology is to come. China spends over $100m a year on plant science and has developed 141 different types of GM crops, 65 of which are already in field trials. In India, too, biotechnology flourishes. Most research is on staple crops grown by ordinary farmers. A transgenic tomato has been modified to thrive on salty water and eventually salt-resistant crops can be cultivated in large tracts of land now infertile.
Research on GM plants will bring particular benefits to health. Some have already been achieved through the reduced use of pesticides. In South Africa, cases of burns and sickness from agricultural chemicals have fallen from 150 to a dozen a year because GM cotton is sprayed only twice a season instead of more than eight times.
More and greater benefits will come from the development of vaccines, antibodies and other pharmaceutical proteins in plants. Vaccines extracted from GM potatoes, against hepatitis B and against bacteria and viruses causing diarrhoeal diseases, are already under test. Eventually they will be produced in bananas or lettuces or in tomato juice that can be ingested raw. They will not then have to be administered by injection by trained personnel and should also be free from possible contamination with human pathogens.
Yet some NGOs dedicated to helping people in the developing world ignore these potential benefits. They even oppose the development of "golden rice" - which contains pro-vitamin A and, as part of a staple diet, could help redress the vitamin A deficiency associated with the deaths of more than a million children every year, according to the World Health Organisation. This deficiency is also the single most important cause of blindness in about half a million children annually.
Golden rice has not been developed for or by industry; it is given free of charge and restriction to subsistence farmers; it does not create advantages for rich landowners; it does not reduce biodiversity and has no harmful effect on the environment; it will benefit the poor and disadvantaged. Yet Greenpeace ridicules it as irrelevant.
Blind opposition to GM crops is the triumph of dogma over reason.
Lord Taverne is a chair of Sense About Science and author of The March of Unreason, published in November
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2.Lord Dick Taverne - GM WATCH profile
[for all the links etc. http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=127&page=T
for more about Sense About Science
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=151]
Lord Dick Taverne's long career has taken in politics, the law, business, lobbying, and supporting biotechnology. Among his roles:
*Chairman of the Association of Sense about Science
*Liberal Democrat peer in the House of Lords
*Non-Executive Deputy Chairman of Industrial Finance Group.
*Chairman of AXA Equity & Law Life Assurance PLC.
*Former Director of BOC Group plc.
*Former Chairman of the Institute of Fiscal Studies
The pro-GM lobby group Sense about Science which Taverne chairs is one of the Royal Society's closest allies. Sense about Science was set up in the middle of 2002 ahead of the UK's public debate on GM crop commercialisation. It promotes its point of view to peers, MPs and the media and is said to be funded by 'corporations and learned societies'.
Taverne has long enjoyed a close relationship with Lord Sainsbury. In the late 1980s Taverne, originally a Labour MP, served with Roger Liddle and David (later Lord) Sainsbury on the Steering Committee of the Social Democrat Party, which David Sainsbury bankrolled. Sainsbury also bankrolled the Institute of Fiscal Studies, after being approached by Taverne. Taverne became the first Chairman of the IFS.
Taverne and the director of Sense about Science, Tracey Brown, co-authored the article, 'Over-precautionary tales: The precautionary principle represents the cowardice of a pampered society' (Prospect, September 2002). Brown used to work for PR firm Regester Larkin, whose client list includes Aventis CropScience, Bayer and Pfizer. She is part of the Living Marxism network as is Ellen Raphael - Brown's lieutenant at Sense about Science.
Taverne also has a background in PR consultancy. In the late 1980s Dick Taverne and Roger Liddle founded the consultancy firm Prima Europe. In 1990 Prima published The case for Biotechnology , a paper authored by Taverne. Liddle and Taverne were joined on Prima's board in 1996 by Derek Draper. Prima's clients included Unilever, RTZ, BNFL, and Glaxo Wellcome.
In April 1998 Lord Taverne resigned from Prima, as a result of lobby-firm rules prohibiting employment of sitting MPs and peers, after its merger with GPC Market Access. GPC's clients included Pfizer, Novartis and SmithKline Beecham. Three months after Taverne's departure his former Prima co-directors Derek Draper and Roger Liddle were at the centre of the 'lobbygate' 'cash for access' scandal
Taverne is keenly concerned to prevent 'media distortion' in relation to biotechnology. Taverne claims the media's 'sloppiness' on GM issues is 'undermining the health of our democracy'. Taverne served on a Forum established by the SIRC and the Royal Institution which laid down a Code of Practice and Guidelines on the Communication of Science and Health issues in the Media, which tells journalists how to report GM and other contentious issues.
Taverne was also amongst those involved in the setting up of the biotech-industry supported Science Media Centre directed by Fiona Fox who is also part of the Living Marxism network.
In July 2002 Lord Taverne was reprimanded in the House of Lords after he called for Prince Charles to be made to relinquish the throne if he made any more statements critical of GM crops. On another occasion Taverne told his fellow peers that, 'There is a moral imperative for the Government to do everything they can to encourage and promote the spread of this technology [ie GM]'.
Taverne's attitude to organic agriculture is somewhat different. He describes it as 'voodoo science'. According to Taverne, not just the Soil Association but even the National Consumer Council base their opposition to GM 'on ideology, and they will not allow evidence to disturb their preconceived opinions.' He is even more scathing about Greenpeace, 'With its anti-science dogma, Greenpeace is in some ways our equivalent of the religous right in the US' (Against Anti-science, Prospect magazine, December 1999).Taverne is, however, a great admirer of Sir John Krebs who he has described as, 'the excellent and admirable chairman of the Food Standards Agency'.
Despite his preoccupation with the accurate reporting of science Taverne told his fellow peers in the House of Lords, 'The Pusztai saga and the GM food scares are a shameful indictment of British journalism. It all started when Dr Pusztai fed harmful lectins inserted in potatoes to rats, which he claimed poisoned them.' Pusztai's experiments, in fact, involved a type of lectin that is not normally harmful to mammals.
In November 2002 Taverne chaired the Scientific Alliance conference on GM called 'Fields of the Future'.