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comments on a book review
The author of the book review below,Alan McHughen, is a devoted acolyte
of Alex Avery and his book Pandora's Picnic Basket went a long way
towards trying to legitimize Avery's belief that the Center of Disease
Control had reported that organic foods spread toxic E coli 0157 even
though the Center denied the claims as most now know. McHugen , then a
Saskatchewan plant scientist also testified in support of Monsanto in
the trial against Percy Schmeiser.
In the material below on "safety assessment" the regulatory use of
"substantial equivalence" the prior assumption of food safety by
regulators is not highlighted even though it is the basis for safety
evaluation and release of GM products.GM foods have not been required to
undertake chronic animal feeding studies nor have clinical trials with
human volunteers been done. Instead large north american populations
have been fed unlabeled GM foods (unlabeled foods cannot readily be
traced in a legitimate epidemiological study).
Furthermore, the commercial GM crops have been produced using
illegitimate recombination while traditional crops were produced using
homologous (meiotic) recombination. It is not entirely rational to
suggest that virus resistance selected using normal meiosis and sex is
equivalent to the illegitimate products of genetic engineering. The two
differ in stability and other important attributes. Unfortunately,
commercial genetic engineering has been able to use heavy handed public
relations to obscure the truth and to avoid important issues.
Nature Biotechnology
October 2002 Volume 20 Number 10 p 975
Safety first
Reviewed by Alan McHughen
Alan McHughen is a biotechnology specialist at the University of
California, Riverside e-mail: alanmc@citrus.ucr.edu. His book, Pandora's
Picnic Basket: The Potential and Hazards of Genetically Modified Foods,
was published by Oxford University Press in 2000.
Biotechnology and Safety Assessment, Edn. 3
Invariably, when the topic of biotechnology arises, the curious public
asks, "Is it safe?" Activists opposed to biotech cleverly transmute this
perfectly valid question into the pointedly invalid "Where is the
scientific evidence proving biotech to be safe?" and hastily, if
fallaciously, conclude, "These hazardous biotech products are put on the
market with no safety testing."
Scientists venturing into the public debate over biotechnology have long
been exasperated by these claims, as there can be no scientific proof
that biotechnology (or anything else, for that matter) will never cause
harm; science cannot prove negatives, and in any case, safety is a
relative condition, not an absolute. But these concepts are difficult to
convey expeditiously to an anxious consumer hungry for a fast-food
sound-bite reassurance.
In spite of anti-biotech campaigners' assertions to the contrary, there
is a substantial database of biosafety information related to
biotechnology. The scientific studies testing safety of biotech and
biotech products date back to the earliest days of the technology, and
continue to form an important component in the evolution of the
technology and regulation of the products. Unfortunately, much of the
data from the various studies is widely dispersed and often
inaccessible, even to scientists, in dry government reports, low–print
run conference proceedings, and obscure journals, or locked away in
corporate vaults. Now, at last, some biosafety data is available to all.
In Biotechnology and Safety Assessment, editors John A. Thomas and Roy
L. Fuchs compile 16 chapters in a diverse accounting of biosafety
issues. The book is a treasure trove of useful information and, yes,
cold, hard peer-reviewed data. Actually the third edition (the first,
published in 1993, focused on recombinant drugs and their pre-clinical
testing; the second, from 1999, included transgenic plants and opened
vistas in environmental as well as health safety issues), this volume
provides a somewhat eclectic but strategically chosen series of chapters
on biosafety topics spanning agricultural and medical biotechnology.
This is not encyclopedic or comprehensive, but does sample the spectrum,
from ecological consequences of growing biotech crops, to food safety
assessments of biotech microbes, to biotherapeutics. Such a diverse
range of topics necessarily results in a staccato reading session; it is
not easy to finish reading a rousing chapter on "Preclinical safety
evaluation of (biotech) vaccines" and then turn the page to begin "Gene
flow from transgenic plants." Just when you get into the flow (so to
speak), you're faced with a sudden, sometimes jarring, change of direction.
As with almost every compilation, some chapters are better than others.
Some are fairly general and vague, others are so specific they might
have been journal articles. All are well written by worthy authors and
amply referenced, and the illustrations, though not plentiful, are,
well, illustrative. But the best thing is the broad collection of actual
data—the stuff some people claim over and over doesn't exist. Throughout
the book, tables and charts satisfy the desire for quantitative
measurements.
In a departure from the usual mundane defensive posture often taken
almost apologetically by biotech supporters, in which the relative
safety of biotech products is meekly defended, Thomas and Fuchs embark
with an aggressive attack, promoting the power of biotechnology to
remove or reduce allergens from common foods. The first chapter has Gary
A. Bannon firing the opening salvo, dryly noting that conventional plant
breeding hasn't helped allergy suffers much, but removal or reduction of
allergens using biotechnology is imminent. With so many allergy
sufferers out there, the ability of biotech to provide safer, less
allergenic foods is welcome and attractive.
In another important chapter, Detlaf Barsch and Gregor Schmitz discuss
environmental hazards relating to crop plants, noting—in what has become
a resounding refrain from almost every scientist who investigates the
issue—that "...environmental impact does not depend on the process (of
breeding)... but on the end product." They note, for example, that
conventional plant breeding could produce virus-resistant crops
virtually identical to those generated using biotech. Does this suggest
biotech crops are all without hazard? Not at all—it means that biotech
crops are potentially just as capable of causing environmental
disruption as any other methods of breeding and introduction (including
"natural" ones), and that regulatory efforts should focus on the
attributes of the plant, regardless of how those attributes got there.
Unfortunately, opponents of biotechnology will not be swayed by this
book. In dogmatic fashion, they will contemptuously dismiss the entire
work because one of the co-editors, and some of the chapter authors, are
employed by private companies and therefore—in their minds—the whole
book is tainted. So successfully has this dismissive tactic worked in
public venues that now it's assumed that so-called evil corporations
routinely fabricate data to support their commercialization and
globalization agenda.
This is a repugnant assumption. It is appropriate to scrutinize
potential conflicts of interest, and fair to keep these in mind when
assessing the authors' interpretations of the data. The beauty of
scientific research is that data can be independently assessed on its
own merits. For experienced scientists (especially those with an
undergraduate teaching role), fabricated data tends to jump off the
page. If there is scientific fraud, subsequent experimentation and
analysis will eventually expose it. To summarily dismiss a work based
solely on the employment affiliation of an author or editor without any
actual evidence of misconduct is not only unjustified, it is unjust. In
what other field of human activity can a person's intellectual efforts
be accused, convicted, and condemned to oblivion without evidence being
presented? Anyone championing respect for intellectual inquiry must
challenge such unsubstantiated accusations.
Thomas and Fuchs provide a useful, fact-filled handbook of biotechnology
biosafety data. There's not much new data, but it has great value as
compiled database of evidence on a broad range of biosafety issues. If
you have only one source of biosafety data, this is for you. Don't go
out in public without it.
.