Letter to the Editor

CHEMO-HUBRIS

Greetings;

This letter is a response to the questions and topics raised by Mr. Robert Tashbook in the "Letters" column of 30 July, 2003. In his letter, Mr. Tashbook requests enlightenment on the issue of Genetic Modification with a special emphasis upon facts and science, not opinion or conjecture. I shall try to slake his thirst.

To a certain and critical extent, as he rightly points out, all of the food crops which humans raise are "modified" in order to best serve the needs of humanity -- namely nourishment, and the security of same in the future. This was not always the case, as many textbooks make plain. Human society was, originally, dedicated almost exclusively to hunting and gathering. It appears that, some fifteen to twenty thousand years ago, a spontaneous genetic mutation (or "sport") in a certain variety or perhaps more than one variety of wild grasses from the region formerly known as Mesopotamia is responsible for what we now know as agriculture; that is, a particular type of grass began to grow which not only bore a larger and more nutritious seed than its cousins, but which also had the advantage of not "shattering" (casting out its seeds) spontaneously or too easily, thus making it harvestable by humans. This was one of the first varieties of triticum, or wheat, and the very foundation stone of what we call civilization. It is still grown today although mostly (in this country, anyway) as a kind of hobby grain called "Stone Age Wheat." I have grown it myself. The flour it eventually yields is much tastier than modern "hard red spring" wheat or "English" (sometimes known as "soft") wheat, has a higher content of protein, lysine and other amino acids, but tends not to yield quite so much and is much more difficult to thresh and process. It does not lend itself to mechanical cultivation or processing, hence its current commercial unpopularity. Anyway, as the centuries went by, farmers dutifully selected their seed grains for next year's crop based upon the evident characteristics they found most desirable: higher yields, better straw, good flavor, improved resistance to diseases, and so forth.

Many people think of this as a kind of "genetic modification," but it can only be described as such in a distant sense because after all, the agriculturist isn't "modifying" anything himself, but simply taking best advantage of whatever modest natural genetic variations he can identify that suit him. On rare occasions the variation is not so modest, such as with the fruit known as "eggplant." A century ago, the fruit of this curious nightshade was creamy white in color and the size and shape of -- yes, you guessed -- an egg. Not for nothing was it known as an "egg plant." Then one year, in some agriculturist's field, his eggplant bore huge, shiny, deep purple fruits that didn't taste as bitter and also, more importantly, instantly caught the eye of everybody in the marketplace. A handy new eggplant "sport," in other words.. Today, small creamy white eggplants can be found here and there in the "heirloom" seed catalogues, but the average grocery shopper wouldn't know what the fruit was if they saw it.

So-called "eating apples" are of the same background. America's Puritan forebears brought apples over with them from England, but they weren't "eating apples," they were for making cider. "Johnny Appleseed" Chapman planted hundreds, perhaps thousands of apple trees, but these too were entirely cider apples. Cider apples taste pretty awful compared to what we're used to eating today, but their juice ferments into a splendid drink, unlike eating apples. The Native Americans of New England were not only glad to help the invaders plant their orchards (they liked the cider, just like the settlers) but showed them how to take the pomace, or pressed-out apple pulp, and spread it over a fallow field, to slowly rot into compost and fertilize the soil. Of course, dozens of the cider apple seeds sprouted in the field, and of these the sturdiest-looking were dug out and set into a new orchard for future use -- and then greatly to the surprise of the orchardist, now and again some few of these sprouts did not yield the old cider apples, but entirely new varieties. These are what we now call "eating apples." Even as late as the 20th century, a Chinese coolie hired to prune and maintain a large cherry orchard noticed a particularly healthy-looking sprout popping up from an old pile of branch cuttings. He cultivated the sprout, which as a tree bore spectacularly large, sweet, dark cherries. They're still named after him: "Bing."

Was Mr. Bing thus an exponent of "genetic modification?" Arguably -- maybe. But once again, all he did was take best advantage of something which occurred (and is still occurring) naturally. He didn't modify anything, himself. Which brings us to the modern era.

So-called gene splicing -- actual "genetic modification" -- is definitely NOT in the same league as traditional agriculture or husbandry, and scientists in the lab are most definitely NOT doing the same thing as herdsmen or seed-savers. They very cleverly create combinations of genetic material which have not, and could not exist in nature. There is no natural way on this earth that a bacterium, protozoa, phytoplankter or a rat could introduce their genetic material to the DNA of corn, for example -- only humans can do that and only under severely controlled conditions. But, it can be done. What has responsible scientists and human beings everywhere concerned is not that humans can do this, but that they have done it and then simply flung their new, literally monstrous DNA out into nature while blandly assuring us that it will not have the slightest deleterious effect on anything, a claim so fundamentally stupid it beggars discussion. Wide range, complex, in-depth testing? It hasn't been done -- it's too complicated and too expensive, we're told.

We do know that everything in nature (and this even includes humans!) is interconnected, sometimes through a vastly subtle and mysterious path, but they are irrevocably interrelated. DDT, for example, appeared perfectly harmless to everything except what we thought we could do without (body lice, pestilential insects, vermin, etc.) and it took generations to discover that no, in fact it has terrible long-range effects on a wide variety of innocent flora and fauna. (And by the way, it's still being made here in the USA, where it's banned from use. The law is simply side-stepped by having it sold overseas, instead.) Now, to change the basic structure of life itself in such a heretofore impossible fashion, even on the smallest of scales, to create forms of life which have never been known before, cannot but have endless unknown consequences. What will these consequences be, particularly the long-term ones? Nobody knows! -- that is the scary part. They may be pifflingly small, even inconsequential. Or not. Smiling assurances aren't worth a damn; they don't really know.

But genetic modification's true malign nature is most clearly revealed in the behavior of its controllers. GM food seemed, at least in the press releases, to open up a fantastic window allowing humans to bypass the tiresome necessity of waiting for dozens of generations to slowly, gradually improve their crops, or rely on usable "sports" to randomly occur to their advantage. We just tweak the odd gene and zip-bang, a year later the miracle is on our grocery shelf -- or more accurately, on its way to the bank, since this is the real impetus to "genetic modification," the potential oceans of money its proponents see to be made in it.

Take the first great public (and I stress the word public, for reasons given below) example of GM food: the "McGregor Flavvr Savvr" Tomato. Ballyhooed as the greatest advance in ag since rye bread, it was a lead showpiece of the so-called GM revolution. It tasted absolutely incredible, it wouldn't go soft, it looked ever so pretty, hell it even sounded cuter than ordinary toms; the name, by the way, was boosted from the farmer whom Beatrix Potter's adorable little rabbits used to steal food, and had nothing to do with real farmers or anybody actually named McGregor. The tomatoes made their grand debut in supermarkets across America...and they were a flop. A dismal flop. Advertised, showboated, whooped up ad nauseam, and nobody would buy them. The bottom line? Nobody trusted 'em. Wisely, ordinary people did not feel it was in their best interests to become voluntary test subjects for GeneTech; that, and the few who tried them found they tasted no better than ordinary store-bought tomatoes, and considerably worse than home-grown ones. What to do, what to do?, the GM boys wondered in a frenzy, we've invested too much into this to just back out! Well, the answer was simple, based on their unhappy experience: Go ahead and feed it to the dumb bastards, but just don't tell anybody and they won't know to complain. Don't start at the bottom, trying to convince consumers -- go right to the top and do your dirty work there. The FDA was furiously and successfully lobbied so that GM foods, particularly corn and soybeans, could not only be grown anywhere, but be included in any processed foodstuffs without the slightest notification on the packaging. And going even further, it was established that companies who sought to inform their customers that their products "contained no GM foods" were banned from doing so on the front of the package, as this might cast an unfair aspersion on the obvious miracle of genetically modified foodstuffs, like they might be bad, or something -- and they're not because ConAgra (and their money) SAYS they're not. To this day, the FDA insists you have no right to make an informed choice or to know exactly what it is you're eating.

Is this the behavior of a company with mankind's best interests at heart? Why all the shadowy string-pulling, if they're the champions of light and truth? Monsanto says they want to end world hunger, so they employ an army of lawyers to zealously guard their patents, going so far as to even engineer seeds which will only produce infertile offspring -- thus magnanimously insuring that their customers buy from them forever, or starve.

Yes the money flows in, but nature isn't quite so co-operative. It doesn't follow the markets. It isn't static, holding conveniently still for our quick-fixes to work. Every new tweak may address some old problem, but it automatically opens up a whole world of new problems of which nature takes immediate advantage. Organized medicine, for example, has helped many people with antibiotics, but they have in turn created a whole raft of new, virulent, drug-resistant strains of pathogens which never seemed to exist before. GM agriculture can prove no different, as our grandchildren and their grandchildren will discover.

Hubris, thy names are Monsanto, Cargill, ConAgra...

The answer? Buy organic, because it's the only way you know what you're getting. Better yet, be a true subversive and grow your own.

JB Reynolds
Graton

PS. I also read with interest in the same issue of the paper, W.E. Reinka's tribute to Desi Arnaz. I can supply a few more modest details to this article.

I Love Lucy's pioneering three-camera technique was not developed by Mr. Arnaz, who, though a gifted musician and a charming fellow, didn't know one end of a camera from the other. His real credit was to listen to the hard-boiled business advice of his wife, Lucille Ball, who had been largely responsible for his success as a band leader and who assumed a prominent role in the running of Desilu Studios. It was her idea to hire a brilliant Czech named Karl Freund as the company's Director of Photography, a very interesting, technically proficient, innovative and multi-talented individual. He did the actual inventing of the three-camera process.

Mr. Freund had worked for many decades, starting with the silent film industry in Germany where he photographed F.W. Murnau's The Last Laugh and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. With the advent of sound he came to Hollywood where he worked both as Director of Photography (winning an Academy Award for The Good Earth) and also Director (The Mummy, Madame Spy, and others). He also did a great deal of uncredited work, some of it amusingly disreputable. For example, the film director Richard Brooks' first script was the 1948 feature Key Largo, which the film's producers were astonished to discover was an actual place and then decided to use as a location. Mr. Freund was hired as Cinematographer, but had many criticisms of the script. This irked Mr. Brooks, who accosted him in the hotel bar one evening. Mr. Freund declined to enlarge upon his criticisms. Brooks suggested that as DP, Freund had no real competence in criticizing a scriptwriter. Freund raised an eyebrow, finished his drink and beckoned, taking Brooks back to his hotel room where he had a 16mm projector set up. He threaded a reel of film, and sat down and lit a cigar as the projector cranked up. What they looked at was a very competently made reel of pornography. After a few minutes Brooks marshaled his nerve and wondered out loud why in the world they were viewing this. "In zis film," Freund said, gesturing through the flickering light and billows of cigar smoke, "I am ze producer, ze writer, ze director, ze cameraman und ze editor. I am doink everysink except ze actink. I learn with zis story, chust what you must learn with yours -- tell ze story, ya, but GET TO ZE FUCKING POINT!"