Fueling the Fears of Science

Volume 16 | Issue 13 | 10 | Jun. 24, 2002 Previous | Next Fueling the Fears of Science By Arlene Judith Klotzko Image: Anthony Canamucio In so many ways, it is hard to remember what life was like before the carnage of Sept. 11. What it felt like to be safe from unknown horrors. What seemed so important and now does not. What was top of the national policy agenda and now is not. All through last spring into the summer it was stem cells, but the events of that terrible day in September sent the whole subject into more or less oblivion, only for it to reappear more recently in the even more contentious discussion of therapeutic cloning. Fears of science--focusing specifically on the consequences of genetic manipulation--are being stoked on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, worries tend to center on the human applications of biotechnology, most notably cloning and a future in which genetic engineering of the human germ line will be possible. These largely neoconservative critics--including their intellectual big gun, Francis Fukuyama--see cloning as the thin end of the wedge. In their doleful view, therapeutic cloning will lead to reproductive cloning, which will lead to germ line interventions and, in Fukuyama's particular nightmare vision, a class of genetic aristocrats lording it over a genetic underclass, who may well turn violent unless the government offers them a eugenic way out of their sorry lot in life. For anyone who knows about science, this vision is preposterous. For the rest, it is very, very scary. In a brazen attempt to link science with feelings of terror and menace, Eric Cohen of The Weekly Standard wrote an article with an extraordinary title, "Dr. West and Mr. Bin Laden." With the evocation of Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," the title was cynically chosen to achieve maximum impact. And insult. Dr. West is, of course, Mike West, CEO of Advanced Cell Technology, very much the public face of therapeutic cloning in the United States. Meanwhile, in Britain, visions of science and scientists running amok are also causing fear and trembling. While no one seems particularly bothered about therapeutic cloning, periodic updates about Severino Antinori's alleged efforts at reproductive cloning (most recently, we have been told, his work is taking place in an unnamed Middle Eastern country) are always good for a headline. But, in the United Kingdom, it's not visions of irresponsible human applications of biotechnology that get people cowering in the corner. The subject is the ever popular and ever sinister one of genetically modified (GM) foods. Distrust of the food supply--especially when it is manipulated in ways that nature never intended--predate current GM food concerns. They are traceable directly to the catastrophe of BSE (colloquially and evocatively known as mad cow disease). It is impossible to erase the memory of years of assurance that BSE in cows could not be transmitted to humans who ate infected beef. Of course, it was not scientists who decided to turn cows from herbivores into carnivores. As Prime Minister Tony Blair has rightly said, BSE represented a failure of practice, rather than a failure of science. Still it is science that has inherited a legacy of suspicion that it has yet to shake off. Last month, Blair gave a major speech at Britain's national science academy, the Royal Society, on the theme of science as a vehicle for human progress. He expressed great concern that terrorism on the part of some animal welfare campaigners along with virulent feelings about GM foods would deprive Britain of its competitive edge, not just with respect to developed countries including the United States, but also developing countries, especially in Asia. As he said, Britain has great reason to take pride in its scientists. With 1% of the world's population, Britain produces 8% of its scientific papers and earns 9% of citations in learned journals. ANTI-SCIENCE IS PUTTING SCIENCE AT RISK When recombinant DNA technology appeared on the scene about 30 years ago, it was clear that there were two sets of concerns apart from intrinsically scientific questions. The first was risk and the second was ethics. While science has made enormous strides and the landscape of genetics has changed beyond recognition, the twin concerns of those early days are still with us now in the public's wariness over GM food. There are also attempts to severely circumscribe research involving GM animals, potentially jeopardizing the use of mice as models for human disease research. And now, with an increasingly bitter dispute about a two-part "GM thriller" shown on the BBC June 8 and 9, things have turned really nasty. Fields of Gold is a drama written by two writers, one of whom is Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the liberal Guardian newspaper. Since information about the program started filtering into the press, editors and writers of competing papers, in particular the conservative Times of London and The Daily Telegraph, have launched a vitriolic attack on the writers and on the BBC. In the sort of play on words that the British do so well, an editorial in the June 2 issue of the Telegraph referred to the program as "dramatically modified truth." Lord Robert May, president of the Royal Society, has joined the fray, and was quoted in the same editorial decrying Fields of Gold as "an error strewn piece of propaganda." He said that the BBC would be abdicating its responsibility to the public by broadcasting it. The editorial went on to summarize the plot: A scientist, it reports, uses a food blender to create GM wheat in his bedroom, and he adds a gene resistant to the powerful antibiotic, vancomycin HCl, which turns up in hospital waste. The next thing we know, the editorial says, a superbug infects foxes and birds and old people and threatens humanity. To make matters worse, viewers were referred to a map of GM field trials through a BBC Web link--this immediately following the last image of the program, which was of GM wheat on fire. Lord May has since accused the BBC of inciting ecoterrorism. The scientific adviser to the program, Mark Tester, has told one and all that although he told the writers and the BBC "there was a theoretical possibility of genes transferring from a crop to bacteria, they have confused this with a probability." Certainly an easy mistake for a nonscientist to make. IDEOLOGY GAP FEEDS DISTRUST In the June 7 issue of the Guardian, coauthor Alan Rusbridger replied to his critics, accusing them of a "concerted effort to destroy the credibility" of the drama even before it was put on air. An effort that he claims serves "the interests of biotech industry." There is an ideology gap between Britain and the United States that feeds into the distrust here and explains why people seem receptive to conspiracy theories about nefarious American companies sneaking their noxious substances into the food and the environment and making money on it all. The combination of science and business does not feel as comfortable to the British as it does to Americans. Indeed, Blair's speech was attacked by several newspapers for being pro-business. The anticapitalist argument is often raised in conjunction with a rather old-fashioned earnest belief that we would all be better off in a state of nature devoid of human interference. Of course, nostalgia for an Eden that never was is patently illogical; our ancestral hunter-gatherers were certainly not like the 18th-century philosopher Rouseau's noble savages, although they certainly were savage. To the chagrin of those championing the public understanding of science, several polls in Britain have shown that the more people know or think they know about it, the more distrustful they are. In the aftermath of this program--seen by six million viewers--most of the audience will be left frightened and confused. While many people have seen Fields of Gold and many others have heard about it, how the larger debate on GM food will turn out is still very much a tale without an ending. Arlene Judith Klotzko is a contributing editor. She is writer in residence at the Science Museum and Adviser on Science and Society at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre. She is also the Visiting Scholar in Bioethics at the Windeyer Institute of Medical Sciences, University College, London. ©2002, The Scientist Inc. Comment E-mail article

Fueling the Fears of Science

Fueling the Fears of Science

By Arlene Judith Klotzko

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