Biotechnology Still Struggling To Gain A Public Awareness Foothold

The industry's supporters and critics both claim that surveys support their causes; meanwhile, its boosters ponder improvements to their educational efforts. POLL POSITION: Ronnie Cummins claims that the Pure Food Campaign's surveys reveal negative attitudes toward biotech. Biotechnology representatives paint a rosy picture of the industry's future, portraying it as a rising star gaining influence among commercial interests and policymakers. But surveys reveal a wide range of public reactions and illustrate that people are far more accepting of some forms of biotechnology, such as those applied medically, than of others, such as those used in agricultural applications. In addition, a vocal anti-biotechnology contingent continues to make its presence felt. Anti-biotech activists argue that people are skeptical of the industry's claims of better products and adequate safety measures, and claim that in light of this skepticism, negative images are justified. Observers say that with many biotech companies still struggling to attract investors, improving the industry's image is critical for scientists who work in the field. The Washington, D.C.-based Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) gauges the opinions of focus groups across the United States, and president Carl B. Feldbaum acknowledges that there is a long way to go. "We have found that fewer people than you think know about biotechnology," he notes. "When we ask them, 'What do you think of biotechnology?' they say, 'We'll tell you what we think when you tell us what it is.'" Feldbaum contends that people respond positively to biotechnology once they are informed about it. But critics argue that the public is wary of genetically engineered products-especially foods-because they have legitimate doubts about their safety. "The surveys we've looked at over the last 10 years show the public in the United States, in Canada, in Europe, and in most of the Western world have some basic misgivings about this technology being applied to the food they eat," says Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Little Marais, Minn.-based Pure Food Campaign. The group is an offshoot of the Foundation on Economic Trends, headed by long-time anti-biotech activist Jeremy Rifkin. "Although they don't know a great deal about the technology, what they've heard does not reassure them," Cummins maintains. Cummins's group would like to see mandatory labeling of genetically altered foods. The industry instead supports ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which would impose an international biotechnology testing requirement, saying that "uniform regulations governing food and agriculture are advisable to assure the safety and quality of our food supply." Activists believe, however, that the industry's reluctance to label its products is simply a tacit concession that they are inherently different from organic products. Opponents also argue that there is no way to test for all possible harmful effects of foods derived from biotechnology, and that allowing such products to be sold and consumed especially when unlabeled-constitutes an unacceptable public health risk. "The bottom line is that the public does not believe these products are totally safe, and they're outraged at the industry's attempts to avoid labeling," Cummins states. "You have to look at each particular food or crop in order to criticize its potential health hazards or economic hazards, but we haven't seen a product so far that has been properly tested before commercialization." 'SYMBOLISM': the industry must address cultural issues, cautions Arthur Caplan. As Arthur L. Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, points out, biotechnology can come in many forms-"in foods, for pharmaceuticals, or for genetic engineering." He adds that foods considered "natural," with no additives and not the results of genetic altering, currently have a commercial advantage. "There's all kinds of biotechnology," Caplan says. "My experience has been that people are terrified of biotechnology when it comes to their foods. There are hordes of people making money out of the sale of soybeans, milk, ice cream, and tomatoes that are not biologically engineered or genetically engineered. There are many nations that want labels for [genetically engineered products], and they don't want to import them." However, others say their polls show that biotechnology is finding increasing favor among the public. Thomas J. Hoban, an associate professor of sociology and anthropology at North Carolina State University, helped to design and conduct nationwide telephone surveys on biotech in 1992 and 1994, and has continued to gather information since then. "The real clear pattern is that the average citizen does not know much about biotechnology, but they're really quite positive about it," he observes. Hoban notes that his surveys asked questions in a variety of ways, and that while people admitting to having little knowledge of biotech, between two-thirds and three-quarters gave positive responses. "It basically sounds okay to them. The proof will be when foods arrive and they have a chance to make a decision on the taste, the nutrition, the price, things like that." HOT TOPIC: Henry Miller notes that when people favor biotech despite having little knowledge of it, they're "responding to a buzzword." But that disparity between people's knowledge and positive reactions concerns Henry I. Miller, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a consulting professor at Stanford University's Institute for International Studies. "They're responding to a buzzword. If that is the purpose of your survey, to get people to respond to a buzzword, you've succeeded," he complains. "It's the least informed opinion possible that you've elicited. And I don't find that very useful." As director of the University of California's Biotechnology Research and Education Program, Susanne L. Huttner heads an outreach campaign that aims to educate a large number of varying constituencies about biotech. Huttner, who is based at UC-Berkeley, regards surveys as untrustworthy snapshots that do not reveal the complete picture of public opinion. "In general, we find that people are very interested in biotechnology," she declares. "They have some questions, usually to do with what applications they can expect in their fields." For instance, she says, food-community representatives, such as farmers and restaurant owners, in California "are interested in knowing what the latest advances in fruits and vegetables and pest-control strategies are that they can start preparing to take advantage of." Huttner notes that while California has a higher percentage of environmental and health activists than most states do, there has not been a serious outcry over biotechnology. With the exception of a few activist groups in the state, most accept the field, she contends. When there are concerns, according to Huttner, they are generally "very straightforward-whether the foods are safe and whether anyone in government was looking into food-safety issues. "When we explain the traditional regulatory systems and the traditional standard practices of plant breeders, we find that by and large they're fairly well-satisfied that new biotechnology fruits and vegetables don't present novel concerns that warrant special requirements," she states. With so many different applications, biotechnology is regulated by a variety of federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Biotechnology is only 20 years old and remains a fledgling industry. Many critics say that any negative perceptions are well deserved and that biotech products are simply unsafe. Vast changes in safety measures-to ensure that dangerous toxins are not passed from engineered foods to people, for example-and in actual accomplishments must be made within the field before people will welcome it into the mainstream, critics contend. BIG BUCKS: The biotechnology industry is concerned less with science and more with money, charges John Fagan. John Fagan, chairman of the department of biochemistry at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, describes himself as neither a salesman for nor an activist against biotechnology, but as someone who stands for "scientifically guided implementation of biotechnology, which is what hasn't been happening." As a member of the health advisory council of the Natural Law Party, which ran 700 candidates on Election Day ballots across the country, he testified before the National Organic Standards Board last summer that genetically engineered foods should be barred from being labeled "organic." Fagan claims that the biotech industry is being driven more by economics than by science, as companies seek "the next hit of venture capital." Because the industry has failed to demonstrate the scientific validity of its products, people are rightfully skeptical of them, he says. Fagan's objections to biotechnology are no secret. In late 1994, the Cornell University-trained molecular biologist returned to NIH a $1.6 million grant because he felt it could have had dangerous genetic-engineering implications (Notebook, The Scientist, Dec. 12, 1994, page 4). "When you have people with Ph.D.'s behind their names standing up in public and saying there is no difference between genetically engineered vegetables or grains and natural ones, it's obviously unrealistic, and it really hurts the credibility of the industry," declares Fagan, who claims that "organic implies safe, free from risky, high-tech influences." Cummins of the Pure Food Campaign criticizes positive industry surveys as being "distorted," and he accuses the industry of "trying to force-feed these [products] on the public." Fagan argues that the industry has overblown its accomplishments and created products that have not lived up to their hype. He depicts such creations as "genetically engineered snake oil." PLUSES & MINUSES: Disclosure of the field's positives and negatives is the best way to beat fears, says Christine Bruhn. Christine M. Bruhn, director of the Center for Consumer Research at UC-Davis and a researcher whose surveys have turned up positive reactions to biotech, replies that activists have not managed to convince people that biotechnology is dangerous. What little success they have had, she contends, can be attributed to the anxieties of a small group of people who are "concerned about any kind of endeavor." With an acknowledgment of both the potential risks and the rewards of biotechnology, she says, most fears can be overcome. Observers point out that people's reactions are often very dependent on the kind of biotech usage being discussed. "It's uniform to be more positive about medical than agriculture applications," Bruhn reports. In many medical applications, such as genetically engineered insulin, the emphasis is on the product, which is used to improve people's health, and not on the process used to create it, she adds. "The strongest cultural load against biotechnology shows on the dinner table," Caplan maintains. "The weakest shows in the medicine cabinet. Somewhere in between is what happens in the doctor's office." Caplan explains that most people are willing to accept genetically engineered animal organs for transplants, artificial blood that boosts hemoglobin in kidney-dialysis patients, artificial skin, and gene therapy to treat cystic fibrosis or attack cancer cells. "Jeremy Rifkin can pound the industry very effectively by raising all kinds of questions about the naturalness of trying to alter milk, in a biotechnology sense, from a cow, where the very same people he's talking to may have an artificial heart valve or a medicine cabinet of biotechnologically engineered drugs." Caplan criticizes the industry for failing to respond to these varying public reactions, saying, "Too often scientists and the economists who advise them don't pay attention to this complex issue of culture, morality, spirituality, symbolism. That hurts the industry a lot." Indeed, Rifkin has had success over the last two years in uniting with women's groups and religious organizations to oppose the patenting of genes-such as BRCA1 and BRCA2, the breast cancer genes-and to advocate restriction of access to human genetic information. CURRENT EVENTS: Biotech industry officials should stress only what is now happening, not what may happen, says Fergus Clydesdale. According to Fergus M. Clydesdale, chairman of the department of food science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the industry should point out that most of what people fear simply does not apply to current uses of the technology. "A lot of transgenic stuff, like putting a plant gene into an animal, isn't being done. That's a rare application of biotechnology. . . . The really positive aspects aren't talked about a lot-the ones the consumers would see as positive." Part of the problem may also lie in surveying methodology. Miller points out that because most people do not understand biotechnology's terminology, survey responses "are strongly shaded by the context that's provided." He contends that slanted wording-such as "asking, 'How do you feel about genetically engineered organisms released in agricultural testing plots near populated areas? Should this ever be permitted without case-by-case risk assessment by a government agency?'"-leads to distorted answers and negatively skews how biotechnology is perceived. Miller prefers that questions emphasize the long-term, well established practice of selecting and crossing "plants with desirable characteristics in order to get new genetic varieties that have enhanced desirable traits, such as pestand disease-resistance, higher yield, or better taste." He then would ask how people feel about "new, more precise techniques being used to craft new plants, animals, and bacterial substitutes for agricultural chemicals, etc." According to Miller, such a tack would produce a more accurate range of responses from consumers and allow them to "make a rational decision." As Clydesdale notes, pointing out that biotechnology has been around for a long time-albeit in different forms from its present one-surely would help its image. "Humans have modified nature since humans started living together, even when they were still extension of what people have been doing for thousands of years." However, most observers agree that more concrete steps can be taken to increase public awareness. Caplan recommends launching initiatives in junior and senior high schools, communicating better to the media, enlisting scientists to speak out on the subject, and producing commercials and advertisements to promote "how industry and manufacturing intersect daily lives." He chastises industry officials for not being aggressive enough in public-outreach campaigns. PUBLIC INFORMATION: Science ignorance hurts biotechnology's image, argues Carl Feldbaum. The problem, according to BIO's Feldbaum, is that the industry cannot afford to advertise heavily. BIO has produced a biotechnology guide for editors and reporters and has conducted programs that were covered by the popular press, but the industry's greatest hurdle may be a more general unfamiliarity with science. "Nobody's been big enough to educate the public about science," Feldbaum contends. "We're dealing with a very science-ignorant and, in some cases, science-adverse public." But to some, biotech may be just the subject to break through the barriers. "By and large people are very welcoming of biotechnology as a subject that allows you to do some wonderful science communication and science education, at both the K-12 and college levels," Huttner contends. "We should take advantage of it more." Even those aligned against biotechnology as it now exists concede that if the industry can provide what they see as clearer scientific validation that its products are better, good things could follow. Says Maharishi University's Fagan: "My view is that if these products are as good as their promoters claim they are, then even though there might be an initial inhibition to buying a tomato or soybeans that have the sticker 'genetically engineered' on them, once the consumer perceives they are as good as the industry claims, that sticker will become an indicator of a premium product that will actually demand a higher price in the marketplace." Clydesdale's suggestion is for the industry to stop discussing what could be done in the future and instead concentrate on what is being done now, such as tinkering with plant genes to stimulate chemical pathways to produce more ingredients such as extracts, colorings, and flavors. "The most exciting stuff, the most futuristic, exciting stuff, probably creates the most fear," he muses. "Maybe we should talk about really what we're doing. Making beer is biotechnology. I don't think people understand that. Making beer and wine, making cheese is biotechnology."

Biotechnology Still Struggling To Gain A Public Awareness Foothold

Nov 10, 1996

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