GM Foods: From the point of view of...
Dr Bernard Dixon:
Bernard Dixon is the former editor of the New Scientist and the
editor of Medical Science Research. He is also the Media Convenor of
the European Federation of Biotechnology Task Group on the public perceptions
of biotechnology.
How well has the media covered GM food?
With the conspicuous exception of two newspapers (The Times and The
Observer) the media have covered genetically modified foods in an extraordinarily
unbalanced fashion. They have failed to examine critically claims regarding
alleged dangers, and failed to describe the meticulous and cautious
committee structure which regulates the development of all genetically
modified organisms and novel foods. Worst of all, they have usually
failed to explain even what is meant by the term GM food.
None of this has facilitated rational discussion of either the enormous
potential benefits of the genetic engineering of crop plants, or the
environmental problems which may be associated with their cultivation.
As a result, many people must be confused, and many of them unnecessarily
alarmed.
Two developments have largely determined the hostile position adopted
by the media. The first was Monsanto's decision not to segregate its
GM and non-GM soya - thereby confounding the reasonable desire by some
consumers (and indeed suppliers and other companies) that such products
be identifiable and labelled accordingly. The second was the emergence
of BSE in cattle and its probable link with a similar condition in humans,
together with the serious outbreak of food-poisoning caused by Escherichia
coli 0157 in Scotland. Although these incidents have nothing whatever
to do with genetic engineering, they have cast doubts on food safety
in general.
The worst error committed by journalists regarding GM food has been
to use this term generically so that it has become an expression with
an apparently single (though ill defined) meaning and unique significance.
In fact, it refers to three totally different types of food. Firstly,
there are products, made by GM plants, but which do not themselves contain
any genes (DNA). Sucrose from transgenic sugar beet, for example, is
identical with that of unmodified sugar beet. Secondly, products such
as tomato puree and soya flour do contain DNA, but it has been denatured
during processing so that it no longer contains any viable genes. The
third category includes potatoes and other plants (none of them yet
on sale) whose cells do carry viable genes. Anyone eating such a transgenic
plant would take in - and digest - the novel gene along with the astronomical
numbers of other genes which those and, of course, all plants contain.
The procedures required to assess the safety of each of these three
types of GM food are quite different. Yet journalists, and some scientists,
have lumped them all together. Not only that. Following a World in Action
television programme in August 1998, all have been regarded as suspect
on the basis of studies on one specific product at the Rowett Institute
in Aberdeen which have since been discredited.
But why insert novel genes into existing crops anyway? A further deficiency
of much media coverage has been the widespread lack of any explanation
of the aims of scientists involved in work of this sort. To take just
one of those goals, the programming of plants so that they resist destruction
by insects, is precisely the type of strategy which the pioneer environmentalist
Rachel Carson advocated in her book Silent Spring, published in 1962.
Carson looked forward to the day when it would be feasible to replace
the widespread use of chemical pesticides by an ecologically acceptable,
biological approach. Now her dream has become a practical possibility.
As with any new technology, there is room for debate about potential
dangers said to be associated with GM foods. The major theoretical hazard
is that a newly introduced gene will be transferred from a GM plant
in the field into another living organism in which it may have unanticipated
consequences. Yet here again the media have not been helpful. Instead,
they have paid more attention to campaigners disrupting field tests
specifically designed to clarify those risks, than to the safeguards
already widely used to minimise unwanted gene transfers between different
varieties of existing plants.
For much of the time since World in Action in August 1998, coverage
of GM foods in the press, television and radio has been feverish, irrational
and sometimes ridiculous. All credit, therefore, to the science editors
of The Times and The Observer who (while not neglecting scientific and
geopolitical criticisms of GM foods) have resisted the contagious hysteria
to serve their readers by providing real facts and well-informed judgements.
|
