Transgenics: Recognizing the ambiguity<\/p>\n
Yanuar Nugroho
\nResearcher & General Secretary
\nUni Sosial Demokrat
\nJakarta
\nyanuar-n@unisosdem.org<\/p>\n
One of the issues to be raised at the WSSD (World Summit on
\nSustainable Development) in Johannesburg in September 2002 is the
\ncontroversy over the so-termed "genetically modified" (GM) or
\n"transgenic" organisms that have started to worry people in many
\nparts of the world.<\/p>\n
The case of transgenic corn plants in Brazil, which wiped out
\nmore than 13,000 honey bee peasants, or the dispute aroused over
\ntransgenic cotton plants in Sulawesi, Indonesia, some time ago,
\nare obvious examples. Yet, still, it seems to be not easy to
\naddress the problem properly, as there have been so many
\ninterests involved. It is profit-oriented business, spliced with
\nthe advancement of technology, that has played an important role
\nin intervening in the creation of living beings. Of course,
\nlegitimacy from a public agency is needed to bring the
\n"creatures" to the market, in the name of human prosperity. When
\nand how did this problem begin?<\/p>\n
It was on May 19, 1994 that newspaper headlines all over the
\nUnited States reported that the U.S. Food and Drugs
\nAdministration (USFDA) had given its final approval to Calgene,
\nInc. to put its genetically engineered tomato, the Flavr Savr, on
\nthe market. What differentiates Flavr Savr from other tomatoes?
\nIt did not decay as fast as its natural counterparts since it had
\none gene reversed -- the gene meant to make the tomato ripen and
\nso rot, as normal. When the gene was reversed, the tomato stayed
\nfresh for longer.<\/p>\n
And the news did not stop there. Later on, Associated Press
\n(AP), Nov. 2, 1994 announced, "seven more genetically engineered
\nfoods are safe. The USFDA has completed the inspections of seven
\nother genetically altered plants, i.e. three more tomatoes, a
\nsquash genetically altered to naturally resist two deadly viruses
\nand a potato that naturally resists the Colorado potato beetle."
\nThe keyword in this announcement is "naturally". In what sense do
\nthese beings "naturally" exist at all, let alone possess the
\npowers advertised?<\/p>\n
These things are neither natural nor unnatural: They are
\nbeyond natural and unnatural. What we have here is no longer the
\nmass manufacture of objects that belong to us and not to nature.
\nInstead, it is the beginning of a new organic regime, blessed
\nwith unimaginable fertility, giving birth to infinite
\npossibilities, all of them in their own "natural" way. Instead of
\nmanufacturing objects it is recreating the process of birth. This
\nis the new nature, rather than nonnature or antinature, where
\nthese possibilities reach well beyond potato blight, squash rot
\nand tomato decay: We are looking out towards the horizon. These
\nnew "creatures" are entities in whose presence the entire world
\nis altered. How can this -- the new nature -- come into
\nexistence?<\/p>\n
A transgenic organism is understood to be one that has its
\ngene(s) "transplanted" across biological boundaries between
\nspecies or even biological kingdoms, such as plant and animal. As
\nthe Flavr Savr -- and other new creatures -- had a gene added
\nfrom a foreign source, a bacterium (or other), which was used to
\nkeep track of the changes, it was transgenic. Here, precisely,
\nlies the ambiguity: Is the new genetic object going to be a fatal
\ninvasion or a benign enrichment? Is it created for bad, or for
\ngood?<\/p>\n
If we look carefully at these objects, we might lose all our
\ncertainties and find ourselves facing a horizon of questions.
\nThese new things are an incarnation of the next "world-shaping"
\nscience, whose story is all about the breakdown of categories.
\nIts upsurge into the world announces the bending of all the "old"
\nconcepts, including the very time and space in which we all
\ndwell.<\/p>\n
This might be an inseparable phenomenon of development
\nnowadays. Time speeds up in some places under this new regime:
\nthings grow faster, messages move more quickly. But time has also
\nbeen slowing down: Tomatoes decay more patiently, just as the
\ntime needed for the new potatoes in fighting beetles. Time is
\nsimply not what it was -- time is changing. The old earth is
\npassing away and a new earth is being born. Our familiar time
\nbends and quakes in the presence of such objects like Flavr Savr
\nand its transgenic successors, which possess the weird property
\nof rerouting time and space. Just take the new "seed" like the
\nwell-known Monsanto GM Round-Up Ready Soya Beans as an example.
\nIt grows very well according to many new laws: More quickly, more
\nenduringly, with more yields, in new places.<\/p>\n
GM products have redefined for us the meaning of the future
\nand therefore the present in its turn. The future is coming
\ncloser as its presence is ready-to-hand for us. Going further,
\nthe ecosystem is now a being that has arisen as we have become
\nconscious of destroying it: It is the presence of a threatened
\nfuture.<\/p>\n
To this point, have we ever addressed this question seriously:
\nTo whose benefit do these changes accrue?<\/p>\n
This genetic engineering is inseparable from global economic
\nsystems, with its global reach and ambition. This is the arena
\nwhere knowledge, business power and state legitimacy come
\ntogether. Universities try to produce knowledge, much of it in
\nthe form of texts, but also some in the form the new living
\nknowledge. A year before Flavr Savr, again AP reported that
\nmutant mice bred by Harvard University turned into a test bed in
\n1993 for curing cancer. This practice was legal as the university
\nhad already been granted the U.S. patent in 1988, the first ever
\nfor an artificially engineered natural life form. The creature
\nseems to be alarming because it breaks all the boundaries:
\nartificial and natural, engineered and living. But the news also
\nemphasized that its ownership was equally hybrid: DuPont de
\nNemours and Bio, Inc. of Washington, Delaware owned the
\ncommercial rights.<\/p>\n
It is clear that the mouse -- as well as other GM organisms --
\nis an academic product and a commercial commodity. It is a
\nresearch tool and a room in a sales catalog; it is the hope of
\ncure and the glitter of profit. Inserting a bacterium gene into a
\ntomato is one small change in vegetable marketing, but it is also
\none large change in the international economy, which signifies
\nthe trademark of the symbiosis between industry and academia.
\nBut, be careful: Trademarks belong to the economic world;
\nsymbiosis is part of nature. Again, the categories curve into
\neach other.<\/p>\n
Here nothing stays distinct and separate. To exist is to have
\nthe potential for becoming connected to other entities, for being
\nabsorbed, overlapped or redefined. The university does not differ
\nfrom the GM tomato in this respect: It has no clear boundaries,
\nbut exists in relation with other entities: Industry and
\ngovernment. We can no longer say where the academic centers stop
\nand the commercial organizations start. The university used to be
\na system of well-patrolled borders -- between disciplines, and
\nbetween the academy and various outside worlds.<\/p>\n
True, there were many secret crossings; but now there is a new
\nage and the border controls have been desperately removed --
\ninstead of being adjusted. Can we see that these overlaps and
\nmergers could look like another breed of corruption? Are we not
\nlosing our institutes of "pure" learning? Shall we denounce
\n"nostalgia" for "pure research" on several grounds?<\/p>\n
This problem, to be addressed in the next World Summit at
\nJohannesburg -- and will also have been started at Bali at
\nPrepComIV and IPF (the Indonesian People's Forum) meetings -- is
\nnot as simple as rejecting or accepting the new biotechnoscience
\nembedded in the transgenic organisms. But rather, how the process
\nof applying such technologies is to the benefit of our shared
\nlife nowadays, when the term "customer" has depersonified the
\npoor and "market" hidden the investor's interests. Isn't it true
\nthat the idea of democracy is the control of power -- including
\nspliced technology and business -- toward public accountability?<\/p>",
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