Genetic Engineering, Food, and Our Environment

Rating:
Summary: On The Emperor's GM Clothes
Review: "Genetic Engineering, Food, & Our Environment" is crisply written, keenly argued, tightly and extensively researched. It presents a wealth of facts and possibilities, both an extremely disturbing side in and around the genetic engineering industry, and some encouraging information on potentially sustainable alternatives.

An excellent study for anyone considering GE-related issues, it makes a key handbook for the campaigner. It is a resource one can variously refer to in connection with environmental and other concerns, third world development possibilities, and underpinning issues in the background of global politics.

Luke Anderson's book entirely deserves the wide readership and serious attention gained by Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring." Carson's book detailed impacts and threats of industrial chemicals in use forty years ago; Anderson's is an effective sequel, an update on the state of play today. Depressing how some of the villains in the story are the same - or rather, grander and more dangerous. Inspiring how voices will yet courageously emerge like those of Carson and Anderson, with the wits and the research base to point to the toxins dribbling down the Emperor's new clothes (or carcass) and explain where they came from.

Altogether a thoroughly useful, troubling and galvanising kind of book. If you haven't got it, get it.

Rating:
Summary: Read this Book, Then...
Review: FIGHT FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Professor Ignacio Chapela courageously spoke out
against the UC $25 million research agreement with
the biotechnology giant Novartis. He published an
article demonstrating that native corn in Mexico had
been contaminated by genetically engineered corn.
Being a prominent critic of the university's ties to
the biotech industry, Dr. Chapela had his tenure
denied despite overwhelming support by his peers at UC
Berkeley and experts around the world.

The implications that these actions have on academic
freedom are frightening. They threaten scientists in
the future from working to seek truth in different
forums without undue influence. Scientists will no
longer be able to ask questions that might seem
uncomfortable even for the university to pose, such as
those in pursuit of precautionary science or in
opposition to corporate control over the university
research agenda.

You can get involved:
1. Call, email or write the UC Berkeley Chancellor
Birgeneau and the Academic Senate.
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Snail Mail: Office of the Chancellor, 200 California
Hall # 1500, Berkeley, California, 94720-1500
(Academic Senate = PHONE: [phone]; FAX:
510-642-8920; E-MAIL: [e-mail]

2. Visit www.tenurejustice.org or write
[e-mail]




Rating:
Summary: Great overview of issues related to GE food
Review: Here in North America the public generally hears very little about debates surrounding around GE foods, this 1999 book from a UK author is a quick read, easy to understand overview of GE food issues. It is strictly food & agriculture covered here, human GE areas are not touched on. Besides discussing safety & nutrition concerns, chapters cover such topics as control of farming & environmental pollution, patenting genes with a brief history of what's already taken place over the last 15 years, and how the world trade organization is used to force countries to accept these products or to outlaw product labeling. There is a chapter on 2 journalists in Florida who got into a lot of trouble with Monsanto for attempting to run a television series on a hormone injected into cows to increase milk production.

Some of the information in this book is quite shocking. The sheer amount of money Monsanto has used to bribe and "settle out of court" tells me there's got to be something very wrong in what they're doing. I enjoyed the "follow the money" advice this book offers - if an "expert" is saying there's no harm at all any of this try to find out who's paying the salary or funding the grant. This quote from pg. 106 is unforgettable, "We paid $3 billion for these television stations. We will decide what the news is......"

Lots of information packed into a small book, also a guide to organizations and further information.

Rating:
Summary: Egregious Examples of Bio-Science Run Amok
Review: Mr. Anderson succeeds admirably in eliciting shock and outrage in the reader with his clear, succinct, and fluid prose on the visible and invisible dangers of agricultural biotechnology. Modern day manipulation of the food chain and the ecosystems that provide humanity with its food (and other valuable services) has the potential to irreversibly affect both human beings and the environment. While the scientific and industrial cognoscenti exchange increasingly friendly repartee genetically modified foods, and governments turn a blind eye to `scientific progress', Mr. Anderson is right when he says that the human is being unwillingly and unwittingly subjected to an experiment whose long-term effects are difficult to assess.

Written shortly before scientists began to seriously question the effects of even minute quantities of hormone disrupting and cancer-causing, mutagenic chemicals and the potential effects of errant DNA in the greater environment, and shortly after genetically modified crops had been shown to sterilize insects and willy-nilly cross-pollinate with plants of the same species located either nearby or a great distance away, this handy little book introduces a considerable amount of information on genetic engineering and its dubious successes to readers who are not well versed in the sciences. In seven highly fluid and readable chapters, the book addresses a plethora of ethical, economic and technological issues associated with genetic engineering and agricultural biotechnology. The first chapter lucidly explains many of the key concepts underpinning genetic engineering as it applies to agriculture, and introduces most of the very real specters to health and the environment that the technology not only has caused, but also can and ultimately may cause in the future. The author devotes one chapter each to the thorny issues of genetic engineering and its effects on the environment, the way that agricultural biotechnology portents to and actually is transforming farming globally for the worse, and the attempts of individuals, universities and corporations, with all the zeal characteristic of a gold rush mentality, to patent every snippet of DNA they can get their hands on. Readers may find the book's fifth chapter to be truly shocking, as it describes in vivid detail the apparent disinterest of governments in industrialized nations to safeguard the best interests of its citizens- especially in the area of public health, from the bitter fruit of agricultural biotechnology. Chapter six presents a detailed case study of one particular biological abomination- the superfluous use of increasing amounts of biotech hormones to increase milk production, even in the face of persistent gluts year after year. The seventh and final details efforts by many groups to resist the onslaught of the adoption of such biotechnologies, and offers insight into the ways the poor in Third World countries are used as dupes and guinea pigs for these less than optimal technologies. The author also includes a detailed list of resources that concerned readers can tap into in their efforts to learn more or to protect themselves from most, but not all, of the spurious products of agricultural biotechnology.

In reading this book, one gets the feeling that the author wants us to share in his concern about the lingering effects of these overly hyped technologies of dubious merit. While the author clearly did his best to choose many of genetic engineering's most egregious examples, readers of this text should bear in mind that these examples merely represent the tip of the iceberg. As a scientist and engineer, it is hard for me come up with a suitable justification for many of the fruits of ag biotech, given that farmers in the industrialized countries are plagued with the onerous problem of oversupply. Furthermore, with slight modifications to current agricultural practices, and a shifting of inputs and plant resources, every single person on the planet could easily be fed, so the excuse of biotechnology feeding the world's hungry does not quite wash either. Basically, I find the motives of big biotech companies to be less than altruistic: if the biotech corporation controls the seeds and the larger food supply, then they control the people dependent upon them.

In this day and age of financial skullduggery and scientific chicanery, astute citizens must actively behoove themselves to exercise caution and awareness at all times. As Huff told us in his classic little book, How to Lie with Statistics, if the honest person wants to prevent oneself from being burglarized, then it pays to learn the ways of the criminally minded. As such, this book's disclosure of the aggressive foisting of these dubious scientific advances on an unsuspecting public by an unscrupulous gaggle of corporate, academic and government interests clearly demonstrates a most disturbing and peculiar case of criminal intent of the highest degree.

Rating:
Summary: Egregious Examples of Bio-Science Run Amok
Review: Mr. Anderson succeeds admirably in eliciting shock and outrage in the reader with his clear, succinct, and fluid prose on the visible and invisible dangers of agricultural biotechnology. Modern day manipulation of the food chain and the ecosystems that provide humanity with its food (and other valuable services) has the potential to irreversibly affect both human beings and the environment. While the scientific and industrial cognoscenti exchange increasingly friendly repartee genetically modified foods, and governments turn a blind eye to 'scientific progress', Mr. Anderson is right when he says that the human is being unwillingly and unwittingly subjected to an experiment whose long-term effects are difficult to assess.

Written shortly before scientists began to seriously question the effects of even minute quantities of hormone disrupting and cancer-causing, mutagenic chemicals and the potential effects of errant DNA in the greater environment, and shortly after genetically modified crops had been shown to sterilize insects and willy-nilly cross-pollinate with plants of the same species located either nearby or a great distance away, this handy little book introduces a considerable amount of information on genetic engineering and its dubious successes to readers who are not well versed in the sciences. In seven highly fluid and readable chapters, the book addresses a plethora of ethical, economic and technological issues associated with genetic engineering and agricultural biotechnology. The first chapter lucidly explains many of the key concepts underpinning genetic engineering as it applies to agriculture, and introduces most of the very real specters to health and the environment that the technology not only has caused, but also can and ultimately may cause in the future. The author devotes one chapter each to the thorny issues of genetic engineering and its effects on the environment, the way that agricultural biotechnology portents to and actually is transforming farming globally for the worse, and the attempts of individuals, universities and corporations, with all the zeal characteristic of a gold rush mentality, to patent every snippet of DNA they can get their hands on. Readers may find the book's fifth chapter to be truly shocking, as it describes in vivid detail the apparent disinterest of governments in industrialized nations to safeguard the best interests of its citizens- especially in the area of public health, from the bitter fruit of agricultural biotechnology. Chapter six presents a detailed case study of one particular biological abomination- the superfluous use of increasing amounts of biotech hormones to increase milk production, even in the face of persistent gluts year after year. The seventh and final details efforts by many groups to resist the onslaught of the adoption of such biotechnologies, and offers insight into the ways the poor in Third World countries are used as dupes and guinea pigs for these less than optimal technologies. The author also includes a detailed list of resources that concerned readers can tap into in their efforts to learn more or to protect themselves from most, but not all, of the spurious products of agricultural biotechnology.

In reading this book, one gets the feeling that the author wants us to share in his concern about the lingering effects of these overly hyped technologies of dubious merit. While the author clearly did his best to choose many of genetic engineering's most egregious examples, readers of this text should bear in mind that these examples merely represent the tip of the iceberg. As a scientist and engineer, it is hard for me come up with a suitable justification for many of the fruits of ag biotech, given that farmers in the industrialized countries are plagued with the onerous problem of oversupply. Furthermore, with slight modifications to current agricultural practices, and a shifting of inputs and plant resources, every single person on the planet could easily be fed, so the excuse of biotechnology feeding the world's hungry does not quite wash either. Basically, I find the motives of big biotech companies to be less than altruistic: if the biotech corporation controls the seeds and the larger food supply, then they control the people dependent upon them.

In this day and age of financial skullduggery and scientific chicanery, astute citizens must actively behoove themselves to exercise caution and awareness at all times. As Huff told us in his classic little book, How to Lie with Statistics, if the honest person wants to prevent oneself from being burglarized, then it pays to learn the ways of the criminally minded. As such, this book's disclosure of the aggressive foisting of these dubious scientific advances on an unsuspecting public by an unscrupulous gaggle of corporate, academic and government interests clearly demonstrates a most disturbing and peculiar case of criminal intent of the highest degree.

Rating:
Summary: Resource Section Alone, makes this book a MUST have.
Review: This book is packed with current and useful information about GE foods, farming practices, life patents issues, and the impacts of GE food on our environment. It is an excellent manual for anyone wanting control of their food, or simply to better understand what all the contraversy about GE foods.. It is short & easy to read. There are many interesting quotes from scientists & industry spokes people. The best part of this book is a comprehensive RESOURCE section. Showing points of contact in the US, other international organizations, magazines, journals, email information services, and websites, for GE information. Anyone who wants to start doing something about this important issue needs to start here. The book is full of excellent references supporting the arguments. Also a worthwhile list of recommended readings. Buy it & share that resource information with everyone you know. Can not over emphasize the usefulness of this book.