Scientific tantrums

“You’ve loved
You’ve lost —
And say you have no regret
Then why are you so desperate,
So desperate to forget”
From Yaadein
by Bachchoo

Contrary to popular opinion it was not the second Portuguese Viceroy of Goa, Alphonso d’Albuquerque, who gave his name to the princess of all fruits, the mango which we Maharashtrians call “hapoos”.
The word is a distortion of the word Alphonso, which was the name the mango acquired when this species of mango was brought back to India from Brazil where it had been transplanted after being cross-bred in Western India. Admiral de Albuquerque may have been in-charge of the transport but, to put the record straight, the name derives from the Jesuit botanist Nicolai Alphonso who grafted the different breeds to produce the hapoos.
If he had done it today, with our knowledge of DNA, genes and chromosomes, we would have called it a triumph of genetic modification. Because that’s what cross-breeding is — the introduction of the genes of one species into that of a related one and the possible elimination of other genes.
It’s nature and the mechanism has worked in fauna, flora and humans since chemicals combined to form the first “organic” (in the chemistry sense and not growing things in natural manure etc.) compounds. Mangoes, mules, human beings who are combinations of Caucasians, Semites, Afro-races, Australasians, Dravidians, Aryans and so on. (Heard the one about my friend who is half-Australian and half-Hindu? — he worships cows but has his way with sheep!) (This is a family newspaper! You’re fired! — Ed. So what yaar, keep the circulation going with a few jokes! — fd ) Since the age of reason began we have fabricated millions of varieties of medicines which we swallow and inject and most sensible people will accept that antibiotics and other laboratory-manufactured drugs have done humanity some good. Obviously, there are cautions and caveats and, as in the case of thalidomide, criminal negligence in the processes of research.
The genetic modification of plant species is a continuation of the process of discovery and the application of that discovery, the turning of the fruit of science into the miracles of technology through which the world we live in has been constructed. There’d be no electrical machines without Maxwell, info-tech without Heisenberg, nuclear power without Einstein and without Newton apples would be flying straight off the tree into the skies (Can you check this last fact please? — Ed.).
So with genetic modification or GM. If it hadn’t been for Watson and Crick discovering the structure of DNA in a crystallography laboratory in Cambridge, we would have no construct of genomes and no scientist would have been able to fabricate a variety of wheat which sees off the pests who destroy it without the benefit of pesticides.
For anyone who has lived through the end of the Soviet Union, through the false dawn of hippies, flower power and the rebellion of the Sixties and Seventies, it is fascinating to see the birth of a new global religion. I am not referring to resurgent Wahabism, which parallels it, but the growth of a faith-based pseudo-religious conviction in opposition to man-made global warming, man-made genetically modified crops, human cruelty to other species that share our earth, be it through fishing, horse-racing, non-vegetarianism, battery farming, experimentation on animals, fox-hunting, badger-quelling, anthropogenerated animal diseases such as mad-cow syndrome or force-feeding geese for their livers.
It is now a universal religion and I have neither the space, need nor inclination to say what I think of it.
Nevertheless, one impulse that generated it is the anti-capitalist one that I, with intelligent reservations, share. The anti-GM movement was well rooted when it reacted against the monopolistic possession of scientific research by greedy, capitalist agro-companies who would develop seeds which gave large yields but no further seeds for the next crop so that the farmers of the poor world became dependent on them. Great Satanism, indeed!
Then there was the canard that crops, which were genetically modified in particular ways to resist bugs would also result in the death of some beautiful ones, such as butterflies which relied on the unmodified plants for their livelihood.
Both the monopolistic control of the food chain and the adverse effects on other fauna and flora are and should be genuine concerns. The concerns have bred fear and the fear has turned into an anti-scientific militant religion. The space occupied by this fear should be filled with facts and science.
One fact, sanctioned now by Europe’s Food Safety Agency and in the UK by the Royal Society which deals with matters biological, is that in countries such as the US and Brazil where GM crops are widely grown and consumed there has been “no specific evidence, in terms of risk to human or animal health or the environment to justify a ban”.
Now in the UK agro-scientists, independent of any monopolistic bio-company, have planted an aphid-resistant spring wheat in a research station at Rothamstead in Hertfordshire. A group of anti-GM activists calling themselves Take the Flour Back (TFB) threaten to invade the fields and destroy the crop on May 27 if the scientists don’t do it themselves.
TFB points out that Europe has no need of a spring wheat crop and that producing GM crops has also turned some varieties of weed to become herbicide-resistant requiring more chemical input into the soil to get rid of them. The pro-GM lobby of scientists which should be encouraged as their research is dedicated to discovery and not to profit, contradicts this connection as exasperating scare-mongering.
The expansion in the world’s population, climate change and possible shortage of fresh water necessitate the progress of food science of which GM forms an important part.
The difference in opinion cannot be resolved by assertion or the militant destruction of crops. It is vital now that verifiable (note that I have banished the meaningless word “sustainable”) science controls the debate.