Dr. John Fagan has summarized some major risks of eating genetically engineered food as follows:

The new proteins produced in genetically engineered foods could: a) themselves, act as allergens or toxins, b) alter the metabolism of the food producing organism, causing it to produce new allergens or toxins, or c) causing it to be reduced in nutritional value .... 1) Mutations can damage genes naturally present in the DNA of an organism, leading to altered metabolism and to the production of toxins, and to reduced nutritional value of the food. 2) Mutations can alter the expression of normal genes, leading to the production of allergens and toxins, and to reduced nutritional value of the food. 3) Mutations can interfere with other essential, but yet unknown, functions of an organism's DNA.52 Basically what we have at present is a situation in which genetically engineered foods are beginning to flood the market, and no one knows what all their effects on humans will be. We are all becoming guinea pigs. Because genetically engineered food remains unlabeled, should serious problems arise, it will be extremely difficult to trace them to their source. Lack of labeling will also help to shield the corporations that are responsible from liability.   

MORE BASIC ETHICAL PROBLEMS  

Junk DNA

The 100,000 or more genes found in the human genome constitute perhaps 5% of the approximately 3.5 billion base pairs of DNA sequence in the haploid human genome. Most of the noncoding DNA lies between genes and has been called spacer, or even "junk" DNA.53

The overwhelming proportion of the DNA-perhaps up to 99% in some genomes-appears to have no known function. It has been described as 'junk DNA' or 'selfish DNA'-selfish because it serves no purpose except to get itself replicated along with the rest of the genome.54  

An interesting parallel in thinking exists between junk DNA theory and earlier theories of the prefrontal lobes of the brain as being non-essential to human well-being. In 1955 Egas Moniz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the treatment of schizophrenia by prefrontal lobotomy. In this procedure a long wire is inserted through the side of the skull and the prefrontal lobes are then stirred like scrambled eggs. In the United States the foremost practitioner of prefrontal lobotomy, Dr. Walter Freeman, a professor at George Washington University Medical School and a president of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, inserted an ice-pick through the tear ducts to sever the prefrontal lobe connections. The procedure, initially used on mental hospital patients, became popular as a way of dealing with mental problems.

A sanitized version of the operation and its consequences was invariably given, and never more so than in an influential article, entitled "Turning the Mind Inside Out", published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1941. The writer, the science editor of the New York Times, began in dramatic fashion by stating that there must be at least 200 men and women in the United States who had had worries, persecution complexes, suicidal intentions, obsession and nervous tensions literally cut out of their minds with a knife.55

About 20,000 people eventually received the operation. Scrambling the frontal lobes of the brain is, of course, an irreversible process.

The 'Junk DNA' concept is a lot like the attitude toward the functioning of the prefrontal lobes of the brain that led to the travesty of prefrontal lobotomies. The attitude in both cases was and is that the latest scientific research does not show that there is any useful function going on there so the prefrontal lobes or the junk DNA must not have any important function and we can, therefore, remove or ignore them Just as the performers of lobotomies operated "blind" - they could not see what they were doing. So too researchers who insert genes into new organisms operate "blind", with a scatter-gun approach, not knowing where the gene is going to end up in the new DNA or what effects it is going to have apart from the most crude measures. As with performing lobotomies, creating genetically engineered organisms is an irreversible process. The lobotomies cannot be undone and the organisms, once released, cannot be recalled. In both cases science and the 'responsible' popular press lauds the great benefits for humankind of the procedures.  

Life as a genetic commodity

In 1971 the United States government issued the first patent on a living organism, a genetically engineered bacterium for cleaning up oil spills. That slippery slope has led not only to the patenting of genetically engineered plants and animals, but also to the patenting of human genes, often without either the consent of the people from whom they are taken or any benefit to them. 56  

A proprietary attitude toward living organisms is based on philosophies of instrumental values, in which intrinsic value is disregarded. In other words all life is evaluated only in terms of its specific use for the individual. Absent is any sense of respect for life and the right of other living beings to work out their own destiny.  

Given the historical role of the United States in championing the notions of equality and individual rights, the legalization of instrumental values with regard to human genes is somewhat surprising, If  'a man's home is his castle', how much the more so our bodies and genetic makeup. One would think that people would have legal control over their own genes; however, that does not seem to be the case."  

ASSESSING THE PRICE

For all the advantages claimed for genetic engineering, in the overwhelming number of cases the price seems too high to pay. In order to insure megaprofits for multinational corporations well into the next century, we will have to mortgage the biosphere, seriously compromise life on the planet, and even risk losing what it means to be a human being. We have seen that genetic engineering poses serious risks to human health and to the environment. It raises serious ethical questions about the right of human beings to alter life on the planet, both sentient and non-sentient, for the benefit of a few.

If there are some areas of genetic engineering that can safely benefit humanity while respecting other forms of life, then efforts need to be redoubled not only in the area of scientific risk assessment, but also in developing broad ethical guidelines. If experts in both scientific and ethical areas are to be trusted and respected, they must be free from the taint of personal monetary gain and other forms of self-aggrandizement. The public's right to know and assess potential dangers and ethical problems must have priority over both corporate secrecy and naive views of academic freedom that accord scientists the right to experiment with whatever strikes their fancy without regard for the consequences. Decisions should not be left solely to the so-called experts, whatever their value. Ordinary citizens need to inform themselves, insist upon a mandate, and take responsibility for the grave decisions that must be made. The public welfare must be restored as the primary consideration, and the unrestrained amoral greed of multinational corporations somehow curtailed.  

Is such a program of action possible? Certainly even slowing the inexorable progress of the current trends will be extremely difficult. Yet there is hope. In Europe, for example, heightened public awareness of the dangers of genetically engineered foods has significantly affected corporate plans for their widespread introduction there. Fortunately there also continue to be a vocal minority of well-trained scientists in the field, who see clearly the dangers of what is occurring, and who are brave enough to voice their consciences, despite very real personal and professional risks." Clearly the key is educating the public about what is happening. We need to have confidence that ordinary citizens working together can build a foundation of integrity from which can arise a collective wisdom that can show us the way through the incredibly complicated maze of issues surrounding genetic engineering.  

NOTES:  
52. John Fagan, "Assessing The Safety And Nutritional Quality Of Genetically Engineered Foods" .  

53. Mark V. Bloom, Ph.D., "Polymerase Chain Reaction," .

54. Mae-Wan Ho, Genetic Engineering: Dream or Nightrnare, p.110.

55. "Adventures with an Ice Pick: an Short History of the Lobotomy," adapted from Robert Youngson and Ian Schott, Medical Blunders (London: Robinson, 1996). Adaption copyrighted by The Independent on Sunday, March 3, 1996.  

56. See Vandana Shiva, Biopiracy, p. 19 ff., for a summary.  

See also Vandana Shiva, Biotechnology and the Environrnent (Malaysia: Third World Network, n.d.).

57. For example, see the interesting case of Seattle businessman John Moore, discussed by Phillip L. Bereano in this article "Body and Soul: the Price of Biotech" (Seattle Times, August 20,1995) p.B5 . The case is also discussed in Monte Paulsen, "Biotech Buccaneers" (Fairfield County Weekly, August 29, 1998).  

58. For example, several years ago I talked with a distinguished professor in the field who is a department chair at a well-known university. After publicly writing about the theoretical possibility of some serious dangers with genetic engineering, he was publicly reprimanded by colleagues for needlessly scaring the public and blacklisted, so that he was denied government funding, even after subsequent experiments proved him to be correct.  

(The End)