Bibliographies Biotechnology, the Life Science Industry, and the Environment

berkeley workshop on environmental poli tics

bibliographies b 04-9

biotechnology, the life science industry, and the environment an annotated bibliography

Dustin R. Mulvaney and Jennifer L. Wells

institute of international studies, university of california, berkeley table of contents

Introduction...... 1

General Overview ...... 1

Biological Frameworks: Genetic Reductionism and Epigenetics ...... 7

The Ethics of Biotechnologies ...... 12

The Ecological Hazards of Transgenic Crops ...... 16

Politics, Science and the Social Context of Regulation...... 20

The Life Science Industries and Agro-Industrial Dynamics ...... 25

The University-Industrial Complex...... 31

Germplasm, Genetic Resources, and Global Governance ...... 35

Annotated Bibliography ...... 39

Appendices A. Acronyms ...... 98 B. Popular Works ...... 100 C. Edited Volumess...... 102 D. Glossary of Laws, Policies, and Institutions ...... 103 E. Website Clearinghouse...... 105

June 2004

iii biotechnology, the life science industry, and the environment: an annotated bibliography

Dustin R. Mulvaney Department of Environmental Studies University of California, Santa Cruz

Jennifer L. Wells Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management University of California, Berkeley introduction

The entrance of “biotechnology” into the lexicon of environmental controversies coincided with increasing awareness of the nefarious effects of industrialization, and with the greater scrutiny of our faith in science and technological progress. Mapping the discourse of biotechnology fi nds franken- foods, golden rice, monarch butterfl ies, miracle drugs, and eugenics caught up in a maelstrom of claims and counterclaims about food safety and security, ecological stewardship, medical progress, and social justice. This annotated bibliography aims to serve as a guide for refl ecting upon and investigating these themes.

In the essays that follow, you will ﬁ nd a general overview of the ﬁ eld of biotechnologies. This annotated bibliography reviews the challenges biotechnologies present, surveying the literature on the ethics, politics, ecology, and political economy of biotechnology as it relates to concerns as diverse as regulatory governance, industry-academic relations and capitalism in agriculture. Following the essays is an extensive appendix that includes edited works, books for general audiences, websites, and a condensed summary of relevant laws, policies and institutions. A list of acronyms used throughout this annotated bibliography can be found in the appendix as well. general overview

Biotechnology—What is it?

Signiﬁ cant advances in molecular biology have rapidly brought about a far-reaching set of biotechnologies. Boundaries must be drawn to make a collection such as this meaningful and consistent. In doing so, this bibliography restricts “biotechnology” to mean the application of techniques that intervene at the molecular or cellular level to transform life processes. Biological processes, such as those utilized in beer brewing and the manufacture of penicillin, do not fall under our rubric. Recombinant DNA techniques, protoplast fusion, tissue culture, and nanotechnology (genetic interventions at the scale of the nanometer—one billionth of a meter, which is the scale of atoms and molecules) deﬁ ne the modern biotechnology that characterizes the products and processes of the life sciences industry and the techniques of molecular biology.

1 The terms that characterize these objects are inconsistent. Genetically modiﬁ ed organism (GMO) is used to emphasize the intentional manipulation of genetic code; genetically engineered organism (GEO) conveys a sense of precision that sets it apart from other techniques of manipulation, although this characterization can be misleading; transgenic organism is used to emphasize that the product was produced by moving genes from one place to another, either within or across species. All three are used by authors in this bibliography for reasons political, ethical, or scientiﬁ c.

Finally, the “life sciences industries” are the ﬁ rms whose products depend on cellular and molecular techniques. They are in the business of biomedical technologies, pharmaceuticals and plant genomics. The ﬁ rms that converge at the nexus of biotechnologies, the life science industries and the environment are primarily those that develop products for agricultural and medical biotechnology or those that pursue genetic materials with pharmacological properties.

The genetic manipulation of plants and animals represents a huge leap in the powers of humankind to alter their environment. Scientists can now fabricate hybrid and chimerical plants and animals, with traits that are not only new but also transmissible to all succeeding generations, coming from the intimate genetic make-up of different organisms—even those belonging to entirely different branches of the tree of life (Seralini 2000).

As such, this annotated bibliography will provide a background for the reader to explore the ways that the life sciences industry is reifi ed by the ideology of scientifi c precision, the organization of economic systems, and the logic of commodifi cation. This overview aims to make accessible a wide range of emerging literature exploring the many ways in which biotechnology and the life sciences industries interact with individuals, our culture, and our environment.

Boon or bane—the spectrum of opinions

Claims about new technologies have rarely been divided across such a wide spectrum. Many of the world’s leading molecular biologists largely support advances in biotechnologies as critically needed approaches to end hunger, cure disease, prolong lives and perfect human beings. Biotechnology in agriculture was initially billed as the next Green Revolution, a technology that would end world hunger and prevent environmental degradation. Norman Borlaug, who won the Nobel Prize for his founding role in the Green Revolution, says that in its ﬁ rst twenty years biotechnology developed invaluable applications with the greatest impact in medicine and public health. Proposed beneﬁ ts include increased yields and improved nutritional value. Some even argued that reduced use of chemical input means that transgenic crops are better for biodiversity than non-transgenic crops.

“Improvement” of human genetics is a radical proposition. While transgenic crops involve ethical questions of how we affect our environment, human germline engineering raises deep and very challenging ethical concerns about our very humanity and fundamental identity. Critics of human germ-line engineering fear we will lose our individual identities and our very sense of humanity (Habermas 2003; Kass, 2002). Advocates claim that what they openly call a “new eugenics” is inevitable and good. Professor Lee Silver of Princeton, a leading advocate of eugenics, envisions a biotech society emerging in the coming decades, in which, “the GenRich—who account for ten percent of the American population—[will] all carry synthetic genes…. All aspects of the economy, the media, the entertainment industry, and the knowledge industry [will be] controlled by members

2 of the GenRich class… Naturals [will] work as low-paid service providers or as laborers… The use of reprogenetic technologies is inevitable… There is no doubt about it… whether we like it or not, the global marketplace will reign supreme.”1

The new technologies, according to critics, will not only degrade the environment, they will also pose several major new environmental problems, perhaps on an unprecedented scale, as well as exacerbate wealth divides and create some of our most difﬁ cult new social problems (Fukuyama 2002; Habermas 2003; McKibben 2003; Rifkin 1998). “The stakes are absurdly high,” says Bill McKibben, “Nothing less than the meaning of being human” (McKibben 2003). Jeremy Rifkin, who has written about biotechnologies for three decades, calls biotechnology the most radical technology since ﬁ re, and says that in the next 25 years they may provoke a profound disruption in all areas of our daily lives and deeply transform our individual and collective conscience (Rifkin 1998).

Understanding biotechnologies is a complex and lengthy process given their novelty and unpredictability. Applications in medicine may bring about great advances and industrial applications may allow for more environmentally friendly processes. Yet, any beneﬁ ts must be considered alongside ecological and health risks, as some of them may be costly, some catastrophic, and many irreversible. Moreover, the biotechnology industry has created serious problems by privatizing the foundations of our living systems.

Environmental problems

Historically crop and animal breeding requires the time lag from an organism’s birth to reproductive age, and were confi ned within species boundaries. In contrast, transgenic organisms allow traits to be combined from unrelated species, such as fi sh genes inserted into strawberries to protect them from cold temperatures. In the past decade, the fi rst phase of the biotechnology revolution effectively turned countries like the United States, Argentina, Canada, and China into great agricultural fi eld experiments. While laboratories around the world are carrying out molecular interventions in hundreds of different agricultural products including trees, livestock and salmon, their commercial release remains limited. Global adoption of transgenic crops has been mostly limited to large-scale, low cost, row crops such as corn, cotton, soy and canola with Bt and herbicide tolerance (HT) the traits of choice.

Transgenic crops pose various ecological hazards. One major difference between biotechnologies and mechanical or industrial technologies is that living organisms self-replicate, giving them inherent uncertainty. Once biotechnologies are released, they may propagate, perpetuating alterations. Technologies with this novel quality of self-replication—GM plants and animals, not to speak of bioweapons—may not only be creating new toxins, but new pests—reproducing organisms that may have tendencies to become increasingly strong and virulent (Berlan 2001; Rissler and Mellon 1996; Seralini 2000). It requires patience and persistence to assemble a model or vision complex enough to assess how environmental factors may play out. Transgenic crops may not resolve but could instead exacerbate some of the major ﬂ aws of industrial agriculture. Researchers fear transgenic crops will

1. Lee Silver, from his book Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family, also cited at: http://www.genetics-and-society.org.

3 perpetuate monocultures, spur still more soil and water depletion, and create a pesticide resistance treadmill. Indeed, will they lock us further into these degrading cycles?

Social problems

There are two kinds of technologies involving the genetic manipulation of humans: somatic gene therapy and germline gene therapy. Few question the wisdom of promoting research advances in medical somatic gene therapy. Modifi ed genes are not passed along and children of the patient are not affected. Much like other medical practices, somatic gene therapy begins with an existing individual and researchers try to deliver new, modifi ed genes to some of her cells, usually by putting the genes aboard viruses they inject into the patient, hoping that the viruses will infect the cells and thereby transmit the genes. If the therapy works, the proteins causing the disease should diminish. The fi rst trials began in 1991 and the fi rst real cures came about in 2001 (McKibben 2003).

The second kind of genetic manipulation of humans, germline gene therapy, is unlike anything humanity has known, provoking some of the deepest and most diffi cult questions about our capacity to control science. Some call it eugenics, as it entails attempts to “improve” genes that will be passed on to children. “Germ” refers not to microbes, but to the egg and sperm cells, the basic cells from which babies “germinate.” Scientists would take a young embryo, tease apart its cells, select one, and add to, delete, or modify some of its genes. Or they could insert artifi cial chromosomes containing pre-designed genes. They would then place the modifi ed cell inside the egg, whose nucleus had been removed, and implant the resulting embryo inside a woman. The embryo would then grow into a genetically engineered child.

Eugenicists such as Lee Silver and James Watson advocate the redesigning of children to be “more religious, more musical, more optimistic,” and practically every other desirable trait. Crit- ics think that path will lead to the death of human meaning and sensibilities. They ask, what will it mean to children to discover they have become “outdated” before they reach adulthood, as the next generation is born with “better” hardware? The critics’ consensus is that trying to perfect ourselves will degrade our very humanity (Kass 2002; Habermas 2003; McKibben 2003). Germline engineering of humans seems to pose some of our hardest philosophical struggles and social risks.

The tyranny of the gene

While molecular biology has greatly ﬂ ourished and advanced in the last twenty years, public perception is still embedded in the outdated Central Dogma of genetics—the view that one gene causes one trait. Many molecular biologists still operate on the assumption that you can read the traits of single genes as a “book of life” (Kay 2000). Yet since the 1960’s, evidence has supported our understanding of epigenetic functioning, in which genes are just one part of a set of complex, dynamical interactions that make life tick. In the 1980s, the prevailing sentiment among molecular biologists was that, “Life is what genes do… Genes are the key to life, and one need look no further than this for the central problems of biology” (Yoxen 1983: 19). Ten years later, Donna Haraway decried the ongoing dogma: Genes R Us. This is the central dogma of the story of life itself (Haraway 1997). Almost a decade later, in 2004, prominent biologists still proclaim that genes are the key to life that will allow us to better understand ourselves.

4 Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin debunks this idea. Quite the contrary, he claims, genes do little or nothing to help us “better understand ourselves.” (Lewontin 2001). They are one piece of a puzzle, of which environmental factors are just as important. DNA itself, explains Richard Lewon- tin, is an inert molecule. This explains the plot of Jurassic Park, based on the possibility of recovering intact DNA in amber many thousands of years old. What bring genes to life are the cells in which they are embedded. DNA cannot simply and unaided make copies of itself. It cannot “replicate” in the sense that this term is usually understood. Replication—using one strand of the double helix of DNA to provide the template on which another can be constructed—requires an appropriately protected environment, the presence of a wide variety of complex molecular precursors, a set of protein enzymes, and a supply of chemical energy, says Lewontin. Denying claims that DNA is the key to life, Lewontin concludes that DNA “is not self-reproducing, it makes nothing, and organisms are not determined by it” (1992: 33).

The conﬁ dent march toward progress

Since the biotech businesses fi rst boomed around 1980, the year when Genentech’s stock rose from $35 to $80 in one day, the initial enthusiasm for the Genes R Us view has been promoted by prospects for some of the greatest fi nancial gains in scientifi c history. Within this context, deeper debate has been slow to develop. Industry has paid substantial sums for risk assessment studies and publicity campaigns. With the lack of substantialpublic debate, public perceptions of biotechnologies remain largely optimistic in the United States. Views from corporate biotech leaders today, despite much more knowledge of risks than existed in the early days, still echo Edward Yoxen’s optimistic tone of 1983: “Genetics now offers an exceedingly powerful handle on nature… Now we can … mix up rabbit genes with mice genes, without chaos. This is an amazing degree of virtuosity, a novel form of power that is awesome in its implications” (9).

Biotechnologies promise a genetic reordering of almost every aspect of our lives—in the work- place, in the classroom, in the courts, in our coupling and in our children (Brave 2003). Although faced with such great responsibility, most scientists proceed conﬁ dent of the beneﬁ ts and the ability to control these technologies. Critics reply that the many complexities of living systems sets biotechnologies apart from past technologies.

After thirty years of alarm from social critics, many feel the U.S. is lacking critical public debate on what Rifkin has called, probably the most radical experiment ever conducted by humans on their environment (Rifkin 1998). Eighty-ﬁ ve percent of the American public agree or strongly agree that “citizens deserve a great role in decisions about science and technology,” yet 82 percent feel that citizens have too little to say on biotechnologies, and less than 23 percent have conﬁ dence in government’s ability to regulate biotechnology (Rollin 1995: 97).

With each step that society takes towards this “Brave New World” we must ask ourselves if we understand the potentially irreversible changes this creates. Biotechnologies possess novel qualities that demarcate them from the many technologies of the modern age and are poised to alter almost every aspect of our environments, our societies, and our selves. Regarding just what future this could bring about, the experts—geneticists, molecular biologists, social and scientiﬁ c critics, and philosophers—are far from consensus. If we could ask one of the founders of modern science, he might respond with a greater sense of precaution. Francis Bacon, who is famous for having said, “Conquer

5 nature, relieve man’s estate,”2 also warned us that we can only manage nature by obeying nature. Words to ponder, as, with the challenges already before us—social strife, depletions of topsoil, fresh water and the ozone layer, climate change and massive extinctions—we begin to tinker with more intimate workings of nature.

References

Berlan, Jean-Pierre, Ed. 2001. La Guerre au Vivant: Organismes génétiquement modifi és & autres mystifi cations scientifi ques. Collection Contre-Feux. Marseille: Agone.

Brave, Ralph. 2001. “Governing the Genome.” The Nation 273(19): 18-24.

Fukuyama, Francis. 2002. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the BiotechnologyRevolution. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Habermas, Jurgen. 2003. The Future of Human Nature. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity.

Haraway, Donna. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.Female-Man©_Meets_Onco-Mouse™: Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge.

Lewontin, Richard. 2001. It Ain’t Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illu- sions. New York: New York Review of Books.

McKibben, Bill 2003. Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. New York: Times Books, Henry Holt and Company.

Rifkin, Jeremy. 1998. The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World. New York: P. Tarcher, G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

Rissler, Jane and Margaret Mellon. 1996. The Ecological Risks of Engineered Crops. Boston: MIT Press.

Séralini, Gilles-Eric. 2000. OGM: Le vrai débat. Dominos. France: Flammarion.

Yoxen, Edward. 1983. The Gene Business: Who Should Control Biotechnology? New York: Harper & Row.

2. Kass, Leon 2003, p.4.

6 biolotical frameworks: genetic reductionism and epigenics

Scientists diverge in the scientifi c context in which they understand biotechnologies. Two general frameworks—the genetic reductionist and the epigenetic—help to explain why some scientists see biotechnologies as benign and controllable, while others see biotechnologies as inherently spurring various negative environmental consequences. In fact, both views are intrinsic to genetic processes and necessary in understanding them. Genetic functioning involves interactions between genes and proteins, but also the highly complex and dynamic interplay of multiple cellular and environmental infl uences. Thus genetic functioning involves both specifi c gene-protein interactions and more complex network and environmental dynamics.

Generally speaking, reductionism in science represents the view that to obtain knowledge about our complex world researchers must isolate parts that they can manipulate to test hypotheses, the classical scientifi c method. According to the objectivity inherent to classical science, new discoveries are considered self-suffi ciently, devoid of their context. Reductionism is necessary and intrinsic to acquiring knowledge, yet it is insuffi cient for understanding our study systems more comprehensively, the kind of knowledge needed to study biotechnologies and their effects.

Epigenetics is what complexity theories yield in the fi eld of genetics, complex dynamic systems that regulate genetic functioning. Complexity is an emerging scientifi c view that to obtain knowledge about the world researchers must study not objects but subjects and systems, and not only interactions between parts, but also how the ensemble of parts self-organize and evolve. Complex- ity theories can be described in relative rather than absolute terms. Complexity theorists search for simple laws in the context of more comprehensive systems. On the one hand, many scientists believe that reductionist approaches are necessary and suffi cient for attaining knowledge. On the other hand, complexity theorists claim that while reductionism is essential to science, it is insuffi cient for the study of complex, dynamic systems, such as cells and epigenetic systems.

Genetic determinism is a biological theory that claims that complex characteristics of organisms are caused by speciﬁ c genes, a reductionist view of genetic development. The theory dominated the life sciences for almost a century, and is the principal idea behind the Human Genome Project. In rare cases, such as the treatment of muscular dystrophy, relatively simple gene interactions are the cause. In the last few decades, biologists replaced the one gene-one function paradigm with the realization that in complex, epigenetic systems, genes are just one part of an intricate web of interactions (Atlan 1999; Strohman 2003). In the vast majority of diseases, causation entails many genes interacting with one another and with a vast array of signals forming the cellular environment—nutrient supply, hormones, electrical signals from other cells, and much more.

Genetic determinism is fostered by positivist ideology, which sees reductionism as the only valid means to increasing knowledge (Bock 1998). Critics of exclusive reductionism have revealed how metaphor and analogy in fact play a signifi cant role in shaping scientifi c work (Kay 2000; Keller 2002; Lewontin 1992, 2001; Rose 1998). Viewing genetic reductionism and epigenetic dynamics as exclusionary creates an unnecessary chasm in beliefs. Reductionist scientists tend to have greater confi dence about the ability to predict, control, and provide certainty; scientists using more systemic methodologies and models are more modest. This fork in ideologies leads to radically different views of risks, benefi ts, and the responsibility of scientists to society.

7 The key lesson from these ideological battles seems to be that positivism and reductionism are essential to but entirely insufﬁ cient for the study of living systems. In the case of cells, reductive methodologies alone do not grasp all the key dynamics. Moreover, the scientiﬁ c data must be understood within the social and ethical context. Society is still in the dark ages of understanding biotechnologies with regards to the psychological and moral implications (Lewontin 2001; Strohman 2001).

Epigenetics is now the common framework among geneticists and molecular biologists. The notions of one gene for one protein and a unidirectional causal ﬂ ow have collapsed, proving the necessity of dynamical systems in genetics (Atlan 1999; Gould 2001; Strohman 2001).3 Nonetheless, genetic determinism still underlies much of the claims of biotechnology companies. Many scientists, including many Nobel laureates in biology, still view reductionism as the only appropriate general approach to knowledge. “Other sciences describe things,” said one prominent biologist, “reductionism explains them.” James Watson put it more bluntly, “There is only one science, physics; everything else is social work” (Rose 1998: 2). Certainly, most physicists no longer agree. (See for instance, Anderson, Elsasser, and Feynman.)

Belief in pure genetic reductionism tends to go hand in hand with unconditional acceptance of biotechnologies and dismissal of risks. Scientists and business leaders advocating the industry claim that you can manipulate genetic information, changing qualities and characteristics of plants and animals and crossing species boundaries at will with little worry. University of California geneticist Charles Langley, who once served on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) genome project’s planning committee, says that complexity simply means that they will not understand it as planned (Brave 2003). “Genes,” one leader of Aventis went so far as to say, “are a lot like garbage cans. You can put in anything and take anything out.”4 Yet, belief in our capacity to control these technologies to our beneﬁ t is based largely in assumptions of simple and controllable mechanisms more characteristic of mechanics than of biology.

Critics of reductionism in biology think that greater analysis and understanding of positivist and reductionist explanations are only possible within a broader context of society and environment that must be incorporated in methodology from the very beginning of the research process. Richard Strohman emphasizes epigenetics, placing biotechnologies in a different light. His thesis is that dynamic, epigenetic networks have a life of their own. Efforts to understand genetic engineering from the bottom up will fail as most genetic interactions are highly complex, often involving dozens or hundreds of genes interacting in unpredictable ways. As such, Strohman disagrees with the metaphor used by many Human Genome Project scientists that DNA is a “book of life” (Strohman 2001). He says DNA is not a book at all, but simply a collection of words from which a meaningful story of life may be assembled and told. But in order to assemble this story, a living cell uses a complex informational system. For instance, heart disease involves a dynamic, epigenetic network of 100 proteins, many biochemical reactions, and many reaction products. It is dynamic in that it regulates changes in products over time, and it is epigenetic in that it is above genetics in levels of organization. Signals

3. Richard Strohman’s related articles can be found on the following website: Physicians and Scientists for the Respon- sible Application of Science and Technology, http://www.psrast.org/.

4. “Biosciences: Risks, Ethics and Society.” Conference, October 22-24, 2001, given by the Aventis Foundation and the Institute of France, Paris.

8 from the body and the environment alter output from these networks. Some of these environmental changes feed back to DNA to regulate gene expression. The key concept is that genes and molecules have network rules, not speciﬁ ed by DNA, which nobody as yet understands (Strohman 2001).

This is not to negate the colossal importance of reductionism, which remains the backbone of science. Systems theorists simply advocate inclusion in the scientiﬁ c analysis of other modes of explanation—across a range of scales from the organism to the environment. Steven Rose, for instance, suggests that we cannot understand development without understanding the context in which an organism develops, the context of the organism, as well as particular aspects of genetic functioning. Many think the environment is as critical to genetic adaptation as genetic functioning is, concluding that the two spheres of explanation are equally indispensable. DNA itself is an inert molecule, entirely dependent upon the cell and its environment for self-replication. Our understanding of biotechnologies must reﬂ ect this and include the implications of this mutual genotype-phenotype interdependence and interaction.

Metaphor has played a role in our understanding of modern genetics. Though remarkably compelling and productive as analogies, says Kay, molecular biologists have unwisely taken the terms: information, language, code, message, and text, as ontologies (Kay 2000: 2). Some warn that such metaphors confl ate “biological information” with “meaning.” Molecular biologists use “information” as a metaphor for biological specifi city, according to Lily Kay. “Information” is thus a metaphor for a metaphor, a signifi er without a referent. As both biologists and philosophers have warned, taking “information” as ontology makes a dangerous mistake, confl ating “biological information” with “meaning.” Thus biologists misleadingly claim their biological understanding yields social and philosophical understanding as well. As Warren Weaver, then head of the Natural Sciences Division of the Rockefeller Foundation said, “the word “information”in this theory (cybernetics, and now bioinformatics) is used in a special sense that must not be confused with “meaning.’”

Even if it were possible to determine mathematically (in bits) the information content of a genomic message (a “sentence” in the “book of life”)—this would not yield any semantics. The context of the genomic message—genomic, cellular, organismic, and environmental—would all have to be speciﬁ ed. Yet this is impossible because this genomic context is evolving and changing. Develop- ments in deciphering the human genome can be compared to having a pile of telephone books, with no addresses, no names, and no way of telling them apart.

Still, many biologists feel they are uncovering “truth,” and they do not see why people are talk- ing about metaphors. James Watson, ﬁ rst leader of the Human Genome Project, said of advances in genetic engineering, “What we’re doing is revealing the way genes work… that is no metaphor…” Similarly, biologist Roger Brent has said that scientists do not go around using the term like “genetic determinism.” But the difference in orientation becomes particularly problematic when one interpretation leads to the belief that we can safely control biological manipulations, and the other belief leads to the opposite conclusion. The reductionist approach eschews complexity in social-natural relationships as well as biology. Evelyn Fox Keller, in Making Sense of Life, argues that the very basis of genetics consists by nature in diverse interpretations, at least epistemologically. What would it be to understand development, she asks. Understanding is a notoriously unstable word, she says, and a central aim of her book is to illustrate this instability.

9 Lily Kay notes two views on understanding. In some contexts, understanding means providing a “reductionist” account—one that invokes only lower order entities. In others, it means providing a program (or algorithm) for “computing” the embryo. And sometimes understanding means both at the same time, as if the two were equivalent. Regardless, each case raises serious questions. For instance, in the reductionist’s account, what is development to be reduced to (Fox-Keller 2002)? As the philosopher Mary Midgley puts it, neither the value of money nor the rules of football are collapsible into physics; there is one world, but it is a big one (Haraway 1997). Lewontin warns that because biology is so complex, there remains a continuing tendency to understand living processes and systems by metaphorizing them to the most advanced forms of current human artifact (Lewontin 2001).

According to philosopher of science Sahotra Sarkar, the very defi nition of “genetics” is “diffi - cult if not impossible” (Sarkar 1991). He discusses various diffi culties in defi ning the term “gene”in molecular terms. Genetic reductionism leads to an emphasis on DNA, which specifi es the alleles over all other biological molecules. In recent years, says Sarkar, this has led to a deifi cation of the DNA se- quence. Epigenetics leads us instead to a greater appreciation of the as yet undiscovered in genetics. All this has led Evelyn Fox Keller to conclude, “I see nothing counterintuitive in the possibility that there are phenomena in the natural world extending beyond the grasp of human comprehension—if only by virtue of their sheer complexity. Embryonic development may well be one of these” (2002: 296).

References

Atlan, Henri. 1999. La ﬁ n du “tout génétique”?: Vers de nouveaux paradigmes en biologie. Paris: Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique.

Boch, Gregory R. and Jamie A. Goode. 1998. The Limits of Reductionism in Biology. Novartis Foun- dation Symposium: 213. New York: J. Wiley.

Brave, Ralph. 2001. “Governing the Genome.” The Nation 273(19): 18-24.

Haraway, Donna. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.Female-Man©_Meets_OncoMouse™: Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge.

Kay, Lily. 2000. Who Wrote the Book of Life: A History of the Genetic Code. Stanford: Stanford Univer- sity Press.

Keller, Evelyn-Fox. 2002. Making Sense of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lewontin, Richard C. 1991. Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA. New York: Harper Perennial.

Lewontin, Richard C. 2001. It Ain’t Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illu- sions. New York: The New York Review of Books.

Rollin, Bernard E. 1995. The Frankenstein Syndrome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rose, Steven. 1998. Lifelines: Biology Beyond Determinism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sarkar, Sahotra. 1998. Genetics and Reductionism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

10 Strohman, Richard C. 2001. “Toward a new paradigm for life—Beyond genetic determinism.” Avail- able online: http://www.psrast.org/strohmnewgen.htm

Strohman, Richard. 2001. “The Complexity of Bioethics,” Nature Biotechnology. 19(1): 1007.

11 the ethics of biotechnologies

In the United States the ethical implications of biotechnologies has been largely neglected, and the regulation of biotechnologies has lagged behind other industrialized nations. Authors in this section address such issues as: unfair burdens of risk, unfair distribution of proﬁ ts, private interests overrul- ing public interests, and risks of increasing sexism, racism, classism, and environmental problems. Other authors explore the misunderstandings that arise from the gulf between genetic reductionism and more contextual explanations. Despite popular belief in the independence of science, no science exists that is not born of and embedded in social, cultural, and ethical contexts (Lewontin 1992; Rose 1998). Conceiving of “science with conscience” (a phrase from Edgar Morin), or science understood within its social context, has become an imperative (Lewontin 2001).

Ethics becomes increasingly important in the face of technologies with increasingly greater impact and uncertainties. Proponents of biotechnologies argue that potential beneﬁ ts outweigh potential risks. Ironically, experimentation should proceed even if this subverts efforts to regulate and evaluate risks of the same technologies before they are used. Opponents reason that the way to avoid risks and reduce uncertainty is to carefully evaluate and regulate before implementation.

Several problems intervene in the assessment of biotechnologies. First, the benefi ts of biotechnologies accrue to a very few corporate entities, scientifi c laboratories and shareholders, while the burden of risks and environmental degradations fall on an impoverished majority (Peters 1998). Regulators have largely failed to make critical distinctions between public and private benefi ts of biotechnologies. Thus the rise of biotechnologies has seen the accompanying increase in privatization of public goods (Shand 2001). Critical questions about germline engineering include risks that it will worsen discrimination, racism and wealth inequality in rich nations (Billings 2001; Shand 2001), and threaten indigenous culture (Tauli-Corpuz in Tokar, 2001; Dorsey in Tokar 2001). Acknowledg- ing the public interest requires us to reassess the challenges surrounding biotechnologies—high scientifi c uncertainty, little ethical precedent, high potential impact, and diffi culties in gauging systemic effects in living environments.

A second obstacle to better regulation is the doctrine of inevitability, a product of the ideologies of objectivity and positivism underlying classical science, as well as the belief in absolute progress, or the notion that science and technologies always bring about progress (Weiner 1999). Instead, the advent of complexity theories throughout the sciences, the fall of the classical scientiﬁ c belief in absolute truths, the erosion of positivism, and the awareness of a multiplicity of religious and cultural beliefs are all trends that signal the dissolution of the traditional subordination of ethics to science.

In light of this one might suggest the opposite notion, that science and its technologies be subordinated to ethics. The notion that ethics must guide science has emerged from increased awareness about the impacts of technologies on society and nature (Haraway 1997). The radical nature of biotechnologies might incite us to look more closely at our underlying assumption that science and ethics are dissociated. This view might be changed with the increasing realization that science and technology can bring about undesirable and sometimes catastrophic effects, and that we do have the power to control and even abstain from the use of new technologies.

There is nothing inevitable about the development of science and technology (Weiner 1999;

12 Wright 2002). Citizens in many countries are mounting increasing regulations for biotechnologies. Both scientists and citizens have started to control the impact of technologies on our environments and on our persons. They should continue to do so (McKibben 2003). This requires ﬁ rst determining what is the public interest in biotechnologies– a task that has begun to elicit considerable reﬂ ection (Fukuyama 2002; Kass 2002; Habermas 2003).5 Demands for public input on biotechnologies are mounting, as the effort begun in July 2002 by the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration to impose an international moratorium on synthetic nanoparticles while risks and ethics are considered.6

Views on human germline gene therapy diverge wildly. Optimists envision great beneﬁ ts of ma- nipulating living organisms, while critics fear that these techniques will quickly bring us to the brink of social chaos (Brave 2002). United States bioethicist Leon Kass asks us whether germline genetic engineering will actually make us stronger or weaker, and in what sense, arguing that strengthening some humans with genetic manipulations may actually be psychologically crippling both the new humans and their “natural” counterparts (Kass 2002). Kass also questions the manufacturing and commodifying of humans. For example, many scientists see the elimination of pregnancy involved in transferring procreation from the home to the laboratory as a certainty (Fukuyama 2001). Kass says that a woman’s losing the childbirth experience, necessary to germline engineering, would be profoundly dehumanizing (Kass 2002).

Jurgen Habermas has also taken up the issue of germline engineering. He suggests that subjective control by parents over children might result in deep conﬂ icts of objectivity and control, which would irreparably degrade children’s ordinary maturation. Children would suffer from the strange experience of having been created by their parents to be a certain way, denying their individual development. Genetically engineered children might be terribly troubled knowing that they were “designed” by their parents, interfering with the process of psychological individuation (Habermas 2003).

Habermas questions how germline engineering might affect relations between “natural” children and genetically engineered children. The divergence between them would be profoundly troubling. It would jeopardize humanity’s long struggles towards equality. Western humanitarian goals of liberty, equality, and happiness for all, are based upon a sense of we-ness, an inclusive communality. After centuries of struggles with social inequities, he says, it would be sad indeed to fall back into inevitable social divides, which would prevent our hopes of achieving one human community. Germ- line genetic engineering would also threaten our sense of newness. Historically, couples enjoy the coming of each new child as a gift that is entirely new. While sharing familial traits, it is nonetheless an entirely new person. In contrast, the risks of a Huxleyan eugenics could degrade newness, fostering narrowly deﬁ ned, homogenous caste structures.

5. People can and do choose the future. It is not inevitable. Yet, the precautionary principle jars those still moored in classical scientifi c thinking. In fact, to date, the principle calls for little more than demurring in the face of risk. After a decade of use in dozens of major international treaties, the principle, used in many international treaties, the defi nition from the 1992 Rio Declaration at UNCED, Principle 15 still stands: “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientifi c certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation” (Freestone 1996: 3).

6. Action Group on Erosion, Technology, and Concentration (ETC), at: http://www.etcgroup.org

13 Both Habermas and McKibben warn that engineering humans might lead to a radical distor- tion of our emotional sensibilities. It would be deeply troubling, suggests McKibben, for children to become quickly outdated like software models—an analogy used by advocates of germline engineering. Judging from current predictions of how quickly germline engineering may become possible in the next few decades, McKibben questions how society would avoid giving genetically engineered persons a sense of being less valuable products, rather than intrinsically valuable humans.

The possibilities of germline engineering evoke powerful questions about what it is we want to change and why, as well as what we should and can learn to accept about the human condition, and why. McKibben’s solution is that we could decide that life is “good enough” as it is. He suggests we should impose limits on our efforts to improve ourselves, attempts to overcome insecurities and dissatisfactions. The possibility for this restraint is already evident in examples of limitations we have adopted: use of resources, use of alcohol, etc. Before we attempt to “improve” humans, Habermas concludes, what we need is a penetrating analysis of the connections between the contingency of life’s beginning and freedom to give one’s life an ethical shape (75).

Finally, we might consider how biotechnologies would affect the possibilities for a peaceful future. The present era remains heavily militarized, as described by the companion bibliography in this series, War, Militarization and the Environment (Mitchell and Koko 2004). Research is underway to use biotechnologies to develop chemical and biological warfare. Biological weapons might upset the intricate balances between hosts, pests and the environment.

Possible military applications and implications of biotechnologies are broad. Disturbing propo- sitions include genetic modiﬁ cation and automated manipulations of people’s bodies. Consider the following excerpt from the National Research Council report, “The Applications of Biotechnologies in the Military,” entitled “A Day in the Life of a 21st Century Soldier”:

Picture yourself driving an Army vehicle similar to an SUV… As you move over rough terrain in a Third World country, the vehicle computer, programmed with map data, assists you by smoothing the ride so that you can focus on avoiding shell craters and other obstacles… In spite of your bioenhanced tolerance to heat, you feel sweat… under the airtight garment you wear for protection against chemical or biological agents... In your ear the insistent voice of your unit commander reminds you … what your objective is… Suddenly the display ﬂ ashes! External sensors… have detected the presence of a toxic chemical agent… internal medical sensors detect changes in your body, and drugs speciﬁ cally designed to your needs are automatically admin- istered to calm you and stimulate your reactions… You drive on, secure in your objectives…” (National Research Council 2001)

Increasing research on biotechnologies in the military may lead to a biotechnological arms race, with applications more readily usable than nuclear weapons. The weapons may be used not against enemies, but against one’s own soldiers—turning persons into robotic mercenaries. Biotechnologies might be used to subvert people’s rights to “natural” lives. Soldiers, the unborn, and all the rest of us, risk losing something fundamental—the right to lives free from fundamental biological interventions.

14 References

Billings, Paul 2000. “Lessons from Genetic Discrimination.” Genetics in Medicine 2(4): 207-208.

Freestone, David and Ellen Hey, Eds. 1996. The Precautionary Principle and International Law: The Challenge of Implementation. The Hague: Kluwer Law International.

Fukuyama, Francis. 2002. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the BiotechnologyRevolution. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Habermas, Jurgen. 2003. The Future of Human Nature. Cambridge: Polity.

Haraway, Donna. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.Female-Man©_Meets_OncoMouse™: Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge.

Kass, Leon 2002. Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics. San Francisco: Encounter Books.

Lewontin, Richard. 1992. Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA. New York: Harper Perennial.

Lewontin, Richard C. 2001. It Ain’t Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illu- sions. New York: The New York Review of Books.

McKibben, Bill. 2003. Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. New York: Times Books.

Mitchell, Marisa and Linda Coco. War, Militarization and the Environment. Berkeley: Institute of International Studies.

Patrice, Jean, Ed. 2000. Éthique et Génétique. Conférence à l’Université française du Paciﬁ que, L’Harmattan.

Rose, Stephen. 1998. Lifelines: Biology Beyond Determinism. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Shand, Hope. 2001. “Gene Giants: Understanding the “Life Industry.’” in Redesigning Life?: The Worldwide Challenge to Genetic Engineering. edited by Brian Tokar. London: Zed Books.

Strohman, Richard C. 1993. “Ancient Genomes, Wise Bodies, Unhealthy People: Limits of a Ge- netic Paradigm in Biology and Medecine.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 37(1): 112-145.

National Research Council. 2001. Opportunities in Biotechnology for Future Army Applications. Wash- ington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Weiner, Charles. 2000. “Recombinant DNA, Policy, Asilomar Conference.” in Encyclopedia of Ethi- cal, Legal, and Policy Issues in Biotechnology. edited by Thomas J. Murray and Maxwell J. Mehl- man. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Weiner, Charles. 1999. “Social Responsibility in Genetic Engineering: Historical Perspectives.” in Gene Therapy and Ethics. Anders Nordgren ed. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Uppsala.

15 the ecological hazards of transgenic crops

In the spring of 2001, a University of California at Berkeley professor and his graduate student tested maize landraces grown in Oaxaca, Mexico, the center of crop diversity for maize, and found the presence of patented transgenes despite a moratorium on transgenic maize. Their study found not only the presence of transgenes in maize landraces, but also suggested that the transgenes inherited did not exhibit the stability ensured by the crop’s developers and patent holders. Their initial fi ndings were published in a brief article in the journal Nature.7 Shortly after publishing the results, the journal came under fi re from the scientifi c community, particularly those supportive of the life sciences industry and from within the discipline of molecular biology. Nature retracted the article, questioning the researchers’ methodology and interpretation of evidence. When data were subsequently submit- ted supporting the fi ndings, Nature refused to publish them, to retract the retraction, or to provide a forum to pursue earlier editorial commentary.

Despite concerns that transgenic crops may pose threats to biodiversity, the Nature controversy continues to be framed as one of academic practice and integrity. The point that GE traits were found in Mexican maize landraces, a Vavilov center of crop-wild diversity, seem to be less a concern. Opponents were noticeably silent about the permeability of the seed system in response to questions from NGOs, indigenous groups and ecologists about the adequacy of regulatory institutions to “control” the “deliberate release” of GEOs.

The introduction of GEOs into the environment presents risks to natural systems and agroecosystems. Environmental problems may follow from intrinsic qualities of the plant itself, its interaction with its environment, and/or the practices associated with its cultivation. These hazards in many cases are the extreme versions of conventional analogs, but the novelty of some traits makes ecological effects even more likely (Letourneau & Burrows 2002; Rissler & Mellon 1996).

Gene fl ow is the movement of genes from one place to another as when seed is transported or pollen drifts and subsequently hybridizes. If gene fl ow leads to introgression, the subsequent backcrossing of two hybrids, the transgene may remain in the wild or weedy population potentially increasing weediness or invasiveness if the transgene confers fi tness advantages. Gene fl ow also poses consequences to genetic diversity as outbreeding depression or genetic swamping could result in the extinction of wild relatives. The potential for outbreeding depression would follow if short-term fi t- ness advantages favor the increased presence of the transgene in the population but with long-term fi tness consequences over time (e.g. reduced fecundity, increased disease susceptibility). Genetic swamping would occur where the receiving plants are relatively rare and exposed to high rates of hybridization. These concerns are paramount in the case of transgenic maize in Mexico as there are instrumental as well as intrinsic values of biodiversity at play; small farmers as well as international research institutions depend upon the diversity of wild relatives and landraces for plant breeding.

Widespread use of herbicide-tolerant (HT) RoundUp Ready™ and Liberty Link™ crops could lead to the rapid evolution of resistance to herbicides like glyphosate and glufosinate in weeds, either as a result of increased exposure to the herbicide, or as a result of the horizontal transfer of the

7. See Ignacio H. Chapela & David Quist. 2001. “Transgenic DNA introgressed into traditional maize landraces in Oaxaca, Mexico,” Nature 414: 541-543.

16 HT trait to weedy relatives of crops. HT crops could change the mix of agro-chemical herbicides used as some become ineffective, which could result in greater levels of overall environmental harm. Since herbicides differ in toxicity and environmental harm, loss of some herbicides may be detrimen- tal to the environment overall.

The impacts of transgenic crops on biodiversity from changes in farming practices may be to the detriment of the biodiversity near and in farms. In October 2003, the Royal Society of the U.K. published its fi ndings from the U.K. farm scale evaluations.8 Two out of the three crops studied demonstrated an association between transgenic crops and practices harmful to wildlife as well as a tendency to decrease biodiversity. The report attributed the impacts to changing in spray regimes of herbicides, fi nding that wildlife adjacent to GE crops were subject to increased exposure to agrochemicals such as atrazine, pointing to a signifi cant difference in agronomic practices associated with GE and conventional varieties. One senior source close to the trials said: “The null hypothesis is wrong, that’s what’s come out of the trials clearly. What is consistent is there are differences in the impact of GE crops and conventional crops.”9

Non-target effects of GE crops could threaten both biodiversity and agronomic practices such as biological control. Plants engineered to produce toxins in mobile tissue parts such as pollen pose threats not only susceptible species that enter into areas where the crop is grown, but also to the adjacent fi eld margins where the pollen may drift. Such was the case with the study that launched the monarch butterfl y controversy. It was suggested that Bt that drifted onto milkweed growing in the fi eld margins increased the mortality rates of monarch larva.10 Toxic mobile plant tissues may impact soil biota as well. Bt has been shown to accumulate in the soil through the root exudates of transgenic plants.11 The impact of dosing the rhizosphere with the Bt endotoxin has not been evaluated for consequences to non-target soil organisms or to soil health. Benefi cial insects used in the biological control of pests are also subject to non-target effects. One study suggests that the green lacewing, an insect benefi cial to farmers because it predates the same pest that Bt is used against, suffers greater mortality rates after consuming Bt-fed prey.12

The introduction of transgenic crops into the environment also raises the concerns about insect resistance. The naturally occurring microorganism bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) has been used as a pesticide for several decades as it crystallizes and blocks the passage of food into the stomach of many species of Lepidoptera, effectively killing them. Its rapid degradation when exposed to UV light allows it to escape regulation from the EPA making it widely used in powdered form by organic farmers. However, many studies have shown that Bt resistance can evolve rapidly in agroecosystems. Incor- porating the genes that produce the endotoxin into plants and subsequently planting them on such

8. The report can be assessed by going to the Royal Society website: http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/gmplants/

9. See Woolf, Marie, World Wildlife Fund, April 2, 2003. WWF website: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd

10. See Losey, Rayor, & Carter. 1999. “Transgenic pollen harms monarch butterﬂ ies.” Nature 399: 214.

11. Saxena, Flores, & Stotsky. 1999. “Insecticidal toxin in root exudates from Bt corn.” Nature 402: 480.

12. See Hilbeck, et al. 1999. “Prey-mediated effects of Cry1Ab toxin and protoxins and Cry2A protoxins on the predator Chrysoperla carnea.” Entomological Experimental Applications 91: 305-316.

17 a large scale could, unless properly managed, hasten this process with implications for both organic farmers and conventional ones. Currently, industry argues that high dose-refuge model will suppress the evolution of resistance in Lepidoptera. They argue that the high dose of Bt will kill most of the pests and that the alleles that develop resistance will be “diluted” by the presence of a non-Bt refuge harboring Bt-susceptible Lepidoptera. However, this argument rests on two assumptions. The ﬁ rst is that Bt resistance is a recessive trait; the second is that farmers actually plant the refuge.

Transgenic crops conditioned to produce viral-resistance potentially can create new or more virulent viruses through two mechanisms: recombination and transcapsidation. The former can occur between the plant-produced viral genes and closely related genes of incoming viruses; the latter occurs when nucleic acids from one virus are incorporated into the protein structure of plants. Both can result in viruses that infect a wider range of hosts, demonstrate increased virulence or lead to a biological resistance “arms race.” Further, some viruses play an ecological role in plant community dynamics. For example, barley yellow dwarf virus resistance has been engineered into cultivated oats to prevent yield losses. It has also been shown to suppress invasive wild oats. The transfer of viral resistance in this case may increase the invisibility of wild oats in natural communities as it alters plant competitive interactions.

The discovery of transgenes in Mexico points to the permeability of a system that is designed to ensure that ecological hazards are well characterized. Controlling where the GEOs take to the landscape proved to be unrealistic given the “science-based” focus on mechanical pollen ﬂ ow and the failure to consider social processes that move seed. Moreover, the limited understanding of the ecological behavior of transgenic organisms in the environment has been based on studies which are neither temporally or spatially robust. Moreover it rarely relies on understanding the trophic interactions of organisms in their environments.

This section has focused discussion on the consequences of transgenic food crops because of the in-depth analysis it has received. Hundreds of other transgenic organisms (salmon, trees, insects, etc.) and traits (fungal resistance, drought resistance, etc.) are slated for deliberate release presenting potential ecological risks that require adequate scrutiny. A more modest approach to evaluating the risks of biotechnology is one that recognizes uncertainty, complexity and incomplete knowledge while emphasizing the precautionary principle from post-release monitoring to designing rigorous ecological risk assessment (Letourneau & Burrows 2002; Kapuscinski 2002; National Research Council 2002). However, it requires the interdisciplinary cooperation of molecular biologists, ecologists, social scientists, and others to meaningfully understand the ecological hazards that may accompany genetic engineering.

References

Kapuscinski, Anne R. 2002. “Controversies in designing useful ecological assessments ofgenetically engineered organisms.” in Genetically Engineered Organisms: Assessing Environmental and Hu- man Health Effects. edited by Deborah Letourneau & Beth Elpern Burrows. New York: CRC Press.

Letourneau, Deborah K. & Beth Elpern Burrows (eds.). 2002. Genetically Engineered Organisms: As- sessing Environmental and Health Effects New York: CRC Press.

18 National Research Council. 2002. Environmental Effects of Transgenic Plants: The Scope and Adequacy of Regulation. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Rissler, Jane and Margaret Mellon. 1996. The Ecological Risks of Engineered Crops. Cambridge: MIT Press.

19 politics, science, and the social context of regulation

Biotechnology presents society with indeterminate technological risks from medicine to agriculture. Effects to bodies and landscapes make it fertile ground for regulatory and scientiﬁ c conﬂ ict. Society’s interest to mitigate the risks accompanying late modernity and industrialization has put this technology on a unique footing, as regulatory agencies have been intimately involved with biotechnology since its inception.13 This section reviews the history and politics of biotechnology regulation at the nexus of regulatory agencies, scientists, and the public. These actors have widely differing goals and agendas seeking to ensure public health and protect the environment while not inhibiting technological innovation and national economic competitiveness, all of which are recurrent themes in the biotechnology discourse.

Situating the discussion of biotechnology regulation and determining the acceptability or manageability of certain risks reveals how certain dimensions of these risks, like the potential social and distributional consequences, fall outside the scope of regulatory decision-making; risks are reduced to technological problems with manageable solutions. This has fostered the acceptance of the “scientism” story line, reminiscent of logical positivism, invoking the idea that “objective”experts should arbitrate regulatory decisions (MacMillan 2003). The ability of scientists to create “expert enclosure” (Gottweis 1998) in policy-making has resulted in a policy process dominated by exclusion, curtail- ing public participation. The resulting negative public perception is as much a result of inﬂ uential institutions divorcing risk and ethical concerns, as of the risks per se (Wynne 2001). Further, the role of the courts in the regulation of biotechnology has served to regularize its associated risks, as judicial review has been partial to a commitment to technological and scientiﬁ c progress (Jasanoff 1995). The trajectory of technological change and the distribution of accompanying risks is co-produced by science and policy, an expression of social control demonstrated not by conscious intent, but by subtle cultural norms. This expert-led approach to decision-making has contributed to the growing anxiety that surrounds how regulatory decisions are made, a social problematic that extends well beyond questions solely about biotechnology.

The U.S. history of biotechnology regulation typically begins with the Asilomar Conferences (1973 and 1975) where the safety concerns about laboratory experiments, in particular the insertion of an animal tumor virus into E. Coli, were voiced and deliberated (Krimsky 1982). This discussion fostered the development of new regulatory controls through the NIH led by “manageable” strategies to deal with risks (physical and biological containment) that were “inseparable from molecular biology discourse” (Gottweis 1998). Accordingly, molecular biologists cultivated policy narratives and networks of meaning, effectively normalizing and bounding risk. Science gained authority as it was able to translate, simplify, and inscribe risks (Wright 1994).

The second major event in biotechnology’s regulation in the U.S. came in concert with the

13. For a discussion of how risks are deliberately undertaken and how risk management characterizes industrial society in late modernity see Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity London: Sage Publications; Also: Lash, Scott, Bronislaw Szersznski, and Brian Wynne. 1996. Risk, Environment and Modernity London: Sage Publications. For a broader, sociological view on “reﬂ exive modernization,” the continual input of expert systems in reorganization of social relations, see Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity Stanford: Stanford University Press.

20 plans to deliberately release GEOs into the environment. Ecologists and evolutionary biologists, began to break down the boundaries of expertise drawn by molecular biologists as the discussion shifted to one of ecological consequences. The failure to establish a national policy toward genetic engineering in the late 1970s was followed by attempts to secure its regulation by other means (Ken- ney 1986; Krimsky 1991). The Coordinated Framework established in 1985, distributed regulatory responsibility between three Federal agencies: the USDA, the EPA, and the FDA.

GEOs present society with uncertainties and unknowns. Two principles are commonly invoked: substantial equivalence and precaution. Substantial equivalence holds that products that bear similar resemblance they should be regulated similarly. It is used as a heuristic to rationalize the relative differences between products and is invoked to suggest that GE products are no different than their conventional counterparts. The precautionary principle suggests that any lack of demonstrable effect should not be taken to mean no effect and that actions should proceed with an acceptance of the particular hazards posed. In this sense, the precautionary principle seeks to minimize false negatives (type II errors) as opposed to false positives (type I errors), noting that the consequences for policy choices are ontological rather than epistemological.14

Arguably the most controversial site of GEO regulation centers on food safety, where substantial equivalence and the precautionary principle have become central to the discourse. Food safety concerns revolve around the perceived risks of biotechnology in the sense that they are risks that are invisible, involuntary, imposed, and uncontrollable (Adams 2000; Nestle 2003). In regulating food safety, the FDA uses the notion of substantial equivalence to determine whether the products of biotechnology differ from conventional foods. GE foods are released from regulatory oversight unless the food can be shown to differ in nutritional content, allergenicity, or toxicity from its conventional counterpart. Opposing this view, GEO labeling advocates argue for the consumers “right to know,” governing food safety through consumption (Guthman 2003).

The ﬁ rst commercial transgenic crop, Calgene’s Flavr Savr™ tomato, set the precedent for the regulatory approval process in the U.S. and Mexico (Martineau 2001). This product was designed to ripen en route to the supermarket shelf, ﬁ lling a niche for fresh, ripe tomatoes. In the review process, the FDA exhausted all available legal means to regulate the crop, suggesting it was ecologically innocuous and substantially equivalent. This narrow focus on safety impacts marginalized social concerns seen as more central, like economic impacts on local tomato growers (Nestle 2003). Subsequently, social impacts have been consistently marginalized, leading to the invocation of what Marion Nestle calls “safety as a surrogate,” where GE detractors exploit gaps in knowledge about safety to pursue social interests that are not supported by regulatory frameworks.

14. Schrader-Frechette makes this argument most eloquently by positing ethical conservatism (minimizing type II errors) against epistemological conservatism (minimizing type I errors), suggesting that the former exacts consequences that go beyond claims to truth, but that actually impact people and landscapes. The implications for policy are such that, “in a situation of statistical uncertainty in which we cannot adequately assess effects, we should place the burden of proof on the persons who create these potentially adverse effects.” See Schrader-Frechette, Kristen S. 1991. Risk and Rationality: Philosophical Foundations for Populist Reforms Berkeley: University of California Press. Also: Schrader-Frechette, Kristen S. 1996. “Methodological Rules for Four Classes of Environmental Uncertainty.” In Scientiﬁ c Uncertainty and Environmen- tal Problem Solving Lemons, J. (ed.). Cambridge: Blackwell Science: 12-39.

21 Not all regulation is based on such narrowly defi ned terms. In Europe,15 Austria has slowed E.U. harmonization (EC Deliberate Release Directive 90/220) by adding social criteria to the evaluation of benefi ts and risks (Torgerson and Seifert 2000). Much of the emerging food politics around GE foods concerns not its biosafety consequences, but the impact to agricultural production systems (Tait and Bruce 2001). The arrival of the fi rst transnational shipments of unlabelled GE foods, coupled with the growing distrust of the regulatory system stemming from the highly visible food scares, resulted in consumer rejection of these new crops. There has been a de facto moratorium on GE food and crops in the E.U. since 1998, to review and gather more data on the social, health and ecological impacts; it has sparked confl ict at the WTO as the U.S. insists that the E.U. invocation of the precautionary principle erects an illegal barrier to trade. This again has brought facts and values to the fore in the debate as consumer groups invoke the precautionary principle, a tenet that the life sciences industry camp calls “unsound science” (Levidow and Carr 2000).

The use of the precautionary principle demonstrates how many of the controversies surrounding biotechnology stem not from the scientiﬁ c data itself, but the ways in which the data is translated in policy (Mills 2002; Nestle 2003). Regulation of biotechnology is as much a question about values as it is about fact (Levidow and Carr 1997). As was the case in the controversy concerning recombinant bovine growth hormone (a.k.a. bovine somatropin, BST, or Posilac®), different policy paths were pursued in the U.S. and Canada as the former claimed that the risks were manageable, while the latter claimed they were not (Mills 2002).

The labeling of GE foods has also been a contentious issue confronting biotechnology regulation (Guthman 2003). In Europe, consumer concern has ensured that GE food is clearly labeled; a concern that was catalyzed by Pusztai affair (Pusztai 2002). In fact, the power of retail supermarkets in Europe has ensured that the politics of consumer concern is adequately represented (Levidow and Bijman 2002). In the U.S., the biotechnology lobby has successfully fought such actions on the grounds of substantial equivalence as made evident by the multiple lawsuits involving Monsanto and r-BGH (Mills 2002). Critics of biotechnology ask why, if the industry is so supportive of its claims, it does not support food labeling. The Flavr Savr™ tomato, for example, was labeled in an effort to tout the fact that it was GE (Martineau 2001; Nestle 2003).

The regulation of biotechnology has raised many questions about the transparency and inequitable distribution of political power in regulatory processes and democratic choice. Who is taking the risks? Who secures the benefi ts? How will biotechnology regulation be applied in the developing world (Scoones 2002)? Further, it reveals how economic interests often take precedence over protecting the safety and welfare of citizens and the environment; the regulatory system is seen more as a promoter of biotechnology rather than its overseer. However, it is not simply identifying interest that makes these works particularly relevant to policy debates. It is nesting these interests with a general characterization of the regulatory processes and scientifi c culture. Many of these works offer a critique, not of regulatory science, but of the use of science and authority to achieve specifi c ideological, political, and economic ends. In doing so, they speak to larger questions that refl ect the social implications of the adoption of new technologies.

15. For a comprehensive of review GMO regulatory positions within the E.U. see Levidow, Les & Susan Carr, eds. 2000. “Precautionary Regulation: GM Crops in the European Union,” special issue of the Journal of Risk Research 3(3).

22 References

Adams, Barbara. 2000. “The Temporal Gaze: The challenge for Social Theory in the Context of GM Food.” British Journal of Sociology 51(1):125-142.

Gottweis, Herbert. 1998. Governing Molecules: The Discursive Politics of Genetic Engineering in Europe and the United States. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Guthman, Julie. 2003. “Eating Risk: the politics of labeling genetically engineered foods.” in Engi- neering Trouble: Biotechnology and its Discontents, edited by Rachel Schurman & Dennis Taka- hashi Kelso. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Jasanoff, Sheila. 1995. Science at the Bar: Law, Science and Technology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Kenney, Martin. 1986. Biotechnology: The University-Industrial Complex. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Krimsky, Sheldon. 1982. Genetic Alchemy: The Social History of the Recombinant DNA Controversy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Krimsky, Sheldon. 1991. Biotechnics and Society: The Rise of Industrial Genetics. New York: Praeger.

Levidow, Les and Jos Bijman. 2002. “Farm inputs under pressure from the European food industry.” Food Policy 27(1): 31-45.

Levidow, Les and Susan Carr. 1997. “How biotechnology regulation sets a risk/ethics boundary.” Agriculture and Human Values 14(1): 29-43.

Levidow, Les and Susan Carr. 2000. “Sound Science or Ideology?” Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy 15(3): 44-56.

MacMillan, Thomas. 2003. “Tales of power in biotechnology regulation: the E.U. ban on BST.” Geoforum 34(2): 187-201.

Martineau, Belinda. 2001. First Fruit: The Creation of the Flavr Savr Tomato and the Birth of Geneti- cally Engineered Food. New York: McGraw Hill.

Mills, Lisa Nicole. 2002. Science and Social Context: The Regulation of Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone in North America. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Nestle, Marion. 2003. Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Pusztai, Arpad. 2002. “GM Food Safety: Scientiﬁ c and Institutional Issues.” Science as Culture 11(1): 69-92.

23 Scoones, Ian. 2002. Science, policy, and regulation: challenges for agricultural biotechnology in developing countries. Brighton, Sussex, U.K.: Institute for Development Studies.

Tait, Joyce and Ann Bruce. 2001. “Globalisation and Transboundary Risk Regulation: Pesticides and Genetically Modiﬁ ed Crops.” Health, Risk & Society 3(1): 99-112.

Torgerson, Helge and Franz Seifert. 2000. “Austria: precautionary blockage of agricultural biotechnology.” Journal of Risk Research 3(3): 209-217.

Wright, Susan. 1994. Molecular Politics: Developing American and British Regulatory Policy for Genetic Engineer- ing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wynne, Brian. 2001. “Creating public alienation: expert cultures or risk and ethics on GMOs.” Science as Culture 26(2): 445-481.

24 the life science industries and agro-industrial dynamics

The logic of capital has shaped the relationship between agriculture and technology in the contemporary agro-food system, often putting proﬁ t and markets over people and the ecological systems of which they are part. Industry is the engine of technological change in agriculture and in many ways it drives the global restructuring of agro-food systems. Increasingly, farmers have become subordinate to the interests of capital with agro-input, processing, and retail sectors absorbing more of the food system’s value. The works in this section suggest that a biotechnology driven by the life sciences industries promises to pursue this trend. They suggest that capitalist agriculture is a speciﬁ c form of agriculture and social relation. Biotechnology is a means for capital to expand its control over the food system and the authors herein seek to point out the consequences of this trajectory.

As a point of departure, several of these works entertain varieties of Kautsky’s Agrarian Ques- tion, which seeks to identify the how capitalism will manifest in agriculture (Boyd, Prudham, and Schurman 2001; Goodman, Sorj, and Wilkinson 1987; Kelso 2000, 2003; Kloppenburg 1988; Lewontin 1998; Prudham 2003; Wilkinson 2002). Writing at the turn of the previous century, Kautsky sought to comprehend the incomplete development of capitalist agriculture as it penetrated rural activities.16 In agriculture, capital encounters obstacles not found in other industrialized production processes because of the unreliability of nature-based farming (e.g., plant growth time, pest outbreaks, weather). Capital seeks to dissolve these barriers with the aid of science and technology. Consequently, the farmer assumes less control over the food system, often with deleterious consequences for both ecological and social systems (Lewontin 1998).

These concomitant and often overlapping patterns of industrialization have been termed appropriationism, the increased sourcing of off-farm inputs, and substitutionism, the substitution of industrially produced products for rural ones (Goodman, Sorj, and Wilkinson 1987). The displace- ment of manure by synthetic fertilizers and the outsourcing of seed are just two examples of appropriationism; the synthetic production of vanilla is emblematic of the process of substitutionism. The appropriation of natural and labor processes and substitution of rural products promises to extend its reach throughout the agro-food system. From salmon farming (Kelso 2000, 2003) to forestry (Prud- ham 2003) to food processing (Wilkinson 2002), biotechnology’s industrial activities are “improving” the “efﬁ ciency” of nature while at the same time threatening sustainable alternatives to commercial industrialization. These works illuminate the way that science, often with public sector support, becomes a capitalist force of production.

A similar attempt at theorizing agro-industrial dynamics posits real versus formal subsumption of labor (Boyd, Prudham, and Schurman 2001). This framework notes that biologically based industries are able to confront nature via capital’s real subsumption of biological processes. As Marx saw the processes of subsuming labor, formal subsumption requires getting more work out of labor

16. See Kautsky, Karl. 1899. The Agrarian Question. London: Zwan; For a richer discussion of the Agrarian Question in contemporary contexts see de Janvry, Alain. 1981. The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America; Goodman, David & Michael Watts (eds.). 1997. Globalizing Food: Agrarian Questions and Global Restructuring; Mann, Susan A. 1990. Agrarian Capitalism in Theory and Practice; Mann, Susan A. & James Dickinson. 1978. “Obstacles to the Develop- ment of Capitalist Agriculture.” Journal of Peasant Studies 5:466-481.

25 to increase absolute surplus value, by means such as extending the workday. Real subsumption on the other hand, ﬁ nds surplus value in the ability to transform the labor process through science and technology.17 Taking this allegory to nature, life science ﬁ rms pursue strategies that use nature as a force of production. These frameworks permit ways contemplate how industry structure and the state, shape the content of the science and technology.

Recent turns in capitalist agriculture could also be reconsidered in the context of the enclosure of the commons, which began with the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century (Boal 2001). As Marx saw the enclosures, capital’s process of primitive accumulation was set into motion whereby the means of production are commodiﬁ ed. This process requires state intervention or similar landed power as the rules and norms of property rights need to be initially distributed (primi- tively accumulated) and subsequently enforced. More recently the seed has been transformed into a “vehicle for accumulation” as the reproduction of crops has become the prerogative of capital (Klop- penburg 1988: 8). The creation intellectual property rights (IPRs) through the courts and by statute in the U.S. from 1930 through the 1980s was justiﬁ ed on the premise that IPRs stimulate technological innovation. Today, those interested in securing patents for plants have the option of invoking the Plant Variety Protection Act (PVPA) or utility patent protections (Fowler 1994). IPRs in the seed also provide industry with the impetus to shape research priorities in ways that lead to the extraction monopoly rents.

Against the triumphalist rhetoric of biotechnologies boosters, the progression of the life sciences industry’s vision of agriculture can be seen as a failure even on its own terms.18 GE crop varieties have not lived up to the touted potential: some crops have failed, secondary pests have emerged, and anticipated yield increases have not materialized. The low rates of GE crop adoption (with the considerable exceptions of corn, soy, cotton, and canola) have been attributed to issues related to social acceptance and marketability, making GEOs a liability to the life science’s industry’s strategy (Brown 1999).

Industrial microbiology was born in the early 20th century, scaling up biological processes for the industrial production of acetic acid, penicillin, etc. (Bud 1993). However, techniques like r-DNA transfer and cell fusion, the techniques that embody the modern biotechnology discourse, were not developed until the 1970s (Yoxen 1983). The early part of the nascent industry can be characterized through two waves of investment. The fi rst was the establishment of venture capital fi rms, often by university professors; the second was the purchase of these fi rms by multinational chemical and pharmaceutical companies (Kenney 1986).

The narrow portfolio of commercially available GE crops emerges from the history and contemporary character of the industry structure itself. The organizational strategy of the larger multinational fi rms has been to capture value by acquiring seed fi rms and delivery systems, and securing horizontal and vertical licensing agreements with other fi rms and universities (Boyd 2003). The

17. For the canonical text on the labor process see Braverman, Harry. 1974. Labor and Monopoly Capitalism: The Degra- dation of Work in the 20th Century.

18. For an assessment of the industry’s failings from the perspective of a biotechnology supporter see Benbrook, Charles. 2000. “Who controls and who will beneﬁ t from plant genomics.” Proceedings of the American Association for the Advance- ment of Science. Washington, D.C.

26 increasing costs of energy and new developments in environmental regulation hit the chemical industry’s bottom line hard in the 1970s, forcing them to consider new economic strategies. As agrochemical companies became life science industry fi rms, they pursued synergies in crop varieties and agro-chemicals, with Monsanto’s Roundup® and Roundup Ready® seeds epitomizing this strategy. The fi rms also sought out strategies of vertical integration, gaining signifi cantly more value from the commodity chain as fi rms integrate downstream into manufacture, integrate upstream into research and development, and bring the patent-protected varieties to the fi eld through farming contracts.

These developments raise the problem of monopoly in an agro-food system that is currently experiencing an unprecedented consolidation (Heffernan 1999). At this time, agricultural biotechnology has been largely concentrated in fi ve major fi rms: Pharmacia (Monsanto, Asgrow, Dekalb, Calgene), Bayer (Aventis), Dupont (Pioneer Hi-Bred), Syngenta (Zeneca, Novartis), and Dow Chemical (Mycogen). Starting in the late 1980s, these fi rms purchased equity in seed companies.19 This economic strategy seeks to secure global market share in the age of a globalized, integrated, industrial food system (Gibbs 2000). However, concentration also poses considerable obstacles for the life sciences industry as the upstream food retail and processing sectors have increasingly accom- modated the public’s distaste for GEOs (Levidow and Bijman 2002).

Concentration also presents challenges for both public sector and private sector innovation in biotechnology. Many of the patents held by life science industry ﬁ rms are not product patents, but patents on processes that constitute the “enabling” part of the technology. IPRs held by Monsanto make them an obligatory passage point for all other plant genomics ﬁ rms. This concentration of patents may have negative impacts on food security, as public sector agencies working on developing country smallholder applications are shut out of or brought into the complicated material transfer agreements (MTAs). These agreements allow companies and institutions to license IPRs and technical property rights usually for a fee or a stipulation that the uses will not undermine the advantages of the patent holders monopoly. For example, the industry-heralded “golden rice” required the use of over seventy IPRs and TPRs from 32 companies and universities.20 This has precipitated calls for patent pools to protect public sector innovation (Resnik 2003). In early 2004, one such institution was founded at the University of California at Davis. However, the establishment of patent pools to develop smallholder applications may prove piecemeal in the face of larger restructuring processes and falling commodity prices fostered by industry concentration.

The negative public reaction to GEOs across Europe, reinforced by social movement mobili- zations, has forced the life sciences industry through a period of de-mergers as the pharmaceutical divisions have found the agricultural biotech ones to be a liability. Firm approaches to the regulatory process, as well as their industrial strategy more generally, have been seen as contributing to the problem of public image (Tait & Chataway 2003). Further, the 1999 Deutsche Bank Report was a compelling argument for investors to distance themselves from agbiotech (Brown 1999). Shortly

19. For detailed research on the innovation processes see the Economic and Social Research Council’s Centre for Social and Economic Research on Innovation in Genomics: http://www.innogen.ac.uk/

20. For an exchange on the role of material transfer agreements in the development of biotechnology products in the public sector see Chrispeels, Martin J. 2001. “Biotechnology and the Poor.” Plant Physiology 124: 3-6; & Potrykus, Ingo. 2001. “Golden Rice and Beyond.” Plant Physiology 125: 1157.

27 thereafter, the life science concept went out of vogue as the industry giants divested their agricultural subsidiaries to focus on medical applications, abandoning an earlier vision of health and agro sector synergies (Chataway, Tait, and Wield 2003). Agricultural biotechnology is now found in spin-offs concentrating on agrochemical and plant genomic divisions. Although, medical biotechnology’s dis- sociation with their agricultural counterpart may only be a temporary fad, waiting for public opposition to wane.

Resistance to agricultural biotechnology remains strong despite industry restructuring. From the sabotage of ﬁ eld crops (Boal 2001; Reed 2002) to consumer rejection of GE foods in European supermarkets (Levidow & Bijman 2002), GEOs will not slip into some agro-food chains uncontest- ed (Schurman and Munro 2003); although they already have in the U.S., where labeling is not man- datory and the public’s radar is less in tune. Social movements have successfully reframed the debate in terms of rural identity and food quality, creating new spaces for consumer agency (Heller 2002). Industry also appears as an antagonist to farmers as the recent lawsuits against Percy Schmeiser (Lee and Burrell 2002) and many other farmers in the U.S., India, and Brazil to extract “technology user fees” will attest. Further disdain will accompany increased surveillance and genetic use restriction technology (terminator technology) as the ability to save seed becomes biologically unfeasible.21

References

Boal, Iain A. 2001. “Damaging Crops: Sabotage, Social Memory, and the New Genetic Enclosures.” in Violent Environments, edited by Nancy Lee Peluso and Michael Watts. Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press.

Boyd, William. 2003. “Wonderful potencies? Deep structure and the problem of monopoly in agricultural biotechnologies.” in Engineering Trouble: Biotechnology and its discontents, edited by Rachel Schurman & Dennis Takahashi Kelso. Berkeley: UC Press.

Boyd, William, W. Scott Prudham, and Rachel Schurman. 2001. “Industrial Dynamics and the Problem of Nature.” Society and Natural Resources 14: 555-570.

Brown, Alex. 1999. “Ag Biotech: Thanks, But No Thanks.” Deutsche Bank.

Bud, Robert. 1993. The Uses of Life: A History of Biotechnology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chataway, Joanna, Joyce Tait, and David Weild. 2003. “Understanding Company R&D Strategies in Agro-biotechnology: Trajectories and Blindspots” Research Policy.

Fowler, C. 1994. Unnatural Selection: Technology, Politics, and Plant Evolution. Yverdon, Switzerland: Gordon and Breach.

21. For a detailed explanation of both the biology and social implications of terminator technology see Crouch, Martha L. 1998. How the Terminator Terminates. Occasional Paper, Edmunds Institute. Available online: http://www.edmonds- institute.org/crouch.html

28 Gibbs, David. 2000. “Globalization, the biosciences industry and local environmental responses.” Global Environmental Change 10: 245-257.

Goodman, David, Bernardo Sorj, and John Wilkinson. 1987. From Farming to Biotechnology: A Theory of Agro-industrial Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Heffernan, William. 1999. “Biotechnology and Mature Capitalism.” in 11th Annual Meeting of the National Agricultural Biotechnology Council. Lincoln, NE.

Heller, Chaia. 2002. “From Scientiﬁ c Risk To Paysan Savoir-Faire: Peasant Expertise in the French and Global Debate over GM Crops.” Science as Culture 11(1): 5-37.

Kelso, Dennis. 2000. “Aquarian Transitions: Technological Change, Environmental Uncertainty, and Salmon Production on North America’s Paciﬁ c Coast.” Doctoral Dissertation Thesis, Energy and Resources, University of California, Berkeley: Berkeley, CA.

Kelso, Dennis. 2003. “The Migration of Salmon from Nature to Biotechnology.” in Engineering Trouble: Biotechnology and its Discontents, edited by Rachel Schurman & Dennis Takahashi Kelso. Berkeley, CA: UC Press.

Kenney, Martin. 1986. Biotechnology: The University-Industrial Complex. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Kloppenburg, Jack. 1988. First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lee, Maria and Robert Burrell. 2002. “Liability for the escape of GM seeds: pursuing the victim?” The Modern Law Review 65(4): 517-537.

Levidow, Les and Jos Bijman. 2002. “Farm inputs under pressure from the European food industry.” Food Policy 27(1): 31-45.

Lewontin, Richard. 1998. The maturing of capitalist agriculture: farmer as proletarian. Monthly Review 50(3): 72-85.

Prudham, Scott. 2003. “Taming Trees: Capital, Science, and Nature in Paciﬁ c Slope Tree Improve- ment.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 93(3): 636-656.

Resnik, David B. 2003. “A Biotechnology Patent Pool: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?” Journal of Philosophy, Science & Law 3

Schurman, Rachel A. and William Munro. 2003. “Making Biotech History: Social Resistance to Ag- ricultural Biotechnology and the Future of the Biotechnology Industry.” in Engineering Trouble: Biotechnology and its Discontents, edited by Rachel Schurman & Dennis Takahashi Kelso. Berke- ley, CA: University of California Press.

29 Tait, Joyce & Joanna Chataway. 2003. “Risk and Uncertainty In Genetically Modiﬁ ed Crop Devel- opment.” INNOGEN Working Paper 1

Wilkinson, John. 2002. “The Final Foods Industry and the Changing Face of the Global Agro-Food System.” Sociologia Ruralis 42(4): 329-346.

Yoxen, Edward. 1983. The Gene Business: Who Should Control Biotechnology? London: Free Associa- tion Books.

30 the university-industrial complex

The relationship between commercial biotechnology and the university is emblematic of a larger process of commercialization affecting the university.22 Biotechnology was born in the university and continues to rely on it for new applications and innovations. However, the controversy surrounding the 1998 agreement between Novartis and the University of California at Berkeley suggests that despite this long marriage, university-corporate relations remain contentious. The promises of commercial biotechnology took center stage at a time when the university was faced with the prospect of declining research funds, making it a particularly attractive site for private sector engagement. This section reviews works that situate the changing nature of U.S. university-industry affairs in the broader political economy of capitalist penetration into a traditionally public institution, providing a framework for examining the “enclosure” of intellectual endeavors in effort to evaluate and comprehend its consequences.

Molecular biology required space in the university with public ﬁ nancial support until research yielded commercial applications, making it a prime example of the commercialization of university research. Basic and applied research in molecular biology provides the fundamental tools and techniques for the life sciences industries. Molecular biology as a discipline was established with help from both public and philanthropic institutions, gaining support from technology-focused universities such as Caltech, Stanford, and MIT and organizations seeking to “maximize social returns from science” such as the Rockefeller Foundation as early as the 1930s (Abir-Am 1982; Kay 1992; Kay 2000; Yoxen 1983). Lessons from WWII demonstrated how targeted investment in technological knowledge could strengthen the national economy. Ushering in the postwar era, Vannevar Bush published a widely acknowledged essay about the need for the university to be in touch with the applied needs for the larger economy and national interests.23 The resulting efforts helped establish funding agencies like the NSF and NIH that could channel funds into applied research. Investing in science and technology became the priority of the nation-state as the development of technological infra- structure was seen as the preeminent source of economic and geopolitical power.24

Molecular biology was one of a cluster of postwar technological fi elds, evolving in step with cybernetics and information theory. This mix produced an ideology that saw “organisms as information-processing machines” (Yoxen 1983). Demystifying the genetic code required tools that could handle and process masses of information. As the processing of information has become more complex, fi rms married biology with computer science, advancing genomics with automation by speed- ing up some processes and simplifying others playing off informational, computational, and biotechnological synergies (Regis 2003). These smaller, more specialized, fi rms typically cluster in distinct regions, near sources of intellectual workers like government laboratories and academic institutions.

22. For an overview of the various aspects university commercialization see Bok, Derek. 2003. Universities in the marketplace: the commercialization of higher education Princeton University Press.

23. Bush, Vannevar. 1945. “As we may think.” The Atlantic Monthly 176(1): 101-108.

24. There is a rich literature available on the role of the university in the development of Cold War technologies. See Lowen, Rebecca S. 1997. Creating the Cold War University: the transformation of Stanford Berkeley: University of Califor- nia Press. For an edited collection see Chomsky, Noam et al. 1997. The Cold War & the University: Toward an intellectual history New York: The New Press.

31 This has opened the discussion to consideration of how university-industry alliances factor into the growth of the regional economy (Kenney 1986).

Academic research also extends the global reach of multinational corporations (MNCs), another player in university-industry alliances. MNCs are more interested in bringing to the market the applications that arise from their university-industry relationships. They attempt to exploit their advantages in production scale-up, regulatory testing, and marketing (Kenney 1986). MNCs infuse universities with research monies in exchange for “windows on technology.” This enables particular faculty, departments, and disciplines to expand while ensuring MNCs have the opportunity to reap the proceeds.

How does proﬁ t-motivated research affect the content of technologies? Do the means of research and development determine those technologies that are developed and those that remain under-funded? Many of the authors explore these questions. As patent protections enable the bearer to extract monopoly rents, research ends that can produce patents will be the ones heavily funded by university-industry alliances. Likewise, research ends that result in public goods do not provide the impetus for industry engagement.

In agriculture, the land grant institutions were established under the Morrill Act of 1862, en- dowing the university with a public agenda. Historically, plant breeding has been done in these public institutions as the university and government agencies responded to the needs of farmers (Buttel 1985; Buttel and Belsky 1987; Kloppenburg 1988).25 The rise of the seed industry and concomitant declines in government support for applied research in plant breeding is emblematic of a process that follows patents into university research. As Kloppenburg (1988) argues, proximity to the commodity form dictates the extent to which commercial enterprises become involved. Describing the rise of the seed industry, he notes that public support for plant breeding experienced a rapid decline as hybrid seed emerged. Since hybrid seed does not breed true, farmers are required to return to the seed source, giving it the characteristic of a de facto biological patent (Lewontin 1986).

This creation of economic space provided a new means for capitalist accumulation in agriculture. With the newer forms of plant protections afforded to breeders via the PVPA and Diamond v. Chakrabarty, the motive for developing plant varieties assumes greater stakes. These interests may imperil agricultural science conducted in the public interest as the desire for commercially-viable research takes precedence, shaping the content of agricultural research and the technologies brought to the agricultural landscape (Busch, Lacy, Burkhardt, and Lacy 1991). A point underscored by many is that it is not predetermined that GE seed is the next stage in agriculture’s technological trajectory. The decision to follow technological paths is socially derived, chosen by those who embark upon and fund certain research objectives. University-industry research endeavors will tend toward the path that allows for the extraction of monopoly rents. They will tend toward inventions that are well protected by IPRs, be they legal or biological.

The commercialization of university research was accelerated by legal and statutory changes designed to foster relationships between the university and commercial activity. By the early 1990s,

25. For a more detailed discussion see Buttel, Fred. 1985. “The Land-Grant System: A Sociological Perspective on Value Conﬂ icts and Ethical Issues.” Agricultural and Human Values 2(2): 78-95.

32 a large percentage of university faculty were involved in commercial activities with many fi rms being represented within each institution (Krimsky 1991). The Bayh-Dole Act (1980) allowed universities the right to patent results from research sponsored with federal funds, while the Stevenson-Wydler Act (1980) codifi ed university-industry cooperation. Patents subsequently were seen as a means for universities to generate income. The fi rst landmark patent at this turning point was the Cohen-Boyer patent for r-DNA techniques awarded to UCSF and Stanford in 1980 (Smith Hughes 2001). Fur- thering synergies between the private and public sectors, the Technology Transfer Act (1986) along with Executive Order 12591 required agencies doing biotechnology research to engage actively with private sector fi rms to develop commercially viable products. Coupled with tax incentives for capital investment such as the Economic Tax Recovery Act (1981), these university-industry contracts have often proved more tempting to MNCs than developing a costly in-house research capacity.

What are the implications of patents for the university? Securing a patent requires the object be something new and not obvious. Publication establishes prior art and therefore makes the patenting impossible because publication brings it into the realm of the obvious. The need to maintain confi dentiality has led to the increase of trade secrets in the university, shutting off communication between colleagues and amongst the community of scholars who speak through the process of peer review. The “free fl ow of information” and the “free fl ow of material” are threatened by commercial activities in the university (Kenney 1986). The growth of patents has also adversely impacted the ability of scientists to pursue research goals in the fi eld of biotechnology. Both products and processes are patentable objects in the patent code, leading to an explosion in material transfer agreements (MTAs) and technology transfer agreements (TTAs), numbering in the scores, for developing a single product. For example, the development of “golden rice” required over 70 MTAs and TTAs. Applications for the agreements are time consuming, often creating delays in research. Further they are often transferred to the private sector, even after being developed by the public sector.

The movement of patents into the university arena raises many questions concerning the university’s research goals and educational mission. What are the effects of commercial activities on laboratory practice (Kleinman 1998)? As university professors and their graduate students become “waged workers” engaged in commercial activities, will there still be ﬁ nancial support for non-commercial endeavors? Will the “directed autonomy” (Yoxen 1983) of corporate sponsorship grant professors the ﬂ exibility required for intellectual scholarship? Will land grant institutions be capable of providing agriculture with a public good (Middendorf and Busch 1997)? Or, perhaps most importantly, as the “freely usable knowledge base is shrunk [will] the intellectual commons become eroded and polluted” (Kenney 1986)?

The impact of biotechnology on society may rest on what alternatives get pursued, making academic independence from commercial agendas an imperative for creating the plurality of alternatives. In many ways it has become a question about who the “public” actually is. University research could be used to provide public’s corporations with seed that will allow them to exploit economies of scale, or it could be employed to help the public’s small farmers increase yields of cassava (Stone 2002). These outcomes have differing implications for social justice and sustainability. As Lacy (2000) suggests, it is important that policies and guidelines be established that “deﬁ ne conditions and circumstances where collaborations are encouraged and developed as well as where broader public interest takes precedent over free-market considerations.”

33 References

Abir-Am, P. 1982. “The discourse of physical power and biological knowledge in the 1930s: A reappraisal of the Rockefeller Foundation’s “policy” in molecular biology.” Social Studies of Science 12: 341-382.

Busch, Lawrence, William. Lacy, Jeff Burkhardt, and L.R. Lacy. 1991. Plants, Power, and Proﬁ t: Social, Eco- nomic, and Ethical Consequences of the New Biotechnologies. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Buttel, Frederick. 1985. “The Land-grant System: A sociological Perspective on Value Conﬂ icts and Ethical Issues.” Agricultural and Human Values 2(2): 78-95.

Buttel, Frederick and Jill Belsky. 1987. “Biotechnology, Plant Breeding, and Intellectual Property: Social and Ethical Dimensions.” Science, Technology, and Human Values 12: 31-49.

Kay, Lily. 2000. Who wrote the book of life? A history of the genetic code. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Kay, Lily. 1993. The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biol- ogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kenney, Martin. 1986. Biotechnology: The University-Industrial Complex. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Kleinman, Daniel Lee. 1998. “Untangling Context: understanding a university laboratory in the commercial world.” Science, Technology and Human Values 23(3): 285-303.

Kloppenburg, Jack. 1988. First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Krimsky, Sheldon. 1991. Biotechnics and Society: The Rise of Industrial Genetics. New York: Praeger.

Lacy, William B. 2000. “Commercialization of university research brings beneﬁ ts, raises issues and concerns.” California Agriculture 54(4): 72-70.

Lewontin, Richard. 1986. “The Political Economy of Hybrid Corn.” Monthly Review 38: 25-47

Middendorf, Gerad and L. Busch. 1997. “Inquiry for the Public Good: democratic participation in agricultural research.” Agriculture and Human Values 14: 45-57.

Regis, Ed. 2003. The Info Mesa: Science, Business, and the New Age Alchemy on the Santa Fe Plateau. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

Smith Hughes, Sally. 2001. “Making Dollars Out of DNA: The First Major Patent in Biotechnology and the Commercialization of Molecular Biology.” Isis 92(3): 541-575.

Stone, Glenn Davis. 2002. “Both Sides Now: Fallacies in the genetic modiﬁ cation wars, implications for developing countries, and anthropological perspectives.” Current Amthropology 43(4): 611-630.

Yoxen, Edward. 1983. The Gene Business: Who Should Control Biotechnology? London: Free Association Books.

34 germplasm, genetic resources, and global governance

The new biotechnologies have emerged as a site of struggle over the global rules governing the development and transfer of genetic resources. Life science fi rms and neoliberal commitments to “market forces” infl uence both the transfer of genetic resources from developing to developed nations and biodiversity conservation projects in the developing world, presenting signifi cant challenges for global governance. Multinational corporations, indigenous communities and nation-states engage in discursive and material struggles embodied in confl icts over international agreements like the World Trade Organization’s Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), the United Nation’s Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Interna- tional Treaty on Plants Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGR).

Life science fi rms often use genetic resources and indigenous knowledge from developing countries in the production of pharmaceuticals and for the improvement of agricultural crops. Granting access to these raw materials in exchange for monetary considerations has been touted as a solution to conservation concerns in biodiversity-rich countries in the developing world. Bioprospecting has become the mantra of conservationists seeking to save the biological resources of the global South from its “irrational” inhabitants while sharing the direct benefi ts derived from its protection. This has come to be known by critics as “green developmentalism” (McAfee 1999) or “postmodern ecological capitalism” (Escobar 1999), an “attempt to extend the logic of commodifi cation to solving local and global environmental problems” (Castree 2003) by judiciously assigning property rights and by creating markets where they are absent.

Bioprospecting turns on the notion that biological diversity is a public good everyone depends on and therefore the “price” the good bears in the market does not represent its value. The costs of protecting these systems should not be borne solely by their inhabitants, but by all of those that real- ize the maximum utility of those ecosystem services. Benefi ts derived from biodiversity have historically realized by fi rms that require these biological resources for applications in pharmaceuticals and agriculture. Contract relationships for sharing access to genetic resources and sharing potential benefi ts have begun to proliferate as a means to preserve biodiversity as the market has assumed a privileged role in global governance (Hayden 2003).

The strictly Western and utilitarian picture of beneﬁ ts is seen by its detractors as troubling on several fronts. Bioprospecting privileges exchange value over use value, allowing societies with greater purchasing power to determine the sites worthy of preservation and the permissible land uses. It further extends hegemonic relationships with developing countries, seeing them as sources of raw materials, a relationship not yet decoupled from the legacy of colonialism (Fowler 1994; Juma 1989; McAfee 1999).

The most problematic of the issues that confront bioprospecting relates the unclear language of the CBD. While it requires the equitable sharing of bioprospecting benefi ts, it is not clear who the benefi ciaries are, how prior informed consent will be obtained or how benefi ts will be shared (Hayden 2003; Nigh 2002). In areas where protected lands have been set aside, it is often the state that becomes the sponsor of consent, displacing local interests and involvement (Brand and Gorg 2003). Despite these concerns, opposing the changing international system of property rights may only result in moral victories; equity and ecological issues must be dealt with from with within the

35 patent system by invoking a system of communal rights (Mgbeoji 2001). This speaks to the concern of Castree (2003), who argues that instead of generalizing and rejecting on principle, policy-makers should ask, “what kind of bioprospecting for what kind of beneﬁ ts and in which contexts” (52)? This will better engage with the bioprospecting critique that will be theoretically thorough, but remain policy relevant.

Another site of contestation concerns the development and transfer of “improved” products of biotechnology to farmers in the developing world and fi nds its political expression both in the FAO and the CBD. Biotechnology transfer has raised questions about both equity and genetic erosion, particularly in light of the effects of green revolution technologies on smallholder agriculture and food security (Fowler & Mooney 1990; Mooney 1983; Shiva 1993). Two distinct mechanisms for governing germplasm have emerged that employ the rhetoric of the benefi ts of biodiversity and cultural diversity in the quest for food system sustainability and security. The fi rst, exemplifi ed by the TRIPS, is based on the creation of markets and assignment of property rights to individuals, communities, or corporations and is justifi ed by the assumptions of neoliberalism and Coasian economics. The second, embraced by the FAO, recognizes germplasm and indigenous knowledge as “common heritage” and therefore exempt from allocation via the market mechanism. The latter model was embraced by developing countries that were freely allowing germplasm to fl ow to the industrialized world while the industrialized world was developing a system of patent protections for plant variety improvement. While states eventually asserted sovereignty over genetic resources by the 1980s, no mention of the contribution of countless farmers to crop genetic improvements in the Vavilov centers of crop diversity was recognized in the IPR discussions. In response, farmers in the global South and NGOs have sought to ratify the Porto Alegre Treaty to Share the Genetic Commons, although it remains unclear as to the jurisdiction of the common heritage decree and the TRIPS patents.

In lieu of these constantly evolving mechanisms, nation-states have played a pivotal role in restructuring processes and have taken varied responses to the valorization of nature (Brand and Gorg 2003; Mushita and Thompson 2002). Taking the example of Mexico, the roles of multilateral agreements such as NAFTA are central to determining national IPR policies regarding germplasm and genetic resources (Gomez and Torres 2001). Mexico was a major actor in the development and passage of Resolution 6/81 and the subsequent International Undertaking (IU) at the FAO that shifted the international perspective on germplasm “common heritage” to “national sovereignty” leading to new germplasm transfer rules (Mooney 1983). After state policy transitioned to a neoliberal economic plan in the early 1990s to prepare for NAFTA, Mexico reworked IPR legislation in effort to harmonize with TRIPS. Changes to IPR law are highly suspect according to Mexico’s indigenous groups, making state policy irrelevant to attempts to establish bioprospecting contracts in those regions (Nigh 2002).

International treaties concerning genetic resources are troubling for those concerned with food security (Falcon 2002; Scoones 2002). It is in the context of deteriorating national research programs that some authors hope to remedy the development and transfer of genetic resources through the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) (Falcon and Fowler 2002; Pin- gali and Traxler 2002). Consequent to common heritage controversies at the FAO in the early 1980s, the CGIAR gene banks are now held as international in status (Falcon and Fowler 2002; Mooney

36 1983). These institutions promote not only ex situ but in situ conservation of crop genetic resources, recognizing that much genetic diversity comes from centuries of land stewardship. While these institutions engage in many approaches to sustainability and food security, from agro-ecology to biotechnology, the fact remains that developing countries have a limited research capacity. Is it wise to devote limited fi nancial, scientifi c and regulatory resources to capital-intensive approaches to crop improvement like biotechnology? Can the same ends be achieved by low-tech means? What research agendas and technological paths are sacrifi ced to pursue biotechnology research and development?

Governance also contends with the concern that patents give seed ﬁ rms control over farmers. One NGO calls the condition where farmers must return to the source of seed each year or pay royalties for saving seed “bioserfdom” (ETC Group 2001). Farmers’ rights advocates suggest that the right to save seed is paramount to protecting IPRs (Cleveland and Murray 1997; Shand 1991; Srinivasan 2003). This concern provides impetus for the FAO’s ITPGR, which seeks assurance on the farmer’s right to save seed.

One fi nal issue that biotechnology has posed for global governance concerns biosafety. New questions have emerged regarding the safety of releasing GE crops into ecosystems. Under the auspices of the CBD, the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol was adopted in 2000 to regulate the cross- border fl ow of GE crops and seeds, and requires the advanced notifi cation living modifi ed organisms (LMOs) shipments. Its commitment to the precautionary principle has put it out of favor with countries that seek unfettered access to markets. As a result it has become a fl ash point in the controversy over the jurisdiction of the WTO and CBD (McAfee 2003); it is argued that biosafety and food safety standards should be voluntary and non-binding through the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards, Codex Alimentarius or the ISO standards so as to avoid unnecessary bureaucratic and regulatory interference with trade.

References

Brand, Ulrich & Christoph Gorg. 2003. “The state and the regulation of biodiversity: International politics and the case of Mexico.” Geoforum 34: 221-233.

Brush, Stephen B. 1999. “Bioprospecting and the Public Domain.” Cultural Anthropology 14: 535-55.

Castree, Noel. 2003. “Bioprospecting: from theory to practice (and back again).” Transaction of the Institute of British Geographers 28: 35-55.

Cleveland, David A. & Stephen C. Murray. 1997. “Crop genetic resources and the rights of indigenous farmers.” Current Anthropology 38(4): 477-515.

Escobar, Arturo. 1999. “After Nature: steps to an anti-essentialist political ecology.” Current Anthro- pology 40: 1-30.

ETC Group. 2001. “New Enclosures: Alternative Mechanisms to Enhance Corporate Monopoly and BioSerfdom in the 21st Century.” ETC Group. Available Online: http://www.etcgroup.org/ documents/NewEnclosuresFinal.pdf

Falcon, W. P. & Cary Fowler. 2002. “Carving up the commons--emergence of a new international 37 regime for germplasm development and transfer.” Food Policy 27(3): 197-222.

Fowler, Cary. 1994. Unnatural Selection: Technology, Politics, and Plant Evolution. Yverdon, Switzer- land: Gordon and Breach.

Fowler, Cary & Pat Roy Mooney. 1990. Shattering: Food, Politics, and the Loss of Genetic Diversity. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press.

Gomez, Francisco Martinez & Robert Torres. 2001. “Hegemony, commodiﬁ cation and the state: Mex- ico’s shifting discourse on agricultural germplasm.” Agriculture and Human Values 18: 285-294.

Hayden, Corinne P. 2003. When Nature Goes Public: The Making and Unmaking of Bioprospecting in Mexico. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Juma, Calestous. 1989. The Gene Hunters: Biotechnology and the Scramble for Seeds. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

McAfee, Kathleen. 1999. “Selling nature to save it? biodiversity and green developmentalism.” Envi- ronment and Planning D: Society and Space 17(2): 133-154.

McAfee, Kathleen. 2003. “Biotech Battles: Plants, Power, and Intellectual Property in the New Global Governance Regimes.” in Engineering Trouble: Biotechnology and its Discontents, edited by Rachel Schurman & Dennis Takahashi Kelso. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Mgbeoji, Ikechi. 2001. “Patents and Traditional Knowledge of the Uses of Plants: Is a Communal Patent Regime Part of the Solution to the Scourge of Bio Piracy?” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 9(1): 163-186.

Mooney, Pat Roy. 1983. “The Law of the Seed: Another Development and Plant Genetic Resourc- es.” Development Dialogue 1-2: 1-173.

Mushita, Andrew and Carol Thompson. 2002. “Patenting Biodiversity? Rejecting WTO/TRIPS in Southern Africa.” Global Environmental Politics 2(1): 65-82.

Nigh, Ronald. 2002. “Maya medicine in the biological gaze: bioprospecting research as herbal fetishism.” Current Anthropology 43(3): 451-478.

Pingali, P.L. and G. Traxler. 2002. “Changing Locus of Agricultural Research: Will the Poor Beneﬁ t from Biotechnology and Privatization Trends?” Food Policy 27

Shand, Hope. 1991. “There is a Conﬂ ict Between Intellectual Property Rights and the Rights of Farm- ers in Developing Countries.” Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Ethics 4(2): 131-142.

Shiva, Vandana. 1993. Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology. Lon- don: Zed Books.

Srinivasan, C. S. 2003. “Exploring the Feasibility of Farmers’ Rights.” Development Policy Review 21(4): 419-447. 38 annotated bibliography

The summaries are in the words of the authors of the annotated bibliography while abstracts are in the words of the original authors. Slight modiﬁ cations to abstract texts were made for consistency.

Abir-Am, Pnina. 1982. “The discourse of physical power and biological knowledge in the 1930s: A reappraisal of the Rockefeller Foundation’s ‘policy’ in molecular biology.” Social Studies of Science 12: 341-382.

ABSTRACT

This paper uses three case studies to examine the implementation of a policy of biological progress initiated by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1930s. In discussing the social and scientiﬁ c goals of this research policy, the paper challenges views attributed to the Foundation’s policy a direct impact upon the rise of molecular biology. It also suggests that this policy, conceived around the idea of technology transfer from the physical sciences to biology, had inherent limitations for revolution- izing biology. The paper concludes by offering a new interpretation of the historical impact of the Foundation’s policy towards molecular biology.

Adams, Barbara. 2000. “The Temporal Gaze: The challenge for Social Theory in the Context of GM Food.” British Journal of Sociology 51(1): 125-142.

ABSTRACT

The temporal gaze in socio-environmental theory can take many forms. Time may be added to existing approaches without disturbing the status quo of theory and methodology. Alternatively, focus may be on the time-space of socio-environmental time. Finally, phenomenon, processes and events may be conceptualized as timescapes. Through a focus on genetic modiﬁ cation of foods, the paper demonstrates the pertinence of this timescape perspective for social theory and socio-environmental analyses. A thorough-going temporal gaze is important because (a) such reconceptualization forms an integral part of rethinking the social sciences’ relationship to nature and environmental matters; (b) the implications at the level of theory tend to be glossed over and ignored; and (c) it is central to changing practice at the level of public and personal action. The paper thus uses a timescape perspective to set out substantive and conceptual issues that present some of social theory’s challenges for the new millennium.

Barben, Daniel. 1998. “The Political Economy of Genetic Engineering: The Neoliberal Formation of the Biotechnology Industry.” Organization and Environment 11(4): 406- 420.

ABSTRACT

The breakthrough of genetic engineering and the subsequent formation of biotechnology as a strategic technology of the future come at a time when science has become an object of political struggle and neoliberalism has become hegemonic. This article shows how neoliberalism has

39 trumped a variety of opposing arguments, above all environmental and ethical. Patterns of the social structuring of biotechnology are analyzed in the fi elds of innovation, risk management, patenting, biodiversity, and bioethics. With regard to the political and ethical void of the neoliberal strategy of biotechnology release, observations are given as to how it has been fi lled with an effective ideology and aesthetic of technology. In the fi nal analysis, perspectives beyond an authoritarian or subaltern technological determinism are argued for, especially with reference to concepts of sustainable development within the framework of global and local economies.

Berlan, Jean-Pierre, Ed. 2001. La guerre au vivant: Organismes génétiquement modifi és & autres mystifi cations scientifi ques. Contre-Feux, Marseille, Agone.

SUMMARY

In this volume the agricultural biotechnologies industry takes a hard hit from some of France’s leading critics, Jean-Pierre Berlan and colleagues, Michael Hansen, Paul Lannoye, Suzanne Pons, and Gilles-Éric Séralini. “Modern biology and its biotechnologies,” the collection begins, “reveal more about the fi nancial speculation characteristic of our epoch, than of “science” that has lost even the memory of what it was once considered under the guise of truth, objectivity, disinterested research and liberation of society” (5). The process of capitalizing biology orients programs of research, and helps determine the nature of explanations in biology. Where one can fi nd scientifi c truth in genetics, is wherever profi t is to be found. Behind the guise of philanthropy and ecology, says Berlan, a handful of multinationals has committed a “hold-up” of living organisms, taken over the world’s genetic resources, brought the small farmer to his knees, and confi scated the rights to make critical decisions about our food supply and our health. This passionate, hard-hitting criticism of the capi- talization and manipulation of life by some of the leading French thinkers on the subject surveys the social and environmental consequences of “phase one” of the biotech revolution.

Billings, Paul. 2001. “Lessons from Genetic Discrimination.” Genetics in Medicine. 2(4): 207-208.

SUMMARY

Billings and his colleagues researched and described examples of genetic discrimination. Dis- crimination is a fact of life, they say. While certainly a social phenomenon, considerable information in our genomes is devoted to it. Self versus nonself determinations, in an immunologic sense, are accomplished by highly polymorphic genes, the unique properties of their products, receptors that interact with these protein targets and the resulting biological functions. Whether by deletion, selection, tolerance, paralysis, or suppression, an enormously intricate system regulates this biological reaction to difference. Observations of assortative mating and neuropsychological development of children also suggest biological inﬂ uences on what we consider as different. Recognizing the historical relationship of human genetics to the description of the difference, he says, in a testimony to the Committee on Energy and Commerce based on this research, and admitting that social institutions discriminate among customers and applicants as a matter of normal operations, genetic discrimination has been anticipated.

40 Few try to deny the existence of genetic discrimination, yet it is still highly controversial. Insur- ance commissioners, their employees, and members of the human genetics professional community, differ from consumers on the importance or rate of cases of genetic discrimination. Since our health care ﬁ nance system is based on the discriminatory process intrinsic to insurance and the lack of privacy in medical interactions allows genetic information relevant to health to be circulated widely, some genetically-based discrimination occurs more as a result of inadvertent events or ignorance rather than by design. This research has fostered investigation and academic and professional discussion about genetic discrimination; signiﬁ cant public media coverage of the issue; the inclusion of warnings about it inpatient counseling, research informed consent documents, and stock investment prospectuses; and state legislation aimed at limiting its impact on insurance and employment processes of state chartered corporations.

Boal, Iain A. 2001. “Damaging Crops: Sabotage, Social Memory, and the New Genetic Enclosures.” in Violent Environments. Nancy L. Peluso and Michael Watts eds. Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press.

SUMMARY

This chapter frames the recent sabotage of GE crop fi eld trials in East Anglia in terms of two prominent historical subjects of capitalism, “the enclosures” and “the Luddites.” When the enclosures came to East Anglia in 1589, they began the process of separating the rural population into landed and landless classes, a primitive accumulation of sorts as the landlords forced people off the commons. The Luddites destroyed the machinery of the industrial revolution, not because of technological apprehension per se, but in light of the larger implications for the labor process. Boal eloquently brings the two themes together to describe how the modern Luddites, under the banner of Captain Chromosome, have sought to sabotage fi elds of GE crops “because they constitute an assault on the commons” (150). The invocation of earlier fi eld invasions, “campying on the commons,” shows how the landless decried the new enclosures, eliciting an allegory for the new agricultural Lud- dites and the new genetic enclosures. Boal concludes with a question for further exploration: How should the new politics of purity in the discourse of GE, replete with metaphors of “contamination” and “(un)naturalness,” at the “nexus of nature and artifi ce and the social relations embedded there” (154) be considered? In East Anglia, the historical relationships between the people and the land whisk away such dichotomies. In places less forsaken, this dichotomy represents a challenge for social movements mounting challenges to genetic engineering.

Bock, Gregory R. and Jamie A. Goode, Eds. (1998). The Limits of Reductionism in Biol- ogy. The Limits of Reductionism in Biology—Novartis Symposium #213, J. Wiley & Sons.

This volume is based on a conference organized by the Novartis Foundation, also the publisher. The conference brought together some of the great minds in science and philosophy to discuss a meta-question that bears on molecular genetics—What are the limits to reductionism—methodological, ontological, and epistemological—in biology?

The reductionist program in biology has yielded amazing insights into the basic processes of

41 life. In particular, the explanation of many cellular processes at the molecular level has revolutionized our understanding of biology. However, given the vast increase in the amount of analytical information now being obtained, society has to ask what we need to know in order to “understand” a biological process. The reductionist program raises fundamental questions about levels of explanation and about what constitutes understanding and meaning in science.

Thomas Nagel begins with a chapter discussing reductionism and antireductionism, which sets the stage for many of the book’s debates. He deﬁ nes reductionism as the idea that all of the complex and apparently disparate things we observe in the world can be explained in terms of universal principles governing their common ultimate constituents: that physics is the theory of everything. Differentiating between epistemological and ontological anti-reductionism, Nagel distills the questions posed in this volume: Can highly complex functionally organized systems and self-replicating systems be accounted for in terms of particle physics, or do they require independent principles of order? Some chapters deal with the enormously powerful techniques of molecular biology, and analyze precisely how molecular information has improved our understanding of biological processes. Others deal with speciﬁ c physiological systems in relation to the appropriateness of attempts to provide reductionist explanations. Some chapters deal with ecological and evolutionary issues. The responses across this group fall across a spectrum from skeptics of universal reductionism to proponents. The responses are as provocative as the questions raised.

Boyd, William. 2003. “Deep Structure and the Problem of Monopoly in Agricultural Biotechnology.” in Engineering Trouble: Biotechnology and its Discontents, edited by Rachel Schurman & Dennis Takahashi Kelso. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

SUMMARY

This chapter develops the historical conditions that have led to consolidation and monopoly in agricultural biotechnology. It argues that the “deep structure” of agricultural biotechnology evolved from speciﬁ c actors and actions in business, science and law. The essay articulates the “life as code” paradigm that allowed for the reduction of living things into constituent parts, a precision of sorts that easily lent itself to more sophisticated elaboration of biological processes and hence, greater proprietary control. A “new legal architecture” emerged in the 1980s with patents on life forms, and institutional incentives for commercial research, which set into motion an effort to reorganize and integrate agricultural input ﬁ rms.

Boyd, William, Scott Prudham, and Rachel Schurman. 2001. “Industrial Dynamics and the Problem of Nature.” Society and Natural Resources 14: 555-570.

ABSTRACT

Existing literature suggests that food, ﬁ ber, and raw material sectors differ from manufacturing in signiﬁ cant ways. However, there is no analytical basis for engaging the particular challenges of nature-centered production, and thus the distinct ways that industrialization proceeds in extractive and cultivation-based industries. This article presents a framework for analyzing the difference that nature makes in these industries. Nature is seen as a set of obstacles, opportunities, and surprises that

42 ﬁ rms confront in their attempts to subordinate biophysical properties and processes to industrial production. Drawing an analogy from Marxian labor theory, the authors contrast the formal and real subsumption of nature to highlight the distinct ways in which biological systems—in marked contrast to extractive sectors—are industrialized and may be made to operate as productive forces in and of themselves. These concepts differentiate analytically between biologically based and nonbiologically based industries, building on theoretical and historical distinctions between extraction and cultivation.

Brand, Ulrich and Christoph Gorg. 2003. “The state and the regulation of biodiversity: International politics and the case of Mexico.” Geoforum 34: 221-233.

ABSTRACT

In this article, the evolving forms of biodiversity politics are examined in the light of regulation theory and in the tradition of materialistic state theory (Gramsci, Poulantzas, etc.). Biodiversity politics is not so much oriented toward the conservation of biodiversity as towards the creation of a stable political-institutional framework for its commercialization. In this contested and contradictory process, the nation state plays a crucial role. After a few remarks on the theoretical assumptions, some basic elements of the international regulation system of genetic resources are presented. The main topics of international biodiversity politics beside conservation are: access to biodiversity and its genetic resources, benefi t sharing from its use and intellectual property rights. A major problem of this system is the relationship between varying negotiation processes in different fora. Another closely connected problem is the contradictory relationship between different regulatory levels at different spatial scales (international, regional, local). These contradictions are analyzed for the case of Mexico. Central issues of Mexican biodiversity politics, and the different actors, forces and interests are outlined and discussed against our initial theoretical refl ections. Bioprospecting projects in the south of Mexico have raised questions of legal and legitimate forms of access, which have generated growing concern and signifi cant disputes within Mexico. Finally, some conclusions are drawn, binding together the theoretical with the empirical results of our study.

Brush, Stephen B. and Ben S. Orlove. 1996. “Anthropology and the Conservation of Biodiversity.” Annual Review of Anthropology 25(1): 329-352.

ABSTRACT

Conservation programs for protected areas and plant genetic resources have evolved in similar ways, beginning with a focus on single species and expanding to ecosystem strategies that involve the participation of local people. Anthropologists have described the increasing importance of the participation of local people in conservation programs, both of local populations in protected area management and of farmers in plant genetic resources. Both protected areas and plant genetic resources link local populations, national agencies, and international organizations. Anthropological research (a) documents local knowledge and practices that infl uence the selection and maintenance of crop varieties and the conservation of rare and endangered species in protected areas, and (b) clarifi es the different concerns and defi nitions of biodiversity held by local populations and international conservationists. In addition, anthropologists operate in NGOs and international agencies, participating in policy debates and acting as advocates and allies of local populations of farmers and indigenous peoples.

43 Bud, Robert. 1993. The Uses of Life: A History of Biotechnology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

SUMMARY

This history of biotechnology differs from much of what is told in other histories. For Bud, it is all of the “uses of life” which constitute biotechnology; it is the marriage of biochemistry and engineering. He traces biotechnology through its semantic expression in industry. In this framework, biotechnology arises out of zymotechnology, a discipline that harnessed life and biological thinking in industrial processes such as fermentation. This vision of life working for man invoked an image that was aesthetically modernist is many ways. However, many of these promises of an antecedent biotechnology were short-changed as biotechnology was competing against the ﬁ eld of synthetic chemistry, which was much more economically efﬁ cient, being based on fossil fuels.

Nevertheless, the Baconian ideal of commanding nature remained steadfast (78). As more applications were employed there emerged “alternative visions of biotechnology as a boundary object whose control was sought by engineers, physiologists, and microbiologists” (99). Post-war biotechnology was replete with “new possibilities” (122), like the idea of single cell proteins as a food source for developing countries (125). But where did all that promise go? Bud argues that biotechnology became unnatural as it lost its distinction from the chemical industry (126) and the light in which industrial microbiology and genetics came to be seen as reacting exclusively to Western needs (140). Biotechnology “became a policy category” (141) at a moment not exclusively determined by the technology itself, but at a time of general mistrust in the applications of industrial society made evident in light of Vietnam and the rise of environmental concerns. When “molecular biology co-opted the technological promise of a century old tradition” (188), the control over the life sciences became an issue of public trust requiring the intervention of biotechnology regulation (211).

Busch, Lawrence, William. B. Lacy, Jeffrey Burkhardt and Laura R. Lacy. 1991. Plants, Power, and Proﬁ t: Social, Economic, and Ethical Consequences of the New Biotechnologies. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

SUMMARY

This book provides a general overview of policy considerations facing the new biotechnologies, particularly impacts to the structure and science of agriculture. It situates the emergence of commercial biotechnology in the context of the restructuring of the farm sector, concentration in farm inputs and food processing, and the general tendency toward industrial food production. Moreover, the authors paint commercial biotechnology into changing landscape of university-industry relations, arguing that the public mission of the university is being redeﬁ ned with implications for the structure of research communities and the nature of the food system.

In a framework that provides a sociological perspective on science, this work uses two case studies to illuminate the role of research in developing the modern varieties of tomatoes and wheat. It is argued that the particular agricultural forms found in the production process took on distinct features sought out by the interested actors with particular consequences to the political economy of

44 each crop. Thus, they see a particular site of policy intervention in developing a sustainable and just food system at the site of agricultural research.

The new issues for universities in the atmosphere of commercialization of research pose the following questions. “Does corporate penetration into academic science distort the traditional values of basic research? Are the atmosphere, climate and communication of academic departments being altered? Will research that lacks commercial potential be undertaken? Will short-term, proﬁ t-oriented projects overshadow long-term agendas?” (16) These questions frame why they see the changing structure of university-industry relations as so pivotal. The tendency for agricultural research to ignore its social, economic, and ethical implications is likely to be exacerbated by a science driven by proﬁ t motive. Taking these considerations seriously, they argue, requires “strong regulatory powers” that “attend to broader socioeconomic and structural effects anticipated” (218).

Buttel, Frederick H. and Jill Belsky. 1987. “Biotechnology, Plant Breeding, and Intel- lectual Property: Social and Ethical Dimensions.” Science, Technology, and Human Values 12: 31-49.

ABSTRACT

The past half dozen years have witnessed in many countries the mobilization of public interest groups that seek to reverse global trends toward proprietary protection of plants and plant parts. Numerous articles have appeared in the popular, trade, and science press concerning the beneﬁ ts and costs of plant variety protection and plant patenting. Private sector seed and agricultural biotechnology companies have found it necessary to defend the social desirability and ethical neutrality of proprietary protection to a degree that would be uncommon for other types of industries with product lines protected by comparable intellectual property arrangements.

Although the scope and intensity of current debates over proprietary protection of plants are unprecedented, there has actually been a long history of struggle in the United States and other industrialized countries over the means by which private fi rms could profi tably market and sell plants. Indeed, there are a number of similarities between these historical struggles during the fi rst three decades of the 20th century and those that appeared since the late 1970s. The conditions for a profi t- able private seed industry have continued to revolve around reducing or eliminating competition from three sources: (1) farmers (who may save their own seed for planting the next cropping season), (2) the public research system (which has historically developed new, improved crop varieties), and (3) other seed companies.

This paper provides a brief overview of the development of the seed industry in the United States, particularly in relation to public plant breeding institutions that have supported and com- peted with private sector efforts. It then discusses major types of intellectual property arrangements that pertain to private plant breeding and identiﬁ es several crucial issues in the proprietary protection of plant breeding inventions.

45 Buttel, Frederick H. 2000. “The recombinant BGH controversy in the United States: Toward a new consumption politics of food?” Agriculture and Human Values 17: 5-20.

ABSTRACT

The history of the controversy over recombinant bovine growth hormone (r-BGH) is explored in terms of the issue of the potential robustness of a consumption-driven “new” politics of food and agriculture. It is noted that while the dominant historical traditions in the social sciences have served to discount the autonomous role that consumers and consumption play in modern societies, there has been growing interest in consumption within food studies as well as other bodies of scholarship such as postmodernism, social constructivism, social capital/social distinction, and environmental sociology. A review of the shifting pattern of discourses during the r-BGH controversy shows that consumption-driven claims and politics played a tangible, but relatively minor role. Even so, it is suggested that the r-BGH experience along with parallel trends in food politics (e.g., anti-pesticide campaigns such as the Alar scare, agribusiness attempts to intimidate opponents through food dis- paragement laws, conditions-of-production provisions of the World Trade Organization agreement) could make the consumption/consumer dimension of food politics more important in the future.

Castree, Noel. 2003. “Bioprospecting: from theory to practice (and back again).” Trans- action of the Institute of British Geographers 28: 35-55.

ABSTRACT

This paper critically assesses the theory and practice of biodiversity prospecting in the developing world. Taking the case of perhaps the most famous bioprospecting broker—Costa Rica’s National Institute of Biodiversity—rival theoretical discourses on the “selling nature to save it” approach to environmental conservation are unpacked. This approach, currently de rigueur in mainstream global environmental organizations, is touted by its advocates in the academic and policy world as an effective tool for “green developmentalism.” For a cohort of university-based left critics, however, bioprospecting is one more troubling example of “postmodern ecological capital” in action, representing the further commodifi cation of nature for profi t purposes. By treating the rival theoretical discourses on bioprospecting produced by differently situated knowledge communities as objects of analysis, the paper asks fundamental questions about the grounds on which evaluations of bioprospecting might be made. It is argued that the radical critique buys its logical and moral power at the expense of its practical relevance, while advocates of selling biodiversity have made their case with only limited empirical persuasiveness. On the basis of a heuristic distinction between immanent and external critique, the paper seeks to put the evaluation of bioprospecting in particular, and green developmentalism more generally, on a new cognitive and normative footing. In so doing it impinges on recent debates over the wider relevance of “critical” thinking in human geography and cognate fi elds in the current conjuncture.

46 Chataway, Joanna, Joyce Tait, & David Weild. 2003. “Understanding company R&D strategies in agro-biotechnology: Trajectories and blindspots.” Research Policy, forthcoming.

ABSTRACT

Companies innovating in agriculture-related biotechnology currently confront a complicated and controversial policy environment. Using analytical frameworks of technical trajectories and paradigms this paper examines the R&D strategy in large companies. A large research project found that R&D related decisions taken by managers refl ect company distinctiveness and can be characterized as cumulative in important respects. “Economising” and “strategizing” strategies combine in different ways. But managers did not suffi ciently recognise the importance of complex interactions between public policy and public opinion and failed to incorporate public policy into strategic R&D decision-making. This blindspot compounded initial diffi culties in bringing products to market and has had signifi cant impact on the rate and direction of innovation in this area, including contributing to the demise of the idea of an integration of agro and health sectors based on life sciences.

Cleveland, David A. and Stephen C. Murray. 1997. “Crop genetic resources and the rights of indigenous farmers.” Current Anthropology 38(4): 477-515.

ABSTRACT

Farmer or folk crop varieties developed over many generations by indigenous farmers are an important component of global crop genetic resources for use by both industrial and indigenous agriculture. Currently there is a debate between advocates of indigenous farmers’ rights in their folk varieties and the dominant world system, which vests intellectual property rights to crop genetic resources only in users of those resources for industrial agriculture. While indigenous peoples at the individual and group levels do have a broad range of intellectual property rights in their folk varieties, they deﬁ ne and use them differently than does the industrial world. Therefore, industrial-world intellectual property rights mechanisms are generally inappropriate for protecting the intellectual property rights of indigenous farmers, but some could be used effectively. To meet indigenous farmers’ need for protection, new approaches are being developed that embed indigenous farmers’ rights in folk varieties in cultural, human, and environmental rights. More research on the cultural, social, and agronomic roles of folk varieties, ongoing negotiation of the meaning of key concepts such as “crop genetic resources,” “rights,” and “indigenous,” and an emphasis on a common goal of sustainability will help resolve the debate.

Escobar, Arturo. 1999. “After Nature: steps to an anti-essentialist political ecology.” Cur- rent Anthropology 40: 1-30.

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the outline of an anthropological political ecology that fully acknowledges the constructedness of nature while suggesting steps to weave together the cultural and the biological on constructivist grounds. From tropical rain forests to advanced biotechnology laboratories, the resources for inventing natures and cultures are unevenly distributed. The paper proposes an anties-

47 sentialist framework for investigating the manifold forms that the natural takes in today’s world. This proposal builds on current trends in ecological anthropology, political ecology, and social and cultural studies of science and technology. The resulting framework identiﬁ es and conceptualizes three distinct but interrelated nature regimes—organic, capitalist, and techno—and sketches their characteristics, their articulations, and their contradictions. The political implications of the analysis are discussed in terms of the strategies of hybrid natures that most social groups seem to be faced with as they encounter, and try to stem, particular manifestations of the environmental crisis.

ETC Group. 2001. New Enclosures: Alternative Mechanisms to Enhance Corporate Monopoly and BioSerfdom in the 21st Century. Winnipeg, MB: Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration. Available online: http://www.etcgroup.org/ documents/NewEnclosuresFinal.pdf

SUMMARY

Formerly know as the Rural Advancement Foundation International, the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Control has been engaged with agricultural biotechnology since long before any deliberate releases were introduced to the landscape. In this paper the group evaluates what they see as emerging mechanisms that will reify the sanctity of large corporations in biotechnology: biological monopolies from genetic use restriction technology, remote sensing and biodetectors to protect intellectual property rights, and legal contracts which shift the responsibility of genetic contamination to the farmer.

Falcon, W. P. and Cary Fowler. 2002. “Carving up the commons: emergence of a new international regime for germplasm development and transfer.” Food Policy 27(3): 197- 222.

ABSTRACT

No nation has ever fabricated or maintained a prosperous food system based on genetic resources of purely indigenous origin. Remarkably, many countries now seem ready and almost eager to try such an approach. The authors identify four separate components of an emerging regime that are interacting in ways that should worry everyone concerned with the development and transfer of plant genetic materials into the South: new provisions on intellectual property; increased concentration of new enabling technologies into a few large multinational companies; heightened anxieties over transgenic crops; and new problems arising from international agreements. The authors argue that the solutions now being discussed in global forums are either infeasible, incomplete, or are likely to have seriously negative effects. Instead, the authors call for creative new thinking on building human capacity in developing countries, on the legal status of plant genetic resources, and on public-private partnerships, especially those in service of the poor.

48 Fowler, Cary & Pat Roy Mooney. 1990. Shattering: Food, Politics, and the Loss of Genetic Diversity. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press.

SUMMARY

Mooney and Fowler underscore the value of crop genetic diversity in supporting a sustainable approach to agriculture. In the ﬁ rst part of the book, a thorough historical approach begins with the origins of agriculture and points to the role of wild relatives and landraces as a source of breeding materials for modern crops. It is these landraces and wild relatives that are rapidly disappearing, threatening the base upon which agriculture has relied on since sedentary civilization began. The authors turn to the political questions that shape genetic technologies in the second part of the book. They primarily concern themselves with control of and concentration in the seed industry, which they see as the “prerequisite to the control of all agricultural markets” (139). It is the proﬁ t motive of new biotechnologies, leading to their early release and their unforeseen consequences. The authors suggest multiple strategies with coalitions of farmers and scientists alike to conserve what is left of crop genetic diversity in the centers of domestication.

Fowler, Cary. 1994. Unnatural Selection: Technology, Politics, and Plant Evolution. Yverdon, Switzerland: Gordon and Breach.

SUMMARY

This book surveys the history of the use of plant genetic resources, suggesting that the contemporary trend toward “commoditization was not a technological imperative, but a rationalization process” (60). For Fowler, this history is not simply guided by a monolithic capitalist imperative, but is the product of individual agents shaping and guiding policy to their respective interests. It begins with the history of colonial plant collections, with particular attention to the Kew Gardens and the role of botanical gardens in rationalizing control over biological materials (11). Likewise, it surveys the early practices of farmers and the role of public institutions in encouraging seed saving practices. The turn of the century brought with it a nascent seed industry seeking to commercialize the seed; by 1970, the seed-saving farmer disappeared with his seed (118).

Fowler analyzes the evolution of plant protection through the Congress and the courts, showing how newly institutional arrangements offered protections through the PPA, PVPA, and more recently, utility patents. It is the utility patents that offer the greatest protections for biotechnology as they are not restricted to plants. The author concludes by laying out the changing role of international governance concerning plant genetic resources, with a detailed description of the events that transpired at the Keystone dialogue where representatives of industry, development agencies, and activists expressed their concern over the changes to IPRs, encouraged provisions to accompany genetic conservation projects, and called for the establishment of farmer-operated breeding programs.

49 Fukuyama, Francis. 2002. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

SUMMARY

While citizens worry about unintended consequences and unforeseen costs, our deepest concern about biotechnologies is not a utilitarian fear at all. Biotechnologies arouse profound fears that we will lose our very humanity, our sense of self. Worse yet, we as a society might make these changes without recognizing the tremendous loss. Humanity might “emerge on the other side” of the biotechnology revolution without seeing the watershed that had been breached in losing sight of our essence.

This is the posthuman future Fukuyama warns against. Losing grasp of our humanity in this way would have myriad causes and effects. Biotechnology could overturn the political equality in our Declaration of Independence. Biotechnologies create the capacity to effectively breed castes, which means that if society fails to resist biotechnologies this can jeopardize the gains made through our rich historical struggle for greater political rights.

If this seems unlikely, consider the outright eugenicist rhetoric of thinkers like Lee Silver. Logic like Silver’s would lead to a genetic arms race, in which, Fukuyama says, “My decision to have a designer baby imposes a cost on you (or rather, your child), and in the aggregate it is not clear that anyone is better off. Further, there is good reason to defer to the natural order of things, and not assume that humans will “improve”on it through casual intervention.” This has proven to be true of the environment, of which Fukuyama says, researchers in many disciplines fail to understand that ecosystems are complex, interconnected wholes. Introducing a dam or a plant monoculture into an area disrupts unseen relationships and destroys the system’s balance in unanticipated ways. Fukuyama warns that similar mistakes with biotechnologies may have more dire consequences, as the results may be economically driven and ecologically irreversible.

Gibbs, David. 2000. “Globalization, the biosciences industry and local environmental responses.” Global Environmental Change 10: 245-257.

ABSTRACT

Recent controversy over the introduction of GM crops and their subsequent incorporation into foods has led to major popular debate and discussion. Despite this, there has been relatively little academic discussion of the background to these new developments. In this paper it is argued that such developments need to be seen in the context of restructuring activity within the new “biosciences industry” and closely linked to the globalization of such corporate activity and the drive for the liberalization of trade. By contrast, the reaction to GM foods and seeds has typically been national or local in scope, and limited in its effectiveness.

50 Gomez, Francisco Martinez and Robert Torres (2001). “Hegemony, commodiﬁ cation and the state: Mexico’s shifting discourse on agricultural germplasm.” Agriculture and Human Values 18: 285-294.

ABSTRACT

In this work, the authors examine the debate over the commodifi cation of agricultural germplasm in Mexico using a neo-Marxist theoretical framework. Specifi cally, this work examines Mex- ico’s movement away from a “Farmers’ Rights” framework, which treats germplasm as a “common good” towards the passage of the Mexican Federal Law on Plant Varieties, which sees germplasm as a commodity. In order to understand this legal change, the recent history of this discourse in Mexico is examined. Using theoretical insights based in an analysis of this discourse, the authors examine the ideological elements of this debate. It is argued that an international hegemonic bloc has arisen to address this issue, superceding the bounds of any single state entity and functioning through the international bodies of free trade. Taking the Mexican state to be relatively autonomous from capital, this study argues that the hegemonic bloc infl uenced the change in Mexican policy. It concludes with a discussion of the possible effects of this legal change in Mexico.

Goodman, David. 2003. “The Brave New Worlds of Agricultural Technoscience: Chang- ing Perspectives, Recurrent Themes, and New Research Directions in Agro-Food Studies.” in Engineering Trouble: Biotechnology and its Discontents, edited by Rachel Schurman & Dennis Takahashi Kelso. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

SUMMARY

This chapter offers a critical assessment of the past approaches to the biopolitics of production and consumption, while delineating new currents and approaches to studying agricultural biotechnology in agro-food studies. These more nuanced approaches to uncovering “biopolitical choices” require an interrogation of the “modernist ontological foundations” of “mainstream agro-food studies” (227) and its tendency towards duality and abstractions of nature. While the “labor process-commodifi cation perspective” suggests that mutual conditioning of the forces and relations of production, it reifi es the modernist nature-society divide and fails to recognize material agency in nature as an active partner in the mutual constitution of technological innovation, commodity production, ecological risk, etc. To overcome this under-specifi cation, Goodman argues that ontological domains be recast, borrowing from perspectives that engage with technoscience and relational ethics. Evaluat- ing the coproduction of “socio-natures” (232) requires this non-dualistic frame to understand the catalysts for biopolitics, the embeddedness of activism, and the relational materiality of nature.

Goodman, David, Bernardo Sorj, & John Wilkinson. 1987. From Farming to Biotechnol- ogy: A Theory of Agro-industrial Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

SUMMARY

Goodman, Sorj, and Wilkinson resituate the contributions of the classical debates concerning agrarian change and its more nuanced counterparts in an attempt to determine the speciﬁ cities of

51 capitalist agriculture. A fully capitalist agro-food system is confronted by the rhythms and fl ows of the natural production process, creating diffi culties for capitalist industrialization. “Unable to remove these constraints directly by devising a unifi ed production process, industrial capitals have responded to the specifi cities of agricultural production” (2). Industrial capital has penetrated rural areas by the concomitant processes of appropriationism and substitutionism. The former is the appropriation of the rural labor process, transforming it into an industrial activity exogenous to the farm, while the latter can be seen as the downstream substitution of rural products with industrially produced ones. The book focuses on the “partial” processes of the appropriation of “discrete” activities. “The main constraints are represented by organic nature, land and space, and these have determined the trajectory of appropriation” (6). Case studies are explored, focusing on structural turning points in mecha- nization, inputs, and seeds showing how the farming sector was slowly transformed into the agro- food industry. Likewise, substitutionism has been driven by advances in food processing, distribution, and the incorporation of synthetically derived products into foods, displacing the rural product.

Appropriationism and substitutionism culminate at the heels of biotechnology; “Will the main effects of new biotechnologies be to accelerate present tendencies toward their convergence? Or, alternatively, will this new and revolutionary potential for the industrialization of nature expose the latent conﬂ ict between the alternative strategies of appropriationism and substitutionism” (99)? The transcending of species barriers, engineering of nutrients into food, and synergistically packaging traits and chemicals suggest that both may be true.

While early interpretations characterize the family farm and peasant production in terms as being in conﬂ ict with industrial capitalism, some have began to characterize them as being an expression of capitalist relations. This perspective does not see ownership of land as the sine qua non of capitalist relations. Rather it is the agro-industrial capitals that determine the “rhythms and organization of the production process.” However, there is something more to the analysis than simply the obstacles presented by the dynamics of social relations as suggested by the contemporary authors. In the search for an explanation of rural structural dynamics the authors suggest a shift emphasizing the intrinsic qualities of the rural production process and its inextricable ties to nature. It is via appropriationism and substitutionism that capital attempts to eliminate risk and uncertainty inherent to biological production systems. A system of peasant agriculture will continue to persist until substitutionism and appropriationism can undermine their existence by retaining value added and exercising control over the conditions of supply.

Gottweis, Herbert. 1998. Governing Molecules: The Discursive Politics of Genetic Engineer- ing in Europe and the United States. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

SUMMARY

This work uses a post-structural analysis at the nexus of power and knowledge to understand the complex history and politics of r-DNA regulation through discourse. This framework allows for the articulation of power in “regimes of governability” beyond political institutions such as state agencies to scientifi c disciplines such as molecular biology. The politics of genetic engineering can be seen not simply as the expression of economic interests or geopolitical strategies, but as discursive constellation of objects, actors, institutions, and strategies with “differing and partially confl icting discursive practices” (221). 52 Gottweis specifi cally focuses on the policy fi elds of the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany and the E.U., starting with a description of national political metanarrative justifying supports for molecular biology that was crafted on the desire for scientifi c progress, better health, and economic growth. This was complicated by the ways in which r-DNA research was deemed a public risk leading up to Asilomar, out of which the basis for new regulations based on physical and biological containment emerged through the NIH. In a second phase of the r-DNA controversy, ecological concerns coupled with the ecological modernization discourse, a new counter-narrative emerged focusing on the boundaries between science, business, society, and politics (258). A new politics emerged with “complex new confi gurations...shaped around a master signifi er of precaution” (320).

However, as he continues to argue throughout this book, in neither instance did regulation set back genetic engineering; rather, it sought to stabilize the discussion of risk. This took the form of an expert enclosure, the defi ning of the boundaries of debate. It is this process of boundary defi nition which makes gives science its hegemonic power; the ability to “dramatically narrow the available space for subject positions in a policy fi eld and thus establish exclusionary patterns of decision- making” (329). While the ecological critique brought new actors and institutions to the discursive constellation, it did not open the forum for other marginalized actors such as those with economic, social, or ethical concerns. With this view, the challenge for policy-makers becomes creating “tolerance for dissenting policy stories” and the “creation of deliberative spaces” (339) exposing technology to greater scrutiny in the discussion of its implications.

Guivant, Julia Silvia. 2002. “Heterogenous and Unconventional Coalitions around Global Food Risks: Integrating Brazil into the Debates.” Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning 4: 231-245.

ABSTRACT

Current debates about food-borne risks (GMOs and BSE) have not only deepened public concern about how food is produced on farms, processed in factories, and transported, stored and traded. More importantly, these debates have exposed a crisis related to central social issues, such as the role of science, politics and business corporations in the decision-making processes for determining which risks societies should, or are prepared to, assume. This article discusses how cultural and social constructivist studies of environmental and health risks and Ulrich Beck’s theory of world risk society can contribute to the analysis of how to deal with these confl icts. The criticism of quantitative methods of risk analysis has resulted in a certain idealization of the lay knowledge of risks as being intuitively more correct than the scientifi c one. One consequence of this polarization between expert and lay knowledge—idealizing the latter—is a disappointing vagueness when looking for alternatives on how to deal practically with risks that have important consequences. A key obstacle to the implementation of some of the suggestions presented by the critical risk analysis approach is that, for example, in the current global dynamics of food-borne risks one can fi nd heterogeneous alliances for and against GMOs allying lay people and experts, as well as conventional and unconventional social actors, in a complicated manner, at the regional, national and international levels. Since a signifi cant part of the analysis of manufactured risks focuses on the situation of highly industrialized countries, a more complex perspective of these lay and scientifi c alliances can be obtained from a more extensive study of the reactions surrounding GMOs and BSE in less industrialized countries such as Brazil.

53 Guthman, Julie. 2003. “Eating Risk: the politics of labeling genetically engineered foods.” in Engineering Trouble: Biotechnology and its Discontents, edited by Rachel Schurman & Dennis Takahashi Kelso. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

SUMMARY

In this chapter, Guthman problematizes the labeling strategy as a regulatory approach to evaluating GEO risks. Her purpose is “to further an understanding of how the politics of consumption can both enliven and eviscerate broad public participation in technological decision-making” (132). In this frame, the “privatization” of risk decisions through labeling demonstrates a sort of reifi cation of market preference, giving the consumer discretionary power over risks that are deeply social and ecological. Borrowing from her research on organic farming, she emphasizes the diffi culties in establishing and enforcing standards. Guthman suggests that “the very existence of standards creates incentives to push the limits of those standards” (143) and that standard certifi cation will create “rents and market niches, which will thwart the politics of consumption that labeling is designed to enable” (145). Further, since disclosing whether or not food contains GEOs requires some level of technical codifi cation, it may be that labels simply convey food safety risks and not the social and biosafety risks that accompany GEOs, a repacking of the commodity fetish that conceals both its social relations and historical conditions.

Habermas, Jurgen. 2003. The Future of Human Nature. Cambridge: Polity.

SUMMARY

Recent developments in biotechnology and genetic research are raising complex ethical questions concerning the legitimate scope and limits of genetic intervention. As society begins to contemplate the possibility of intervening in the human genome to prevent diseases, we cannot help but feel that the human species might soon be able to take its biological evolution in its own hands. “Playing God” is the metaphor commonly used for this self-transformation of the species, which, it seems, might soon be within our grasp.

Habermas takes up the question of GE and its ethical implications and subjects it to careful scrutiny. His analysis is guided by the view that genetic manipulation is bound up with the identity and self-understanding of the species. Society cannot rule out the possibility that knowledge of one’s own hereditary factors may prove to be restrictive for the choice of an individual’s way of life and may undermine the symmetrical relations between free and equal human beings. In the concluding chapter—which was delivered as a lecture on receiving the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for 2001—Habermas broadens the discussion to examine the tension between science and religion in the modern world, one aspect of the complex context within which biotechnologies may affect societies.

54 Haraway, Donna. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.Female-Man©_Meets_Onco- MouseModest_Witness@Second_Millenium.Female-Man©_Meets_OncoMouse. New York: Routledge.

SUMMARY

Haraway mirrors concerns of Habermas about the conﬂ ation of boundaries that occur as people design other people. She warns that what marks the new era is the implosion of subjects and objects in the entities populating the world today. Haraway critiques Bruno Latour’s suggestion of the name “amodern” for the chimeras of humans and nonhumans gestate. She sees something more going on—something vastly beyond the separation of nature and society proper to “modernity.” The explosion of new technoscience is at the heart of these substantial new differences.

Haraway uses a series of cartoons to dig beneath glossy industry promises to a more realistic view of the genome. She takes readers on a fun romp through everything from an advertisement of cloned Mona Lisas to the University of California at Berkeley’s “dog genome project.” She dissects the mapping of the genome, from the historical importance of cartography as a master tool of technoscience, to the focus on the mapping as opposed to the details of what is mapped. At every stage of genome production, she warns, “in both evolutionary and laboratory time, database management and error reduction in replication take the place of anxiety about originality.”

Hayden, Corrine P. 2003. When Nature Goes Public: The Making and Unmaking of Bio- Prospecting in Mexico Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

SUMMARY

As bioprospecting achieves currency in global efforts to preserve biodiversity, it remains a concept that, while critically interrogated for its role in legitimating forms of global capital, remains black boxed as regards the institutions it creates and the actors engaged in the ways it produces knowledge. In this book, Hayden employs science studies to uncover the ways in which “political and social interests…reside in knowledge and bio-artifacts (among other things)” (35). She argues “bioprospecting contracts (and their attendant controversies) themselves actively call up, animate, and lay bare for contest and debate, the idea that “knowledge” and biological material are bevies of claims and interests” (37). This is apparent in the ways that representation is tied to the materials of nature, revealing much about the changing institutional approaches to making claims to knowledge and resources through intellectual property rights in an era of neoliberalism and entrepreneurialism that sees the “publics” shifting to the private sector.

The book provides an extensive ethnography on the actors in the Maya-International Coop- erative Biodiversity Group-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México-Diversa bioprospecting contract, a collaborative project between scientists in the U.S. and Mexico. The project illuminated problems such as choosing the “local” over the “public” as beneﬁ ciaries, demonstrating how tangled a resource can be. “The bumpy career of bioprospecting in Mexico demonstrates just how actively liabilities, viabilities, claims and opportunities are being built into objects, knowledges, and sites of intervention, and back out of them again, by a stratiﬁ ed and heterogeneous mix of interested parties”

55 (317). Thus, bio-politics is animated by the interactions of interests, interests that are playing out in a particular historical moment where property rights are the current fashion generating conﬂ icts over the ways they are recognized and distributed and the ways that knowledge becomes shaped to meet those ends.

Heffernan, William. 1999. “Biotechnology and Mature Capitalism.” 11th Annual Meeting of the National Agricultural Biotechnology Council. Lincoln, NE. Available online: http: //www.foodcircles.missouri.edu/biotech.pdf

SUMMARY

The subject of Heffernan’s inquiry is the concentration of industrial capital in agriculture. In this report he characterizes the biotech industry as it reﬂ ects recent trends of horizontal and vertical integration, a process proceeding throughout the food system. He argues that this particular form of capitalism, namely monopoly capitalism, is the major driver of change in the agro-food system and is increasing inequality in the distribution of food.

Heller, Chaia. 2002. “From Scientiﬁ c Risk To Paysan Savoir-Faire: Peasant Expertise in the French and Global Debate over GM Crops.” Science as Culture 11(1): 5-37.

SUMMARY

This ethnography of a resistance movement examines the role of the Confederation Paysanne (CP) and their peasant farmer constituents in debates concerning GMOs and globalization. It argues that this group, aided by the charisma of Bove and Reisel, was able to transform the debate from the “objective” discussions about food and ecological safety into one that framed the argument about GMOs around food quality, germplasm heritage, and preserving the rural landscape. The French “GMO risk network” consisted of a variety of actors that renegotiated the “risk objects” developed by regulatory agencies in hegemonic ways. The CP was able to implicitly “destabilize” the “hegemony of risk” (21) by associating themselves with notions of worker solidarity and rural livelihoods in a directed campaign against global capital and industrial agriculture. Thus, in debates over technoscience actors may begin to consciously challenge objectivist framings and expert knowledge resulting in “new norms and criteria for what constitutes legitimate debate.

Jasanoff, Sheila. 1995. Science at the Bar: Law, Science and Technology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

SUMMARY

Jasanoff’s work focuses on the interaction between science and the courts in the changing landscape of political change and technological innovation. She has employed the term co-production to emphasize the dynamic evolution of scientiﬁ c knowledge and values. She argues that the courts embody some of the fundamental characteristics of society, a token that adds their subjective perspective to policy disputes in which “society is increasingly deﬁ ning itself” (xiii). “The involvement of the courts in science and technology policy often reinforces dominant beliefs and institutional arrange-

56 ments, which, in this society, include a well-entrenched faith in the progressive force of science and technology” (140).

She devotes Chapter 7 to genetic engineering policy and the courts, posing the hypothesis that, “...the courts have helped normalize genetic engineering by providing forms and methods of discourse that made the applications of the technique seem amenable to control.” This story begins with the initial fears and subsequent conferences on r-DNA that accompanied the insertion of an animal tumor virus into Escherichia coli. It follows the questions about innovation from Diamond v. Chakrabarty through the Leder patent (Oncomouse). In ends with a discussion of The Founda- tion for Economic Trends v. Heckler, a case in which the courts sided with activists about concerns about the deliberate release of genetically engineered organisms into the environment. The court’s interpretation hinged upon whether or not the RAC evaluations were “functionally equivalent” to an environmental impact assessment. For Jasanoff, biotechnology presents a clear example of how “the legal system mediates among conﬂ icting knowledge claims, divergent values, and competing views of expertise” (xiv). The study of the culture of the legal system is an important site in science and technology studies, as the law has serious consequences for innovation and risk regulation.

Jepson, W. E. 2002. “Globalization and Brazilian biosafety: the politics of scale over biotechnology governance.” Political Geography 21: 905-925.

ABSTRACT

Monsanto’s request to commercialize its GM herbicide-resistant soybean technology in Brazil sparked heated debate and protest. This paper explores the conﬂ ict and illustrates how biosafety politics and policy outcomes are highly contested and situated, rather than controlled by external forces within the ever-expanding global economy. This paper argues that GM crops are not inherently artifacts of economic globalization and trade liberalization. What makes GM crops “global” and part of a new iterative and uneven globalization process are the new and unanticipated sites of contradiction and contestation and the multi-scaled conﬂ ict over biotechnology governance. Political strategies taken by the state government in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazilian consumer protection activists, and Greenpeace exploit the new “nature” of GM crops as a means to expand the debate, change the rules governing the genetic commons, and consequently, rescale biotechnology governance.

Juma, Calestous. 1989. The Gene Hunters: Biotechnology and the Scramble for Seeds. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

SUMMARY

Juma’s work provides a thorough discussion of plant genetic resources and their role in socio- economic evolution. It suggests, “the introduction of new genetic materials was a crucial innovation in economic development” (32). This history of increasing germplasm ﬂ ows details how genetic resources were distributed and maintained by complex institutional networks and shaped the global division of agricultural production. The legacy of these developments left Third World countries few options for agricultural development. In particular, Juma traces genetic resource policy in Kenya from its inception during colonial times through contemporary times, arguing that new programs in

57 biotechnology “cannot be effectively introduced without major policy and institutional reforms to reﬂ ect the research and organizational imperatives of diversifying food production as well as conserv- ing the genetic base over the long run” (179).

Juma argues that “biotechnology presents an opportunity for decentralized production” (4); “it is also amenable to participatory research and can be controlled at the local level” (208). Develop- ing a biotechnology for African countries requires science and technology policy aimed at meeting regional and national development needs (210) and that is capable of monitoring technological developments (227). Further, it requires shifting the technology design emphasis toward the rural sector, and women, that sector’s major source of economic productivity (217). Finally, a Third World biotechnology requires strengthening farmers rights and other institutional innovations to provide an incentive for genetic conservation (219).

Kapuscinski, Anne R. 2002. “Controversies in designing useful ecological assessments of GEOs.” in Genetically Engineered Organisms: Assessing Environmental and Human Health Effects. edited by Deborah K. Letourneau & Beth Burrows. New York: CRC Press.

SUMMARY

Kapuscinski attempts to distill the biosafety debate, beginning a discussion of the distinct meanings of risk and hazard in the formal risk assessment process; a process that begins with hazard identiﬁ cation and follows with estimates of the likelihood of occurrence and attempts to reduce those risks. In a precautionary context, she argues for a transparent “adaptive biosafety and management” regime that recognizes the incomplete knowledge, complexity, and uncertainty of ecological effects.

Kass, Leon. 2002. Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity. San Francisco: Encounter Books.

SUMMARY

Kass warns that humankind is walking too quickly down the road to physical and psychological utopia. In a series of meditations on cloning, embryo research, the Human Genome Project, the sale of organs and the attempted assault on mortality itself, Kass evaluates the ongoing effort to break down the natural boundaries given us and to refashion the human body into an instrument of our will. Kass says we should be seriously contemplating several questions before we allow runaway scientism and its utopian longings to reshape humankind in the image of its own choosing. What does it mean to treat nascent human life as raw material to be exploited? What does it mean to blur the line between procreation and manufacture? What are the proper limits to this project for the engineering of human nature?

Kass points out that although technology has done wonders for our health and longevity, there is more at stake in the biological revolution than saving life and avoiding death. Perhaps his driving message is that we must also protect the ideas and practices that give us dignity and keep us human. Our technological prowess, so celebrated for its contributions to human welfare, may also lead us down a dehumanizing path. Our views of the meaning of our humanity have already been so trans-

58 formed by the scientiﬁ c-technological approach to life that we are in danger of forgetting what we have to lose. The scientiﬁ c method and approach structurally omits questions of value, ethics and human dignity. To counter the force of blind progress Kass calls for a richer bioethics, a reconsid- eration of the strengths and limits of liberal principles, and a serious reevaluation of the sources of human dignity and how to preserve it.

Kass, Leon. 1999. “The Moral Meaning of Genetic Technology.” Commentary 32-38.

SUMMARY

Unless we mobilize the courage to look foursquare at the full human meaning of our new enterprise in biogenetic technology and engineering, we are doomed to become its creatures if not its slaves, says Leon Kass. The peculiar moral crisis of biotechnologies is that by which we subject ourselves to the view of humankind as, no less than nature, “mere raw material for manipulation and homogenization.” The philosophies promoting this are nothing new—reductionism, materialism and determinism—they are all philosophies that Socrates contended with. What is new, says Kass, is that as philosophies, they seem to be vindicated by scientiﬁ c advances. Hence the peculiarity of the present moral crisis: we adhere increasingly to this enormous power, which at the same time denies us non-arbitrary standards for guiding the use of this power.

Kay, Lily. 2000. Who Wrote the Book of Life?: A History of the Genetic Code. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

SUMMARY

“Today the world is messages, codes, and information,” says Francois Jacob in the 1960s, one of several Nobel laureate voices at the time furthering the notion of genes as the very, “secret of life.” The implications of this view have yielded great infl uence as the life sciences have burgeoned in the last half-century. Kay argues that science is strongly infl uenced by social context and interpretation and critiques the view that DNA represents the “secret of life.” She questions the use of “information” as a metaphor for biological specifi city, which makes it “a metaphor for a metaphor, a signifi er without a referent, and thus, a “catachresis.’” As Warren Weaver warned, the metaphor of information as the basis of life confl ates information with meaning. Biologists may be advancing in the former without the latter. Moreover, information is most often confused as an entity, she warns. There is a dangerous vagueness that arises when human beings or biological organisms are regarded as “communication systems”—a critique echoed by Heinz von Foerster, one of the leaders of cybernetics.

Kay deconstructs the idea that the gene alone controls human development. Gene interactions are polygenic, one trait determined by several genes, or pleiotropic, when one gene controls diverse traits. Only two percent of developmental traits are “monogenetic,” determined by one gene. Given that modern biology taught us not only about how genetics functions, but about how to make genetic alterations, it is dangerous to proceed without fully understanding the complex external and internal factors that affect development,

59 Keller, Evelyn Fox. 2002. Making Sense of Life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

SUMMARY

Keller argues for a de facto multiplicity of explanatory styles in scientifi c practice, refl ecting the manifest diversity of epistemological goals which researchers pursue. Further, the investigation of processes as inherently complex as biological development may in fact require such diversity. Explanatory pluralism, she continues, is now not simply a refl ection of differences in epistemological cultures but a positive virtue in itself, representing our best chance of coming to terms with the world around us.

Underlying Keller’s critique is a revision of common assurances about the scientifi c process. For instance, she questions the computational view of biology. One example is embryogenesis, which is computable in a trivial sense, that in which the criterion of computability is satisfi ed when a process can be executed by a machine. The diffi culty arises in distinguishing between computing and understanding. The subject of the verb, to compute is the actual system, while it is the scientist, or thinker, who is the subject of the verb to understand (297). Keller’s argument for the plurality within the sciences is epistemological and methodological, not ontological.

A focus of the book is experimental genetics, which she calls far and away the most successful research program of twentieth-century biology. Genetics introduced its own characteristic way of framing the problem of development. The question of genetic metaphors is explored, with an analysis not only of the necessity of metaphor and other linguistic ﬁ ltering of scientiﬁ c ideas, but also a critique of the explanatory force of the concept of the genetic program.

Kelso, Dennis. 2000. Aquarian Transitions: Technological Change, Environmental Uncer- tainty, and Salmon Production on North America’s Paciﬁ c Coast. Ph.D. dissertation, Energy and Resources. Berkeley, CA: University of California, Berkeley.

SUMMARY

This dissertation looks at the changes in the salmon industry in Alaska, British Columbia, and Washington as it reconfi gures into a new regime of global production. A particular focus is on the transition to commercial salmon aquaculture, displacing the small-boat industry that harvests wild salmon. From a political economy perspective, it looks at the impacts of salmon aquaculture on populations that depend on the fi sh for their livelihood and discusses the ways that transgenic salmon threaten to amplify these impacts by further lowering the costs to the aquaculture industry and depressing the prices received. Kelso evaluates the similarities and differences found in the structure of the salmon industry at various sites and identifi es how different sectors respond to uncertainty and variability. Kelso also explains how social resistance helped shape the industry’s trajectory, contrary to technological determinist approaches to understanding changes in the agro-food system. Instead, human agency, local political factors, and economic forces mutually constitute the process of economic change in the salmon industry.

Salmon farming has come up against several barriers to fully industrialized production -- some social, some natural. Social forces that limit aquaculture expansion include consumer acceptance and 60 obtaining new production sites. Regarding the latter is the public-use status of coastal waters typically used for salmon farming, presenting a constraint not posed to the private production systems of land-based agriculture. Regarding the former, it is clear that social resistance in both ﬁ shing communities and by consumer activists play a signiﬁ cant role in opposing aquaculture. Though the aquaculture industry is vertically integrated, threatening those not operating with economies of scale, Kelso argues the wild salmon sector will continue to persist “as long as the natural production base of salmon populations remains intact” (16).

Kelso, Dennis Doyle Takahashi. 2003. “The Migration of Salmon from Nature to Bio- technology.” in Engineering Trouble: Biotechnology and its Discontents, edited by Rachel Schurman & Dennis Takahashi Kelso. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

SUMMARY

AquAdvantage™ is a transgenic salmon patented by A/F Protein Inc., engineered to produce growth hormone year-round, which allows it to grow faster than its siblings. In this chapter, Kelso characterizes the signifi cance of transgenic salmon as it affects the salmon industry’s structure by looking at the role of social agency through a story replete with contradiction and contention. Point- ing to the ways that social forces and nature shape the industry’s technological trajectory and conditioning, Kelso moves beyond the determinism embedded in earlier accounts of social struggle and technological change in agro-food studies. The interviews that this research evaluates suggest that the actors within the aquaculture industry fear that consumers will confl ate the risks of transgenic salmon with the risks from aquaculture’s own proprietary stock; as such, some in the aquaculture industry seek to distance themselves from transgenic salmon. This insight suggests that resistance to transgenic salmon is both exerted from outside and within the industry; it also suggests that resistance does not completely revolve around any clear notion of ecological risk intrinsic to the transgenic fi sh itself (though it certainly is a factor): the adoption of transgenic salmon subtly circulates around consumer perception. A signifi cant contribution to the literature of technological change in capitalist production, this work demonstrates that production effi ciency alone does not dictate the adoption of new technologies by capital, a lasting notion in teleological views of technological change.

Kenney, Martin. 1986. Biotechnology: The University-Industrial Complex. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

SUMMARY

Kenney’s classic work on university-industry relations has stood the test of time, making it an indispensable source of history and analysis covering the incipient years of the commercialization of biotechnology. In piecing together the impetus for technological change, he frames his analysis of innovation in industrialized economies in the terms in which Schumpeter described it; ideas must emerge during years of stagnation to form the basis of new industries, leading to new periods of economic growth. The wave of biotechnology hit in the late 1970s and early 1980s through MNCs, venture capital ﬁ rms, universities, and professors. Kenney’s concern is that the intrusion of commercial sector ends into the university will erode the intellectual commons, displacing the traditional role of the university as a source of autonomous public knowledge.

61 University-industry relations can be seen as two main types. Faculty can sell their labor power independently; or institutional arrangements can be set up through academic departments (34). The concern about the former is that professors may become captive to fi nancial interests with consequences for graduate students, laboratories, and modes of research deemed unprofi table. The concern about institutional arrangements is that short-term profi t oriented research may displace long-term research for the public good. Also, academic departments may begin to favor certain types of research from which funds can be much more easily solicited. Another concern about the commercialization of knowledge is that research will be funded without peer review, the traditional form of maintaining integrity in research. Finally, the free fl ow of materials and information, the basis of the intellectual commons whether within labs or across disciplines, has been impacted severely by the need for commercial activities to extract monopoly rents. That is, securing patents in biotechnology requires that research is done quietly and away from the public eye.

In his chapters on venture capital start-up fi rms and MNCs Kenney predicted the small-fi rm “shakeout” that occurred (175). Due to advantages in scaling up production, clinical testing, marketing, and securing a “window on the technology” from the university, the technical expertise in the startup fi rms has been subsumed into the large MNCs (205). This is particularly true in agriculture, where Kenney sees the greatest impact of university-industry relations to the public interest. Agri- culture would be signifi cantly impacted by the shrinking of a “freely usable knowledge base” and the pollution and erosion of the intellectual commons (246).

Kleinman, Daniel Lee. 1998. “Untangling Context: Understanding a University Labo- ratory in the Commercial World.” Science, Technology and Human Values 23(3): 285- 303.

ABSTRACT

The past twenty years have been an incredibly productive period in science studies. Still, because recent work in science studies puts a spotlight on agency and enabling situations, many practitioners in the ﬁ eld ignore, underplay, or dismiss the possibility that historically established, structurally stable attributes of the world may systemically shape practice at the laboratory level. This article questions this general proposition. Drawing on data from a participant observation study of a university biology laboratory, it describes ﬁ ve features of the institutional landscape that shape this laboratory’s practice.

Kloppenburg, Jack. 1988. First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

SUMMARY

In this classic work of political economy, Kloppenburg explains the shift in plant breeding research in the early twentieth century from the public to the private sector in an effort to speculate about the effects that patents and biotechnology bring to the landscape. The plant sciences have become increasingly subordinated to capitals ability to shape the content of research and the characteristics of its products (3). Looking at the role of science in the creation of new economic space serves

62 as window to view the priorities and content of agricultural research. Using the case study of the commodiﬁ cation of the seed and the evolution of the seed industry, he demonstrates how the seed industry became proﬁ table to capital only after the development of a “biological” patent in hybrid corn. Traditionally, seed married both grain and the means of production; hybridization divorced the two. Using hybrids, the farmer was required to purchase seeds every year (hybrids cannot be saved because they do not breed true). This was characteristic of a trend in agriculture to outsource from an industrialized agro-input sector, a tendency which favored larger companies or companies with monopolies on rent extraction.

Hybridization itself emerged from speciﬁ c set of social relations between commodities and sci- entiﬁ c research. Traditional distinctions between public and private or applied and basic research in this vein are misleading. If science a link between knowledge and application, the pivotal question is how proximate is research to the commodity form? As happened with corn, plant breeding in pubic institutions poses itself as a direct competitor to the burgeoning private seed industry. As such, the division of labor between the public and private sectors was, and continues to be, directed by industrial capital.

Kloppenburg employs a framework that examines the interactions between the forces of production and the social relations of production. It is at this site that the imposition of the commodity form takes root, requiring some stage of genesis. This is found in what Marx described as primitive accumulation in his take on the process of enclosure that enveloped the English countryside in the 1500s, separating the worker from the means of production. Primitive accumulation requires intervention by the state. In England, it was the abolition of common property; with biotechnology, it is the erosion of the public applied research commons and the advent of commercial patents on life forms and processes. Since the state creates and enforces property rights and shapes technology through the allocation of research funds, policies and institutions are a fundamental site of intervention. Kloppenburg argues that regaining control of the research agenda from industrial capital is imperative to shaping the future of agriculture in the public interest.

Knorr-Cetina, Karin. 1999. Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cam- bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

SUMMARY

This work investigates the epistemic foundations of scientifi c knowledge by contrasting experimental high energy physics with molecular biology in an effort to understand the role of knowledge as a productive force in the new institutional forms of capital. Building on the fashions of social studies of scientifi c knowledge, Knorr-Cetina investigates the “epistemic machinery “ (3) of science through ethnographies of scientifi c laboratories. Her study contends that natural science is not as unifi ed a body of knowledge as portrayed by the social sciences, but rather is a “whole landscape...of independent epistemic monopolies producing vastly different products” (4). In investigating two of these epistemic monopolies, she develops the following contrasts...

one science (physics) transcends anthropocentric and culture-centric scales of time and space in its organization and work, the other (molecular biology) holds onto them and exploits them; one science is semiological in its preference for sign processing, the other shies away from signs

63 and places the scientist on a par with nonverbal objects; one (again physics) is characterized by a relative loss of the empirical, the other is heavily experimental; one transforms machines into physiological beings, the other transforms organisms into machines.

The many other differences highlighted by Knorr-Cetina include the communitarian aspects of experimental high-energy physics and the sharing of instruments and results. This is starkly contrast- ed by the impossibility of cooperation in molecular biology. This impossibility is rendered as molecular biology’s services are “construed in the logic of exchange” (236) as opposed to communitarianism, creating “tension, conﬂ ict, resistance, and feelings of exploitation” (234). Thus, the value of this comparative study lies in the examination of the ways in which research collaboration is undertaken and fostered by research policy and laboratory organization.

Kottow, Miguel. 2001. Proposiciones Bioeticas Para Sociedades en Riesgos Biotechnicos. Seminario Internacional sobre Biotechnología y Sociédad, conference. A. Bergel, organizer. Buenos Aires, Ciudad Argentina.

This article by Kottow is part of a mostly Spanish-language conference that took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 16-17 November, 1999, called the Seminario Internacional sobre Biotech- nología y Sociédad. International in scope, the resulting book contains essays from many European as well as Argentinean authors. Kottow draws on the work of the German sociologist Ulrich Beck in describing the ethics and risks of biotechnologies. Inherent to his argument is the realization that risk is unevenly distributed across socio-economic populations nationally and internationally, putting poor people at risk of industry decisions with regards to new technologies. Kottow argues that biotechnologies have thus far been developed largely without regard to popular sentiments, putting common resources in jeopardy of irreversible changes to vital processes and living beings. Faced with the relativist discourse of values and the fragmentation of postmodern doctrines, we must establish a common ethical language to encourage public involvement in the emerging biotechnologies, of which the consequences will reach us all.

Krimsky, Sheldon. 1982. Genetic Alchemy: The Social History of the Recombinant DNA Controversy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

SUMMARY

This early contribution to the social analysis of biotechnology policy focuses on the controversies over the development of r-DNA research. In particular, it focuses on scientists’ perceptions of risks and the new problems that confronted regulators in the midst of a divided scientiﬁ c community. Krimsky gives careful attention to the exogenous political and social factors that shape the normative commitments of the actors involved in the incipient biohazard controversies generated by r-DNA research.

The controversy was ignited after Paul Berg, a Stanford biologist, chose the simian virus, a virus that readily transforms human cells, as the object for the ﬁ rst r-DNA experiments. The Berg controversy sparked the fears that tumor viruses may create a human cancer epidemic at large. This pro- voked calls for regulation at the Gordon Conference on Nucleic Acids (1973) and two subsequent

64 Asilomar conferences (1973, 1975). In the years following those conferences, the scientiﬁ c community went to great pains to establish a “consensus position” (126) on the risks and potential hazards accompanying r-DNA research.

1. They deﬁ ned the issues in such a way that the expertise remained the monopoly of those who gain the most from the technique, and

2. They chose to place authority for regulating the use of the technique in the agency that is the major supporter of biomedical research in the United States (153)

The formation of the r-DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) codiﬁ ed these principles through the NIH. The result was a narrowly deﬁ ned set of problems that focuses exclusively on gene splic- ing techniques and foregoes a comprehensive view that would reconsider all conventional biological work (180). Krimsky wraps up his thorough discussion by documenting the climate that fostered the local attempts at regulation like the moratoria set up in Cambridge, Berkeley, Princeton, and Am- herst, MA; the creation of biosafety committees; and federal attempts at regulating biotechnology.

Krimsky, Sheldon. 1991. Biotechnics and Society: The Rise of Industrial Genetics. New York: Praeger.

SUMMARY

Unlike many other nascent technological revolutions, “the biotechnological revolution derives directly and immediately from the pure sciences” (2). This has brought the role of science and its accompanying symbols and metaphors to the fore of Krimsky’s analysis. In the vein of Lewis Mumford, he is interested in the ways in which scientiﬁ c and technological revolutions lead to changes in social and cultural interpretation (11). In this work he considers three main areas of investigation: the commercialization of academic biology, the controversy over the deliberate release of GE organisms into the environment, and the structure and fragmentation of GE regulation.

Krimsky outlines the major issues confronting the university in the era of commercialized research. He reviews a study at Harvard University and then outlines the fi ndings of his own study of Tufts University, both of which are concerned with “the extent to which life sciences faculty have formal tied to industry” (73). These studies show that a signifi cant percentage of faculty are involved in commerce, but that a host of fi rms are often represented in a single institution. While some universities have adopted guidelines to manage such considerations, Krimsky suggests that the “disap- pearance of a critical mass of elite, independent, and commercially unaffi liated scientists to whom we are to turn for vision and guidance when confounded by technological choices” is “the greatest loss of all to society” (79).

These choices are further obscured by scientiﬁ c debates over the risks and regulation of GE. In the second section of this book he looks at the politics of the RAC guidelines as industry prepared to release its ﬁ rst products into the environment. Though the guidelines were established for projects done with federal dollars, industry decided to comply for fear of tort lawsuits and the threat of statutory regulations (101). The planned deliberate release of ice-minus into the environment sparked public outcry led by Jeremy Rifkin, whose legal challenges biotechnology have been able to “impose

65 [a] greater burden of assessing risks and eliciting the ethical consequences of new technologies” (110) and “build coalitions and public support” by “dramatizing risks” (123). When ice-minus did eventually enter into the environment, it set the stage for future environmental assessments of biotechnology and the cross-fertilization of two distinct scientifi c communities. Invoking Kuhn’s crises in scientifi c paradigms to sketch the debate between molecular biologists and ecologists over the consequences of biotechnology, he shows how the debate over ice-minus “unfolded into a larger debate about scientifi c culture, epistemology, and disciplinary hegemony” (111).

The concluding section, looks at the future of biotechnology and how the consequences that may accompany this technological revolution may be best evaluated and regulated. His main concern is that the existing framework is unable to capture the social and ethical consequences of biotechnology. In conclusion, he proposes a process of biotechnological assessment that goes beyond “hazard control” to the “social governance of innovation” (206). This requires the clariﬁ cation of public and private roles, the independence of the university, and greater attendance to the secondary impacts (228).

Lacy, William B. 2000. “Commercialization of university research brings beneﬁ ts, raises issues and concerns.” California Agriculture 54(4): 72-80.

ABSTRACT

New commercial opportunities, patent laws and federal policies, as well as growth in private- sector research and a relative decline in public-sector funding for agricultural research, have contributed to a changing collaborative relationship between universities and industries. While such partnerships have existed for decades, these new relationships, particularly in agricultural biotechnology, are generally more varied, wider in scope, more aggressive and experimental, and more publicly visible. Examples of UC-industry collaborations include Calgene at UC Davis, Ceres, Inc. at UCLA, and the Novartis alliance at UC Berkeley. On the benefi t side, such collaboration may bring useful products to market, promote U.S. technological leadership in the world economy and provide funding and “hands-on” opportunities for students. However, concerns have arisen that such collaborations may narrowly redirect research agendas, disrupt long-term research and create confl icts of interest. For these collaborations to be mutually benefi cial, the potential negative consequences must be monitored and addressed aggressively with appropriate policies, practices and organizational arrangements. At the same time, adequate investment for public-sector research will be essential for universities to be a strong and complementary partner.

Lee, M. and R. Burrell. 2002. “Liability for the escape of GM seeds: pursuing the victim?” The Modern Law Review 65(4): 517-537.

ABSTRACT

The widespread commercial cultivation of GM crops in the E.U. and the U.K. is getting closer. Intense concerns about the uncertain health and environmental effects of GM farming have been the subject of high proﬁ le debate. The effects of GM farming on existing forms of agriculture, raised by the prospect of cross-pollination of GM seed, provoke similar polarized views. However, whilst

66 regulatory developments have been strongly inﬂ uenced by environmental and health concerns, the socio-economic impact of GM agriculture is relatively neglected in current regulatory approaches. The authors examine various possible legal responses to unwanted cross-pollination by GM seed, and contend that the law is likely to struggle to cope with conﬂ icts that may arise.

Letourneau, Deborah K. & Beth Elpern Burrows (eds.). 2002. Genetically Engineered Organisms: Assessing Environmental and Health Effects New York: CRC Press.

SUMMARY

This volume brings together some of the leading scholars involved in assessing the ecological and health effects of GEOs. The volume includes questions about gene ﬂ ow, insect resistance, and non-target effects. What makes the collection impressive is its methodological rigor and commitment to precautionary design in ecological risk assessment. While not intrinsically discounting biotechnology, the authors move the discussion about GEOs to one that engages with the industry about ways to “adaptively evaluate” (cf. Kapuscinski) the ecological implications and consequent risks associated with the introduction of GEOs into the environment.

Levidow, Les and Jos Bijman. 2002. “Farm inputs under pressure from the European food industry.” Food Policy 27(1): 31-45.

ABSTRACT

The rise of own-brand labels has made retailers more vulnerable and responsive to consumer concerns. In response to widespread protest, the European food industry has sought to exclude GM ingredients and to minimize pesticide usage from their supplies. In particular, retailers have developed common practices or criteria for non-GM grain and lower-pesticide methods. This cooperative approach has several aims: to maintain consumer confi dence in product quality, to establish Europe- wide supply chains which meet common or minimum standards, to make supplies interchange- able, and to avoid competition for “non-GM” or “low-pesticide” products defi ned in various ways. The consequent pressures on farm inputs go beyond national boundaries, for both companies and farmers. Overall these commercial pressures favour non-GM products which help reduce chemical pesticide sprays—e.g. pest-resistant seeds, seed treatments, or biopesticides—especially for use as components of ICM methods. There remain many diffi culties in basing future products upon other novel seeds. Such constraints go beyond any statutory restrictions on GM products or pesticides. Of course, government policy still infl uences the use and innovation of farm inputs in Europe. Con- versely, however, cooperative efforts from the food industry there provide de facto criteria which could supersede or infl uence government policy.

Levidow, Les and Susan Carr. 2000. “Sound Science or Ideology?” Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy 15(3): 44-56.

ABSTRACT

In disputes over GM crops, the demand for “sound science” pre-empts debate on uncertainties

67 about potential harm. The controversy over GMOs in Europe and the U.S. reveals fundamental differences that have led to trans-Atlantic trade confl icts. There have been national differences and shifts in criteria for scientifi c evidence that regulators require. GMOs have become a test case for the confl icting slogans of sound science versus the precautionary principle. The U.S. framework for GMOs has been termed a risk-based regulation or science-based regulation, an approach that claims to base decisions on scientifi c evidence. The concept of sound science has been used to assign a weak burden of evidence for safety and a strong burden of evidence for risk, thus facilitating commercial approval. Although the term sound science is heard in Europe too, it co-exists with the precautionary principle, which generally acknowledges uncertainty or ignorance warranting more scientifi c information prior to decisions. Offi cially linked to regulation of GMOs, the precautionary principle has been widely invoked as grounds for delaying approval of many GM crops. Using this more cautious approach, European regulators have cited new evidence of risk or uncertainty, or have requested more evidence of safety. Some proponents of these crops maintain that precautionary regulation is mis- guided on several grounds: that it imposes an unrealistic burden of proof for safety, it discriminates against GM crops, and it ignores the lower risk of such products compared with the agrochemical risks of cultivating their non-modifi ed counterparts. Precautionary controls are a proxy for issues that have nothing to do with risk, for example trade policy, agricultural production methods, or irrational fears. In short, regulatory delays are attributed to political rather than scientifi c reasons.

Levidow, Les and Susan Carr. 1997. “How biotechnology regulation sets a risk/ethics boundary.” Agriculture and Human Values 14(1): 29-43.

ABSTRACT

In public debate over agricultural biotechnology, at issue has been its self-proclaimed aim of further industrializing agriculture. Using languages of “risk,” critics and proponents have engaged in an implicit ethics debate on the direction of technoscientifi c development. Critics have challenged the biotechnological R&D agenda for attributing socio-economic problems to genetic defi ciencies, while perpetuating the hazards of intensive monoculture. They diagnosed ominous links between technological dependency and tangible harm from biotechnology products. In response to scientifi c and public concerns, the European Community enacted precautionary legislation for the intentional release of GMOs. In its implementation, choices for managing and investigating biotechnological risk involve an implicit environmental ethics. Yet the offi cial policy language downplays the inherent value judgments, by portraying risk regulation as a matter of “objective” science. In parallel with safety regulation, the state has devised an offi cial bioethics that judges where to “draw the line” in apply- ing biotechnological knowledge, as if the science itself were value free. Bioethics may also judge how to “balance” risks and benefi ts, as if their defi nition were not an issue. This form of ethics serves to compensate for the unacknowledged value-choices and institutional commitments already embedded in R&D priorities. The state separates “risk” and “ethics,” while assigning both realms to specialists. The risk/ethics boundary encourages public deference to the expert assessments of both safety regulators and professional ethicists. Biotechnology embodies a contentious model of control over nature and society, yet this issue becomes displaced and fragmented into various administrative controls. At stake are the prospects for democratizing the problem-defi nitions that guide R&D priorities.

68 Lewontin, Richard. 1992. Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA. New York: Harper Perennial.

SUMMARY

Science has several functions. One of these is to manipulate the world through a set of techniques and inventions by which our quality of life is changed. Another is the function of explanation—why things are the way they are. Finally, there is the function explanation often takes on—the process by which, irrespective of the truth of scientiﬁ c claims, explanations of how the world works serve to legitimate science.

Integrating science within the social context, Lewontin shows how science often contributes to legitimizing social structures. Science is used to convince people that society is just and fair, or at least is inevitable. The inevitability doctrine has been central to the genetic paradigm. Some proponents claim that genes completely determine us, and we are lumbering robots. The problem is to construct a third view, says Lewontin, neither as reductive as genetic determinism, nor as simplistic as the misleading holistic theories. Rather, the world cannot be simpliﬁ ed in either of two equally incorrect extremes. It is neither an indissoluble whole, nor is it the case that at every level the world is made up of bits and pieces that can be isolated and that have properties that can be studied in isola- tion. In the end, both views deny a richer understanding of nature, and prevent us from properly clarifying and analyzing the issues that confront us with the advance of biotechnologies.

Lewontin, Richard. 1998. “The maturing of capitalist agriculture: farmer as proletarian.” Monthly Review 50(3): 72-85.

SUMMARY

The penetration into agriculture by capitalism is far from complete, argues Lewontin. The biological character of agriculture and its high degree of ﬁ eld-scale production risk are some of the reasons for the incompleteness. However, biotechnology will facilitate the process as agricultural input ﬁ rms contract IPRs to petty commodity producers serving to proletarianize them. Lewontin argues that it is this vertical integration through contract that will characterize the penetration of agriculture by capital.

Lewontin, Richard. 2001. It Ain’t Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions. New York Review of Books: New York.

SUMMARY

Lewontin debunks natural scientists’ assumptions that everything about the material world is knowable and that eventually everything we want to know will be known. It is simply not true, he says; for some things there is simply not world enough and time. For some complex questions, given necessary constraints on time and resources available, natural scientists may never have more than a rudimentary understanding. For other things, especially in biology where so many of the forces operating are individually so weak, no conceivable technique of observation can measure them. Science,

69 he warns, is a social activity carried out by a remarkable, but by no means omnipotent species.

As his analysis moves from one aspect of biotechnologies to another, Lewontin focuses on what can be clariﬁ ed, probing deeper concerns. In an essay on transgenic crops, Lewontin says that no un- equivocal conclusions can be drawn about the overall effect of GE technologies. The manipulation of organisms poses some danger to human health, to present systems of agricultural production, and to natural environments. Summing up one of the greatest challenges to our understanding of biotechnology, he says that all of these potential effects have led to an apparatus of government regulation whose chief deﬁ ciency is its dependence on data supplied to it by parties whose prime concern is not the public good but private interest.

This challenges the core the notion that genes “determine” organisms. Instead, the development of an organism is a unique consequence of the interaction of genetic and environmental forces, and always subject to accidents of development. The problem, Lewontin says, referring to the book he lauds as one that ought to be used as a text in law and public policy schools, Exploding the Gene Myth, by Ruth Hubbard and Elijah Wald, is that “once the myth is exploded there is nothing left but a hole in the ground.” It takes a certain moral courage, says Lewontin, to accept the present level of scientiﬁ c ignorance in genetics and all that it implies, including our incapacity to grasp fully the ideological framework of GE or to predict its consequences.

MacMillan, Thomas. 2003. “Tales of power in biotechnology regulation: the E.U. ban on BST.” Geoforum 34(2): 187-201.

ABSTRACT

Biotechnology regulation has been dogged by allegations of bias, usually phrased in terms of “confl icts of interest.” Social constructionist analyses of regulatory science have shown up serious epistemological diffi culties with such “interest” explanations of regulatory power, but in the process they have also destabilized the platforms such as “objectivity,” upon which critiques of regulatory bias are usually grounded. This paper argues that their critical impotence follows from not being constructivist enough. Building on Hajer’s notions of “story-lines” and “discourse coalitions,” it argues that recovering the non-human, material components that construct regulation offers suffi ciently fi rm ground for evaluating regulatory power even in the absence of the fi rm benchmarks assumed by interest accounts. The paper develops this approach by focusing on a single story-line, characterised as “scientism,” as it is deployed in the build up to a European Union (E.U.) ban on bovine somato- trophin, the fi rst food-related product of the “new biotechnology.” The essay ends by discussing how far this retrospective analysis can help us to understand and intervene in the current and future E.U. regulation of biotechnology.

Martineau, Belinda. 2001. First Fruit: The Creation of the Flavr Savr™ Tomato and the Birth of Genetically Engineered Food. New York: McGraw Hill.

SUMMARY

Martineau’s work on Calgene’s Flavr Savr™, the ﬁ rst commercially available crop of biotech-

70 nology, provides an insider’s view to the economic, scientiﬁ c and regulatory processes involved with its genesis, marketing, and demise. The Flavr Savr™ was conceptualized as a tomato engineered to survive long distance transportation and retain its vine ripe taste. Calgene believed this characteristic would be a hit to those consumers seeking that home grown taste that could not be replicated in the store bought varieties.

Martineau describes how Calgene’s vision of itself as a vertically-integrated enterprise was internally debated and beat out a competing vision of itself as a gene boutique, setting the agenda for the Flavr Savr™ to be the company’s golden goose. Calgene’s scientiﬁ c endeavors resulted in the company being awarded the patent on antisense technology, the basis of the Flavr Savr™. With this foundation secure, it came time for the encounter with the regulatory bodies so the product could be grown, shipped and eaten. This seemingly innocuous plant, GM but containing no foreign DNA except for its marker gene, set the standard for many of the procedures in the regulatory process. The relative ease with which the tomato made it through the process was helped by the voluntary and transparent approach Calgene used during the application process.

In the second half of the book Martineau describes the impact of “corporate culture”on Cal- gene as the Flavr Savr™ entered its marketing phase with a sister enterprise Calgene Fresh. It is here where Calgene and the Flavr Savr™ unraveled. Infi ghting, new safety concerns and patent disputes set the stage for the most appalling of all scenarios: the arrival of the fi rst truckloads with liquefi ed tomato oozing from seals of the truck’s cargo containers. While the fruit durability eventually improved, the company continued to free-fall until its rebirth as a subsidiary of Monsanto. The story of the Flavr Savr™ is important because it opened the regulatory doors to future applications in agbiotech. It also shows the implications of merging scientifi c and corporate cultures.

McAfee, Kathleen. 1999. “Selling nature to save it? biodiversity and green developmentalism.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 17(2): 133-154.

SUMMARY

In this article McAfee deconstructs green developmentalism the environmental discourse embodied in the CBD. The mandate of the CBD to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity while sharing the beneﬁ ts of genetic resources has resulted in a system whereby “natural capital”or “ecosystem services”are readily converted into property rights with prices subject to “perfect-as-possible markets” (136). “Natural capital becomes abstracted and torn out of its spatial and social-historical context” (137) leaving behind the social and ecological conditions which are location speciﬁ c.

McAfee suggests that this green developmentalism “attempts to maintain a separation between environmental problems and broader political-economic issues” (135), resulting in a bias toward technological solutions as opposed to structural change. It also tends to reregulate international resource ﬂ ows as they are desired by dominant economic, institutional, and discursive actors. “Global purchasing power reﬂ ects the structural inequalities and disarticulations between industrialized and primary commodity-based regions, and between commercialized and subsistence or partial subsistence sectors within regions” (139). It is argued that, “no country in history has climbed the international economic ladder by exporting primary commodities” (146). Any attempt to manage biodiver-

71 sity requires the disclaimer that environmental valuation is both culturally speciﬁ c and profoundly shaped by power relations” (138).

McAfee, Kathleen. 2003. “Biotech Battles: Plants, Power, and Intellectual Property in the New Global Governance Regimes.” in Engineering Trouble: Biotechnology and its Discontents. edited by Rachel Schurman and Dennis Takahashi Kelso. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

SUMMARY

This work of McAfee’s exempliﬁ es the contradictory nature of the “principles” and “jurisdic- tions” of two institutional paradigms codiﬁ ed in the WTO and CBD. These seemingly disparate policies have become the grounds through which discursive contestations regarding biotechnology have taken root. In the camp where discourse is channeled through the WTO, market based regulation and the strengthening of the IPRs under TRIPS take precedence over all other rules and regulations. Likewise, those whose values are embodied elsewhere (i.e., farmer livelihoods, genetic diversity, and food security) use the CBD to justify the ecological and social criteria deemed sacrosanct.

McAfee argues that the resistance to the WTO authority through the CBD is rooted in “pre- existing patterns of inequitable resource fl ows” (254) and “the long history of removal of genetic and other resources from colonized regions” (261). The extension of commodity relations is seen by the developing world as a form of maintaining poverty and dependency. This tension is furthered by the assertion by the U.S. that “unimproved”genetic materials are part of the common heritage of man- kind and only embody improvement after certain “technocratically accepted”manipulations occur (i.e., when life science corporations make the improvements). The economic agendas of life science corporations are apparent in this context, even with their assertion of a level playing fi eld with local farmers playing the IPR game. In response to this framing, developing countries have asserted their own rights through the CBD text on “fair sharing of the benefi ts of biodiversity” and by Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.

The tensions illuminated by McAfee highlight some of the fundamental contradictions of green developmentalism, a paradigm that accepts the primacy of the market. “Green developmentalism provides nature with the means to earn its own right to survive in the world-market economy” (270). The interpretation of the CBD that asserts property rights as a management tool for biodiversity is contradicted at every turn by assertions of the rights of local peoples and alternative systems (274). Global governance debates over legal standards, the precautionary principle, harmonization of TRIPS and CBD, etc., will continue to ignore the fundamental problematic that social movements seek to address, namely the inequalities that pervade the international food system.

McAfee, Kathleen. 2003. “Neoliberalism on the molecular scale: Economic and genetic reductionism in biotechnology battles.” Geoforum 34: 203-219.

ABSTRACT

New agro-biotechnologies promise bounty from ﬁ ne-tuned molecular manipulation of

72 food crops. They already provide profi ts and export opportunities to a few transnational seed/ agrochemical/biotechnology fi rms. Against growing resistance in international arenas, industry and U.S. government spokespeople have aggressively promoted genetic engineering, arguing that it permits precise control of life processes. However, this claim is based on a deceptive form of molecular-genetic reductionism which uses outdated notions of “genes”and “genetic codes”and disregards the interactions among molecules, organisms, their environments, and their social settings. This discourse, in turn, supports economic-reductionist arguments that genetic information should be patentable and that market-based management of biotechnology will benefi t everyone. This double reductionism furthers the extension of the commodity realm to the molecular level. It treats biotechnology inputs (genetic resources) and outputs (transgenic products) as ordinary, tradable factors of production under globally standardized intellectual property regimes and bolsters proposals to regulate biotechnology under the World Trade Organization. Critics of this approach fi nd some support in the Biodiversity Convention and its Biosafety Protocol, which would allow consideration of scientifi c uncertainty, socioeconomic factors, and pluralism in intellectual property regimes. They stress that natural-resource values and knowledge about nature are inseparable from place-specifi c ecologies, cultural practices of farming and science, and power relations.

McHughen, Alan. 2000. Pandora’s Picnic Basket: The Potential and Hazards of Genetically Modiﬁ ed Foods. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

SUMMARY

McHughen takes his readers on a tour of GM foods. Filled with anecdotes, this book also has invaluably clear descriptions of the basic science involved in producing GM foods. He muses about the state of public confusion over genetics—for instance, only 40% of respondents in a recent U.K. study knew that ordinary, non-GM tomatoes contain genes. To the more than half the population who are either uncertain or believe that food is normally devoid of genes, biotechnology appears to be adding an alien contaminant—DNA—to our foods!

McHughen starts by clearing up the basics, such as elemental but poorly understood terms like DNA. DNA is not a blueprint or an invulnerable physical entity, he says, but a substance that can break. He goes on to raise sophisticated questions. Regulatory ideas are often based on false notions of controlling ecological systems. He refers to one regulator who suggested new rules by which “a farmer would have to account for each and every seed at planting and at harvest.” McHughen says, “I didn’t laugh as I noticed my counterpart wasn’t.” McHughen probes reasons to ban GM crops. He asks, Why do Europeans reject GM foods? The underlying problem is not GM, he concludes, it is agricultural intensiﬁ cation. It is easy to see that GM might exacerbate agricultural intensity in the E.U. Faced with this prospect, he wonders, is there any way to exploit GM to attenuate instead of accelerate the problems of agricultural intensity? Showing the conﬂ icts of GM, McHughen points out that the US FDA has Monsanto employees on their advisory board, and calls for greater objectivity.

73 McKibben, Bill. 2003. Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. New York: Times Books, Henry Holt and Company.

SUMMARY

Enough is an alarm bell. McKibben asks all of us to examine long neglected aspects of human nature, including the psychological bases of our desires to “enhance”humanity. He argues insightfully that this humanity is just what is at stake. Perhaps humanity emerges only in the context of balance, humility, and imperfection. By trying to forever grow in reach and power, will we jeopardize that humanity? Should we learn to say, “Enough”?

First, McKibben offers a tour of the current state of the technologies. He concludes that the world has already arrived. The genetic modiﬁ cation of humans is not only possible, it’s coming fast; with the present mix of technical progress and shifting mood, many new technologies may be both possible and adopted within a matter of not decades but years.

Next, he derides the view of would-be scientist eugenicists, deeply criticizing their myths. “If you think I exaggerate about the lack of special wisdom conferred by mere scientifi c genius,” he la- ments, “I have two words for you: “James Watson.’” He goes on with the list of Watson quotes some- body had to compile. For instance: when asked if he feared that genetic engineering could be used for eugenic ends, Watson replied, “It’s not much fun being around dumb people.” He has also said of germline engineering, it could be used to benefi t the shy, the hotheaded, and “cold fi sh.”

While McKibben is not shy of controversy, he spreads his critique fairly. He attacks not just the circle of proponents, but the politics by which bioethicists become mouthpieces. Indeed, bioethicists have become captives of science and industry. All sides in these debates have “their”bioethicists. The big biotech companies have ethics boards, and some of them pay their advisers with stock options or hand them checks for $2,000 a day. If McKibben’s tour is not reassuring, it is compelling. His goal is not to ease our worries, but to inspire louder and deeper debates, before it is too late. Perhaps pain, suffering, and cruelty are inextricable parts of our existence, without which humanity risks losing the array of feelings that make our lives worthwhile. Exploring a hidden side of human psychology, McKibben asks: How might our attempts to achieve lives of pure joy and perfection ironically undermine our very humanity?

McMichael, Phil. 2000. “The Power of Food.” Agriculture and Human Values 17: 21- 33.

ABSTRACT

In the developmentalist era, industrialization has simultaneously transformed agriculture and degraded its natural and cultural base. Food production and consumption embody the contradictory aspects of this transformation. This paper argues that the crisis of development has generated two basic responses: (1) the attempt to redeﬁ ne development as a global project, including harnessing biotechnology to resolve the food security question, and (2) a series of countermovements attempt- ing to simultaneously reassert the value of local, organic foods, and challenge the attempt on the part of food corporations and national and global institutions to subject the food question to market 74 solutions. It is proposed that the power of food lies in its material and symbolic functions of linking nature, human survival, health, culture and livelihood as a focus of resistance to corporate takeover of life itself.

Mgbeoji, Ikechi. 2001. “Patents and Traditional Knowledge of the Uses of Plants: Is a Communal Patent Regime Part of the Solution to the Scourge of Biopiracy?” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 9(1): 163-186.

SUMMARY

This work includes an overview of the CBD, the debate over the patentability of bio- cultural knowledge, and a critique of the current patent system. There are two major questions concerning the traditional knowledge of the uses of plants. Has it been stolen (biopiracy)? And will it be lost? The author suggests that these normative notions can be addressed through the international patent system by adopting a communal patent regime with local legislative control. A strategy is proposed to ascribe rights to the providers of bio-cultural knowledge that avoids unwanted appropriation and exploitation by using the language and concepts of article 8(j) of the CBD as a tool of political economy.

Middendorf, Gerad and Lawrence Busch 1997. “Inquiry for the Public Good: democratic participation in agricultural research.” Agriculture and Human Values 14: 45-57.

ABSTRACT

In recent decades, constituencies served by land-grant agricultural research have experienced sig- niﬁ cant demographic and political changes, yet most research institutions have not fully responded to address the concerns of a changing clientele base. Thus, the authors have seen continuing controversies over technologies produced by land-grant agricultural research. While a number of scholars have called for a more participatory agricultural science establishment, little is understood about the process of enhancing and institutionalizing participation in the U.S. agricultural research enterprise. This paper ﬁ rst examines some of the important issues surrounding citizen participation in science and technology policy. It then reviews and assesses various institutional mechanisms for participation that have been implemented in diverse settings by institutions of science and technology. Based on evidence from the experiences of these institutions, the paper argues that a closer approximation of the public good can be achieved by encouraging the participation of the fullest range possible of constituents as an integral part of the process of setting research priorities.

Mills, Lisa N. 2002. Science and Social Context: The Regulation of Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone in North America. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

SUMMARY

The focus of this work is how scientiﬁ c evidence is produced and interpreted at the interface of science and policy. Mills employs a comparative framework to examine the controversy over r-BGH (i.e. BST), a GE hormone brought to market by Monsanto used to increase milk production in

75 cows, as it unfolded in the U.S. and in Canada. The different treatment of the drug by the FDA and Health Canada demonstrates differing interpretations of the same evidence as it was examined by regulatory ofﬁ cials. The U.S. determined that any impacts on animal health were manageable while Canada assumed that these were serious enough to warrant a ban. Situating the differing approaches reveals much about the social context in which regulatory decisions are made. For example, in the U.S. the burden of managing these concerns rests on the farmer, while in Canada it is the responsibility of the regulatory agencies (9).

Mills suggests it is the “background assumptions” which provide “a means by which [social] values...enter the reasoning process” in policy deliberation (4). This brings her to focus on interpretations of scientists as they are guided by the “goals and mandate” of the institutions in which they are embedded as well as the broader political economy of agricultural biotechnology. Mills contrasts the approaches of regulatory, industry and academic scientists, pointing to the particularly diffi cult position of regulatory scientists who are required to maintain corporate confi dentiality and public confi dence. She examines the political context for regulation in Canada and the U.S., while thoroughly reviewing the scientifi c literature that infl uenced the risk debate.

Mills also underscores how social criteria are overlooked in the assessment of r-BGH. It was well known that the milk quota system had driven the price of milk quite low. Increased productivity of dairy cows would further reduce those prices, likely to the detriment of the smaller farmers. These questions, as well as questions about “the consequences for human health of perceived health risks and the potential to aggravate latent risks in the food system” (147), were bracketed off by the regulatory agencies. This work includes an excellent general overview of the political economy of biotechnology, situating the regulation of, and resistance to, r-BGH in the larger context of the breakdown in the surplus food regime and the global restructuring of food production (152). The approval of r-BGH hinged on its manageability, which could be seen as an artifact of the regulatory agencies differing contexts and approaches to the acceptability of certain risks (149). This work shows the difﬁ culty in separating safety and economic issues in policy deliberations over scientiﬁ c evidence and the need for alternative means for evaluating and regulating technology.

Mol, Arthur. P. J. and Harriet Bulkeley. 2002. “Food Risks and the Environment: Chang- ing Perspectives in a Changing Social Order.” Journal of Environmental Policy and Plan- ning 4: 185-195.

ABSTRACT

Risks related to food production and consumption are not a recent phenomenon. Through agricultural practices, the transport of agricultural and food products, the processing of food, its storage, and fi nally the consumption of food, risks have been externalized, mediated, contested and ingested. But agrofood systems have also been paralleled by routinized practices and institutions that attempt to reduce risks and sustain trust among the many actors involved in these food regimes. However, both the (defi nition of) food risks and the institutions and discourses used to dispel anxiety and build trust are far from stable throughout time. In the contemporary modern world-order, food risks and the practices and institutions dealing with these risks refl ect the signifi cant transformations in the agrofood system, the changing nature of the risks involved in food production and

76 consumption, and the modifi cations in scientifi c risk assessment and risk management. This article provides an overview of the current debates, discussions and practices on actual and potential institutional transformations that parallel the emergence, assessment and management of food risks in refl exive modernity.

Mooney, Pat Roy. 1983. “The Law of the Seed: Another Development and Plant Genetic Resources.” Development Dialogue 1-2: 1-173.

SUMMARY

Mooney’s work is still relevant today. He calls for attention to the problem of genetic erosion and suggests that the problem is intimately linked to the issue of plant breeders’ rights. At the time of writing the seed industry was being concentrated into the MNCs such as Royal Dutch/Shell, Ciba-Geigy, and Sandoz. While the actors have morphed, control of germplasm by MNCs continues today as the likes of Monsanto, Bayer CropScience, Dupont, and Dow dominate the global seed supply. As early as 1983, Mooney correctly predicted that the result of such control would be the packaging of high-input chemicals and genetically uniform crops, a signiﬁ cant threat to food security.

Mooney’s work begins with an overview of the Vavilov Centers of diversity and the role of genes from the South in crop improvements. The focus is to underscore the importance of crop genetic diversity and the rapid pace of genetic erosion, calling for international efforts to confront these dangers. His comprehensive review of seed storage facilities and gene banks demonstrates the shortcomings of exclusively ex situ conservation (73-79). Accordingly, international priority should be the establishment of an international gene bank under international control coupled with in situ conservation of germplasm. In developing an argument for in situ conservation, where germplasm can be inexpensively multiplied, Mooney suggests that farmers could be paid to maintain varieties in the ﬁ eld in conjunction with national gene banks and botanical gardens. Any international convention adopted by the FAO, he suggests, should assert the South’s right to beneﬁ t from their botanical treasures and further their own agricultural development. More succinctly, to protect germplasm he suggests the development of the following facilities: biospheres with farmers as curators, an international gene bank system, and national conservation centers. A valuable contribution to this special issue is the extensive documentation of the politics leading to FAO resolution 6/81 concerning the control and exchange of genetic resources and the politics leading to the establishment of the Inter- national Board for Plant Genetic Resources, a “stepchild” of CGIAR and FAO (65). The legacy of this convention continues on today and the historical location of the perspectives provides an interesting baseline for comparative analysis.

Mushita, Andrew and Carol Thompson. 2002. “Patenting Biodiversity? Rejecting WTO/ TRIPS in Southern Africa.” Global Environmental Politics 2(1): 65-82.

ABSTRACT

The year 2000 was the deadline for developing countries to bring their national laws into compliance with TRIPS for plants and animals under the WTO. The TRIPS agreement is the ﬁ rst international instrument to require intellectual property protection for living forms (microorgan-

77 isms), and the goal was to extend it to all plants and animals (Article 27.3b). However, the transition to one universal intellectual property law is not proceeding as scripted. After briefl y summarizing a long tradition of debate about intellectual property, this article fi rst analyzes what is new and different about one universal law under the WTO. It then proposes that extending IPRs to seeds and plants challenges scientifi c logic and threatens biodiversity. Because of these problems, Southern Africa is devising alternatives to the patenting of biodiversity. The focus of the article is an analysis of Southern African policy, which combines principles from the CBD and the IU as well as local solutions. This policy affi rms farmers’ and community rights, while not denying the important role of the state and international protocols. The proposed legislation is not only a model for Africa, but also for other developing countries to resolve the incongruities between TRIPS of the WTO and the CBD over the patenting of living organisms.

National Research Council. 2002. Environmental Effects of Transgenic Plants: The Scope and Adequacy of Regulation. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

SUMMARY

This comprehensive report on the environmental effects of transgenic plants evolved out of a request by the USDA to evaluate the adequacy of APHIS regulatory oversight. The report sees transgenic plants as posing no novel hazards a priori, but sees speciﬁ c traits as posing unique risks. The report takes issue with both the design of ecological risk assessment as well as the adequacy of regulatory oversight in determining biosafety. Regarding regulatory oversight, it points to closing loopholes in the deregulation process, suggests a more transparent review procedure, and advocates a system of post-commercial testing and monitoring. It suggests that the process-based regulatory oversight, while historically providing a regulatory trigger, is wholly inadequate. It points to risks posed by convention crops as well and suggests a system that regulates crops based on phenotypic traits instead of process.

National Research Council. 2001. Opportunities in Biotechnology for Future Army Ap- plications. Washington, D.C: National Academies Press.

SUMMARY

This National Academy Press report details the fourteen major areas of uses of biotechnology in the military, and explores future visions. Therapeutic drugs and vaccines are the highest priority area of research, followed by such potentially beneﬁ cial areas as bioinspired and hybrid materials, biological sources of energy such as biological photovoltaics. The report focuses on the materials, industry, and future direction of the military. Such a vision raises deep social and ethical questions. In recent years, the connections between war and environmental degradation have being increasingly revealed, especially with regards to largely wars sponsored by the U.S. in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Such developments raise questions about the environmental morality underlying the very foundations of military technologies.

78 Nestle, Marion. 2003. Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism. Berkeley: University of California Press.

SUMMARY

Nestle’s book sets out to examine the ways in which science is used to evaluate and justify how risks are interpreted into policy. The work extends beyond an exclusive focus on biotechnology, looking at the multiple ways the food and agricultural industry interests use science in regulatory matters as a means to acheive commercial goals. Her main conclusion is that “food safety is as much a matter of politics as it is of science.”

Her examination of biotechnology begins by looking at the Starlink™ corn controversy and evaluating how the questions of science became political as the question of risks became thoroughly interrogated after Starlink™ corn was found in the food system before it had been approved for human consumption the regulatory process. What is interesting about the emerging biopolitics is how activists and consumer groups opportunistically expose concerns deemed legitimate (i.e., food safety) to pursue interests that otherwise are excluded from discussion (i.e., social impacts). Likewise, this is exempliﬁ ed in her discussion of the approval process for Calgene’s Flavr Savr™.

What Nestle does best in this work is demonstrate the disparity in the distribution of risks. “Consumers bear the burden of ensuring safe food” (24) as the regulatory process is often more concerned about inhibiting technological progress than actually protecting consumers and the environment. Nestle provides many other anecdotes about biotechnology (golden rice, labeling, r-BGH, etc.). Her analysis of regulatory politics is her greatest contribution. She suggests that science is perhaps qualiﬁ ed to estimate risk, but the determination of the acceptability of these risks is a matter for public debate.

Nigh, Ronald. 2002. “Maya medicine in the biological gaze: bioprospecting research as herbal fetishism.” Current Anthropology 43(3): 451-478.

ABSTRACT

The relationship of human societies to territory and natural resources is being drastically altered by a series of global agreements concerning trade, intellectual property, and the conservation and use of genetic resources. Through a characteristic style of collective appropriation of their tropical ecosystems, Maya societies have created local institutions for governing access to their common resources. However, new mechanisms of global governance require access to Maya biodiversity for world commercial interests. The Chiapas Highland Maya already face this prospect in the International Coop- erative Biodiversity Group drug discovery project, which proposes to use Maya medical knowledge to screen plants for potential pharmaceuticals. The ethnobiological focus of the project emphasizes the naturalistic aspects of Maya medicine, primarily the use of herbal remedies. This biological gaze decontextualizes the situated knowledge of

Maya healers, ignoring the cultural context in which they create and apply that knowledge. The search for raw materials for the production of universal medical technology results in symbolic violence to the cultural logic of Maya peoples. Only the full recognition of Maya peoples’ collec- 79 tive rights to territory and respect for their local common-resource institutions will provide ultimate protection for their cultural and natural patrimony.

Paarlberg, Robert L. 2001. The Politics of Precaution: Genetically Modiﬁ ed Crops in De- veloping Countries. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press.

SUMMARY

Paarlberg researches a cross-section of international policy on transgenic crops. He looks at several aspects of policy choices: intellectual property rights, biosafety policy, trade policy, food safety and consumer choice policy, and public research investment policy. Policies in Brazil, China, India and Kenya are compared and analyzed. Several results emerge from Paarlberg’s questioning of the deep divide in opinion between industrialized countries—notably the U.S. and the E.U.. While some still think developing countries have to accept whatever technologies they receive from the industrialized world, the choices actually being made are far more complex. Nonetheless, it seems that policy differences in the four countries are partially based upon the differential ability of these countries to resist international inﬂ uence. One important ﬁ nding is that, albeit to different degrees, Kenya, Brazil and India have all recently adopted national policies that are slowing the spread of transgenic crops within their own borders. Paarlberg also analyzes why China has remained more im- mune to anti-transgenic pressures, and opted to expand use of transgenics.

Parayil, Govindan. 2003. “Mapping technological trajectories of the Green Revolution and the Gene Revolution from modernization to globalization.” Research Policy 32(6): 971-990.

ABSTRACT

The dynamics of technology development along the technological trajectories of the Green Rev- olution and the Gene Revolution can be explained by the social morphologies of modernization and globalization. The Green Revolution was shaped by the exigencies of modernization, while the Gene Revolution is being shaped by the imperatives of neo-liberal economic globalization. Innovation, development and diffusion of technologies followed different trajectories in these two realms because of being part of different innovation systems. Considerations of private gain and proﬁ t in the forms of high returns to shareholders of agro-biotech corporations of global reach, largely determine the dynamics of technological innovation in the Gene Revolution. Technology transfer and local adaptive work in the Green Revolution was carried out in the international public domain with the objective of developing research capacity in post-colonial Third World agriculture to increase food production to avert hunger-led political insurrection during the Cold War. Differentiating these two trajectories is important not only due to the normative implications inherent in comparing the impacts of these two “revolutions,”but also due to the important lessons we learn about how different contexts of innovation in the same technology cluster could evolve into contrasting research policy regimes.

80 Parry, Bronwyn. 2000. “The Fate of the Collections: Social Justice and the Annexation of Plant Genetic Resources.” in People, Plants, & Justice: The Politics of Nature Conserva- tion. Charles Zerner ed. New York: Columbia University Press.

SUMMARY

Part of a larger collection on conservation politics, Parry’s chapter outlines the debate that posits conservation through bioprospecting versus bioimperialism or biocolonialism. Parry begins a discussion on what actually happens to the genetic resources after they leave their collection sites, and the neglected role of spatial dynamics in such processes. “[The] intention here is to illustrate the central role that spatial relations play in the actual mechanics of collecting and thus in the inherently political process of annexing and monopolizing speciﬁ c collections of materials” (375).

Parry treats three spatial processes in particular. The ordering of nature is what gives exotic materials new value in new locales of codiﬁ ed knowledge, establishing the demand to import. Explor- ing and exploiting genetic resources also requires “stabilizing”and “mobilizing”nature through new technologies, a process of decontextualization that requires only the reproduction of “simply environmental conditions, not ecosystems” (379). Further the recirculation of the new materials and information imbues the collector with power “through strategic utilization, exchange, or trade” (380). In many ways, the value of genetic resources is only through its utilization and exploitation. Parry reviews the new technologies and new repositories, or “centers of calculation” (399) put into use for collections since the late 1980s. Invoking Castell’s concept of a “spaces of ﬂ ows,” Parry demonstrates the new role of genetic information in the global economy; it transfers genetic material into genetic information requiring a reassessment of current policies toward genetic resources (and their focus on materiality) as they relate to conservation and social justice.

Parry, Bronwyn. 2002. “Cultures of Knowledge: Investigating Intellectual Property Rights and Relations in the Paciﬁ c.” Antipode 34(4): 679-706.

ABSTRACT

Although often presented as inherently normative, Euro-American systems of IPR law are, like earlier systems of biological classifi cation, best understood as particular, culturally defi ned systems for codifying knowledge employed to discipline objects, phenomena and social relations. Despite their partiality, such systems have successfully colonized new domains, recently underpinning a new uniform global regime for the protection of IPRs (GATT/WTO/TRIPs). This paper reveals the central role that global institutions now play in accelerating the universalisation of specifi c “cultures of regulation”: acting as powerful vectors for the transmission of particular types of knowledge and arbiters of the “normative” bases of global regulatory regimes. Recent empirical evidence from the Pa- cifi c illustrates how the TRIPS regime facilitates the commodifi cation and appropriation of intellectual, cultural and biological resources in that region and highlights the development of alternative sui generis systems of IPR protection that challenge the normativity and hegemony of this regime. The article serves as an entry point for further research into the geography of knowledge systems the way in which the colonization of certain regulatory systems and forms facilitates the pursuit of particular interests or sustains relations of domination.

81 Patrice, Jean, Ed. 2000. Éthique et Génétique. Conférence à l’Université française du Paciﬁ que, L’Harmattan.

SUMMARY

This book is based on a conference that aimed to demonstrate the urgency of familiarizing the public with diverse aspects of biotechnologies, including not only the scientiﬁ c and economic aspects, but also the social, legal, and ethical implications. Bringing public scrutiny to these issues, say the organizers—a group of scientists, jurists, philosophers, religious leaders and students—is a democratic imperative.

To this end, the group met to start a dialogue on these diverse implications of biotechnologies. A great vigilance is necessary, writes Patrice Jean, if people are to attempt to avoid massive social degradation or catastrophe. The nature of the conference was affected partially by the law, which Jean says, often has more to do with the art of posing questions than of resolving them. Unlike many academic gatherings, intended on furthering research, participants in this conference aimed to raise questions, which they achieved in abundance. Marie-Sybille refers to an old French dictum “He who makes an egg makes something new.” Yes, says Marie-Sybille, but until when? Such queries launched the group into the puzzling questions raised by the prospects of a new eugenics.

Prudham, Scott. 2003. “Taming Trees: Capital, Science, and Nature in Paciﬁ c Slope Tree Improvement.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 93(3): 636-656.

ABSTRACT

This article traces the emergence of industrial tree improvement along the Paciﬁ c Slope of western Oregon and Washington. Anxieties about timber famine in the United

States prompted research on forest genetics and Douglas-fi r provenance as far back as 1913, while diminishing supplies of old-growth timber resources in this region led to tree improvement—systematic tree breeding to enhance commercially attractive characteristics—on an industrial scale beginning in the 1950s and 1960s. Throughout, tree improvement has been characterized by a preponderance of cooperation among private, otherwise competitive capitalist fi rms, with considerable support from state agencies and from science in both research and applied settings. Pacifi c Slope tree improvement is explored as a case study of the social production of nature by capital and science, particularly the ways in which, in response to natural-resource constraints, the reproductive biology of forest trees has been increasingly targeted, appropriated, and subsumed as a source of industrial productivity. The general absence of exclusively private, proprietary approaches to tree improvement is discussed as a refl ection of a set of particular biophysical challenges, including the “problem” of biological time. Thus, while biophysical nature is increasingly socially produced through tree improvement, the social organization of tree improvement bears the inscription of biophysical nature. The article closes with an examination of one of the main avenues by which biotechnology -including genetic engineering—is being incorporated into tree improvement. The new technological possibilities and opportunities for establishing exclusive property rights over plant varieties that biotechnology entails may lead to a more complete model of commodifi cation in tree improvement. Some evidence of such change is already apparent. Though forestry biotechnology is subject to regulatory 82 and wider social sanction, its advent reinforces a main theme in the article: that social and environmental change are interlocking, dialectical processes.

Pusztai, Arpad. 2002. “GM Food Safety: Scientiﬁ c and Institutional Issues.” Science as Culture 11(1): 69-92.

SUMMARY

Some suggest that studies of the effects of GM potatoes on rats by Pusztai and his peers, along with the accompanying media coverage, sparked the current controversy over the safety of GM foods in Europe. His controversial paper was published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet and was followed by criticism from the scientifi c establishment including the Royal Society. In this paper, he recounts the peer review and publication process and the subsequent fallout that cost Pusztai his job and reputation amongst the scientifi c community. He suggests that the way his scientifi c evidence was heavily criticized refl ects changes in the ways that science is practiced and communicated and embodies institutional biases held by scientifi c administrators.

Pusztai levels much of the blame for science’s inability to act in the public interest on the commercialization of university research initiated by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Thatcher in the 1980s. By interrogating his own story he points to the ways that industry is able to shape the direction of research. His research on lectins was funded by industry. Subsequent to his ﬁ ndings, the company did not allow the publication of his results and prevented him from doing further research.

Pusztai argues that the concern is not whether or not GM foods are safe, “but whether scientifi c debate is conducted in an ethical manner” (82). Science has been reluctant to accept that there are uncertainties in need of investigation and that differences do exist between GM and conventional foods. According to Pusztai, science claims of control do not refl ect the unpredictability and instability associated with transposition and phenotypic variability. As for environmental risks, Pusztai underscores the lack of tri-trophic ecological studies needed to assess the phenotypic behavior of novel traits in the environment. As a parting thought, Pusztai argues for bringing ethical and social considerations into the evaluation of the scientifi c issues either from the scientists themselves or from deliberative social institutions.

Rabinow, Paul. 1996. Making PCR: A Story of Biotechnology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

SUMMARY

This anthropological text focuses on the invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) during the 1980s, through the concept’s adoption as a routine component of every molecular biology laboratory. It narrates the events that unfolded at the Cetus Corporation and details the conﬂ icts therein, particularly those between the managerial and scientiﬁ c cultures. Through an ethnographic lens, interviews with business leaders, scientists, and technicians provide insight into the “representation of science as a practice and a vocation” (17). Rabinow frames his work by suggesting that “the

83 truths in molecular biology emerge from model systems and techniques used to create and study them” (20); this makes nature into a subject of intervention, allowing the biosciences to remake “nature according to our own terms” (20).

Reed, Matthew. 2002. “Rebels from the Crown Down: The Organic Movement’s Revolt against Agricultural Biotechnology.” Science as Culture 11(4): 481-504.

SUMMARY

This article discusses the roots of the opposition to agricultural biotechnology by the organic agriculture movement, drawing from interviews from campaign groups and an email list-serve run by the Genetic Engineering Network. It argues that “the marriage of daily practices and dramatic protest” made for a more successful anti-GM movement (483). In particular it focuses on the role of the Soil Association and its antecedents in bringing a more holistic approach to agricultural science framed in the context of sustainability. The paper uses discourse analysis to understand the power of invoking metaphor and symbols to produce “new entities and representations” (482) while revealing the “cultural roots of science” (483). It shows how the Soil Association’s campaign against agricultural biotechnology based on concerns about safety, democracy and reliability “shows careful use of symbols and the outlining of “scripts”that preﬁ gure potential outcomes” (499); it was able to use its own science to engage with a science of a less democratic form. Thus, the Soil Association was able to take on the institutional forms of science as they are practiced by MNCs.

Regis, Ed. 1999. The Biology of Doom: The History of America’s Secret Germ Warfare Project. New York, Henry Holt & Company.

SUMMARY

Regis traces the history of biological warfare from the 1920s to the end of the 20th century. By the 1940s a biological weapons race was on. Japanese had a ten-year lead, followed by Europeans, Canadians, and last the Americans. Then Americans began to catch up. The book opens with a description from 1955, on Dugway Proving Ground, BW Grid No. 4 in Utah. A normal ﬁ eld trial, Regis explains, would have included packs of caged animals waiting for clouds of airborne infectious agents to wash over them. Hours, days or weeks later most would show symptoms of the disease and many would have died. The experiment this day included thirty humans, set out on a biological warfare test grid exactly as if they were animals. In fact, next to each group of three human beings there was a cage of seven rhesus monkeys and a cage of guinea pigs. “The test line is thus a tidy biological cross section,” says Regis, “fair and democratic, with no trace of species chauvinism anywhere in evidence.”

Biological warfare has been called “a natural way of dying,” a method of killing people with the very agents that nature itself had created and regularly applied to the task. Regis’ history provides another story. He suggests the reason biological weapons have not been used more often is that they “lacked the single most important ingredient of any effective weapon, an immediate visual display of overwhelming power and brute strength.” To spare ourselves, Regis suggests, we have to take an active stance towards prevention.

84 Regis, Ed. 2003. The Info Mesa: Science, Business, and the New Age Alchemy on the Santa Fe Plateau. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

SUMMARY

Regis narrates the history of a place he terms “the Info Mesa”where a small fortune has been made working at the nexus of applied science and technology in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, in and around Santa Fe, New Mexico. He follows actors from new fi rms that rose out of the information revolution to recent startups that have changed the way reality is reduced to bioinformation using automated knowledge discovery in areas like biotechnology and genomics. The Info Mesa has acted as an engine of regional economic growth as Regis paints parallels between the Info Mesa and Silicon Valley. The major distinction, he argues, is that the Info Mesa deals exclusively in scientifi c knowledge, a commodity that does not require factories, assembly plants, or the workers that inhabit them. Further, the nature of the fi eld requires ties with academics to channel science into commercial ends. These fi rms generally work on a range of items like software for processing bio-chemicals, developing bio-sensors, and analyzing DNA. The region’s strength in this fi eld helped determine the relocation of the National Center for Genome Resources to the Santa Fe area in 1994, keeping the region closely tied to the business of genomics and developments in biotechnology and the life sciences more generally. Especially noteworthy are the ways in that scientifi c and technological innovation is pursued and funded and how this new marriage of computer science and biology lay the foundation for how this bioinformation is adopted by the chemical, pharmaceutical, and life sciences industries.

Resnik, David B. 2003. “A Biotechnology Patent Pool: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?” The Journal of Philosophy, Science & Law 3. Available online: http://www.psljournal.com/ archives/papers/biotechPatent.cfm

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the idea of forming a patent pool in order to address some of the licensing problems in the biotechnology industry. The pool would be an independent, non-proﬁ t corporation that would manage patents and have the authority to grant licenses. The patent pool would not be a purely altruistic venture, since it would charge licensing fees. The pool would charge the market price for licensing services and reimburse patent holders for licensing activities. The pool would also provide patent holders with a minimum income based on a percentage of royalties generated from the pool. The pool would include patents on a variety of materials and methods that play an important role in biotechnology. It would also be international in scope, with the power to grant licenses in different countries.

Rifkin, Jeremy. 1983. Algeny. New York: The Viking Press.

SUMMARY

After twenty years, this is still one of the most important books about biotechnologies. In 1983, long before biotechnology was a household word, Jeremy Rifkin was probing the advent of

85 biotechnologies, charting the most pressing issues. Describing advances in genetics that took place in the 1960s and 1970s, Rifkin signaled a startling scientifi c development: biological knowledge was doubling every fi ve years, and in the fi eld of genetics, the quantity of information was doubling every two years. As a result, he said, we virtually hurled ourselves into the age of biotechnology. While the nation had begun to turn its attention to the dangers of nuclear war, he said, little or no debate was taking place over the emergence of an entirely new technology that in time could very well pose as serious a threat to the existence of life on this planet as the nuclear bomb itself. With the arrival of bioengineering, Rifkin continued, humanity was approaching a crossroads—using the same technological principles we now employ in our industrial processes it would soon be possible to engineer and produce living systems. Algeny, an early critique of the era of biotechnology, questioned the intellectual foundation of Western thought that helped create it, and the changing concept of nature it might create.

Rifkin, Jeremy. 1998. The Biotech Century: Harnassing the Gene and Remaking the World. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Putnam.

SUMMARY

The Biotech Century describes the panorama of emerging biotechnologies at the dawn of the 21st century. Rifkin is sometimes called biotech’s largest critic-- he is a gadﬂ y, stressing the potentially disastrous side of biotechnologies, and all our uncertainties surrounding them. The effects of biotechnologies, in multiple manifestations, may be enormous, he says, the most radical technology since ﬁ re. Rifkin invites all to the debate, hoping to give it more depth and detail.

Rifkin covers a great range of questions—economics, politics, law, the environment, eugenics, and social questions. He argues that the marriage of biotechnology and informatics may be quite inﬂ uential, hypothesizing the many changes this might bring about. Rifkin calls for deep and broad reﬂ ection, appropriate bans, and regulations.

Rissler, Jane and Margaret Mellon. 1996. The Ecological Risks of Engineered Crops. Cam- bridge: MIT Press.

SUMMARY

This book by two authors from the Union of Concerned Scientists presents an ecological approach to identifying GM crops that pose the greatest ecological concern. It argues that an experimental protocol can help evaluate the biosafety of GM crops in the pre-commercialization phase, but requires that crops be evaluated in the environments in which they will be introduced to garner any ecological merit. The authors advocate a precautionary approach to risk assessment and build precaution into their assessment procedures. Since 1996 the authors have periodically updated their data on the Union of Concerned Scientists website.

86 Rose, Steven. 1998. Lifelines: Biology Beyond Determinism Oxford: Oxford University Press.

SUMMARY

In Lifelines, Rose attempts to counter reductionist views in biology, arguing we must move beyond pure reductionism if we are to shed light on harder questions in biology. A challenging part of the scientifi c process, Rose says, is that questions have metaquestions. This raises questions about the scientifi c use of metaphor, distinguishing how metaphor, analogy and homology function in the making of scientifi c theory. In rejection of Watson’s claim that genes “might even be seen as counterparts to atoms,” Rose says macroscopic study is necessary to understanding genetic functioning. Thus he questions the tendency in biology to focus on parts to the exclusion of larger scales, such as the whole organism. Rose debunks the common notion that reductionist explanations can fully explain any biological phenomena. Analyzing the case of a frog jumping, he systematically describes the many environmental scales necessary to understanding a biological event. Independently, a physi- ologist, community ecologist or landscape ecologist, may have as many different explanations. Syn- thesizing these explanations will yield a better understanding. By considering the question from the perspective of different biological disciplines and different scales, he shows how a full understanding of biological organisms or processes must necessarily incorporate not only reductionist analyses, but also synoptic and synthetic analyses.

Sarkar, Sahotra. 1998. Genetics and Reductionism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

SUMMARY

This book in the Cambridge series on the philosophy of biology explores the way we in- terpret genetics. Analyzing reductionism in genetics, Sarkar confronts some of the underlying questions about the nature of genetics that help us evaluate biotechnologies. Common views of “genetic”are fl awed, says Sarkar. Attempts to defi ne what is genetic by distinguishing it from what is “environmental”will break down. Making this distinction is diffi cult if not impossible. A second faulty approach is the common attempt to base a defi nition of “genetic”on whether some gene or set of genes “causes”the genesis of a particular feature. This approach fails, argues Sarkar, because it simply transfers the diffi culty of defi ning “genetic”to the even more troublesome problem of defi n- ing “cause’. It would appear that any reasonable defi nition of “cause”would fi nd both genes and some environmental factors to be causes of any organismic feature of interest. Defi ning “genetic”is hard enough that some philosophers have suggested that the attempt simply be abandoned.

Sarkar’s goal of this book is to defi ne “genetic’, if, he says, by a circuitous route. After laying out the current conceptions of “genetic’, he spends much of the book arguing that common views are misleading, and suggesting seven points about the risks of reductionism in the context of genetics. He concludes that very little of what is popularly claimed to be genetic survives as such. He critiques many defi nitions of genetics he calls illegitimate, in favor of a more thorough analysis of genetic methodology, and in particular, genetic explanation. He critiques the reduction to genetics, or the belief that the best explanation for a feature of an organism must be defi ned in terms of genetics.

87 His analysis signals the rift between the popular idea of genetic explanation of many traits and the acknowledgement of most geneticists that the successful modiﬁ cation of traits through intervention at genetic levels may be far less plausible than through intervention at environmental levels.

Scoones, Ian. 2002. Agricultural Biotechnology and Food Security: Exploring the Debate. Brighton, U.K.: Institute for Development Studies.

ABSTRACT

Many claims and counter-claims are made about the potentials for new agricultural biotechnologies in improving food security, particularly in the developing world. This paper explores the various dimensions of the debate, looking at the assumptions of the arguments made by various protago- nists and situating current discussions about biotechnology in broader debates about food security. After looking briefl y at what is meant by the term “agricultural biotechnology’, the paper turns to exploring the multiple meanings of the term, food security. A number of policy narratives are identifi ed, emphasizing perspectives associated with productionist, sustainable agriculture, nutrition, trade, agri-food political economy, access and entitlements and livelihood policies. The paper then looks at the arguments made for and against biotechnology by various actors in the current policy debate, and how these link to different policy perspectives on food security. A number of positions are identifi ed, each with different underlying assumptions and implications for policy and practice. The paper then concludes with a review of some of the key axes of the contemporary debate, identifying points of dispute and confl ict.

Scoones, Ian. 2002. Science, policy and regulation: challenges for agricultural biotechnology in developing countries. Brighton, U.K.: Institute for Development Studies.

ABSTRACT

What is the relationship between science, policy and regulation in the context of debates about the future of agricultural biotechnology? This paper explores the real world of policy-making and regulation surrounding agricultural biotechnology. The starting point is a view of policy-making which is non-linear, incremental, contested and negotiated. This involves a critical examination of the competing discourses and narratives which frame the debate, the forms of practice that make up day-to-day actions in policy and regulatory arenas, the underlying political, economic, and social interests which are both infl uential and excluded, and the complex and often changing networks of actors involved. The paper fi rst outlines some of the particular challenges for biotechnology policy and regulation. The following section explores notions of “sound science”and “precaution”in the context of risk assessment before examining the application of science in biotechnology policy and regulation through a series of examples. These show how regulatory science sets an interpretive frame for the establishment and implementation of regulations. Highlighting the social and political commitments of such scientifi c knowledge, the notion of an abstract, objective “sound science”as the foundation for regulatory decision-making can be opened up to questioning. Finally, particular issues for developing countries are raised, with the conclusion outlining some of the challenges for regulatory policy.

88 Schurman, Rachel A. and William A. Munro. 2003. “Making Biotech History: Social Resistance to Agricultural Biotechnology and the Future of the Biotechnology Industry.” in Engineering Trouble: Biotechnology and its Discontents, edited by Rachel Schurman & Dennis Takahashi Kelso. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

SUMMARY

The rise of the anti-biotech movement has long been “overlooked by analysts of world-food- system restructuring” (113). The authors argue that social movements are under-appreciated for their “role in shaping patterns of food production, consumption, and distribution” (113). They argue that resistance to agricultural biotechnology does not rest on a politics of consumption alone, but that social movements provide impetus for resistance through their fostering of awareness and motivation. The authors characterize the anti-biotech movement as it affects regulatory politics and conditions the conduct of MNCs. They point to the new tactics employed by social movements as they push for greater state accountability, inﬂ uence global governance, and “complicate... the economic lives of biotechnology corporations” (123).

Shand, Hope. 2001. “Gene Giants: Understanding the Life Industry.” in Redesigning Life?: The Worldwide Challenge to Genetic Engineering. edited by Brian Tokar. London: Zed Books.

SUMMARY

It is impossible to understand biotechnology without examining the transnational enterprises that are in the business of patenting, engineering, controlling, and proﬁ ting from life. Understand- ing the biotechnology business means recognizing and analyzing the process by which all parts of life are being privatized and market dominance has combined with monopoly patents to yield a steadily shrinking number of corporate giants that have unprecedented control over commercial food and farming. Shand analyzes the various trends involved in the rise of commercial biotechnology, which began in the early 1970s. For instance, traditional boundaries between pharmaceutical, biotechnology, agribusiness, food, chemicals, cosmetics and energy sectors are blurring and eroding. The common denominator of biology is leading to a focus of many or all of these industries on: high- throughput screening, combinatorial chemistry, transgenics, bioinformatics, and genomics. Shand looks at industries such as food and beverages, seeds, agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, and human genomics. She supports a claim made by civil society organizations in 1988, at the close of a meeting on biotechnologies in Bogeve, France—If a society already has injustice, new technologies will tend to exacerbate those disparities.

Smith-Hughes, Sally. 2001. “Making Dollars Out of DNA: The First Major Patent in Biotechnology and the Commercialization of Molecular Biology.” Isis 92(3): 541-575.

ABSTRACT

In 1973-1974 Stanley N. Cohen of Stanford and Herbert W. Boyer of the University of Cali- fornia, San Francisco, developed a laboratory process for joining and replicating DNA from different

89 species. In 1974 Stanford and UC applied for a patent on the recombinant DNA process; the U.S. patent ofﬁ ce granted it in 1980. This essay describes how the patenting procedure was shaped by the concurrent recombinant DNA controversy, tension over the commercialization of research, and national expectations for high technology as a boost to the American economy. This essay concludes with a discussion of the patent as a turning point in the commercialization of molecular biology and a harbinger of the social and ethical issues associated with biotechnology today.

Stone, Glenn Davis. 2002. “Both Sides Now: Fallacies in the genetic modiﬁ cation wars, implications for developing countries, and anthropological perspectives.” Current An- thropology 43(4): 611-630.

SUMMARY

Wading through the discourse of biotechnology that emerges from the polar positions of advocates and critics, Stone challenges both sides to discern between public and corporate offerings in determining the relevance of biotechnology to helping developing countries in deal with issues of food security. The rhetorical arena grants little space for such considerations as the “monolithic project” (611) of biotechnology and development moves forward as each side campaigns for their respective poster children: “golden rice”and “terminator technology.”The industry plays the “Malthus card” (614) as it justiﬁ es biotechnology as a “need to produce more food for developing countries” (616) ignoring the deepening crisis of overproduction, a specter that already haunts certain countries affected by hunger. A similar critique is leveled at the green lobby who “defy the potential” (616) for public-oriented crops. Stone points to improvements that could be made to subsistence crops such as cassava, which is difﬁ cult to improve through conventional means (inbreeding depression, vegetative reproduction, etc.).

Signifi cant inroads could be made in the debate over biotechnology if anthropology could apply its synthetic tools to understanding the specifi cities of particular crops in particular agricultural systems. Stone proposes three major avenues in need of research to move the debate to higher ground. First, exploring the social life of GM seeds requires understanding, “how these seeds move through social channels” (619). To date, risk assessment overlooks social vector for gene escape: migrant workers, food aid, and human error. Migrating as seasonal work permits, the migrant worker may bring seeds from corn fi elds in the mid-west to homelands in Southern and Western Mexico where teosinte and landraces of Zea mays are grown presenting an risk that is not easily qualifi ed. Second, attention to the role of biotechnology in deskilling farmers plays a “vital role...in sustainable smallholder agricultural production” (619). Finally, he evaluates who controls the research agenda requires discerning between public and proprietary products of biotechnology. “There is a world of difference between proprietary HT cotton and publicly available virus-resistant cassava” (619). It is highly unlikely that the needs to procure proprietary arrangements in order to secure added value will be in line with the needs to improve crops for subsistence farmers. Therefore, crops like cassava will be ignored while the needs of large commercial growers will continue to direct the research agenda.

90 Strohman, Richard C. 1993. “Ancient Genomes, Wise Bodies, Unhealthy People: Limits of a Genetic Paradigm in Biology and Medecine.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 37(1): 112-145.

SUMMARY

This paper explores the possibility that a mechanistic view of genetic functioning has caused a crisis in the medical sciences. The dependence of current research on a genetic view of life has yielded remarkable progress in our understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of biology. Yet, although cellular mechanisms are now amply understood, a mechanistic view alone, warns Strohman, will severely limit advances in our understanding of the cell or organism viewed at a behavioral level— viewed whole. Strohman surveys the current literature on medical applications of the HGP. His conclusion is that costs may be prohibitive. He calculates we are expending approximately $10 billion per year for testing alone, with no guarantee that therapy would follow and with most population geneticists arguing that the discovered gene associations (for complex polygenic diseases) are trivial. With 24 million patients, Strohman ﬁ gures the cost to ﬁ nd cures would be close to 90 percent of our current medical budget. Due to such concerns, biologists working on fundamental problems of molecular and cell biology are following the lead of population geneticists, increasingly rejecting the major assumptions of the HGP.

Tait, Joyce and Ann Bruce. 2001. “Globalization and Transboundary Risk Regulation: Pesticides and Genetically Modiﬁ ed Crops.” Health, Risk & Society 3(1): 99-112.

ABSTRACT

Globalization of food production systems and accompanying pressures for trade liberalization are raising new issues for risk regulation and also placing greater demands on risk regulatory systems. Transboundary food-related risks are categorized here as “traded”risks, subdivided into those which are product-based and those which are production system based. The international systems for regulating the risks of pesticide residues in food and of GM crops are summarized and examples are given of how the risks are monitored and evaluated. For GM crops and pesticides, although in different proportions, concerns focus on risks inherent in food products themselves and in the food production systems of which they form components. Different public motivations (Self-interest versus fundamental values) underlie the expressions of concern and different approaches are needed for resolution and public reassurance in each case. The authors propose an approach assigning legitimate and clearly speciﬁ ed roles to two approaches, product based and production system based, which would elevate the debate about GM crops to a higher systemic level where it may have a greater chance of being resolved.

91 Tait, Joyce & Joanna Chataway. 2003. “Risk and Uncertainty In Genetically Modi- fied Crop Development.” INNOGEN Working Paper 1. Available online: http:// www.innogen.ac.uk

SUMMARY

The authors here consider the ways that innovation processes evolve and market uncertainties are approached in three multinational corporations: Monsanto, Novartis and Zeneca Agrochemicals. They look at the factors that shaped the trajectory from agro-chemicals to biotechnology in the industry and how industry strategy has contributed to the current impasse regarding GM crops in the E.U. Regarding the latter, they found the following aspects contributed to the debate and subsequent stalemate:

• The choice of ﬁ rst generation GM products;

• Interactions between pesticide and biotechnology product strategies in different companies and industry’s efforts to present their sector and its products as contributing to sustainable development;

• Cultural and world-view differences between companies;

• Company responses to European biotechnology policies and risk regulation

The paper identifi es the research and development strategies of MNCs. For example, Zeneca kept a lower profi le, which may explain why their GM tomato paste did not encounter any consumer resistance. Monsanto attempted to redefi ne sustainability with a vision that requires GM crops as a centerpiece. Ironically, this commitment to sustainable development received the greatest assault directed at MNCs by environmentalists, which was likely augmented by the company’s opposition to regulation and labeling. The authors suggest that perhaps the better strategy would have been to accept regulation and build consumer confi dence in biotechnology, rather than ignoring public concern.

The Royal Society of Canada. Elements of Precaution: Recommendations for the Regulation of Food Biotechnology in Canada. 2001. Ontario: The Canadian Academy of the Sciences and Humanities.

SUMMARY

Produced by a fourteen-member panel, this report made 53 recommendations to enhance the regulatory system for foods derived through the use of recombinant DNA technology. This publication has attracted considerable attention because of its focus upon the risks that may be posed by future biotechnology products, and the regulatory approaches and processes that will be required to assure health and environmental safety. Given the many scientiﬁ c uncertainties that remain in the assessment of the safety of GM food products, the panel argued that a prudent, or “precautionary,” approach to the regulation of these technologies will require careful research and rigorous testing in order to reduce these uncertainties, and to maintain public conﬁ dence in the management of any

92 potential harms to human, animal or environmental health, while also being scientifi cally rigorous and practical. Many of the panel’s recommendations aim at establishing the regulatory guidelines and adoption of rigorous scientifi c standards and approaches that will help achieve this goal. The panel’s mandate was to address the regulatory policies and scientifi c capacity needed to assess the risks posed by new GM products and to protect health and the environment from unacceptable harms. They this in a forward-looking manner—focusing on the regulatory practices required in the future.

The panel’s recommendations range in character from very general ones concerning the scientif- ic research capacity in Canada, to those concerning the principles and policies underlying the regulatory process, including specifi c recommendations about testing requirements for new GM products. In the face of scientifi c uncertainty, the Panel says that conservative standards of proof should be adopted. We must employ the best scientifi c methods to obtain evidence of absence of harmful effects. In addition, they debunk the highly controversial “substantial equivalence” concept of regulation. They make a series of recommendations for strengthening the scientifi c basis of the regulatory process by increasing the transparency and validation of the risk assessments upon which regulatory decisions are based, including strengthened peer review and independent verifi cation of research. Finally, they emphasize the importance of establishing research programs to monitor the long-term effects of GM organisms on the environment, human health, and animal health and welfare.

Torgerson, Helge and Franz Seifert. 2000. “Austria: precautionary blockage of agricultural biotechnology.” Journal of Risk Research 3(3): 209-217.

ABSTRACT

Austria has interpreted the precautionary principle and Directive 90/220 in a more stringent way than other E.U. member states. It continues to ban the import of Bt maize despite the Commis- sion’s recurrent warnings. The Austrian standard of GMO risk assessment emphasizes a broad deﬁ - nition of adverse effects beyond a purely technical account of risk, including effects of agricultural practices. Boundaries between plant, seed, food and feed assessments tend to blur. It asks implicitly for the demonstration of safety and uses organic farming as a normative reference point. The understanding of precaution goes beyond the Danish approach in extensively interpreting the scope of Directive 90/220. This policy originated from the Environment Agency (UBA) and developed out of the division of labor among government agencies. It is in line with the inherent paternalism of Aus- trian governance as well as with Austrian public sensitivities concerning organic agriculture and food. When public opinion turned hostile to agricultural biotechnology, the Austrian standard became entrenched and led to Austria’s initially lone stance among E.U. member states.

Weiner, Charles. 1999. “Social Responsibility in Genetic Engineering: Historical Per- spectives.” in Gene Therapy and Ethics. edited by Anders Nordgren. Uppsala: Acta Uni- versitatis Uppsala.

SUMMARY

In this chapter, Weiner adds insights from the experience of the HGP throughout the 1990s. Biologists have proclaimed in recent years that through the HGP they are seizing control of our

93 own evolution. In this article Weiner raises more sober topics related to biotechnologies, questions of complications, responsibilities, and ethical priorities. The new biological research, says biochem- ist and Nobel Laureate Arne Tiseluis, “will lead to methods of tampering with life, of creating new diseases, of controlling the psyche, of infl uencing heredity, even perhaps in certain desired directions.” This may “result in a still more refi ned and perhaps still more dangerous way of abusing the results of research than that implied in the instruments of mass destruction” (52). Tiselius and others have called for an international moral code governing the use of scientifi c results, calling it “a self- evident necessity” (52). While discussions of ethics seem to take place under the assumption that human gene therapy is inevitable, Weiner reminds us that it is not. In too many major conferences on genetics, the scientists leave before the ethicists speak. Weiner says this must and will change, as the public demands more understanding and participation in the scientifi c process. He recommends that scientists develop ethical literacy and a stronger sense of social responsibility. The goal, says Weiner, is to set research priorities to meet public health needs rather than commercial goals.

Weiner, Charles. 2000. “Recombinant DNA, Policy, Asilomar Conference.” in Encyclo- pedia of Ethical, Legal, and Policy Issues in Biotechnology. edited by Thomas J. Murray & Maxwell J. Mehlman. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

SUMMARY

Weiner recounts here the history of the Asilomar Conference. He recounts from Paul Berg’s let- ter in April 1974, “It is our plan that one of the major purposes of the Conference, besides a report on the scientiﬁ c progress, would be a wide-ranging discussion of potential hazards growing out of these types of experiments (910)”. Berg went on to ask if there were any experiments that should not be done and how such a moratorium could be proposed or enforced.

Asilomar was a remarkable moratorium on GE research, enforced for two years from 1974- 1976. In 2002, almost three decades later, a major Canadian non-profi t, ETC, began proposing a moratorium on nanotechnology, sending out further calls in April 2004 after new research suggested links between nanotech particles and brain damage. Perhaps this is a good time to revisit the history of Asilomar, at which, says Weiner, the r-DNA issue was defi ned as a technical problem to be solved by technical means, a technical fi x. Today Weiner asks us to go a step further, and recognize the myriad ramifi cations of genetic engineering: economic, political, social, and ethical.

The quasi self-regulation model developed in the r-DNA controversy is not adequate for many potential GE applications. Weiner says these potential applications are choices, not inevitabilities, and they may be bad choices. GE raises profound issues beyond safety and rights. The technologies are being developed in the context of increasing genetic determinism, pervasive commercialization, and aggressive efforts to sell genetic intervention as a cure-all for medical and even social problems. Serious ethical issues are often obscured behind issues of medical ethics. Instead, the profound ethical issues of genetic engineering must be brought out and addressed.

94 Wilkinson, John. 2002. “The Final Foods Industry and the Changing Face of the Global Agro-Food System.” Sociologia Ruralis 42(4): 329-346.

ABSTRACT

For the consumer, the agro-food system is probably most identifi ed with brands closely linked to, if not the personifi cation of, the leading historic food fi rms, although most of these have now become incorporated into larger global holdings. Nestle, still the world’s largest food fi rm, would be the pure case here, followed by fi rm-brands such as Kraft, and Nabisco, now incorporated into Phillip Morris, together with their counterparts in the drinks sector—Coca and Pepsi. This article focuses on the challenges which current processes of global restructuring represent for the leading food industry fi rms, exploring, in addition, the hypothesis that both the new bio(techno)logy paradigm and novel patterns of food demand accentuate the vulnerability of fi rms organized around this link in the global agro-food chain. At the same time, this refl ection will provide an opportunity for revisiting and re-evaluating analyses and concepts, which have been developed in earlier work.

Wisniewski, Jean-Pierre, Nathalie Frangne, Agnes Massonneau, & Christian Dumas. 2002. “Between myth and reality: genetically modiﬁ ed maize, an example of a sizeable scientiﬁ c controversy.” Biochimie 84: 1095-1103.

ABSTRACT

Maize is a major crop plant with essential agronomical interests and a model plant for genetic studies. With the development of plant genetic engineering technology, many transgenic strains of this monocotyledonous plant have been produced over the past decade. In particular, fi eld-cultivated insect-resistant Bt maize hybrids are at the center of an intense debate between scientists and organizations recalcitrant to GMOs. This debate, which addresses both safety and ethical aspects, has raised questions about the impact of GM crops on the biodiversity of traditional landraces and on the environment. the authors review some of the key points of maize genetic history as well as the methods used to stably transform this cereal. They describe GE Bt maizes available for fi eld cultivation and we investigate the controversial reports on their impacts on non-target insects such as the monarch butterfl y and on the fl ow of transgenes into Mexican maize landraces.

Wright, Susan. 1994. Molecular Politics: Developing American and British Regulatory Policy for Genetic Engineering. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

SUMMARY

This work documents the creation and dismantling of the regulatory controls governing the science of biotechnology from 1972 to 1982. Its theoretical focus is to bridge post-structuralist and post-pluralist debates to provide an assessment into the black box of regulatory decision-making. It is argued that the “received view” of GE policy, framing technical problems as being resolved through the NIH, “excludes complex motives and social-cultural conditions” (7) that largely shaped the direction of research in the ﬁ eld. Her method of analysis combines the social and economic context, with the formation of interests, the expression of those interests in policy, and the evolution of discursive

95 practices to uncover who expresses power and how power is located in the history of GE policy in the U.S. and the U.K.

Her focus is on the power, structural bias and discursive practices embedded within the “normalizing gaze” (12) that accompanied GE as the discussion of risks and beneﬁ ts was relegated to actors able to exclude public input in GE hazard identiﬁ cation. This occurred even as legislation spurred by the antiwar and environmental movements expanded government reach to include methods of gaining public control over new technologies. The discourse of deregulation in this story was shaped through the NIH, echoing the utility of biomedical research and the need to geopolitically maintain leadership in biotechnology. She shows how these interests were supplemented by domestic policies to foster university-industry cooperation, capital investment for research and development, and to reduce the regulatory burdens on high tech industries.

Wright’s comprehensive review of the risk debate around the safety of microbial research shows how it was part of a larger paradigm governed by reductionism shifting the burden of proof from the scientists to the public. It also demonstrates how different policies regarding risk emerged in the U.S. and U.K. as the two countries granted different sets of actors the privilege of representation. Never- theless, as the culture of microbiology assumed a dominant role in policy-making and the controls were dismantled it became more apparent that “risk assessment was designed and used to soothe public concern rather than test worst scenarios” (404). Wright’s work suggests “no simple explanation” (454) for the changes in GE’s regulatory structure. Her discussion points to the hypothesis that the “laissez-faire development of technology is driven primarily by the interests of its funders and creators and by the conditions of international industrial and scientiﬁ c competition” (456).

Wynne, Brian. 2001. “Creating public alienation: expert cultures or risk and ethics on GMOs.” Science as Culture 26(2): 445-481.

SUMMARY

Wynne looks at the expert and lay perceptions of the GM debate as they pertain to risk assessment science and the ways that experts alienate the public by failing to recognize certain elements of public judgment. He argues that the divorce of risk and ethical concerns obscures the public’s “combined intellectual-ethical judgment of scientiﬁ c knowledge,” suggesting that this reﬂ ects how the public perceives “the quality of the institutions which are the proponents of that knowledge, and which appear utterly unwilling to render that knowledge-culture accountable to public discussion of its limitations” (447). As such, Wynne focuses on the “mode of policy culture…”

a) how science has become the unreﬂ exive policy culture rather than its key intellectual resource; and

b) the corresponding unaccountable public representations which this policy-scien- tiﬁ c culture imposes (448).

Thus, Wynne picks apart the dichotomy of objective versus perceived risks along the public-lay divide. He argues that this dichotomy weakens the ability of the public to seriously engage in “expert-led policy” (453). The public either assumes the objective ﬁ ndings as fact, or the

96 “irrational”position. He reaches a conclusion similar to his earlier studies of nuclear technologies: that much of public concerns over new technologies need to be evaluated in light of the ways that “relevant scientiﬁ c and policy institutions behave,” particularly how they circulate the dominant discourses (479).

Yoxen, Edward. 1983. The Gene Business: Who Should Control Biotechnology? London: Free Association Books.

SUMMARY

Yoxen’s work was written as biotechnology’s fi rst deluge of venture and corporate capital had begun to subside. This offered a moment in which society should refl ect upon what biotech “represents as an industrial, political, and cultural phenomenon” (225). “The fl ood tide has slowed and [we] need...to consider what kind of future is being constructed through the operation of the fi nancial, industrial, and research systems.” In this context, he provides an assessment of the gains and losses engendered by the social changes that biotechnology promises to endure.

Yoxen takes a critical view on the advent of molecular biology and the idea of organisms as information systems, processing, translating and inscribing data. He traces the history of molecular biology from the early days of Rockefeller funding, through the laboratory safety debates in the 1970s. In clear prose, Yoxen explains the science of biotechnology. The book is also an early critique of the impact of entrepreneurial activity on the university. Here he in concerned with the secrecy, disrupted communication, research priority disputes, changes in citation practices, and the shift in research programs away from ideas with long term payoffs or those which conﬂ ict with industrial interests. The concern is not what research in biotechnology brings to medicine and agriculture, but that the possibility of alternatives is shut down. For universities to maintain independence he argues, they must express a plurality of ideas, critical thought, and a vision of social, economic, industrial, and scientiﬁ c alternatives.

97 appendix a: acronyms

APHIS Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA)

Bt Bacillus thuringiensis

BST Bovine Somatropin

CBD Convention on Biological Diversity

CGIAR Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research

CIMMYT International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center

DNA Deoxyribonucleic acid

EC European Community

EPA U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

E.U. European Union

FAO United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization

FDA Food and Drug Administration

GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

GEF Global Environmental Facility

GE Genetically engineered or genetic engineering

GEO Genetically engineered organisms

GM Genetically modiﬁ ed or genetic modiﬁ cation

GMO Genetically modiﬁ ed organisms

HT Herbicide tolerant

HGP Human Genome Project

IARC International Agricultural Research Center

IPR Intellectual Property Rights

IU International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources

ISO International Organization for Standardization

98 ITPGR International Treaty on Plants Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture

MNC Multinational Corporations

NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement

NAS National Academy of Science

NIH National Institute of Health

NRC National Research Council

NSF National Science Foundation

OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

OSTP Ofﬁ ce of Science and Technology Policy

PVPA Plant Variety Patent Act of 1970, 1980

RAC Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee r-BGH recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone r-DNA recombinant Deoxyribonucleic acid

TPR Technical Property Rights

TRIPS Trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights

USDA U.S. Department of Agriculture

WHO World Health Organization

WTO World Trade Organization

99 appendix b: popular works

The pulse of the public can be best experienced through the ways that biotechnology is represented in the books written for general audiences. The following list compiles many popularly accessible works. While many of these works focus on the popular concerns that relate biotechnology to what people eat (Nestle 2003; Hart 2002; Lambrect 2001), many attest to the ways in which cultural practices shape biotechnology and the food system. For example, the appeal of Schlosser (2001) rests in his ability to link the culture of fast foods to the accompanying risks of industrial food production and the growing power of food retail sector to shape agriculture; he accomplishes this by painting an indelible account of the rise of the fast food industry. Pollan (2001) traces the history through contemporary uses of four plants (apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes) by asking who is domesticat- ing whom? The chapter on the potato is dedicated to a Bt variety produced by Monsanto called New Leaf™. As the growing season progresses, Pollan provides insights into the legal (IPRs) and regulatory (its EPA status as a pesticide) aspects of the crop in his garden, probing with questions that strike at the heart of biotechnology’s controversies. Among the controversies he discusses is the role of large corporations in the control of the food system, a premise covered by many of the authors below (Charles 2001; Lappe & Bailey 1998). Another reoccurring theme in many of these works is the deconstruction of the rhetoric that posits biotechnology as a risk-free technology with unlimited beneﬁ ts for food security, social justice and the environment (Shiva 1997). Ho (2000) strikes down many of the certainty claims made by science’s proponents of biotechnology. Likewise, Kneen (1999) relates the notion of scientiﬁ c progress to the agenda of life sciences corporations in a critical deconstruction of semiotics of molecular biology.

References

Anderson, Luke. 1999. Genetic Engineering, Food, and Our Environment: A Brief Guide. Totnes: Green Books.

Bremner, Moyra. 1999. Genetic Engineering and You. New York: Harper Collins.

Charles, Daniel. 2001. Lords of Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, and the Future of Food. Cambridge, MA: Perseus.

Hart, Kathleen. 2002. Eating in the Dark: America’s Experiment with Genetically Engineered Food. New York: Pantheon.

Ho, Mae-Wan. 2000. Genetic Engineering: Dreams or Nightmare. New York: Continuum.

Kneen, Brewster. 1999. Farmageddon: Food and the Culture of Biotechnology. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Press.

Lambrecht, Bill. 2001. Dinner at the New Gene Cafe: How Genetic Engineering is Changing What We Eat, How We Live, and the Global Politics of Food. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Lappe, Marc and Britt Bailey. 1998. Against the Grain: Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press.

100 Lurquin, Paul F. 2002. High-Tech Harvest: Understanding Genetically Modiﬁ ed Food Plants. New York: Westview Press.

McHughen, Alan. 2000. Pandora’s Picnic Basket: The Potential and Hazards of Genetically Modiﬁ ed Foods. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nestle, Marion. 2003. Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Pence, Gregory E. 2002. Designer Food. New York: Rowman and Little ﬁ eld.

Pollan, Michael. 2001. The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World. New York: Random House.

Pringle, Peter. 2003. Food, Inc., Mendel to Monsanto the Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Rowell, Andy. 2003. Don’t Worry, it is Safe to Eat: the true story of GM food, BSE and foot and mouth. New York: Earthscan.

Schlosser, Eric. 2001. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: Peren- nial.

Shiva, Vandana. 1993. Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology. Lon- don: Zed Books.

Shiva, Vandana. 1997. Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge. Boston: South End Press.

Teitel, M. and K.A. Wilson. 1999. Genetically Engineered Food: Changing the Nature of Nature. Roch- ester, VT: Park Street Press.

Ticciati, L. and R. Ticciati. 1998. Genetically Engineered Foods: Are They Safe? You Decide. New Ca- naan, CT: Keats.

Winston, Mark L. 2002. Travels in the Genetically Modiﬁ ed Zone. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer- sity Press.

101 appendix c: edited volumes

The following works are comprehensive edited volumes that assess the fundamental issues facing biotechnology, the life sciences industry and the environment.

Comstock, Gary, ed. 2002. Life Science Ethics. London: Blackwell.

Kelso, Dennis and Rachel Schurman, eds. 2003. Engineering Trouble: Biotechnology and its Discon- tents. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kimbrell, Andrew, ed. 2002. Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Letourneau, Deborah K. and Beth Elpern Burrows, eds. 2002. Genetically Engineered Organisms: Assessing the Environmental and Human Health Effects. New York: CRC Press.

Magdoff, Fred, John Bellamy Foster, and Frederick Buttel, eds. 2001. Hungry for Proﬁ t: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Peters, Ted, ed. 1998. Genetics: Issues of Social Justice. Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press.

Shantharan, Sivramiah & Jane F. Montgomery, eds. 1999. Biotechnology, Biosafety, and Biodiversity: Scientiﬁ c and Ethical Issues for Sustainable Development. Enﬁ eld, NH: Science Publishers, Inc.

Shiva, Vandana and Ingunn Moser, eds. 1995. Biopolitics: A Feminist and Ecological Reader on Biotechnology. London: Zed Books Ltd.

Thackray, Arnold, ed. 1998. Private Science: Biotechnology and the Rise of the Molecular Sciences. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Tokar, Brian, ed. 2000. Redesigning Life? The Worldwide Challenge to Genetic Engineering. Johannesburg: Wit- watersrand University Press.

Zerner, Charles, ed. 2000. People, Plants, and Justice: the Politics of Nature Conservation. New York: Columbia University Press.

102 appendix d: glossary of laws, policies, and institutions

This list is intended to serve as a reference guide to the policies and legal decisions that affect biotechnology. It is not intended to be exhaustive and mainly focuses on global accords and policies in the U.S. & E.U.

Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures: Standards developed to harmonize health and hygiene inspections for imported foods. http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/sps_e/sps_e.htm

Andean Pact on a Common System on Access to Genetic Resources: This agreement is widely discussed as a model for a regional access and beneﬁ t-sharing program. The contracting parties are Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.

Bayh-Dole Act (1980): The act allowed universities the right to patents arising from federally sponsored research.

Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety: A supplementary agreement to the CBD that seeks to protect biodiversity from the introduction of living modiﬁ ed organisms into the environment. It entered into effect September 11, 2003, but has not been ratiﬁ ed by the U.S. as of publication of this bibliography. http://www.biodiv.org/biosafety/

Codex Alimentarius Commission: This international system of regulation for food standards was set up in the 1960s by the WHO and FAO. http://www.codexalimentarius.net/

Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology: The White House OSTP announced this framework for comment in 1986 (FR 51:233302-23393). It suggested that current laws and institutions are appropriate for regulating biotechnology and that no new institutions need to be created. It delegated responsibility to the FDA, APHIS, and the EPA.

Diamond v. Chakrabarty (1980): U.S. legal ruling that a microorganism or a process used to modify an organism could be the object of a patent.

EC Deliberate Release Directive 90/220: E.U. policy to ensure harmonization of biotechnology regulation and development.

Ex Parte Hibbard (1985): Ruling by the U.S. Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences extending of full patent protection to transgenic plants.

Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act: Grants authority to the FDA to regulate transgenic foods as food additives. This requires that manufacturers get pre-approval and demonstrate that the foods are generally recognized as safe.

Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act: Allows the EPA to regulate transgenic plants that express traits that are lethal to plant pests. The EPA is required to register these plants as plant pesticides or plant-incorporated protectants.

Federal Noxious Weed Act: Allows the USDA to limit the movement of plants that threaten to impact

103 agricultural production.

Federal Plant Pest Act: Allows USDA-APHIS to regulate transgenic crops as plant pests when they contain genes of regulatory DNA segments from potentially harmful organisms.

Economic Recovery Tax Act (1981): Provided tax credits for research and development and created incentives for capital investment. (Wright 1994)

European Patent Directive: An E.U. effort to bring patent law into harmony with other regions. Only adopted by 4 member states as of 2003.

International Plant Protection Convention: A biosafety agreement organized through the auspices of the FAO. http://www.fao.org/legal/treaties/004t-e.htm

International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture: This legally binding treaty governs the sustainable use and conservation of plant genetic resources. http://www.fao.org/ag/ cgrfa/itpgr.htm

International Union for the Protection of Plant Varieties (UPOV): An intergovernmental organization with headquarters in Geneva established by the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants. The Convention was adopted in Paris in 1961 and it was revised in 1972, 1978 and 1991. The objective of the Convention is the protection of new varieties of plants by an intellectual property right. http://www.upov.int/

Plant Variety Protection Act (1970): Amended in 1980 the PVPA gave formal protection to seeds of plant varieties for 17 years that exhibit new, stable, uniform, and distinct characteristics.

Porto Alegre Treaty to Share the Genetic Commons: NGOs from around the world participating in the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre signed on to this accord that seeks to challenge corporate rights to life patents by establishing the global gene pool as a global commons. http: //www.ukabc.org/genetic_commons_treaty.htm

Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act (1980): Required Federal laboratories to more actively cooperate with private industry.

Technology Transfer Act (1986): Along with Executive Order 12591 (1987), this statute requires active engagement in biotechnology research between government research agencies and private companies.

Toxic Substances Control Act: Under this statute the EPA has authority to review all new chemicals prior to their commercial production. Manufacturers are required to submit a pre-manufacture notiﬁ cation to regulators. Microorganisms are “chemical substances” according to the interpretation of the Coordinated Framework.

World Trade Organization’s TRIPS Council: This treaty focuses on the international governance of intellectual property rights. http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/trips_e.htm

104 appendix e: website clearinghouse

The following list is an entry point into the many campaigns and projects related to biotechnology. It is a general survey of websites for NGOs, foundations, institutes, industry organizations, informational resources, and policy think tanks.

Action Group on Erosion, Technology, and Control: www.etcgroup.org

African Agricultural Technology Foundation: http://www.aftechfound.org/

Agbiotech Info-Net: http://www.biotech-info.net/

AgBioWorld Foundation: http://www.agbioworld.org/

Biodevastation: http://www.biodev.org/

Biotechnology and Ethics: http://www.biotik.dk/english/

Biotechnology and Development Monitor: http://www.biotech-monitor.nl/

Biotechnology Knowledge Center, sponsored by Monsanto: http://www.biotechknowledge.monsanto .com/

Biotechnology Industry Organization: http://www.bio.org/

Bread for the World Institute: http://www.bread.org/

The Campaign to Label Genetically Modiﬁ ed Foods: http://www.thecampaign.org/index.php

The Center for Genetics and Society: http://www.genetics-and-society.org/

The Center for Food Safety: http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/

Centre for Social & Economic Research on Innovation in Genomics: http://www.innogen.ac.uk

Council for Biotechnology Information: http://www.whybiotech.com/

Council for Biotechnology Policy: http://www.biotechpolicy.org

Council for Responsible Genetics: http://www.gene-watch.org/

CropBiotech.net: http://www.isaaa.org/kc/

CropChoice: http://www.cropchoice.com

Croplife, America: http://www.croplifeamerica.org/

Croplife, International: http://www.gcpf.org/

105 The Crucible Group: http://www.idrc.ca/books/725/preface.html

The Crucible II Group: http://www.idrc.ca/books/926/02intro.html

The Edmonds Institute: http://www.edmonds-institute.org

The Economic Research Service, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture: http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/ BiotechCrops

FDA’s Report on Consumer Focus Groups on Biotechnology: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov

Food First, Institute for Food and Development Policy: http://www.foodﬁ rst.org/

Forum on Biotechnology and Food Security: http://www.agbioindia.com

Foundation on Economic Trends: http://www.foet.org/

GE Food Alert: http://gefoodalert.org/

GM Nation?: http://www.gmnation.org.uk/

Genetic Engineering Network: http://www.dmac.co.uk/gen.html

Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN): http://www.grain.org/

Genetics Action: www.geneticsaction.org.uk/

Genewatch U.K.: http://www.genewatch.org/

GM Debate Ofﬁ cial Website (U.K.): http://www.gmnation.org.uk

Greenpeace’s Genetic Engineering Campaign: http://ge.greenpeace.org/homepage/

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy: http://www.iatp.org/

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s WTO Watch: http://www.tradeobservatory.org

Institute for Development Studies “Democratizing Biotechnology Project”: http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/env/ biotech/

Institute for Social Ecology’s Biotechnology Project: http://www.social-ecology.org/biotech/

International Forum for Genetic Engineering: http://www.anth.org/ifgene/

International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA): http://www.isaaa.org/

Intellectual Property Rights Commission: http://www.iprcommission.org/

National Catholic Rural Life Conference: http://www.ncrlc.com/plant_biotechnology.html

106 Network of Concerned Farmers: http://www.non-gm-farmers.com/

Norfolk Genetic Engineering Network: http://ngin.tripod.com/

Northeast and Northwest Resistance Against Genetic Engineering: http://www.nerage.org/ & http:// www.nwrage.org/

Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development: http://www.foundation.novartis.com/

Nuclear Threat Initiative: http://www.nti.org/e_research/e5_publications.html#biological

Nufﬁ eld Council for Bioethics: http://www.nufﬁ eldfoundation.org

OGM Danger: http://www.ogmdangers.org/

Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology: http://pewagbiotech.org/

Physicians and Scientists for the Responsible Application of Science and Technology: http://www.psrast.org/

Programme for Traditional Resource Rights: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~wgtrr/

Rockefeller Foundation Food Security Program: http://www.africancrops.net/

Third World Network: http://www.twnside.org.sg/

Traditional Ecological Knowledge Prior Art Database: http://ip.aaas.org

Turning Point Project: http://www.turnpoint.org

U.K. Agricultural Biodiversity Coalition: http://www.ukabc.org

U.K. Government Dialog on GM Foods: http://www.gmsciencedebate.org.uk/

Union of Concerned Scientists: http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and _environment/biotechnology/

107 about the authors

dustin r. mulvaney is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Dustin’s research interests focus on the terrain of power and knowledge in regulatory disputes over ecological risk, the political economy of agricultural research and development, and the role of social movements in renegotiating the scale and content of agricultural biotechnology governance through the analytical lenses of political ecology, science studies, and cultural geography.

jennifer l. wells is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California at Berkeley, and in the Department of Philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris. Jennifer’s research interests center on ethics, sustainability, complexity theories, and precautionary approaches to risk assessment in socio-natural systems. Her current research focuses on assessing the impacts and ethics of agricultural biotechnologies, through the lenses of complexity theories, interdisciplinary analyses, and science and technology studies. Founded in late 1996, the      emerged from a long-standing commitment to environmental studies on the Berkeley campus and from the presence of a core group of faculty whose research and scholarly interests linked environment, culture, and political economy. The workshop draws together over fifty faculty and doctoral students from San Francisco Bay Area institutions (the University of California campuses at Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and Davis, and Stanford University) who share a common concern with problems that stand at the intersection of the environmental and social sciences, the humanities and law. The Berkeley Workshop on Environmental Politics has three broad functions:

✦ to assist graduate training and scholarly research by deepening the theoretical and methodological toolkit appropriate to understanding environmental concerns in an increasingly globalized world;

✦ to bring together constituencies of local and international scholars, activists, and policy makers for transnational conversations on environmental issues; and,

✦ to bring community activists and policymakers to Berkeley as Residential Fellows, thus providing synergistic possibilities for developing new learning and research communities.

The Berkeley Workshop on Environmental Politics is funded by the Ford Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

     was established in  to promote interdisciplinary research in international, comparative, and policy studies on the Berkeley campus of the Uni- versity of California. The current emphasis is on the following intellectual themes: peace and security after the Cold War; environment, demography, and sustainable development; development and comparative modernities across regions; and globalization and the transformation of the global economy. The Institute has several major research programs, and provides support to Berkeley faculty and fellowships to Berkeley graduate students. Ongoing research colloquia bring together faculty, advanced graduate students, and visiting scholars for discussions. The Institute hosts distinguished visiting fellows who participate in Institute programs while in residence at Berkeley. Its public out- reach programs include lectures, forums, conferences, interviews, and the Connecting Students to the World program. The Institute publishes Policy Papers in International Affairs, Insights in International Affairs, Currents, and the Globetrotter website .