Ethical Record The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol. 104 No. 7 £1.50 July/August, 1999 INGERSOLL BROUGHT TO LIFE AT CONWAY HALL Photo: Martin Harris The Time to be Happy was 1930 hr. Friday 9 July 1999 The Place was Conway Hall Library The Reason 70 eager Rationalists assembled at the behest of SPES and GALHA to be stimulated and entertained by Derek Lennard's imaginative Dramatisation of the Life and Work of R.G. Ingersoll (1833-1899). following on his successful lecture to the Society in May last year. Illustrated above: The 19th Century 'Question Time' Sketch - a debate between Ingersoll (played by Derek Lennard on the left), the Rev. Talmage (played by Terry Sanderson on the right) chaired by Mike Savage (keeping the peace in the middle). The Compere for the evening was Marios the Heathen (Marios Hajipanayi). GM CARS, THEN GMTV, NOW GM FOODS Alan MaIcahn 3 FROM POLITICS PAST TO POLITICS FUTURE Peter Lonsdale 5 CONVICTION, CONVERSION AND CHESTERTON T.E Evans 6 WHO FIRST TRANSLATED STRAUSS'S LIFE OF JESUS? D. O'Hara 11 MORAL JUDGEMENTS ACCORDING TO KANT Christopher Bratcher 91 VIEWPOINTS: M. Granville: H. Erenherg; L. Elton; G. Hutchinson; A. Langdon; PA. Lovell; J.R.J.; R. Eden; M. Sergeant; M. Lincé; J. Langdon: P Rhodes; B. Smoker; D. Murray; C. Onnell; S. Hayes; I. Buxton. 34 MARION GRANVILLE, 1925-1999 Jennifer Jeynes 35 ETHICAL SOCIETY EVENTS 36 SOUTH.PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC IR 4RL. Tel: 0171 242 8034 Fax: 0171 242 8036 website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk Officers General Committee Chair Donald Rooum. Vice-Chair: Vacant Hon. Treasurer: Don Liversedge. Registrar: Ian Ray-Todd. Hon Representative: Terry Mullins. Editor, Ethical Record: Norman Bacrac. SPES Staff Administrative Secretary to the Society: Marina Ingham Tel: 0171 242 8034 Librarian/Information Officer: Jennifer Jeynes. Tel: 0171 242 8037 Operations Manager: Frances Hanlon. Tel: 0171 242 8033 Lettings Manager: Peter Vlachos.For Hall bookings: Tel: 0171 242 8032 New Members Nick Duckett, London; Fiona Sutherland, Bristol. We regret to report the death of J.R. Bennett NOTICE OF SPES ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING Sunday 3 October 1999 at 2.30 pm. Registration from 2.00 pm. A leaflet accompanying this issue gives further details. SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Registered Charity No. 251396 Founded in 1793, the Society is a progressive movement whose aims are: the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism, the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life, and the advancement of research and education in relevant fields. We invite to membership all those who reject supernatural creeds and find themselves in sympathy with our views. At Conway Hall there are opportunities for participation in cultural activities including discussions, lectures, concerts and socials. The Sunday Evening Chamber Music Concerts founded in 1887 are renowned. We have a library on subjects of humanist concern. All members receive the Society's journal, Ethical Record, eleven times a year. Funerals and Memorial Meetings may be arranged. Please apply to the Admin Secretary for membership, £18 p.a. (Concessions £12 p.a.) The views expressed in this Journal are not necessarily those of the Society. 2 Ethical Record, July/August, 1999 GM CARS, THEN GMTV, NOW GM FOOD - WHATEVER NEXT? Professor Alan Malcolm Institute of Biology Lecture to the Ethical Society 28 March 1999 I wish to address seven questions which I think are uppermost in many people's minds in order to reach conclusions about the introduction of gene technology into the food chain. These are What is it? 4 Do we want it? 2 Is it ethical to interfere with 5 Can we reject it? our genetic material? 6 Who is in charge? 3 Do we need it? 7 Where will it end? Although scientists love to describe the fact that we have been interfering with the genes of plants and animals in the food chain ever since man became agrarian and that therefore this new technology is little more than a logical extension, many would believe that this is being economical with the truth. The type of genetic improvements which have been made over the millennia have taken place extremely slowly and have given generations opportunities to pause and take stock of each advance and also to reject such mistakes as occurred. The new technology has within two decades totally revolutionised the way that we approach the introduction of new varieties of food-crops. The fact that it is a much more specific technology and is, if anything. less likely to result in undesirable products is clearly not widely accepted. The idea that genes can be taken from one organism and put into an alternative organism which would never normally have been able to cross-breed within nature seems to many people, at the very least, bizarre. It is perhaps important to emphasise that we are really considering two different applications of the technology. At the present time none of the food in British supermarkets is itself modified or altered in any way as a result of this technology. It is the production of enzymes in the factory or the production of the food crop in the field which is changed but the product on the shelf or in the tin has not altered. However in the very near future we will be eating fruits and vegetables where the concentration of nutrients such as vitamins or anti-oxidants has indeed been altered. Should We 'Interfere' with Nature? Everybody will, of course, have their own definition as to the extent to which we should 'interfere with nature'. For most, it will be the selecting of wheat varieties for shortness of stalk in order to increase yield. Very few people have had problems with the introduction of human genes into bacteria in order to produce pharmaceutically useful products such as insulin, blood-clotting factors and growth hormone. Very clearly, people's acceptance of the latter relates to the clear demonstration of a case of need for those suffering from illnesses which might otherwise prove fatal. The Polkinghorne Committee, set up by the Government seven years ago, considered the problems of inserting animal genes into plants (could vegetarians eat them?) and of putting pig genes into any other species (could Jews and Moslems eat them?). They also discussed whether putting human genes into food crops might be perceived by some as equivalent to cannibalism. On the basis of their discussions they came to the conclusion that there was no major ethical problem for most of society in altering Ethical Record, JulylAugust, 1999 3 the gene of a tomato to change its ripening characteristics, that Jews would not have a problem with putting pig genes into non-porcine species but that Moslems would. They felt that on the whole it would not be a good idea to put human genes into food crops. Interestingly enough, there is in fact no commercial driver to perform this operation either. Cheese produced using Chymosin, wawa .3 produced in the laboratory by gene .rornea"" N\ technology, provides an advantage to le •cally secoltfired?? vegetarians who would previously have rn objected to the use of animal-based rennet to clot the milk proteins. The tomato, with modified ripening characteristics, enables the farmer to produce the ripe tomato with less input of water. It enables to processor to use less electricity to drive off this water in order to produce tomato paste and the net effect for the consumer is that the tomato paste is that little bit cheapen In the case of herbicide-resistant crops such as soya, it enables the farmer to produce the harvest with less input of herbicide and with less I) &maim labour. In the case of insect-resistant crops such as cotton and maize, it enables the yield to increase very dramatically with much reduced application of chemical insecticides. It does however remain the case that in Europe and in North America we are not, on the whole, short of food. Indeed, if anything, we suffer from a surfeit of food such that the fastest growing health problems are based round obesity. That situation, however, does not yet obtain in less well-developed countries such as South America, many part of Africa, China and India where, for many reasons, there is a genuine shortage of protein and carbohydrate. It is, therefore, essential that crops capable of growing in arid conditions or high salt environments or resistant to locusts are developed and used in order to cope with a world population which, while growing less rapidly than twenty years ago, is none-the-less still expanding. An increased food production on a global scale is clearly necessary and this needs to be achieved without increasing the land area available for agriculture and without an increase in chemical fertilisers, herbicides or insecticides. Unease in the Public In spite of the clear benefits to different people on different occasions, there is obviously considerable unease in the public at large, although the extent to which this is aggravated by sensational media coverage is a matter for debate. Although many opinion polls ask leading questions resulting in the impression that the public in northern Europe would prefer to do without it, the behaviour of people when faced with choices in the supermarket clearly is inconsistent with this. The cheese mentioned above clearly labelled and with suitable information leaflets available, haS clearly been successful in commercial terms. The GM tomato paste outsells its non-GM rival quite comfortably since the customer cares more about the reduced price than about their awareness of the technology behind its production.