All these factors should be included and weighed carefully in a rational, public debate. But such care and rigor are hard to come by. The fear of radiation, its invisibility and treacherous effects (inducing cancer, for example), its immense destructive capability when accidentally unleashed, have all been exploited to inflame the general public against nuclear power. In several European countries, including my own (Belgium, a pioneer in the development of nuclear power, on which it depends for more than 50 percent of its electricity), the decision has been made to abandon nuclear power, even though no adequate alternatives have been proposed to meet future needs.
The tide seems to be turning in this respect. In the United States, where nuclear energy has long suffered from neglect, nuclear plant construction is about to resume on a large scale. Even in Europe, voices are increasingly raised against the ban imposed by several countries on the development of nuclear power. In Belgium, the decision has been taken to prolong three nuclear power plants beyond the date foreseen for their closing.
The systematic hostility against genetically modified organisms is an even sharper illustration of ill-conceived environmentalism. How animals can be modified with the help of cloning techniques was briefly mentioned in chapter 16. Much more important, in terms of economic and political fallout, is the production of genetically modified plants. The technique used to this end is different from cloning and merits a brief digression, because its history shows in exemplary fashion how fundamental research carried out for the sole purpose of understanding a natural phenomenon can lead in totally unforeseeable manner to practical applications of major importance.
A basic discovery opened the way to revolutionary applications
The story begins with a plant disease called crown gall, more commonly known as plant cancer, which is revealed by unsightly outgrowths, or tumors, on affected trees. Early studies of this disease showed it to be caused by bacteria, which were called Agrobacterium tumefaciens (tumor-causing) for this reason. This was a major discovery in itself: a cancer-causing microbe! The manner in which the microbe acts proved equally remarkable. It was elucidated in the 1970s by two Belgian investigators, the late Jozef Schell and Marc van Montagu, who found that the bacteria possess a special gene-insertion mechanism by which they inoculate into the plant cell a set of genes that are then incorporated into the cell’s genome and expressed to produce the tumor. The investigators further used their findings to develop a procedure in which the bacterial inoculation system is disconnected from the tumor-generating genes and exploited to insert chosen foreign genes into plant cells, in place of its nefarious cargo. Thus, a major basic discovery was turned into a new and particularly powerful biotechnological tool. This example, of which many others could be cited, deserves to be heeded by decision makers who too often are willing to support only investigations aimed at solving a practical problem and likely to lead in the short term to useful and, if possible, profitable applications.
Developed industrially, this gene-insertion technology has led to a large number of valuable applications. Thus the ability to destroy harmful insects, to defend themselves against pathogenic fungi or viruses, or to resist certain herbicides has been conferred to plants as widely different as corn, rice, soybeans, beets, potatoes, and bananas, to mention only a few.
The same gene-insertion technique has also been used to generate nutritionally enhanced plants. Rice, for example, has been treated to produce large quantities of vitamin A, the so-called yellow rice. In another application, the production of allergy-causing proteins has been turned off in soybeans and peanuts.
Other types of changes have been induced for industrial purposes. Potatoes have been engineered to produce large quantities of amylopectin, a form of starch that is widely used to make glossy paper coatings, clothing finishes, and adhesive cement (but renders the potatoes unfit for human consumption). Trees have been modified to make less lignin, the structural component responsible for their hardness, so that they can be exploited more efficiently for the production of biofuels. The list goes on lengthening. Using this technique, any desirable, genetically determined quality can be conferred by insertion of the appropriate gene into the appropriate plant.
One would expect such technology to be hailed enthusiastically, especially as some of its main benefits are expected to favor impoverished and malnourished Third World populations. This has not happened. On the contrary, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have become targets of particularly vicious attacks.
GMO: an acronym that ignites passions
A salient objection expressed in anti-GMO propaganda has been that a genetically implanted character could be transmitted to neighboring wild varieties and “contaminate” them. The objection, to say the least, is strange. Humans, without knowing the molecular mechanisms they employed, have been genetically manipulating plants and animals for ten thousand years, creating varieties that have little in common with their prehistoric ancestors. A Cro-Magnon individual suddenly transferred into the modern world would be hard put to recognize our corn, wheat, tomatoes, and other cultivated plants, or our pigs, horses, cows, goats, and sheep. All these and other domesticated varieties have been generated empirically by means of hybridization and crossing techniques selected for the sole purpose of producing organisms that were useful and profitable to humans at the time, with no concern for any environmental drawback. Here, for the first time, a change can be introduced knowingly and responsibly, under carefully controlled conditions. And the procedure is categorically rejected!
Another objection is that GMO food could be unfit for human consumption. The term “Frankenfood”—from Frankenstein, the monster-creating scientist imagined in the famous 1818 novel by Mary Shelley—is the scare word invented to highlight the danger. This argument is even less valid than the preceding one. There is no a priori reason to suspect that the organisms carrying such foreign genes would be more toxic than the natural versions of those organisms. The often evoked risk of allergies is, of course, real, as it is with many natural substances. This and other possible dangers can easily be screened by control procedures. Large populations in the United States have been consuming “Frankenfood” for years without ill effect.
In Europe, the Greens have succeeded in manipulating public opinion to the point that growing GMOs is prohibited in several countries and, if allowed under restricted conditions, as in France, is exposed to lawless destruction. In most European countries, GMO food is authorized for consumption only on condition that the consumers be clearly warned that they are exposing themselves to “risk” at their own peril. A recent decision allowing a small amount of GMO material to be included in commercial food products without warning caused an explosion of protests. People were shown on television expressing their refusal to eat such disgusting “pig’s food.” Faced with this kind of indoctrination, defenders of rational objectivity are almost powerless.
Even manipulations designed to favor the opposition’s aims are rejected. Thus the “enviropig,” which has been developed for the specific purpose of protecting the environment against the harmful effects of excreted phosphorus (see chapter 15), has been fiercely combated. A representative of a major, international environmental defense organization called it a “Frankenpig in disguise.” Similarly, those who want GMO food banned because of its hypothetical risk of causing allergies oppose manipulations that are aimed at preventing real allergies. Vitamin A–enriched “yellow rice” is still awaiting permission to be cultivated, some ten years after its creation.
Part of the opposition to GMO technology is political and ideological, fuelled by hostility against the perceived ills of capitalism and globalization. The technology is in the hands of a few multinational companies, which, because of the large investments required, were the only entrepreneurs able to develop it. Understandably, they want a fair return on their investment; and their motivation is not always innocent. Thus, creating a plant variety resistant to a given herbicide is particularly profit
able to the manufacturer of that particular herbicide, which is the only one among such substances that can prevent harmful herbs from invading the area occupied by the herbicide-resistant plants without attacking the latter. Commercial companies are often accused of coercing Third World populations, making them dependent users of GMOs. The so-called terminator gene, which prevented second-generation seeds from being used to produce new crops and made purchase of new seeds necessary every year, did, indeed, fulfill this purpose; that gene has since been removed from GMOs. The fight goes on.
Are GMOs an assault against the sacredness of nature?
The argument against GMOs that most impresses the general public is that they are “unnatural.” Inserting a foreign gene into a living organism is viewed as a crime against nature, an attempt at “playing God,” an expression used by the heir to the British throne. Nature, in a revival of the doctrine defended by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is seen as sacred, inherently good, to be revered and not manipulated.
Such sanctification of nature is irrational and rests on no objective argument. Nature is neither good nor bad; it is neutral. Natural selection is blind; it has as much solicitude for the AIDS virus as for penicillin-producing molds, for the scorpion as for the poet. What favors survival and proliferation under prevailing conditions is automatically selected, whatever the nature of the advantaged organism. It is precisely one of humankind’s privileges to be able to oppose this blind process and to manipulate nature at will. Humans have, from the onset, interfered with natural processes and exploited these processes for their own benefit, and it was, for them, natural that they did so. It is ironic that, at the very moment when it has become possible for us to take such actions responsibly and knowingly, defenders of the environment oppose progress and advocate keeping to the old procedures, on the pretext that they are more respectful of nature.
Environmentalism has a crucial role to play
This conversion of environmentalism into some kind of religion is regrettable. The menaces exerted by “human progress” on the environment are of extreme magnitude and gravity; they demand urgent measures by all available means. The ecological awakening of the last fifty years has been extraordinarily beneficial in this respect, and the movement it has generated could be of immense importance for the future of the planet. Its political influence should be much greater than it is at present and should carry the adhesion and support of all the populations of the world, all equally concerned by the fate of the planet. Green parties should be dominant worldwide. But for that to happen, their leaders should get rid of their extremist, irrational, and demagogic fringe and work together with scientists, instead of combating them. If we want effective ecological interventions, it is important that these be conducted in rational fashion with the help and advice of knowledgeable and trustworthy experts—which is what most scientists are, contrary to the accusation of venality that is too frequently thrown at them. Such interventions could contribute powerfully to alleviation of human-inflicted damage to our planet and help save it from the menaces that threaten its future. The misappropriation of ecology by mostly well intentioned but poorly informed and inadequately trained advocates is a deplorable perversion of an otherwise hugely constructive and indispensable movement, essential to human well-being on planet Earth.
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Option 6: Give Women a Chance
B efore we close this excursion into the future, a question that has attracted increasing interest in recent years must be addressed: the role of women in the running of human affairs. To keep within the limits of our subject matter, does science have anything to say concerning this key societal problem? Apparently yes, as the evidence suggests that several unfavorable human traits singled out by natural selection are largely associated with maleness.
Combativeness is primarily a male character
Most of the time, wars have been waged by men. Almost invariably, the dominators and conquerors, the soldiers and other fighters, have been men. Women have followed, to provide food, to care for the wounded, and to entertain the warriors with sex. Only exceptionally have they borne arms. This difference in behavior between the male and female members of our species could be written in the genes.
Throughout the animal world, males fight each other, sometimes to the death, sometimes ritually, for the most desirable females, while the females protect their young, or watch, fascinated, this joust of which they are destined to be the prize. The winners of these battles earn the right to entrust their genes to the best females and to give rise to similarly endowed progeny. Thus, the drive to win in battle is, in these species, genetically a male imperative, strongly favored by natural selection.
In contrast, females, especially mammals, are programmed to take care of the young. Their fighting instinct is aroused mostly by menace to their offspring. This fostering function gives females a prominent role in the epigenetic wiring of young brains. Babies are overwhelmingly nursed and nurtured by their mothers—or by grandmothers, nurses, nannies, or other surrogates, almost invariably of the female sex. Women are thus the main purveyors of the stimuli that shape the wiring of the babies’ brains. So, they are particularly well placed to change the world for the better.
This is of course an oversimplified way of looking at the sexual divide. Women have their share of competitive impulse. The female sex has given us not only Florence Nightingale, Mother Theresa, and Sister Emmanuelle but also the suffragettes, Margaret Thatcher, and the Williams sisters, let alone the Great Catherine. During the French Revolution, women sat for hours knitting—the famous tricoteuses—waiting to watch the executions. According to the popular adage Homo homini lupus, mulier mulieri lupior, man is a wolf to man, woman is “wolfer” to woman. On the whole, however, it is fair to say that fighting has overwhelmingly been a man’s business.
In most civilizations, women are treated as inferior to men
Favored by natural selection, the subjugation of women by men has been confirmed by custom in many societies, most prominently those that follow the biblical tradition. Whether in Orthodox Judaism, the Catholic Church, or Islam, women are treated as inferior to men, even though this discrimination may be disguised as “respect.” The fights around the ordination of women are typical of this attitude. So is the amalgamation by several religions of sex, sin, and feminity, as is the widespread cult of virginity. This atavistic misogyny even goes back to Genesis. Not Adam, but Eve ate the forbidden fruit first. In this pervasive myth, a woman is the origin of our genetic curse.
In line with this cultural tradition, men greatly outnumber women in all leading professions, whether in business, politics, the sciences, or the arts. This is not an inevitable fate. Matriarchal societies have existed. According to certain archaeologists, the Golden Age prevailed in Crete, in the third millennium before our era, under the influence of women of peace. Women have won Nobel prizes or have had works exhibited in museums or performed in concert halls. In politics, especially, they are beginning to emerge, whether by exhibiting typically feminine qualities or by imitating men remains, however, open to question.
The social rise of women in the modern world is an encouraging change
As things stand now, the human world is still largely a man’s world. Even the world in which women win remains ruled by competition in every area of endeavor. Whether cooperation and understanding will eventually prevail cannot be foretold. Whether women would run the world better than men is still debatable. But they deserve a chance to try. The problem is: How can women gain power without behaving like men?
Although this problem is far from solved, the present trend is encouraging. There is no doubt that women have, in a mere fifty years, acquired considerably more influence in several parts of the world, as evidenced, for example, by the increase in the number of women professionals or by the shifting distribution of parental responsibilities and of household chores between the two members of a partnership. What is particularly encouraging about this change is that it is taking
place largely with the cooperation of men.
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Option 7: Control Population
I n the last analysis, it all boils down to a population problem. Most of the ills covered in chapter 12 flow, directly or indirectly, from the fact that there are too many of us now on Earth, and soon there may be way too many. The unbridled multiplication of human beings allows our genetic heritage increasingly to produce its most damaging effects. Initiated many millennia ago, this trend has burgeoned with time, but without reaching tragic proportions as long as there remained on our planet virgin territories to occupy and fresh resources to exploit. The exponential pace of demographic expansion, linked with the extraordinary power of the human species to survive under adverse conditions thanks to its intellectual faculties, was bound to lead one day to a global crisis. Malthus predicted it two centuries ago. Today, it is happening.
Genetics of Original Sin Page 18
