“What if they get out? Go on the rampage? Start breeding, then the population spirals out of control – like those big green rabbits?”
“That would be a problem,” said Crake. “But they won’t get out. Nature is to zoos as God is to churches.”
“Meaning what?” said Jimmy. He wasn’t paying close attention, he was worrying about the ChickieNobs and the wolvogs. Why is it he feels some line has been crossed, some boundary transgressed? How much is too much, how far is too far?
“Those walls and bars are there for a reason,” said Crake. “Not to keep us out, but to keep them in. Mankind needs barriers in both cases.”
“Them?”
“Nature and God.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in God,” said Jimmy.
“I don’t believe in Nature either,” said Crake. “Or not with a capital N.”
Ecology is a special science. Among the natural sciences, it is unique in its inherent connection to human-centered values. Ecology’s relationship with transgenic biotechnology – i.e. the biotechnology used to make genetically-modified organisms – is therefore an inherently complex one. This can be seen by the myriad of ways in which biotechnology companies are often demonized – with false accusations that sound great for rousing the public, as well as with accurate information about the harms created by their work – and in the way that the technology is often criticized as inherently unsafe, a practice to be avoided like Frankenstein’s monster.
During the time I have spent working on environmental issues, the utility and morality of biotechnology has come up in discussion many times: questions about safety, questions about “how much is too much” when tampering with nature, questions about interest groups and decision-making processes, questions about the actual benefits and harms to using genetically-modified organisms to feed people.
There were two particularly influential experiences for me in forming my views about biotechnology.
The first was visiting the New York Botanical Garden with my Ethnobotany course at Lehman College, where lab technicians and scientists who were working with potential transgenic genes spoke of their successes, of the ways in which lives were positively transformed by golden rice and similar GM crops developed to aid the fight against hunger and malnutrition in less industrialized parts of the world. This gave me an appreciation for the intent and the potential benefits of the technology. It was following this that I learned that GMOs actually take less pesticide to create than conventional crops, and similar bits of scientific knowledge that made me question anti-GMO activists’ claims.
The second occurred one day in Patagonia, AZ, while I was volunteering with the local native seed library, cleaning and sorting bags of seed collected to help with restoration ecology projects in Southern Arizona. A political economist by the name Carol Thompson (this is her Northern Arizona University faculty profile) was also volunteering that day, and she started telling me about her work on the political economy of GMOs in US food aid to Africa. This was the scientific and political counter-argument I had been waiting to hear: that GM seeds are created in large batches without nearly enough genetic diversity; that they often squelch local seed varieties and spread their genetic material far outside their intended reach; that these seed varieties are usually fine for the first year, but are often maladapted to the large annual fluctuations in growing conditions that are common in much of sub-Saharan Africa.
Dr. Thompson’s most important point, to me, was that agency is being stripped from the countries and from the people receiving food aid. The United States has refused to pay for GM corn seeds to be milled before sent as food aid, a large problem for countries with strict anti-GMO sentiment, rampant hunger, and little money in the budget to pay the US to mill the food that we are supposedly donating out of goodwill.
I am optimistic that we will learn how to make more smaller batches of seed and integrate local adaptations, but I am skeptical about whether the choice will be given to people receiving food aid to abstain from eating genetically modified foods if they so desire, and whether American citizens will have the right to know what genetic modifications have been made to the foods we eat. (Anti-GMO-labeling legislation is already being churned out in America.)
Technology is unfortunately not an implicit harbinger of justice and positivity into the world. As stated by Peter Sunde, founder of The Pirate Bay, in a recent interview with Motherboard about why he has given up the fight for net neutrality:
“The reason that the real world is the big target for me is because the internet is emulating the real world. We are trying to recreate this capitalistic society we have on top of the internet. So the Internet has been mostly fuel on the capitalistic fire, by kind of pretending to be something which will connect the whole world, but actually having a capitalistic agenda.
Look at all the biggest companies in the world, they are all based on the Internet. Look at what they are selling: nothing. Facebook has no product. Airbnb, the biggest hotel chain in the world, has no hotels. Uber, the biggest taxi company in the world, has no taxis whatsoever.
The amount of employees in these companies are smaller than ever before and the profits are, in turn, larger. Apple and Google are passing oil companies by far. Minecraft got sold for $2.6 billion and WhatsApp for like $19 billion. These are insane amounts of money for nothing. That is why the Internet and capitalism are so in love with each other.
… I think the focus needs to be that the Internet is exactly the same as society. People might realize that it’s not a really good idea to have all of our data and files on Google, Facebook and company servers. All of these things need to be communicated al the way to the political top, of course. But stop treating Internet like it’s a different thing and start focusing on what you actually want your society to look like. We have to fix society, before we can fix the Internet. That’s the only thing.”
Like the Internet, GM technology is currently masquerading as a force for justice and sustenance, but I don’t believe that Monsanto making smaller batches of seeds will, on its own, make nearly enough difference to solve the issues with GMOs. Scientific advancement is not the same as political and economic change. I posit that we cannot fix transgenic biotechnology and solve the problems with its application simply by refining the science. We must engage with the political, social, and economic forces controlling GM technology if we are to create substantial social change.
~ Ari Himber
Though I have not mentioned feminism by name in this post, there are obviously a heap of feminist issues and perspectives that this post touches on. Another topic alluded to in the title is the misdirection of initiatives that center hunger as a separate issue from poverty, environmental justice, and social inequality. This is where I will be steering the class conversation on Tuesday.
