The World Trade Organization, which is quickly becoming the transnational government of Planet Earth, will be meeting in Seattle at the end of this month. Right now, it looks as if the meeting will be a food fight with the delegates from Europe squaring off against the Americans over biotechnology and genetically-modified organisms in the food supply.
In the next month, there will be plenty of discussion of this in the newspapers, talk shows and on the web. One of the arguments put forward by the corporations which produce genetically-modified foods is that these technologies are needed to feed a world whose population now exceeds six billion.
If we accept for the sake of argument – and only for the sake of argument – that someday, somewhere, genetically-modified crops will contrive the means to feed the hungry and clothe the naked without first precipitating an agricultural meltdown, we have to ask, what is the likelihood of that technology ever being put into practice? From my reading of current events, no chance whatsoever.
The problem with feeding the hungry, either through technical breakthrough or more equitable distribution of goods, is that there’s no money in it, and since the people who run this planet are primarily interested in money, feeding the hungry is a goal not likely to be met anytime soon.
Let’s look at medicine. Of all the diseases we contend with, it’s said that it should be fairly easy and cheap to develop a vaccine for malaria, but no one ever has. Why? Because, for the most part, malaria is contracted by third-world people or first-world do-gooders out slumming with the poor.
Movie star-cum-disability activist Christopher Reeve has said that with $40 million in research money, we could find a way to reconnect spinal tissue and make the lame walk. Yet it doesn’t happen, because there is not much of a market in para- and quadriplegics, much less wealthy ones like Mr. Reeve.
Or look at HIV/AIDS. Thirty-three million of our fellow humans have this dread disease, one we can now control, if not cure, but the drug makers would rather let the vast majority of people who have AIDS die rather than drop their prices.
I recently heard a speech by Sonja Schmitz, a PhD candidate at the University of Vermont, who for eight years worked as a biotechnologist for Dupont. She once thought she was going to help Dupont use science to feed the world. In her eight years, every project she worked on – with one exception – dealt with manipulating cornstarches to make processed foods more attractive to customers. Nothing to feed the hungry or improve nutrition. Ms. Schmitz said no one else in her department was feeding the hungry either. Oh, and that single non-cornstarch project? Dupont was trying to manipulate the sugars in beans to make them less prone to induce flatulence. Pbbbbt. I suppose that was for the good of society. Reducing global warming and all that.
So why should Monsanto, Dupont, Novartis, et al, be allowed to proceed with their experiments on the planet under the cover of “feeding the hungry”? Why should we all risk agricultural catastrophe, when we are quite sure no fruits of genetically-modified foods will ever go to fill the belly slackened by hunger?
I must admit, I’m just as jaded about ever seeing the fair allocation of goods and food as I am about biotechnology feeding the world, but at least efforts by activists to make society more just don’t threaten the stability of ecosystems.
The problem – as I see it – is that our cleverness has outstripped our wisdom by half and our compassion by an order of magnitude.
Feeding the Hungry
The World Trade Organization, which is quickly becoming the transnational government of Planet Earth, will be meeting in Seattle at the end of this month. Right now, it looks as if the meeting will be a food fight with the delegates from Europe squaring off against the Americans over biotechnology and genetically-modified organisms in the food supply.
In the next month, there will be plenty of discussion of this in the newspapers, talk shows and on the web. One of the arguments put forward by the corporations which produce genetically-modified foods is that these technologies are needed to feed a world whose population now exceeds six billion.
If we accept for the sake of argument – and only for the sake of argument – that someday, somewhere, genetically-modified crops will contrive the means to feed the hungry and clothe the naked without first precipitating an agricultural meltdown, we have to ask, what is the likelihood of that technology ever being put into practice? From my reading of current events, no chance whatsoever.
The problem with feeding the hungry, either through technical breakthrough or more equitable distribution of goods, is that there’s no money in it, and since the people who run this planet are primarily interested in money, feeding the hungry is a goal not likely to be met anytime soon.
Let’s look at medicine. Of all the diseases we contend with, it’s said that it should be fairly easy and cheap to develop a vaccine for malaria, but no one ever has. Why? Because, for the most part, malaria is contracted by third-world people or first-world do-gooders out slumming with the poor.
Movie star-cum-disability activist Christopher Reeve has said that with $40 million in research money, we could find a way to reconnect spinal tissue and make the lame walk. Yet it doesn’t happen, because there is not much of a market in para- and quadriplegics, much less wealthy ones like Mr. Reeve.
Or look at HIV/AIDS. Thirty-three million of our fellow humans have this dread disease, one we can now control, if not cure, but the drug makers would rather let the vast majority of people who have AIDS die rather than drop their prices.
I recently heard a speech by Sonja Schmitz, a PhD candidate at the University of Vermont, who for eight years worked as a biotechnologist for Dupont. She once thought she was going to help Dupont use science to feed the world. In her eight years, every project she worked on – with one exception – dealt with manipulating cornstarches to make processed foods more attractive to customers. Nothing to feed the hungry or improve nutrition. Ms. Schmitz said no one else in her department was feeding the hungry either. Oh, and that single non-cornstarch project? Dupont was trying to manipulate the sugars in beans to make them less prone to induce flatulence. Pbbbbt. I suppose that was for the good of society. Reducing global warming and all that.
So why should Monsanto, Dupont, Novartis, et al, be allowed to proceed with their experiments on the planet under the cover of “feeding the hungry”? Why should we all risk agricultural catastrophe, when we are quite sure no fruits of genetically-modified foods will ever go to fill the belly slackened by hunger?
I must admit, I’m just as jaded about ever seeing the fair allocation of goods and food as I am about biotechnology feeding the world, but at least efforts by activists to make society more just don’t threaten the stability of ecosystems.
The problem – as I see it – is that our cleverness has outstripped our wisdom by half and our compassion by an order of magnitude.