Forwarded by Ericka Dana, Catnip Farm
(I'm going to need false teeth pretty soon if I keep reading things like
this...)
--The Mighty Oak was once a little nut that held its ground.
------------------------------------------------------------
American Seed Trade Association
THE BENEFITS AND POLITICS OF BIOTECHNOLOGY Senator Christopher Bond (R-MO)
Home Page Senator Christopher Bond (R-MO) made a very powerful speech in
support of biotechnology in the U. S. senate, January 26, 2000
Mr. BOND.
Madam President, as we move into this next century, we face a great
opportunity and great challenge. We need only to look backward to help
contemplate the immense change and innovation that is in front of us. While
positive change is to the long-term benefit of all, it typically results in
short-term difficulties, anxiety, and fear for some. How we cope with those
difficulties defines our vision and tests our courage. In the last century
we saw the industrial age and the computer age. We experienced fits of fear
regarding everything from aviation, penicillin, industrialization,
computerization and most recently, the non-calamity, fortunately, known as
Y2K.
Remarkably, plant technology in this half-century has helped make it
possible for the U.S. farmer, who in 1940 fed 19 people, to fee 129 today.
Meanwhile, worldwide population grows and farmland shrinks, Policymakers,
farmers, doctors, business leaders, scientists, and others look ahead and
search for critical tools to meet the increasing demands of a growing and
changing world.
Nobel prizewinning chemist Robert F. Curl of Rice University said that `it
is clear that the 21st will be the century of biology.' Scientists, medical
doctors, Government officials, farmers, and others have testified before the
Congress and elsewhere to the benefits of this new generation of technology,
which may offer the sustainable production of safer and more abundant food
sources, new vaccines and medicines, as well as biodegradable plastics and
cleaner energy alternatives.
Senator Mack hosted a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee in September
entitled `Putting a Human Face on Biotechnology' where Tour de France winner
Lance Armstrong testified about his personal experience using biotechnology
and will to overcome cancer. Senators Lugar and Harkin held 2 days of
hearings in October with a diverse number of distinguished witnesses to
discuss the science and regulation of biotechnology.
Bipartisan members including Senators Kerry, Durbin, Hagel, Craig, Frist,
Conrad, Lugar, Gorton, Grassley, Ashcroft, Robb, Burns, Grams, Gordon Smith,
Baucus, Helms, Hutchison, Roberts, Bayh, Brownback, Crapo, and Coverdell
have joined me in expressing to the President our bipartisan commitment to
biotechnology. We urge the administration and the State Department to be
firm in their negotiations in Montreal, to say that the phyto sanitary
agreements are adequate in all we need to regulate biotechnology.
As chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee which funds public
research activities at the National Science Foundation, I have worked with
my partner, Senator Mikulski, to win congressional approval of $150 million
in the last 3 years for the Plant Genome Initiative at the National Science
Foundation to study the structure, organization, and function of genomes of
significant plants important to improving human health and the environment.
Recently, I received a letter signed by over 500 scientists revealing the
exceptionally strong scientific consensus endorsing biotechnology. These are
public- and private-sector scientists, the majority of whom are from
academic institutions representing nearly every State, a number of foreign
countries, the National Academy of Sciences, private foundations, Federal
research agencies, and our National Labs. Here is some of what they told me
about biotechnology:
The ultimate beneficiaries of technological innovation have always been
consumers, both in the United States and abroad. In developing countries,
biotechnological advances will provide means to overcome vitamin
deficiencies, to supply vaccines for killer diseases like cholera and
malaria, to increase production and protect fragile natural resources, and
to grow crops under normally unfavorable conditions. She concluded:
Millions of people have eaten the products of genetic engineering and no
adverse effects have been demonstrated. The proper balance of safety testing
between companies and the government is a legitimate area for further
debate. So are environmental safeguards. But the purpose of such debate
should be to improve biotech research and enhance its benefits to society,
not stop it in its tracks. It should be mentioned that her students at Cal
Davis were also victimized by law-breakers who vandalized their research
testing plots. Clearly, if the radicals were as interested in understanding
as they are in intimidation, eliminating research is the last thing they
would consider.
In an Op-Ed in the New York Times entitled `Who's Afraid of Genetic
Engineers?' former President Jimmy Carter outlined the sad irony. He said:
Imagine a country placing such rigid restrictions on imports that people
would not get vaccines and insulin. And imagine those same restrictions
being placed on food products as well as on laundry detergent and paper. As
far-fetched as it sounds, many developing countries and some industrialized
on may do just that.
He concluded: If imports . . . are regulated unnecessarily, the real losers
will be the developing nations. Instead of reaping the benefits of decades
of discovery and research, people from Africa and Southeast Asia will remain
prisoners of outdated technology. Their countries could suffer greatly for
years to come. It is crucial that they reject the propaganda of extremists
groups before it is too late.
Renowned scientists have dedicated their lives to understanding
biotechnology and using it to the benefit of mankind to solve problems of
hunger, disease and environmental degradation. These problems are
considerable now, but will grow in magnitudes in the years ahead. In the
tabloid press, however, a teenager dressed up as a corn cob will get as much
attention and is attributed the same credibility as leading scientists,
whose work is subjected to rigorous peer review.
We need to be clear about several issues. First, our Government and its
citizens are second to none in our collective commitment to food safety. We
have a rigorous multi-agency approval process that has stood the test of
time since 1938. It is based not on politics but on scientific consensus. It
is supported by bipartisan Members of each body who have the strongest
commitment to food safety and environmental protection. None of us are
advocates for unfettered technology. As with any technology, there are
limits that will be and must be subjected to law, not to mention common
sense.
Second, we need to realize that there are strong elements in the European
Union who are more than happy to exploit fears--fears that they helped
create--to provide short-term protection to their farmers from imports. In a
sentence, fear and hysteria, without scientific basis, is being used by some
to limit the productivity of foreign farmers--period. Meanwhile,
opportunistic food companies such as ADM and Novartis are knowingly
undermining our scientists and trade negotiators to placate the Luddites and
protectionists.
Finally, let me emphasize this critical point. The issue of risk is not
one-dimensional. Yes, we must understand and evaluate the relative risk to a
Monarch Butterfly larvae. Additional research has answered already many of
those questions. But there is another risk. That risk is that naysayers and
the protectionists succeed in their goals to kill biotechnology and condemn
the world's children to unnecessary blindness, malnutrition, sickness and
environmental degradation.
Dr. C.S. Prakash directs the Center for Plant Biotechnology Research at
Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Ala, said the following in a column for the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Anti-technology activists accuse corporations of `playing God' by
genetically improving crops, but it is these so-called environmentalists who
are really playing God, not with genes but with the lives of poor and hungry
people.
While activist organizations spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to
promote fear through anti-science newspaper ads, 1.3 billion people, who
live on less than $1 a day, care only about findings their next day's meal.
Biotechnology is one of the best hopes for solving their food needs today,
when we have 6 billion people, and certainly in the next 30 to 50 years,
when there will be 9 billion on the globe.
Those people, who battle weather, pests and plant disease to try to raise
enough for their families, can benefit tremendously from biotechnology, and
not just from products created by big corporations. Public-sector
institutions are conducting work on high-yield rice, virus-resistant sweet
potato and more healthful strains for cassava, crops that are staples in
developing countries.
The development of local and regional agriculture is the key to addressing
both hunger and low income. Genetically improved food is `scale neutral,' in
that a poor rice farmer with one acre in Bangladesh can benefit as much as a
larger farmer in California. And he doesn't have to learn a sophisticated
new system; he only has to plant a seed. New rice strains being developed
through biotechnology can increase yields by 30 to 40 percent. Another rice
strain has the potential to prevent blindness in millions of children whose
diets are deficient in Vitamin A.
Edible vaccines, delivered in locally grown crops, could do more to
eliminate disease than the Red Cross, missionaries and U.N. task forces
combined, at a fraction of the cost. But none of these benefits will be
realized if Western-generated fears about biotechnology halt research
funding and close borders to exported products.
For the well-fed to spreadhead fear-based campaigns and suppress research
for ideological and pseudo-science reasons is irresponsible and immoral.
Dr. Prakash just released a petition signed by more than 600 scientists
declaring support of agricultural biotechnology. In his press release he
noted, `We in the scientific community felt it necessary to counteract the
baseless attacks so often being made on biotechnology and genetically
modified foods. Biotechnology is a potent and valuable tool that can help
make foods more productive and nutritious. And, contrary to anti-biotech
activists, they can even advance environmental goals such as biodiversity.'
Not content to live with their own brand of ludditism, European activists
have shifted the battleground and they are now looking to export--not
answers or solutions or constructive proposals--but fear, hysteria and
unworkable restrictions to Asia, South America and even the United States.
Many have stayed out of this debate thinking the controversy will blow over
as it does with most regulated technologies. Many, particularly those who
understand the science of the issue, had been silent, thinking, possibly
that people would understand and that the technology would sell itself.
I have said from the beginning that we could not take it for granted that
people would embrace the technology because it is complex. I have said from
the beginning that American consumers would want information. Consumers who
know the facts--who know the benefits this technology will provide--will
endorse it. American consumers demand food safety, but they also embrace
technology and progress. They are not satisfied to say what we are doing is
good enough. And finally, they want to base their decisions on science not
fiction and it is the open discussion of facts that the vandals, the
protectionists, and the luddites fear the most.
President Clinton outlined what is at stake last week in proclaiming January
2000 as National Biotechnology Month:
Today, a third of all new medicines in development are based on
biotechnology. Designed to attack the underlying cause of an illness, not
just its symptoms, these medicines have tremendous potential to provide not
only more effective treatments, but also cures. With improved understanding
of cellular and genetic processes, scientists have opened exciting new
avenues of research into treatments for devastating diseases--like
Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, diabetes, heart disease, AIDS, and cancer--that
affect millions of Americans. Biotechnology has also given us several new
vaccines, including one for rotavirus, now being tested clinically, that
could eradicate an illness responsible for the deaths of more than 800,000
infants and children each year.
The impact of biotechnology is far-reaching. Bio-remediation technologies
are cleaning our environment by removing toxic substances from contaminated
soils and ground water. Agricultural biotechnology reduces our dependence on
pesticides. Manufacturing processes based on biotechnology make it possible
to produce paper and chemicals with less energy, less pollution, and less
waste. Forensic technologies based on our growing knowledge of DNA help us
exonerate the innocent and bring criminals to justice.
A question is whether we want to continue with a fixed number of
agricultural uses or if we want to expand them to provide farmers and
consumers new options and new opportunities. A question for some is whether
we want to be more pro-environment and pro-health and nutrition than we are
anti-corporate.
Like many of my colleagues here in the Senate, I have consulted scores of
scientists in the academic world, in the public sector and in the private
sector. I have consulted medical professionals, and farmers for their
practical experience regarding biotechnology. But let me finish by reading
you a quote from a December 25, 1999, interview in `New Scientist' and you
consider for yourself who might be the source:
I believe we are entering an era now where pagan beliefs and junk science
are influencing public policy. GM foods and forestry are both good examples
where policy is being influenced by arguments that have no basis in fact or
logic. The source is not a corporate leader, a Senator, or a university
scientist. It is an ecologist with a Ph.D. That ecologist is Patrick Moore,
one of the founding members of Greenpeace and a veteran of the frontline
against everything from whaling to nuclear waste since the 1970s.
The scientific consensus amongst government and academic scientists in the
U.S. is extraordinary. The scientific community in Europe, some of whom I
have met with agree, but have been intimidated and silenced. Please give the
scientific and medical communities the opportunity to speak to these complex
issues before you are swayed by the tabloids in Europe, those who may have
their head buried in the flat earth, and the vandals and extremists who have
been condemned even by some of their very own.
We have a system in the U.S. to identify and evaluate relative risk, and, if
necessary, mitigate those risks. The focus of international leaders should
be on working constructively to identify and evaluate relative risk so that
our people may have safely the options of biotechnology available to them.
The development of this technology is not recreational. It is to solve real
world problems and the possibilities are truly breathtaking. There is too
much at stake for those who know better to remain passive.
In 1921, Missouri's renowned plant scientist, George Washington Carver said:
`I wanted to know the name of every stone and flower and insect and bird and
beast. I wanted to know where it got its color, where it got its life--but
there was no one to tell me.' He added that: `No individual has any right to
come into the world and go out of it without leaving behind him distinct and
legitimate reasons for having passed through it.' This issue will be a test
of our collective vision, discipline, and courage.
Madam President, I thank the Chair and my colleagues. I ask unanimous
consent to print in the Record materials from President Clinton, President
Carter, Drs. Prakash and McGlaughlin, New Scientist, and the 500 scientists'
letter.
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