 Many of the books reviewed here can now be purchased over the internet from amazon.co.uk. You can use the link following most of the reviews, or if you are unable to find the book you are after, you can use the search facility at the end of the page. |
In print
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Redesigning Life? The worldwide challenge to genetic
engineering
Edited by Brian Tokar
Published by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London N1 9JF, UK
Website: zedbooks.co.uk
2001, 432pp, ISBN 1 85649 835 2 (Pb), £15.95/$22.50
If bio-technology as the way to feed Earth's massively expanding population were in the dock, you would be pressed to find a better case for the prosecution than the opening essay in this volume. Martha L Crouch may be passionate that 'agricultural biotechnology will not feed the world or save the planet', but her argument is made with clarity and common sense, and is, frankly, extremely convincing. One of her central tenets is that producing more food will not actually do anything to help the poor, but merely further fill the bank accounts and stomachs of the rich. She advocates polyculture, based on traditional systems of cultivation, which she argues are more energy efficient, maintain healthier soils, keep pests and pathogens below epidemic levels without harmful chemicals, are more resilient during adverse conditions, and result in a more balanced diet than the new alternatives. They also employ more people and help to maintain rural cultures.
Other papers in this volume make similarly strong contributions. 'Ten reasons why bio-technology is incompatible with sustainable development', includes as reason number four, that research, since it relies for funding on private industry, is increasingly targeted towards things that can be sold. This comes in the form of products that redress symptoms rather than solve underlying problems. For example, Monsanto's approach to Colorado Beetle is to develop potato plants that produce bacterial toxins which kill the beetles. Thus the beetle is seen as a problem to be dealt with, ignoring the underlying situation that monoculture of potatoes allows the beetle to prosper unchallenged. Thus biotechnology tends to ignore the root causes of unsustainability, and methods that could deal with a situation of this kind, such as crop rotation, receive little attention from researchers, because they cannot be sold. Another result of science being funded by business is that it loses the neutrality which ought to be encouraging exploration of alternatives to corporate biotechnology, instead becoming its ally.
Vandana Shiva, in a paper on vitamin A rice, subtitled 'A blind approach to blindness prevention', argues that betacarotene rice, developed by IRRI, is a Trojan horse, being used to smuggle in a wider acceptance of genetically modified crops. She is against the new rice on the grounds that increasing bio-diversity in agriculture - so that people can get Vitamin A from vegetables and fruit - will cost less, be available to more people, and be environmentally safer than the genetic solution. She also warns that the new rice will need intensive irrigation, unlike native vegetables, thereby necessitating a shift from water-conserving to water-consuming production. This in turn is likely to lead to the environmental damage that follows from excessive groundwater tapping or reservoir creation, such as waterlogging and salinisation.
The three examples above are all from the first section of the book. Part two covers medical genetics, science and human rights including 'The case against designer babies' and 'If pigs could fly, they would: The problems with xenotransplantation'. Part three has eight papers on 'Patents, corporate power and the theft of knowledge and resources', and the final section looks at examples and patterns in the worldwide opposition to genetic engineering. The majority are based on the experience of developed countries, for example the resistance to bovine growth hormone in Canada.
There is also an account of an ongoing battle in India, where events have been more extreme. In 1997 one district of Andhra Pradesh near the city of Hyderabad saw the suicide of nearly five hundred farmers, who were in debt after buying hybrid seeds and pesticides. An organised campaign led by scientists and farmers' organisations, has attempted to force Cargill and Monsanto to 'Quit India'. While naming itself Seed Satyagraha, after Gandhi's method of non-violent protest, this has not excluded the burning of cotton trials and storming of offices. So far the protests have not achieved their aim. However their likelihood of success in the longer term can only be helped by a book like this, which deserves to be widely read.
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Vital Signs: The trends that are shaping our future
Published by Worldwatch Institute, 1776 Massachusetts Ave., NW Washington, DC 20036 USA
Email: wwpub@worldwatch.org
Website: www.worldwatch.org
Published in Britain by Earthscan, 120 Pentonville Road, London, N1 9JN, UK
Email: earthinfo@earthscan.co.uk
Website: www.earthscan.co.uk
2001, 192pp, ISBN (US) 0 393 32176 2 / (UK) 1 85383 832 2, £12.95/US$13.95
Vital Signs is a sharply focused snapshot of the world in 2001. Thousands of reports, reviews and surveys from governments, industry, international organisations and scientific institutions are pruned and condensed by the researchers of the Worldwatch Institute into 24 key indicators and 25 special features describing the world we live in. It makes fascinating reading, ideal for dipping into; each topic is contained in two facing pages - often one of text and one of graphs - so each trend can be understood in a couple of minutes. The key indicators are found in the spheres of agriculture (e.g. 'Fertilizer use rises'), energy ('Wind energy growth continues'), climate, economics ('Food trade slumps'), transport ('Bicycle production recovers'), health, social and military trends. The special features describe particular developments in these areas, such as the slow down in transgenic crop planting, the frequency of natural disasters, variations in tax on petrol, and the tightening of malaria's lethal grip.
