Genetically modified foods: Crisis or Opportunity*
Conflicting pre-scientific world views, ethical action in freedom and the form of society

World views determine the debate

On the one hand it is possible to argue that genetic modification of crops is just a small step in an ongoing trend, so lets get on with it, on the other that it is something totally new that we should stop and think about before going further. Both positions are equally defensible. But taking into account not only the fact that many non-governmental organisations have been actively campaigning against it for more than a decade but also the tremendous upsurge of UK media interest in the debate in the UK, it is clear that our society is facing in GM crops a huge moral challenge. How society deals with it is going to have far reaching implications for things ranging from human nutrition to the very appearance of the rural landscape.

One organisation, Ifgene,** differs from almost all the rest in being neither for nor against GM crops. It brings specialists together, sometimes in conjunction with a wider public, to develop power-free dialogue by encouraging participants not to fall back on their corporate identity but rather to speak as individuals who just like other individuals are faced with moral choices. We easily forget that biotechnologists or Genetic Snowballers are human beings and that behind any corporate identity are people, more or less consciously trying to manifest their humanness. Ifgene tries to encourage people to take an interest not only in the other person’s point of view, but also how they arrived at it. This has often meant going into biographical aspects that the person feels contributed to the point of view. This is a cultural process towards ethical judgement forming which complements the more important individual ethical judgement. Because it is a group activity it cultivates pluralism. It has not always worked. People all too easily talk past each other. When this happens, neither side takes a step in their thinking.

Here I define genetic modification (GM) as recombinant DNA technology that involves artificially transferring genes or groups of genes between organisms, often between quite unrelated species. Even GM enthusiasts usually agree that its ethical, social and environmental implications need considering and discussing. But they often will only do this if you are willing to ‘stick with the facts’ or ‘stick to the science’, as if there was something out there quite independent of the human being that should determine how we behave. The government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Robert May said on 20 May 1999 that the science must set the time scale for the GM crop trials, that nothing should be arbitrary but rather governed by good science. I am inclined to agree with him, but there are differing judgements as to what good science is even amongst scientists.

To illustrate the sort of problem that arises when we just stick to the facts consider the illustration below. Everybody has the same facts, the same black and white markings in front of them, but some of us first see a young lady, some an old crone. From the same set of facts we construct two totally different pictures. This illustrates that we as thinking-perceiving human beings bring something to the given facts which is not inherent in them.

Our thinking is also influenced by all kinds of habits of thought and presuppositions. Scientists who say ‘let's just stick with the facts’ mean facts as they perceive them. Before even going into his laboratory the scientist is armed with a whole host of pre-scientific viewpoints or opinions. How else can you account for the fact that there are molecular biologists around the world who are implacably opposed to genetic engineering along with, albeit a majority, those who support it. Despite what Lewis Wolpert and Steve Jones assert, value free science simply does not exist. Scientists are supposed to be objective. There is supposedly no room for the subject in the scientific process. But in reality this is impossible because habits of thought are often deeply unconscious – such as thinking of living things as more or less complicated mechanisms –, or are difficult to overcome – such as the deep repugnance felt by the young scientist faced with doing something unpleasant to a laboratory animal.

The habits of thought divide us into two camps almost from the moment we hear about GM crops. People are either against them or for them with barely a moment's reflection. This is partly explainable by the views of man and world that people hold. One view is that mankind is basically the cumulative result of millions of accidents which began originally in dead matter – the materialist reductionist view. In complete contrast there is the view that life preceded all the material world that we see and that this world is the unfolding of a primal idea, of the being of Anthropos – Man with a big ‘M’ irrespective of gender – an idea which has not yet manifested in its fullness, in its potential. Throughout history we have been reminded by great spiritual leaders of this potential which could be realised. Both pictures of the human being that I have put before you are equally defensible from their own points of view.

Thinking: the key to the future

The most important faculty that we have for unfolding the primal idea of 'Man' is thinking. Only through thinking can we put ourselves in the position of the knowing doer, that is being conscious of everything our actions spring from leaving no residue. Thinking cannot function without an act of will and judging the rightness or wrongness of our thoughts needs our feelings. If we ourselves determine the motives for our actions and do not merely take them from our instincts or from what society tells us to do we progress to inner freedom, but this presupposes our thinking faculties, our intuitions, our inspirations and our imagination. What we think ultimately manifests as the reality that we experience around us, i.e. the facts. This spiritual activity of thinking, is the key to the world in which our children and grandchildren will find themselves in the future. Man has become creator in that idea becomes deed. And we have seen how powerful man is as creator in that we can make or break our whole planet and with it our whole possibility to exist. So a first activity for deepening the debate about genetic engineering is to try to make conscious what world views the various actors in the debate are coming from.

The scientific thinking behind making GM crops is that the genes which are passed on from generation to generation contain all the information that a plant needs to grow and survive. Put crudely the genes, made up of DNA, produce proteins which build up the form of the plant and carry out its life processes. Change one or more of those genes and you can dramatically alter the plant, change the flower colour from white to pink, for instance. But a plant can also be seen as an expression of the environment in which it is growing, an expression of its context. We easily verify this by looking at the shape of even the same species such as a dandelion in different situations in one's immediate environment. The plant’s genes do not cause all those different shapes we see, their causes must be sought in the plant’s surroundings. Whilst the plant’s genes of course enable it to exist at all they also exert a limiting or restricting influence on the possibilities that the plant has at its disposal. Beside the picture of the plant as being the result of its genes we can put a very different picture. We can look at a plant as an expression of the idea of the plant, what Goethe called its type or archetype, manifesting through a conversation between gene and environment. The idea of the plant is not the genes. They are merely one of the conditions for its existence. Other conditions include nutrient, warmth, light, air and so on.

GM crops: DNA thinking versus contextual thinking

If the whole of agriculture becomes determined by the DNA thinking of the molecular biologist we will leave the all important factor of context out of account. One simple consequence of this is that whilst we allow our weeds and pests complete freedom to adapt their genetic make up to the context of our farms, including the soil conditions, microclimate and other species present, we are increasingly not allowing that luxury to our crop plants and they are increasingly at a disadvantage. Breeding has moved from the farm, to nurseries, then into greenhouses and finally into the laboratory. The logical conclusion of this is that we will have plants well adapted to the laboratory but not to the conditions in which they are grown. The result is that they become genetically weakened and need constant cosseting with a cocktail of various chemicals to keep them ahead of the competition and free from disease. Plant breeding for a sustainable agriculture reverses this trend by putting the context of the farm back in the centre of the picture. This is the principle behind a new sustainable organic plant breeding initiative involving research institutes in the UK, Holland and Switzerland. It envisages encouraging moving the breeding back to the farm environment, where it belongs albeit with the collaboration of specialists.

GM foods and society

In Larry Zuckerman's ‘The Potato: How it Changed History’ we read that the potato was regarded with as deep a suspicion as most of the public now regard GM foods. Subterfuges had to be adopted to get the potato into circulation. The peasants who knew only too well about the harmful properties of the nightshade family to which the potato belongs did not want to grow them. But in France, Antoine Parmentier hit on the idea of putting a guard on the fields by day and leaving them unguarded at night. Low and behold, within a short time potatoes were growing all round the district. In this country, people were paid premiums to grow them. But today's novel foods have far wider implications than the humble potato. The effect of GM foods on health – if any there be – is only part of the story. With GM crops we envisage dramatic changes to farming systems and environment. There are also social implications to consider.

Food is very much a cultural matter. We generally accept that in a healthy society, the cultural life should be allowed to conduct itself in freedom. People should not be coerced or tricked through failure to declare certain details about the food into eating habits that they have not freely chosen. But this freedom of choice extends beyond buying the end product. The discerning consumer wants to know how it has been produced, wants to support certain forms of agriculture in preference to others.

Another area of social life that is relevant to the GM food debate is that of rights. It is an area where we should ideally all meet as equals. It is the responsibility of the politicians after appropriate discussion to set in writing what rights, i.e. laws, apply to the proliferation of GM foods. But in our society our politicians are not just politicians, they try to run another area of social life, namely the economy. This leaves them open to powerful influences coming from economic interests. The result is that making laws and putting them into practice becomes driven by economic interests. And in this country we could hardly have a regulatory system that is more favourable to the industry than it is.

So there are disorders in the form and interrelations of the three main sectors of social life: cultural, rights and economic which are deeply connected with people’s dissatisfaction about genetic engineering and the mess that the government and retail trade have got themselves into with the issue. An opportunity offered by the GM debate is to start to think about how we can run our society so that the challenges of modern life are better coped with. Two improvements would be to recognise that freedom is paramount in cultural life and that the economic sector should be prevented from meddling in basic rights, in government. But more is needed. A healthy economic sector, one where solidarity – i.e. co-operation not just competition – has a proper chance to develop would work associatively in that economic associations would bring together the interests of consumers, traders and producers. And of course, it would have its own regulatory system. At the moment we have consumers associations, traders associations and producers associations. They are even beginning to establish more or less formal communication channels between one another. Had we had associations in place where all three main actors in economic life, consumers, traders and producers were represented, this genetic engineering commercial adventure that has landed us in such an almighty mess might have been conducted in a more conscious way. It might even have never been started.

The greatest opportunity that this challenge of GM crops offers is to look again at our social structures to see if they are adequate for realising the ultimate potential of the human being.

* This article is based on a talk given by the author at  a public debate the Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, Bath, on 21 May 1999 organised by the Bath Anthroposophical Social Initiative Group. The other speakers were Patrick Holden of the Soil Association (UK's main organic certification body) and Dr Nigel Halford of the Institute of Arable Crops Research, Long Ashton, Bristol UK. The debate was chaired by Caroline Jackson MEP. 

** About Ifgene and the author
Ifgene – International Forum for Genetic Engineering, coordinated in the UK by David Heaf, is an initiative of the Goetheanum School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, Switzerland. It was started in 1989 by a group of scientists, doctors, ethicists and agriculturalists in Holland who were concerned at the superficiality of the genetic engineering debate. David Heaf, a biochemist with 18 years research experience some of which is in the biotechnology industry has an interest in the philosophical basis of science and its social, ethical and environmental implications. He is a member of the Biodynamic Agricultural Association and a biodynamic gardener himself, and wrote the 'Statement on Genetic Engineering' for its Demeter Standards Committee which rules out the use of GMOs in Demeter products. Ifgene address: David Heaf, Hafan, Llanystumdwy, LL52 0SG. Email: 101622.2773 (at) Compuserve.Com. Web site: http://www.anth.org/ifgene.

Other articles by this author on this web site.

Other articles by the author on Ifgene web site.

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