A Solution in Search of a Problem:
An Interview with Plant Scientist Dr. E. Anne Clark on Genetic Engineering in Agriculture (Part I)

Scientists Speak Out - from Rural Vermont Report - April-May, 2002

JB: Maybe you could start by talking about what genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are and how they differ from traditional selective breeding.

AC: That's a good starting point, because it's proven useful for some to say that GMs (genetic modifications) are no different than conventional plant breeding, but in fact they're quite different. A number of techniques have been used including what is called mutagenesis, which is when you intentionally induce mutations in individual genes, and the purpose is to create diversity, which can potentially be useful. That has been used in some crops with some success. Genetic modification is the intentional, forcible insertion of genes into a genome.

I want to make it clear that the problems of doing that are not necessarily related to how distant the genes are from the host genome. You get the same problems if you take a gene out of a species and put it back into the same species, the same problems occur. So although it may seem more offensive or more disturbing to take a gene from a fish and put it into a tomato for example, the side effects, which are completely unpredictable, and therefore potentially hazardous, are the same regardless of where the gene came from. So the issue is the forcible insertion of a gene into a genome.

The very notion of forcibly inserting a gene is based on the idea that a gene codes for some kind of trait -- it codes for herbicide resistance or cold tolerance, for instance, but that's really quite an outdated notion and it's become quite clear, most recently through the human genome project, that genes do not act in isolation, that they act in the context of the genetic background. So the same gene put into e.coli, for example, is actually a different product than the same gene put into a corn plant. So the genetic background makes a huge difference in the expression of the intended trait.

Another point to make is that when you look at conventional plant breeding, you don't see genes randomly migrating around inside chromosomes, although that does happen occasionally. What distinguishes genetic modification from this is that when you insert the trans-gene packet, regardless of the method used, the placement of the packet is completely random. You don't know which chromosome it's going to go into, and you don't know where on the chromosome it's going to go. You also don't know how many copies of the packet are going to insert in a given cell -- you could have one copy or you could have ten. These things -- which chromosome, where on the chromosome, and how many copies -- make a huge difference, not simply in the expression of the target trait, such at Bt, but also in the inadvertent expression, or silencing, of other unrelated traits.

For example, when Bt was inserted into one of the clones that Monsanto has marketed as their Bt potato, it silenced the gene for golden nematode resistance. Now golden nematode resistance has nothing to do with Bt, it was a completely different gene. But the gene for golden nematode resistance was turned off by the forced insertion of the Bt gene packet.

JB: You're saying we have no idea what the outcome will be?

AC: None at all. And this is what makes it so farcical to talk about risk assessment, because until you know what you're looking for, you're not going to find it. Who would think to look for golden nematode resistance?

JB: It sounds like a very inexact technique.

AC: It is. It's ridiculous for people to say it's precise. It actually is very precise up to the point of insertion, but from the point on it's completely random, completely unpredictable, and unrepeatable.

It is a very elegant and exact process to pull out the genes you want and glue them together into a packet. Typically when you're inserting a packet you're not just inserting one gene, you're inserting several, and they come from disparate sources, so they have no evolutionary history of having evolved together, which is the way that genes work in reality. Rather they've been put together hodgepodge, to do specific functions. But our ignorance, coupled with our arrogance in doing this, has blinded us to the reality that in fact other things are happening as well.

JB: How do they actually insert it?

AC: There are two main methods, one is called the ballistic method. This is with a machine that actually shots it in with a shotgun. The other is based on a biological vector, usually a bacteria that is designed to insert itself into alien genomes, that's how it lives its normal life. You insert this packet into the bacteria and use the bacteria to sneak into the genome.

JB: There are economic ramifications to GMO contamination. Farmers' fields are inadvertently contaminated by GMOs and the farmer is held responsible.

AC: In the US the experience has been primarily with corn. Not all crops are out-crossing; some crops, like barley or oats, are selfing species and that means that the pollen that fertilize the flower comes from within the flower on the same plant, so you don't get pollen from another plant elsewhere coming in and pollinating the flower. The risk of this happening is reduced substantially in selfing species such as soybeans. But out-crossing species like corn or canola, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, squashes, etc., the pollen that fertilizes the flower can come from any same-species plant. So when that happens pollen can move very great distances, often on vectors (such as insect pollinators) but also on wind. An insect pollinator goes from flower to flower and it carries the pollen from one flower to the next. And of course plants have evolved ways to make this happen. The flowers that were bright and colorful or have an attractive scent are designed to attract insects, that's their function. Whereas plants that have very obscure flowers, like grasses for example, are designed for wind pollination.

JB: Even though the intention was to have more control, it sounds like they have no control whatsoever.

AC: The intention was to make money. Genetic modification like many technologies is a solution in search of a problem. It's a nifty technique that they're trying to find a way to make money from. Imagine - right now the traits we're talking about are things like herbicide tolerance and Bt. These are things that act on the farm predominately. I'm lying to you a little bit, but functionally, that's what they do. Imagine if genes that were moving in pollen were a drug, like for diabetes or a blood thinner, or an industrial enzyme, or plastics, whatever -- and these genes are floating around contaminating other people's fields so when you harvest your field you get some Parkinsons drug over here and a drug for diabetes over there, and you get some vaccine --

JB: And these are things they're working on?

AC: Oh yes, they're very close to releasing them. It simply boggles the mind that anyone, any thinking scientist, could ever have authorized the release of this stuff. These are not rocket scientist type things. I'm not a geneticist at all, I'm a physiologist, and agronomist. I can see these things and many people can see these things, but governments don't seem to be willing to see it. I'm appalled when I think about what could happen.

JB: The industry seems so closely wed to the agencies that are supposed to regulate them.

AC: That is a concern. It didn't originate with genetic modification. Thinking charitably on this -- not thinking about campaign contributions -- I think that governments were persuaded to accept uncritically a fraudulent assumption: what's good for industry is good for society. There are certainly cases where that is true; there are many cases where it is not. But this assumption has been guiding a lot of government policies which favor industry. It needs to be critically assessed.

Government is supposed to be of the people, by the people, for the people. It's there to support our needs. The way that this has evolved, it's unclear to me how these products, rBGH or anything else, are actually serving the needs of society.

Caller: The great selling point for GMOs is the Malthusian analysis that this is the only way we're going to be able to feed the masses.

AC: I know that international agricultural research centers (IRCs) claim to be doing just that - to be producing GMOs that will service the needs of society. I'm afraid I don't see the benefits. They're taking a very linear approach to feeding the world which actually disenfranchises people. The golden rice is a classic example. This is a product that industry is trumpeting with enormous fanfare, saying we're going to end blindness as we know it, etc., when in point of fact the countries that have the highest rate of blindness in children attributable to the lack of vitamin A in their foodstuffs are countries that have large sources of vitamin A (carotene, etc.) in their native foods, which have disappeared from the marketplace owing to the green revolution, which encouraged the growing of a few management and capital intensive crops like white rice, and eliminated through pesticides many of these native indigenous crops and leafy vegetables people had come to depend upon for, among other things, vitamin A.

So golden rice is dealing with a symptom, not a cause and it's going about it in the wrong way. Thanks to Vandana Shiva and others, they've called their bluff on this. In order to get enough vitamin A to actually do any good you have to eat kilos and kilos of rice. If it works at all -- it's still in the early development phases. And finally the originator of this concept has now gone public rebuking the industry for over-selling his hard work, really questioning the whole thing. He still thinks it's beneficial, and the Rockefeller Foundation which funded the work still thinks it has the potential to benefit, but it's now owned by the life sciences companies, and if it does anything at all, it's not clear it will do what they're saying.

I'm sympathetic to the notion that there could be uses of this technology that would be beneficial, but when I think of diseases or pests or nutritional issues in the third world that are so heavily caused by poverty, the genetics of a crop has so perishingly little to do with solving the problem.

And in fact it can exacerbate it. I have recently worked with beef producers in the rain forests in Nicaragua, and they're there not by choice, burning down the rain forest, and destroying biodiversity -- they're there because their land in western Nicaragua, which is the flat agricultural land, was taken by large companies to grow crops for export. So unless the GM is used by the small subsistence farmers, it will be the large landowners that will benefit, and they will further marginalize and disenfranchise their own people.

Caller: How about disease resistance or crop yield?

AC: When I think of diseases for crops -- there are so many of them -- whenever you take a linear approach as they are with Bt for instance, where we're targeting the corn borer -- other pests proliferate, just like with chemicals. When you kill of a particular pest, other pests proliferate. It's called secondary pest proliferation. Twenty-four of the top agricultural pests were originally minor pests of the community. Nature abhors a vacuum. If you were to create an herbicide that selectively kills chickweed, do you think you would have holes where there used to be chickweed? When you empty out a niche something else comes along and fills it in. In order to functionally control diseases and pests you need a much more holistic mentality, and that means many traits all the time working. It's not going to work with GM. It works a whole lot better with management decisions and diverse crop rotation and things of that nature. This is not to say that there is no place for disease resistance or pest resistance in plants, it's just that that's got to be part of the tool box. There is a whole bunch of management decisions that can facilitate disease and weed encroachment or can retard it. All of this focus on genetics is distracting attention from the real cause of these problems, which is the way we're growing these crops. The same is true in the third world.

I think a real illustration of the point is the work done by Jules Pretty's group at Sussex in the UK, they've just recently published the work in the journal Nature. They looked at some 200 different projects relating to sustainable agricultural all around the world, they were showing yield increases of 30, 60, 80 percent -- it had nothing to do with genetics and everything to do with how the crops are being grown. Very imaginative solutions to problems done by small NGOs and locally relevant appropriate technologies. Very encouraging stuff and absolutely nothing to do with genetic modification.

Part II of this interview will appear in the next issue of the Rural Vermont Report. Dr. Clark has a website at: www.plant.uoguelph.ca/faculty/eclark/