KP Prabhakaran Nair
In the winter of 2013 when it became known that the World Food Prize was jointly given to Dr Robb Froley, chief technical officer, Monsanto, Syngenta, a Swiss MNC that is heavily into genetically-modified crops and a totally unknown Belgian biotechnologist, the world Press gave the news little importance and it went practically unnoticed in the Indian media. Curiously, the announcement was made in Washington and the Press statement was made by an Indian agricultural scientist, who has been covertly backing GM crops globally and in India, in particular, and coincidentally was also the chairman of the selection committee for this coveted award.
Currently, the Narendra Modi government at the Centre is quietly pushing GM crops in India although and off and on ambiguous statements emanate from Prakash Javadekar, the minister for environment, whose word is the final say on the subject. It is important to note that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) election manifesto unambiguously said that it was anti GM crops and foods.
Interestingly, the BJP-ruled Maharashtra government has quietly given permission for the field trials of GM rice, among others. These developments are of great concern for the future course of Indian agriculture because, on balance, the viewpoint of many concerned, knowledgeable and well meaning Indian scientists and farmers’ organisations is anti GM crops and GM food.
A Parliamentary Committee has called for an indefinite embargo on the field testing of GM crops, a technical expert committee (TEC) consisting of some eminent life scientists, with the exception of a former director general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, has categorically said that all field testing of GM crops must be stopped until India has a fool proof biosafety protocol in place, finalised by the department of biotechnology. That is yet to happen and the field trails are going on much to the dismay of many, in particular, concerned and knowledgeable scientists.
A book containing explosive inside truth on GM crops and foods, resulting from more than 15 years of intense research, was released May 20 in the USA, titled “Altered Genes and Twisted Truth — How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public”. The book was authored by Steven M Drucker, a leading public interest attorney in Washington, and executive director of Alliance for Bio-Integrity, who has also initiated a lawsuit against the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that has forced it to divulge its confidential files on GM foods. Further, he has delivered a challenge to Monsanto to contradict any of the material in his book.
The thoroughly documented and referenced book exposes the substantial risks of genetically engineered foods and the multiple misrepresentations that have enabled them to permeate world markets. Druker asserts that if Monsanto cannot prove that his book is essentially erroneous, the world will have a right to regard these controversial foods as unacceptably risky and to promptly ban them.
The central theme of the book is to prove, based on incontrovertible facts, that the commercialisation of GM food in the US was based on a massive fraud. The FDA files revealed that GM foods first achieved commercialisation in 1992 but only because the FDA covered up the extensive warnings of its own scientists about their dangers, lied about the facts and then violated federal food safety law by permitting these foods to be marketed without having been proven safe through standard testing.
If the FDA had heeded its own experts’ advice and publicly acknowledged their warnings that GM foods entailed higher risks than their conventional counterparts, Druker says that the GM food venture would have imploded and never gained traction anywhere.
The author also argues that that many well-placed scientists have repeatedly issued misleading statements about GM foods, and so have leading scientific institutions such as the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the UK’s Royal Society.
The fact that such prestigious scientific academies, such as the Royal Society, London, which has several Nobel Laureates as members, and India-born Dr Venkatraman, himself a joint recipient of the Nobel Prize in chemistry for unravelling the ribosome, as its current President, makes one very concerned about these facts, leading to the inevitable question — “Is science also getting to be very corruptible? Or, is it that, the personal and selfish agenda of some corruptible scientists, bringing a very shameful disrespect to the other honest community of scientists spread all over the world?”
The exposure of one of our own leading scientists to the ignominy of plagiarism and, yet, receiving the highest civilian award of the nation, is fresh in one’s memory.
The author of the book states that contrary to the claims of biotech advocates, humans have indeed been harmed by consuming the output of genetic engineering. He also explains that laboratory animals have also suffered from force-feeding of products of genetic engineering, and well-conducted tests with GM crops have yielded many troubling results, including intestinal abnormalities, liver disturbances, and impaired immune systems.
Druker says: “Contrary to the assertions of its proponents, the massive enterprise to reconfigure the genetic core of the world’s food supply is not based on sound science but on the systematic subversion of science — and it would collapse if subjected to an open airing of the facts.”
May 19, Drucker wrote an open letter to Froley stating, “Face Up to the Extensive Evidence Demonstrating that Genetically Engineered Foods Entail Unacceptable Risks and Should Be Promptly Removed from the Market.”
Druker finishes his letter by saying: “If by July 20th you and your allies have not been able to refute the essential factual accuracy of Altered Genes, Twisted Truth according to the terms set forth above, the world will have a right to assume that it is as sound as the experts who reviewed it have affirmed — and to conclude that GE foods are unacceptably risky and must be banned.”
The author is a former Professor, National Science Foundation, The Royal Society, Belgium & Senior Fellow, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, The Federal Republic of Germany
