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[SANET-MG] sis 27
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/ASIS27.phpISIS Press Release 18/08/05
Announcing Science in Society #27, Autumn 2005
The only radical science magazine on earth
This issue is now being printed in the UK. We are offering the final pdf
at a very reasonable price to any foreign publisher wishing to print,
distribute, and sell the magazine. Please contact printpdf@i-sis.org.uk
with your detailed credentials.
If you want to purchase any article in this issue with sources or
references, please contact papers@i-sis.org.uk
Download this magazine in its entirety as a PDF document from the ISIS
members area, or the first few pages here.
Hardcopies are available from our online store.
From the Editor
Health, Human Rights, and GM crops
In 1978, the governments of the world gathered under the aegis of the
World Health Organisation to sign the Alma Ata Declaration promising
“Health for All by 2000”. But this promise was never taken seriously,
and was sidelined in subsequent health policy discussions.
In December 2000, 1 453 delegates from 75 countries, representing
people’s movements and other non-government organization across the
globe, came together in Savar, Bangladesh for the world’s first People’s
Health Assembly, to reiterate the pledge of “Health for All”, declaring
health as a basic human right, including the environmental, social and
economic conditions that guarantee health. The Assembly documented the
adverse impacts of the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) on
people’s health, and roundly condemned the international financial
institutions – the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the
World Trade Organisation - for pushing SAPs, the governments for
imposing the policies on their people, and the big transnational
corporations for putting profit before people.
SAPs are supposed to help poor indebted nations restore their balance of
payments, reduce inflation and create the conditions for “sustainable
growth”. Typical measures include devaluation of local currencies,
spending cuts in the public sector, privatisation of public services,
elimination of subsidies and trade liberalization (removal of all
barriers to trade, finance and procurement). In practice, SAPs deprive
poor people of basic healthcare, education and other essential services,
and leave poor countries wide open to economic exploitation, especially
through transnational corporations - based in rich countries in the
North operating in the South - that have scant regard for human health
or the environment. As a result, peoples’ health worsens while the
environment is destroyed at an ever-accelerating rate, and the poor
countries sink deeper into poverty and indebtedness.
The People’s Health Assembly met for the second time this July in
Cuenca, Ecuador, when “Health for All” seems even more remote than in
2000. Nevertheless, thirteen hundred delegates from 80 countries came to
reaffirm the Alma Ata vision amid deteriorating conditions of health for
most of the world’s people, which are blamed unequivocally on
“neo-liberal policies that transfer wealth from the South to the North,
from the poor to the rich, and from the public to private sector.”
The delegates were unanimous in opposing the signing of the Free Trade
Agreements imposed by the United States government and the international
financial institutions that can only further worsen people’s health
prospects.
Invited to speak on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), I explained
to the Assembly why GM food and feed are proving unsafe, because genetic
modification goes against the grain of the new science of genetics. I
also exposed all the lies and half-truths told by certain scientists
that genetic modification is perfectly safe and very precise; and makes
environmentally friendly GM crops that improve yield, reduce pesticide
use, improve nutrition and so on.
Among the most important conditions for health is people’s right to food
and adequate nutrition. The People’s Charter for Health calls on
governments to implement agricultural policies attuned to people’s
needs, and not to the demands of the market, in order to guarantee food
security and equitable access to food. GM crops guarantee neither food
security nor equitable access to food, quite the opposite.
In fact, GM crops usurp people’s right to food by imposing licence fees
on patented seeds and by preventing farmers from saving and exchanging
seeds, a practice going back for thousands of years. GM crops are
industrial monocultures, only worse. They are more genetically uniform
than conventional monocultures, and hence more prone to disease. They
are more dependent on external inputs, particularly pesticides; and
according to the latest reports by farmers across the world, GM crops
require more water and are less tolerant of drought.
Delegates were right to fear that the Free Trade Agreements will mean
forced imports of GM seeds and GM food and feed into Latin America,
especially as “food aid”. The US’ agricultural exports are worth more
than US$ 50 billion each year, and rejection of GM food and feed across
the world is hurting exports.
War on world food rights fought over GM crops
A war on food rights is being fought over GM crops with big agribusiness
- supported by the US and US-friendly governments (including the Blair
administration) – against the rest of the world; and it is taking place
at all levels from the international arena to local communities.
The US government has sued the European Union (EU) at the World Trade
Organization (WTO) for restricting import of GMOs, and wants the WTO to
override the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety - which gives countries the
right to regulate and reject GMOs - in order to force GMOs on the world
in the name of free trade. The European Commission responded to the WTO
complaint by urging European countries to lift their national bans on
GMOs. But EU member states stood firm with a clear majority vote in June
in favour of keeping the existing national bans.
The US administration is pushing GMOs both officially and through
unofficial channels. In July, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
announced a “second generation of India-US collaboration in
agriculture”. This, after Monsanto’s Bt cotton has proven to fail, as
reported by both independent and Indian government scientists.
Monsanto’s Indian subsidiary, Monsanto-Mahyco has shamelessly hyped the
GM-cotton seeds, even enlisting a Bollywood star and dancing girls to go
on promotional tours in Punjabi villages.
GM crops are also aggressively promoted in Africa. Earlier in July, a
team of “international food scientists” was reported complaining that,
“regulatory hurdles are preventing African farmers from reaping the
benefits of genetically modified foods”, but nonetheless the African
farmers “have been adopting this technology rapidly”. The team’s
spokesperson, Joel Cohen of the International Food Policy Research
Institute, was formerly with USAID, and worked with Monsanto to fund
Florence Wambugu to head Monsanto’s GM sweet potato project in Kenya,
generating fantastic PR for GM crops, although the project turned out to
be a total flop at a cost of millions. Florence Wambugu is regularly
featured and quoted in top scientific journals including Nature as a
scientist speaking on behalf of Africa and in favour of GM crops,
despite having been exposed by fellow African scientists on many occasions.
Meanwhile, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded US$ 3.3
million to the Monsanto-backed Donald Danforth Plant Science Centre in
Ohio, USA, to genetically engineer cassava; and $16.9 million to
Wambugu’s African consortium to genetic engineer sorghum for African
farmers, also at a US company, Pioneer Hi-Bred, a subsidiary of DuPont
based in Des Moines, Iowa.
Within the US, repressive bills have been passed in at least 10 states
to block local communities and regions declaring themselves GM-Free, and
are clearly targeted at the grassroots uprising against GM crops that
has been gaining momentum over the past year.
A Sustainable World is possible
Dr. Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher, Minister for the Environment,
Ethiopia, supported the first public action against commercial GMOs in
Germany with the following statement: “Badly informed governments and
corrupt members of governments everywhere in the world are the main
obstacle to an objective discussion of the true problems of world food
supplies. The merciless forces of the free market, which in the wake of
globalisation is taking on a cynical, inhuman character, deprive the
poorest of the poor of any basis for making a living.”
Alan Simpson, Member of UK Parliament, similarly declared at our
Sustainable World International Conference in London that, “irreverence,
heresy, and the breaking of rules are necessary to raise awareness in
the face of deepening water, energy and food insecurity.”
Adopting GM crops, when oil and water are both rapidly depleting under
global warming and when industrial monoculture is showing all the signs
of collapse, is a crime against humanity and our planet, especially when
we have all the knowledge at our disposal to build a truly sustainable
and equitable world.
All SiS issues and articles can be accessed at
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/isisnews.php
GM-Free
Molecular Pharming – the New Battlefront over GM Crops
Molecular Pharming by Chloroplast Transformation
GM Pharmaceuticals from Common Green Alga
Cover-up over GM DNA in Milk
Bt10 Detection Method Unacceptable
Energy
Energy Strategies in Global Warming: Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Taking to the Wind
Deconstructing the Nuclear Power Myths
Science under the spotlight
What Science, What Europe?
Letters to the Editor
Sustainable World
Bug Power
Dream Farm
Biogas Bonanza for Third World Development
Agriculture without Farmers
Sustainable Food Systems for Sustainable Development
Sustainable World Coming
Technology Watch
Safe Gene Therapy at last?
HIV/AIDS
US Foster Children Used in AIDS Drugs Tests
Guinea Pig Kids in AIDS Drugs Trails
NIH-Sponsored AIDS Drugs Tests on Mothers and Babies
Against corporate serfdom
SoS: Save Our Seeds
Italy’s Genebank at Risk
Rethinking Agriculture
Organic Cotton Beats Bt Cotton
Download this magazine in its entirety as a PDF document from the ISIS
members area, or the first few pages here.
Hardcopies are available from our online store.
The Institute of Science in Society, PO Box 32097, London NW1 OXR
telephone: [44 20 8452 2729] [44 20 7272 5636]
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press-release@i-sis.org.uk - ISIS Director m.w.ho@i-sis.org.uk
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