2.In a paper of this length, I do not have space to go into all the other determinants of scientific activity, including individual curiosity. I therefore hope that the reader's response to the emphasis laid here on the economic and political context will not be an automatic accusation of 'vulgar Marxism'. Besides, we shall find some far more specific links between business objectives and scientific activities as we proceed. Back
3.Pnina Abir-am, 'The Discourse of Physical Power and Biological Knowledge in the 1930s: a Reassessment of the Rockefeller Foundation's "Policy" in Molecular Biology', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 12, Sage, London and Beverly Hills, 1982, p. 345. Back
4.Edward Yoxen, 'Life as a Productive Force: Capitalising the Science and Technology of Molecular Biology', in Science, Technology and the Labour Process, Les Levidow and Bob Young, eds, CSE Books, London, and Humanities Press Inc., New Jersey, 1981. See especially pp. 87-91. Warren Weaver's skills were subsequently put to use in an important position in the US wartime Office of Scientific
Research and Development, which oversaw everything from the atomic bomb to anti-malarial drugs.
5.Watson's introductory remarks to the anniversary Conference are reported in Nature, Vol. 302, 21 April 1983, pp. 651 ff.
6.Professor Jonathan King, 'Erosion of Biomedical Research through Unregulated Commercialization', Paper presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Symposium (January 1982) on Commercial Genetic Engineering, organized by Professor Sheldon Krimsky. Back
7.Lewis Thomas, 'The Technology of Medicine', in The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher, New York, Bantam, 1975, p. 39. Back
8.Susan George, How the Other Half Dies, Penguin Books (UK) and Allanheld, Osmun (USA), 1976/77, Ch. 5.
9.Jonathan King, op. cit., note 6. Back
10.James Watson's famed The Double Helix (1968) is not necessarily the best or most accurate of these histories, though it makes racy reading. Maurice Wilkins, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize with Crick and Watson, once confided: 'If you read the book [it says] "I'm Jim, I'm smart; most of the time Francis is smart too; the rest are bloody clots."' I tend to agree with his assessment. A more useful layperson's history was first published in The New Yorker in its 'Annals of Science' series: Horace Freeland Judson, DNA, 27 November, 4 and 11 December 1978; subsequently published in book form. Also, TheDNA Story: a Documentary History of Gene Cloning, by J. D. Watson and John Tooze, San Francisco, W. H. Freeman & Co., 1981; an exhaustive (and expensive) volume reproducing a huge number of documents on gene-splicing and the debate engendered by it. Back
11.For those who read French, an excellent summary of the biological skills involved in the development of recombinant DNA techniques is Jean-Claude Kaplan, 'Le Genie Genetique', in Les Manipulations, No. 6 in the series 'Le Genre Humain', Paris, Fayard, 1983. For those who don't, the most comprehensible summary I've come across is 'Shaping Life in the Lab', Time Magazine, 9 March 1981.
12.M. Kenney, F. H. Buttel, J. T. Cowan and J. R. Kloppenburg, Jr, 'Genetic Engineering and Agriculture', Cornell Rural Sociology Bulletin Series, Bulletin No. 125, July 1982. Back
13.'Biotech Comes of Age', Business Week, 23 January 1984.
14.Financial Times Survey, 'Biotechnology', 3 May 1983. Back
15.Business Week, op. cit.
16.'The Livestock Industry's Genetic Revolution', Business Week, 21 June 1982. Back
17.Harold M. Schmeck, Jr, 'Gene splicing called key to agricultural progress', the New York Times, 20 May 1981. The think tanks that did the study are called Policy Research Corporation of Chicago and The Chicago Group, Inc. They claim to have undertaken the study on their own, without outside financial backing, so they must be confident of finding paying customers.
18.Anne Crittenden, Interview with T. N. Urban in 'Talking Business', New York Times, 5 May 1981.
19.Mary-Dell Chilton, 'L'Introduction de genes etrangers dans les plantes', Pour la Science, August 1983 (this is the French edition of Science: the same article certainly appeared in English, though perhaps at another date). Back
20.Anne Hughey, 'More firms pursue genetic engineering in quest for plants with desirable traits', Wall Street Journal, 10 May 1983. This article sums up a lot of other corporate activities in plant genetics, 'a burgeoning field'. See also 'The race to breed a supertomato', Business Week, 10 January 1983, and H. Garrett De Young, 'Crop Genetics: the Seeds of Revolution', High Technology, May 1983.
21.OECD, Impact des Entreprises Multinationales sur les Potentiels Scientifiques et Techniques Nationaux, Direction de la Science, de la Technologie et de l'Industrie, DSTI/SPR/79.23.MNE, August 1979. This report is unsigned but is the work of the excellent researcher Francois Chesnais.
22.See note 18. Back
23.Leon Wofsy, 'Biology and the University on the Market Place: What's for Sale?', speech at Berkeley, 16 March 1982, typed transcript. Back
24.Peter Behr, 'DuPont Gives Harvard $6 million', Washington Post, 30 June 1981.
25.Wofsy, op. cit., and Sheldon Krimsky, 'Commercial Genetic Engineering: Impacts on Universities and Non-Profit Institutions', introductory remarks for a Symposium of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, DC, 6 January 1982; cf. note 6. Back
26.David F. Noble, 'The Selling of the University', The Nation, 6 February 1982.
27.Victor Cohn, 'Profit seeking said to inhibit biology research', The Washington Post, 17 June 1981.
28.See Wofsy, op. cit., who spoke before the Pajaro Dunes Conference took place, and William Boly, who reported on it in 'The Gene Merchants', California Magazine, September 1982. This is an excellent, detailed article showing how biotech has developed and is affecting California. Back
29.Chief Justice Burger's opinion for the 5-4 Supreme Court decision is quoted in Edward Yoxen, The Gene Business, London, Pan Books, 1983, p. 98. Back
30.Time Magazine, cf. note 11. Back
31.Tom Kiley writing in the New York Times of 29 August 1982, p. 4 f„ and quoted in Rx for the Future: Biotechnology and Public Policy in California, Office of Appropriate Technology, State of California, December 1982, photocopy of typescript. This document, unsigned but prepared by Nancy Pfund, summarizes Kiley's arguments, p. 35.
32.Professor Irving Kayton, Director of the Patent Law Program, The National Law Center, George Washington University, 'Does Copyright Law Apply to Genetically Engineered Cells?', George Washington Law Review (1982), 50, pp. 191-218; also summarized by the author in Trends in Biotechnohgy, Vol. 1, No. 1, Inaugural Issue, March/April 1983; Elsevier Science Publishers, Bio-Medical Division, Amsterdam.
33.Paul Berg et al„ the so-called 'Moratorium Letter', Science, 26 July 1974, p. 303.1 Back
34.Stephanie Yanchinski, 'Keeping the Gene Genie in the Bottle', New Scientist, 14 April 1983; also Rx for the Future, op. cit., note 31. Back
35.Philip J. Hilts, 'EPA to Regulate Gene Engineering', International Herald Tribune, 11 August 1983.
36.Philip J. Hilts, 'Clergymen ask ban on efforts to alter genes', Washington Post, 9 June 1983.
* My severity here with doubtless well-meaning clergy was probably due to their signing a manifesto written by Jeremy Rifkin, whose book Algeny (Penguin Books, alas, 1984) is one of the shoddiest, most unscientific tracts ever published. Having thrown it across the room in 1984, I was pleased as a non-scientist to find my critical judgement confirmed in a review in Science 85 (William J. Benetta, 'Where does this stuff come from?', July-August 1985). Some samples: '[Rifkin] shows no understanding of the biology that underlies and constrains genetic manipulations ... To bolster [his] contentions Rifkin distorts the history, content and vocabulary of evolutionary biology, deals in sophisms only a creationist could love and borrows freely from creationist luminaries such as Duane Gish [who]... believes that life on earth is only a few thousand years old ...' Given all this, and much, much more, the reviewer got in touch with the hardback publishers [Viking] to find out how this stuff saw print. 'Wasn't it vetted by s
omebody who understood, say, evolution or genetic engineering?' he asked. No, it wasn't, because it was considered a 'trade' book, not a textbook. 'With trade books, we just ask whether the material is consistent with itself and whether the author has said what he wanted to say in as clear a way as possible.' Stephen Jay Gould, a particular hero of mine, is also quoted in the review. Gould had stated, in a review of his own, 'I regard Algeny as a cleverly constructed tract of anti-intellectual propaganda masquerading as scholarship.' When the Science 85 reviewer rang Gould to ask why he had taken the time to 'swat Rifkin', Gould replied, 'My attitude toward something like Algeny is that you should ignore it if you can. But Rifkin has gained a lot of attention and I can't hope any longer that this thing will dissolve in its own absurdities and contradictions.' I'm sticking this extra note into my own 'trade' book just in case anyone is still reading Rifkin's rubbish - even if we do have the same publisher! Back
37.For a balanced discussion of what genetic research is already contributing to medicine and how genetic techniques can be used to predict and thus prevent individual susceptibility to certain diseases, see Dr Zsolt Harsanyi and Richard Hutton, Genetic Prophecy, London, Paladin Books, Granada Publishing, 1983.
38.Stephen Jay Gould has dealt with this theme in virtually everything he has written (notably in The Mismeasure of Man, New York,
Norton, 1981) and is highly recommended reading. A previous generation's formulation of this recurrent theme is particularly crass, considering who said it: 'No economic equality can survive the working of biological inequality': Herbert Hoover, The Challenge to Liberty, 1934, Ch. 3. A philosopher's view in 'The Genetic Adventure', QQ: Report from the Center for Philosophy and Public Policy, University of Maryland, Vol. 3, No. 2, Spring 1983.
39.'Morgan Stanley taps Middleton as President of new venture unit', Wall Street Journal, 2 May 1984.
40.David Fishlock, 'Government Initiatives in UK Biotechnology', Financial Times, 11 May 1984. Back
41.Steve Lohr, 'Japan closing biotech gap', International Herald Tribune, 21 March 1983, and Harold M. Schmeck, 'Japan rivaling US in Biotechnology', International Herald Tribune, 28-29 January 1984.
42.Both quotes cited in David Noble, op. cit., note 26. Back
43.Nelson Schneider of E. F. Hutton, interviewed in the Central Television-Channel Four film, The Gene Business, 1984 (directed by Alan Bell, presented by SG).
44.Frederick H. Buttel, Martin Kenney and Jack Kloppenburg, Jr: 'From Green Revolution to Biorevolution: Some observations on the changing technological bases of economic transformation in the Third World', Cornell Rural Sociology Bulletin Series, Bulletin No.132, August 1983. Back
45.Id. See also Martin Kenney, 'Is Biotechnology a Blessing for the Less Developed Nations?', Monthly Review, April 1983. On the perverse social effects of the Green Revolution, Susan George, How the Other Half Dies, cf. note 8. Since this paper was written, an excellent book on 'The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology' (the subtitle) has appeared: Jack R. Kloppenburg, Jr, First the Seed, Cambridge University Press, 1988. I regret not having had the benefit of his remarkable research. Another recent and excellent source is the special number of Development Dialogue (1988: 1-2) entirely devoted to biotechnology: Cary Fowler et al„ The Laws of Life: Another Development and the New Biotechnologies, Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, Ovre Slottsgatan 2, S-752 20 Uppsala, Sweden. Back
7 DECOLONIZING RESEARCH
1.On this and other questions in this report, see 'Toward a World without Hunger: Progress and Prospects for Completing the Unfinished Agenda of the World Food Conference', a report by the Executive Director of the World Food Council, WFC/1979/3, 23 March 1979; e.g., 'To get additional food into the diets of those [hundreds of millions who are chronically hungry] involves much more than increasing food production ... Greater production does not ensure that the increased food available will reach large numbers of hungry and malnourished people, nor can selective programmes for nutrition intervention - useful as they are - meet the needs of large malnourished populations afflicted by a shortage of food energy or calories ... Basically, the main obstacle to meeting the nutritional needs of large populations is one of poverty or lack of "effective demand" ... [Solutions] must be sought in development policies which increase employment for the rural landless and the urban poor and stimulate increased production by small subsistence farmers.'Paras. 121, 123. Back
2.These two paragraphs are taken from the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development's project report, Food Systems and Society, with whose analysis the FSG is in full agreement. The Group wishes to draw particular attention to this study: UNRISD/78/- C.i4/Rev. 1 (quote from p. 21).
3.Questions discussed in this section are more fully treated in the Food Study Group's Issues Paper (Susan George, Rapporteur): HSDRGPID-2/UNUP-54, United Nations University, 1979. Back
4.With the exception of President Nyerere's speech, the proceedings of the recent World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (WCARRD, Rome, July 1979) were a striking example of unanimous participation in conceptual deradicalization. Back
5.cf. a similar analysis in Richard Franke and Barbara Chasin, 'Science versus Ethics', Science for the People, July 1975. Back
6.Crozier, Huntington, Watanuki, 1975, Noam Chomsky, in Intellectuals and the State (Het Wereldvenster Baarn, the Netherlands, 1978) provides a brilliant analysis of intellectuals as 'experts in legitimation' and of the institutions they serve as disseminators of the 'state religion'. His comment on the Trilateral study: 'The crisis of democracy to which they refer arises from the fact that, during the 1960s, segments of the normally quiescent masses of the population became politically mobilized and began to press their demands, thus creating a crisis, since naturally these demands cannot be met, at least without a significant redistribution of wealth and power, which is not to be contemplated.' On 'value-oriented intellectuals': 'Speaking of our enemies, we despise the technocratic and policy-oriented intellectuals as "commissars" and "apparatchiks" and honour the value-oriented intellectuals as the "democratic dissidents". At home, the values are reversed.' Back
7.Ponna Wignaraja should be credited with conceptualizing the separate knowledge stocks and the perspective of new 'mixes'. Back
8.Details of a seasonal methodology can be found in Pierre Spitz, 'Drought, Stocks and Social Classes', UNRISD, 1979. Back
9.cf. the presentation by Elise Boulding at the MIT Workshop. Back
10. John Berger, 'Towards Understanding Peasant Experience', Race & Class, Vol. 19, No. 4, Spring 1978. Back
12 THE RIGHT TO FOOD AND THE POLITICS OF HUNGER
1.United Nations, Human Rights: A Compilation of International Instruments (ST/HR/i/Rev.i), New York, 1978. An interesting analysis will be found in Philip Alston, 'International Law and the Right to Food', Food as a Human Right (Asbjorn Eide et al., eds), United Nations University (HSDB-11/UNUP-503) 1984, p. 162. Back
2.Forcefully argued by Pierre Spitz, who uses the French Revolution example, 'Right to Food for Peoples and for the People: a Historical Perspective', in P. Alston and K. Tomasevski, eds, The Right to Food, International Studies in Human Rights, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, for SIM, Holland, 1984, p. 170. Back
3.Some of the information on Ethiopia from Colin Legum's Third World Reports, of 7 February 1985 (Richmond, Surrey, mimeo) and from Graham Hancock, Ethiopia: The Challenge of Hunger, London, Victor Gollancz, 1985. Back
4.Figures from 'World Military and Social Expenditures 1983', World Priorities, Washington, 1983; conclusions from the figures drawn in Nigel Twose, 'Cultivating Hunger', a paper for Oxfam and the World Food Assembly (Rome, November 1984), mimeo. Back
5.For two excellent summaries, see Georgina Ashworth, 'Women are not half human: an overview of women's rights', and Jocelyn Kynch, 'How many women are enough?: Sex ratios and the right to life'; both in Third World Affairs 1985, published by the Third World Foundation, London, 1985. Back
6.Necker, 'Sur la legislation et le com
merce des grains', in Manuscrits de Monsieur Necker Publie's par sa Fille, chez J. J. Paschoud, Libraire a Geneve, An XIII (1804); (not to be confused with the book of the same title, published in Paris in 1775). Back
7.R. Bin Wong, 'Les emeutes de subsistances en Chine et en Europe occidentale', and Pierre-Etienne Will, 'Le stockage public des grains en Chine a l'epoque des Qing (1644-1911). Problemes de gestion et problemes de controle'. Both articles in Les Annales (Economies, Socie'te's, Civilisations), March-April 1983. The article by Robert Chambers, 'Putting "last" thinking first: a professional revolution', in Third World Affairs 1985 (cf. note 5), is excellent on vulnerability and resilience of poor people's support systems. Back
8.Graham Hancock, op. cit., note 3, pp. 92-3. Back
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