Miracle or menace? : biotechnology and the third world / by Robert Walgate.
- Walgate, Robert
- Date:
- [1990]
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Credit: Miracle or menace? : biotechnology and the third world / by Robert Walgate. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![172 Miracle or menaceì Hubert Zandstra, research director of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the PhiUppines, says that the public trust of scientists vanished with Chernobyl and Bhopal — I saw it fall away — there's a big gulf to bridge. After a controversy over an IRRI experiment with rice blast fungus, the Philippines Government has banned the import of DNA probes etc until proper regulations are in force. We can't import mapping probes from Cornell because of the restrictions, says Lesley Sitch, who runs the interspecies crossing programme at IRRI. Scientists are therefore looking for a certain amount of media help. The public will inevitably get to know what is happening — and if that knowledge comes by rumour, the reaction will be much worse, says Ellen Messer of the World Hunger Programme, who has been studying these issues at Brown University, USA. The information must come from the scientists, she adds. Meanwhile, releases are now becoming more common in several countries — particularly France, where the environmentalists' foothold is small, and where, traditionally, experts and engineers enjoy great respect and are given greater licence than elsewhere. According to a report by John Hodgson in the first edition of the magazine Scientific European [4], during the last three years over 50 separate releases have been made in France, with 20 in 1989 alone — considerably more than the whole of the rest of Europe, and more than in the United States, where regulation is stricter and public opposition vociferous. In developing countries, there are added complications: • The technology is often in the hands of an economically strong foreigner — usually a multinational company or a foreign government — whose motives may be suspected. • The lax or non-existent regulations controlling biotechnology releases in Third World countries could be attractive to companies or institutions wishing to test products that cannot be tested in the tougher regulatory climate of their home country. Many experts argue that the speed at which countries can establish effective regulations on the release of genetically engineered organisms will limit the speed at which biotechnology can be applied to developing country crops. Others say the recognition of patents will set the limits. Ecological and physiological studies will have to be made of the risks of the genes escaping from engineered varieties, and entering wild plants (the risk of herbicide resistance is the most obvious); and](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18035644_0183.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
