How would you feel about human genes in your food ?

Najma Sadeque

 

How would Muslims feel about human genes in pigs? And Hindus, about human genes in cows?
And Buddhists and vegetarians, about human genes in all fruit, grain and vegetables?

It's actually rather late in the day to be asking because the scientists of multinational agri-business corporations have been taking liberties with human genes for the past decade at least without telling the public too much about it. Even when some news would appear in the media about genetic engineering -- or biotechnology as it is also called -- it would usually be some promotion or propaganda about its claimed miracles and benefits emerging indirectly from the profit-oriented perpetuators. The accidents or unexpected, unwanted consequences are usually suppressed or skimmed over even when some dissenting scientist or whistleblower tries to highlight the risks.
It is understandable that modern technological devices such as electrical appliances, cell-phones and satellite television that virtually anyone can enjoy without having to have any scientific knowledge, should greatly impress the illiterate and unsophisticated. From the success of what have become everyday items, it is easy for them to assume that any development from 'scientific' minds must be as good, especially since the difference between the biological world and manufactured goods does not strike them nor is explained to them.
But for the educated middle- and upper classes, to remain complacent about the genetically-engineered developments that are rapidly developing and sweeping the globe to affect every aspect of our lives, including the safety of our food, our health systems, our natural physical environment, and our ethical and religious beliefs, blind faith in science is totally misplaced. It is to court danger and outcomes that threaten to be as horrible as they are unpleasant.
Just because some claim scientific 'advancement' has been made, it does not necessarily follow that it is either beneficial or desirable. Because it is an outcome of human action, and humans are highly prone to error, it can be - and often has been - disastrous. Science is after all, what humans have discovered so far about the world and the universe. But what they have discovered is only a miniscule decimal point of all that remains to be discovered. What they know least about is the consequences of re-arranging at will the natural arrangements in nature, as they are doing now through the random extraction and rearrangement of genes from any source and environment - human, animal, fish or plants from oceans, forests, deserts, and soils from simply anywhere.
Although chemical pollution has created havoc worldwide in the environment as well as in our bodies and that of wildlife and domestic livestock and plants and marine life, biological pollutants are far more dangerous - because, unlike chemicals, they are alive. Unlike chemicals, biological agents reproduce, can move great distances carried by the wind, insects, rain or pollen, overwhelm wild species, and mutate into even more virulent life-forms.
Plenty of human genes have gone into trees and plants but people are not generally told which. Human genes have been introduced into certain plants to increase their capacity to absorb pollution from mining sites. That was certainly news. - Few knew that humans had it in them to absorb so much pollution; except that they also develop cancer as a result. But even more worrying was when human genes were introduced into animals.
Rabbits were engineered to produce human growth hormone but most ended up sterile, except some escaped rabbits. Now what if they had not been recaptured and multiplied and created 'hurabs' - a cross between rabbits and humans? What would there legal and moral status have been in society and the environment?
Corporate scientists are fond of repeating the claim that genetic engineering is just a continuation of plant breeding and selection that farmers have been doing for the past 15,000 years. Then they'll give some other examples such as cheese and beer fermentation. The comparisons are utter nonsense because none of the past practices involved crossing the barriers between human and animal and plant and marine species. Farmers never used unnatural means. Reproduction was possible only within species, only through sexual means. Scientists broke the species barrier through unnatural means -- by artificially transplanting a gene from one species into another very different one. The changes that result would have never been able to occur in nature.
One of the cruellest experiments was done with a pig. There is every reason not to consume pork - the religious ban being on health grounds - because the pig eats anything including much filth indiscriminately and is an easy disease-carrier. But like the shark and vulture, the pig has its specific role in the natural scheme of things, to mop up waste or dead creatures. What man did to the poor pig was certainly not ordained. Scientists working with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) introduced human growth hormone genes into pig embryos with the objective of produce faster-growing pigs. The pig grew big alright, but it became so horribly deformed as well as heavy, it could not carry its own weight. It endured great pain and suffering as unmoved scientists watched their botched-up experiment.
Another pig has modified with human genes so that its organs could be transplanted to humans for $16,000 each. Whoever buys them, if it ever works out, it certainly won't be the Muslims or Jews or Buddhists. Maybe not the Hindus either out of sheer disgust. Together they constitute the world's overwhelming majority.
One of the greatest problems with genetic engineering is that it allows no room for making mistakes. Biotechnology, concerned scientists have warned, is NOT a perfect science; far from it. Because of high unpredictability, mistakes and accidents were therefore inevitable. Whatever is done is irreversibly done. The damage simply cannot be withdrawn or undone by any means. It has to be lived with for eternity.
In fact, the human safety track record is an alarming one. In 1989 and 1990, a genetically-modified dietary supplement made by a Japanese chemical company which had become common in use, ended in killing 30 Americans and disabling or afflicting over 5,000 others with a painful blood disorder. It was only after such a major disaster that the drug was recalled and banned by the Federal Drug Administration. No one is sure what exactly went wrong. But the supplement jars had no information on the labels to reveal that the contents were genetically modified. The company had to pay $2 billion in damages to the victims, something which the American companies would be loathe to do in any such future eventuality, and which is they are hell-bent in 'proving' that all things genetically-engineered are safe. They don't want labelling either, so that they can't be held more easily liable. The same risks drive consumers to demand labelling in any kind of material to be consumed, not just drugs.
Food, agro-chemical and biotech corporations authoritatively insist that genetically modified products are absolutely safe and healthy as well as superior, and people are expected to believe them without expecting fool-proof evidence because the rich and powerful corporations say so. Even if such evidence existed, which it doesn't, the corporations have scant respect for such things as human rights as free will and free choice - to reject any product for whatever reason. Their own claim of their own product being supposedly superior to the ones occurring naturally in nature, is supposed to override any objections, because ordinary people don't know better.
Consequently there are already some fifty genetically-engineered foods and crops being cultivated or marketed in the US. Not surprisingly, they have spread rapidly and widely into the food chain. In the US alone, 60 million acres of farmland are currently under genetically-engineered crops, much of it meant for export. - Which is why the US gets angered when Europe or starving African countries refuse to entertain any of the stuff.
Most packaged foods in US supermarkets have some degree of the genetically-engineered in them: it has become almost impossible to escape.
Unlabelled GE food and ingredients include tomatoes, potatoes, soybeans, corn, squash, papaya, soy oil, canola oil, cottonseed oil and dairy products. -- Which is why pure organic food-producers distance themselves from them and want their standards very clearly spelt out and differentiated and labelled? Furthermore, scientists estimate that about ten-percent of genetically-engineered escape into the wild. -- Which also means they merge with wild relatives and pass on their worst traits to them to create super-pest species.
Then there are the hapless half a million dairy cows in America that are regularly injected with the controversial genetically-engineered hormone to induce greater milk production in them. Known as recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) made by Monsanto, the Canadian biotech giant corporation, it was approved by the Federal Drug Administration in 1994 even though a US Congressional watchdog agency had told them not to, because of consequent high udder infections in turn requiring heavier antibiotic treatment. At least the European Union paid heed and immediately banned it. Scientists had warned that the higher 400-500 percent levels of a chemical hormone in cow's milk and dairy products posed risks of breast, colon and prostate cancer in humans. Only after undisclosed documents were released by Canadian government scientists, was rBGH banned in 1999. No industrialised country except the US has legalised it.
Worst of all, ethical questions have now arisen. Would you knowingly eat a fruit or vegetable or some meat if you knew there was a human gene in it? When a human gene is inserted into a plant or animal, is the modified form still wholly a plant or animal, or part-human/part-plant or part-human/part animal? Is it determined by the number of human genes introduced into another species, especially of the animal kingdom? For example, what if 50 or a 100 human genes were inserted, or maybe an entire chromosome, instead of just one or two human genes? -- Would that make the modified specifies more of a human even if it couldn't talk or walk?
In other words, at which stage does a new species become more human than animal or plant? - or, as in the horror science fiction stories, are scientists risking transferring humans into plant or animal bodies without their permission? What happens to human integrity and rights then? Wouldn't that amount to creating a slave or commoditized species to do with as they willed?
These are not pie-in-the-sky matters of speculation. While billions go around their daily business totally unaware, arrogant corporations and scientists are turning an orderly, natural world into chaos. If there is no strong worldwide resistance - which at the moment is restricted to the west - it may become too late after the worst damage is done. Whether for ethical or religious reasons or other personal reservations, the ultimate choice has to be of the consumer-citizen.
Control lies not so much in the hands of the average consumer who is not properly informed either by the producer-corporation or the media, but in the hands of the importer, trader, the Ministries of Commerce, and Food, and Agriculture. With most borders gone down for goods if not human migrants, the developed countries are being flooded with packaged and canned processed foods from the industrialised, biotech-dominated North, their labels stating nothing about whether any genetically-engineered material has gone into the contents or not. Next time you pick up an imported food can from the supermarket, are you sure you want to eat it. Even fish, which we imagine being wild and harvested from the oceans, are not spared genetic engineering.
Should suppliers excuse themselves by allowing buyers to remain in ignorant bliss? Or should they be exercising conscience about the majority of local consumers who would not, if they were aware, compromise themselves by eating genes or produce from genes of human origin.