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ABSTRACT
THE DEBATE OVER FOOD BIOTECHNOLOGY:
IS A SOCIETAL CONSENSUS ACHIEVABLE?
Edward Groth III, PhD., Consumers Union of U.S., February 19, 2001
Unless the public comes to agree that the benefits of food biotechnology are
desirable and the associated risks are acceptable, our society may fail to
realize much of the potential benefits. Three historical cases of major technological
innovations whose benefits and risks were the subject of heated public controversy
are examined, in search of lessons that may suggest a path toward consensus
in the biotechnology debate. In each of the cases-water fluoridation, nuclear
power and pesticides-proponents of the technology gathered scientific evidence
that they believed established that the innovations were safe. In each case,
the federal government was heavily involved in oversight, safety regulation,
and in the first two cases, active promotion of the technology. Supporters
of the technologies employed a variety of communications strategies, ranging
from massive "educational" campaigns (e.g., "Our Friend The
Atom") to vituperative ad hominem attacks on leading opponents. None
of these strategies succeeded in achieving broad societal acceptance of the
technologies. Fluoridation today is opposed as vigorously by activist groups
as it was when first introduced around 1950, it has not been universally adopted
even in the U.S., and it has been rejected in most other countries. The American
nuclear power industry is moribund, and the public has essentially rejected
the technology. The pesticide industry is thriving, with new generations of
products succeeding older more hazardous chemicals in a constant cycle. However,
strong regulation has failed to prevent adverse health and ecological effects,
which have been empirically associated with pesticide uses after the chemicals
were dispersed in the environment. Debate over whether risks of such effects
are acceptable has been heated for four decades, with scientists and the public
divided.
None of these cases
offers an ideal model for the biotechnology revolution, though they do reveal
many strategies that have not worked. The biotechnology debate is also taking
place at a time when our concepts of risk communication have improved, and
when many consumers are more actively concerned with buying products perceived
to be less likely to harm the environment. Based on the lessons of history
and more recent trends, some characteristics of a process for seeking a societal
consensus are described. They include explicitly defining the subjects for
consensus; including all stakeholders in a respectful dialogue; confronting
value issues, such as acceptability of risks and ethical perceptions; listening
to others' perspectives and being willing to change one's own point of view.
If activists on all sides of the food biotechnology debate are willing to
commit to such a consensus-building process, there is hope that the national
debate can be resolved in a manner satisfactory to essentially all parties.
THE DEBATE OVER
FOOD BIOTECHNOLOGY:
IS A SOCIETAL CONSENSUS ACHIEVABLE?
Late last month, the New York Times published an obituary for food biotechnology. In a long and deeply researched investigative article, reporters Kurt Eichenwald, Gina Kolata and Melody Petersen documented, step by painful step, how the biotechnology industry had "lost the battle for the public trust." The sources they quoted were almost uniformly pessimistic. Even Henry Miller of Stanford's Hoover Institution, long a cheerleader for genetically engineered foods, is quoted as saying "Food biotech is dead." (1)
Like certain other celebrated obituaries, reports of the death of the biotech industry are exaggerated. The industry has not fully nor permanently lost the public's trust-not yet. But the writing is on the wall, and the risk of that outcome is greater than negligible. A genuine sense of crisis is in the air. That's not all bad: Perception of a crisis may boost interest in how we got into this mess, and stimulate creative thinking about ways to get out of it.
In that spirit, I'd like to examine several examples of past controversies over beneficial but potentially risky new technologies. At the very least, we perhaps can learn how not to respond to this kind of public controversy, at this kind of crossroads of confidence. To paraphrase George Santayana, if we can understand the past, we may not be condemned to repeat it. (Slide with quote)
The history of the 20th Century is filled with examples of revolutionary new technologies, many of which really have changed the world. Automobiles, antibiotics, airplanes, radio, TV, computers, and chemicals of every sort-most of us could list hundreds of advances of science and technology that we're very glad to have benefited from. History also will show, in a not insignificant number of cases, that many of these new technologies turned out to have risks and costs-negative impacts on society-that were often unanticipated, or not understood until long after the inventions were economically entrenched. Who on earth would have imagined that versatile, inert chemicals like chlorofluorocarbons could diffuse into the stratosphere and there deplete the ozone layer?(2) That burning fossil fuels could change the earth's climate?(3) That stratospheric flight by a fleet of SST's could also rip holes in that same ozone layer?(4) That water chlorination and medical x-rays-for all their valuable health benefits-could also increase cancer risk?(5),(6) That pesticides sprayed on Texas cotton fields to control boll weevils could accumulate in human breast milk and in the tissues of Antarctic penguins?(7)
Actually, scientific predictions of adverse public-health and environmental effects have often greeted new technologies. Some scientists argued strenuously against adding lead to gasoline in the 1920s, for example.(8) The greenhouse effect was understood a century ago, and long before we could model climate effects accurately, credible predictions were made that an economy based on fossil fuels would eventually warm the Earth.(9) Doubts have been voiced about just about any new technology, when it was first introduced, and often for years thereafter. Often, the doubts were based less on hard evidence of harm than on concern about unknowns. Usually, they were brushed aside, even if they later proved accurate. Our American faith in progress and modern belief in the almost infinite potential of science and technology to improve our lives generally have overcome doubts, and propelled new technologies onto the market.
For the most part, we're all better off to have taken the risks and reaped the benefits of technological progress. But there are cases where the risks were substantial enough to suggest seriously that "progress" in that instance was a costly mistake. In some cases, our society has largely rejected the innovations-rightly or wrongly (the verdict is never unanimous), and often only after long and bitter scientific and political controversies.
Is food biotechnology another of those cases? Will it be overwhelmingly rejected as a mistake, a technology whose risks outweighed its benefits? No, I don't think so. The issue confronting us now is not, "Food biotechnology-yes or no?" "No" is no longer an option; the genie is out of the bottle. Biotechnology cannot be un-invented, and it will be applied to foods. What we face is a series of more complex choices: Which of the many imaginable applications of crop biotechnology will we choose to pursue, and which will we perhaps choose to avoid? What role will American science and industry play in applying this novel technology? Will we stay in the forefront, or cede the field to other nations? Will we manage this new technology so humankind can reap its benefits, while keeping its risks to an acceptable minimum? Or will we plunge ahead, driven by visions of rewards, discounting risk concerns, only to learn much later that the fears were well grounded and that we've irreparably harmed our global life-support system? These are some of the choices the biotechnology industry and America confront today.
I can't foresee the future, but I believe that finding the right path forward from where we are now requires that all of us-the biotechnology industry and its critics, our scientific institutions and government-ask the right questions. To me, the questions are, how can we reap (sorry) the benefits of agricultural biotechnology, without unacceptable risks to public health and the environment? How can we effectively maximize the benefit/risk ratio for agricultural applications of biotechnology? Which benefits do we really want to pursue, and which risks do we really want to avoid? And even more important, how do we reach consensus answers to these questions? What kind of process is needed to make the decisions?
Notes:
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1. Eichenwald, K., G. Kolata and M. Petersen (2001), Biotechnology Food: From
the Lab to a Debacle. New York Times, January 25, page A-1.
2. Molina, M. and F.S. Rowland (1974), Stratospheric sink for chlorofluoromethanes:
chlorine-atom catalyzed destruction of ozone. Nature 249:810-814.
3. Schneider, S. (1989), Global Warming: Are We Entering the Greenhouse Century?
San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
4. Johnston, H.S. (1971), Reduction of stratospheric ozone by nitrogen oxide
catalysts from SST exhaust. Science 173:517-522. Also, National Research Council
(1975) Environmental Impact of Stratospheric Flight. Washington, DC: National
Academy of Sciences.
5. National Research Council (1987), Drinking Water and Health, Vol. 7, Disinfectants
and Disinfectant By-Products. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
6. National Research Council (1990), Health Effects of Exposure to Low Levels
of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR V). Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
7. Accumulation in breast milk discussed in Ehrlich, P.R., A.H. Ehrlich and
J.P. Holdren (1977), Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment. San Francisco:
W.H. Freeman and Co. (pages 561-562). On global extent of pollution, see Risebrough,
R.W., et al., (1976), Transfer of chlorinated biphenyls to Antarctica. Nature
264: 738-739.
8. See Patterson, C.C. (1980), An Alternative Perspective: Lead Pollution
in the Human Environment: Origin, Extent and Significance. In National Research
Council (1980), Lead in the Human Environment. Washington, DC: National Academy
of Sciences.
9. Schneider, op. cit. (Note 3)
