More on James Neel, Monsanto capitalism and the Pentagon

The incredible story gets larger and larger. 

In 1974, James Neel received the National Medal of Science. 

Search for Professor James Neel on the Internet, and you also find -
Monsanto, Dupont and all the other Gene technology corporations that are so
important for the gene technological 'upswing' in America at present. 


Let me provide you with an Internet documentation on some of the possible
backgrounds of the Neel case:


http://www.stanford.edu/class/history133/Beatty/Genes&National_Security.html


ORIGINS OF THE U.S. HUMAN GENOME PROJECT: 
CHANGING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN GENETICS AND NATIONAL SECURITY 


DRAFT
John Beatty 
Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior 
University of Minnesota 
St. Paul, MN 55108 




important further informations:

http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/en/1998/12/02gen

(Le Monde Diplomatique on the capitalist logic of gene technology. This
article is available freely)

Further materials:

http://zobell.biol.tsukuba.ac.jp/~macer/ej103news.html

http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/cifs/

http://www.isaaa.org/

http://ars-genome.cornell.edu/rice/

Please also read:

http://www.amphilsoc.org/library/mendel/2000.htm



PAPERS OF JAMES V. NEEL, AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY LIBRARY


R.S. Cox 
American Philosophical Society

From Amazonia to post-nuclear Hiroshima, Jim Neel saw a wide swath of
humanity and the world during almost sixty years as a medical geneticist.
Spent largely in the employ of the University of Michigan, Neel provides a
living thread connecting the genetic incunabula of T. H. Morgan with
contemporary molecular genetics, his own work characterized by the use of
extensive field research with an eye toward exploring not only the medical
implications of genetics, but the intricacies of evolutionary processes and
genetic theory. What is most striking about Neel's work, however, is his
uncanny ability to position himself where luck might strike, and to
capitalize upon it when it did. 
Today, Neel is most widely known for a trio of pioneering projects in human
population genetics: his work during the 1940s and early 1950s exploring the
genetic basis of the haemoglobin diseases thalassemia and sickle cell
anemia, his participation in follow up studies on the genetic impact of the
atomic bombings in Japan (1946-present), and his population genetic studies
of tribal populations in the Amazon (1960s-present). By 1945, his work had
already earned sufficient notice to merit an invitation to join the newly
established program in human genetics associated with the University of
Michigan hospital, acting as chair of the Department of Human Genetics from
1956 to 1982. He remained in Ann Arbor until his death in February, 2000.
As a boy in Depression-era Ohio, Neel developed an avid interest in natural
history, carrying him first to his hometown College of Wooster, and then, in
1935, to graduate school at the University of Rochester. At Rochester, he
became the first graduate student of Curt Stem, the prominent Drosophila
geneticist from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute who had recently fled the
swelling tide of fascism in Germany. Stem inoculated Neel with an affection
for the fly, however the inoculation never took deep root. Even while
pursuing his dissertation -a study of mutation patterns in fly bristles and
the effect of temperature on character expression - Neel suspected that the
most fruitful years of fruitfly genetics were past. Even as he accepted a
position at Dartmouth following completion of his doctorate in 1939, he
began to imagine new futures for himself.
Neel's restlessness soon came to a head. In 1941, while studying at Columbia
as a NRC fellow under Theodosius Dobzhansky and L.C. Dunn, Neel began to
reevaluate his research priorities. Although concerned by the disrepute cast
by eugenics and the reservations of his mentors about the difficulties of
working on human populations, he became convinced that the potential
benefits of research in human genetics outweighed the risks and decided to
commit himself to the endeavor. After briefly taking Milislav Demerec up on
an offer to work in the archives of the Eugenics Record Office (which served
only to demonstrate the insufficiency of those records for rigorous genetic
research), Neel opted to enter medical school to bolster his understanding
of the organism to which he would devote the remainder of his professional
life.
Thus in the summer of 1942, Neel once again found himself in Rochester, once
again in school. With the exigencies of the war, he also found himself in
the army, assigned to complete his medical training and await whatever
assignment would open. Rather than impeding his plans, however, military
service actually created opportunities for the budding medical geneticist.
After finishing his degree in 1944, Neel was in the midst of eighteen months
of additional training in internal medicine when he met with a double stroke
of research fortune -- based on profound misfortune. During the war, as part
of the Manhattan Engineering District, Rochester had been one of the centers
for research on the somatic and genetic effects of radiation (Neel's old
advisor, Stem, was deeply involved, as was his undergraduate mentor, Warren
Spencer). After this news came to light during the summer of 1946, Neel
mentioned in a casual conversation with a friend that he would like to take
part in a follow-up study to determine the genetic effects of the atomic
bombings in Japan. His friend, adjutant to Stafford Warren, commanding
officer of the Rochester Manhattan District, obviously listened. By
November, after entering active service in the Army, Neel was sent to Japan
where Dobzhansky remarked, "no doubt a fellow as bright as Jim Neel will
find a lot of research to be done."
Based in Hiroshima, Neel was assigned as one member of a five person team to
assess the feasibility of long range epidemiologic studies to measure the
medical impact on the survivors of the atomic bombings, with Neel given
specific responsibility for developing a program for genetics. Since at
least the 1920s, geneticists had been aware of the mutagenic potential of
ionizing radiation, however the impact on human populations remained
uncertain, and the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission and its successor, the
Radiation Effects Research Foundation have employed a variety of
methodologies and generated enormous quantities of data to address this
question. On the somatic end, the ABCC and RERF studies demonstrated
significant increases in solid cancers and leukemia among survivors and
other implications for those exposed in utero, however demonstration of
heritable genetic mutation has been more elusive. As early as the mid1950s,
Neel argued that given the best available estimates of radiation exposure
during the bombing and the data gathered from the survivors, estimates of
the doubling dose for mutation in human populations had been dramatically
overstated. In his most complete statement on this matter, The Children of
the Atomic Bomb Survivors: A Genetic Study (1991), he and his colleague,
William J. Schull, concluded that no statistically significant genetic
impact from the atomic bombings had yet been demonstrated. In later years
Neel has become a frequent consultant (and, on occasion, expert witness) for
governmental and other organizations regarding risk assessment in radiation
exposure.
As Neel's ABCC involvement was percolating in 1945-46, so was his
involvement with blood. As a third year medical student, he had encountered
a patient suffering from Cooley's anemia (thalassemia), a severe and usually
fatal disease that was known mainly to afflict persons of Mediterranean
ancestry and that was noted to occur as well in a more benign form. Neel's
search of the literature and his genetic intuition led him to propose that
the two forms of the anemia represented the homozygous and heterozygous
conditions of a single genetic malady, and he set out to test his
hypothesis. Over the course of the next decade and a half, the story
developed to explain the origins of both thalassemia and sickle cell anemia,
producing theoretical insights into heterozyote advantage and the spread of
genetic mutations in large populations, and indirectly helped to spark the
proliferation of biochemical and molecular genetics. Neel's classic
population genetic work, combined with the work of Linus Pauling, Harvey
Itano, Anthony Allison, and others, had a profound impact on both medical
practice and evolutionary theory. In 1960, Neel was recognized for his
contributions with receipt of the Lasker Award, for "laying the foundation
for the rapid development of research in human genetics."
But by the late 1950s, disinclined to pursue the burgeoning biochemical
approach to genetic diseases, Neel imagined a return to the field. What he
had in mind was a comprehensive population genetic study of a discrete human
population to document breeding structure, genetic diseases,
microdifferentiation, rates of spontaneous mutation, and other factors, all
with the intent of providing a robust framework for the study of
evolutionary change in human populations. Hoping to examine humans under
their "natural" conditions, Neel proposed to document a population of
"unacculturated" peoples, the further removed from western medicine and
culture, the better. To this end in 1962, he began a pilot study of the
Xavante Indians in Brazil, though two years later, fortune once again
intervened to alter his course. Delayed en route to Brazil by political
turmoil, Neel and his team learned of the presence of a larger and
apparently less acculturated tribe, the Yanomamo, which became the focal
point of his research beginning in 1966.
During the spring of 1999, the American Philosophical Society added the
professional papers of James V. Neel to its extensive collections for the
history of genetics. The papers include over 150 linear feet of
correspondence, manuscripts, research notes, and data, documenting nearly
every aspect of Neel's career after 1943 (and spotty documentation prior).
Neel was a prolific writer and at times, a prolific correspondent. The
collection includes revealing correspondence with Dobzhansky, Stem, Itano,
Pauling, Luca Cavalli-Sforza, and, perhaps most of all, Neel's long-term
collaborator on the Japanese studies, Jack Schull. Neel's substantial
correspondence with anthropologists Napoleon Chagnon and David
Maybeffy-Lewis (among others) forms a valuable adjunct to the rich APS
collections relating to the indigenous populations of America. With the
generous assistance of archivist, Margaret Irwin, the Houston Academy of
Medicine has provided the APS with eight reels of microfilm containing their
collection of Neel's work with the ABCC.
At the APS, Neel's papers join those of his graduate advisor, Stem, his
postdoctoral preceptors Dobzhansky and Dunn, the papers of Milislav Demerec
and the Eugenics Record Office, and many colleagues to create a remarkably
integrated archive for study of the development of human medical genetics.
The Neel Papers are currently in the early stages of processing, and by
mid-January, 2000, will be made available for consultation by researchers.



*******************************************





Le Monde Diplomatique: Operation Terminator December 1998

CASHING IN ON LIFE 





Genetically modified organisms (GMO) are under fire. But the multinational
firms which make up the genetic-industrial complex - like the
military-industrial complex we used to talk about before - are hiding behind
all sorts of committees of ''experts'', most of which they have infiltrated,
in their effort to dodge questions from a worried public: is it acceptable
to play with living things, or even sterilise them, in order to increase
profits? Can the heads of public research establishments, and the ministers
they report to, continue - through ignorance, thoughtlessness or
self-interest - to back this complex so little concerned with the common
good?  In December, the French Council of State will rule on the
authorisation by the agriculture ministry last February for the marketing
and cultivation of three varieties of transgenic maize developed by
Novartis. This follows suspension by France's highest administrative court
on 25 September of any implementation of the ministerial decree on grounds
of caution.  


by JEAN-PIERRE BERLAN and RICHARD C. LEWONTIN *   

Respectively Director of Research at the National Agronomic Research
Institute (INRA); and holder of the Alexander Agassiz chair in zoology and
professor of population genetics at Harvard University. 


Life has two fundamental and paradoxical properties (1): the ability to
reproduce and multiply (while preserving its characteristics) and the
ability to adapt, change and evolve. The first has given us farming, the
second selection. Geological time has seen an extraordinary genetic
variability develop both between and within species. In the course of their
very short history, men have domesticated plants and animals, selecting them
and adapting them to their needs by exploiting and expanding this natural
variability. But towards the middle of the 19th century, these two
complementary properties became incompatible. Selection was no longer a way
of satisfying needs, but of making money. Seed-producing "investors"
realised that their work could not become a source of gain if farmers sowed
grain they had harvested themselves. Nature became set against the "natural
law" of profit; farming and farmers against selection and breeders. As
nature's unfortunate property of reproducing itself and multiplying could
not, at the time, be legally taken away by political means, the only way of
achieving the same result was to use biological methods. Agricultural
genetics was to devote all its efforts to doing this. In March 1998 genetics
scored a new victory with the Terminator patent granted to the United States
Department of Agriculture and a private company, Delta and Pine Land Co. The
technique consists of introducing a killer "transgene" that prevents the
germ of the harvested grain from developing. The plant grows normally and
produces a normal harvest but the grain is biologically sterile. In May 1998
the multinational Monsanto bought Delta and Pine Land Co and the Terminator
patent - by now registered, or in the process, in 87 countries - and is
currently negotiating exclusive rights to it with the Department of
Agriculture. Also in May, Monsanto tried to woo French public opinion with
an expensive advertising campaign about the philanthropic wonders of
genetically modified organisms (GMO). Neither the scientists concerned nor
the media nor the French Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of
Scientific and Technological Options went to much trouble to understand the
issues at stake, let alone explain them to the public. Terminator is merely
the outcome of a long process of seizing control over living things (2) that
began when biological heredity (3) started to become a commodity. In 1907
Hugo de Vries, the most influential biologist of his day who "rediscovered"
Mendel's laws (4), was the only one to realise that in an applied science
like agricultural genetics, economics took precedence over science: what is
profitable affects, or even determines, what is "scientifically true" (5).
He investigated replacing the technique of improving cereals by isolation,
which dated back to the early 19th century and was based on the fact that
the plants go on to breed true - and therefore bring no profits to the
investor - by the continuous selection method. According to this method,
justified by the best science of the time, Darwinism, varieties
"deteriorate" in the farmer's field. This method cannot improve the plants,
as was demonstrated empirically by Nilsson at the Svalöf Institute in Sweden
in 1892 and confirmed by the earliest work inspired by Mendel at the
beginning of this century. Thus, even then, a technique that was profitable
but incapable of bringing the slightest progress replaced one that was
useful to society but generated no profits. Sterilising the harvest Ignorant
of the history of their own discipline and of the work of de Vries in
particular (6), the 20th century's agricultural geneticists repeated the
same scenario. At the end of the 1930s they triumphed with "hybrid" maize,
which was extravagantly fêted (7). The technique of hybridisation, which has
become the model for agronomic research the world over, is now used in
around 20 food species and a dozen others are likely to follow. Poultry of
every kind and a large number of pigs are also "hybrids". On the strength of
a sham theoretical explanation of hybrid vigour, heterosis-superdominance
(8), geneticists have tried since the mid-1930s to get the hybrid technique
generally accepted following their success with maize in the United States.
"Hybrids increase yield", they say. This puts the theory of heterosis in a
nutshell: having different genes - "hybridity" - is beneficial per se. In
reality, what distinguishes this varietal type from all the others is the
reduction in yield in the next generation - that is, in plain terms,
sterility. As a result, the farmer is obliged to buy his "seed" in every
year. But varietal progress can only come from improving populations by
selection, the very thing that this quest for hybrids prevents. Apparently
unaware of what they are doing, the agricultural geneticists have
dialectically overturned reality: they state they are using a biological
phenomenon, heterosis, to increase yield, while actually using inbreeding to
create sterility. But if they were politically successful in sterilising
maize, they had to focus attention on the illusion created by selection -
improvement - to mask their real objective. There is therefore no difference
between the late 19th century "deterioration" technique - hybrids - and the
Terminator technique. The only innovation is the political context. Until
recently, the investors could not reveal their true design - the
sterilisation of living things - without making it unachievable. The
peasantry were a powerful social group. Life was sacred. But peasants are
disappearing: they have become farmers, eagerly awaiting the smallest sign
of "progress" capable of delaying their ultimate demise. And life has been
reduced to a source of profits in the banal form of strands of DNA. Numbed
by 20 years of neo-liberal propaganda, people have been conditioned to look
to science and technology for the answers to society's major political
problems, while politicians are content to "manage". Finally, the small
breeding firms have given way to a powerful genetic-industrial complex with
ramifications extending into the very heart of public research (9).
Terminator shows this complex now feels so powerful it no longer needs to
hide its quest for control over life itself. For example, Monsanto, the firm
that is most advanced in "life science" applications, has no compunction
about publishing threatening display advertisements in American farming
journals. Under a banner headline pointing out the cost of planting pirated
seed, it reminds farmers who purchased Biotech seed - genetically modified
and including a gene for resistance to Roundup, its flagship herbicide -
that they are not entitled to keep any of the harvested grain for use as
seed the following year. This is "contractual sterility". But the farmer may
have bought Roundup Ready grain without signing a contract - from
neighbours, for example. In that case the company can prosecute him because
the variety is patented. So now we have "legal sterility". Monsanto, which
has just made 2,500 people redundant, is using the old familiar response of
hiring Pinkerton agency detectives (10) to track down farmers who "pirate"
its seed as well as using more conventional informers: neighbours,
crop-spraying companies and seed merchants. To avoid a potentially ruinous
lawsuit, more than 100 farmers have been obliged to destroy their crops, pay
compensation and allow Monsanto agents to inspect their accounts and their
farms for years to come. It is perfectly legal to keep harvested grain to
sow the following year: the farmer's only obligation is not to sell that
grain to his neighbours. But according to Monsanto, that right does not
apply to genetically modified seed that is covered by a patent (11). As for
the risks of "biological pollution" and the consequences - quite unknown -
of genetically modified varieties for public health and the environment, the
genetic-industrial complex's philosophy was clearly summed up by Monsanto's
communications director Phil Angell when he said with unusual frankness that
his company had "no need to guarantee the safety of genetically modified
food products"; it was only interested in selling as many as possible and
safety was a matter for the Food and Drug Administration (12). This from the
people who paint the benefits of genetic manipulation in such glowing
colours (13). Monsanto and its ally-competitors, Novartis, Rhône-Poulenc,
Pioneer-DuPont and many others, have specialised in the "life sciences".
Strange life sciences that conspire against the marvellous property of
living things to reproduce themselves and multiply in farmers' fields so
that capital can reproduce and multiply in investors' bank accounts. Will we
soon be forced to brick up doors and windows to protect candle makers from
unfair competition from the sun (14)? There is no shortage of arguments that
the sun should shine for everyone. Here are just four. First, the wealth of
variety was created by peasants all over the world, the third world in
particular. It is a point always being raised by non-governmental and
intergovernmental organisations like the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organisation (FAO). The domestication and selection/adaptation work done by
peasants over thousands of years has built up a biological heritage from
which the industrialised nations have greatly benefited - and which they
have plundered and already partly destroyed. American agriculture was built
from these genetic resources freely imported from all over the world, the
only important species native to North America being the sunflower. If
justice still means anything, the US - where there is much opposition to
allowing a few companies to expropriate the universal biological heritage -
should repay their "genetic debt" to the world. Second, we owe the
unprecedented increase in yields in the industrial countries, as well as the
third world, to the free movement of knowledge and genetic resources and to
public research. (Yields have increased four or five fold in two
generations, after taking 12 to 15 generations to double and being no doubt
much unchanged for thousands of years before that.) The contribution of
private research has been marginal, including in the US with its hybrid
maize. For example, in the course of the 1970s nearly all the hybrids in the
US Corn Belt were the result of crossing two public lines - from the
universities of Iowa and Missouri. It is public research and public research
alone that does all the basic work on improving the populations of plants on
which everything depends. An expert from the National Agronomic Research
Institute (INRA) recalled that at the start of his career packets of seed
often came free with scientific publications. Thirty years later, he
suspects some of these journals of deliberately misleading the reader - and
the competition. Research work is being hampered by the privatisation of
knowledge, genetic resources and the techniques for their use. Tired of
paying royalties on genetic resources that were snatched from them in the
first place, many countries in the Southern hemisphere are now trying to
stop their circulation. Third, experience shows that the price of privatised
"genetic progress" is and will be exorbitant. For example, in 1986 an INRA
researcher estimated the additional cost of hybrid wheat seed - that is, the
cost of bricking up doors and windows plus the cost of hybrid candles - at
between 6 and 8 quintals per hectare (15). Another researcher, in charge of
the INRA hybrid wheat programme - which is continuing despite this
incredibly high estimate - recently came up with an even higher figure of 8
to 10 quintals per hectare sown (16). This means, at the very least, $500
million a year, or the entire INRA budget, for a net gain of scarcely a few
quintals - a gain that can be more easily and quickly obtained using lines
or varieties reproduced by the farmer. But those lines were of no interest
to INRA's "partner", Lafarge-Coppée. Fourth, giving up our rights in living
things means giving the genetic-industrial complex a free hand to guide
technical progress into the paths that will bring it the most profits rather
than those that will be most useful to society. Rambling on about progress
in general while ignoring how things are done in practice smacks of
deception. As does invoking some alleged "social demand" in justification of
the scientific choices made by the authorities. Public opinion is massively
against GMO. So there is no "social demand" for GMO; the term is simply
being used as a smokescreen for the demands of the genetic-industrial
complex. And yet, in France, ministers have just opened a genetic research
centre in Evry. Easy prey for investors The myth of hybrids is easily
exposed. On the one hand, farmers want better quality varieties that are
more productive per unit cost. But they are unable to specify in what form.
Unfortunately, they can't rely on scientists to tell them that there are a
number of routes to improvement and that the choice between a free variety
and a hybrid is a political, not a scientific one. Scientists are not
political animals, as we know. On the other hand, investors, looking to
maximise the return on their investment, choose the most profitable varietal
type: they take the hybrid route of sterile varieties. Whether spontaneously
or working to order, researchers set to work, devoting their efforts
exclusively to the success of these hybrids. And, sooner or later, the
technique is made to work, proving the initial choice was correct. A
technical choice is like a self-fulfilling prophecy - the farmer's demand
for better varieties is transformed into a demand for hybrids. In the twin
fields of applied biology, health and medicine, we are trying to get rid of
the great scourges of cancer, obesity, alcoholism, etc. But we don't know
how to reach this objective. The genetic-industrial complex, for its part,
is trying to make more and more money. Confusing the agent with the cause,
it drums into us that these social ills are genetic and therefore
individual, transforming every well individual into a potential patient,
expanding the market to the limit - as it previously did for seed with
hybrids and as it will with Terminator. By definition, we are all carriers
of genetic diseases. Since genes produce proteins and proteins are involved
in every function of life, to speak of a "genetic" disease is a virtual
tautology. But in a society where the social and political causes of disease
are absent, the genetic agent manifests itself very rarely, if at all (17).
The deception of individualising and naturalising a social and political
cause is the death knell of any system of social security. In France we see
this every day with the endless debates about the chronic but
oh-so-profitable social security deficit. By cutting themselves off from
society in the name of objectivity and technology, biologists are falling
victim to their own narrow concept of causality and their "a-historicity" -
easy prey for investors. But the way for researchers to work for that better
world that the vast majority want is for them to open themselves up to the
scrutiny of their fellow citizens. That means scientific democracy. The
genetic-industrial complex is trying to transform political questions into
technical and scientific ones so that responsibility for them can be shifted
on to bodies it can control. Its experts, dressed in the candid probity and
the white coat of impartiality and objectivity, use the camera to distract
people's attention. Then they put on their three piece suits to negotiate
behind the scenes the patent they have just applied for, or sit on the
committees that will inform public opinion - quite objectively, it goes
without saying - and regulate their own activities. It is a serious thing
when democracy no longer has any independent experts and has to depend on
the courage and honesty of a few scientists and researchers, as it must, for
example, in the nuclear industry. Such abuses are beginning to elicit a
timid reaction. American biological journals, for example, are asking their
contributors to declare their personal or family interests in biotechnology
companies and their sources of funding (18). This is the minimum level of
transparency that should be asked of anyone who takes the floor or sits on
committees of supposedly independent experts. We would then become aware of
the genetic-industrial complex's many and various ramifications. In short,
do we want to allow a few multinationals to take control of the biological
part of our humanity by granting them a right - legal, biological or
contractual - over life itself? Or do we want to preserve our responsibility
and our autonomy? Will farmers' organisations continue to allow ruinous
techniques to be imposed upon them or will they debate what would be in the
farmers' and the public's interest with renewed public research and a
network of breeder-agronomists? Finally, what are the intentions of "public"
agronomic research - which for decades has been privatising the material of
life economically, and now biologically? There is another way. Turn our
backs on the present European policy of allowing life forms to be patented,
which is nothing but a servile imitation of what is happening in the US, and
declare living things "the common property of humanity". And reorganise
genuinely public research around this common property in order to block the
already well-advanced private hold that is seeking to eliminate any
scientific alternative that would make ecologically responsible and
sustainable agriculture possible. Guarantee the free movement of knowledge
and genetic resources that have made the extraordinary advances of the last
60 years possible. Restore power over living things to the farmers, that is
to each one of us. Replace economic warfare and the plundering of genetic
resources with international cooperation and peace.  * 



Translated by Malcolm Greenwood 

(1) This article takes up the theme of a European workshop on the subject
"Should we create a right in living things?" held, because of opposition
from the board of the INRA, at the Montpellier Centre for Higher Agronomic
Studies on 26-27 September 1997. (2) In his article "Playing God in the
Garden", Michael Pollan writes that with the rise of biotechnology, farming
is entering the information age, and Monsanto, more than any other firm,
looks set to become its Microsoft, providing the proprietary "operating
systems", to use its own metaphor, that will manage the new generation of
plants. The New York Times Magazine, 28 October 1998. (3) The biological
concept of heredity appeared in the mid-19th century, at the same time as
the heredity of property. See the contribution by Jean Gayon to the European
workshop mentioned in note 1. (4) The botanist Johann Rehof ("Gregori")
Mendel was the founder of genetics. He described the laws of hybridisation
(or Mendel's laws) in a seminal article published in 1886 but generally
unknown until rediscovered in 1900. (5) Hugo De Vries, Plant-Breeding, The
Open Court Publishing Co., Chicago, 1907. (6) For the elimination of history
from scientific projects, see Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond, La Pierre de touche.
La science à l'Épreuve de ... la société, Gallimard, coll. Folio, Paris
1996. (7) From the start of the development of "hybrids" (1922) - when the
Department of Agriculture imposed the technique on reluctant breeders - to
their conquest of the Middle West in 1945-46, the maize yield increased 18%
while that of wheat increased 32%. But the small wheat breeders only serve
the general interest, while the "hybridisers" create a new source of profit
and therefore become scientific heros. (8) See "The Genetics and
Exploitation of Heterosis in Crops", Book of Abstracts, International
Symposium, Mexico City, CIMMYT, 1997. This symposium, whose purpose was to
popularise the "hybrid" technique the world over and to extend it to new
species, was sponsored by the cream the genetic-industrial complex,
including Monsanto, Novartis, Pioneer, DeKalb and Asgrow, as well as by US
Aid and the American Department of Agriculture. China was also among the
sponsors. (9) In France, a former chairman and director of INRA boasted in
1986 of being on the boards of Rhône-Poulenc, Entreprise minière et
chimique, and Société commerciale des potasses d'Alsace et de l'azote. The
present director of this public research institute was formerly (1989-94) on
the board of Rhône-Poulenc Agrochimie. (10) The Pinkerton private detective
agency traditionally supplied employers with auxiliaries to break trade
unions and whip up provocation. (11) See Progressive Farmer, Birmingham,
Alabama, 26 February 1998. Monsanto has recently spelled out the penalties
to be imposed on farmers found to be "pirating" its varieties: they will
have to pay a royalty and allow their farms to be inspected for a period of
five years. Two farmers in Kentucky were obliged to pay it $25,000. In
France, farmers belonging to the Confédération paysanne are actively
fighting against GMO. See the Confederation's monthly, Campagnes solidaires
(104, rue Robespierre, 93170 Bagnolet. Tel.: (+33) 143-62-82-82). See also
the dossier on GMO published in the October 1998 edition of the monthly
Regards, Paris. (12) Reported by Michael Pollan, "Playing God in the
Garden", op. cit. (13) See interview with Axel Kahn, "Les OGM permettront de
nourrir la planète en respectant l'environnement", Les Echos, 18 December
1997. Mr. Kahn, a member of the National Consultative Committee on Ethics
and chairman of the Biomolecular Engineering Commission from 1988-1997, is
director of research unit 129 at the National Institute for Health and
Medical Research (INSERM) and assistant director of life sciences at
Rhône-Poulenc. (14) See Jean-Pierre Berlan and Richard C. Lewontin, "Plant
Breeders' Rights and the Patenting of Life Forms", Nature, London, 322:
785-788, 28 August 1986. (15) Michel Rousset, "Les blés hybrides sortent du
laboratoire", La Recherche, Paris, No. 173, January 1986. (16) Gérard
Doussinault, report to the scientific committee of the Economics Department
of the INRA, December 1996. (17) See Richard C. Lewontin, The Doctrine of
DNA. Biology as Ideology, Penguin Books, London, 1993. (18) In his article
"Study discloses financial interests behind papers" (Nature, vol. 385, 30
June 1997), Meredith Wadman shows that one third of the main authors of
articles published in 14 cellular and biomolecular biology and medical
journals had a direct financial interest in the work they were reporting.
The definition of "financial interest" is narrow, however, since it does not
include consultations, private shareholdings or fees.

 Translated by Malcolm Greenwood  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 1997-2000 Le Monde
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