A criticism of the World Bank document on Biotechnology and Biodiversity

The World Bank shilling for GMOs. So how much Monsanto stock does Wolfowitz own? between order #61 in Iraq when he was the Purple Tufted High Grand Grand Poobah and ordered that Iraqi farmers could only plant seeds bought under contract from Monsanto and this document issued by the World bank when he was in charge I just have a hunch that there's more going on here than Pauly's deep rooted altruistic motivation to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Seriously, does anyone know how to find out if and how much stock he might own in Monsanto?
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A criticism of the World Bank document on Biotechnology and Biodiversity



Sean McDonagh, SSC, MA, Ph.D





In section 5.4.8 to 5.4.8.7 of the document on biotechnology, the World Bank does what it is best at, namely, promoting the interests of rich countries and their trans-national corporations while claiming to help the poor. The document itself contains all the propaganda that has been circulated by public relations companies employed by the corporations. To coat thousands of gold bullets with genetic material and use a gene gun to shoot these into the cell of the target organism can hardly be called a precise technology. It can often take between 5,000 and 10,000 experimental gene insertions to achieve the desired result. Nevertheless you make this claim in the second paragraph that this is a precise technology.



The renowned English zoologist, Colin Tudge presents a very different picture. We writes, “genetic engineering, even at its simplest, implies the ad hoc introduction of exotic genes into the genome of established organisms; and this, in principle immediately suggests a hierarchy of possible problems. Most obviously, the newly introduced gene could disrupt the host genome in undesirable and quite unpredictable ways. The theoretical problem can readily be seen through an analogy. It’s often said that the genetic code is ‘digital’, so in a general way it is. Each gene and so, by implication, each functioning length of DNA corresponds to some specific ‘bit’ of information. We get closer to reality, though if we compare genes to language as in the title of Steve Jones’s 1993 book The Language of Genes. Individual genes are then compared to words. But the meaning of individual words is not to be captured in a stripped-down dictionary definition. Anyone who tries to speak a foreign language out of a dictionary knows how droll the natives find such efforts. The meaning of words depends very much on their context – what words are they surrounded by. Behind the dictionary definition of individual words lies the syntax of the language, and the actual use of it; the colloquialism, the cross-references, the historical allusions, the puns. Genes work in this way too because genomes evolve, trailing their history behind them. They are not simply ‘digital’, but work to rules that are in part logical and in part a matter of historical accident. If genes are compared to words, then the genome of any particular creature as a whole should be compared to literature. Genetic engineering is not really engineering. It is more like gardening, in you plant and then stand back, and watch; or, to pursue the present metaphor, it is more like editing. Every writer knows that the injudicious alteration of a single word can change the import of a text absolutely and prays for a gentle and competent editor.



At present, after 100 years of formal Mendelian genetics and a few decades of genomics, we have some small insight into the functioning of a few genes in a few genomes (including for human genes). For some organism, in short we have the beginnings of a dictionary. But the genome of an organism – any organism – might be compared in literary terms, to some sacred poetic text written in a language of which we have virtually no inkling; medieval Tibetan, or Linear B. Would you, or anyone who was halfway sane, undertake to edit such a text if all they had to guide them was a bad dictionary?





You continue that paragraph with another half-truth that it is an extension of traditional breeding practices. It is nothing of the sort; recombinant DNA technology is new and radically different technique that has no semblance to any previous breeding methods used by humankind. It circumvents the barriers that exist between completely different species and does this with the aid of bacteria and viruses. 5.4.8.1





In March 2007 it was revealed at a Paris news conference that Monsanto maize (MON863) caused serious damage to the liver and kidney of rats which consumed it during feeding trials. The rats showed signs of heptorenal toxicity, symptoms of poisoning and liver and kidney damage. According to Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini who conducted the study at the University of Caen in France, these revelations are profoundly disturbing from a health perspective. They are sufficient to require new and more carefully conducted feeding studies and an immediate ban from human and animal consumption of GM maize MON836 and all its hybrids. In spite of this study which was published in the Archives on Environmental Contamination and Toxicology in March 2007, MON 863 which was formally approved by the EU in August 2005 was not withdrawn from circulation.
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