Genetic Engineering, Food and Our Environment [Paperback]

An excellent study for anyone considering GE-related issues, it makes a key handbook for the campaigner. It is a resource one can variously refer to in connection with environmental and other concerns, third world development possibilities, and underpinning issues in the background of global politics.

Luke Anderson's book entirely deserves the wide readership and serious attention gained by Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring." Carson's book detailed impacts and threats of industrial chemicals in use forty years ago; Anderson's is an effective sequel, an update on the state of play today. Depressing how some of the villains in the story are the same - or rather, grander and more dangerous. Inspiring how voices will yet courageously emerge like those of Carson and Anderson, with the wits and the research base to point to the toxins dribbling down the Emperor's new clothes (or carcass) and explain where they came from.

Altogether a thoroughly useful, troubling and galvanising kind of book. If you haven't got it, get it.

Some of the information in this book is quite shocking. The sheer amount of money Monsanto has used to bribe and "settle out of court" tells me there's got to be something very wrong in what they're doing. I enjoyed the "follow the money" advice this book offers - if an "expert" is saying there's no harm at all any of this try to find out who's paying the salary or funding the grant. This quote from pg. 106 is unforgettable, "We paid $3 billion for these television stations. We will decide what the news is......"

Lots of information packed into a small book, also a guide to organizations and further information.

Written shortly before scientists began to seriously question the effects of even minute quantities of hormone disrupting and cancer-causing, mutagenic chemicals and the potential effects of errant DNA in the greater environment, and shortly after genetically modified crops had been shown to sterilize insects and willy-nilly cross-pollinate with plants of the same species located either nearby or a great distance away, this handy little book introduces a considerable amount of information on genetic engineering and its dubious successes to readers who are not well versed in the sciences. In seven highly fluid and readable chapters, the book addresses a plethora of ethical, economic and technological issues associated with genetic engineering and agricultural biotechnology. The first chapter lucidly explains many of the key concepts underpinning genetic engineering as it applies to agriculture, and introduces most of the very real specters to health and the environment that the technology not only has caused, but also can and ultimately may cause in the future. The author devotes one chapter each to the thorny issues of genetic engineering and its effects on the environment, the way that agricultural biotechnology portents to and actually is transforming farming globally for the worse, and the attempts of individuals, universities and corporations, with all the zeal characteristic of a gold rush mentality, to patent every snippet of DNA they can get their hands on. Readers may find the book's fifth chapter to be truly shocking, as it describes in vivid detail the apparent disinterest of governments in industrialized nations to safeguard the best interests of its citizens- especially in the area of public health, from the bitter fruit of agricultural biotechnology. Chapter six presents a detailed case study of one particular biological abomination- the superfluous use of increasing amounts of biotech hormones to increase milk production, even in the face of persistent gluts year after year. The seventh and final details efforts by many groups to resist the onslaught of the adoption of such biotechnologies, and offers insight into the ways the poor in Third World countries are used as dupes and guinea pigs for these less than optimal technologies. The author also includes a detailed list of resources that concerned readers can tap into in their efforts to learn more or to protect themselves from most, but not all, of the spurious products of agricultural biotechnology.

In reading this book, one gets the feeling that the author wants us to share in his concern about the lingering effects of these overly hyped technologies of dubious merit. While the author clearly did his best to choose many of genetic engineering's most egregious examples, readers of this text should bear in mind that these examples merely represent the tip of the iceberg. As a scientist and engineer, it is hard for me come up with a suitable justification for many of the fruits of ag biotech, given that farmers in the industrialized countries are plagued with the onerous problem of oversupply. Furthermore, with slight modifications to current agricultural practices, and a shifting of inputs and plant resources, every single person on the planet could easily be fed, so the excuse of biotechnology feeding the world's hungry does not quite wash either. Basically, I find the motives of big biotech companies to be less than altruistic: if the biotech corporation controls the seeds and the larger food supply, then they control the people dependent upon them.

In this day and age of financial skullduggery and scientific chicanery, astute citizens must actively behoove themselves to exercise caution and awareness at all times. As Huff told us in his classic little book, How to Lie with Statistics, if the honest person wants to prevent oneself from being burglarized, then it pays to learn the ways of the criminally minded. As such, this book's disclosure of the aggressive foisting of these dubious scientific advances on an unsuspecting public by an unscrupulous gaggle of corporate, academic and government interests clearly demonstrates a most disturbing and peculiar case of criminal intent of the highest degree.