wfn.org | Ethicists grapple with issues in bioengineering food

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July 27, 2001      News media contact: Joretta Purdue ·(202)
546-8722·Washington    10-21-24-71B{334}

WASHINGTON (UMNS) - "Genetically Modifying Food: Playing God or Doing God's
Work?" was the question posed to a panel of ethicists, but for some of the
speakers, that was not the issue.

"We need to ask not whether we are playing God, but whether we are playing
as God would play," said Jaydee Hanson, a staff executive with the United
Methodist Board of Church and Society.

The Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology sponsored the July 26
discussion, with funding from Pew Charitable Trusts. Hanson was one of four
speakers on a panel moderated by Margaret Warner, senior correspondent with
the "PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."

The issue of genetically modifying food by the introduction of a gene from
another living plant or animal is muddied by lots of faulty assumptions,
including the idea that the reason for such modification is to feed the
world's hungry, Hanson said. 

"The truth is we've been working on hunger for a long time," he said. The
shortage of food is not a major cause of hunger; rather, hunger is related
to issues of distribution and power, he said.

"The basic reason people don't have food is because they don't have enough
money to buy food," he declared. More than 2 billion of the world's people
are getting less than $2 a day to live on, he noted.

David Magnus, professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in
Philadelphia, disagreed with some of Hanson's reasoning. It is not fair to
argue that "social, political, economic problems" associated with hunger
mean that technological change is not needed to benefit hungry people,
Magnus said.

"Our obligation to improve the lot of humankind" is a major ethical
consideration in the issue of genetically modifying foods, he said. But that
concept prompts many questions about whether people really know what they
are doing, who benefits, who takes the risks and who makes decisions, Magnus
said.

Robert T. Gronski, senior policy coordinator of the National Rural Catholic
Life Conference in Des Moines, Iowa, commented on what his organization sees
as a strong rush to the powerful technology, which has powerful forces
behind it. "Let's slow down a bit," he said. "Let's not stop it completely."
The group was founded in 1923 to seek justice in human relationships and
respect for the integrity of God's creation.

Gronski cited as a goal "making sure that if indeed the earth belongs to
God, then everyone has access to these resources and that they are not being
forced to accept these types of foods across an agricultural system that is
in the hands of a few."

Rabbi Avram Israel Reisner, an adjunct professor at Baltimore Hebrew
University, stated that Jewish history includes arguments on both sides of
the issue, but he said the majority of Jews tend to be pro-technology if the
result is good -- that is, if it benefits humankind.

"We do know that we have made bad mistakes in hybridization," Hanson said,
in response to a question about a longstanding form of biotechnical
engineering. He cited the development of toxic potatoes through
hybridization as one example. 

"God makes ecosystems at every level of the universe, and we are arrogantly
going in and tinkering with that universe," Hanson said. The ultimate
theological question in this issue might be whether people are worshipping
their own creation instead of God, he said.

Reisner said that human arrogance must be forcefully controlled so that
people "are careful, not careless."

"The issue of the arrogance of this industry should be well taken," Magnus
said. "In our culture, the scientific community have become a kind of
priesthood. They have these secrets about the nature of life that are not
acceptable to the public at large." 

People in the scientific community are resistant to being democratic about
their processes, he continued. "And they are quite resentful about the
intrusion of values that are not their own into any kind of debate." He
wants debate about these technologies to be open to the public and ongoing.

Hanson took issue with some forms of patents. "Gene patenting is a form of
theft," he said. Patenting a gene is stealing from humanity something God
created, he declared. He said he does not object to patenting a process or
piece of equipment, but to obtain a patent on all processes that could lead
to a specific result is wrong.

Magnus agreed that many gene patents are "problematical" and "unethical." To
some extent corporate America has behaved in unethical ways in obtaining
various patents, he said. He believes the patenting process is "too broad"
when a patent is taken on a gene, or on all the ways of seeing something, or
all the ways of finding something like a cure for a particular disease, he
said.

Hanson said that those with the resources to defend a patent have an
advantage. "The more powerful person or entity gets to claim something and
keep it away from others."

"Who has a stake in what comes out, and who has control?" are ethical
questions that should be included in the equation, Magnus said. He objected
to the idea that patenting is theft in the medical realm. However, he
conceded that the people whose cells were used to develop a cure or
treatment have no claim to any patent taken out by a company or individual.

Warner cited viewpoints from developing countries that the richer nations
have the luxury of arguing the merits of bioengineering, while the
developing countries simply want access to technology for feeding their
people.

"I think that there are these specific uses that can be developed, but we
have to make sure that they do what they were developed to do and not do any
more than that," Gronski said. However, citing a "web of creation," he also
said, "You can't just do one thing without expecting all these other things
to happen as well." 

Gronski urged that alternatives to biotechnology should be considered also.
He added that developing countries should be able to participate in the
decisions about whatever technology or processes are used.

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