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T The Corporate Takeover of Science the experiences of Dr Mae Wan Ho In her review of Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain by George Monbiot, Dr Mae Wan Ho began: "The corporate takeover is here and threatening the foundations of democratic government...Corporations have seized control of our hospitals, schools, universities. They have infiltrated government and come to dominate government ministries, dispensing our tax money to research and development that benefit industry, taking over our food chain. To top it all, the British Government has colluded in ceding its power to international institutions controlled by corporations, such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund." When she retired as a professor at Open University, Ho co-founded ISIS, Institute of Science in Society, to work for social responsibility in science. It was agreed that she would manage the non-profit institute from the campus, but that arrangement disintegrated when Imutran and Huntingdon Life Sciences, collaborators in developing pig-to-human organ transplants, objected to her receiving information from Uncaged Campaigns. At one point she was banned from entering the campus. A 1993 white paper on science, "Realizing Our Potential" urged research councils to develop "deeper links" with industry. Now, the major biological research funding agency, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, is chaired by Peter Doyle, an executive director of Zeneca. Other council members include executives of Chiroscience, Nestle, the Food and Drink Federation, Inc., Merck Sharpe and Dohme, Agrevo, and Aventis. BBSRC has funded a program aimed at making scientists more business-oriented at Nestle, Unilever, Glaxo Wellcome, SmithKline Beecham, AgrEvo, Dupont, Rhone Poulenc, and Zeneca. The same phenomenon has been occurring in the US where executives from agribusiness play musical chairs between their company, notably Monsanto, and the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration giving big business undue influence over policy and regulation. The American distributor of Dr Ho's book is out of business and we are trying to locate a new supplier as of March 17, 2001. |
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The Civil Abolitionist Spring 2000-2001 |