"An extremely important book - even a heroic one - and a worthy successor to Rachel Carson's SILENT SPRING."

- Prof. Charles Jencks of Harvard University

I remember all too well the feeling of foreboding that descended over me after reading a few advance chapters of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring previewed in The New Yorker in the summer of 1962.  It had been a droughty summer in western New York.  The leaves on the trees had taken on a grayish tinge and rustled like the dead leaves of autumn when the wind stirred them.  No birds sang because it was August and the nesting season was over for most.  They were busy elsewhere stocking up and flocking with others of their kind in preparation for the coming southward migration.

My brain was aware of this, but it seemed as if the silence Rachel Carson was warning us about had already happened.  Except for the dried leaves rustling, we seemed to be experiencing a silent summer.  Like Hans Ruesch's Slaughter of the Innocent and Ernest Sternglass's Low  Level Radiation, it was a book that would influence the course of many lives, including my own.  I wanted to make everyone aware of what she had written so they could take steps to reduce the poisoning of the planet and its creatures.

Dr Mae-wan Ho's Genetic Engineering is the same sort of landmark book.  It is concerned with the world-wide implications of rearranging the smallest components of living matter into new entities, i.e. scrambling the genes of divergent species in what is now, now that it has become an every day occurrence, less threateningly termed "genetic modification" or GM (which could also stand for "genetic manipulation") instead of GE for "genetic engineering".

As a British scientist specializing in genetic engineering biotechnology, Dr Ho attended a conference in Malaysia in 1994 that made her aware of how "The commercialisation of science in genetic engineering biotechnology has compromised the integrity of scientists, reduced organisms including human beings to commodities, intensified the exploitation of the Third World, and threatened human and animal health and biodiversity. 

She recalls the elaborate care scientists took in the 1970's to be sure that genetically altered organisms were destroyed to prevent harm to the environment as a whole.  Today, multinational corporations are deliberately rearranging these organisms and releasing them into the environment with little , if any, regard for possible consequences.  Herbicide resistance passed to weeds by genetically-engineered soy beans and rape seed (Canola oil) plants immediately comes to mind.  Then there are the still unknown long-term effects of the increased insulin growth factor, IGF-1, on people who drink milk from cows injected with a genetically-manipulated bovine growth hormone.  The short term effects are already known to be bad for cows.

Dr Ho explains in detail that snipping a gene from one species' DNA and inserting it into that of another is not so simple as most biogeneticists would have us believe.  Far from being static entities, genes and other elements of living material are constantly interacting with each other and with their environment:  "....we know that genes and genomes are fluid and dynamic, that mutations are much more frequent than previously thought and that they can occur in response to environmental conditions...."

Her descriptions of the various interactions made me think of all the little pieces in a kaleidoscope, not only rearranging themselves into constantly shifting patterns but even altering their individual shapes by exchanging bits and pieces with each other according to what is happening around them, and the whole picture being complicated by free-spirited viruses jumping in and out of view as opportunities present themselves.  However you choose to look at it, there is a constant struggle for balance at this most basic level of life, just as there is a constant struggle for chemical balance within individual organisms and amongst all living things in the environment as a whole.

There is also a continuous struggle among financial interests vying to produce the most profitable products.  One example of this is the takeover of all the major American seed companies by chemical companies usurping for themselves the power to restrict seed varieties to those that require the use of their fertilizers and pesticides and those resistant to their herbicides.

Dr Ho deplores the reductionist science that concerns itself with the smallest components of living matter while ignoring larger organisms, ecosystems, and the planet as a whole.  She is greatly concerned with the exploitation of poor southern hemisphere countries by the more industrialized and money-oriented countries of the northern hemisphere.

As a scientist concerned with the invisible particles of life, the author takes pains and uses diagrams to explain the functions of these entities, but the focus of her book is on the big picture, encompassing ethical as well as scientific concerns.  On the ethical side, she worries about genetic discrimination, the "marginalisation of women in the commercial control of reproductive technologies"; using cloning or in vitro techniques to produce humans as well as other animals as a source of spare parts, and exploiting the resources of poor countries.

Scientifically, she fears cross-species epidemics; "severe immune reactions from vectors in gene replacement therapy"; cancers and superviruses triggered by recombination between vectors and endogenous viruses; "cross-species superviruses from recombination between viral vaccines and endogenous viruses in plants, animals, and humans"; harmful mutations from cross-species transfers; new iatrogenic diseases from drugs and vaccines derived through genetic manipulation.

The phrase "bad science" recurs often as Dr Ho names and criticizes reductionist scientists (including Dolly-producer Dr Ian Wilmut) whom she accuses of not looking beyond their accomplishments to consider the effects they will have on all living things.

"Unfortunately, most molecular geneticists, apart from being absorbed into industry, also lack training in classical genetics,and suffer from a severe molecular myopia that prevents them from appreciating the implications and broader perspective of the findings in their own discipline."

This is a very rich book. There is an interesting chapter on the progression of genetic theory since Mendel and Darwin, another on the importance of keeping track of energy input in relation to output, and yet another on making the most of our resources by planning for sustained use.  There is discussion antibiotic resistance, intensive agriculture and animal experimentation "for which there is neither need nor good scientific justification".

"Based on the same reductionist ideology, chemical and pharmaceutical industries are producing ever more exotic chemicals, drugs and cures that have already done more harm in environmental pollution and in physiological side-effects than the conditions they are supposed to overcome or treat.  The history of the pharmaceutical industry is littered with failures of wonder-drugs. Iatrogenic disease is estimated to result in 2 million Americans being hospitalised each year and 180,000 deaths.  Do we need more of the same?  Is it not time to stop profiting from ill health that has already been created by the overuse and abuse of drugs?        continued on next page

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GENETIC ENGINEERING  review concluded           beginning of this review
                                                 
Discussing the relationship of human mutations to "physiological stress", Dr Ho suggests," It is time we redirected our efforts and resources to address the real problems facing our societies instead of

(Continued on page 74)