Book Review
Recoding Nature: Critical Perspectives On Genetic Engineering
Richard Hindmarsh and Geoffrey Lawrence (eds)
ISBN: 978-0-868407-41-8 2004 246 pages University of New South Wales Press, Sydney
Wendy Russell
Lecturer, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Wollongong, NSW
In the Genetic Modification (GM) debate, genetic engineering has received an enormous amount of attention. Support for this emerging technology, which has come from many public and private organisations, from the global Life Science industry and from many scientists, has been very well resourced - in terms both of money and of scientific research and expertise. The opposition, originating from environment and development NGOs and a number of scientists, academics and activists, is much less well resourced. But its unexpected strength of numbers - a groundswell of opposition coming from the ‘general public' - has significantly affected GM Research and Development, particularly in Europe, has put GM on national political agendas, and made the contest resemble the Lilliputians against Gulliver more than David against Goliath.
Like previous collections by the same editors, Recoding Nature is an important contribution to the relatively small literature of critical perspectives on genetic engineering. It has the usual advantages and disadvantages of edited collections. Although the broad range of issues, perspectives and expertise - approaches range from thoroughly academic to ‘grassroots'- is refreshing and useful, coverage is not always comprehensive or cohesive, in terms of style, content or argument; and there is some overlap - between topics and with the editors' previous collections. But authors cover areas (food safety and gene flow for example) more thoroughly than before and introduce important topics and approaches (indigenous and third world perspectives for example) that have previously received little space.
The book seems to be aimed primarily at an academic audience, predominantly in the social sciences. Of its four parts (GM culture and politics; Ecology, GM food and organics; Human genetics - the future; Biocolonialism to activism), at least two are of direct relevance to Rural Society readers. The first chapter (by the editors) places the topic in an historical and epistemological context, with a useful exposé of the symbolism associated with genetics and the DNA code. Another introductory chapter discusses the policy and legal environment surrounding GM technology in Australia and the weak use of the precautionary principle in regulating the release of genetically modified organisms (GMO's). The two chapters in the second part are in the natural sciences but are accessible to non-scientists. The gene flow chapter does an excellent job of presenting scenarios of environmental spread of GMO's. The food safety chapter similarly provides an excellent picture of potential GM health problems, and dispels the myth of the ‘experiment' that has been conducted with the release of GM food in the US (an ‘experiment' lacking design, method, informed consent, data collection and analysis).
The fact that this collection on genetic engineering includes as many experts on organics as on GM agriculture perhaps indicates the importance to the debate of the oppositional binary between GM and organics. The chapters on the organics industry present interesting and well-informed accounts of the binary, but could have done more to deconstruct or critique it. The analysis seems to treat GM as intrinsically bad, regardless of context, ignoring the insight in the discussion of the organics industry that institutional, economic and legal frameworks are important in the development of any agricultural system.
The Human Genetics part of the book offers some interesting and useful perspectives and covers many of the major issues in this area, without presenting anything fundamentally new. The human genomics chapter, although it digresses into a lengthy discussion of globalisation, does present a useful analysis of the role of the genomics effort in maintaining a biomedical approach and its connections with globalisation. I felt that the chapter on direct-to-consumer genetic testing chose to critique one of the most benign applications of genetic testing that I have yet heard of (one that positions it with iridology and blood group diets).
The third part of the book presents interesting new perspectives and topics. Its excellent first chapter, although based specifically on Maori culture and beliefs, raises important general issues about potential transgressions of indigenous cultures and belief systems. The chapter on commodification of native flora discusses the difficult issues associated with bioprospecting without, in my view, adequately explaining them (I have yet to come across an article that does). The last chapter discusses resistance to GM in Asia.
As a biologist, I was concerned about a number of mistakes, misinterpretations and misnomers in relation to the science of genetic engineering. Chapter 3 mistakenly links horizontal gene transfer to asexual reproduction (p. 55). Chapter 11 links forensic DNA evidence to ‘criminality' genes; but the link is weak, this evidence being more usually based on non-coding DNA sequences. Finally, a GM model of health (Chapter 9) is a poor description because it suggests gene therapy (genetic modification), which may be an extension of the biomedical approach, but is secondary to (and potentially undermines) the development of new diagnostics and pharmaceuticals, which is the major thrust of current human genomics work. In addition, some of the less academic chapters make empirical statements without reference to supporting literature or with over-reliance on web sites and unpublished reports.
I was also disappointed with the negative (rather than critical) stance of many of the chapters, a stance launched by Mae Wan Ho's provocative introduction. The GM debate has been characterised by polarity and polemics. The entanglement of public science with private interests in the development of genetic technologies has rightly cast suspicion on the endorsement by such science of the technology (Krismky, 2003). On the critical side, that GM is now a rallying theme in a range of campaigns, from opposition to industrial agriculture and technoscience through to the anti-globalisation movement, has made opposition to it a symbol of resistance and social criticism. GM is constructed as a ‘danger worth attention' (Douglas & Wildaver 1982), its risks accentuated. I believe that the current reductionist and culturally distorted views of genetic engineering (from both sides) mars the academic debate, and that ‘lumping' GM in with a range of ‘evils' reduces the sophistication of the critical analysis of GM technology and of its place in current trends.
References
Krimsky, S. 2003. Science in the private interest: Has the lure of profits corrupted biomedical research?, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc, Lanham, MD.
Douglas, M & A Wildavsky. 1982. Risk and culture: An essay on the selection of technical and environmental dangers, University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif.
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