Bioscience Resource Project News and Views

We hope the service provider can have the Independent Science News website up and running soon. Apologies for the inconvenience.

You can also read Jonathan Latham’s  “Science as Social Control: Political Paralysis and the Genetics Agenda” on Truthout.

“Science and Social Control: Political Paralysis and the Genetics Agenda” written by Jonathan Latham PhD, Executive Director of the Bioscience Resource Project, was published on July 31st in Independent Science News.

Synopsis: Over the last twenty years, media accounts of human genetic research [including twin studies, the Human Genome Project, and many thousands of Genome-wide association (GWA) studies] have convinced the public that genetic factors underly most disease and human behavior. Yet in terms of actual scientific findings this massive effort, one of the most expensive scientific undertakings ever conceived, has almost entirely failed to identify the important genes that geneticists predicted, or to account for the occurrence of human illness. Thus the BRCA1 equals breast cancer example, which remains the most cited example of a genetic contribution to common disease, plays a role in less than 10% of all breast cancer cases. For most diseases or behaviors, the identified genetic contribution in total is less than what BRCA1 alone contributes to breast cancer. Moreover, many “predisposing” genes prominently reported in the media, turn out to have been false positives.

This contrast between the hype of genetics and the meager results exposes first a failure of geneticists to ensure their results are accurately reported in both the scientific literature and science media and second a failure of the science media to ask hard questions and put research findings in context. It also adds significance to the fact that human disease genetics first found political favor aided by hundreds of millions of research dollars from the tobacco industry.

Faced with a lung cancer epidemic, the tobacco industry looked to genetic research to shift blame from their product (cigarettes) to individuals (the smoker). While predisposing genes were never found, the search for genetic predispositions to nicotine addiction and lung cancer successfully confounded understanding of the negative health effects of cigarettes and transformed tobacco industry efforts to avoid liability and regulation.

This strategic success positioned human genetics as the go-to science of polluters and of governments disinclined to address politically challenging environmental and social issues. Human genetics conveniently and plausibly offered to locate the blame for unwanted social behaviors, inequality, and disease in the genomes of individuals rather than in their external experiences of unequal opportunity, social stress, and toxic environments. Thus the political impetus of democratic, environmental, and social movements has successfully been blunted even while the the presumed genetic predispositions have never materialized.

Read the full and fully referenced article at: http://www.independentsciencenews.org/science-media/science-and-social-control-political-paralysis-and-the-genetics-agenda/

Claire Robinson and Jonathan Latham, PhD published “The Goodman Affair: Monsanto Targets the Heart of Science” today (May 20th, 2013) in Independent Science News and simultaneously on Earth Open Source.

This article describes one of the most important ways that corporations ensure their viewpoint is heard over all others — by creating journals and by installing or otherwise manipulating editors on supposedly independent and peer-reviewed scientific journals. Robinson and Latham detail a series of examples of industry-friendly editorial decisions that seem intended to bias the science of genetically engineered plants.

The most recent case involves a scientific paper published in late 2012. The paper reported that a genetically engineered corn and the herbicide Roundup, both Monsanto products, caused organ damage and increased rates of tumors and premature death in rats (Seralini et al. 2012). The paper, published in the leading academic journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, caused an international storm of bad publicity for Monsanto and genetically engineered organisms. Three months later, a former Monsanto researcher with close ties to the biotech industry, Richard E. Goodman, joined the senior editorial staff of Food and Chemical Toxicology. The position, newly created for him, is “Associate Editor for biotechnology”. Is agribusiness calculating that by controlling the academic peer review process, it can choke off the flow of negative publicity at the source? What are the implications of editorial bias for the future of science? What are the publishing options left for scientists whose results don’t conform to industry wishes?

Read the full article at: Claire Robinson and Jonathan Latham, PhD (2013) “The Goodman Affair: Monsanto Targets the Heart of Science”, Independent Science News.

Reference: Séralini, G-E. et al. (2012) Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize. Food Chem. Toxicol. 50: 4221–4231.

Published today in Independent Science News the article “The Experiment Is on Us: Science of Animal Testing Thrown into Doubt” by Pat Dutt and Jonathan Latham describes important new research that strongly suggests animal testing does not meaningfully protect us from unsafe food additives, pesticide contaminants, and other industrial chemicals. read more…

Both a lack of adequate and science-based risk assessment for genetic engineering (GE) (e.g. Hilbeck et al. 2012; Freese and Schubert 2004; Pelletier, D. 2006) and actual GE regulatory failures (e.g. Latham and Wilson 2013; Gurian-Sherman, D. 2007; Bratspies R.M., 2003) have been extensively documented. Without a complete regulatory rethink, future failures seem assured. The latest case is the heavily promoted GE technology known as RNAi (Williams et al. 2004), whose use seems set to expand while regulators and developers fail to ask or answer key scientific questions.

A recent paper by JA Heinemann, SZ Agapito-Tenfen and JA Carman (2013) “A comparative evaluation of the regulation of GM crops or products containing dsRNA and suggested improvements to risk assessments” presents a careful assessment of three regulatory regimes (Australia, New Zealand and Brazil) and their use of assumption-based reasoning to discount the risks of RNAi technology and the likelihood of harmful and unintended consequences. The authors discuss evidence from the scientific literature showing key assumptions made by these regulators are already known to be wrong. In addition, they provide case studies of previous regulatory failures, such as Vioxx and BSE, that stemmed directly from faulty assumption-based risk assessment. Heinemann et al. outline an alternative science-based risk assessment strategy for RNAi technology that takes into account known sequence-specific hazards and the current state of scientific knowledge.

References:

Bratspies RM, (2003) Myths of Voluntary Compliance: Lessons from the StarLink Corn Fiasco

Freese and Schubert: Safety Testing and Regulation of Genetically Engineered Foods (2004)

Gurian-Sherman, D (2007) Transgene Escape! – But No One Has Called Out the Guards

Hilbeck et al.: (2012) Underlying Reasons of the Controversy over Adverse Effects of Bt toxins on Lady Beetle and Lacewing Larvae

Latham and Wilson (2013): Regulators Discover a Hidden Viral Gene in Commercial GMO Crops

Pelletier, D (2006) FDA’s regulation of genetically engineered foods: Scientific, legal and political dimensions

Williams, Matt, et al. (2004) RNA Interference and its Application in Crop Improvement

Watch the new video of Dr. Jonathan Latham’s 2012 talk at the Rachel Carson Institute‘s Perspectives on Silent Spring at 50 Symposium. The talk can be heard at Greenwashing and the Food Industry. For background information on the topic see: Way Beyond Greenwashing: Have Corporations Captured Big Conservation? and Greenwashing and the Food Industry Further Reading.