Barbara Kingsolver, "A Fist in the Eye of God"
From Small Wonders (Perennial, 2003)
- Account of natural selection
- Organisms produce more seeds/offspring than will survive
- These offspring have different traits/characteristics
- Some of these traits (genetically-based ones) are passed down to
future generations
- Organisms that have genetically-based traits that suit them better
for their environment survive better than those that don't,
- These organisms pass on these survival traits to the next
generation, thus increasing the incidence of the trait in the
population
- Those organisms that don't have the genetically based
survival trait less likely to survive and pass on their genes
- Natural selection "just a theory?"
- To reject natural selection because it is "just a theory" is on a par
with rejecting "gravity" because it is "just a theory."
- Genetic diversity is key to survival of a population
- Each individual (e.g, grain of wheat) has a somewhat different set
of traits
- For example,
- In a windy year, individual wheat plants with a "shortness"
gene will survive and allow the population/crop to survive
- After a bunch of windy years shortness will start to
dominate the crop, but if it maintains its diversity, tallness
will still be present (perhaps in a recessive state) and will
be there to help the population survive in a different
environment.
- Genetic diversity allows populations to survive even while
individuals die off
- Sexual reproduction is what keeps genetic diversity going
- Because it involves the shuffling of genes
- This is what cloning would significantly undo
- Genetic diversity in crops is highest in crop populations grown and
artificially selected for the longest period of time
- Land races grown by "third world" farmers are great source
of genetic diversity
- Farmers saved seeds through thousands of seasons
- For example, they saved different seeds for different types of
corn crop: popcorn, roasting corn, tortilla corn, corn with
different colors and textures
- Generations of selection also yield breadth of resistance to all
types of pests and weather problems encountered over the years
- Crops grown in U.S. are extremely genetically uniform and thus
vulnerable to mass crop die-off
- Agriculture in U.S. is controlled by a few large corporations that
sell relatively few seed varieties
- Crops that are genetically uniform will be less resilient to disease
or weather-related problems
- Third world genetic diversity is our insurance policy in response to
crop failure and we are getting rid of that resource
- To create new varieties to handle new problems, we draw from
the genetic resources left in land races of poor peoples around the
world
- Modern multi-national agricultural practices drive third world
farmers who uses genetically diverse crops out of business
- Ethiopian farmer and magic wheat anecdote (p. 5)
- Grows land race of wheat, wildly variable, been in family for
hundreds of years
- Each year loses some to wind, weather, and disease, but rest
comes through
- Hears about magic wheat that grows 6 times bigger, is easier to
harvest, and has special vitamins
- Government gives it out for free
- Magic wheat grows well 1st year, but rapid green growth attracts
startling number of pests; insects you'd never seen eating wheat
before in whole history of your land race
- Have to spray pesticides to get a harvest
- Same company gave you seed for free can sell you pesticide
- It's a good pesticide--used in US all the time--but costs you
money you don't have (so you borrow against next years crop)
- Second year you have serious drought and all magic wheat dies
(as it knows nothing about Ethiopian drought-unlike the land
races)
- Examples of catastrophes due to planting entire area in single
genetic strain of food crop
- Irish potato famine or Southern Corn Leaf Blight in 70s
- Why need 3rd world farmers? What about seed banks?
- Says seeds can't survive more than a few years on the shelf
- If not gown out as crops year after year, they die
- STATEMENTS ABOUT WHY GENETIC ENGINEERING (GE)
IS INFERIOR TO TRADITIONAL SELECTIVE BREEDING
- Claims biotech companies can't engineer a crop that will have the
resilience of land races under wide variety of moisture, predation, and
temp conditions
- GE crops won't have the variability of a ancient land race
population which has stored in it characteristics traits/alleles for a
variety of circumstances
- Why not? Can't breed it from scratch. But why can't they add a
trait to a given land race and make it even more diverse?
- I suppose they don't use ancient land races as starting points for
modification, but rather more genetically uniform hybrid seeds
they have bred in the past.
- GE antithesis of variability as removes wild card/sex from equation
- Why can't GE put variability into a crop variety?
- GE adds a few genes to a particular race (but this is less genetic
shuffling than would occur via sexual reproduction)
- Still, GE can bring together genes from wildly different species
something sexual reproduction does not allow, and this would
increase diversity
- Of course, GE planted crops tend to be uniform
- Don't use seeds from wildly diverse land races, but from cloned
desired individual
- More uniform crop easier to insure the GE trait is
replicated in all the individuals
- How GE is different from traditional cross breeding: GE fails to
"work with nature"
- Many claim that modern GE is not really any different from
selective breeding of animals and plants, something we have been
doing for 10,000 yearsYes we have been pushing genes around for centuries via
selective breeding of crops and livestockBut farmers/breeders who select best crops/animals are working
with the evolutionary forces of selection, pushing it in a direction
of their choosing
- Results of this will work "within natural evolutionary
context of variability, predators, disease resistance"
- GE "tampers with genes outside of the checks and balances of
nature"
- Has stunning unforseen consequences
- Examples of possibilities of genetic engineering that traditional cross
breeding could not produce
- Can put a firefly gene in a tobacco plant and make it glow
- A fish antifreeze gene in a strawberry
- Geeps (mix of goats and sheep)
- "Engineered genes don't play by rules that have organized life for 3
billion years"
- No natural checks and balances (e.g., predators to keep in
check?) whereas for naturally evolved plants there are likely to
be such predators and other checks?
- Like the argument against introducing exotic species
- Exotic species: Those that have not evolved in local habitat
- Often exotics reek havoc on local ecosystems as nothing
there to control them (unlike in their native habitat)
- Exotics are not naturally evolved locally to have natural
local controls?
- BT CORN EXAMPLE
- Bt is a naturally occurring soil bacterium that kills caterpillars
who eat it
- Harmless to humans, birds, ladybugs or bees
- Organic farmers used it as a pesticide for years, putting it on their
plants, quickly washes off and returns to soil
- Example of how farmers have used nature for own ends; slow
methods in context of natural laws
- GE spliced a gene from Bt into corn plant so each corn plant
cell has the pesticide in it, each bit of pollen has Bt pesticide
- Bt remains in the plant's body indefinitely and does not
wash away
- We consume the Bt protein
- Possible problems of BT corn
- Could harm many non-target insects (some delightful, some
important, some rare)
- Bt pollen floats onto every tree/bush in vicinity of farms
that use it and this is rapidly becoming the entire corn
growing region of US
- Perhaps a threat to monarch (and other more endangered
butterflies) or pollinators important for human crops
- Shouldn't we test its affects on important insects before we
allow its widespread use?
- Widespread use breeds super-resistant insects that won't be
affected by Bt pesticide
- When Bt is everywhere, there will be no groups left of
insects that are harmed by Bt that could breed with Bt
tolerant insects and the result is a super tolerance to Bt in
the insect populationLike problem of overuse of antibiotics in human health
- Bad for organic farmers who will lose one of the few
methods they have of protecting their crops
- Pollen from Bt corn so rapidly contaminating other corn that
soon there may be no naturally bred corn left in U.S.
- "A fist in the eye of God"
- Strange as this is contamination of a human developed
organism: the corn plant
- Make more sense if contaminating God's creation (i.e.,
nature)
- OTHER POSSIBLE ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
- GE organisms escape into natural populations, change its
genetics in a way lead to its demise
- E.g., Monster salmon, genes for rapid growth, could be
accidentally released into oceans and drive native salmon
populations extinct
- Super weeds (weeds that have herbicide tolerant genes in them)
- A main type of GE crop is herbicide tolerant crops
("roundup ready soybeans")
- If this crop breeds with local weedy relatives, that weed
could inherit the gene for herbicide tolerance
- HUMAN HEALTH WORRIES ABOUT AG BIOTECH ARE MINOR
compared to the environmental ones (a sneeze versus cancer)
- Allergic reactions: New combos of DNA create foods some
people allergic too (brazil nut gene in soybeans, eat soybeans and
have allergic reaction to nuts)
- POLITICAL PROBLEMS
- Chemical dependency of farmers in developing countries
- Local governments are working with multinationals to get locals
to grow these crops
- Will patenting and owning genes be good for those poor who are
farming to feed themselves?
- Is it safe to give up self-sustaining food systems in favor of
dependency on a global marketplace?
- Rest of the world is much less sanguine about GE food than we in
the U.S. (or at least our government/regulatory agencies)
- Much of world has refused to import GE foods/seeds from U.S.
- Indian farmers burned trial crops of transgenic cotton
- India banned Monsanto's "terminator tech" that makes
the plants' seeds sterile so farmers can't save and replant seed as
is the custom, but have to go back to Monsanto for new seed
- Beneficial use of terminator technology in preventing
spread to wild of the GE crop/organism
- But power/momentum of World Trade Organization (WTO) makes it
increasingly difficult for countries to resist having their food supply
"reconstructed" around the new international, large agribusiness,
biotech model
- Handful of agribusinesses controlling worlds narrowing seed banks
- US agribusiness controlling world food supply is likely to
exacerbate the hate much of the world directs at us.
- QUASI RELIGIOUS ARGUMENT
- Kingsolver believes that creativity, brilliance, and longevity of
natural selection and evolution is worthy of religious awe
- She's a scientists who can see excitement of GE
- But looks at what 30 million years of evolution has done to the
humming bird
- And thinks "it is wise to enter the doors of creation not with a lion
tamer's whip (genetic engineering) but with reverence appropriate for
entering places of worship, a sacred grove as ancient as time.
- GE on nature (and domesticated crops?) is a "fist in the eye of God"
- Miscellaneous
- GE moves single genes around a genome
- E.g., moves genes for traits like rapid growth or vitamin A in rice
- But solving agricultural problems this way is far less broadly effective
than old-fashioned multi-genetic solutions of selective breeding
- Crop predators evolve in quick and mysterious waysGE tries one simple tack after anotherGene splicing is to a large extent shooting in the dark because
individual genes rarely control traits; traits depend on context of
gene-what it is next to in genome
- Suggestion is scientists don't know what will happen when
transfer DNA between species.
- Natural selection is a "simple logical construct that explains and
predicts perfectly the existence and behavior of every earthly life form"
- Way too general and exaggerated a claim (e.g., what about
environmental forces?)