Dinner at the New Gene Cafe: How Genetic Engineering Is Changing What We Eat, How We Live, and the Global Politics of Food
By Bill Lambrecht
Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 383 pages, $24.95
Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion
By Daniel S. Greenberg
University of Chicago Press, 530 pages, $35
As a schoolboy in Brooklyn in the 1960s, no story of science made a deeper impression on me than the tale of Madame Curie. Even now I can hazily recall how Marie Curie and her husband, Pierre, working in a grim shed in France at the end of the 19th Century, sifted through thousands of pounds of black pitchblende ore in a pioneering effort to isolate the radioactive element radium. This was truly a story of heroism, our teacher said, because the Curies unwittingly exposed themselves to lethal radiation as they labored in behalf of mankind. How romantic! I thought. How noble! If politics lurked somewhere in the saga–even a hint of it–I don’t remember it.
In truth, as schoolchildren learn soon enough, science and politics are almost always inextricably intertwined. That’s not necessarily bad, just a fact. In the case of the Curies, a quick Internet search shows, the Austrian government donated a ton of pitchblende in the hope that the couple would find a use for a mineral produced as waste by the nation’s mining industry. A century later, as Congress debates the implications of stem cell research and the mapping of the human genome, politics and science still go together like beakers and Bunsen burners.
Two informative new books showcase this in vastly different contexts. The one that I suspect will have far broader appeal is “Dinner at the New Gene Cafe: How Genetic Engineering is Changing What We Eat, How We Live, and the Global Politics Of Food.” In this timely, balanced and lively yarn, Bill Lambrecht, a Washington correspondent for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, explores how the proliferation of genetically altered crops in a mere five years has dramatically reshaped politics overseas and, to a much lesser extent, in America.
I was only vaguely familiar with the term GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, before I read Lambrecht’s book; I knew that a tub of “natural buttery spread” in my refrigerator trumpeted that it had no GMOs. Most Americans, as Lambrecht points out, are blissfully unaware that a quiet revolution has transformed (literally) what they put on their dinner plates.
Consider this remarkable statistic: In the United States, the acreage used to grow genetically modified crops has skyrocketed from zero to more than 70 million since 1996, writes Lambrecht. More than half of America’s processed grocery products–from cornflakes to granola bars to diet drinks–contain gene-altered ingredients. But the United States, unlike Europe and other democratic nations, does not require labeling of genetically modified food, so most Americans are in the dark.
Lambrecht, who has been covering this developing technology since 1986, underscores the pervasiveness of genetically modified products in the United States in a masterful opening chapter. He recounts accompanying Gene Grabowski, a vice president of the Grocery Manufacturers of America, to Camden Yards for Opening Day of the Baltimore Orioles’ 2000 season. Grabowski, the chief spokesman of the American food industry, brushes aside concerns about GMOs, saying that genetic engineering is “as American as the national pastime.”
That’s not just spin. “At Camden Yards,” Lambrecht writes, “Gene reminds me that cola and soft drinks contain high-fructose syrup made from bulk corn that is likely to have engineered hybrids mixed in. Dairy farmers are using a genetically engineered hormone that induces cows to give more milk. Modified milk blends in the general supply of the beverage that’s hired wholesome hero Cal Ripken as its poster boy. Next, barley breeders intend to use genetically engineered varieties in beer. Scanning the patchwork of reds, yellows, and Oriole orange worn by fans in the rows in front of us, Gene observes that many in this crowd of 46,902 are wearing cotton from genetically engineered plants.”
Whether this is a good thing remains to be seen. The biotechnology industry, led by the St. Louis-based Monsanto Company, argues, not unconvincingly, that splicing genes to make crops immune to insects and blights has cut pesticide use. The next wave of modified crops, scientists and industry executives say, could deliver more nutritious food, even food that wards off disease, and reduce starvation in the world’s poorest countries.
But opponents, including environmentalists, anti-globalization activists, foodies and celebrities such as Paul McCartney, counter that the biotech industry is opening a Pandora’s box. Genetic engineering “takes mankind into realms that belong to God and God alone,” one of the more unlikely critics, Prince Charles of Wales, wrote in a Daily Telegraph op-ed article in 1998. “We simply do not know the long-term consequences for human health and the wider environment of releasing plants bred in this way.”
So far, Lambrecht notes, there’s no proof that “Frankenfood,” as some detractors call it, has harmed humans. Still, critics have cause for concern. In 2000, an alliance of environmental and consumer advocates announced that a laboratory had detected genetically modified corn in Taco Bell products in grocery stores. The corn had never been tested on humans and was intended only for animals but had somehow found its way into taco shells on supermarket shelves. Kraft Foods, the manufacturer, recalled the products.
In addition, scientists at Cornell University in 1999 found that the pollen of corn genetically altered to reduce the need for insecticides paradoxically killed some monarch butterfly caterpillars in a greenhouse experiment. The study was challenged by the biotechnology industry, Lambrecht writes, but it galvanized anti-GMO activists and made a martyr of the monarch, the “Bambi of the insect world”–beloved by children, released at weddings and admired for its remarkable, 3,000-mile migrations.
The U.S. government has embraced bioengineering, and relatively few Americans have expressed alarm. But the technology has become a cause celebre for the anti-globalization movement, especially in Europe. Activists blister Monsanto as “Monsatan” and “Mutanto” and accuse the company of putting profits ahead of public health concerns.
Why have GMOs caused a firestorm there but not in America? The reasons range from Europe’s experience with the deadly Mad Cow Disease to different perceptions of food. “When it comes to what they eat, Europeans are not Americans,” Lambrecht writes. “On the one hand, famine and privation remain fresh in their memories. Threaten their food, and you threaten their survival. On the other, traditions go centuries deeper, and growing, preparing, and enjoying food remain active traditions in many households. Throughout much of Europe, food is a daily sacrament.”
Lambrecht–who concludes that “GMOs are here to stay, barring unforeseen health threats”–does a terrific job humanizing this story, interviewing farmers, activists, scientists, industry executives and government leaders in North America, South America, Europe, India and Africa. His book could have used more editing; at times it reads as though he rewrote and stitched together his newspaper reports but forgot to hide the seams. Nonetheless, this is a fine work by a journalist who knows his subject.
Daniel S. Greenberg, a Washington, D.C.-based science journalist, also knows his turf, having investigated the politics of science for nearly 40 years. His book “Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion” contends that the American scientific community since World War II has made the relentless pursuit of funding its Holy Grail–often at the expense of ethics and the pursuit of knowledge.
Greenberg’s book, which is densely packed with statistics and government studies and transcripts, will appeal to policy wonks and journalists more than to a general audience. Still, it’s an important and iconoclastic work because it shows how many scientists–despite their high-minded image–are as eager to feed at the public trough as other interest groups.
“This is not a work of reverence, as are many books about science,” writes Greenberg, who combed through archives and interviewed presidential science advisers and politicians. “Money will serve as a diagnostic tool for our study” because “the politics of science is registered in money awarded or denied.”
In a nutshell, Greenberg says that research scientists have whined for years about inadequate public funding and rhapsodized about the good old days when the government gave them the cash they needed, such as during the World War II Manhattan Project.
In truth, he says, there has never been a shortage of federal grants for scientific research, even in times of supposed austerity like the Reagan era and the days of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America.” Even after adjusting for inflation, scientists are getting billions more for research today than they did 30 years ago. As a result, Greenberg writes, scientists and doctors published 142,334 papers in professional journals in 1991, compared with 103,778 in 1973–an important yardstick of scientific productivity.
“By virtually every relevant measure, the United States leads the world in the financing, quality, and volume of research,” he writes. “[I]t has held this lead since the end of World War II, and appears bound to maintain, and increase, its supremacy far into the new century.”
To get funding, the scientific community has hired the best congressional lobbyists and has gulled journalists into reporting a steady stream of medical “breakthroughs” that increase public pressure for more research grants, writes Greenberg. It has seen to it that politicians supportive of medical research are rewarded with buildings named for them at the National Institutes of Health.
At the same time, scientists have taken care not to offend the mighty. They have eschewed the ballot-box politics undertaken by other interest groups. (The only large-scale involvement of scientists in national politics took place in the presidential campaign of 1964, when scientists and engineers mobilized for Lyndon Johnson because they feared Barry Goldwater’s nuclear bravado — this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). And they have held their tongues when it seemed wise, as in the case of science advisers to Ronald Reagan who remained silent even though they knew that false claims were being made for the Star Wars missile-defense program.
Why does it matter? “Attention is warranted,” Greenberg writes, “because science has effectively insulated itself against independent scrutiny by its political paymasters and, in turn, the public.” Not many interest groups that get billions of dollars a year from Washington can say that.
