Today's column, The Case for Green Biotechnology: Attempting to Reach a Tentative Consensus, by Dwayne Tunstall is a continuation in our exploration of some of the social, political, and ethical intersections where science and religion seems to regard each other with more than a passing glance. In fact, they often seem to be engaged in face-to-face confrontation.

"According to opponents of human GM food consumption," writes Tunstall, "genetic tampering of crops poses a serious threat to human and environmental health. Indeed, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has ignored the warnings of many of its own scientists and permits these experimental crops to be mass-marketed without adequate safety testing and labeling, at least until recently."

And this is a global concern, not merely because of the markedly European movement away from fast food and frankenfood toward "slow food" and organic products, but also because

"[e]ven now, after the "U.S. Department in Agriculture [issued its] regulations outlining what qualifies as 'organic' foods," GM food products are still marketed without government-regulated safety testing (Bailey 25). In fact, there is evidence that demonstrates the potential harm of using GM products as a human nutritional source. The Japanese manufacturer Showa Denko K.K., for instance, began marketing a genetically engineered L-tryptophan dietary supplement in 1989 - the byproduct of the splicing a gene to increase tryptophan production into the DNA of bacteria, then extracting the substance (Druker 1). Within a few months of entering the market, the dietary supplement manufactured by Showa Denko K.K. "caused an epidemic of an unusual malady (called EMS) that resulted in the death of 37 people and the permanent disability of at least 1,500 others" (Druker 1; "FDA Regulation")."

So, how do we deal with what, for the majority of members of the public, is an invisible interloper in our foodstuffs? Moreover, how do we deal with it in a healthy, helpful, and sane way? Read on to fiond out some of the possibilities and problems.

Dwayne Tunstall is a senior at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, VA, graduating in May 2002 with a B.A. in Philosophy; Values and the Professions. His interests include Value theory (especially metaethics and applied ethics), philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language. He is also a professional artist and some of his artwork can be found at his website "Embracing the Contradiction" at <http://web2.airmail.net/dsh440/paintings.html>.

-- Stacey E. Ake

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Subject: The Case for Green Biotechnology: Attempting to Reach a Tentative Consensus From: Dwayne Tunstall Email: <zendeist@hotmail.com>

I. Introduction

Often, ethical disputes arise from conflicting interpretations of non-moral facts, such as scientific data, due to the cornucopia of epistemological assumptions among persons. Indeed, one's epistemological assumptions, or the primary presumptions that the mind filters all perceptions through and through which these perceptions become intelligible, greatly influences one's interpretation of the significance of non-moral factors on human affairs. Epistemological assumptions even have a role in one's ethical thought processes, especially concerning whether certain applications of scientific information are morally acceptable. A prime example of these assumptions leading to differing interpretations of identical non-moral facts, and thus to a seemingly irresolvable ethical dispute, comes from the emerging controversy over the acceptability of genetically engineered (GM) foods as safe human nutritional sources.

Over the course of this paper, I shall expose several of the fundamental epistemological assumptions held by the opposing factions in the GM controversy that fuels the current ethical dispute over the human consumption of GM foods. Then, I shall introduce a novel moral paradigm to gauge the morality of using GM foods for human consumption, also referred to as "green biotech" - Richard Beauchamp's interpretation of the harm principle.

II. Epistemology Assumptions in the Green Biotech Controversy

Ronald Bailey excellently demonstrates, at least superficially, the conflicting epistemological assumptions underlining both positions in the green biotech controversy in his January 2001 article in Reason magazine:

"Ten thousand people were killed and 10 to 15 million left homeless when a cyclone slammed into India's eastern coastal state of Orissa in October 1999. In the aftermath, CARE and the Catholic Relief Society distributed a high-nutrition mixture of corn and soy meal provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development to thousands of hungry storm victims. Oddly, this humanitarian act elicited cries of outrage."

"We call on the government of India and the state government of Orissa to immediately withdraw the corn-soy blend from distribution," said Vandana Shiva, director of the New-Delphi-based Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology. "The U.S. has been using the Orissa victims as guinea pigs for GM products which have been rejected by consumers in the North, especially Europe."

...Per Pinstrup-Andersen, director general for the International Food Policy Research Institute, observes: "To accuse the U.S. of sending genetically modified food to Orissa in order to use the people there as guinea pigs is not only wrong; it is stupid. Worse than rhetoric, it's false. After all, the U.S. doesn't need to use Indians as guinea pigs, since millions of Americans have been eating genetically modified food for years now with no ill effects. (21-22)

How could people perceive the exact same event in such starkly different terms? Proponents of human GM food product consumption hail the distribution of the GM corn-soy meal to aid the Orissa storm victims as a humanitarian act. Opponents of human GM food product consumptions, on the other hand, view the act as the subjugation of the citizens of Orissa, using them as "guinea pigs for GM...products which have been rejected by consumers in the North, especially Europe" (Bailey 21). Let us examine each side's epistemological assumptions and these assumptions' role in each side's subsequent interpretation of scientific data.

Anti-Green Biotech Position

According to opponents of human GM food consumption, genetic tampering of crops poses a serious threat to human and environmental health. Indeed, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has ignored the warnings of many of its own scientists and permits these experimental crops to be mass-marketed without adequate safety testing and labeling, at least until recently. Even now, after the "U.S. Department in Agriculture [issued its] regulations outlining what qualifies as 'organic' foods," GM food products are still marketed without government-regulated safety testing (Bailey 25). In fact, there is evidence that demonstrates the potential harm of using GM products as a human nutritional source. The Japanese manufacturer Showa Denko K.K., for instance, began marketing a genetically engineered L-tryptophan dietary supplement in 1989 - the byproduct of the splicing a gene to increase tryptophan production into the DNA of bacteria, then extracting the substance (Druker 1). Within a few months of entering the market, the dietary supplement manufactured by Showa Denko K.K. "caused an epidemic of an unusual malady (called EMS) that resulted in the death of 37 people and the permanent disability of at least 1,500 others" (Druker 1; "FDA Regulation").

Of course, many proponents of human consumption of GM products would dismiss the Japanese incident as an aberration. Yet, opponents of green biotech would contend, "For many years, other manufactures had marketed L-tryptophan supplements produced from bacteria without use of gene-splicing. Epidemiological evidence from the Center for Disease Control does not link any tryptophan from these other manufactures with outbreaks of EMS" (Druker 1; Kilbourne). Therefore, the genetic procedure probably altered the composition of the bacteria, and the tryptophan also, enough to cause it to produce "at least one usually toxic containment never before seen in any of those conventionally produced batches" (Druker 1). In addition, there are other instances of GM foods causing abnormal diseases, such as the stomach lesions linked to the consumption of "Flavr Savr" tomatoes (Druker 4). At the very least, opponents of green biotech say that consumers should have the option to choose whether they want to purchase GM food product via a meaningful safety labeling system.

The scientific data documenting instances where GM products caused harm to humans, however, is not enough to justify the strong, almost violent, response Vandana Shiva and others have had to CARE and the Catholic Relief Society's distribution of GM products to the Orissa storm victim. So what epistemological assumptions underlie their staunch resistance to green biotech? The Alliance of Bio-Integrity, an anti-green biotech organization, centers its entire mission statement around one of the most significant epistemological assumptions fueling the anti-green biotech position - that a handful of giant multinational agrochemical companies have launched a massive venture to genetically restructure the world's food supply (Alliance 1). Closely related to the first epistemological assumption, a second one emerges - that genetic tampering of food crops by these giant multinational agrochemical companies poses a serious threat to human (as well as environmental) health and integrity. A third epistemological assumption arises from the first two assumptions; no one should use biotechnology to restructure the genetic composition of any organism because it undermines Gaia's dynamic ecosystem. Thus, from a general evaluation of the anti-green biotech literature, it seems as though these epistemological assumptions are the central determiners of how non-moral elements of the GM controversy are interpreted.

Pro-Green Biotech Position

Proponents of human consumption of GM nutritional products often view the anti-green biotech position, at best, as a misguided crusade and, at worst, an outright assault on human dignity. Proponents of green biotech usually attempt to refute anti-green biotech claims by either citing government-sponsored or corporate-financed scientific reports that "prove" the safety of GM food products. Two of the most recent scientific reports proclaiming the safety of GM products for human consumption were released last April by a U.S. Research Council panel and last July by Transgenic Plants and World Agriculture (Bailey 24).

The U.S. National Research Council panel report "[emphasized the fact that they] could not find 'any evidence suggesting that foods on the [American] market today are unsafe to eat as a result of genetic modification" (Bailey 24). The Transgenic Plants and World Agriculture report went a step further than the National Research Council's report and declared in its conclusion: "To date, over 30 million hectares of transgenic crops have been grown and no human health problems associated specifically with the ingestion of transgenic crops or their products have been identified" (Qtd. in Bailey 24). Essentially, these two reports uphold the pro-green biotech advocates' contention that genetic engineering of crops and their derivatives pose no adverse risks to human health or environmental integrity beyond those present in conventional crossbreeding techniques.

Pro-green biotech advocates would probably dismiss the instances where GM products were harmful to us, like the L-tryptophan incident, as isolated cases and not representative of the relative safety of these products. They probably would further contend that there is no concrete scientific evidence that sufficiently refutes the claim that GM crops are as safe as conventional crossbreeding techniques. Furthermore, many proponents of green biotech, as well as many concerned citizens, are disturbed by "the apparent willingness of biotechnology's opponents to sacrifice people for their cause [of saving the ecosystem from us "evil" humans]" (Bailey 22).

For instance, pro-green biotech advocates cite such anti-green biotech spokespeople as the bioethicist Michael Fox who once said, "We are very clever little simians, aren't we? Manipulating the bases of life and thinking we're little gods...The only acceptable application of genetic engineering is to develop a genetically engineered form of birth control for our own species." (Qtd. in Bailey 22) Another anti-green biotech spokesperson that proponents of green biotech cite to prove their contention that anti-green biotech advocates are willing to sacrifice people for their cause is Benedict Herlin, head of the Green peace's European anti-biotech campaign. According to the New York Times in "a biotechnology meeting held in [March 2000] by the Organization for Economic Cooperation...[Herlin] dismissed the importance of saving African and Asian lives at the risk of spreading a new science that he considered untested" (Qtd. in Bailey 22).

As for the moderate anti-green contention that governmental agencies should establish comprehensive safety label systems to allow consumers to know which food products are genetically modified and which food products are organic, pro-green biotech advocates call it a red herring. Proponents of green biotech contend that "...scare tactics, including the use of ominous words such as frankenfoods, have created a climate in which many consumers would interpret labels on biotech products to mean that they were somehow dangerous or less healthy than old-style foods. [They believe that] biotech opponents hope labels would rive frightened consumers away from genetically modified foods and thus doom them." (Bailey 24).

Upon evaluation, the pro-green biotech position centers itself around three epistemological assumptions: (1) GM crops and their derivatives are at least as safe as traditional crossbreed crops; (2) anti-green biotech advocates value their crusade against multinational agrochemical companies even at the expense of human lives; and (3) anti-green biotech advocates, especially the spokespeople of the movement, cherish the natural environment more than the lives of people in the developing world.

III. Shifting the Paradigm - Beauchamp's Interpretation of the Harm Principle

Comparing the sets of epistemological assumptions underlining the positions of both sides of the green biotech controversy demonstrate how differing interpretations of non-moral data leads to the development of differing, and often conflicting, ethical perspectives. However, is there a way the factions involved in the GM ethical dispute could at least discuss their antagonistic perspectives within the same moral sphere? There are a vast variety of moral theories at one's disposal to evaluate the ethical dilemmas arising from the GM controversy - e.g., Kantian ethics, utilitarianism, Aristotelian virtue ethics, feminists ethics, and Rawlsian ethics. Yet, I do not wish to evaluate the GM controversy using these theories. I want to evaluate it from a novel moral paradigm, namely Richard Beauchamp's interpretation of the harm principle in the context of his moral philosophy. Accordingly, I propose that we reexamine the anti-green biotech and pro-green biotech positions using Beauchamp's interpretation of the harm principle.

Beauchamp's Moral Philosophy

To appreciate Beauchamp's harm principle we must understand its function in his overall moral philosophy. First, we needs to realize that in any society there exists an implicit moral contract that outlines the guidelines for desirable coexistence between the members of that particular society ("Moral Theory" 377). Beauchamp considers the existence of the implicit contract analogous to "...an embedded potential that stands ready to emerge as one grows in understanding of how one's life intertwines with others for weal or for woe...we do not create the moral contract; we recognize it as in the course of living we feel its pervasive and poignant force and discern its conceptual structure." ("Moral Theory" 378)

Any ethical theory, Beauchamp contends, is "to render an explicit statement of those implicit conditions for a desirable coexistence" ("Moral Theory" 379). In this spirit, he offers two pillars to solidify and to reinforce his rendering of the moral contract; namely, (1) not to ever knowingly harm others or their vital interests, promising to maintain reasonable awareness of the harmful effects of one's actions and (2) "to show a positive regard for [others'] well-being, so long as it is consistent with a prudent regard for my own well-being" ("Moral Theory" 379). The second promise does not entail being engaged "in overt acts of doing good; ...it does mean that I promise always to live in a manner that is consistent with positive good will towards...all...persons with whom I must coexist" ('Moral Theory" 379).

Beauchamp believes that five interdependent principles are essential to the actualization of the now-explicit moral contract - the principles of impartiality, autonomy, inclusiveness, refraining from harm, and beneficence ("Moral Theory" 380-81). The most relevant principle for our discussion, however, is his principle of refraining from harm; i.e., the harm principle. As such, a brief explanation of Beauchamp's principle of refraining from harm is in order.

The principle of refraining from harm answers the second question that the contract prompts: 'what is the harm to be avoided or minimized?' This question requires conscientious attention to the effects of our acts. [Once we recognize the harmful effects of certain acts], every choice which [sic] relates directly or indirectly to those harm generating acts takes on a moral quality. In the contractual frame of reference, the dominant moral sensitivity is that of harm. Who is being hurt? Is the harm avoidable, and, if not, can it be distributed more equitably than it is now distributed? The range of concerns that are generated by this sensitivity is very extensive and it grows with the state of our knowledge. ("Moral Theory" 381)

The questions associated with the principle of refraining from harm cause us to venture into one more aspect of Beauchamp's moral philosophy - his typology of the communities of significance, or the arenas of moral agency where a person becomes a mature moral agent by responsibly participating in them. "[F]rom a phenomenological point of view, 'community of interpretation' is really plural, that we simultaneously inhabit a number of communities of [significance] and consequently face the task giving some consistency and integrity to the way we indwell each one in the light of who we are in the others" ("Personhood" 3). In fact, according to Beauchamp, moral agents "compose their identity in any given role in the light of their simultaneous membership in other communities of [significance]"
("Personhood" 4). In his typology of the communities of significance, he expresses what he believes to be the five most common arenas of moral agency - community of intimacy and kinship, civil communities, enterprise communities, bio-eco community, and religious/interpretative communities. For the sake of our discussion, I am restricting my evaluation of the ethical dilemmas arising from the GM controversy to the bio-eco community and civil communities.

First, what would a mature member of the bio-eco community regard as the ethical course of action concerning the usage of GM food products for human consumption? A responsible member of the bio-eco community would acknowledge that "[o]ur bodies and their actions are part of the...community which is responsive to our practices and 'tells' us when we are poisoning her (and ourselves) and when we are promoting her (and our) health" ("Personhood" 5). Which position on green-biotech usage most closely adheres to the requirements of being a responsible member of the bio-eco community? From the above comparison of the anti-green biotech and pro-green biotech, I would say that the anti-green biotech activists are more responsible members of the bio-eco community. On balance, their concern about questionable safety of many GM food products embody the concern for Mother Earth that is essential to anyone to be a responsible member of the bio-eco community more than their counterparts. In fact, according to Beauchamp's harm principle, the moderate anti-biotech position embodies the most mature moral perspective on GM food usage because they advocate the development of more rigorous testing of GM crops and their derivatives to ensure their safety before being mass-marketed to consumers.

However, there is a second relevant community of significance in our discussion, the civil communities, which may not regard the anti-biotech position, especially in its extreme manifestations, as a responsible moral perspective. In fact, the pro-green biotech position has a higher moral ground in civil communities than the anti-green biotech position. Unlike the most influential elements of the anti-green biotech movement, most proponents of green biotech believe that the supposed harms of GM crops cannot justify refusing to assist people in need. They recognize that people in the developing world are members of the global community. They also recognize that if there is a proven means of alleviating these people's malnutrition available then we are obligated by the harm principle to use those means to alleviate it. Indeed, the anti-green biotech position of refusing to distribute GM food products worldwide is, in itself, immoral because they are not acting as responsible members of the civil community.

Also, the anti-green biotech advocates have to prove why refusing to allow anyone to consume GM food products is in accordance with the harm principle by answering the question, 'what harm is avoided by denying people access to GM crops?' Yet, what concrete harm would be avoided by outlawing the production of GM crops for human consumption? I have not discovered any beyond theoretical concerns. In contrast, a whole list of actual harms that could be avoided would materialize almost instantaneously if we opened up access to GM crops to the developing world. For instance, by enabling people to grow beneficial crops such as "golden rice...[we] could prevent blindness in half a million to 3 million poor children a year and alleviate vitamin A deficiency in some 250 million people..."(Bailey 22). However, the acceptability of using GM crops for human consumption, in the spirit of Beauchamp's harm principle (within the context of the civil community), does not mean that proponents can assume that green biotech is as safe as conventional crossbreeding techniques. As responsible moral agents, proponents of green biotech should be receptive to any relevant scientific study that legitimately questions the safety of GM crops and alter their position accordingly.

IV. Conclusion

Of course, many philosophers and laypeople would not agree with my assessment of the GM controversy or the methodology in which I evaluated it. Nevertheless, I believe that I have accomplished my objective of outlining some of the fundamental epistemological assumptions held by the opposing factions of the GM ethical dispute and offered a novel moral paradigm to gauge the moral acceptability of using GM crops for human consumption. Hopefully, other ethicists will investigate the ethical issues surrounding biotechnology in general and green biotechnology in particular, since these issues will be among the most pressing and divisive ethical dilemmas of the 21st century.

I would like to close with an excerpt from Per Pinstrup-Andersen's comments to the participants of a Congressional Hunger Center seminar:

"We need to talk about the low-income farmer in West Africa who, on half an acre, maybe an acre of land, is trying to feed her five children in the face of recurrent droughts, recurrent insect attacks, recurrent plant diseases. For her, losing a crop may mean losing a child. Now, how can we sit here debating whether she should have access to a drought-tolerant crop variety? None of us...[has] the ethical right to force a particular technology upon anybody, but neither do we have the ethical right to block assess to it. The poor farmer in West Africa doesn't have any time for philosophical arguments as to whether it should be organic farming or fertilizers or GM food. She is trying to feed her children. Let's help her by giving her assess to all of the options. Let's make the choices available to the people who have to take the consequences." (Qtd. in Bailey 29)

Works Cited

Alliance for Bio-Integrity. "Alliance for Bio-Integrity, Home Page."<http://www.bio-integrity.org> Accessed: Jan. 8, 2001.

Bailey, Ronald. "Dr. Strangelunch, Or: Why We Should Learn To Stop Worrying and Love Genetically Modified Food." Reason. 32.8, Jan. 2000: 21-29.

Beauchamp, Richard A. "Moral Theory and Moral Education: The Neglected Connection."

Becoming Persons: Proceedings of the Second Conference on Persons. Vol. 1. Ed. Robert N. Fisher. Oxford: Applied Theology P, 1995. 375-383.

_____."Personhood and Communities of Interpretation: A Phenomenological Foray." Unpublished manuscript.

Druker, Steven M. "Executive Summery: How the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Approved Genetically Engineered Foods Despite the Deaths They Had Caused and the Warnings of Its Own Scientists About Their Unique Risks."<http://www.biointegrity.org/execsummaryoecd.html> Accessed: Jan. 8, 2001.

Human Resources and Intergovernmental Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, U.S. House of Representatives. "FDA's Regulation of the Dietary Supplement L-Tryptophan." Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1991.

Kilborune. E. Journal of Rheumatology Supplement. 46. Oct. 1996.

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Published   2002.04.09