Students are helping to investigate GE health
claims — one banana at a time.
A recent
controversy about
an upcoming genetically engineered (GE) banana study at Iowa State University
(ISU) highlights public universities’ reluctance to engage with students in
critical dialogue. Several graduate students, over the course of the last year,
have raised
critical
questions about the claims made by ISU administrators and others that the GE
banana study will save lives. The research will test the bioavailability of beta
carotene in bananas genetically engineered to contain more of the Vitamin A
precursor. The study recruited 12 female ISU students (ages 18-40) to eat GE
bananas in return for $900. This study is one of the first human feeding trials
of GE products and the first feeding trial of the GE banana.
The students also recently
delivered 57,309
petition signatures to ISU in conjunction with a parallel delivery to the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle by AGRA Watch and the Community Alliance
for Global Justice. Critics of the initial questions and subsequent petition
delivery use an increasingly
common
argument that critical questions about GE technology are somehow
“anti-science.” Several GE proponents also accused students and activists
involved in the delivery of using their white privilege to keep Africans hungry
and malnourished.
Yes, students are privileged to ask these questions. The opportunity to
engage in a scientific dialogue is a powerful privilege. This privilege compels
us to ask difficult questions about the ethical dimensions of this GE banana
research process, as well as its impacts and other viable alternatives.
Last year, the concerned ISU graduate students drafted scientific questions
investigating how the study would be conducted and potential effects the GE
bananas could have on Ugandan food systems.
Their questions are not about
whether the use of biotechnology is morally right or wrong, or if the
researchers are good or bad people. At their heart, these questions are about
social, economic and environmental impacts that this kind of research will have
upon real people in real places. Hunger and malnutrition are not only biological
challenges, they are social problems rooted in inequality.
The questions boil down to four main queries: (1) How will GE bananas impact
nutrition and hunger in Uganda, or how will ISU and/or the Bill and Melinda
Gates foundation address this question? (2) How was the technology determined to
be a culturally appropriate intervention? (3) Who will own or control this
technology upon its development? and (4) How should public universities be
involved in GE biofortification and testing?
These questions highlight the need for a public dialogue on our campuses
about the role of power in the scientific process.
Claims
made by ISU officials that this research will save lives are premature and a
smokescreen to deflect students’ questions. These claims are made without any
grounding in research or recognition of the power differential between their
privileged positions as tenured faculty, deans, or department chairs and the
would-be recipients of their GE hunger “solutions.” The claims ignore the ways
in which the incessant battle to convince communities across the world to accept
GE technology as a one-size-fits-all solution to complex social problems is
itself a privileged perspective.
Such far-reaching claims are not only
unscientific but may lead to dangerous assumptions. These claims have also
falsely implied that students, in asking their questions, attempted to directly
malign the study’s primary researcher. Aligning the ISU students’ critical
questions with attacks on the researcher is a sabotage of the scientific process
itself.
GE proponents’ over-simplified approach poses risks to us all. Genetic
engineering, in some cases, may be an appropriate technology that helps to solve
agricultural and human health problems. Yet, for this approach to be scientific,
it must incorporate – and take part in dialogue about – the social, economic,
and environmental
consequences associated
with this technology.
No scientific study is free from the social, political, and cultural context
in which it is conducted. We must be able to have meaningful critiques, pulling
from multiple scientific disciplines, that challenge GE technology, including
its potential uses, as well as interrogating who controls, owns, and benefits
from it.
Science is a negotiation – an iterative process rooted in asking questions,
in testing hypotheses and counter-hypotheses. Thus it is crucial that scientists
and students of science – regardless of status, expertise, or background – be
able to ask critical questions regarding each other’s work without fear of
vitriolic retribution or retaliation.
We need a long view that takes into account social inequality and includes
space for critical dialogue. No single crop, GE or otherwise, will solve the
fundamental problems of hunger and malnutrition.
There is a great deal of
evidence that
a more diversified agriculture – a system that places women’s empowerment and
food sovereignty at its center – is likely to be more successful in the long
term in achieving these ends. Many in agriculture and food systems scientists
acknowledge that we need
more
research and development in alternative agricultural solutions.
To raise questions about the safety, utility, as well as the social and
ecological consequences of GE is scientifically valid, and not akin to wanting
people to go hungry or become malnourished. While administrators at public
universities, philanthropic organizations, and private corporations talk about
“saving lives,” many others want to talk about rebuilding their lives on their
own terms, through agroecological methods and food sovereignty. As such, we
should be investing in these endeavors just as we invest in GE technology.
It is essential that there is a space at public universities, with large
philanthropic organizations, and in broader society where students, academics,
and activists can ask difficult questions in the name of a more sustainable and
equitable food system without being labeled as unscientific or accused of
misusing their privilege.
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