In defense of better food

Boston Herald editorial 28dec99

Associated Press reporter Anne Gearan noticed that President Clinton seems captivated by the Human Genome Project. He referred to it 20 times in remarks during a single month, everywhere from Kosovo to Seattle.

This exciting $3 billion effort led by the National Institutes of Health is aimed at finding out the structure, location and function of every one of the roughly 120,000 human genes. The results will offer previously undreamed-of insight into many diseases and clues to cures.

The president likes to slide into observations that all human beings are basically the same, that real genetic differences are trivial. It's hard to criticize a president for what he doesn't say, but it would have been nice (at least for some of the overseas audiences) not to slide into a plea for tolerance but to defend one of the already successful fruits of the same revolution in genetics that led to the Human Genome Project: improved food.

Two examples are corn that's resistant to pests and herbicide-resistant plants that let a farmer really zap the weeds without harm to his crop. American farmers quickly adopted these techniques, and most American corn recently has been of this kind.

But Luddite opponents in Europe have won many converts, including Prince Charles of England, with quite unjustified scenarios of environmental disaster.

There's a concrete U.S. economic interest in overcoming these fears. They give cover to government ministries in the pocket of farm lobbies that like nothing better than to keep American products out of their markets.

Despite what the Luddites say, scientists agree that how the genome of a plant is modified means nothing - the point is what the modification is. Cross-breeding has modified organisms for centuries.

Cheaper, better food, grown on fewer acres with less effort, is an unqualified benefit to humanity. How sad that it must be defended.