------------------------------------------ -- EZ A SZÁM CSAK TEXT FORMÁBAN LÉTEZIK -- ------------------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 23:33:11 EST Subject: *** FORUM *** #187 Tartalomjegyzek: ---------------- Felado : 72600.3046@compuserve.com Temakor : Re: a genmanipulalasrol =============================================== Felado : 72600.3046@compuserve.com Beerkezett: Wed Apr 3 19:10:11 EST 1991 Temakor : Re: a genmanipulalasrol - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - KEVORKIAN: You've got to see what humans are and how they behave. Prohibition proved you can't legislate morality. We've legislated against commercialization of organs without any real insight into the problem. We've rammed it through, but wait until the demand increases over time. We will have a black market in organs. You're not going to solve the problem with all this moralizing. You've got to discover a motivation for people to donate. It isn't going to be education or implied consent or required request. They aren't going to do it. It's been proven! There's only one thing that motivates humanity. Self-interest. Profit. Tell me I'm wrong. MAY: You're wrong. ANDREWS: Dr. Kevorkian, self-interest takes many forms. Some say that altruism is a kind of self-interest. You give to others so that you will have good feelings about yourself, a sense that you are noble and above others. KEVORKIAN: You know, these old arguments aren't going to solve anything. KIMBRELL: You have the oldest argument of them all, and that's your problem. You adhere to a theology that began to develop 400 years ago that believes the natural world is devoid of any sacred meaning, that it is just a collection of resources to be consumed. That's not some essential "truth"--it's the theology of the marketplace, the faith for those who have no faith. Its God is the aptly named "invisible hand" and its greatest good is efficiency--a term borrowed from the lexicon of the machine, on which the market system is based. Now, if I told you I had two children and treated them "efficiently" or that I had a friend or a pet and I treated him or it "efficiently", wouldn't you properly think I was mad? No one treats anything they care about based on efficiency. We have applied this kind of thinking to nature, and now we seek to apply it to our bodies. We can look at the destruction of the earth as a model of what we will do to ourselves. Kerekasztal vita arrol, hogyan valik az emberi test a biotechnologia nyersanyagava. Sacred or For Sale ?--Harper's Magazine, October 1990 Posfai Janosnak szeretnem megkoszonni Barry Commoner cikkeben (Bringing up Biotechnology, Science for the People, March/April 1987) talalt tenybeli hibak kijavitasat. Nem vagyok szakember, ezert ezeknek jogossagat nem tudom megitelni, igy meghajlok Posfai Janos szakvelemenye elott, leszamitva azokat az eseteket, ahol B.C. 87-es szakmai allitasai ma mar elavultak, de akkor ezt nem lehetett elore tudni, valamint azt az esetet, ahol ugy erzem nem szakmai ervrol van szo, hanem ertekiteletrol. Igy laikus letemre nem is folytatnam a vitat, ha Commoner cikke szakmai reszletekrol szolt volna. Commoner azonban cikkeben nem foglalkozik a genetikaval mint egyetemi kutatassal, ill. annak letjogosultsagaval, sem annak etikai kerdeseivel; O csak ezen tudomany eredmenyeinek egy ujonnan felfuto iparagban, a biotechnologiaban valo alkalmazasanak a tarsadalmi kerdeseirol, ill. azoknak elhallgatasarol ir. Cikkenek lenyeget 3 pontban tudnam osszefoglalni: 1. A kozpenzen folytatott kutatasok eredmenyeit maganvallalatok hasznaljak fel maganprofit keresesere a szelesebb tarsadalmi nyilvanossag tudta es jovahagyasa nelkul. 2. A biotechnologia eljovendo kornyezeti artalmait nem ismerjuk es ez azzal a veszellyel jarhat mint amit pl. a vegyipar hozott magaval. 3. A profitra dolgozo maganvallalatok rendszere a biotechnologiaban hasonlo veszelyeket rejt magaban mint a vegyipare: vannak valos tarsadalmi szuksegletek, amiket nem elegit ki, mert nincs benne nagy penz; illetve uj termekeket hoz letre, amikre nics valos tarsadalmi igeny, csak profitot lehet rajta csinalni. Ugy erzem Posfai Janos korrekcioi igazabol nem cafoljak ezeket a meglatasokat. Hogy ezek mennyiben ervenyesek, ahhoz csinaltam egy kis sajtoszemlet az elmult ket ev eziranyu irasaibol. >Szabadalmaztatni lehet genetikai manipulaciokkal letrehozott >organizmusokat. >A szabadalom targyanak valami ujdonsagnak kell lennie. Buta lenne az, aki >termekerol azt allitana, hogy nem uj. Az elso szabadalmaztatott organizmus >a Harvard egy egere volt. (Az egerrol keszitett szep muszaki rajzot is >mellekeltek a kerelemhez, ahogy az eloirt.) Egy rakot okozo human gent >ultettek bele, hogy az emberi betegseg gyogyitasaval allaton >kiserletezhessenek. Az organizmusok szabadalmaztatasarol tobbek kozott a Society c. folyoiratban jelent meg egy cikk (Public Responses to genetic engineering, Nov-Dec '89), amelyben a kerdes politikai, intezmenyes es moralis oldalait feszegetik, es Commonerehez hasonlo kerdesek merulnek fel: What will be the effect of patenting on the research agenda and on the patterns of communication among scientists? Is it right that biotechnology companies will profit by building on a base of publicly funded research? Will academic scientists, in dealing closely with industry, be appropriately accountable for their work? Who should be making decisions about a technology with complex economic and moral implications? Teny, hogy a legkevesebb panaszt a biotechnologiarol az emberi betegseg gyogyitasaval kapcsolatban talaltam. Ez nem kis mertekben annak koszonheto, hogy olyan emberek hatasara, mint Barry Commoner, vagy feltucat felugyeleti szerv (FDA, NIH, OSHA, EPA, stb.) komolyan veszi feladatat. Commoner irja: >>Everyone agrees that the most important use of genetic engineering would >>be to produce vaccines, particularly for malaria. Posfai Janos valasza: >Aligha! A malaria sulyos ugyan, de ritkan halalos. A mersekelt egovon nem >terjed, evi ezer megbetegedes (ebbol ot eset halalos) fordul pl. elo az >USA-ban, 99%-ban kulfoldrol hazaterok a megbetegedok. A tropusokon lakok >nagy resze szuletesetol rezisztens a betegseggel szemben. A kinin vagy >primakin emberben hatasos gyogyszere a fertozesnek, a szunyogok irtasa >hatasos modja a jarvanyok megelozosenek. Ez szerintem egy mersekelt egovi ertekitelet. Wall Street Journal, July 25 '90: The World Health Organization called for the "urgent acceleration" of research into anti-malarial drugs and vaccines. WHO said its appeal followed the recent discovery that malarial parasites had developed resistance to the antimalarial drug mefloquine at the Thai-Cambodian border. ...WHO estimates that there are 110 million new malaria cases a year but that about 270 million people may be carrying the malaria parasite; FROM ONE MILLION TO TWO MILLION PEOPLE DIE EACH YEAR FROM MALARIA AND ITS COMPLICATIONS. Science, January 26 '90: Vaccination is the most cost-effective and efficient method of prevention of certain infectious diseases. A vaccine probably could not completely prevent transmission--the mathematics of malaria show that it would have to reach more than 99 percent of the population in order to do that--but if a single inoculation could prevent disease, then the single greatest tropical scourge would have been conquered. ...A vaccine remains the likeliest way of preventing entire populations from having a severe attack of malaria. Washington Post, March 28 '90: Almost 500 million people worldwide are infected with tropical diseases, and the prospects for controlling major global killers such as malaria and schistosomiasis are worsening, according to a WHO report released yesterday. Tropical diseases cause about half of the world's illness but receive only about 3 percent of its medical research funds, said Tore Godal, director of the WHO's special program for research and training in tropical diseases. He said DRUG COMPANIES HAVE BEEN RELUCTANT TO BRIDGE THE GAP BECAUSE THEY DOUBT THAT NEW TREATMENTS WILL BE PROFITABLE. Technology Review, August-Sept '89: ...large biotechnology companies are developing pharmaceuticals such as the heart drug tPA for affluent markets. But according to Buttel (rural sociologist, Cornell University), these firms are less interested in developing drugs to treat malaria--a disease suffered largely by poor people in poor countries. Nekem legalabbis nem ugy tunik, hogy Commoner valotlant allitott volna. A sajtobol itelve legtobb problema a biotechnologianak a mezogazdasagban torteno alkalmazasabol ered. Technology Review, August-Sept '89: Corn that repels insects, tomatoes that stay firm on the vine--the age of the super vegetable is coming. But as the commercial use of genetically engineered seeds approaches, some researchers warn that altered plants could upset the agricultural ecosystem. Would crops designed to resist droughts, disease, insects, or herbicides pass those traits to weedy relatives nearby? The result could be super weeds. Vagyis olyan gyomok, amik pl. befogadhatjak a termesbe ultetett gyomirtonak ellenallo gent es maguk is ellenallova valnak a gyomirtoval szemben. Kovetkezeskeppen kemiailag meg veszelyesebb gyomirtok lennenek csak hatasosak. Egyeb variaciokra, es az alkalmazas elotti tovabbi okologiai kutatasok szuksegessegere hivja fel a figyelmet a BioScience 1990 juniusi cikke is. Organic Gardening, January, 1989 Frostban is a bioengineered bacterium created by AGS for the purpose of slowing the process of frost formation. AGS made headlines after one of its experiments was discovered to have been insufficiently contained, potentially permitting the bioengineered bacterium to escape into the environment. After AGS received government approval for field-testing strawberry plants treated with the frost-retarding bacterium, local governments were most reluctant to give their approval, and the strawberry patch eventually planted was vandalized. The lack of popular support for bioengineering has a lot to do with the absence of a significant public discussion on the objectives that bioengineers should pursue. Another example. Biotech engineers are trying to put nitrogen-fixing genes into some common plants, such as corn. If successful, they would create corn that wouldn't need nitrogen fertilizer. It would take its own nitrogen from the air, just as legumes do. Seed of that special corn could be sold at very high prices to farmers and gardeners. But today many farmers are learning how to seed legumes right in the corn rows, accomplishing much the same goal. There are dozens of ways to get free nitrogen from the air into grains and vegetable plants without waiting for bioteched seeds to be available at a possible cost of 50 cents each. What bothers me is that so many of the state universities are still failing to take interest in low-input, regenerative and organic methods that could quickly pay big economic and ecological benefits. The same goals that biotechnology is aiming to achieve by the year 2000 could be accomplished in a few years if the universities would stop being dazzled by high tech and work on the simple, low-cost methods that could work today. ...The biotech gene jockeys know almost nothing about what people need or want. They are experts in things that are possible to do in the laboratory. Therefore, their craft springs from the lab, not from the wishes of people to have more freedom in their lives and take more pleasure from their food. Is necessity really the mother of all these biotech inventions? Not by a long shot! Talan a legnagyobb port a Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) verte fel. Ez egy olyan genetikusan eloallitott anyag, amely tehenekbe beoltva a tejtermelest 20 szazalekkal is megnovelheti. A BGH-ban a Monsanto, American Cyanamid, Eli Lilly es az Upjohn korporaciok erdekeltek. Fuggetlen szakertok vitatjak a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allitasat, hogy a hormonnak nem lennenek masodlagos hatasai a tejet fogyaszto emberekre. A tehenekre sem tesz tul jo hatast a BGH: Syndicated columnist Jack Anderson says he obtained copies of the confidential documents showing some cows that received BGH injections "lost weight, suffered lower fertility rates or anemia, or came down with mastitis (inflammation of the mammary glands)." In some cases, Anderson wrote, Monsanto researchers refused to count cows that got mastitis. --Just Say Moo - Now They Want to Drug the Cows, The Progressive, November, '89. A legsulyosabb kovetkezmeny azonban gazdasagi lenne: Do we really need more milk from fewer cows? The world already is awash in milk and especially milk fat. We have a long term supply of cheese in storage. Europe is struggling under its famous "butter mountain." ...The average dairy farmer in Vermont can expect to suffer an annual loss of more than $3,500 if BGH is introduced into the state's herds, according to University of Vermont agricultural economist Rick Wackernagel. That would make the losses large enough to wipe out hundreds of the state's farms. BGH and products like it could eventually make it possible for only 50,000 commercial farms--one-tenth of the present number--to produce most of the nation's food. Smaller farms and the communities that support them would be the first casualties. Frances Moore Lappe, founder of Food First and author of Diet for a Small Planet, sees the BGH issue as just the latest attempt to keep farmers dependent on big-money technologies whose long-term effects--like poisons from pesticides--are unknown at their inception. "Our entire agricultural system has put farmers on a treadmill where they have to produce more and more to stay even," she says. "It's simply a distraction from the issue of how to reorganize agriculture so that it's sustainable in every sense of that word. If the technologies end up consolidating more control, then you can produce more hunger at the same time you produce more food." Kis csoda hat, hogy a tejtermelo farmerek elkezdtek szervezkedni, de szovivojukbol itelve nem tul optimistak: "Companies like Eli Lilly and Upjohn will clean up on this stuff if it gets approved. If cows get sick, they'll just make more money selling antibiotics to the farmers. They just can't lose." A korporaciok valoban nem adtak fel a harcot, hisz pl. Monsanto szamitasai szerint a BGH evi 500 millio dollar bevetelt hozna: The corporations' strategy is to rely on surrogates--mostly scientists and the FDA--to win the battle for public confidence. They have also saturated officials of the American Medical Association with propaganda in favor of BGH and are launching a massive advertising campaign to win public confidence. One of their tactics is to avoid any reference to genetic engineering, according to an analyst quoted in The Wall Street Journal. That's why the industry insists on using the more scientific--and sanitized--term Bovine Somatatropin, or BST, rather than BGH. The FDA is holding steadfast to its position that BGH milk is safe. It's not the first time the agency has insisted that a radical new chemical is benign: Such pesticides as DDT, symthetic hormones, and chemical additives now known for their high risks were all once touted as threat-free. Az egyetemek es a fiatal ipar viszonya sem problemamentes, amirol ket konyv is szamot ad: Robert Teitelman, Gene Dreams: Wall Street, Academia, and the Rise of Biotechnology (Basic Books), valamint: Martin Kenney, Biotechnology: The University-Industrial Complex (Yale University Press). Az utobbi ismertetojebol: The developments that Kenney decries--such as the setting of academic research agendas by investors, the inhibition of free flow of information and reagents for pecuniary motives, and the investigators' conflicts of interest when they simultaneously received equity interest, consulting fees, and research grants for projects for which they may also be receiving federal funding--all arise from the intrusion of commercial values into the university. As the author points out, similar problems have arisen before, when areas of knowledge became part of the production process. However, the rapid rise of biotechnology in the context of an officially condoned erosion of academic values, has cut deeper into the ethos of the university than previous technological advances. Why has the entire scientific discipline of molecular biology proved so amenable to commercialization, so that in the words of one scientist cited in this book "there isn't a walking biochemist who doesn't have a piece of some company in which he is a consultant" [p.91]? Meg folytathatnam a peldakat, azt hiszem azonban talan ennyi szemezgetes is eleg (es az etikai problemakat meg meg sem emlitettem) ahhoz, hogy kitunjek, hogy a biotechnologia nem annyira sima ugy, mint ahogy azt a "gene jockey"-k lattatni szeretnek a nagykozonseggel, es hogy Commoner fenti harom allitasa nem teljesen alaptalan. Ez a kemeny kritika es gyanakvas a biotechnologiaval szemben ebben az orszagban persze az elmult 40-50 ev tapasztalatait is magaban suriti: tul sok technologia (atomeromuvek, petrokemia, stb.) nem valtotta be a hozzafuzott es a tudosok es korporaciok altal nagydobra vert remenyeket, ill. utobb derult ki veszelyes voltuk; mindez a lakossagban vedekezo reflexet alakitott ki. Ennek szerintem egyik pozitiv kovetkezmenye volt annak a felismerese, hogy azert, mert egy tudosnak/szakertonek szakmailag igaza van, abbol nem kovetkezik automatikusan, hogy politikailag/tarsadalmilag is igaza van. Jo lenne, ha tevednek abban a velemenyemben, hogy mi meg nem tartunk itt, sot, szeretjuk a szaktekintelyt elfetisizalgatni, es ebben van valami guzsbakoto es antidemokratikus. Leirer Laszlo P.S. "Sorry for the long letter but I didn't have the time to write a shorter one.":-)