Vancouver Province
for June 11, 1999

Crazy old Prince Charles – he’s off on another "green" kick. I mean what sort of a King will this cat make – first he’s on about saving Paternoster Square, the area that surrounds St Pauls Cathedral, from the benefits of modern land development and now he claims that Genetically Modified foods (GM) may not be all they’re cracked up to be.

Well, folks, I’m with Charlie.

Genetically modified foods have foreign genes injected into them. It’s quite common that genes from animals will be mixed in with vegetables so as to enhance that vegetable – perhaps to make it grow bigger, or faster or look better. It’s all the rage these days and as HRH points out, GM will soon be out of control since farmers adjacent to genetically modified food farms will be unable to prevent winds and bees from cross-pollinating with their traditional crops.

This is all wonderful stuff according to the scientific community - mostly Monsanto Chemicals, which is profiting enormously - and Charles is vilified as a meddler and laughed at as a fool. Why GM will end world hunger! It will help us make do with ever decreasing agricultural land.

Maybe. Though third world leaders point out that there’s not so much a shortage of food in their lands as a lack of means by which to deliver it. Moreover, they say, if GM becomes the norm, agriculture will quickly become the private preserve of the large landowner, presumably funded by Monsanto.

I’m not a scientist but a sometime lawyer. And I have some questions relating to safety. For if GM isn’t safe, surely all the claims made for it are in the ashcan.

The scientists claim that GM has been thoroughly tested and approved by governments all over the world. Sounds nice until you realize that far from being independent, these tests were conducted by the industry which profits immensely from favourable results – mainly Monsanto which has given the world Aspartame, or Nutrasweet, a chemical which is now widely criticized by the medical community and is seen, amongst other things, to radically increase blood sugar readings in diabetics. (I’m diabetic, it does, and it’s approved by the Canadian Diabetes Association which gets huge grants from Monsanto.)

But let us, as the ultimate jury, examine similar claims of great virtue made by the scientific community in the past.

After the war we had DDT and I well remember pictures of scientists in white frocks pointing at charts as they told us of the enormous benefits of this chemical. It killed all the bad things we were told – and it did. Along with all the good things too.

For decades the scientific community backed smoking – or at least tacitly approved it – and to this day the tobacco companies employ multi degreed scientists to deny its adverse effects.

Science gave women thalidomide, the ultimate in birth control, with devastating results for which the companies involved paid peanuts in compensation. On the drawing board and in the mice cages it was perfectly safe, you see.

Then science – which has picked on women dreadfully – gave them the IUD birth control device, which had catastrophic results resulting in a huge class action. But of course it was scientifically safe because the company scientists said so.

This was followed by plastic breast implants and now saline versions, both disasters which have wrecked thousands of lives. But of course these were safe – why the company scientists and the plastic surgeons who make up to $5,000 an operation all said they were safe.

Well, then, what about the fact that the US and Canada have approved GM? Doesn’t that prove that this method of mass producing agricultural products is wonderful?

It might if either of these two governments had done so much as five minutes testing on their own, but they haven’t. They rely entirely on the research done by Monsanto which stands to make billions upon billions out of government approvals.

But aren’t company scientists still scientists? Perhaps. But where is the great scientific virtue of skepticism when it’s your job is to make your corporation – and yourself – lots of money which only comes with positive results?

In order to be sure about GM, it must be tested on humans. That test is now being done – with you and me the guinea pigs.

But of course, what’s to worry about knowing that Monsanto’s house scientists have pronounced the method safe as … er DDT? Or cigarettes? Or Thalidomide? Or IUD? or breast implants?