Open Letter to New Zealand Royal Commission on Genetic Engineering.

• Author: Ho, Mae-Wan, Dr.
• Position: Biodevastation

August 13, 2001. As one of the many scientists presenting evidence to the Royal Commission on Genetic Engineering, I had high hopes that New Zealand would assume moral and intellectual leadership in rejecting this dangerous technology bolstered by degenerate science, so obviously serving the corporate agenda instead of the public good. It is still not too late for New Zealand to take on this role.

It has become increasingly evident that genetic modification (GM) technology is inherently hazardous and unreliable both in agriculture and in medicine. The list of failures is growing apace. Let me mention a few recent examples that came to light since I presented evidence to the Commission.

GM crops are inherently unstable, and this is fully borne out by numerous new scientific publications (1). Even the top "success", Roundup Ready soya, is showing every sign of breakdown: reduced yield, non-germination, diseases and infestation by new pests (2). Molecular genetic characterization, the first ever done on any commercially grown GM crop so far, has confirmed that both the GM construct of Roundup Ready soya and the host genome have been scrambled (rearranged), and hundreds of base pairs of unknown DNA have got in as well (3).

The "next generation" crops are even worse. I draw your attention especially to those developed with terminator technologies aimed at protecting corporate patents and preventing farmers from saving and replanting seeds.

Many are currently field tested and commercially grown as "male sterile" crops. Not only are the constructs more complicated and hence more unstable and prone to horizontal gene transfer, the gene products used are cell poisons or recombinases, ie, genome scramblers. Female-sterile and even male-sterile genes are being spread via pollen (4). These dangerous genes will spread and wipe out other crops as well as wild plant species.

It has become all too clear that GM agriculture cannot co-exist with other forms of agriculture. Bees are known to travel up to 10km or more in foraging for pollen (5). And there is no way to prevent the horizontal spread of GM constructs to unrelated species, which can occur in all environments, including the digestive and respiratory tracts of animals. There are both sound a priori reasons as well as empirical evidence to support my contention, shared by other scientists, that GM constructs may more likely spread horizontally than nonmanipulated DNA. Let me reiterate them here.

GM...