Commerce and freedom of inquiry.

On New Year’s Day 2000, I learned that some of my colleagues were allegedly in league with the Devil. The previous evening, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) had firebombed the office of the Director of the Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project (ABSP) at Michigan State University (MSU; East Lansing, MI, USA). This project was the primary route for the US Agency for International Development to invest in agricultural biotechnology. As part of its activities, the ABSP was organizing a conference in Africa on intellectual property rights, and had accepted US$8,000 from Monsanto (St Louis, MO, USA) to bring African leaders and scientists to the conference. Because many anti-biotechnology activists seem to believe that Monsanto is the incarnation of the Devil, they felt that the ABSP needed to be taught a lesson in the form of arson. The ELF later claimed responsibility in a fax, which justified the attack by citing the dissemination of transgenic crops by the ABSP to developing countries, although the activities of the ABSP have not yet led to the commercialization of any such crops. However, the project had a high profile and was frequently mentioned in the news, which might have contributed to the choice of the ABSP as a target of the ELF. The separation between the office of the Director of the ABSP and my own is thin and comprises only an electrical closet. Luckily it had a reasonable amount of insulation—in any case, it prevented my office from suffering any damage. The arsonist probably walked past my display case in the hall outside. Earlier that week, I had asked my secretary to change the display to highlight some of the work of the Biotechnology Interest Group that I had recently founded, but the new display was not ready. As I receive no funding from Monsanto, I was presumably safe, although I wonder whether the bomber would have added my office to his list, had the display case contained information on biotechnology. I now do what the ELF and other such groups want all researchers to do—consider the connection between my research and their political and social agendas. However, the ELF is just one of many pressure groups that try to influence research agendas by directly dissuading scientists from certain lines of research, by putting political or economic pressure on university administrations or by lobbying governments. All research is subject to these pressures, but biotechnology has become a particular focus for external groups. It is a relatively new area of inquiry that potentially has direct effects on people, raises significant ethical questions, relies heavily on the interface between the public and private sector, and has a partially formed research agenda that is susceptible to political manipulation.