Biotechnology on Parade

y the second day of BIO 2001, San Diego’s conference center was buzzing with activity. Inside the barricades were 14,000 registered participants and almost as many police officers; outside was a single raggedy group of seven protestors (two toddlers; five adults), one of whom looked like he had dropped way too much acid in the sixties. This was the biotechnology industry’s showcase, and nothing was going to disrupt it—there was to be no repeat of the chaos in Seattle during the 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization. After a mild protest on the first day, Kelli Gray, a food-science major at San Diego State University and member of the Greenpeace True Food Network, was one of the few dissenters left. “It’s not really biotech that I have a problem with; it’s the government,” she said. Inadequate testing and labeling of genetically modified (GM) foods was her issue, and one that got support from a surprising quarter. Craig Venter of Celera Genomics (Rockville, MD), receiving a joint award with Francis Collins (National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda, MD) for coordinating efforts to sequence the human genome, called GM food safety issues “answerable questions. The research has not been funded to answer these questions.” GM foods were the most vital thread B in the sprawling meeting, and the new battleground appears to be the developing world. Stories from Africa and Asia were put forward as models for how biotechnology could benefit poorer countries. The alternative—that the agricultural biotechnology industry is using poorer countries as a way to force GM foods into reluctant markets—was vehemently denied, but in the end, the true story was difficult to ascertain. In this debate, it comes down to determining motivations, and those motivations may well vary depending on which person from a particular project (from research scientist to company CEO) is doing the talking.