Taking care to keep in harmony

By GRAHAM REID

There's a metaphor spinning quietly on Roger Booth's desk in his small, tidy, third-floor office.

The odd object, given to him by one of his students, is a small cylinder tucked at the waist and tapered at each end which appears to float in the air above a metal base. It is, of course, suspended in space by magnets. Booth likes it because it is in a constant, dynamic and harmonious relationship with its environment, even when it is spun.

And Booth - who holds a senior lectureship in immunology and health psychology in the molecular division in Auckland University's Medical School - is keenly aware of harmonious relationships in nature. His teaching specialty is a tongue-twisting field known as psychoneuroimmunology: "How the mind and body affect each other, specifically in relation to the immune system."

In the past he has had research interests which have involved genetic modification in the laboratory: "Immunology developments in the last 20 years wouldn't have been possible in the way they have without laboratory-based genetic modification research," he acknowledges.

And that makes his quietly articulated cautions in the GM debate of interest.

Booth, educated in Auckland to PhD level and with almost 20 years at the Medical School in various positions, is no rabid anti-GM activist, but did present a personal submission to the royal commission and expresses firmly held views about the field release of genetically modified organisms. He is well informed in GM matters, yet his views run at odds with his departmental colleague John Fraser, who works on the same floor.

Once those organisms are put in the field, says Booth, we simply cannot be certain what will happen. The finest minds can speculate, may even have thorough lab-tested studies to back up their predictions, but out there in the real world where species interrelate, where germination patterns can change, where other organisms can cross-pollinate with GMO, well ...

"I have disquiet about what we know, what we don't know, and what we could unleash. Like a lot of people, I fall on the side of being conservative where we're not certain what's likely to happen," he says. Booth is not into sci-fi scaremongering, but takes a more philosophical view. He notes, for example, we haven't a great record of introducing species into our delicate environment. He cites possums, gorse and the ginger plant.

Of course, he stresses, such examples might not seem the same as introducing crops which may have specific reproductive constraints or disabling modifications genetically programmed into them, but there's a similar principle at work: all were introduced with the best of intentions, and all came back to bite us.

Booth is not a plant biologist but comes to the debate from the perspective of a scientist who thinks about the complexity of ecological systems and how they interrelate through routes we are still learning about. What we do know for certain is genes can be transmitted from one species to another.

He certainly doesn't suggest shutting laboratories, sees no potential threat from what people on his floor of the Medical School are doing, and advocates no change to present regulations governing laboratory work because they are rigorous and frequently re-addressed.

"All I'm saying is we should be cautious where we are releasing something into the wild where we don't know what might happen. Unless I've missed substantial amounts of information about genetics and ecology, nobody can say with certainty what [ecological] balances are going to be like when you've released some GM organisms."

As he considers how the debate has played out in recent years, Booth says some major threads have emerged after an initial period of extreme polarisation. A moderate amid the factionalism, he is concerned that issues of harm from GM food have obscured other matters which should be debated more rigorously and philosophically. Such as why we want to start modifying plants and putting them in the environment.

"It's a legitimate question to ask. Is it to improve the quality of food? Well, we've already been doing that and we've got a diversity of foods which seem to be adequately nutritious for us.

"Related to that question is that fewer species means we are limiting our biodiversity. One of the things we know is diversity allows for plasticity when things change. So if we limit it we are increasing the chances of catastrophe."

Booth quietly disabuses other objections. If it's to produce more crops to assist the hungry then, like many, he is yet to be convinced that starvation is a production problem. "I think it's more a distribution problem."

If it's to make crops more resilient, then "where something is sensitive to frosts, don't grow it in areas where there are frosts. We don't have to grow everything in every part of the country. If we use the environment to grow things wisely, we can get around these things."

He sees this partly as - and doesn't wish to overstate the hubris - Man tinkering with his world simply because he can.

And no, he isn't religious, but prefers to describe himself as spiritual, "in the sense I try and maintain a relationship with the world around me and see the virtue in what I'm living with".

One final argument which isn't usually put is somewhat more problematic and divisive: we just want to do it because it's profitable. "If that's the only reason you have to ask, do the potential - not actual, because we don't know - dangers justify using this route? Or can we use a safer route to increase profits?"

"If it is to maintain an economic advantage, then that requires broad societal discussion because there are large groups suggesting our produce might sell better if it were organic, so GM food may not be as advantageous as it first seems."

As Booth speaks, the issue which is engaging him takes on many forms and complexities. Some people, he says by way of example, want to live in a biologically diverse environment which they can have a relationship with. That's an aesthetic argument which needs to be grafted onto the scientific one and addressed with equal weight.

"Many who live in New Zealand do so because of that issue. Call it clean and green if you will, but it's more than that. It's being able to walk out your back door and have plants around you and feel you are part of them and they are part of you. That becomes more a spiritual issue, and for some groups that's a bigger issue in their lives than for others. But we have to factor that in to the discussion."

When a scientific debate shifts to such an inchoate level, however, you can almost hear stakes being driven into the higher moral ground. Booth, who has no party political affiliations, acknowledges some in the anti-GM lobbies have used that to give their argument more weight, "but it doesn't really".

What the spiritual position does illustrate is the diversity of cultural, scientific and philosophical perspectives which have crystallised around this debate within our society.

That is why he has been pleased the continuing deliberation has increasingly been conducted with an appreciation of such complexities. Within his own faculty there have been measured inter-staff exchanges of opinion and via e-mail with other universities.

But he seldom watches the representation of the debate on television because too often it reduces positions to soundbites and unhelpful polarisation, a kind of Greenies v Business standoff which is unrepresentative and unworthy of the Gordian nature of the issues, let alone the disparate nature of opinion within the community.

"It has been characterised as you are either this or that. But these extremes don't represent the curve in the middle where most people are sitting. The danger is if we try to resolve things quickly we create a binary split and we count the numbers in each category. You see that in polls which ask, 'Are you for or against GE?' My answer is I am both, because I can't answer that way. It's meaningless.

"If people want to polarise, then it's convenient to locate [a contrary opinion] in a group you deny the legitimacy of, so anyone opposed is a freaky green or anyone supporting it is an extortionate businessman. It makes it manageable to lump people together and you don't have to think about the issue itself."

Booth is insistent this is a debate which shouldn't polarise but rather bring people together to question what we value as a society and how we can continue to play a role in the global context without compromising our position, whatever that might be.

"But there's an assumption, which occurs around a lot of issues these days, that there is a right answer. So what we are doing is trying to find it. My view is increasingly that in most of the big issues there is no right answer.

"Nobody can tell you what the answer is going to be, the only way we are going to come to a path is by debating it and then choosing a path which we can then continue to assess and change if necessary. But it's almost as if at this time that New Zealand, because of our small size and recent history of colonisation, is worried about choosing the wrong path and being left behind by the rest of the world - as if what the rest of the world does is, by definition, right.

"But with this I don't see a right or wrong answer," he says, counselling caution again. "It's a case of a societal debate. The more people who are able to express their views, and listen to others' views then assess and modify them, the better result we'll get."

nzherald.co.nz/ge

Report of the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification

GE lessons from Britain

GE links

GE glossary