Food, Genetic Engineering and Philosophy of Technology

The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics 28

N. Dane Scott

Food, Genetic Engineering and Philosophy of Technology Magic Bullets, Technological Fixes and Responsibility to the Future

The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics Volume 28

Series editors Michiel Korthals, Wageningen, The Netherlands Paul B. Thompson, Michigan, USA

The ethics of food and agriculture is confronted with enormous challenges. Scientific developments in the food sciences promise to be dramatic; the concept of life sciences, that comprises the integral connection between the biological sciences, the medical sciences and the agricultural sciences, got a broad start with the genetic revolution. In the mean time, society, i.e., consumers, producers, farmers, policymakers, etc, raised lots of intriguing questions about the implications and presuppositions of this revolution, taking into account not only scientific developments, but societal as well. If so many things with respect to food and our food diet will change, will our food still be safe? Will it be produced under animal friendly conditions of husbandry and what will our definition of animal welfare be under these conditions? Will food production be sustainable and environmentally healthy? Will production consider the interest of the worst off and the small farmers? How will globalisation and liberalization of markets influence local and regional food production and consumption patterns? How will all these developments influence the rural areas and what values and policies are ethically sound? All these questions raise fundamental and broad ethical issues and require enormous ethical theorizing to be approached fruitfully. Ethical reflection on criteria of animal welfare, sustainability, liveability of the rural areas, biotechnology, policies and all the interconnections is inevitable. Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics contributes to a sound, pluralistic and argumentative food and agricultural ethics. It brings together the most important and relevant voices in the field; by providing a platform for theoretical and practical contributors with respect to research and education on all levels. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6215

N. Dane Scott

Food, Genetic Engineering and Philosophy of Technology Magic Bullets, Technological Fixes and Responsibility to the Future

N. Dane Scott W.A. Frank College of Forestry & Conservation The University of Montana Missoula, MT, USA

ISSN 1570-3010     ISSN 2215-1737 (electronic) The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics ISBN 978-3-319-96025-8    ISBN 978-3-319-96027-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96027-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018953151 © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Introduction

Our civilization, which subsumes most of its predecessors, is a great ship steaming at speed into the future. It travels faster, further and more laden than any before. We may not be able to foresee every reef and hazard and headway, but understanding her design, her safety record, and the abilities of her crew, we can, I think, plot a wise course between the narrows and the bergs looming ahead…. The vessel we are now aboard is not merely the biggest of all time; it is the only one left…. The world has grown too small to forgive us any big mistakes – Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress

Biotechnology is a rapidly expanding and branching area of research that includes transgenics, synthetic biology, and genomic editing. These powerful technologies are increasing the rate and expanding the scope of possibilities for engineering life to solve human problems. Food genetic engineering (GE) is ethically charged and highly controversial. Environmental and consumer activists groups such as Greenpeace International and Friends of the Earth International have launched sustained and effective campaigns against GE foods. Robert Paarlberg observes: The campaigns these organizations have been conducting for almost 2 decades now have been remarkably successful, particularly in blocking the planting of [genetically modified organism] GMO food crops. GMO wheat, GMO rice, GMO potato, and nearly all GMO fruits and vegetables have been blocked from commercial planting, even in the United States. GMO food animals and GMO fish have also been kept entirely off the market (Paarlberg 2014)

On the other side of the debate, life science corporations and governments have spent billions of dollars in research and development of GE crops and foods. In 2016, nearly one third of the living Nobel laureates (108 people) signed an open letter responding to Greenpeace’s campaigns against GE foods. The scientists addressed the letter to environmental groups, the United Nations, and governments. It accuses Greenpeace of misrepresenting the “risks, benefits and impacts” of genetically altered food plants (The Guardian 2016). This area of research and development is the source of an intense international debate with no end in sight. Sheldon Krimsky and Jeremy Gruber observe that, “while there have been longstanding controversies between vegetarians and omnivores or organic versus conventional v

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f­ arming, rarely has there been a time when food has divided society into two major warring camps” (Krimsky and Gruber 2014). How is one to understand this long-­ standing controversy over food genetic engineering? What contributions should the rapidly expanding list of powerful biotechnologies play in the future of food and agriculture? There are numerous books on the food GE debate that argue for one side or the other in this predominately philosophical dispute. For example, the above remarks by Krimsky and Gruber are taken from their edited volume, entitled The GMO Deception: What You Need to Know About the Food, Corporations, and Government Agencies Putting Our Families and Environment at Risk (2014). There are numerous books that take a strong stand like theirs against GE foods. In a similar vein is Steven Druker’s Altered Genes and Twisted Truths: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public (2015). These books are countered with optimistic appraisals of the promise of GE foods to feed the world, for example, Robert Paarlberg’s Starved for Science: How Biotechnology Is Being Kept Out of Africa (2008) and Gordon Conway’s One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World? (2012). There are more balanced approaches to the GE debate. In her book on ethics, technology, and the future, Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Harvard, asks: “Is there no middle ground for responsible, ethical, technological progress between unbridled enthusiasm and anachronistic Luddism?” (Jasanoff 2016). Paul B. Thompson, W. K. Kellogg Professor of Food and Agriculture Ethics at Michigan State University, writes that “it is…past time…to discard simplistic thinking…. No blanket endorsement or condemnation of biotechnology makes any sense at all” (Thompson 2009). Professors Jasanoff and Thompson have been writing about the ethical and social implications of GE for decades; they both argue for more complex and sophisticated ways of thinking about technology, ethics, and responsibility. The goal of this book is to explore several possibilities for moving beyond the sweeping pro and con stances in the GE debate. The controversy over GE is historically significant. It marks a new period when humanity is reassessing the technological enterprise that has created modern civilizations. The expanding list of biotechnologies in agriculture (and medicine) is one focal point of a philosophical dispute over the idea of technological progress and the future of life on earth. Paul B. Thompson has labeled the international controversy over GE a quandary and identified it as a “wicked problem” (Thompson 2014). Wicked problems are ones where “important values are at stake, factual issues are shrouded in uncertainty, options for moving forward are mutually exclusive and have irreversible consequences, but there is no fundamental agreement on what the problem is” (Ibid.). Scholars often cite climate change and chronic poverty as examples of wicked problems. The following chapters are an attempt to make sense of the GE quandary and move beyond the polarized, ideological conflict. I will organize these efforts by using an overarching heuristic to examine key theories and concepts in the GE debate.

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The overarching heuristic is that of a narrative or epistemological crisis. The key theories and concepts are divided into three groups: philosophy of technology, ethical ideals, and problem-solving strategies or paradigms. The first group contains three philosophies of technology: technological optimism, technological pessimism, and technological pragmatism. The second group is composed of three ethical ideas on how technological change should be governed: the idea of progress, the precautionary principle, and the imperative of responsibility. The third group is composed of two problem-solving strategies or paradigms: magic bullets and technological fixes. The heuristic of an epistemological crisis and the three groups of theories and concepts create three “stories” or schemata that simplify the GE quandary or wicked problem. The heuristic is, of course, pragmatic. Readers can judge how successful it is at providing ideas for moving beyond the GE debate and toward more responsible management of powerful and rapidly evolving biotechnologies. In the discussions below, I introduce the notion of an epistemological crisis and the three groups of theories and concepts and how they are related.

Epistemological Crises and Rival Philosophies of Technology The idea of an epistemology crisis is taken from the philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre. MacIntyre uses the notions of dramatic narratives and epistemological crises to resolve a specific dispute in philosophy of science over how scientists are rationally able to judge a new scientific theory to be superior to the theory it replaces (MacIntyre 1980). His arguments are derived from a general theory of human agency. In his major work on moral theory, After Virtue, MacIntyre argues that humans are essentially story-telling animals. Dramatic narratives serve to explain human action, for both an individual and groups. We move from childhood to adulthood to become persons by learning to understand and tell stories; these stories allow us to make sense of the world and ourselves. Persons are essentially tellers of stories “that aspire to truth” (MacIntyre 2013, 250). The central question as we become persons is about our own authorship. MacIntyre notes that “I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’” (Ibid.). An epistemological crisis occurs when the narratives and schemata a person uses to make sense of the world conflict with the truth. MacIntyre illustrates the idea of an epistemological crisis with a series of examples that demonstrate a breakdown between the way things seem and the way things are. It seems to a person that she is a valued employee, then she is suddenly fired. It seems to a person that his colleague is a friend, then he learns that colleague has been covertly subverting his efforts and work. An epistemological crisis is when an agent’s or a tradition’s schemata for interpreting and understanding social life “are put into question” (McIntyre 1980). MacIntyre uses Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Austin’s Emma to further illustrate his notion of a narrative or epistemological crisis. However, for the purposes of this investigation, a few references to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road will serve better.

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This postapocalyptic novel helps illustrate the conflict between two rival philosophical traditions: technological optimism and technological pessimism. The conflict between these two philosophies is contributing to the GE quandary. The Road, at least on the surface, fits within the tradition of technological pessimism; it seems to be postapocalyptic science fiction—whether this is what McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel is will be discussed at the end of this introduction. The basic story line of The Road is about the intensely dark and difficult struggles of a father and his 10-year-old son as they try to survive in a postapocalyptic world. The father and son travel south on a highway pushing a shopping cart with their belongings through the charred and ash-covered remnants of capitalistic-technological civilization. Everything is dead except for a few remaining humans, many of whom have turned to blood-cults and cannibalism. To state the obvious, postapocalyptic science fiction is pessimistic about the future of technological civilization. This popular genre within science fiction contributes to a larger cultural, pessimistic narrative that aims to subvert the narrative of progress. As will be discussed in Chap. 1, the Enlightenment idea of progress created the philosophical tradition of technological optimism. This tradition can be traced to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century histories of philosophy that held that social progress was the inevitable outcome of scientific and technological development. For many people in Western societies, particularly in the United States, technological optimism remains influential. From this perspective, the consistent application of science and technology is humanity’s greatest hope for improving human life. The philosopher Hans Achterhuis describes its essential assumptions as “purely instrumental, utterly neutral with respect to political and social choices. This social-­ political neutrality is said to result from the rational and universal character of technology” (Achterhuis 2001). The important feature of the progressive and optimistic tradition is it views technology as having a universal and instrumental character. It is merely a tool for making life better and more efficient. The ethical idea of progress and technological optimism have contributed to culture-shaping narratives whereby people are able to interpret the past, envision a future, and make sense of their actions in the present. Scientists conducting research in biotechnology might understand their actions by identifying with the progressive narratives of curing diseases or feeding the world. The dramatic arc of the narrative of progress begins with the scientific and democratic revolutions of the Enlightenment. Over time the forces of democracy, science, and technology struggle to advance until finally, at the end of history, progress will have displaced despotism with freedom, ignorance with knowledge, disease with health, and hunger and poverty with abundance. In this philosophy of history, time’s arrow has a target, an end or telos (final purpose). The implied end of history is a liberal technological utopia. The alternative, pessimistic tradition, as will be discussed in Chap. 1, became influential in the second half of the twentieth century with rising concerns over the threats of nuclear war, overpopulation, resource depletion, and industrial pollution. When Cormac McCarthy published The Road in 2006 the pessimistic narrative was so well established he could begin his novel without an explanation of how the earth

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was destroyed. He could assume that his readers could supply that part of the narrative. Technological pessimism paints a dark picture of the role of technology in contemporary culture. From this tradition, human history is on a dangerous trajectory where technology is destined to become the “determining and controlling influence on society and culture” (Verbeek 2005, 11). One of the deepest critiques comes from German philosopher Martin Heidegger who “understands technology as a particular manner of approaching reality, a dominating and controlling one in which reality can only appear as raw material to be manipulated” (Ibid. 10). This view is commonly represented in books and films, from the coldly ominous computer, HAL 9000, in Arthur C. Clark’s book and Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey to militarized robots in the popular, postapocalyptic Terminator films. Again, the pessimistic narrative subverts the progressive philosophy of history with a dramatic arc whereby scientific and technological progress ironically ends tragically, for example, nuclear winter, genetically engineered plague, overpopulation and resource depletion, and so on. In this tradition, technology is not value natural. It is an independent and essentially dangerous threat to human existence and the planet. The heuristic of an epistemological crisis caused by the conflict of the rival traditions of technological optimism and technological pessimism can help make sense of the GE quandary. These rival traditions provide narratives and schemata whereby people are presented with conflicting interpretations of powerful new emerging biotechnologies. Optimistic stories promote new biotechnologies as holding the promise to solve some of humanities most pressing problems, cure diseases, and end hunger. Pessimistic stories warn that new biotechnologies are taking humanity further in the wrong direction; they pose serious threats to human health and the environment. Further, these rival traditions provide conflicting schemata for interpreting key ideas in the GE debate: the idea of progress, the precautionary ethics, magic bullets, and technological fixes. The influences of technological optimism and technological pessimism can be seen in social science research that studies people’s attitudes toward emerging genomic technologies. In a study examining a large body of survey data on attitudes toward genomic engineering in society, Hochschild et  al. characterized people as falling into two groups: technological optimists and technological pessimists. On the one hand, technological optimists have high levels of trust in science and technology to improve human life and environmental quality. They downplay risks and uncertainties and emphasize potential benefits and promises (Hochschild et  al. 2012). Optimists are motived by progress and growth, and while they acknowledge the dangers and risks of emerging genomic technologies they are confident that the benefits will outweigh the harms (ibid). The famous biotechnologist and entrepreneur, Craig Venter, is cited as an archetypical technological optimist. Venter predicts that “genomics will protect the environment by reducing the need for pesticides, creating oil-spill-eating bacteria, and combating climate change” (Ibid.). On the other hand, technological pessimists are characterized as having low levels of trust in science and technology to improve human life and the environmental quality. They emphasize risks and uncertainties and downplay potential benefits and promises. Pessimists advocate for precautionary measures to protect human health and

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the environment from potential harms, even if that means passing up opportunities and gains (Hazlett et  al. 2011, 77). Activists groups such as GeneWatch UK are cited as exemplifying technological pessimism. This activist organization warns that “an over-emphasis on genetic explanations and solutions to these problems [. . . as diverse as hunger, crime, climate change and cancer] can mean that underlying social, economic and environmental issues are ignored,” and that “commitments to particular assumptions about science, technology, nature and society are often made behind closed doors, with insufficient public scrutiny” (GeneWatch UK, referenced in Hochschild et  al. 2012). These characterizations of attitudes toward emerging biotechnologies offer support for the idea that the optimistic and pessimistic traditions are playing key roles in shaping the GE quandary. The above comments from GeneWatch indicate more than a rejection of genomics and GE. They are criticizing the optimistic tradition’s general pattern of framing problems in scientific and technological terms while neglecting “underlying social, economic and environmental issues” (Ibid.). As will be explained in Chaps. 4, 5 and 6, these remarks indicate a deep suspicion of the magic bullet and technological fix strategies. Like the idea of progress and precautionary ethics, the magic bullet and technological fix paradigms focus on controversy in the GE debate. Most GE foods and crops are created using the magic bullet and technological fix paradigms. The magic bullet metaphor and the idea of a technological fix are often used today as dismissive or critical terms. However, they represent influential strategies for finding technical solutions to some of humanity’s deepest troubles, such as infectious diseases and agricultural pests. Within the tradition of technological optimism they are strategies for making “progress” using science and technology. As will be seen, technological optimists implicitly endorse these strategies while pessimists explicitly criticize them. To summarize, on the one hand, the tradition of technological optimism is justified by an ethics of progress that seeks to control nature for human benefit. On the other, the tradition of technological pessimisms is justified by an ethics of precaution that seeks to protect human health and the environment. The rival optimistic and pessimistic traditions provide conflicting interpretations of key theories and concepts: progress, precaution, magic bullet, and technological fix. Technological optimism promotes the magic bullet and technological fix strategies; technological pessimism rejects the magic bullet and technological fix strategies. These rival traditions with conflicting schemata and narratives for making sense of the world are contributing to the GE quandary. Chapters 1 and 2 examine and reinterpret the idea of progress; Chaps. 3 and 4 identify strengths and defects of the magic bullet paradigm; Chaps. 5 and 6 assess the idea of a technological fix; Chaps. 7 and 8 examine and reinterpret the precautionary ethics. The objective in each pair of chapters is to reinterpret these controversial theories and concepts using technological pragmatism and an ethics of responsibility to the future.

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 echnological Pragmatism and the Imperative T of Responsibility Technological optimisms and technological pessimism are rival traditions that tell different stories about the nature of technological change. Neither technological optimism nor technological pessimism tells the whole story. The successes of scientific and technological progress are impossible to deny. Shelia Jasanoff references a report by the World Health Organization (WHO) that states that global “average life expectancy at birth in 1955 was just 48 years; in 1995 it was 65 years; in 2015 it will reach 73  years” (WHO). She goes on to remark that “technological innovations account for the trends; better sanitation, drinkable water, vaccines, antibiotics, and more abundant and wholesome food” (Jasanoff 2016). Technological progress has delivered on many of its promises, but the future looks perilous. In his book on pending global crises, the philosopher and medical ethicist, Daniel Callahan, invokes the Biblical theme of the Apocalypse to identify “five horsemen” that are catastrophic threats to the future: “global warming, food shortages, water shortages and quality, chronic illness and obesity” (Callahan 2016). Despite their wide influence, technological optimism and technological pessimism create narratives that fail to grasp the complexity of technological change and the GE quandary. A more pragmatic philosophy of technology is needed to tell stories that more carefully account for the complete truth as we know and experience. Technological pragmatism is not a school of thought but a general shift in the way many philosophers and ethicists are thinking about technology. In the scholarly literature this has been labeled the “empiricist turn” (Brey 2010). The idea is that the earlier philosophies of technology, while containing many important insights, were either too optimistic about technological progress or too pessimistic about its negative social consequences. The general idea is that the more time thinkers have spent considering the social, ethical, and political implications of technology, the more pragmatic those considerations have become. However, the price of abandoning sweeping philosophical views is abandoning hope in arriving at clear and complete answers. The philosopher Vincent Colapietro writes of the pragmatic turn in philosophy of technology: Pragmatism is no panacea. It might not even be an –ism. The most pragmatism can do is to illuminate the conflicts, confusions, and crises in which our commitments and indeed successes implicate us. What is often most dissatisfying or disappointing about pragmatism is, in my judgment, most commendable and urgent – the insistence upon framing cultural conflicts in moral terms but the reluctance to proffer definitive solutions to these moral conflicts…. A pragmatist ethics in a technological culture will most appropriately take the form of a critical turn toward the various practices in which we are implicated, including those pertaining to bioethics…. (Colapietro 2004)

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The exercise of examining and reinterpreting disputed theories and concepts contributing to the GE quandary—progress, precaution, magic bullets, and technological fixes—will hopefully yield a few insights that work toward a wider consensus. That wider consensus would be a new narrative that moves beyond the optimistic and pessimistic traditions to a narrative of sustainability. The tradition of technological pragmatism is relatively new and still developing. It offers fresh opportunities for developing new schemata for interpreting technological change. The idea of sustainability requires new stories, ones that do not focus on optimistic or pessimistic ends to the history of technological civilization. A narrative of sustainability requires a more pragmatic philosophy of technology and an ethics of responsibility. The guiding thesis of this book is that out of the epistemological crisis created by these conflicting philosophies a new narrative of sustainability will emerge, one that is guided by a pragmatic philosophy of technology and an ethics of responsibility to the future. Following the philosopher Hans Jonas, societies need a new ethics and a new philosophy of technology to meet the challenges of the technological age (Jonas 1985), or Anthropocene. Returning briefly to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, I noted that McCarthy’s novel seems like it follows the schema of postapocalyptic science fiction. This schema would interpret the novel as a cautionary tale about the current trajectory of capitalistic-technological civilization. However, McCarthy’s novel is about the road, not where the road started or where the road ends. What interests Cormac McCarthy in many of his novels, for example, No Country for Old Men, is the question, is it possible to be a virtuous person in an evil world. The postapocalyptic setting allows McCarthy to explore the duties one generation owes to another and the virtues needed to fulfill those duties. It is an exploration of an ethics of responsibility to the future. The father’s duty is to provide his son with the possibly of a life of dignity and well-being. On this interpretation, The Road is about connections across generations; it is about bonds of love between a parent and child; it is about responsibilities and duties of one generation to another on a perilous journey. The interesting part of the narrative is not how the earth was destroyed or how it will be saved, but the moral struggles along The Road.

References Achterhuis, H. (ed.). 2001. American philosophy of technology: the empirical turn. Trans. Robert, P. Crease. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Agence France-Presse. 2016. Nobel winners slam Greenpeace for anti GM campaign. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/30/nobel-winners-slamgreenpeace-for-anti-gm-campaign. Accessed 25 Apr 2017. Brey, P. 2010. Philosophy of technology after the empirical turn. Techné 14 (1): 36–48. Colapietro, V. 2004. The pragmatic turn: a practical turn toward human practices in their irreducible multiplicity. Techné 7 (3). https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v7n3/colapietro.html. Accessed 24 Apr 2017.

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GeneWatch UK. About GeneWatch. GeneWatch UK. http://www.genewatch.org/sub-396416. Accessed 24 Apr 2017. Hazlett, A., D.C. Molden, and A.M. Sackett. 2011. Hoping for the best or preparing for the worst? Regulatory focus and preferences for optimism and pessimism in predicting personal outcomes. Social Cognition 29 (1): 74–96. Hochschild, J., A. Crabill, and M. Sen. 2012. Technology optimism or pessimism: how trust in science shapes policy attitudes toward genomic science. Issues Technology Innovation 21. https://www.brookings.edu/research/technology-optimism-or-pessimism-how-trust-in-science-shapes-policy-attitudes-toward-genomic-science/. Accessed 24 Apr 2017 Jasanoff, S. 2016. The ethics of invention: technology and the human future. New York: W. W. Norton Company. Jonas, H. 1979. Das prinzip verantwortung: Versuch einer ethik für die technologische zivilisation. Auflage: Suhrkamp Verlag. English edition: Jonas, H. 1985. The imperative of responsibility: In search of an ethics for the technological age (trans: Jonas, H., and Herr, D.). Chicago/ London: The University of Chicago Press Krimsky, S., and J. Gruber. (eds.). 2014. The GMO deception: What you need to know about the food, corporations, and government agencies putting our families and environment at risk. New York: Skyhorse Publishing MacIntyre, A. 1980. Epistemological crises, dramatic narrative, and the philosophy of science. In Paradigms and revolutions: Applications and appraisals of Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy of science, ed. G. Gutting, 57–74. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. MacIntyre, A. 2007. After virtue: A study in moral theory. 3rd ed. London: Bloomsbury. McCarthy, C. 2006. The road. New York: Vintage International. Paarlberg, R. 2014. A dubious success: The NGO campaign against GMOs. GM Crops Food 5 (3): 223–238 Thompson, P.B. 2009. Can agricultural biotechnology help the poor? The answer is yes, but with qualifications. Science Progress. http://scienceprogress.org/2009/06/ag-biotech-thompson/. Accessed 25 May 2016 ———. 2014. The GMO quandary and what it means for social philosophy. Social Philosophy Today 30: 7–27. Verbeek, P.P. 2000. De daadkracht der dingen. Amsterdam: Boom Uitgevers. English edition: Verbeek, P.P. 2005. What things do: Philosophical reflections on technology, agency, and design (trans: Crease, R.). University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. World Health Organization. World Health Report, 50 facts: Global health situation and trends 1955–2025. WHO. http://www.who.int/whr/1998/media_centre/50facts/en/. Accessed 24 Apr 2018. Wright, R. 2004. A short history of progress. New York: Carroll & Graff Publishers.

Contents

1 Progress in Crisis, Genetic Engineering and Philosophy of Technology............................................................................................ 1 1.1 Introduction....................................................................................... 1 1.2 Philosophy of Technology: Optimisms Versus Pessimism............... 2 1.2.1 Technological Optimism....................................................... 2 1.2.2 Technological Pessimism...................................................... 4 1.3 The Narrative of Progress in Crisis................................................... 5 1.3.1 Origins of Technological Optimism..................................... 5 1.3.2 The Origins of Technological Pessimism............................. 6 1.3.3 The Notion of a Narrative Crisis and the Idea of Progress............................................................................ 7 1.4 The Narrative of Progress and the Biotech Revolution..................... 9 1.4.1 The Free–Market Revolution................................................ 10 1.4.2 Promotion Versus Precaution................................................ 11 1.4.3 The Narrative of Progress and Market Failures.................... 13 1.5 Conclusion........................................................................................ 15 References.................................................................................................. 15 2 Reinterpreting Progress, Genetically Engineered Biofortified Crops and Technological Pragmatism............................................................... 19 2.1 Technological Pragmatism................................................................ 19 2.2 Golden Rice, “The Exception that Proves the Rule”........................ 21 2.2.1 Micronutrient Malnutrition and Genetic Engineering.......... 21 2.2.2 Clearing the Funding Obstacle............................................. 21 2.2.3 Hitting the Regulatory Barrier.............................................. 23 2.2.4 “Trojan Horse” for the Biotech Industry.............................. 24 2.2.5 Biofortified Crops and the Progressive Public Health Tradition................................................................................ 25 2.2.6 Market Failures and the Health Impact Fund....................... 28 2.2.7 GE Biofortified Crops and a Pay–For–Performance System................................................................................... 30 xv

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2.2.8 An Unintended Trojan Horse................................................ 32 2.3 Conclusion........................................................................................ 35 References.................................................................................................. 36

3 Magic Bullets I, History, Philosophy and Criticisms............................ 39 3.1 Introduction....................................................................................... 39 3.2 Magic Bullets and Two Models of Health and Disease.................... 40 3.2.1 Magic Bullets and Biomedical Model.................................. 40 3.2.2 Public Health and the Social Model..................................... 42 3.3 The Magic Bullets of Agriculture and Unintended Consequences.................................................................................... 45 3.3.1 The Side Effect of Pollution................................................. 45 3.3.2 Magic Bullets, Side Effects and Worldviews....................... 49 3.3.3 The Revenge Effects of Superpests...................................... 52 3.4 Conclusion........................................................................................ 55 References.................................................................................................. 56 4 Magic Bullets II, Genetic Engineering and Technological Pragmatism............................................................................................... 59 4.1 Introduction....................................................................................... 59 4.2 Insect Resistant GE Crops................................................................. 60 4.2.1 Side Effects/Pollution........................................................... 61 4.2.2 Revenge Effects/Superpests.................................................. 62 4.3 GE Herbicide Resistant Crops.......................................................... 66 4.3.1 Side Effects/Pollution........................................................... 67 4.3.2 Revenge Effect/Super Weeds................................................ 69 4.3.3 Stacked Traits and Revenge Effects...................................... 71 4.3.4 Patents, Treadmills and a Tragedy of the Commons............ 72 4.4 The Magic Bullet Myth, Progress and Sustainability....................... 74 4.5 Conclusion........................................................................................ 76 References.................................................................................................. 77 5 Technological Fixes I, Origins, Philosophy and Criticisms.................. 79 5.1 Introduction....................................................................................... 79 5.2 The Idea of a Technological Fix........................................................ 80 5.3 Technological Pessimism and Technological Fixes.......................... 82 5.3.1 Criticisms from Cultural History.......................................... 82 5.3.2 Criticisms from Deep Ecology............................................. 83 5.4 Technological Pragmatism................................................................ 84 5.4.1 Criticisms from Philosophy of Science................................ 84 5.4.2 Criticisms from Philosophy of Agriculture.......................... 85 5.4.3 The Problem of Simply Changing Problems........................ 88 5.4.4 The Problem of Defining Success......................................... 89 5.4.5 The Problem of Conservatizing Questionable Systems........ 93 5.5 Conclusion........................................................................................ 93 References.................................................................................................. 95

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6 Technological Fixes II, Genetic Engineering, Technological Pragmatism and Planetary Boundaries................................................. 97 6.1 Introduction....................................................................................... 97 6.2 Technological Optimism................................................................... 98 6.2.1 Human-Centered Ethics........................................................ 98 6.2.2 Optimistic Interpretations of History.................................... 100 6.3 Technological Pragmatism and Technological Fixes........................ 102 6.3.1 Planetary Boundaries............................................................ 103 6.3.2 GE Animals and Technological Fixes................................... 105 6.3.3 Pragmatic Arguments for the Enviropig Concept................. 107 6.3.4 Problems with the Pragmatic Arguments for the Enviropig Concept..................................................... 108 6.3.5 Golden Rice.......................................................................... 110 6.3.6 Pragmatic Arguments for Golden Rice................................. 111 6.3.7 Arguments Against Golden Rice.......................................... 112 6.4 Conclusions....................................................................................... 113 References.................................................................................................. 114 7 Genetic Engineering, Precautionary Ethics and Responsibility to the Future............................................................................................. 117 7.1 Introduction....................................................................................... 117 7.2 A New Ethics for the Technological Age.......................................... 119 7.2.1 Modern Technology and the Need for New Ethics............... 119 7.2.2 Comparative Futurology....................................................... 122 7.2.3 Casuistry of the Imagination................................................. 123 7.2.4 Precautionary Ethics............................................................. 124 7.3 Precaution or Liberty........................................................................ 127 7.3.1 Setting the Stage................................................................... 127 7.3.2 Bill Joy’s Ethics of Responsibility, Pro-Precautionary Ethics Argument................................................................... 128 7.3.3 Freeman Dyson’s “Libertarian,” Con-Precautionary Ethics Argument................................................................... 130 7.3.4 The Imperative of Responsibly, Catastrophic Risk and the Precaution Rule........................................................ 133 References.................................................................................................. 135 8 Towards a Narrative of Sustainability, Genetic Engineering, Responsibility and Technological Pragmatism...................................... 137 8.1 Introduction....................................................................................... 137 8.2 Comparative Futurology and Precautionary Ethics.......................... 139 8.2.1 Jonas’ Precautionary Rule and The Limits to Growth.......... 139 8.2.2 Neo-Malthusians and Political Polarization......................... 140 8.2.3 The Precaution Rule and Planetary Boundaries................... 144 8.2.4 The PB Approach and Jonas Imperative of Responsibility................................................................... 145

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8.3 The Imperative of Responsibility, Precautionary Ethics and GE Crops.................................................................................... 147 8.3.1 Two Versions of the Precautionary Principle and Precautionary Ethics...................................................... 147 8.3.2 Deliberative Ethics and the Precaution Rule........................ 148 8.3.3 The Precautionary Rule and the GE Debate......................... 149 8.4 Conclusions: Toward a Narrative of Sustainability........................... 152 8.4.1 Ethics of Responsibility........................................................ 152 8.4.2 The Duty of Comparative Futurology and Planetary Boundary Theory.................................................................. 153 8.4.3 Technological Pragmatism.................................................... 153 8.4.4 The Faustian Bargain and the Narrative of Sustainability.................................................................... 155 References.................................................................................................. 156

Chapter 1

Progress in Crisis, Genetic Engineering and Philosophy of Technology

Abstract  This chapter sets the stage for the rest of the book by characterizing central themes and ideas: the narrative of progress, technological optimism, technological pessimism, and precautionary ethics. The chapter begins by developing the idea that the polarized debate over genetic engineering in agriculture is at least in part the result of a narrative crisis created by a clash between technological optimism and technological pessimism. The ultimate goal of the book is to investigate possibilities for moving beyond the current polarized debate over genetic engineering. This chapter aims to start the process of identifying obstacles to, and possibilities for moving beyond the current narrative crisis and to  develop a narrative of sustainabilty. To that end, the chapter investigates and identifies hindrances to research and development in agricultural biotechnology from  making greater contributions to creating more just and sustainable societies. I identify three obstacles: (1) costly and time-consuming precautionary regulations, (2) market failures in the private sector and (3) limited public sector funding for social-goods research. Chapter 2 will explore ideas for moving beyond these three obstacles.

1.1  Introduction The philosopher Hans Jonas captures the modern idea of progress in his 1985 book, The Imperative of Responsibility: In our time, technology has become the dominant force for progress…. In that connection, progress becomes almost equated with material betterment. Advancing technology is expected to raise material well-being of mankind by heightening the productivity of the global economy, multiplying the kinds as well as the quantity of goods which contribute to the enjoyment of life, at the same time lightening the burden of labor (Jonas 1985, 163).

Jonas is describing a worldview that is still dominant today, and which has been labeled the narrative of progress (Jasanoff 2005, 185). The modernist idea of progress is arguably the most important concept for interpreting and understanding the genetic engineering (GE) debate. To a significant degree the GE debate is a dispute over the narrative of progress. Supporters of biotechnology speak of the “biotech © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 N. D. Scott, Food, Genetic Engineering and Philosophy of Technology, The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics 28, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96027-2_1

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revolution” and the “age of biotechnology.” These terms imply specific interpretations of biotechnology in terms of historical trajectory. Ronald Wright notes that, “our technological society measures human progress by technology” (Wright 2004). This view of human history is one where epoch-making technological discoveries mark progress toward creating a world free of hunger, disease and poverty. However, the idea of progress is highly contested on multiple fronts by philosophers, writers and artists, and activists in alternative agriculture, medicine and environmental movements. These thinkers, artists and groups have an alternative interpretation of the contemporary world; they are pessimistic about the idea of technological progress. The eminent historian of technology, Leo Marx writes: “‘Technological pessimism’ may be a novel term but most of us seem to understand what it means. It refers to a sense of disappointment, anxiety, even menace, that the idea of ‘technology’ arouses in many people” Marx 1994, 238). Technological pessimists are deeply skeptical about the biotech revolution and the motives of the scientists and corporations developing these new technologies. There is a sharp cultural disagreement on whether the narrative of progress and the biotech revolution is driving civilization toward a utopia or dystopia. Is the narrative arch of technological change bending toward transhumanists bliss or an eco-apocalypse? The goal of this chapter is to interpret the GE debate within the context of the larger cultural dispute over the idea of progress between technological optimism and technological pessimism. This chapter will set the stage for the rest of the book, which will explore the controversies over agricultural biotechnology in terms of a conflict between the narrative of progress and the pessimistic narrative, or technological optimism and technological pessimism. The ultimate goal is to identifying the roles agricultural biotechnology might play in a new narrative of sustainability, which will hopefully emerge out of the present conflict.

1.2  Philosophy of Technology: Optimisms Versus Pessimism In order to initiate this inquiry into the GE debate and the idea of progress, I will begin with an exchange over agricultural biotechnology between two respected public intellectuals, the physicist and futurist, Freeman Dyson, and the poet and agrarian philosopher, Wendell Berry. These widely regarded and provocative thinkers will serve as representatives of two rival traditions.

1.2.1  Technological Optimism The celebrated physicist, futurist and science writer, Freeman Dyson, is a strong advocate for technological progress and biotechnology. In his book, The Sun, the Genome and the Internet, Dyson writes that his purpose for considering the

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relationship between technology and society is to look for “ways in which technology may contribute to social justice, to alleviate the differences between rich and poor, to the preservation of the earth” (Dyson 1999, 49). While he is well aware that modern technologies have a mixed record, sometimes generating negative unintended consequences, Dyson judges the overall trajectory of modern technological development to be progressive (Ibid.). Dyson is an optimist. He is convinced that “new technologies offer the opportunity for making the world a happier place” (Ibid.). In an article that appeared in The New York Review of Books, “Our Biotech Future,” Dyson predicts that, “Within a few more decades, as the continued exploring of genomes gives us better knowledge of the architecture of living creatures, we shall be able to design new species of microbes and plants according to our needs” (Dyson 2007). Of particular interest to Dyson is the fact that the biotech revolution is not reaching its potential as a tool for positive social change; it is failing to address the needs of the poor, particularly the rural poor in developing countries. Dyson is concerned that the recent proliferation of expensive technologies is increasing inequalities and creating a technological divide between the rich and the poor. Nonetheless, he argues that biotechnology can solve many of the problems experienced by millions of poor people living in rural areas, but not under the current incentive system driving research and development, which has created a situation where large multinational corporations like DuPont, Monsanto, and Novartis control the direction and pace of innovation. Dyson provides an alternative vision of the biotech revolution that sees numerous creative individuals manipulating genomes outside the strictures of cooperate and governmental hierarchies. The vision he is advocating is one where the biotech revolution mimics the populism of the information revolution. In his progressive narrative geniuses will emerge out of the masses of genomic “coders” like those individuals that launched the information revolution. Dyson imagines a world where obscure biotech start-ups working out of garages will create novel, engineered organisms that will solve many of the world’s most pressing social and environmental problems. This narrative of progress is shared by many in the “biohackers” movement and tells a story of a liberal biotech revolution unconstrained by government bureaucracies and corporate hierarchies, driven by brilliant, freethinking individuals who seek to use technology to promote social justice, reduce the growing divide between the rich and poor and solving environmental problems (Wohlsen 2011). Dyson is well aware of the negative consequences of science and technology in the twentieth century. However, he rejects the various fatalistic and deterministic interpretations of modern technology. “Technological determinism,” the idea that Technology is an autonomous force in history out of human control, is one of the central ideas of technological pessimism (Marx 1994, 249). Dyson thinks that the “evil” of scientific-technology is not an “inescapable fate but a challenge to overcome” (Dyson 2006, 29). Dyson grew up in an English countryside where over generations the inhabitants had completely transformed an inhospitable, wilderness swampland into a hospitable agrarian landscape with a new ecology, which included humans, plants and animals (Dawidoff 2009.) In his view, humans have a moral duty to restructure the world for their survival (Ibid.). Humans do not need to

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a­ pologize for being human, which includes using our technologies to create synthetic organisms and new ecosystems that better suit our needs. However, he is highly critical of the corporate dominated, free market notion of progress that is currently driving the biotech revolution.

1.2.2  Technological Pessimism There are many who are alarmed and dismayed at Dyson’s optimistic vision for a biotech revolution where “the code of life” is analogous to computer code. One such person is the agrarian poet and philosopher, Wendell Berry. Berry responded to Dyson’s essay, “Our Biotech Future,” with a letter that appeared in a subsequent edition of The New York Review of Books. Berry comments that it is “disconcerting to see an eminent scientist such as Freeman Dyson using his own prestige and that of science as a pulpit from which to foretell the advent of yet another technological cure all” (Berry et al. 2007). Berry accuses Dyson of “technological fundamentalism.” He characterizes Dyson’s prophecy that biotech will improve the lives of the rural poor as irresponsible “sales talk” (Ibid). According the Berry, biotechnology “is only another item in a long wish list of techno-science panaceas” (Ibid.) Berry’s reaction to Dyson’s technological optimism is representative of many who are pessimistic about the idea of progress, and who offer various alternative visions. Berry explains his position on the idea of progress in a short essay, first published in the early-1990s, on why he has no plans to join the current wave and buy a personal computer. In that essay, Berry lists at least two reasons for rejecting the idea of technological progress (Berry 1993). The first is that the rapid proliferation of new technologies is often driven by mere consumerism, and he does not want to be complicit in an economic system that he does not admire. The second is that upon careful examination new technologies often impoverish our lives rather than enriching them. They can diminish or break valuable relationships between people, and between humans and nature. In general terms, Berry is deeply pessimistic about the global economy created by modern progress because it does not operate at the appropriate scale. However, he is optimistic, or at least hopeful, about the possibility for a simpler and sustainable agrarian life. This would be a vision of the good life that operates on the appropriate, human and ecological, scale of the local community. Berry’s many writings articulate a positive vision of local community, which is set in opposition to an increasingly global and technological civilization. So the flipside of Berry’s pessimism about the narrative of progress is optimism about an alternative agrarian narrative. Economy is a key term in Berry’s alternative narrative. The notion of a global economy is a dangerous oxymoron and, for Berry, we should think in terms of a local economy. Eco- comes from the Greek, oiko- and the Latin, oeco-, which are derived from the Greek world for house, oikos. Berry uses this etymology to connect economy to ecology, and to drive home the point that they overlap at the local scale of the household. The agrarian narrative promotes the household virtues of thrift and the democratic virtues of citizenship in the context of

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local community, which includes the community of nature. Finally, his vision is one of creating sustainable relations that persist over generations in a particular geographic place, not of growth, progress, and cosmopolitanism. Dyson’s technological optimism is representative of many people whose worldviews are shaped by the liberal, progressive tradition. This vision is committed to technological progress as humanity’s best hope for social progress. Berry’s technological pessimism is representative of many people who reject the idea of progress in favor of a variety of alternative visions for building sustainable societies. In general, these alternative narratives tend to be highly skeptical of new technologies, globalization, and the idea of economic grow powered by competition and innovation. The contrast between technological optimism and technological pessimism is key for understanding the debate over the biotech revolution. It is also important to note that Dyson and Berry share a critical view of the current dominance of corporations and free markets as the driving force of technological change. In what follows, I will argue that the clash between technological optimists and technological pessimists has created a narrative, or epistemological crisis that is being played out in the conflict over GE foods. Further, this narrative crisis has helped to polarize the GE debate; people seem to be forced to take an ideological position on this controversy. This makes it difficult to come together and deliberate over what roles powerful new biotechnologies should play in food and agriculture. The next steps in this exploration, then, are to briefly look at the origins of technological optimism and technological pessimism in relation to the current epistemological crisis.

1.3  The Narrative of Progress in Crisis 1.3.1  Origins of Technological Optimism The philosophical idea of progress has been extensively discussed and debated. I will certainly not attempt to review that vast body of literature here. Rather, I will briefly highlight a few points to set the stage for this discussion of the progressive narrative and the biotech revolution. The modern origins of the idea of progress are often traced to the eighteenth century’s Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment philosophy. There were numerous philosophers during this period that developed a universal history of progress in response to the scientific and democratic revolutions of that period. The idea that history has a trajectory toward an end or telos was a common theme. While the particulars of various theories of progress differed, they all focused on the basic notions that the advance of freedom, reason, science, and technology would lead to the ultimate expression of cosmopolitan civilization. Leo Marx and Bruce Mazlish write that, “what gave credence to the Euro-American belief in an endlessly improving future was the rapidly accelerating expansion of knowledge of—and power over—nature achieved…by Western

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science, technology, economic innovation, and overseas exploration” (Marx and Mazlish 1996, 1). Two essential features of the narrative of progress are the ideas that history has an end or purpose and that technological power over nature can free humans of disease, hunger and want. Modern agriculture was born during the Enlightenment period and it is implicitly and explicitly committed to the idea of technological progress. Porter and Rasmussen note that, “agriculture was mainly based on traditions and traditional knowledge until the 1700’s, when agriculture was influence by scientific progress and the philosophy of the Enlightenment that confirms faith in man, reason and progress” (Porter and Rasmussen 2009, 287). Agricultural technology has contributed mightily to relieving human suffering and promoting economic prosperity; for a long time, its many successes seemed to confirm the idea of technological progress in opposition to tradition and traditional knowledge. In Europe and North America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’ belief in progress seemed to be indisputable, as people’s nutrition, general health, and life expectancy improved with increases in agricultural production.

1.3.2  The Origins of Technological Pessimism By the mid-twentieth century, in the aftermath of two world wars and a growing awareness of industrial pollution, the naïve technological optimism of the modern period was giving way to a growing sense of pessimism about the idea of progress. A major twentieth century “pessimist,” Christopher Lasch, writes: “The history of the twentieth century does not appear, at first glance, to give much support to the idea of progress” (Lasch 1989, 229). Lasch gives expression to a now commonplace conclusion, which has important implications for genetic engineering. He writes: Science and technology have unquestionably enhanced human control over nature; the point is that this control is still subject to severe limitations. The more control humans exert, the more striking those limitations become. Human interference with natural processes has far-reaching effects that will always remain unpredictable in part, even in large part (Ibid., 235).

Hans Jonas points out that in certain senses technological progress is an unequivocal fact, but there is no necessarily link between technological progress and social or moral progress. Technological progress is ethically ambiguous. It is descriptively true that the latest technological advance is superior to previous technologies, but it is an open question if it represents a social progress. For example, Jonas observes, the latest nuclear bomb may represent progress in reliability and destructive power, but it is hard to argue that new and better bombs represent social progress (Jonas 1985). Along the lines of Lasch and Jonas, numerous influential philosophers and writers during the twentieth century, most notably Jacque Ellul, The Technological Society (1964); Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology” (1954); and Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932), challenged the utopian arc of the

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narrative of progress by painting a bleak picture of scientific and technological control over nature. These thinkers created alternative narratives, ones where the narrative arc of progress ends tragically and ironically. In our efforts to create a utopia free of famine, sickness and want, we create a sick or ill place; we create dystopias where we have lost our freedom. Further, these challenges to the idea of progress were supported by observable events and developments, such as technological warfare, industrial pollution, overpopulation, and banal consumerism.

1.3.3  T  he Notion of a Narrative Crisis and the Idea of Progress The well documented and much discussed loss, or questioning, of faith in the idea of progress has resulted in a narrative, or epistemological crisis. The British-­ American philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre describes an epistemological crisis as occurring when an agent’s or a tradition’s schemata for interpreting and understanding social life “are put into question” (MacIntyre 1980). MacIntyre writes: Consider what it means to have a culture. It is to share schemata which are at one and the same time constitutive of and normative for intelligent action by myself and are also means for my interpretations of the actions of others (Ibid.).

The Enlightenment tradition’s narrative of progress, with its central idea of control over nature, has generated schemata for interpreting social life. In this tradition, the idea of progress became part a shared understanding for people inhabiting this culture. For example, within this common interpretative schema scientists and technologists work to contribute to progress, and society should invest in science and technology for the sake of progress. However, as was noted above, the idea of progress has been severely challenged by alternative schemata with the rise of the technological pessimism. In these various rival narratives scientific and technological change is understood as leading to a nightmarish future. For example,  Ronald Wright, in his 2004 book, A Short History of Progress, uses historical and archeological evidence to support the idea of a “progress trap” (Wright 2004). In this interpretation, the idea of progress can be a deadly. Wright comments: “The atomic bomb, a logical progression from the arrow and the bullet, became the first technology to threaten the whole species with extinction. It is what I am calling the ‘progress trap’” (Ibid.). Societies that relentlessly pursue growth through human ingenuity and energy can become trapped in a vicious spiral ending in collapse. This commitment to progress develops an inertia that is difficult to stop and ends in societies overusing resources and crashing into ecological limits (Diamond 2005). Wright uses the image of a great ship to capture the current predicament: “Our civilization, which subsumes most of its predecessors, is a great ship steaming at speed into the future. It travels faster, farther and more laden that any before” (Wright 2004). In terms of the idea of progress our culture is in the midst of an epistemological crisis.

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We are confused and often divided between the poles of technological optimism and technological pessimism. One of the many reasons modern technological societies are divided over agricultural biotechnology is that a key term in the schemata that helps creates this culture, progress, is open to rival interpretations. For example, scientists working in the field of agricultural biotechnology likely interpret their actions as contributing to progress. Anti-GEO activists likely interpret the same actions as contributing to the industrial monocultures that are destroying the earth’s biodiversity. This conflict of interpretative schemas can be seen in Wendell Berry’s reaction to Freeman Dyson discussed at the beginning of this chapter. Berry finds Dyson’s advocacy for biotechnology incomprehensible and disappointing. He accuses Dyson of being duplicitous. As will be discussed in the next chapter this interpretation of Dyson’s advocacy for genetic engineering seems wrong. By all accounts, Dyson is a person of integrity and independence; he may be wrong, but he is genuine. It is possible that Berry simply doesn’t get Dyson, so to speak, because the two men inhabit rival narratives and traditions. Berry’s agrarianism and Dyson’s futurism have incompatible interpretations of the idea of progress and genetic engineering. In his many influential writings, Berry develops the tradition of the Southern Agrarians, who were active in the 1920s and 1930s. The agrarian tradition is a reaction to the loss of community life caused by industrialism, globalism, consumerism and urbanism. Agrarian writings from the 1920s to today celebrate local, community-­ centered ways of life. In this tradition the good life is lived at the appropriate pace and scale determined by nature. It is lived according to the seasonal changes of planting and harvest and at a scale where the human and ecological communities can flourish together. The rapid pace of global technological civilization is incompatible with the good life. Dyson’s futurist vision is dynamic; his ultimate vision is of a post-human future where we put off the limitations of carbon-based bodies to become silicon-based life forms that can live for thousands of years. Berry’s agrarianism vision is static; its ultimate vision is of small, sustainable communities where people live in humility and fidelity with past, present, and future generations, and the land. This alternative tradition leads Berry, and many in the alternative or sustainable agricultural movements, to interpret progress and biotechnology in a negative light. Within this schema agricultural biotechnology simply furthers the ends of consumer-­ driven, industrial-scale agriculture, which has had profound negative consequences for local, agricultural communities and local environments. Berry has chronicled the predation of the “local economy” by the “global economy,” and the negative effects of industrial agriculture on nature in his many books and essays. One of his most influential books is The Unsettling of America, published in 1977. However, it should be clear that, despite the challenges of rival traditions and narratives, the narrative of progress remains at the center of Western cultures, and competing narratives remain for the moment alternatives to this dominant tradition. In order to better understand the GE debate it will be helpful to explore important changes in the narrative of progress that took place in the 1980s. Specifically, I will explore how twentieth century notions of competition, to an important degree, have

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come to replace Enlightenment conception of “common reason” as the engine of progress. As will be seen toward the end of Chap. 2, Dyson and Berry do have one thing in common: they are both critical of the current free-market system as the driver of technological change. This one point of agreement points to a key element that must be confronted in developing a narrative of sustainability that will reappear throughout this book: what sort of insentive system should drive research and development in biotechnology?

1.4  The Narrative of Progress and the Biotech Revolution Despite many challenges the narrative of progress remains the guiding perspective for much, if not most, scientific research and technological development. One noteworthy reason for this is the tremendous cultural and financial inertia built into powerful institutions and its influence on habits of thought. Many of society’s most influential institutions—governmental organizations, research universities, funding agencies, and technology companies—in some sense are committed to the idea of progress. For example, in 1975 the United Nations issued a declaration on the use of scientific and technological progress. The Declaration states, “that scientific and technological progress has become one of the most important factors in the development of human societies” (United Nations Human Right, Office of the High Commission 1975). It goes on to recognize, “that scientific and technological progress is of great importance in accelerating the social and economic development of developing societies” (Ibid.). The United States’ influential scientific funding agency, the National Science Foundation, asserts in its mission statement that its purpose is to “promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare…” (National Science Foundation 1950). More recently, in 2014, on the occasion of establishing a new institute devoted to technological innovation and entrepreneurship, the provost of the University of California-Irvine pronounced that “Elite research universities act as engines of innovation and progress, not only by engaging in fundamental research but also by helping students and faculty transform discoveries into practices and products that benefit society” (University of California Irvine News 2014). This statement is typical of how research universities and centers are characterized as engines of social and economic progress. It follows that these powerful institutions have a vested interest in defending the idea of progress as being “true”. Modern societies are heavily invested in there being a strong link between scientific investigation, technological innovation, economic productivity and social wellbeing. Turning more specifically to biotechnology, the leading biotech company, Monsanto, proclaims on their website: “At Monsanto, we believe agriculture should be improved for the same basic reasons that medicine, engineering, architecture and computers should be improved: because human innovation is at the center of human progress” (Monsanto.org). The use of the progressive narrative to justify genetic engineering in agriculture is also found in the writings of scientists. The Noble prize

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winning agronomist, the late Norman Borlaug, stated in the journal, Plant Physiology, “Genetic modification of crops…is the progressive harnessing of the forces of nature to the benefit of feeding the human race. The genetic engineering of plants at the molecular level is just another step in humankind’s deepening scientific journey”(Borlaug 2000). In a final example, a promotional online video created by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) asserts that humanity is entering the “Biotechnology Age”. BIO describes itself as “the world’s largest trade association representing biotechnology companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centers and related organizations across the United States and in more than 30 other nations” (Biotechnology Innovation Organization). The video begins with a sequence of images representing the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Industrial Age, Electronic Age, and ends with the Biotechnology Age. The remainder of the video consists of interviews with prominent scientists and business leaders providing examples of how biotechnology is transforming the fields of medicine, agriculture and energy for the betterment of humankind. The interpretation of human history as a narrative of progress is an unquestioned truth for those institutions that have been created by that narrative. Biotechnology is seen as the next chapter in the story.

1.4.1  The Free–Market Revolution Paul B. Thompson has labeled bald appeals to progress as the “modernist fallacy,” which is “presuming that science, technology, capitalism, or maybe just history is inherently progressive” (Thompson 2007, 64). The metaphysical idea of progress is not self-justifying. Progress must be progress toward some finite and measurable end. The utilitarian goal of maximizing welfare or utility often serves to define the end or good of technological agriculture. There is a historical relationship and affinity between technological agriculture and utilitarianism in the narrative of progress. This affinity is made explicit in a Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) article on agricultural ethics, which states: “utilitarianism has been the implicit ethical philosophy for agricultural science” (FAO Ethics Series 2008, 24). The utilitarian calculus is straightforward: if scientific research can lead to new technologies that lower costs and increase production then these new technologies will increase net utility or happiness (Thompson 2010, 31). In other words, new agricultural technologies are evaluated by their ability to make food more affordable, available and abundant, as this increases the general welfare. Significantly, the timing of the launch of the “biotech revolution” coincided with the free market revolution of the 1980s and 1990s, which has shaped the development of agricultural biotechnology. The first GE crop, a tomato, was developed in 1982; in 1985 the USDA approved field-testing for four GE crops and in 1996 commercial use of major GE crops began (Fernandez-Cornejo et al. 2014). The philosopher Michael Sandel notes that the era of market triumphalism “began in the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher proclaimed their conviction that markets, not government, held the keys to prosperity and freedom” (Sandel

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2012). There is, of course, a close relationship between utilitarian moral philosophy and free market economic theory. Sandel points out that the case for free markets rests on two ethical commitments: a commitment to freedom, the idea that interference with markets violates liberty, and a commitment to maximizing welfare, the idea that the greatest good to the greatest number can best be achieved by free market competition (Sandel 2009). To a significant degree the free market revolution has transformed central elements of the narrative of progress ever since the 1980s. More specifically, in the 1980s free-market competition was for many seen as the engine and justification for progress (Hill 1989). The goal of the remainder of this part of the chapter is to discuss how the free market revolution has created an internal crisis in the narrative of progress. Many technological optimists, and of course technological pessimists, reject the idea that free market competition should be the driver of technological progress. Nonetheless, in terms of the biotech revolution, for many influential business leaders and politicians, social progress is seen as the near automatic outcome of free market competition in the arenas of scientific research and technological development. This important change to the idea of progress during the Reagan-Thatcher revolution led to a series of policies that continue to shape the biotech revolution. These polices can be divided into at least three categories: (1) a push for minimal regulation of GE crops and food, (2) decreased public funding and increasing deference of public research to goals set by private companies, and (3) the strengthening of intellectual property rights. The idea was that these changes would lead to economic growth, which is the prime indicator of progress toward maximizing the general welfare.

1.4.2  Promotion Versus Precaution Henry I. Miller was the chief official in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in the Reagan administration responsible for regulating new transgenic technologies. Miller is representative of many conservative policy experts who are ideological champions of competition-driven progress. For thinkers like Miller regulations limit freedom and create barriers to innovation and wealth creation, i.e., progress. Miller took the extreme position of opposing any special regulations for GE crops (Charles 2001, 28). While he was not successful in his efforts to avoid regulations all together, some see the United States’ “coordinated framework” and the notion of “substantial equivalence” for regulating GE crops as minimal safety regulations (Sheingate 2006). The push for minimal regulations in the U.S. for the biotech revolution collided with pessimistic tradition in the form of regulations and precautionary ethics and the precautionary principle. Examining the conflict over the precautionary principle and regulation of biotechnology is key in developing a narrative of sustainability. As a note of clarification, while it is common to refer to the precautionary principle, in reality there are multiple versions of precautionary principles that are open

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to varied interpretations—for example, it is common to divide statements of the precautionary principle into strong and weak versions. Discussions about precautionary ethics and precautionary principles are the result of changing attitudes about the notion of technological progress, which developed from the growing technological pessimism of the 1960s and 1970s. More specifically, this area of discussion is a response to concerns over scientific uncertainty and complex risks to human health and the environment associated with climate change and emerging technologies, like GE. Over the last several decades a large body of scholarship has developed over various articulations of a precautionary principle. This scholarship, which I am placing under the general rubric of precautionary ethics, is devoted broad range of topics in a variety of disciplines. In Chaps. 7 and 8, I will examine one important, and perhaps neglected, source for developing productive discourse in precautionary ethics, the philosopher Hans Jonas. My goal in discussing precautionary ethics is not to resolve the complex and contentious debates over precautionary principles, scientific uncertainty and regulations of emerging technologies. Rather, my goal is to identify several philosophical insights to identify and characterize a role for a precautionary ethics in an emerging narrative of sustainably. The first step in pursuing this goal is to examine the conflict between promotion and precaution in the regulation of GE crops. One purpose of applying precautionary regulations to GE crops is to shift the burden of proof to innovators to show that GE crops are safe. This has the practical result of slowing innovation and development in agricultural biotechnology. In the words of van den Belt and Gremmen, “the adoption of the Precautionary Principle entails abandonment of an optimistic maxim for technological innovations, “innocent until proven guilty”, in favor of a suspicious maxim, “guilty until proven innocent” (van den Belt and Germnen 2002). However, it is very difficult to satisfy “strong,” guilty until proven innocent, versions of the precautionary principle by demonstrating the negative: that a new GE crop or food will not cause health or environmental harms. The development of GE crops has been slowed or stifled wherever precautionary regulations have been applied. For those committed to the narrative of progress, the development of precautionary ethics has been an obstacle to social progress. For those who are pessimistic about the idea of progress, the application of precautionary regulations has been an important victory. There is a key divide in the biotech debate, then, between those who promote innovation and progress through free market competition and those who advocate precaution against unintended health and environmental consequences of new biotechnologies. The philosophical “promotion” versus “precaution” divide has to a certain degree placed the U.S. on the promotion side of the debate and Europe on the side of precaution (Sheingate 2006). Those who are committed to exercising precaution over promotion have kept the regulatory burden high, which has led to expensive and lengthy regulatory processes. Henry I.  Miller, who is currently the Robert Wessen Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy in the conservative Hoover Institute at Stanford University, continues to argue against government regulations. In 2007, Miller coauthored a book with Gregory Conko, executive director of the free-market,

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Competitive Enterprise Institute, titled The Frankenstein Myth, How Protest and Politics Threatens the Biotech Revolution. Miller and Conko are highly critical of the EU’s approach to the regulation of GE crops and foods. They complain that “For two decades ever deteriorating polices have weighed down the progress and promise of the new biotechnology applied to agriculture and food production” (Miller and Conko 2004, 224, emphasis added). Elsewhere they assert that “excessive regulation may protect firms from the dynamism of market processes and the need to keep technologically current, and it serves as a market-entry barrier to potential competitors (Ibid., 202). Miller and Conko are extreme examples of technological optimists who are philosophically committed to a free-market version of the narrative of progress. The main point to draw from the above discussion is that precautionary regulations provide an important challenge to the free-market version of narrative of progress. They have greatly slowed the “biotech revolution” by raising the costs and time needed to complete regulatory processes. This challenge can be interpreted as a clash between technological optimists and technological pessimists. However, there is another important challenge to free markets as the engine of progress. Many people, for example, Freeman Dyson, who are optimistic that advances in agricultural biotechnology can lead social progress, see the dominance of free market competition as an obstacle to progress.

1.4.3  The Narrative of Progress and Market Failures In addition to the divide between promotion and precaution, there is an internal, philosophical divide among technological optimists over the role of free markets. This conflict is manifest in a debate over respective roles of “public research” and “private research”. As was noted earlier, one of the hallmarks of the move to competition as the engine of progress was the removal of barriers between private research and public research. Summarizing numerous reports on the biotech revolution in agriculture, Byerlee and Fischer write: “Modern biotechnology has significant potential in developing countries to raise agricultural productivity in a more environmentally friendly manner, enhance food security, and contribute to the alleviation of poverty” (Byerlee and Fischer 2002, 931). However, they go on to observe: The application of molecular biotechnology has been limited to a small number of traits of interest to commercial farmers, mainly developed by a few ‘life science’ companies operating at a global level. Very few applications with direct benefits to poor consumers or resource poor farmers in developing countries have been introduced (Ibid., 931).

Once again, there are many technological optimists, committed the biotech revolution, who strongly disagree with people like Miller and Conko that free market competition can, or should be the exclusive driver of progress. Since the free market revolution of the 1980s there has been a sharp decline in publicly funded research

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aimed at social goods. Many see the decline of public goods research as a barrier to technological innovation promoting social progress. From this view, competitive free markets are failing as engines of social progress. One commonly cited reason for the biotech revolution missing the needs of the poor is market failures associated with the current intellectual property rights (IPR) regime (Barrows et al. 2014, 113). To recall, the strengthening of intellectual property rights is hallmark of the transition to competition as the engine of progress. In the early 1990s the World Trade Organization began administering the Trade-­ Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, which included comprehensive, international property rights for agricultural biotechnology. The 1994 TRIPS agreement allows companies to sell patented GE technologies at monopoly pricing for the length of the patent period. This incentive structure often causes GE seeds to be too costly for small landholder farmers in developing countries. So while these farmers might benefit from certain biotechnologies, and may be willing to use them, they cannot afford them. Poor famers and consumers are not an attractive market for large biotech companies. Given the high costs of GE research and regulations, biotech companies cannot justify to their shareholders researching and developing crops with traits that specifically target the needs of the poor (Barrows et al. 2014, 114).1 Given this market failure, many progressives argue that the public sector should heavily fund  research and develop crops with traits aimed at the needs of the poor. Unfortunately, there are at least two obstacles that hinder the public sector from filling this role, a sharp decline in tax-dollars to fund this kind of research and the adoption of private sector values by public sector science. Barrows et al. observe: “Growing private sector investment in seed technology, motivated by potential royalties from innovation, has occurred alongside a prolonged decline in public sector research and development (Barrows et al. 2014, 113). Pamela Arnold, a prominent geneticist at the University of California-Davis and pro-GE author and blogger, notes that “despite considerable and continuing breakthroughs in plant genetics and genomic technologies, there has been relatively little global government investment into funding basic plant science and translating these discoveries into food crops beneficial to farmers in less developed countries” (Arnold 2014). In addition, due to the steady decline in public funding for universities in the US, many university scientists now have an additional expectation of generating intellectual property that has the potential to generate revenue for the university (Glenna et al. 2011). As a consequence, a study by Welsh and Glenna found that university research on GE crops over time closely mirrors the research done in the private sector (Welsh and Glenna 2006). It seems that there are at least three major obstacles for a twenty-first century narrative of progress. Or stated differently, major obstacles for Freeman Dyson’s technological optimism, where genetic engineering will contribute to “social justice 1  Other related reasons the biotech revolution is missing the poor in developing countries are under developed seed markets, weak IPR laws and poor enforcement of existing IPR laws and agreements.

References

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and decreasing the differences between the rich and the poor” (Dyson 1999, 49). The sources of these obstacles are a growing sense of technological pessimism that has created serious opposition to new biotechnologies and defects with the free-­ market philosophy as the engine of progress. The three obstacles are (1) costly and time consuming precautionary regulations, (2) market failures in the private sector and (3) limited public sector funding for social-goods research.

1.5  Conclusion This chapter has been an initial exploration of the idea of progress in relation to agriculture biotechnology. The main goal has been to gain a greater understanding of the philosophical significance of idea of progress in the GE debate. It was seen that the Enlightenment tradition’s narrative of progress continues to influence the way many people interpret agricultural biotechnology. Also, the idea of progress has helped to create tremendous institutional inertia and entrenched habits of thought, despite the fact that rival, pessimistic narratives have significantly challenged the legitimacy of idea of progress. Further, among technological optimists there are competing philosophies of how progress can be achieved; this divide is between those who argue that research and development should be driven by the private sector and those that think public sector funding is required for social progress. At least in part, the many ongoing conflicts in the polarized GE debate can be understood in terms of an epistemological or narrative crisis over the idea of progress. This narrative crisis has left many people either inhabiting extreme poles or unsure how to interpret and understand important developments in agriculture biotechnology, and its role in shaping the future of agriculture and civilization. In terms of the ultimate goal of this book, this exploration of rival interpretations of the idea of progress and GE debate is the starting point for examining possible roles biotechnology might play in emerging narrative of sustainability. Two important questions have emerged from this initial exploration: How should “progress” in biotechnology to be interpreted within a narrative of sustainability? What can be done to overcome the three obstacles listed above that are hindering research and development in genetic engineering from contributing to social goods? Exploring these two questions will be the subject of the next chapter.

References Arnold, P.C. 2014. Lab to farm: Applying research on plant genetics and genomics to crop improvement. PLoS Biology 12 (6). http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/ journal.pbio.1001878. Accessed 24 May 2016. Barrows, G., S.  Sexton, and D.  Zilberman. 2014. Agricultural biotechnology: The promise and prospects of genetically modified crops. The Journal of Economic Perspectives 28 (1): 99–120.

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Berry, W. 1993. Why I am not going to buy a computer. In Technology and the future, ed. A. Teich, 66–72. New York: Saint Martin’s Press. Berry, W., Herman. J., and Michael, C. 2007. ‘Our biotech future’: An exchange. The New York Review of Books. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2007/09/27/our-biotech-future-anexchange/. Accessed 5 May 2016. Biotechnology Innovation Organization. 2016. Biotechnology Innovation Organization. https:// www.bio.org. Accessed 24 May 2016. Borlaug, N. 2000. Ending world hunger: The promise of biotechnology and the threat of antiscience zealotry. Plant Physiology 124 (2): 487–490. http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/124/2/487. Accessed 24 May 2016. Byerlee, D., and K. Fischer. 2002. Accessing modern science: Policy and institutional options for agricultural biotechnology in developing countries. World Development 30 (6): 931–948. Charles, D. 2001. Lords of the harvest: Biotech, big money, and the future of food. Cambridge: Perseus Publishing. Dawidoff, N. 2009. The civil heretic. New  York Times Magazine. http://www.nytimes. com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?em&_r=0. Accessed 25 May 2016. Diamond, J. 2005. Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. New York: Viking. Dyson, F.J. 1999. The sun, the genome, and the internet: Tools of scientific revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2006. The scientist as rebel. New York: New York Review Books. ———. 2007. Our biotech future. New York Review 54(12) http:// www. nybooks. com/ articles/ 20370. Accessed 6 May 2016. Fernandez-Cornejo, J., Wechsler, S., Livingston, M., and Mitchell, L. 2014. Genetically engineered crops in the United States. Economic research report No. 162, United States Department of Agriculture. https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details/?pubid=45182. Accessed 24 May 2016. Food and Agriculture Organization Ethics Series. 2010. The ethics of sustainable agricultural intensification. In The ethics of intensification, agricultural development and change, ed. P.B. Thompson, 19–41. Dordrecht: Springer. Glenna, L.L., and K. Jones. 2015. Genetically engineered crops and rural society. In Plant biotechnology: Experiences and future prospects, ed. A. Ricroch, S. Chopra, and S. Fleischer, 93–106. Dordrecht: Springer. Glenna, L.L., R. Welsh, D. Ervin, W.B. Lacy, and D. Biscotti. 2011. Commercial science, scientists’ values, and university biotechnology research agendas. Research Policy 40 (7): 957–968. Hill, C.T. 1989. Technology and international competitiveness: Metaphor for progress. In Science technology and social progress, Research in technology studies, ed. S. Goldman, vol. 2, 33–47. Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press. Jasanoff, S. 2005. Let them eat cake’: GM foods and the democratic imagination. In Science and citizens: Globalization and the challenge of engagement, ed. M. Leach, I. Scoones, and B. Wynne, 183–198. London/New York: Zed Books. Jonas, H. 1979. Das prinzip verantwortung: Versuch einer ethik für die technologische zivilisation. Auflage: Suhrkamp Verlag. English edition: Jonas, H. 1985. The imperative of responsibility: In search of an ethics for the technological age (trans: Jonas H and Herr D). Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. Lasch, C. 1989. The idea of progress in our time. In Science technology and social progress, ed. S. Goldman, 229–239. Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press. MacIntyre, A. 1980. Epistemological crises, dramatic narrative, and the philosophy of science. In Paradigms and revolutions: Applications and appraisals of Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy of science, ed. G. Gutting, 54–74. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Marx L (1994) The idea of “technology” and postmodern pessimism. In: Ezrahi Y, Mendelsohn, E, Segal H (eds) Technology, pessimism, and postmodernism. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, p 11–28.

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Marx, L., and B.  Mazlish. 1996. Introduction. In Progress: Fact or illusion? ed. L.  Marx and B. Mazlish, 1–8. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Miller, H.I., and G. Conko. 2004. The frankenfood myth: How protests and politics threaten the biotech revolution. Santa Barbara: Praeger. Monsanto. Improving agriculture. http://www.monsanto.com/improvingagriculture/pages/whydoes-agriculture-need-to-be-improved.aspx. Accessed 24 May 2016. National Science Foundation. At a glance. National Science Foundation. http://www.nsf.gov/ about/glance.jsp. Accessed 24 May 2016. Porter, J.R., and J. Rasmussen. 2009. Agriculture and technology. In A companion to philosophy of technology, ed. V. Hendricks, J. Olsen, and S. Pedersen, 285–288. Wiley-Blackwell. Sandel, M.J. 2009. Justice: What’s the right thing to do? New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ———. 2012. What money can’t buy: The moral limits of markets. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Sheingate, A.D. 2006. Promotion versus precaution: The evolution of biotechnology policy in the United States. British Journal of Political Science 36 (2): 243–268. Thompson, P.B. 1997. Food biotechnology in ethical perspective. London: Chapman and Hall. ———. 1998. Agricultural ethics: Research, teaching, and public policy. Ames: Iowa State University Press. ———. 2007. Food biotechnology in ethical perspective. 2nd ed. Springer. ———. 2010. The agrarian vision: Sustainability and environmental ethics. Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press. UCI News. 2014. UC Irvine establishes Institute for Innovation to expedite technology transfer and commercialization of research. UCI News. https://news.uci.edu/press-releases/uc-irvineestablishes-institute-for-innovation-to-expedite-technology-transfer-and-commercializationof-research/. Accessed 23 May 2016. United Nations General Assembly. 1948. The universal declaration of human rights. United Nations. http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/. Accessed 25 May 2016. United Nations Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner. 1975. Declaration on the use of scientific and technological progress in the interests of peace and for the betterment of mankind. OHCHR. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/ ScientificAndTechnologicalProgress.aspx. Accessed 24 May 2016. van den Belt, H. 2003. Debating the precautionary principle: “Guilty until proven innocent” or “innocent until proven guilty”? Plant Physiology 132 (3): 1122–1126. van den Belt, H., and B.G. Gremmen. 2002. Between precautionary principle and “sound science”: Distributing the burdens of proof. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 15 (1): 103–122. Welsh, R. 2006. Considering the role of the university in conducting research on biotechnologies. Social Studies of Science 36 (6): 926–924. Welsh, R. and Glenna L. 2006. Considering the role of the university in agri-biotechnology research. Soc Stud Sci 36(6) 929–942 Wohlsen, M. 2011. Biopunk, DIY scientists hack the software of life. New York: Penguin Group. Wright, R. 2004. A short history of progress. New York: Carroll & Graff Publishers.

Chapter 2

Reinterpreting Progress, Genetically Engineered Biofortified Crops and Technological Pragmatism

Abstract  This chapter explores ideas for overcoming the three obstacles identified in the previous chapter. The chapter begins by focusing on fundamental issues in philosophy of technology, arguing that we need to reinterpret the philosophical idea of progress to move beyond the polarized debate over genetic engineering in agriculture. This requires abandoning conflicting metaphysical assumptions found in techno-optimism and techno-pessimism. I argue that environmental ethics needs a pragmatic philosophy of technology with a more limited interpretation of progress. The remainder of the chapter explores the implications of applying pragmatic technological philosophy to overcoming the three obstacles identified in the first chapter. More specifically, the chapter examines possibilities for using genetic engineering for social justice by reducing population-level micronutrient malnutrition with genetically engineered biofortified crops, with particular attention to the controversy over Golden Rice. The chapter ends by exploring the possibility of using a publicly funded, pay-for-performance incentive system to correct defects in the current incentive system, which is leading to market failures and injustices.

2.1  Technological Pragmatism It is common to hear claims that biotechnology will solve many of the world’s most perplexing problems. For example, a 2014 US State Department’s online article, titled “Biotech Innovations that are changing the World,” reported on a conference sponsored by the State Department and several other government agencies on the “bioeconomy revolutions” (Juarez 2014). A summary of the conference stated that “the audience of diplomats, academics, and private sector professionals heard from 26 bioeconomy experts how the innovation in the bioeconomy can reduce global hunger and the impacts of climate change, improve global health, minimize our eco-­ footprint, and increase economic growth” (Ibid.). The implied theme of the conference is that the “bioeconomy revolution” is progress, not merely change. However, because of the narrative crisis described in the last chapter, sweeping claims that the biotech revolution represents human progress commit the “­ modernist © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 N. D. Scott, Food, Genetic Engineering and Philosophy of Technology, The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics 28, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96027-2_2

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fallacy” (Thompson 2007, 64). It can no longer be assumed that people share a culture-forming schema for interpreting technological innovations. Technological pessimists—for example in alternative agriculture, health and environmental movements—inhabit traditions that do not readily interpret technological change as equaling progress. They would likely interpret the very same biotech innovations that are driving the “bioeconomy revolution” on display at the State Department conference with suspicion, as potentially menacing threats to human health, biodiversity, or local agriculture. Twenty-first century technological civilization is fractured into rival traditions with rival narratives for interpreting technological change in agriculture. In light of this epistemological crisis, are there possibilities for a common interpretation of “progress” in agricultural biotechnology? This chapter explores the possibility of a technological pragmatism that would move beyond the technological optimism versus technological pessimism conflict. Daniel Sarewitz provides insights on limits to the idea of progress in the twenty-­ first century: “Any assertion of progress (or its lack)…is incoherent without an accompanying statement of beliefs and assumption about how the goals and progress are recognized and how distance from those goals is evaluated” (Sarewitz 2009, 303). It seems that assertions of progress must move away from nineteenth century metaphysics and toward twenty-first century pragmatism. Interpretations of the term “progress” must be freed of all the meanings associated with the myth that the steady advance of science and technology will lead humanity to a final end (telos) where humans are free of disease, famine and want. Progress must be understood in more mundane and pragmatic terms. For “progress” in biotechnology to have a shared cultural interpretation it must be in a common sense understanding of the word. Technological pragmatism means identifying and characterizing discreet goals that are justified in commonly shared terms; and establishing a reliable and widely accepted system for measuring “progress” toward those goals. In what follows I will investigate the possibilities for genuinely interpreting certain GE crops as contributing to the realization of the basic human right of a life of dignity, which includes a right to adequate nutrition. There are many obstacles that would prevent a shared interpretation. The foremost would be for skeptics of biotechnology to accept the integrity of the claim that the purpose of certain GE crops is to make a genuine contribution to human and not a tool for advancing the goals of vested interests. For this to happen, it would be necessary to overcome the obstacles to GE crops aimed at social goods, identified in the last chapter. To recall, those obstacles are market failures in the private sector and limited public sector funding for social-goods research, and costly and time-consuming precautionary regulations. In the first section of this chapter I will look at the story of the much debated “Golden Rice,” GE rice that has been engineered to produce provitamin A, the precursor to Vitamin A. Millions of poor people do not receive enough Vitamin A for adequate nutrition, which for children can result in blindness and death. Golden Rice is a technological fix for what is largely a social and political problem resulting from chronic poverty, Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) and more broadly micronutrient malnutrition. The story of Golden Rice illustrates one possible strategy for ­overcoming the obstacles of market failures and lack of public funding, but advocates for this technology have been unable to clear the third obstacle, costly and time-­ consuming

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p­ recautionary regulations. In an effort to overcome these obstacles, I will explore an alternative, pragmatic schema for interpreting “progress” for biofortified crops.

2.2  Golden Rice, “The Exception that Proves the Rule” 2.2.1  Micronutrient Malnutrition and Genetic Engineering Golden Rice has been at the center of the GE debate for well over a decade. In 2015 Golden Rice reached its 15th year anniversary; as of 2016 it has not been approved for production (De Steur et al. 2015). Shelia Jasanoff, director of the Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard’s Kennedy School, writes of the Golden Rice controversy: Immediate, colorful, consequential and polarizing, the case of Golden Rice understandably captured the attention of biotechnologies critics and defenders. The product became a convenient focal point for longstanding ideological conflicts. As a staple food product of the global South, it is a particularly useful resource for symbolic politics: it serves both the narrative of progress and beneficence of modern biomedicine… (Jasanoff 2005, 185).

The opponents of agricultural biotechnology see Golden Rice as creating unacceptable health and environmental risks. More important to this discussion, opponents see it as a tool for furthering the vested interests of large, multinational biotech companies and the agenda of economic globalization. For proponents of agricultural biotechnology, Golden Rice is touted as offering tremendous humanitarian benefits. Millions of children die or go blind each year because of Vitamin A deficiency diseases (VADD). But micronutrient malnutrition extends far beyond Vitamin A deficiency (VAD). De Steur et al. write: “Despite numerous efforts to tackle vitamin and mineral deficiencies through supplementation, industrial fortification or dietary diversification, deficiencies remain widespread among two billion people” (De Steur et al. 2015) Rice is a staple food for hundreds of millions of people but it does not contain provitamin A, which the body converts to Vitamin A.  In the 1990s a team led by Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer inserted transgenes from daffodils and the bacteria Pantoco to engineer provitamin A-containing rice. Significantly, Golden Rice represented “proof of concept” for a new generation of GE crops and opened the door for research into the GE biofortification of other “staple crops, such as corn, cassava, potato and wheat” (Ibid.).

2.2.2  Clearing the Funding Obstacle In 2013, Potrykus wrote an article detailing his years of frustration attempting to bring Golden Rice to consumers. He identifies the intellectual property rights (IPR) regime and the “lack of financial support in the public domain” as hurdles Potrykus

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and his team had to overcome (Potrykus 2013). Potrykus’ telling of the Golden Rice story can shed light on the challenges faced by those who are committed to the idea that developments in biotechnology can help address social problems. In his telling of the story, Potrykus notes that the patent system did not create problems during the “proof of concept” phase of their research. They had free access to the technologies they needed to develop Golden Rice. However, once they turned to the development phase they discovered that they needed to secure the license for 70 patents held by 32 companies and universities. With this discovery Potrykus recalled feeling that their “dream had come to an end” (Potrykus 2013). The package of technologies used to engineer Golden Rice contained proprietary technologies, for example, owned by Syngenta, Bayer AG, Monsanto, Orynova BV, and Zeneca Mogen BV. Nonetheless, supporters of Golden Rice were able to overcome by persuading universities and companies to provide free access to their intellectual property for humanitarian purposes (Goldenrice.org). If Golden Rice is ever approved, the technology can be sublicensed to qualifying breeding institutions in developing countries free of charge. The next hurdle Golden Rice faced was the absence of public sector funding for development. Potrykus observes that product development is not part of the philosophy of academic institutions but is, instead, considered to be the “task of the private sector” (Potrykus 2013, 132). Unfortunately, Golden Rice was not a good investment. It did not offer private corporations sufficient financial returns on their investment to justify the costs of development. Potrykus notes that their corporate partner, Syngenta, stopped production of Golden Rice “because the chance for a financial return on their level of investment was too low” (Ibid.). Again, Potrykus felt that his project was at a dead-end. He writes: “Humanitarian projects do not offer the chance for [sufficient] return. Therefore, the private sector cannot afford to develop [unprofitable humanitarian] product[s]” (Ibid.). However, three philanthropic organizations, the Rockefeller Foundation, USAID, and the Syngenta Foundation – were persuaded to step in and fund the project (Ibid.), allowing research and development to move forward. Some experts point to Golden Rice as a model for public-private partnerships, which allows biotech innovations to overcome market failures with innovations aimed at poor consumers. Scientists were able to create Golden Rice with public funds, the private sector allowed free use of their intellectual property for humanitarian purposes and philanthropic organizations funded development. However, in their research, Glenna and Jones draw a different lesson: Golden Rice is the exception that proves the rule. They write that, “it is incredible to think that developers of new crops will have time and resources needed to secure free licenses from all companies and universities for each new crop…. It is just as incredible to think that agricultural biotechnology companies would stay in business very long if they were to give away their licenses only for humanitarian purposes” (Glenna and Jones 2015, 102). Glenna and Jones are right to be incredulous at the idea that companies will freely give away their intellectual property on a consistent basis. The Golden Rice Project may not be an effective model for how to overcome obstacles to progress created by the current incentive system under the IPR regime and the lack of public sector funding for humanitarian projects. Insofar as Golden Rice is a model for public-private

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p­ artnerships it is an ad hoc approach that depends on the generosity of patent holders, secured funding from philanthropic agencies and the time and effort of scientists and their support staff to work with patent holders and funding agencies.

2.2.3  Hitting the Regulatory Barrier The third obstacle that Golden Rice has yet to overcome is the precautionary regulations in countries in Asia, where VAD it is most prevalent. Potrykus provides a step-­ by-­step summary of efforts to clear regulatory hurdles, the details of which are beyond the scope of this inquiry. Potrykus does give the following assessment of those efforts: “10 years of expensive experimentation has to be performed with no guarantee, that at the end everything will be in accordance with the regulatory requirements. Not to be in line with the regulatory requirements does, however, not mean to constitute a realistic risk. It just means no permission for release” (Potrykus 2013, 133). Opponents of Golden Rice argue that there are better, less risky ways to solve the problem of VAD through dietary supplements, industrial fortification of staples and more varied diets. These are serious arguments and will be discussed later. Nonetheless, it is hard to deny that Golden Rice has the potential to play a role in benefiting many people suffering from VAD. Whether or not Golden Rice poses health or environmental risks, despite years of testing, remains an unanswered question for regulators. What is clear, for better or worse, is the decision to apply the precautionary principle to regulate GE crops is a philosophical and political decision, not a scientific one. The European Commission acknowledges, “risk management is the preserve of political decision-makers” (van den Belt and Gremmen 2002, 114). The Commission further asserts that “Judging what is an acceptable level of risk for society is eminently a political responsibility” (European Commission 2000, emphasis added). Potrykus is right in asserting that it is a “political attitude” that is driving the precautionary regulations, which are related to the pessimistic narrative discussed in Chapter 1. The amount of risk a society is willing to accept with biotech innovations in agriculture to pursue social and/or economic goals is an ethical and political decision involving values (van den Belt and Gremmen 2002). In sum, for those who are committed to the idea that GE, biofortified crops can contribute to the social goal of reducing population-level micronutrient malnutrition, the way forward is mired by the impediments illustrated in the story of Golden Rice, namely market failures due to the IPR regime and the lack of public sector funding, and the difficulty of satisfying precautionary regulations. The Golden Rice Project was able to overcome the funding obstacle through an ad hoc approach, which would be difficult to consistently duplicate. It is an exception that proves the rule. The Golden Rice Project has yet to overcome the seemingly insurmountable barrier of precautionary regulations, which are largely driven by negative public skepticism and the efforts of highly motivated activists. The negative attitudes toward Golden Rice are connected to larger concerns about the biotech revolution in agriculture.

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More specifically, many see Golden Rice as part-and-parcel of an attempt by corporate agriculture and the multinational biotech companies to take over world agriculture. The question is, can Golden Rice be genuinely interpreted within alternative frameworks that would generate more positive and accepting attitudes?

2.2.4  “Trojan Horse” for the Biotech Industry I think it is safe to say that, if Golden Rice were somehow developed in the first half of the twentieth century, most people would have interpreted it in terms of the idea of progress. To review, technological optimism was high during this period and there was more or less a common schema for interpreting technological change as progress. This is how the vast majority of people interpreted the introduction of synthetic herbicides during this period. More broadly, the numerous petrochemical products that transformed many industries were greeted as a sign of progress, as exemplified by DuPont’s long-lived slogan, “Better things for better living through chemistry.” However, chemical corporations began to be interpreted differently with the rise of the pessimistic narrative, which, again, was significantly influenced by Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring. Technological pessimism became a significant social force in the second half of the twentieth century. For many people the large agrochemical companies, which are now the large agbiotech companies, are now seen in a negative light their products threaten ecosystems, public health, and local agriculture. Anti-GMO activists identify Golden Rice in terms of corporate-driven industrial agriculture. For example, in a widely publicized event in 2013, it was reported that a group of protesting Philippine farmers vandalized experimental plots of Golden Rice. The trials were being conducted at the Philippine Rice Research Institute, of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). The protesters asserted that Golden Rice was a cynical attempt by corporate agriculture to take over the Philippine rice market and take away the livelihoods of small farmers (Lynas 2013). This is a common view perpetuated by anti-GMO groups. If suspicions toward Golden Rice are to be reduced enough to lower the seemingly impossible bar of precautionary regulations, then supporters will need to change the perceptions that it is an instrument to promote the vested interests of the agbiotech industry. Activists frequently label Golden Rice as a “Trojan horse”. For instance, Marcia Ishii-Eiteman of the Pesticide Action Network North America writes, “Golden Rice is really a ‘Trojan Horse’; a public relations stunt pulled by the agribusiness corporation to garner acceptance for GE crops and food” (Ishii-Eiteman 2011). In their influential campaigns against GE crops, Vandana Shiva, the celebrated and controversial activist, and Greenpeace repeat the Trojan horse  frame for Golden Rice. Shiva writes: “The biotech industry and Golden Rice promoters are deliberately blind to [other solutions to micronutrient malnutrition] because Golden Rice is a Trojan horse to introduce GMOs, and GMOs are a Trojan horse to introduce intellectual property rights” (Shiva 2014). Greenpeace states in an article on their website that “GE ‘Golden’ rice has long been a poster child for the GE crop industry in an

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attempt to gain acceptance of GE crops worldwide” (Greenpeace.org). Also, a report written by Greenpeace scientist Janet Cotter states: “After over 20 years and millions of dollars, ‘golden rice’ remains an illusion. It is simply a research project with good public relations” (Cotter 2013). The Trojan horse frame implies that scientists and philanthropic organizations promoting the Golden Rice Project are duplicitous. The primary motivation behind Golden Rice is not to address ill health and mortality caused by vitamin deficiency (VAD). Rather, the “gift” of Golden Rice is a deceit to open the gates for a takeover of small-scale, local agriculture by industrial monocultures and global agribusinesses with dangerous genetically modified organisms. These charges of duplicitous behaviors against supporters of Golden Rice have been countered with equally damning charges against anti-GE activists. The efforts to counter the Trojan horse framing have so far been ineffective. Part of a successful effort would involve the difficult task of changing people’s interpretations of GE biofortified crops by disassociating it from the biotech revolution in agriculture. One possibility for this is to see certain GE biofortified crops as belonging to the progressive public health tradition, rather than the traditions of industrial, technological agriculture. This would have to be more than a reframing or marketing effort to change public perceptions, Golden Rice would actually have to become part of a public health program. If this were done it might be possible for people on both sides of the GE debate to honestly interpret biofortified crops as belonging to the progressive public health tradition. This might change many people’s negative attitudes towards biofortified crops and reduce the currently insurmountable regulatory burdens.

2.2.5  B  iofortified Crops and the Progressive Public Health Tradition In a comment cited earlier, Shelia Jasanoff notes that Golden Rice “serves both the narrative of progress and beneficence of modern biomedicine” (Jasanoff 2005, 185). This comment demonstrates that there are at least two possible interpretations of Golden Rice. However, there is an important distinction, not apparent in Jasanoff’s comment, between the beneficence of biomedicine and the progressivism of public health. Golden Rice can most easily be interpreted as belonging to the public health tradition rather than biomedical tradition. In very broad terms, the story of modern biomedicine is that of treating individuals and curing diseases through discoveries in chemistry to address biological problems; progress in biomedicine is identified with progress in science and technology. Further, discoveries in chemistry created the pharmaceutical industry, just as they created the agrochemical industry. The story of public health tradition is very different. To an important extent the public health tradition focuses on the goal of promoting health at the population level, and notions of social justice and political reform are part of this tradition. There is an important distinction, which is a matter of degrees, between the progressive public

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health tradition, which in part is associated with social and political movements, and technological progress, which is associated with scientific progress. In what follows, for the sake of argument I will imagine what would need to happen for Golden Rice to be placed firmly within the progressive public health tradition. Public health efforts are often associated with progressive movements aimed at advancing social justice and human rights through improved health. Goslin and Powers write: “[A] commitment to social justice lies at the heart of public health. This commitment is to the advancement of human well-being. It aims to lift up the systematically disadvantaged…” (Gostin and Powers 2006, 1054). In their brief summary of social justice and public health, Nancy Krieger and Anne-Emmanuelle Birn note that the term “public health” was coined to designate the action of governments and societies, rather than individuals or corporations (Krieger and Birn 1998). For example, political efforts to develop urban water purification and chlorination systems, public sanitation systems and childhood immunization programs, while at times controversial, have had enormous, quantifiable impacts on improving public health. While relying on science and technology, these efforts are primarily social and political in nature because they require the actions of governments. Further, these kinds of public health efforts promote equity and justice by reducing health differences between the rich and the poor. The tradition of medically sanctioned food fortification programs fits within the progressive tradition of the modern public health movement. The first efforts at food fortification were sparked by a study on the relationship between iodine deficiency and goiter presented by two doctors at a meeting of the American Medical Association (AMA) in Ohio in 1920 (Bishai and Nalubola 2002, 38). Soon after that presentation, public health officials in Michigan led an initiative to add iodine to salt. It is crucial to emphasize that physicians and state public health officials were the drivers of this effort, not the salt industry. This was a public effort, not a private one. The salt industry decided to voluntarily add iodine to their product to avoid proposed legislation requiring compliance. The program was a success: from 1924 to 1935 Michigan health officials document a 74% to 90% drop in goiter (Ibid. 39). One factor that helped the program’s success was the relatively small number of salt producers in Michigan at that time. This created conditions where standards could be set and compliance monitored. Bishai and Nalubola list three key factors for the program’s success that might have implications for GE biofortified crops aimed at reducing micronutrient decencies: (1) There was coordination and cooperation between public health workers and the salt industry during the planning phase. (2) There was excellent public outreach and education before and during the introduction of iodized salt. (3) Health workers followed-up with studies to determine the effectiveness of the salt fortification program (Ibid., 49–50). More generally, Bishai and Nalubola draw the following conclusion from their study: “The U.S. success with sustaining food fortification depended on the cooperative dissemination of innovation involving advertising by private industry, appropriate government action, counseling by private health care providers, and public health campaigns” (Ibid., 50). This food fortification program contributed to progress in public health in terms of the common sense notion of progress. First and foremost public health experts were the drivers of these programs for the clear benefits of

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affected populations. There were discrete, clear and commonly accepted goals that were set by health experts and not industry, and progress toward those goals could be measured. Global public health efforts to use certain GE biofortified crops to address micronutrient deficiencies among the poor might draw lessons from the history of successful food fortification programs. GE biofortified foods might facilitate progress in achieving public health goals over existing fortification strategies. This approach engineers staple crops to contain the targeted micronutrient(s), eliminating steps in traditional fortification efforts where problems arise. In many places where micronutrient malnutrition is most prevalent it is difficult to effectively implement conventional food fortification programs. The reason is that some countries and locations are missing key factors that contribute to the success of traditional fortification programs, such as centralized food processing systems and well-funded and effective public health bureaucracies for education and monitoring. For example, India has had a salt iodization program for over 50 years and has made progress in achieving the goal of reducing iodine deficiency disorders. However, large numbers of Indians are still consuming salts with inadequate iodine or no iodine. Some of the reasons for this are the lack of centralization of the salt industry, and the numerous small and medium-sized salt producers see fortifying salt with iodine as an additional cost without a corresponding benefit. There is inadequate monitoring of the salt production due to costs and other factors (Pandav et al. 2013). In addition, poor rural communities often grow and process their own staple foods, making fortification difficult. Commercial food processing industries, where fortification can be more easily done and monitored, do not exist in many places where micronutrient malnutrition is most prevalent. GE fortified crops could potentially “leapfrog” industrial fortification programs. Allowing poor farmers to grow GE biofortified crops, like Golden Rice, locally and to save seeds would do this. The crops are engineered to contain the deficient micronutrients, which would eliminate the need for fortification during processing. The point of the above discussion is, for the sake of argument, to think about the ethical and practical implications of generously interpreting certain GE biofortified crops as being part of the progressive public health tradition, rather than the narrative of progress and industrial agriculture. This would be a response to the Trojan horse framing and argument. Taking lessons from past food fortification efforts, for this to happen GE biofortification efforts would need to be government led. Public health professionals must set the agenda and be involved with biotech companies early in the planning of a biofortification program and in educating the public about the program, and they would also have to monitor and evaluate according to measurable health impacts. Further, this requires people to be discriminating in their judgments of GE crops. They would need to understand and evaluate innovations in biotechnology in terms of specific traits and the problem those traits are engineered to address. If all this is possible then the tall hurdle of costly and time consuming strong precautionary regulations could possibly be lowered for Golden Rice and other selected biofortified crops. It seems that when placed on just balance, the burden of proof for demonstrating the potential for GE biofortified crops to help reduce the known health consequences of micronutrient malnutrition would outweigh the burden of proof set

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by precautionary regulations to demonstrate that these crops do not pose health and environmental risks. Of course, there are objections and obstacles that could keep this from happening. The first obstacle would be the lack of public sector funding and the difficulty of reproducing the Golden Rice Project’s ad hoc approach.

2.2.6  Market Failures and the Health Impact Fund Even if GE biofortified crops were largely interpreted in terms of public health initiatives that decreased public skepticism, which in turn lowered regulatory barriers, there is still the problem of market failures due to a lack of publicly funded research. Again, the ad hoc approach of the Golden Rice Project discussed earlier, which relied on the generosity of patent-holders and funding from philanthropic organizations, would be difficult to repeat. Societies interested in using GE crops for social goods will need to find a more sustainable funding mechanism. This would be a funding mechanism that is identified with the public sector, rather than one that serves the interests of the biotech industry. There is a proposal for a private-public partnership aimed at encouraging research and development for “orphaned diseases” that might serve as a model for a public-private partnership with the agbiotech industry. Research in the agbiotech industry and pharmaceutical industry share the same incentive system based on IPR and the TRIPs agreement. Consequently both are experiencing similar market failures in regards to missing the needs of the poor in low-income countries. In an article on intellectual property rights and the pharmaceutical industry, Josephine Johnston singles out three disadvantages of the patent system that are similar to the ones outlined in Chapter 1 for agricultural biotechnology. First, Johnston notes that monopoly pricing can cause drugs and treatments to be too expensive for the poor during the patent period (Johnston 2008, 95). Second, there is “little incentive for biomedical research if there is no profitable market for eventual treatments, as with rare diseases or developing countries” (Ibid). And, third, Johnston observes that patents “inhibit research by restricting access to materials and methods that are key to developing new treatments” (Ibid.). In recent years the philosopher Thomas Pogge and others have proposed an innovative solution to the inequities created by the current IPR regime in medical research and development. They have labeled the proposal the Health Impact Fund (HIF). The following paragraphs entertain the idea that the HIF might serve as a model for a limited range of medically warranted GE biofortified crops. Just as the HIF is designed to create incentives that would make research and development in the pharmaceutical industry more just and equitable, something like the HIF might steer biotech research and development in more ethical directions. Advocates for the HIF argue that the current incentive regime in the pharmaceutical industry is unjust due to its systemic failure to satisfy basic human rights; that is, a life of dignity, which requires basic nutrition (Pogge 2009, 542). The HIF is designed to add a financial mechanism to the current incentives structure to direct more research toward the needs of the underprivileged. This will hopefully assure that more life-saving drugs

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will be available to the poor. The basic idea behind the HIF is to add a “pay-for-­ performance system” alongside the current international IPR regime. Participating governments would fund the HIF at an initial sum of 6 billion U.S. dollars per year. The HIF would use these funds to reward pharmaceutical companies for the measurable health impacts attributed to their innovations. Banerjee et al. write: “present market forces and intellectual property rights provide little incentive for innovation in the diseases of low-income countries, such as diarrheal diseases, lower respiratory tract infections, perinatal infections, Burkett’s lymphoma, and other cancers prevalent in poor countries” (Banerjee et al. 2010, 166). The HIF would change this situation by eliminating monopoly pricing on innovations pharmaceutical companies choose to register with the fund. When a company decides to register a new drug with the HIF they would agree to sell that drug at the lowest possible price for production and distribution. At the end of each year, the HIF would reward companies on the basis of the measurable health impacts registered drugs made to improving global health. Health impacts would be measured in Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) saved worldwide. Pogge explains: “The QALYs metric is already extensively used by private and state insurers in determining prices for new drugs, so employing it in calculating HIF rewards is not a big leap (Pogge 2009, 547). After ten years, the length of the patent period, the company would make the drug available for generic production. The expectation is that the addition of the HIF to the current IPR regime will correct the market failure by stimulating research on diseases that largely only affect low-income people. To be clear, the HIF is consistent with the idea of competition driving technological development. It corrects market failures by explicitly identifying social goals in domains that involve justice, equity and human rights. This modification allows companies the option of registering any new drug with the HIF based on business decisions. Depending on the innovation, companies may or may not see it in the best interest of their stockholders to register particular drugs with the HIF.  However, drugs that have low potential for making a profit but high potential for improving global health would be candidates to register with the HIF, and would be seen as a good business decision. According to the HIF’s official website: “The Health Impact Fund will offer innovators the option to be rewarded for global health impacts, even if most of the people consuming their products are poor and can only afford medicines priced near costs. This opens up a range of diseases and treatments which so far have been of marginal interest to investors, since under the current system they have little prospects of benefiting from sales to the poor” (Healthimpactfund.org). Briefly looking at an example, according to the World Health Organization, “in 2014, 9.6 million people contracted tuberculosis (TB) and 1.5 million died from the disease. Over 95% of TB deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, and it is among the top 5 causes of death for women aged 15 to 44” (World Health Organization 2016a, b). Drugs targeting diseases like TB currently have little potential for making large profits, but effective therapies would have much potential to improve global health. By modifying the current incentive system with the HIF, pharmaceutical companies would have an incentive to conduct research on diseases

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like TB. Further, rather than ignoring diseases of the poor, companies would “have incentives to work together toward improving the health systems of these countries in order to enhance the impacts of their innovations” (Pogge 2005, 189). There is a strong incentive for pharmaceutical companies to make sure registered drugs are widely and effectively administered so as to have the maximum measurable impacts on health and, hence, their profits. There are many difficulties to overcome for the HIF to become a reality. The most obvious are persuading nations to make binding commitments to fund the program and to create a trusted bureaucracy to manage the program and measure health impacts. Those advocating for the creation of the HIF are realistic and have addressed many of these concerns. They have argued that many of these obstacles are surmountable by starting with pilot projects and incrementally expanding the program to allow for learning and corrections.

2.2.7  G  E Biofortified Crops and a Pay–For–Performance System Nearly half of the world’s population does not receive adequate micronutrients in their diets. Moreover, young children and women are most affected by micronutrient malnutrition (Newell-McGloughlin 2008, 947). The World Health Organization has listed iron deficiency anemia, zinc deficiency and VAD as respectively, the 9th-, 11th-, and 13th-largest global health burdens. Nearly one-third of the world’s population suffers from these diseases (WHO 2009). Genetic engineering is not the only means to reduce micronutrient deficiencies with biofortified crops. Researchers used conventional breeding techniques to create “yellow cassava,” which is rich in provitamin A. Trials involving children in Kenya have shown biofortified cassava is an effective way to help address vitamin A deficiency (Talsma et  al. 2016). Researchers discovered a breed of cassava in the Amazon with high concentrations of protvitamin A that they were able to breed with varieties that are popular in Africa. However, conventional breeding techniques for biofortification are not always possible. Genetic engineering creates numerous possibilities for creating biofortified crops. Along with Golden Rice, experimental GE crops have been engineered to target iron and zinc deficiencies, among others. There are quantifiable links between micronutrient malnutrition and much illness and premature death, especially among women and children. In the long term one would hope that every person could afford and enjoy a balanced diet of fresh, nutritious foods that contain all the micronutrients needed for a healthy life. However, in the short term, as has been seen in the example of Golden Rice, there are serious arguments that GE crops could play a role in addressing the global disease burden caused by micronutrient malnutrition. It is possible to at least imagine that select GE biofortified crops and conventionally bred biofortified crops aimed at addressing micronutrient malnutrition could fit into a HIF-type incentive program. Since Golden Rice is the most developed and studied GE biofortified crop, for the sake of argument, it will be

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worth considering what research, development and distribution of this technology might have looked like if a HIF-like pay-for-performance program existed. According to an ex ante study by Strein, Sachder and Qaim that appeared in Nature Biotechnology, “the current annual disease burden of VAD in India amounts to a loss of 2.3 million Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), of which 2.0 million are lost due to child mortality alone” (Stein et al. 2006). DALYs are an alternative measure to QALYs. One DALY is the loss of a year of healthy life (WHO.int). “The sum of these DALYs across the population, or the burden of disease, can be thought of as a measurement of the gap between current health status and an ideal health situation where the entire population lives to an advanced age, free of disease and disability” (WHO.int). The study estimated that, “in a high-impact scenario, India’s annual burden of VAD (2.3 million DALYs) could be reduced by up to 59.4% by the consumption of Golden Rice, saving 1.4 million healthy life years. In low impact scenarios, where Golden Rice is consumed less frequently and delivers less ß-carotene, the burden of VAD would be reduced by 8.8%” (Berman et  al. 2013). However, in both scenarios Golden Rice was predicted to be more effective than Vitamin A supplements and industrial flour fortification. Golden Rice is likely to have greater health impacts than supplements because it can blanket the entire population and is more easily sustained. While Golden Rice and GE biofortified crops are highly controversial, these studies point to the promise of this technology to make significant health impacts. Again, to develop Golden Rice, 32 different companies and universities had to be persuaded to allow the free use of their intellectual property for humanitarian purposes. However, if there was something like the HIF for medically warranted GE biofortified these patent holders would be able to participate in a pay-for-­performance system. They could benefit financially from their intellectual property. This may strike some as morally problematic. However, the current IPR regime is in a sense denying people secure access to objects of human rights. A pay-for-performance system for certain GE biofortified corps has much potential to help correct health inequities and unrealized human rights. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25, states: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care….” (United Nations General Assembly 1948). A HIF-like fund for certain medically warranted biofortified cops would stimulate and catalyze research and development that could help millions of people realize their basic human right to health. A pay-for-performance system can be seen as a pragmatic solution to correct a moral defect in a deeply entrenched system. The current IPR regime and the TRIPS agreement will likely be with us for the foreseeable future. Given this reality, if patent holders were able to see monetary returns from their intellectual property, a HIF-life incentive system would be more easily replicated than the ad hoc approach of the Golden Rice Project. More to the point, a payfor-performance system with significant funding at the international level would likely be a more sustainable model than depending on the generosity of private companies and the assistance of philanthropic organizations. Further, if a pay-for-performance system for GE biofortified crops were run by an international organization led and

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largely staffed by public health officials, then these GE crops could be more easily interpreted in terms of the progressive public health tradition rather than that of corporate agriculture and the agbiotech industry. However, it is glaringly obvious that, given the controversial nature of agricultural biotechnology, a pay-for-performance fund for GE crops would face even greater difficulties than those faced by the HIF. New technologies come with many philosophical and ethical challenges, including the evaluation of trade-offs. There is an ethical responsibility to find appropriate ways to weigh goods and benefits against harms and risks. In a report titled “The Cost of Delaying Approval of Golden Rice,” Wessler et  al. note that “between 250,000 and 500,000 children go blind each year because of Vitamin A deficiency and more than half die within a year of becoming blind” (Wesseler et al. 2014). In the last decade scientists have increased concentrations of provitamin A in Golden Rice. According to Wesseler et al., “a recent study found that a daily intake of 60 grams (one-half cup) of Golden Rice is sufficient in preventing Vitamin A malnutrition (Ibid.). In “India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines, rice is the primary food source, comprising 70% of the caloric intake” (Eisenstein 2014). It should be noted that, while Golden Rice has achieved the goal of delivering adequate amounts of provitamin A, it has yet to meet the goal of producing “plants that contain the new trait, but otherwise resemble local strains as much as possible” (Ibid.). Currently, the yields of Golden Rice are lower than local non-GE varieties, which would make Golden Rice less attractive to farmers (Ibid.). Facts like these should be placed on the scale when deciding how best to distribute the burdens that come with ethical decisions concerning health and environmental risks and the opportunity to save lives and improve health. Given the relentless, ongoing tragedy of vitamin A deficiency disease (VADD), and other micronutrient deficiency diseases, strong precautionary regulations might not be morally justified. The ethical course of action could be to readjust the weighting of the unknown harms of Golden Rice against the known harms of VADD in safety regulations. From the above it seems possible, at least in principle, to articulate a common sense notion of progress for certain GE crops in terms of the progressive public health traditions of food fortification. The goal of improving public health by reducing population-level micronutrient malnutrition could be ethically characterized and justified in terms of human rights and quantified in terms of Disability Adjusted Life Years. Public health professionals could measure the contribution of a specific GE crop to achieve the goal of reducing micronutrient malnutrition. If certain GE crops can be shown to be a reasonably safe and cost effective way of reducing much ill health and mortality there could be a moral duty to move forward with this technology, even if the requirements of stronger versions of the precautionary principle cannot be satisfied.

2.2.8  An Unintended Trojan Horse The above speculations rest on the possibility of interpreting certain GE crops using a common sense understanding of progress as achieving limited and concretely definable goals. This will be difficult given how entrenched technological optimism

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and the narrative of progress are in our technological civilization. This can be seen by briefly looking at the U.S. State Department’s conference on the bioeconomy mentioned at the start of this chapter. The innovations in agricultural biotechnology featured at that conference as changing the world all addressed social goods; they were engineered to either improve public health or address environmental problems. However, the conference was organized around the idea of a bioeconomy revolution and its purpose was to educate and connect scientists, policymakers, investors and industry leaders. An implied theme of the conference was that biotechnology is a good investment. However, many people are deeply skeptical about the link implied in the idea of a bioeconomy revolution between pursuing profits and solving social and environmental problems simultaneously—this skepticism seems warranted by the market failures discussed in this chapter and the previous one. It will be recalled from the start of Chapter 1 that the influential writer, Wendell Berry, characterized Freeman Dyson’s prophecy that biotech will improve the lives of the rural poor as irresponsible “sales talk” (Berry et  al. 2007). The history of technological agriculture is one of increasing efficiency and productivity, but it is also a story of expensive new technologies driving rural farmers out of business. While I think it is wrong to question the humanitarian motives of the scientists and philanthropists behind the Golden Rice Project, this technology could nevertheless function as a Trojan horse. It would be hard for anti-GMO activists to prove that the scientists and organizations that are supporting the Golden Rice Project have a hidden agenda, that their real goal is not to address VAD but to help the biotech companies advance their agenda. Nonetheless, there is another way of looking at the Trojan horse argument that does not require bad faith. No matter the motives, if Golden Rice is approved and widely adopted and makes major contributions to alleviating VAD, while not causing significant health or environmental harms, Golden Rice would likely encourage wider acceptance of GE crops. More specifically, if Golden Rice proves to be a public health success it would, as anti-GMO activists argue, be a powerful public relations coup for the agricultural biotechnology industry. While it is rhetorical overreach to call Golden Rice a Trojan horse in the sense that is an immoral, intentional deception, it seems easy to predict that if it is successful biotech companies use it to open the gates for other GM products. This point indicates how difficult it might be to isolate a narrow range of GE crops with traits aimed at humanitarian or environmental benefits from the juggernaut of a biotech, or bioeconomy, revolution. In addition, if Golden Rice were successful and led to wide acceptance for GE crops it could have the unintended consequence of harming rural, poor famers, just as anti-GMO activists predict. To understand this possible issue one needs to look at the technological treadmill phenomenon (Thompson 2009). The agricultural economist Willard Cochrane introduced the notion of the technological treadmill in agriculture in the 1950s and further refined it in 1996 (Cochrane 1958; Levins and Cochrane 1996). The general idea is that new production-increasing technologies create winners and losers. The winners are the technology companies, early adopters and consumers. The losers are late adopters and resource-poor farmers. Paul B. Thompson writes: “New technologies fuel a process where better-off farmers get bigger, and worse-off famers

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leave the land” (Thompson 2009). Very briefly, farmers who are early adopters of new technologies reap the financial benefit of higher yields for a short period, until prices begin to fall due to increased production. In order to remain competitive, late adopters must purchase the technology but they do not reap the financial benefits of increased production—their costs have increased but their profits have decreased. Because of this cost/price squeeze many late adopters and small landholder farmers are driven out of business. This further benefits the early adopters as they have greater financial resources and have the means to purchase additional farmland, driving up land prices. It seems that farmers are forced to purchase the latest production-­increasing technology and farm more acres just to stay in business; and, as the price of crops continue to fall with increased efficiency and production, farmers must, as the saying goes, get big or get out. The metaphor of a technological treadmill is a powerful one because it directly contradicts the myth of technological progress. Farmers on the technological treadmill seem to be destined to share the fate of Sisyphus, forever working but never making progress. From the perspective of rural farmers and rural communities the fate of the technological treadmill is often experienced as a loss of autonomy, and for many as a loss of livelihood. However, from the perspective of the mass numbers of urban consumers, increased production results in decreased food costs, which can be experienced as progress. In our increasingly urbanized world there are more consumers of agricultural goods than rural producers. In a strictly utilitarian calculus the increased utility for the large number of consumers, due to lower food costs, outweighs the loss of utility experienced by the smaller number of rural farmers and rural communities that depend on a farm economy. But from broader ethical perspectives that include other kinds of goods, such as social goods associated from thriving rural communities and the autonomy associated with being an independent landowner and farmer, technological progress in agriculture is morally equivocal. The utilitarian/market-driven ethics underwriting technological progress in agriculture, or the productionist paradigm (Thompson 1997), has made food more abundant and affordable for consumers, but it fails to take into account the effects of this system on farmers’ ways of life (Thompson 1998, 35). Thompson writes: “clearly, autonomy, or the capacity of individuals to choose for themselves, does not figure in the utilitarian goals of productivity except as they contribute to pleasure, satisfaction, or the pursuit of economic well-being” (Ibid.). It is in this sense that an unintended consequence of Golden Rice might be to function as a Trojan horse, despite the genuine humanitarian motives of its developers and supporters. If Golden Rice were successful it would likely open the gates for GE crops with marketable traits that are not aimed at public goods, but at increasing agricultural production and efficiency. This would likely initiate the technological treadmill phenomenon, with the predictable consequence on rural farmers and rural communities. The technological treadmill phenomenon raises important ethical concerns that are not easily dismissed or addressed. How can GE biofortified crops, like Golden Rice, help those suffering from micronutrient malnutrition, while avoiding the unintended consequence of harming smallholder farmers? The treadmill phenomenon provides substance to the Trojan horse argument against Golden Rice beyond unsub-

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stantiated accusations of bad faith on the part of its developers and promoters. It should give pause to the humanitarian champions of Golden Rice, just as the potential public health benefits of Golden Rice should give pause to anti-GMO activists.

2.3  Conclusion Currently anti-Golden Rice activists and pro-Golden Rice backers are trading damning accusations. On one side, activists are accusing Golden Rice advocates of being duplicitous, of acting in bad faith. On the other side, Golden Rice advocates are accusing anti-GMO activists of causing unnecessary suffering and death. For example, the British Secretary of State for the Environment and Rural Affairs, Owen Paterson, stated in an interview: “It’s disgusting that little children are allowed to go blind and die because of a hang-up by a small number of people about this technology. I feel strongly about it. I think what they do is wicked” (BBC News 2013). Paul B. Thompson makes an important observation about the lack of self-critical reflection on both sides of the polarized debate. He writes: It is…past time…to discard simplistic thinking on agriculture…. No blanket endorsement or condemnation of biotechnology makes any sense at all. Each proposal will have to be evaluated case by case. But doing that will require a discourse that is capable of following an argument of some sophistication and complexity. And that, in turn, will require a bit more literacy in the methods, purposes, and history of agriculture and agricultural science. Biotechnology can help the poor, but whether it will depends on people of good will taking the time to understand and consider the arguments in some detail (Thompson 2009).

However, creating such discourse is the challenge. Finding ways to appraise innovations in a careful and limited ways, instead of the sweeping and conflicting claims of technological optimists and technological pessimists, could play an essential role in developing a narrative of sustainability. This chapter identified two of the many challenges that will need to be overcome to create such a discourse. The first challenge would be for technological optimists and technological pessimists to somehow develop a common discourse for interpreting innovations in agricultural biotechnology. This would mean moving beyond the metaphysical assumptions about technology driving the optimistic and pessimistic positions and adopting a technological pragmatism as philosophy of technology. Shared goals would need to be characterized in discrete, achievable terms that are ethically justified; progress toward those goals would need to be gauged by an agreed upon system of measurement. The second challenge would be to overcome defects in the marketdriven conception of the narrative of progress. The idea discussed in this chapter is to correct defects in the current incentive system that leads to market failures, which are ethical failures, with a publicly funded, pay-for-performance incentive system. In this alternative system ethical goals could be established and private companies would be rewarded for progress made toward fulfilling these goals. It is obvious that overcoming these two challenges will be difficult and take time.

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The purpose of this chapter was not to meet these challenges, but to stimulate thought by pointing them out and gesturing toward possible solutions through the illustration of GE biofortified crops and a pay-for-performance system. The market-­ driven narrative of progress is firmly entrenched in our technological civilization. Nevertheless, a modified incentive system that motivates technological development in more consciously ethical directions will need to emerge as a central element in a narrative of sustainability. It is hard to predict what that incentive system might look like; the HIF-like system suggested in this chapter should be seen as a conversation starter, not necessarily a proposal. Recalling Thompson’s remarks above, “biotechnology can help the poor” and, it can be added, help solve environmental problems. However, for this to happen both sides in the polarized GE debate would need to find a common narrative, or discourse that allows for greater sophistication and discrimination than either technological optimisms or technological pessimisms.

References Banerjee, A., A. Hollis, and T. Pogge. 2010. The Health Impact Fund: Incentives for improving access to medicines. The Lancet 375: 166–169. Berman, J., C.  Zhu, E.  Pérez-Massot, G.  Arjó, U.  Zorrilla-López, G.  Masip, R.J.M.  Banakar, G. Sanahuja, G. Farré, B. Miralpeix, C. Bai, E. Vamvaka, M. Sabalza, R.M. Twyman, L. Bassié, T. Capell, and P. Christou. 2013. Can the world afford to ignore biotechnology solutions that address food insecurity? Plant Molecular Biology 83: 5–19. Berry, W., J. Herman, and C. Michael. 2007. ‘Our biotech future’: An exchange. New York Review. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2007/09/27/our-biotech-future-an-exchange/. Accessed 5 May 2016. Bishai, D., and R. Nalubola. 2002. The history of food fortification in the United States: Its relevance for current fortification efforts in developing countries. Economic Development and Cultural Change 51 (1): 37–53. Cochrane, W.W. 1958. Farm prices: Myth and reality. St. Paul: University of Minnesota Press. Cotter, J. 2013. Golden illusion: The broken promise of “golden rice.” Greenpeace International. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/publications/agriculture/2013/458%20-%20Golden%20Illusion-GE-goldenrice.pdf. Accessed 25 May 2016. De Steur, H., D. Blancquaert, S. Strobbe, W. Lambert, X. Gellynck, and D. Van Der Straeten. 2015. Status and market potential of transgenic biofortified crops. Nature Biotechnology 33: 25–29. Eisenstein, M. 2014. Biotechnology: Against the grain. Nature 514. http://www.nature.com/ nature/journal/v514/n7524_supp/full/514S55a.html?message-global=remove&WT.ec_ id=NATURE-20141030 Accessed 25 May 2016. European Commission. 2000. Commission adopts communication on precautionary principle. EUR-Lex. http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-00-96_en.htm. Accessed 24 May 2016. Glenna, L.L., and K. Jones. 2015. Genetically engineered crops and rural society. In Plant biotechnology: Experiences and future prospects, ed. A. Ricroch, S. Chopra, and S. Fleischer, 93–106. Dordrecht: Springer. Golden Rice Humanitarian Board. Golden rice project. http://www.goldenrice.org. Accessed 24 May 2016. Gostin, L.O., and M. Powers. 2006. What does social justice require for the public’s health? Public health ethics and policy imperatives. Health Affairs 25 (4): 1053–1060. http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/25/4/1053.full. Accessed 25 May 2016.

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Greenpeace International. 2016. Golden rice. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/agriculture/problem/Greenpeace-and-Golden-Rice/. Accessed 25 May 2016. Health Impact Fund. http://healthimpactfund.org. Accessed 25 May 2016. Ishii-Eiteman, M. 2011. ‘Golden rice’ or Trojan horse? Pesticide Action Network North America. http://www.panna.org/blog/golden-rice-or-trojan-horse. Accessed 25 May 2016. Jasanoff, S. 2005. Let them eat cake’: GM foods and the democratic imagination. In Science and citizens: Globalization and the challenge of engagement, ed. M. Leach, I. Scoones, and B. Wynne, 183–198. London and New York: Zed Books. Johnston, J.  2008. Intellectual property and biomedicine. In From birth to death and bench to clinic: The Hastings Center bioethics briefing book for journalists, policymakers, and campaigns, ed. M. Crowley, 93–96. Garrison: The Hastings Center. Juarez, K. 2014. Biotech innovations that are changing the world. DIPnote, US State Department’s official blog. 30 May 2014. https://blogs.state.gov/stories/2014/05/30/biotech-innovations-arechanging-world. Accessed 19 January 2017. Krieger, N., and A.-E. Birn. 1998. A vision of social justice as the foundation for public health: Commemorating 150 years of the spirit of 1848. American Journal of Public Health 88 (11): 1603–1606. Levins, R.A., and W.W. Cochrane. 1996. The treadmill revisited. Land Economics 72 (4): 550–553. Lynas, M. 2013. The true story about who destroyed a genetically modified rice crop. Slate. http:// www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/08/26/golden_rice_attack_in_philippines_anti_gmo_ activists_lie_about_protest_and.html. Accessed 20 January 2017. McGrath, M. 2013. GM ‘golden rice’ opponents wicked, says Owen Paterson. BBC News. http:// www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-24515938. Accessed 20 January 2017. Newell-McGloughlin, M. 2008. Nutritionally improved agricultural crops. Plant Physiology 147 (3): 939–953. Pandav, C.S., K. Yadav, R. Srivatsava, R. Pandav, and M.G. Karmarkar. 2013. Iodine deficiency disorders (IDD) control in India. The Indian Journal of Medical Research 138 (3): 418–433. Pogge, T. 2005. Human rights and global health: A research program. Metaphilosophy 36 (1/2): 182–202. ———. 2009. Health Impact Fund and its justification by appeal to human rights. Journal of Social Philosophy 40 (4): 549–569. ———. 2013. Unjustified regulation prevents use of GMO technology for public good. Trends in Biotechnology 31 (3): 131–133. Sarewitz, D. 2009. The idea of progress. In A companion to the philosophy of technology, ed. J. Olsen, S. Pedersen, and V. Hendricks, 303–307. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Shiva, V. 2014. Golden rice: Myth, not miracle. GMWATCH.org. http://www.gmwatch.org/news/ archive/2014/15250-golden-rice-myth-not-miracle. Accessed 26 May 2014. Stein, A., H.P.S. Sachdev, and M. Qaim. 2006. Potential impact and cost-effectiveness of golden Rice. Nature Biotechnology 24: 1200–1201. Talsma, E.F., I.D.  Brouwer, H.  Verhoef, G.N.  Mbera, A.M.  Mwangi, A.Y.  Demir, B.  Maziya-­ Dixon, E. Boy, M.B. Zimmermann, and A. Melse-Boonstra. 2016. Biofortified yellow cassava and vitamin a status of Kenyan children: A randomized controlled trial. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 103 (1): 258–267. Thompson, P.B. 1997. Food biotechnology in ethical perspective. London: Chapman and Hall. ———. 1998. Agricultural ethics: Research, teaching, and public policy. Ames: Iowa State University Press. ———. 2007. Food biotechnology in ethical perspective, 2nd ed, ed. J.  Eckinger. Dordrecht: Springer ———. 2009. Can agricultural biotechnology help the poor? The answer is yes, but with qualifications. Science Progress. http://scienceprogress.org/2009/06/ag-biotech-thompson/. Accessed 25 May 2016. United Nations General Assembly. 1948. The universal declaration of human rights. UN. http:// www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/. Accessed 25 May 2016.

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van den Belt, H., and B.G. Gremmen. 2002. Between precautionary principle and “sound science”: Distributing the burdens of proof. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 15 (1): 103–122. Wesseler, J., S. Kaplan, and D. Zilberman. 2014. The cost of delaying approval of golden rice. Agricultural and Resource Economics Review Update 3 (17): 1–3. World Health Organization. 2009 Global prevalence of vitamin A deficiency in populations at risk 1995–2005: WHO Global Database on Vitamin A Deficiency. http://www.who.int/vmnis/ database/vitamina/x/en/. Accessed 3 February 2017. ———. 2016a Metrics: Disability-adjusted life year (DALY). WHO. http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/metrics_daly/en/. Accessed 25 May 2016. ———. 2016b Tuberculosis fact sheet 104. WHO. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/ fs104/en/. Accessed 25 May 2016.

Chapter 3

Magic Bullets I, History, Philosophy and Criticisms

Abstract  “Magic bullet” is a key term in the many critiques of agricultural biotechnology. The search for magic bullets is a key element in the narrative of progress, and remains an important goal of biomedical and agricultural research. The first part of this chapter examines the historical origins of the magic bullet strategy in biomedicine. There are clear parallels in biomedicine and agriculture, which both overuse and misuse the magic bullet strategy, causing serious health and environmental problems. Understanding the parallels and connections between biomedicine and agriculture provides for a deeper understanding of the genetic engineering debate. The second part of this chapter uses unintended consequences to critically examine and evaluate the magic bullet criticisms of biotechnology based on unintended consequences with the objective of determining where these criticisms provide insights and where they can mislead. The chapter concludes that, rather than rejecting the magic bullet strategy, we would do well to understand its defects and limitations. These investigations into the history, philosophy, and defects of the magic bullet strategy provide a framework for critically examining genetically engineered crops in terms of three categories: side effects, revenge effects, and balance between reductive and holistic strategies. The next chapter will apply these categories for criticisms of the magic bullet strategy to evaluate the two most widely used and profitable genetically engineered crops.

3.1  Introduction Craig Holdrege  and Steve Talbot, authors of Beyond Biotechnology: The Barren Promise of Genetic Engineering (2010), contrasts the magic bullet approach of GE crops to a holistic and ecological paradigm in agriculture. He writes: In [the organismic or ecological] paradigm you are keenly aware of the dangers of isolating phenomena in order to understand them, since such procures lead to overly simple and static concepts, and to the illusion that there are magic-bullet solutions to complex problems (Holdrege and Talbot 2010, emphasis added).

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 N. D. Scott, Food, Genetic Engineering and Philosophy of Technology, The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics 28, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96027-2_3

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Holdrege and Talbot are advocates for alternative, ecological approaches to agriculture. They reject GE crops because they are products of the “reductive” magic bullet strategy. This approach has created the high chemical input, industrial agriculture systems of today and is not suited to create the sustainable agricultural systems of tomorrow. Magic bullet is a key term in the many critiques of agricultural biotechnology and the narrative of progress. The search for magic bullets remains an important goal of medical and agricultural research. The first part of this chapter examines the origins of the magic bullet strategy in biomedicine. There are clear parallels in biomedicine and agriculture, where the magic bullet strategy is overused and misused, that are leading to very serious problems. Understanding the parallels and connections between biomedicine and agriculture provides for a deeper understanding of the GE debate. The second part of this chapter critically examines and evaluates the magic bullet criticisms of biotechnology based on unintended consequences, side effects and revenge effects. The objective is to determine where these criticisms provide insights and where they can mislead. The chapter concludes that, rather than rejecting the magic bullet strategy, we would do well to understand its limitations. Further, there is a pressing need to challenge the institutional inertia that perpetuates an over emphasis on magic bullets at the expense of problem solving strategies.

3.2  Magic Bullets and Two Models of Health and Disease 3.2.1  Magic Bullets and Biomedical Model Paul Ehrlich, a Nobel Prize-winning biomedical researcher, introduced the notion of a “magic bullet” at the beginning of the twentieth century. Not surprisingly, he intended the term to have a positive meaning. Magic bullet is a metaphor representing a pattern of inquiry. This pattern of inquiry has made important contributions to the development of the narrative of progress. However, as indicated in the opening quotes, magic bullet is now often used as a term to criticize emerging technologies. The fact that this term is now sometimes used as a criticism is an indication of the influence of technological pessimism and the erosion of the narrative of progress. The magic bullet metaphor provides a key for interpreting and understanding important issues in the GE debate. Ehrlich first used the term “magic bullet” in a speech given in 1906; he comments: “antibacterial substances are, so to speak, [magic] bullets which strike only those objects for whose destruction they have been produced” (Dubos 1959, 156). The basic idea represented by the metaphor of a magic bullet is that medical research should aim to discover chemotherapies that target specific disease-causing agents while not harming the patient. Strebhardt and Ullrich characterize Ehrlich’s magic bullet approach, writing: “targeted medicine should in theory efficaciously attack pathogens yet remain harmless in healthy tissues” (Strebhardt and Ullrich 2008,

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473). They go on to comment on the extent of Ehrlich’s influence on biomedical research over the last century: [Ehrlich’s] dogma of a rational, targeted strategy against invading microbes or malignant cells has outlived numerous scientific trends; it’s still a paradigm for modern cancer research as well as a valuable guide for disease management. Ehrlich’s ideal of ‘aiming precisely’ using drugs with high efficacy dominates modern drug discovery (Ibid., 477).

Ehrlich’s major contribution was to unite chemistry, biology and medicine in the search for targeted chemotherapies, magic bullets (Ibid.). With this approach Ehrlich was able to develop the first drug to treat syphilis. Further, the magic bullet strategy likely directed Alexander Fleming in his discovery of penicillin during World War I. Ehrlich’s discoveries and insights have helped define a central objective of modern biomedical research. Ehrlich’s discoveries represent a revolution in medical science of the kind described by the influential historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn writes that “Paradigm changes do cause scientists to see the world of their research-engagement differently” (Kuhn 1970, 111). In Kuhnian terms, the turn of the twentieth century was a revolutionary period for medical science. The magic bullet strategy can be seen making an important contribution to a “paradigm shift,” or “scientific revolution” in the health sector (Kuhn 1970). More specifically, the magic bullet metaphor and pattern of inquiry it represents helped define a new “disciplinary matrix” (Ibid.) that created a “normal science” (Ibid.) for modern biomedical research, which still guides much research today. Along with Ehrlich, fellow scientific revolutionaries included the great microbe hunters, most notably Louis Pasteur (1822–1896) and Robert Koch (1843–1910). Pasteur provided the germ theory of disease and Koch contributed his famous postulates, which allowed specific bacteria to be identified with specific diseases. These developments lead to an agent–host–environment epidemiological model. This model sees the “host” and the “environment” as modifying rather than causal factors (Norell 1984, 134). In this new paradigm the specific agents that cause diseases can be identified using Koch’s postulates. Once a disease-causing agent is identified, Ehrlich’s magic bullet strategy can be employed to attack it by discovering targeted chemotherapies that will destroy the pathogen without harming the host. An important element of this paradigm is a monocausal model of disease, which does not consider the host or the environment as disease-causing factors. In sum, the scientific revolution that created modern, biomedical science was largely defined by the doctrine of specific etiology, the monocausal model of disease, and the search for magic bullets. The successes of the monocausal model and the search for magic bullets are essential parts of what is often called the biomedical model. Germov writes: “The biomedical model is based on the assumption that each disease or ailment has a specific cause that physically affects the human body in a uniform and predictable way, meaning that universal ‘cures’ for people are theoretically possible” (Germov 2013). The biomedical model largely defines the technological enterprise of modern medicine, which consists of the powerful pharmaceutical industry, enormous public research institutes and wealthy insurance companies, among others. However,

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p­ hilosopher Alex Broadbent argues that the “monocausal model of disease should not be determined as making empirical claims about disease…[rather] it ought to be interpreted as a normative model. We ought to identify diseases so they can satisfy this model” (Broadbent 2009, 304). In other words, the monocausal model and the doctrine of specific etiology are pragmatic; they are not elements of a general theory of disease. Their philosophical status is that of intellectual instruments to help in resolving particular problems and finding cures for microbial infections. Nonetheless, Broadbent notes that “the monocausal model might be thought to represent a sort of biological chauvinism: the refusal to countenance causes of health that are not biological” (Broadbent 2009). To an important degree the monocausal model and the search for magic bullets has been institutionalized in medical research and the powerful pharmaceutical industry as if they were an ontological theory of disease, not simply a pragmatic problem-solving strategy. The dominant biomedical model is often contrasted with the social model that guides public health efforts and which focuses, for example, on sanitation, nutrition and poverty as determinants of health. As inferred by Broadbent’s comment about “biological chauvinism,” to some degree the biomedical model and social model are in tension as to which model deserves the greater emphasis.1 Investigating the tensions between the biomedical model and the social model is crucial to fully understanding the nature and limits of the magic bullet criticisms of research in biomedicine and agriculture. In his controversial book, The Modern Rise of Population (1976), the British epidemiologist and historian of medicine, Thomas McKeown, famously challenged the idea that the tremendous improvements to health in England from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century were due not to the rise of the biomedical model, but to improvements to the social determinants of health.

3.2.2  Public Health and the Social Model McKeown used demographic information to argue against the widely accepted story that the conquest of infectious diseases was due to the triumph of germ theory, the doctrine of specific etiology and the discovery of magic bullets (Colgrove 2002, 725). McKeown assembled data from England showing an 86% drop in the death rate due to tuberculosis from 1830 to 1947. This decline took place without the benefit of streptomycin, as a treatment for tuberculosis was not introduced until 1947 (McKeown 1980). In addition, it was not until the 1930s that sulfa drugs were 1  Interestingly, the modern, social model of disease, which guides public health, arose just prior to the biomedical model. There is more than a grain of truth to the following comment by Rudolph Virchow (1821–1902), one of the founders of public health and the social model, when he remarks: “Medicine is a social science, and politics nothing but medicine on a grand scale…if medicine is really to accomplish its great task, it must intervene in political and social life…The improvements of medicine would eventually prolong human life, but improvement of social conditions could achieve this result even more rapidly and successfully” (citied in Germov).

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discovered as specific cures for bronchitis and pneumonia. However, mortality from these two diseases had decreased by 90% before this date. According to the “McKeown thesis” the decline of diseases like tuberculosis, diphtheria, pneumonia, and other major nineteenth-century killers was largely due to social contributions to health, higher standards of living and better nutrition. The central idea is that the social model better accounts for the impressive reduction of instances of infectious diseases and increased life expectancy during this period. More specifically, health gains were due to a population-wide reduction of poverty that led to better nutrition, sanitation and general living conditions. People were generally healthier, which “bolstered resistance to disease” (Colgrove 2002, 725). The McKeown thesis has been used to challenge the “chauvinism” of the biomedical model  – that is, the dominance of the magic bullet strategy, with its focus on scientific research and chemotherapies over social and political efforts, i.e. public health efforts, aimed at nutrition and sanitation. There is no necessary reason these two models should be pitted against each other, rather than being complementary. For example, the tremendous success of government-led vaccination programs combines the magic bullet strategy/biomedical model with the public health approach/social model. McKeown’s research has been the subject of much controversy. Subsequent analyses have demonstrated that his research was empirically flawed. For example, McKeown underestimated the role of smallpox inoculations, the development of public hospitals, and improvements in sanitation and food handling (Ibid.). Nevertheless, it is widely agreed that that he was correct in that “curative medical measures played little role in mortality decline prior to the mid-twentieth century” (Ibid.). Despite his flawed methods McKeown has had lasting influence by stimulating a debate between health care strategies. He raised important questions that still need to be addressed about an overemphasis on the biomedical model and magic bullets. However, this does not undermine the significant successes of the monocausal model of disease and the search for magic bullets as a problem-solving strategy, as some advocates for alternative or holistic medicine would argue. The tremendous positive impacts of the magic bullets of antibiotics and vaccines are clear and undeniable. The antibiotic era that began with Ehrlich’s articulation of the magic bullet strategy and Fleming’s discovery of penicillin completely transformed medical science and have greatly benefited humanity (Aminov 2010). However, the misuse and overuse of the magic bullets of medicine are leading to very serious problems. Further, there are clear parallels in agriculture of the overuse and misuse of the magic bullet strategy. Alternative movements and heterodox thinkers need to challenges to the entrenchment of the biomedical model to break up hardened habits of thought, correct defects and stimulate new methods of inquiry and problem solving. However, if the antagonisms are too strident and ideological there is the danger of creating a false dilemma. Medical and agricultural problems are nearly always the results of a complex mix of factors that include biology, sanitation, economics, nutrition, and politics. It is certainly true to say that microorganisms caused the epidemics of the past; it is equally true that microorganisms were but one cause embedded within a complex

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web of causation that included environmental, social, political, and economic factors. Nonetheless, while today’s medical community is intellectually committed to a multifactorial model of disease and the web of causation metaphor, in practice, research, funding and training often focus on identifying disease-causing agents that can be eliminated using chemotherapies. The modern tendency to focus on targeted medical cures, magic bullets, and to overlook or neglect other approaches is scientifically deficient and leads to unnecessary loss of life (Krieger 2007). The search for magic bullets is not always the best problem-solving strategy, in medicine or agriculture. Connecting this discussion with the larger themes of this book, to a significant degree the conflict between the biomedical model and models that focus on social and political causes of health and disease overlap with the conflict between conventional agriculture and alternative models of agriculture. These conflicts can be interpreted in terms of an epistemological crisis over the narrative of progress. Contemporary holistic or ecological movements are deeply suspicious of the idea of scientific and technological progress in medicine and agriculture. Further, these movements often reject technological innovations in biomedicine and conventional agriculture as being derived from a defective modernist worldview. Magic bullet criticisms are frequently an expression of the technological pessimism that challenges the dominance of the narrative of progress. Technological pessimists would clearly challenge Bayer’s motto, “Science For A Better Life.” From the pessimistic view, the narrative arc of scientific and technological progress is ironically bending toward a dystopian world. From this brief inquiry into the history and philosophy of the magic bullet strategy in medicine it is possible to draw some general conclusions. The idea of progress and the quest for magic bullets are deeply entrenched in the enormous and powerful institutions, for example, research universities and the life science industry. The biomedical industry and agrochemical/biotech industry are merging (or have merged) into a single, powerful life science industry. For example, at the time of this writing (February 2017), Bayer and Monsanto are attempting to merge to become a behemoth life science company. The magic bullet strategy has become a habitual way of problem solving that is deeply entrenched and institutionalized in modern biomedicine, as will be seen with modern agriculture. This tremendous institutional inertia in both the private and public sectors in medicine and agriculture makes change difficult. However, there is an inherent flaw with the magic bullet strategy arising from its narrowness. This narrow focus (or reductive approach) focuses on specific causes that can be targeted by magic bullets while neglecting other types of causes and other kinds of solutions. It is the narrowness of the magic bullet strategy that proves to be its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. On the one hand, by reducing complexity to a relatively straightforward pattern of inquiry the magic bullet strategy has allowed scientists to make discoveries of tremendous practical consequence. On the other hand, by reducing complexity, the magic bullets of chemistry, and now biotechnology, have generated dangerous unintended consequences.

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Magic bullet criticisms should not be used as a sweeping condemnation of this strategy, as many technological pessimists in alternative health and agriculture movements often use it. It has proven to be extremely successful over the last 100  years. Rather, magic bullet criticisms are best seen as warnings against too often attacking specific problem-causing agents (e.g. bacteria, viruses, insects, weeds, etc.) while ignoring political, cultural, and ecological determinants of problems.

3.3  T  he Magic Bullets of Agriculture and Unintended Consequences Concerns about unintended consequences have been a major focus of the GE debate. In fact, listing possible unintended consequences has been a primary line of attack of opponents of agricultural biotechnology (Thompson 1995). Critics of biotechnology have warned that GEOs pose threats to human health by possibly containing unknown allergens and carcinogens. They have also cautioned of possible environmental harms, such as killing non-target species (e.g., beneficial pollinators, soil organisms, endangered species), creating “superbugs” (insects resistant to pesticides) and “super weeds” (weeds resistant to herbicides), and causing a loss of biodiversity. In order to examine where the magic bullet criticisms based on unintended consequences provide useful insights and where they misdirect the GE debate, it will be helpful to examine two general types of unintended consequences: side effects and revenge effects. Edward Tenner makes a useful distinction between side effects and revenge effects (Tenner 1997, 7). Side effects are unintended consequences of technologies that involve trade-offs. Revenge effects are not trade-offs; they are unintended consequences of technologies that create problems that are worse, or as bad, as the original problem they are designed to solve. To repeat, the objectives of the inquiry in this section are to critically examine and evaluate these two types of criticisms of biotechnology based on unintended consequences, side effects and revenge effects, to determine where they provide insights and where they can mislead.

3.3.1  The Side Effect of Pollution Paul B. Thompson observes: “chemical pesticides represent an ideal case study for environmental criticism of agriculture” (Thompson 1995, 32). The reason for this has much to do with Rachel Carson’s, Silent Spring. Carson’s influential book that identified the threats chemical pesticides posed to animals and ecosystems helped spark the modern environmental movement. It also created a pattern for examining the harms of industrial agriculture by concentrating attention on the side effect of

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chemical pollution. This pattern has been applied to GE crops. There are two aspects of the ecological side effects of agricultural biotechnology. The first is the practice of framing GE crops as a source of genetic pollution. The second is the claim that GE crops are the product of a defective, mechanistic and reductionist worldview that needs to be replaced by an ecological, holistic worldview. This criticism was illustrated in the quote from Craig Holdrege at the beginning of this chapter. The starting points of this examination will be Paul Müller’s discovery of the insecticidal properties of DDT and Rachel Carson’s expose on the unintended ecological side effects of DDT. In 1939 the German chemist, Paul Müller, discovered that DDT was toxic to insects. Müller followed the path blazed by Paul Ehrlich in using chemistry to discover targeted solutions to biological problems. Kinkela observes that Müller thought he had “found a magic bullet to protect crops from insect infestation” (Kinkela 2011, 18, emphasis added). Nebel and Wright comment: “DDT appeared to be nothing less than the long-sought magic bullet, a chemical that was extremely toxic to insects and yet seemed relatively nontoxic to humans and other mammals” (Nebel and Wright 1993, 217). The development of synthetic pesticides, using the magic bullet strategy, was a key part of the global push for social progress through scientific and technological progress that transformed agriculture in the twentieth century. In 1935, just 4 years prior to Müller’s discovery, Sir Arthur Tansley introduced the notion of an ecosystem (Goley 1996). The ecosystem concept was fundamental to Rachel Carson’s warnings about chemical pollution from widespread application of agricultural pesticides (Seager 2014, 85). When Silent Spring was published in 1962 Americans were largely unfamiliar with the notion of an ecosystem and were shocked to learn that by attacking pests with chemicals farmers were indirectly killing raptors and songbirds (Ibid.). Carson argued that the “synthetic creations of man’s inventive mind” were “totally outside the limits of biological experience” (Carson 2002, 7). In the “war against nature” (Ibid.) modern chemistry was introducing novel substances into the environment at a rate that far exceeded the slow deliberate pace of ecological change. In a direct attack on the Enlightenment Project’s notion of social progress through controlling nature with science and technology, Carson writes: “The control of nature is a phase conceived in arrogance… It’s alarming misfortune that science…has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that turning them against insects it has also turned them against the earth” (Ibid., 297). This expression of technological pessimism was a landmark challenge to the narrative of progress. Silent Spring helped to undermine the philosophical foundations of the “belief that science and technology could [inevitably] improve the health and economics of the nation” (Kinkela 2011, 18). In Silent Spring, Carson’s strategy was to use morally charged language to warn the public of the unintended risks and harms form the indiscriminate use of pesticides, which was being driven by large chemical corporations. This strategy is clearly present in the rhetoric of one of the early, influential critics of biotechnology, Jeremy Rifkin. He writes:

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Corporate leaders in the new life industry promise an era where evolution itself becomes subject to human authorship. Critics worry that the re-seeding of the earth could lead to genetic pollution: destroying habitats, destabilizing ecosystems, and diminishing the remaining reservoir of biological diversity on the planet. Each new synthetic introduction is tantamount to playing ecological roulette. The long-term cumulative impact of thousands of introductions of genetically modified organisms could well exceed the damage that has resulted from the release of petro-chemical products into the earth’s ecosystems (Rifkin 1998, 70 emphasis added).

Rifkin’s final sentence leaves little doubt that his strategy is to frame GE crops as analogous to chemical pesticides, and to assert that GE crops pose an even greater threat to ecosystems than synthetic pesticides. He clearly identifies biotechnology with synthetic chemistry by using the pollution-frame of Silent Spring. The use of the pollution-frame for biotechnology is a repeated tactic of anti-GE activists and organizations. From the late 1980s to the present, Greenpeace International has consistently used the pollution-frame in their influential campaign against agricultural biotechnology. In a policy briefing, titled “Genetic Pollution—a Multiplying Nightmare,” the organization states that “foreign genes” inserted into agricultural plants “causes genetic contamination or pollution of the natural gene pool” (Greenpeace 2002). By framing GE crops as the source of hidden and irreversible pollution the opponents of biotechnology are able to tap into Rachel Carson’s powerful moral discourse that did much to form modern environmental thought. The experiences with polluting agricultural chemicals in the second-half of the twentieth century helped form the pessimistic narrative. For many activists in alternative agriculture, food and health movements, experiences with industrial pesticides and fertilizers lead them to a general suspicion of technological innovations in agriculture and to favor “natural” or organic practices. The crude, normative generalization can be briefly stated: Societies have an obligation to avoid or mitigate pollution in the environment from the agrochemical industry. It has been clearly demonstrated that chemical technologies in the agricultural industry generate pollution by putting foreign substances into ecosystems. Therefore, societies should avoid new agricultural technologies from the agrochemical industry. There are many problems with this generalization, in particular the move from skepticism about synthetic chemicals to skepticism about all technological innovations. Specifically, is inference from experiences with chemical pesticides to GE crops well founded? The role of activists and environmental groups in focusing attention on the health risks and environmental side effects of GE crops is a positive result of Rachel Carson’s legacy. It is right that consumer groups and environmental groups should hold researchers, corporations and, most importantly, regulators accountable for guarding public health and vulnerable ecosystems from possible side effects of new agricultural technologies. Carson’s ecological side effect critique of chemical pesticide and her suspicions of the motives and trustworthiness of agrochemical corporations provide useful insights for the GE debate. However, the framing of GE crops as a source of pollution similar to “petro-chemical products” likely misdirects the GE debate.

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Ironically, according to Daniel Charles, many scientists working in the early days of the agbiotech industry saw this biotechnology as a way to make a break from the agricultural industry’s harmful chemical legacy (Charles 2002). Many of these scientists grew up in the 1960s and 1970s and learned about ecology, ecosystems and the harmful effects of industrial chemicals in the environment. They came of age in a world that was influenced by Silent Spring, Earth Day, and a growing environmental movement. In his history of the biotech industry, Charles observes that for young genetic engineers, “chemicals represented the dirty and regrettable past, and biology was the savior” (Charles 2002, 25). They believed that biotechnology might allow modern agriculture to become less dependent on environmentally harmful chemicals with their legacy of pollution. It seems that the generalization from the pollution caused by synthetic chemistry to the pollution that will be caused by biotechnology can be readily disputed. Creating synthetic petro-chemicals is very different from altering organisms’ genomes to produce proteins that give those organism desirable traits such as pest resistance. The pesticidal trait of GE crops comes from taking advantage of naturally occurring biopesticides; biopesticides are qualitatively different from petrochemical pesticides. It readily seems that the techniques and products of genetic engineering are sufficiently different from the techniques and products of industrial chemistry such that framing GE crops as similar sources of environmental pollution is forced and misleading. The inevitable side effects resulting from GE crops will be qualitatively different from those of synthetic pesticides because of the enormous differences between biotechnology and synthetic chemistry. For example, what is commonly referred to as “genetic pollution,” is the phenomenon of gene flow, the movement of transgenes from GE crops to wild relatives, or non-GE or organic crops. The side effects of gene flow are likely to be very different from the side effects of pollution from synthetic pesticides. The unintended health and environmental consequences from agricultural biotechnology should be examined on their own terms. The pollution-frame misleads by creating an impression in people’s minds that agricultural biotechnology is a direct extension of agricultural petro-­ chemicals. That does not mean that GE crops will necessarily be safer for the environment or human health. It does mean that the pollution-frame rests on guilt by association. The genetic pollution-frame seems to be an instance of the genetic fallacy, no pun intended. To explain, the most relevant feature that the majority of the GE crops on the market to date and synthetic pesticides have in common is that they are often developed and marketed by some of the same corporations with a history of chemical pollution, for example DuPont and Monsanto. The fact that the chemical companies that historically produced chemical pesticides are now producing GE crops raises important ethical concerns that can be traced back to their behavior toward Rachel Carson. In an effort to protect their interests, the “pesticide producers tried to intimidate Carson’s publisher into suppressing the book before publication… Chemical companies attempted to discredit Carson and her findings, and threatened to pull ads from magazines and newspapers that gave Silent Spring favorable reviews” (earthobservatory.nasa.gov). The behaviors of the chemical companies

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raise serious ethical questions concerning integrity, honesty, trustworthiness and concern for the greater good. These companies placed economic self-interest over respect for scientific integrity, honest debate, and health and environmental safety. These are important ethical questions regarding the motives and behaviors of chemical companies once their products were found to cause harm. The pollution-frame applied to GE plants makes for a strong rhetorical tool but it relies on a weak inference and arguments; it likely misleads the GE debate. More importantly, as Paul B. Thompson points out, concentrating the GE debate on possible health and environmental side effect does not advance the philosophical debate over the future of agriculture (Thompson 1995). The side effect criticisms of biotechnology based on the pollution-frame do not represent a philosophical problem for the dominant, industrial model of agriculture. Thompson writes: “By stressing unwanted outcomes, the critics are working within rather than without the existing utilitarian philosophical framework for industrial agriculture” (Ibid., 42). If critics of industrial agriculture and biotechnology want to rethink its philosophical foundations they will “have to mount an attack that goes beyond a list of unwanted outcomes” (Ibid.). In other words, by itself, the pollution-frame simply initiates a back and forth debate over possible outcomes, which in principle should be decidable by collecting scientific and economic data on consequences. The second, related, aspect of magic bullet criticisms based on side effects does raise deeper philosophical questions. These criticisms are explicitly philosophical. They assert that the magic bullets of agricultural biotechnology are part of a defective, mechanistic and reductive worldview that needs to be replaced by an enlightened holistic, ecological worldview.

3.3.2  Magic Bullets, Side Effects and Worldviews Influential critics of agricultural biotechnology frequently criticize it as being part of a reductionist worldview. The biomedical model is criticized in similar terms. Activists in various alternative health movements contrast the reductionist worldview of biomedicine with various types of holistic models of health. One feature of this criticism is that the reductionist “approach has fuelled the search for ‘magic bullet’ cures, resulting in huge expenditure on medical drugs, technology, and surgery. It has also led to a curative and interventionist bias in medical care, often at the expense of prevention and non-medical alternatives” (Germov 2103, 13). These remarks are a general criticism of both modern medicine and agriculture. For example, in response to claims that genetic engineering is more precise than traditional breeding, the Indian activist and popular author and speaker, Vandana Shiva, asserts: “Such confidence arises from the mechanical reductionist world view that informed the founders of molecular biology in the 1930s” (Shiva 1995, 124). Further, in order to fix the problems of modern agriculture, Shiva recommends “a shift from the reductionist, mechanistic paradigm of agricultural, education, research and extension to the holistic paradigm of agroecology” (Shiva 2015). Along the same lines,

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recalling again the quote from the beginning of this chapter, Holdrege writes: “In [the organismic or ecological] paradigm you are keenly aware of the dangers of isolating phenomena in order to understand them, since such procures lead to overly simple and static concepts, and to the illusion that there are magic-bullet solutions to complex problems” (Holdrege and Talbot 2010, emphasis added). There is some truth in asserting an opposition between the reductionist approach of genetic engineering and alternative holistic approach of agroecology. However, placing reductionism and holism in strict opposition in agriculture, or health care, creates a false dilemma. It is true that the major GE crops currently on the market follow Koch’s magic bullet strategy. The three economically of the most important traits for GE crops currently on the market are narrowly targeted solutions aimed at attacking specific agricultural problems: insects, weeds and viruses. GE crops with insecticidal traits attack specific insects that are damaging crops while leaving the plant unharmed, and also reportedly do not harm beneficial insects and humans. GE crops that are herbicide resistant also fit into the magic bullet strategy. These plants are engineered so that they are not harmed by the herbicide, the actual magic bullet. As will be discussed in the next chapter, when a GE herbicide resistant crop is paired with an herbicide the herbicide is able to function as magic bullet, because it kills the pests (weeds) and does not harm the GE plant. And, of course, those crops that are engineered to be resistant to certain herbicide fit into the magic bullet strategy. Vanloqueren and Baret observe that “the fundamental strategy in genetic engineering is to modify plants to allow them to be productive in adverse conditions caused by, for instance, pests, pathogens…”(Vanloqueren and Baret 2009, 972). They go on to note that this “[strategy] fits the scientific paradigm that underlies genetic engineering as of reductionism… [while] the scientific paradigm on which agroecological engineering relies on ecology (and holism)” (Ibid.). It seems perfectly logical to contrast the reductionism of the magic bullet strategy with the holism of agroecology in reference to genetic engineering. However, setting these two perspectives in strict opposition may ultimately be counterproductive as, again, it creates artificially forced choice between pragmatic strategies. Reductionistic and holistic approaches would be better seen as complementary. One source of confusion in the philosophical debates in agriculture (and in health care) over reductionism and holism is that these terms are used in at least three senses: epistemological, ontological and methodological. Epistemological reductionism is a philosophical theory where more foundational domains of knowledge explain higher-level domains of knowledge. For example, in a reductionist theory of knowledge, biology might be explained by chemistry and chemistry might be explained by physics (Fang and Casadevall 2011, 1401; Beresford 2010, 721). Ontological reductionism would describe existence at the most basic level. For example, in a reductionist, physicalist ontology all phenomena can be reduced to the reality of matter as described by fundamental physics. It seems that many philosophical critics of agricultural biotechnology, as in the example of Vandana Shiva, are using reductionism and holism in their epistemological and ontological senses, since they are contrasting a mechanistic and reductive worldview with a holistic, ecological worldview. The essence of this criticism seems

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to be that a holistic ecological view on reality provides true knowledge (epistemological holism) and a right description (ontological holism) of nature. However, to assert that an enlightened ecological worldview can replace the misguided modernist worldview is to oppose one conceit to another. Perhaps the germ of hubris is found in the belief that finite and fallible humans can arm themselves with true knowledge and right description of reality that will finally set things right—that armed with metaphysical truth we can either subdue nature or live in harmony with nature. There does not seem to be much wisdom in overthrowing one fallible and incomplete worldview with another fallible and incomplete worldview. It is true that in metaphysical disputes holism and reductionism are in logical opposition, but there is no necessary reason to oppose methodological reductionism to methodological holism. In an article on reductionism and holism in the biological sciences, Fang and Casadevall note, “methodological reductionism and holism are not truly opposed to each other. Each approach has its limitations” (Ibid.). On the one hand, reductionism can fail to see important connections at the systems level. On the other, holism can be overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of information and complexity at the systems level. The pragmatic approach would be to see the reductionism of molecular biology and the holism of systems biology as “interdependent and complementary” (Ibid.). To illustrate this point with regards to agricultural biotechnology the philosopher of biology, Fred Gifford writes: One sort of reductionistic view would involve not paying sufficient attention to the ecological relationships between different variables in the course of such things as environmental safety analysis…But this is very different from being a reductionist in the sense of limiting one’s attention to problem-solutions that focus on changing one or a few genes in a crop. For one could do this and be ecologically sophisticated in one’s handling of environmental impact assessment. One might expect “genetic engineers” to be reductionists in one sense (methodological), but they wouldn’t need to be in the other (Gifford 2010, 212)

The point to emphasize is that a pragmatic philosophy of technology of genetic engineering is not committed to a mechanistic, reductionist worldview. The choice between a “false” reductionist worldview and a “true” holistic worldview is forced. It does not advance deliberations over genetic engineering in agriculture. Methodological holism and methodological reductionism should be seen as complementary. The magic bullet metaphor simply refers to a pragmatic, problem-solving strategy, be it in medicine or agriculture. The ecological worldview criticism would also seem to mislead the GE debate. It errs by thinking that finite and fallible humans can know and describe the ontological web of causation. Many skeptical philosophers have long been aware of the inscrutability of this problem. For example, the seventeenth century French philosopher, mathematician and physicist, Blaise Pascal writes: “But the parts of the world are all so related and linked to one another, that I believe it impossible to know one without the other and without the whole” (Pascal 2003, 20). A more helpful contrast than the one between holist and reductionist worldviews would be between better and worse habits of inquiry in addressing concrete

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agricultural problems. Rather than rejecting this strategy as part of a wrongheaded worldview, magic bullet criticisms would do better to point out the limitations of this problems-solving strategy, in agriculture or medicine. Further, critics should challenge the institutional inertia that perpetuates an over emphasis of reductionist strategies (e.g., chemical herbicides) at the expense of problem solving strategies that operate at the systems level (e.g., agroecological strategies for weed management).

3.3.3  The Revenge Effects of Superpests To recall, unlike side effects, revenge effects do not involve trade-offs of harms versus benefits. They are unintended consequences of technologies that create problems that are worse than, or at least as bad as, the original problem. The primary revenge effect associated with the magic bullet strategy in medicine and agriculture is the evolution of resistant pests and pathogens—bacteria, insects and weeds. In an article titled “Humans as the World’s Greatest Evolutionary Force,” Stephen Palumbi writes: “The overwhelming impact of humans on evolution stems from the ecological role we now play on the world, and the industrialization of our agriculture, medicine, and landscapes…. Medical and agricultural technologies, in particular antibiotics, [insecticides] and herbicides, are now one of the earth’s greatest evolutionary forces” (Palumbi 2001). The most prominent revenge effects associated with the magic bullet strategy are superbugs and superweeds. These are pathogens and pests with high levels of resistance to antibiotics or pesticides, and sometimes with increased virulence and enhanced transmissibility (Ibid.). Superbugs and superweeds result from the misuse and overuse of the magic bullet strategy that, again, does not adequately take into account factors - cultural, economic, political, ecological and evolutionary - at the systems-level. To explain using biomedicine as an example, 30–40 years ago addressing bacterial infection with antibiotics was seen as an unqualified success. However, taking the long-view many people fear that we are quickly wasting the magic bullets from the “golden age of antibiotics” and doctors and health workers will increasingly be confronted with superbugs. Davies and Davies write: “The importance and value of antibiotics cannot be overstated; we are totally dependent on them for the treatment of infectious diseases, and they should never be considered mere commodities” (Davies and Davies 2010, 429). Unfortunately, antibiotics are being used in ways that are driving the evolution of superbugs. The planet is saturated with these toxic agents, which has of course contributed significantly to the selection of resistant strains. The development of generations of antibiotic-­ resistant microbes and their distribution in microbial populations through the biosphere are the results of many years of unremitting selection pressure from human applications of antibiotics, via underuse, overuse, and misuse (Ibid., 418).

As noted, historically the monocausal model and magic bullet approach place behavioral, cultural, ecological, and evolutionary factors in the background. While this is an oversimplification, it is generally true that these factors are often not

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sufficiently modeled and their effects anticipated. As a result, “resistance mechanisms are pandemic and create an enormous clinical and financial burden on the health care system worldwide” (Ibid., 429). The application of the magic bullet strategy in medicine has too often failed to anticipate and prevent the revenge effect of resistant strains of bacteria. For these reasons, biomedicine is now on an antibiotic treadmill: as the efficacy of one antibiotic is diminished another generation of antibiotics must be developed; as the efficacy of the second generation is diminished, yet another generation must be developed; and so on. But this treadmill is ultimately dangerous, expensive, and likely unsustainable. There are now several medically significant pathogens that can no longer be treated with antibiotics, and the number is growing. In the E.U. nearly 25,000 patients die each year from multidrug resistant infections and in the US nearly 65,000 people die each year from hospital-acquired infections (Aminov 2010). The evolution of resistance is likely inevitable, but actions can be taken to slow the evolution of resistance and preserve life saving drugs. These would involve changing the practices and behaviors of health workers (i.e., addressing cultural and political factors) and taking steps to prevent the unnecessary flow of antibiotics into the environmental (i.e., addressing cultural, political, evolutionary and ecological factors) (Ibid. 429). The pesticide treadmill parallels the antibiotic treadmill in biomedicine. Paul Müller discovered the insecticidal properties of DDT in 1938; by the time he was awarded the Noble Prize for this discovery in 1948 “evolution of resistance [to DDT] had already been reported in house flies” (Palumbi 2001, 1786). In fact, by the time Silent Spring was published mosquitoes had begun to develop widespread resistance to the DDT. The evolution of resistance to insecticides is well known. Very briefly, in any given field there exists a dynamic equilibrium between consumers and producers, predators and prey. Insects become classified as pests when their numbers become great enough to significantly impact profitability. Synthetic insecticides approximate the ideal of a magic bullet in that they kill the pest while leaving the crop unharmed. However, they also kill a broad range of non-target insects. This disrupts the ecological dynamics in the field, as both pests and beneficial insects (i.e. insects that prey on the pest, keeping their numbers in check) are exterminated. After the spraying, during which not all the pests are killed, the population rebounds and surges due to the lag time in the repopulation of beneficial insects. For this reason another round of spraying is required. All of this spraying creates a strong selective pressure favoring the evolution of strains of pests that are resistant to the insecticide, hence, in time, rendering the insecticide useless. Scientists must then develop new insecticides, another round of magic bullets, to control the pest, thus initiating the pesticide treadmill phenomenon. The evolution of resistance is also a fact of life in weed science. While the evolution of resistance is not unique to modern pesticides—this is a chronic problem for all types of agriculture—it creates acute and troubling problems with modern pesticides due to side effects and revenge effects. Herbicides generally only work 10–25  years before resistance develops (Palimbi 2001, 1786). As in the case of antibiotic resistance in biomedicine, this treadmill ultimately leads to the revenge effect of superbugs and, in the case of herbicides, superweeds. The antibiotic and pesticide treadmills are dangerous and expensive. It is important to point out that the pesticide treadmill is a special case of

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a perennial problem for agriculture. It is the result of the omnipresence of evolution. Farmers and plant breeders have always had to do battle with evolution “outsmarting” their strategies. The problem is growing more acute for at least two reasons. Because modern crops have experienced little natural evolution they have developed few natural defenses and are more vulnerable to pests. The solution to this problem has been an overreliance on the magic bullet strategy and pesticides. In agriculture, as in medicine, the conceptual flaw with the magic bullet strategy is that it does not adequately model behavioral, cultural, political, economic, ecological, and evolutionary factors. This inadequacy leads to a treadmill phenomenon and the revenge effects of superbugs and superweeds. (This treadmill phenomenon is, of course, distinct from the technological treadmill of agricultural economics discussed in the last chapter. But it is key is to observe how the use of the treadmill metaphor in both cases undermines the narrative of progress. Further, it is possible for the pesticide treadmill to be a driver of the technological treadmill.) As the pesticide treadmill grows in significance agricultural scientists, like medical scientists, will be forced to continually create new generations of pesticides to address the revenge effects of superbugs and superweeds. There seems to be a law of diminishing returns in antibiotic and pesticide research. Just as medical researchers refer to a golden age of antibiotic discoveries, agricultural researchers refer to a golden age of pesticides during the 1950s, when discoveries were easier and less costly (Casida and Quistad 1998). It is, again, the narrow focus of this reductive strategy that frequently fails to factor in how farmers actually use synthetic insecticides and herbicides, or how their actual use interacts with ecological and evolutionary dynamics in the field. Despite the fact that this is a well-understood phenomenon, many farmers and technology companies seem to accept the consequences of the pesticide treadmill rather than address it. Strategies for mitigating the revenge effect of resistant pests have been well understood and available for several decades. But, as will be seen in the next chapter, there are few incentives for implementing these strategies. One well-known response to the revenge effect of superbugs and superweeds is Integrated Pest Management (IPM). IPM has now been in use for over 30 years and it is acknowledged as being an empirically tested, scientifically sound approach. The University of California’s IPM website describes this alternative paradigm in pest management as an …ecosystem-based strategy that focuses on the long-term prevention of pests or their damage through a combination of techniques such as biological control, habitat manipulation, modification of cultural practices, and the use of resistant varieties. Pesticides are used only after monitoring indicates they are needed according to established guidelines, and treatments are made with the goal of removing only the target organisms (UC-Davis).

In the first section of this chapter we referred to the magic bullet strategy as part of a new research paradigm that emerged in the nineteenth century through the work of Ehrlich, Koch and Pasteur. It is conceivable that IPM is part of a new paradigm that responds to defects in the magic bullet strategy. Further, it can be characterized as a pragmatic strategy that takes advantage of the methodological holism and methodological reductionism discussed in the previsions section. If widely adopted and successful, IPM qualifies as the kind of gestalt switch Thomas Kuhn describes

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as a paradigm shift. Kuhn writes that “Paradigm changes do cause scientists to see the world of their research-engagement differently” (Kuhn 1970, 111). Hence, looking at the problem of pest management in terms avoiding, managing and mitigation the evolution of resistance in light of the dynamics of cultural, ecological, and evolutionary factors at the systems-level creates a new set of puzzles for normal agricultural science to solve. Generally speaking, one of the primary puzzle-solving activities for scientists would be to discover ways of manipulating behavioral, cultural and ecological factors to prevent pest populations from reaching harmful numbers. The goal is not to eradicate the pest, but to keep populations in check by controlling the ecological dynamics in the field between pests and beneficial insects. This is in contrast to the exclusive use of the magic bullet strategy where the primary puzzle solving activity is to develop toxins to target specific pests. In this management plan, “magic bullet” insecticides are used sparingly and judiciously to maximize their benefits while minimizing the evolution of resistance. In sum, IPM is an effort to get off the pesticide treadmill by prioritizing the management of behavioral, cultural, ecological and evolutionary factors. However, IPM is not an ultimate fix. It suffers from the endemic problems associated with systems-level approaches, complexity and implementation. IPM programs have a proven track record of reducing the use of chemical pesticide in many settings and countries. However, to achieve the best results requires collecting, modeling and interpreting much information. Further, in his review of data on IPM programs, Lynn Epstein points out that, “in the absence of rigorous IPM education programs, pesticide overuse is common” (Epstein 2014, 387). Extensive data collection and farmer education and cooperation are required for this strategy to be implemented effectively. There are clear parallels between IPM and the strategy proposed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to get off the antibiotic treadmill. The CDC’s plan calls for “accelerating research that focuses on… developing infection control strategies to prevent disease transmission” (Schuman 2003, 85). It calls for educating “physicians to prescribe antibiotics more prudently” (Ibid). To preserve the efficacy of antibiotics they can no longer be used liberally. Further, it requires new strategies to prevent infection and the careful and judicious use of antibiotics. This pragmatic strategy requires a new research paradigm that better models cultural, ecological, and evolutionary factors to preserve the magic bullets of medicine. Clearly, the extremely fruitful technological innovation of antibiotics is not driving the treadmill phenomenon; it is their overuse and misuse. The same is true in agriculture: the fruitful innovation of pesticides is not driving the treadmill phenomenon; it is their overuse and misuse.

3.4  Conclusion By way of summary, a more pragmatic philosophy of agriculture would see reductionistic theories and holistic theories as complementary instruments for problem solving, to be judged on the work they perform. In pragmatist’s terms a strong case

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can be made for Koch’s magic bullet strategy. It has been a fruitful problems-­solving tool in medicine and agriculture. Rachel Carson understood this when she wrote: “It is not my contention that chemical insecticides must never be used. I do contend that we have put poisonous and biologically potent chemicals indiscriminately into the hands of persons largely or wholly ignorant of their potentials for harm” (Carson 2002, 12). However, this reductive approach has been used for over a century now and its deficiencies are well known. Magic bullet criticisms would caution against its proclivity to generate unintended consequences, side effects and revenge effects. In addition, one important problem is that the search for magic bullets is often still seen as a search for ultimate solutions, when they are nearly always temporary solutions. A common definition for a magic bullet is as an effective solution to a previously unsolvable problem (merriam-webster.com). This persistent magic bullet myth has led to the deeper problem of the overuse and misuse of this reductive strategy at the expense of more holistic strategies. The above investigations into the history, philosophy and defects of the magic bullet strategy provide a framework for critically examining GE crops in terms of three categories: side effects, revenge effects, and balance between reductive and holistic strategies. In the next chapter I will use these three general categories for criticizing “magic bullets” to critically examine the two most popular GE crops, those with pesticidal traits and those that are resistant to herbicides. GE crops with these traits have been in wide use for approximately 20 years. By examining these two crops I hope to gain insights toward identifying elements that could contribute to a narrative of sustainability.

References Aminov, R. 2010. A brief history of the antibiotic era: Lessons learned and challenges for the future. Frontiers in Microbiology 134 (1). Beresford, M.J. 2010. Medical reductionism: Lessons from great philosophers. The Quarterly Journal of Medicine 103 (9): 721–724. Broadbent, A. 2009. Causation models of disease in epidemiology. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 4 (40): 302–311. Carson, R. 2002. Silent spring, fourteen-anniversary edition. New  York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Casida, J., and G.B. Quistad. 1998. Golden age of insecticide research: Past, present, or future? Annual Review of Entomology 43 (1): 1–16. Charles, D. 2002. Lords of the harvest: Biotech, big money, and the future of food. Cambridge: Perseus Publishing. Colgrove, J.  2002. The McKeown thesis: A historical controversy and its enduring influence. Health Policy Ethics 92 (5): 725–729. Davies, J., and D. Davies. 2010. Origins and evolution of antibiotic resistance. Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews 74 (3): 417–433. Dubos, R. 1959. Mirage of health: Utopias, progress, and biological change. Rutgers: Rutgers University Press. Epstein, L. 2014. Fifty years since Silent Spring. Annual Review of Phytopathology 52: 377–402.

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Fang, F.C., and A. Casadevall. 2011. Reductionistic and holistic science. Infection and Immunity 79 (4): 1401–1404. Germov, J. 2013. Second opinion: An introduction to health sociology. 5th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gifford, F. 2010. Biotechnology. In Ethics in the life science, ed. J. Comstock, 189–219. London: Springer. Goley, F.B. 1996. The history of the ecosystem concept in ecology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Greenpeace Briefing. 2002. Genetic pollution: A multiplying nightmare. http://www.greenpeace. org/sweden/PageFiles/497049/genetic_pollution.pdf. Accessed 8 Feb 2017. Holdrege, C., and S. Talbot. 2010. Beyond biotechnology: The barren promise of genetic engineering. Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press. Kinkela, D. 2011. DDT and the American century: Global health, environmental politics, and the pesticide that changed the world. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Krieger, N. 2007. Why epidemiologists cannot afford to ignore poverty. Epidemiology 18 (6): 658–663. Kuhn, T. 1970. The structure of scientific revolutions., 2nd. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McKeown, T. 1980. The role of medicine: Dream, mirage, or nemesis? Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nebel, B.J., and R.T. Wright. 1993. Environmental science: The way the world works. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Norell, S. 1984. Models of causation in epidemiology. In Health, disease, and causal explanation in medicine, ed. L. Nordenfelt and I. Lindhal, 129–135. Boston: D. Reidel Publishing. Palumbi, S.R. 2001. Humans as the world’s greatest evolutionary force. Science 293: 1786–1790. Pascal, B. 2003. Penseés. Mineola: Dover Publications. Rifkin, J.  1998. The biotech century: Playing ecological roulette with mother nature's designs. New York: Tarcher Perigee. Schuman, A. 2003. A concise history of antimicrobial therapy. Contemporary Pediatrics October: 65–85. Seager, J. 2014. Carson’s silent spring: A reader’s guide. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. Strebhardt, K., and A. Ullrich. 2008. Paul Ehrlich’s magic bullet concept: 100 years of progress. Nature Reviews Cancer 8 (6): 473–480. Tenner, E. 1997. Why things bite back: Technology and the revenge of unintended consequences. New York: Vintage Books. Thompson, P.B. 1995. The Spirit of the soil: Agriculture and environmental ethics. New  York: Routledge. University of California, Integrated Pest Management. What is Integrated Pest Management (IPM)?. UCIPM. http://www2.ipm.ucanr.edu/WhatIsIPM/. Accessed 15 Jan 2016. Vanloqueren, G., and P.V. Baret. 2009. How agricultural research systems shape a technological regime that develops genetic engineering but locks out agroecological innovations. Research Policy 38 (6): 971–983.

Chapter 4

Magic Bullets II, Genetic Engineering and Technological Pragmatism

Abstract  This chapter builds on the analysis of the magic bullet strategy discussed in the previous chapter. The overuse and misuse of magic bullets have loaded the environment with antibiotics and pesticides that threaten human health and biodiversity. Nonetheless, the magic bullet myth continues to define the goals of powerful public and private institutions in medicine and agriculture. The framework for critically examining the magic bullet strategy developed in the previous chapter to examine the two most economically important genetically engineered traits to date:  insect resistance and herbicide resistance. This examination will provide insights into evaluating GE crops, as well as more philosophical insights into the magic bullet myth that could contribute to better understanding the place of biotechnology in a narrative of sustainability.

4.1  Introduction The explorations in the previous chapter provide a framework for evaluating specific GE crops in terms of experiences of over 100 years with the magic bullet strategy in medicine and agriculture. To recall, in 1908 Paul Ehrlich proposed an epoch-making strategy for confronting pathogens. “Targeted medicine should in theory efficaciously attack pathogens yet remain harmless in healthy tissues” (Strebhardt and Ullrich 2008). This articulation of the strategy comes from an article titled “Paul Ehrlich’s magic bullet concept: 100 years of progress” (Ibid). The magic bullet strategy is integral to the narrative of progress: science makes progress toward ending disease and hunger by discovering magic bullets. The discoveries of magic bullets, such as antibiotics and pesticides created enduring expectation that there are ultimate cures for plagues and pestilence. Dictionaries define a magic bullet as “A substance or therapy capable of destroying pathogens or providing an effective remedy for a disease or condition without deleterious side effects” (merriam-webster.com). But experience has taught that magic bullets are temporary victories that need to be defended and that they come with the threats of unintended consequences, namely side effects and revenge effects. © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 N. D. Scott, Food, Genetic Engineering and Philosophy of Technology, The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics 28, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96027-2_4

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There is deep concern that, after 100 years of progress guided by the magic bullet paradigm, pests and pathogens are evolving resistance faster than new magic bullets can be discovered. Humanity is in danger of facing a new epoch defined by a technological arms race with superpests. Further, the overuse and misuse of magic bullets have loaded the environment with antibiotics and pesticides that threaten human health and biodiversity. Nonetheless, the magic bullet myth continues to define the goals of powerful public and private institutions in medicine and agriculture. The two most economically important GE crops to date were designed following the magic bullet strategy: those engineered to be insect resistant and those engineered to be herbicide resistant. This chapter uses the two general categories of side effects and revenge effects to examine GE crops engineered to be insect resistant and herbicide resistant. These technologies have been tremendously successful and in wide use for over 20 years. This examination will use the general criticisms of magic bullets to explore two general questions: (1) In terms of side effects, do these technologies make the problem of agricultural pollution better or worse? (2) In terms of revenge effects, are these GE crops being used in ways that will quickly lead to the revenge effects of superpests? Exploring these questions will provide insights into evaluating GE crops, as well as more philosophical insights into the magic bullet myth that could contribute to better understanding the place of biotechnology in a narrative of sustainability.

4.2  Insect Resistant GE Crops Insect resistant GE crops are engineered with a gene from a common soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringinesis (Bt). This microbe secretes proteins that are toxic to a major agricultural pest, caterpillars, which have an enzyme in their gut that activates the toxin. Scientists have isolated numerous Bt toxins that can target several pests. Organic growers have been using powders, sprays and concentrates containing the Bt protein for decades. While Bt based insecticides are not commercially significant in comparison to synthetic insecticides their continued effectiveness is important for the organic industry. For this reason organic producers are concerned that, with the widespread adoption of GE, Bt crops will rapidly drive the evolution of resistant insects, rendering this important pest management tool ineffective. Bt toxins do not generate many environmental or health side effects, especially when compared to synthetic insecticides. They have low toxicity to mammals, fish and beneficial insects, as these organisms do not have the enzyme that activates Bt toxins. Moreover, these naturally occurring toxins do not readily accumulate in the environment; they quickly degrade in water and sunlight. To recall, part of Rachel Carson’s side effect critique of chemical pesticides was that the “synthetic creations of man’s inventive mind” were “totally outside the limits of biological experience” (Carson 2002, 7). Unlike some petrochemicals, Bt proteins are not outside the limits of biological experience. Further, crops engineered with the Bt gene are an excellent approximation of Koch’s magic bullet ideal: they are narrowly targeted at the pest (“pathogen”) and they do not harm the crop (organism). Bt crops are remarkable magic bullets, and most likely a rarity.

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Bt crops have been a tremendous commercial success for the agbiotech industry. The most commercially significant crops engineered with the Bt gene are corn and cotton. Insect resistant GE corn and cotton first became available to farmers in 1996. Seven years later in 2003, 29 percent of the corn planted in the U.S. contained the genetically engineered Bt trait; that percentage ballooned to nearly 80 percent in 2016 (USDA.gov). Bt cotton followed a similar pattern of rapid technological adoption; 84 percent of acreage planted in cotton was Bt in each of the last 3 years, 2014, 2015 and 2016 (Ibid). Scientists have studied these two GE crop for two decades. There is sufficient experience with Bt corn and cotton to evaluate these GE crops in terms of the magic bullet criticisms based on the side effects and revenge effects.

4.2.1  Side Effects/Pollution Prior to the rapid adoption of the Bt corn and cotton, farmers in the U.S. annually sprayed their fields with millions of pounds of conventional insecticides to control pests such as tobacco budworm and cotton bollworm. While these synthetic chemicals provided significant commercial benefits they came with significant health and environmental risks. In a 2005 paper, David Pimentel calculated that $10 billion-­per-­ year in pesticides costs reaped a total of $40 billion annually in benefits for producers, suppliers and consumers (Pimentel 2005). However, these benefits are weighed against at least $12 billion per year in “quantifiable negative externalities,” which include water pollution and health impacts (Ibid.). While calculating economic benefits is relatively straightforward, capturing health and environmental costs, burdens and damages is much more difficult. Pimentel notes that the estimated costs of harms are almost certainly low. It would seem that replacing synthetic insecticides with Bt corn and cotton would be a win-win situation. Through genetic engineering producers, suppliers and consumers could reap the benefits of a uniquely benign bioinsecticide while incurring fewer health and environmental costs and risks. Coupe and Capel document a decline in use of synthetic insecticide for corn and cotton crops ever since the introduction of GE crops. They write: “The use of conventional insecticides (that is, excluding Bt crops) on corn dropped sharply after the adoption of GM crops…. The annual mass of total conventional insecticide decreased by about 80% between 1995 and 2009…. For cotton, the annual mass of total conventional insecticides applied decreased by 76% from 1997 to 2009” (Coupe and Capel 2015).

It would be a mistake to make an exact correlation between the introduction of Bt crops, the drop in the use of conventional insecticides and a reduction of environmental impacts; many factors would need to be considered. For example, the decrease in environmental harms depends on the properties of an insecticide; some synthetic insecticides have more prolonged and severe impacts than others. Also, in 1995 a downward trend in insecticide use had already begun due to numerous factors. Nevertheless, by all accounts Bt corn and cotton have played a most important role in reducing environmental pollution due to synthetic insecticides in the United States over the last 20 years.

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Concerns have been raised that Bt toxins from these GE crops might harm nontarget species. However, there is little evidence to date that this is a significant problems. In a review article on safety research from 2002 to 2012, Nocolia et al. write: “Negative impacts of Bt plants on non-target arthropods and soil microfauna have not been reported in recent papers. Indeed, the positive impacts have been emphasized” (Nicolia et al. 2014, 79). On the basis of the evidence to date, it can be concluded that Bt corn and cotton have few side effects and represent a significant improvement over synthetic insecticides. By way of summary, two decades of experience indicated that genetically engineering corn and cotton with the Bt transgene has created effective and well-targeted magic bullets. In terms of the pollution/side effect criticism, these magic bullets attack significant pests while not harming crops, and pose few risks to humans, nontarget species and the environment. However, the effective life of Bt crops will be short. If it is overused and misused (i.e., not in conjunction with a holistic strategy like IPM) the revenge effect of resistant pests will quickly render this superb magic bullet inoperable.

4.2.2  Revenge Effects/Superpests Ever since the 1960s corn and cotton producers have been experiencing the evolution of resistance and the pesticide treadmill. The average life for a class of synthetic insecticides has been about a decade before insects evolve resistance (Benbrook 2001). Will Bt crops simply represent another round on the pesticide treadmill? The squandering of Bt crops to the revenge effect of resistance would be a significant loss for world agriculture. There is no guarantee that future GE crops with insecticidal traits will be as effective and environmentally benign as the Bt crop currently on the market. In addition, this would be a significant loss for the many organic growers who rely on Bt protein powders, sprays and concentrates. The number of magic bullets created by evolution could be limited and there seems to be a law of diminishing returns on their discovery, both for pesticides and antibiotics. As was mentioned in the last chapter, the majority of antibiotics in use today were discovered in the 1950s and 1960s, during the “golden age of antibiotics” (Davies 2006). Biomedicine found the low-hanging fruits and there is deep concern that discovery is not keeping pace with the antibiotic treadmill. It will require large governmental expenditures and major research efforts to find the new classes of antibiotics needed to avoid much disease and death from resistant bacterial infections. In a foreshadowing of future problems, in January of 2017 the U.S.’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that a patient died from a bacterial infection that was resistant to all 26 of the antibiotics approved for use in the U.S. (CDC). The same evolutionary forces that drive resistance in medicine are at work in agriculture. There are reasons to be pessimistic about the longevity of Bt crops that can be traced to the early development of this technology. The scientists who created Bt crops were attempting to make a magic bullet, an ultimate pest management solution. Daniel Charles writes that “the genetic engineers

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[working on inserting the Bt gene into plants] spoke of ‘permanent solutions’ to the insect problem” (Charles 2002, 82). This is similar to the way scientists once spoke of magic bullets in medicine, as permanent solutions to the problem of bacterial infections. However, biologists who study the evolution of pesticide resistance knew better. Due to the omnipresent forces of evolution, magic bullets targeting insect pests (or bacterial infections) are not permanent solutions. Charles comments: “Evolutionary biologists don’t believe permanent solutions exist in biology. There is only adaptation, moves and countermoves, in a game of chess that never ends. For them, dreams of technological solutions, so common among chemical companies, are the standard object of ridicule. ‘It’s just another silver [sic. magic] bullet,’ they say dismissively. Silver bullets do not work for long” (Charles 2002, 82).

From Charles’ remarks, it is clear there was a conflict in research paradigms between the reductionism of the magic bullet strategy and the holism of ecological evolution, between biotechnologists working for agrochemical companies and the evolutionary biologists researching resistance. The significance of this conflict is key in understanding how cultural, political, economic, ecological and evolutionary factors were included in the resistance management plan for Bt crops. In creating these GE crops, the biotech industry did not initially consider the evolution of resistant strains of insects. These concerns were only considered as an after thought, and then reluctantly. Charles attributes industry’s acknowledgement of the potential for the evolution of resistance to the efforts of concerned, academic scientists (Ibid.). These scientists knew that if Bt corps were widely planted, resistance would quickly evolve. The biotech industry would have squandered, for short-term profit, the long-term benefits of this unique group of biopesticides. With regard to Bt cotton, the efforts of concerned scientists resulted in a management plan requiring farmers to set aside at least 4 percent of their land as a refuge; these are portions of the field where famers plant non-GE cotton (Charles 2002, 183). The idea of refuges is based on genetics and evolutionary theory. Without going into detail, the purpose of planting refuges with non-Bt crops is to supply a pool of insects that are genetically susceptible to the Bt toxin. If the refuges are large enough to provide a sufficient pool of susceptible insects, the very small percentage of insects with a natural resistance to the Bt toxin will likely mate with susceptible insects from the refuges. This would assure that the Bt toxin would be effective against their offspring. However, without the refuges, or if the refuges are too small, resistant insects have a higher probability of mating with other resistant insects, conferring resistance to their offspring to the Bt toxin. Nearly 20 years of experience with Bt crops provides ample data to support the theory behind the refuge strategy (Tabashnik et al. 2013). If the Bt magic bullet is to be preserved and the revenge effect of resistance is to be delayed, science, not economics, should dictate refuge size. However, Charles summaries the process that determined refuge size, writing: “These refuges were the result of a campaign waged by scientists who believed that, without restrictions, new strains of insects would soon emerge that were resistant to Bt. Biotech companies, which wanted to sell as much genetically engineered seed as possible, pushed for smaller refuges. Many scientists believed that much larger refuges were necessary to preserve Bt as a useful tool; because once Bt failed, this gift of God would be gone forever” (Charles 2002, 181).

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There are at least two important points that can be identified from the way the management plan for refuges was determined. The first, as indicated above, is that the setting aside of refuges is a holistic strategy to correct for the revenge effect, a defect inherent in the reductive, magic bullet strategy. It is an example of how methodological holism and methodological reductionism can complement each other. The refuge strategy fits with the IPM paradigm and is consistent with at least some of the general principles of agroecology. Further, Bt crops, because they contain biopesticides that kill the pest but not beneficial insects, easily fit into the IPM paradigm, particularly compared to synthetic insecticides. To recall, one of the reasons conventional insecticides often accelerate the evolution of resistance is that they frequently kill beneficial insects along with the pests, which leads to the rebound phenomenon described earlier that helps drive the insecticide treadmill. The second point exposes a tension between the free-market economic and evolutionary science. Krimsky and Wrubel state this tension well, writing: “Agriculture would best be served by a policy of well-thought-out use of environmentally compatible control agents to conserve their effectiveness. This is in direct conflict with the competitive structure of the agrichemical and, in this case, the biotechnology industry. Their purpose is to sell as much product as quickly as possible to recover the investment in research and development. Our analysis reveals, however, that one cannot separate the problem of pest control from the problem of pest resistance” (Krimsky and Wrubel 1996, 67).

Let us look more closely at this point. On the one hand, if Bt cotton, for example, is to be as profitable as possible, at least in the short term, the competitive, market model requires that the refuges be as small as possible. On the other hand, if the evolution of resistant strains is to be delayed as long as possible, evolutionary theory, genetics and field ecology indicate that the refuges should be as large as possible. Hence, the goal of industry is to minimize refuges to maximize profits, and the goal of concerned scientists is to maximize refuges to minimize the evolution of resistance. The 4 percent refuge standard for Bt cotton favored the profit-motive over science. Many scientists felt that the 4 percent refuge size was much too small, that at least 10 percent was needed, and some scientists argued for as much as 50 percent. More recently, in a 2013 online article, Bruce Tabashnik, a leading expert of the evolution of resistance to transgenic plants, notes that if 2 percent or more of the targeted insects survive the Bt toxin (i.e., are genetically resistant) then the refuge size should be around 50 percent. However, he notes that with Bt crops very often refuge size is just 5 percent, just a tenth of what is needed. Tabashnik remarks, “That 5 percent makes sense if your priority is to make money this year…. But in the long term, it doesn’t make any sense for postponing the evolution of resistance” (Johnson 2013). However, even if scientifically based standards for refuge sizes were mandated, there are problems in getting growers to comply. In 2009 the Center for Science and Public Interest (CSPI) published a report on compliance with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) refuges standard for Bt corn. Through the Freedom of Information Act CSPI was able to review EPA data on growers’ compliance. The data showed that compliance decreased dramatically over time. From 2003 to 2005 grower compliance was high, 90 percent, but by 2008 only 25 percent of Bt corn growers were compliant with EPA standards (Jaffe 2009). The

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significance of growers’ compliance with refuge standards is illustrated in a study that compared the evolution of resistance of pink bollworm, a major caterpillar pest that eats the seeds of cotton bolls, to Bt cotton in western India and the southwestern U.S. In both India and the U.S. there were regulations requiring the planting of refuges. In India grower compliance was low and in the U.S. it was high. The result was pink bollworm quickly evolved resistance to Bt cotton in India, but resistance was not observed in the U.S. (Tabashnik et al. 2014). Tabashnik et al. conclude: “the striking contrast in compliance with refuge regulations appears to have played a key role” (Tabashnik et al. 2014). Tabashnik’s observations on compliance with refuge standards are based on a 2013 review-paper he coauthored in the journal, Nature Biotechnology. The article reviewed 77 reports from around the world on the evolution of resistance to Bt crops. The bad news in the report is that pests can evolve resistance to Bt in as little as 2 years (Tabashnik et al. 2013). Further, in 2005 only one of the 13 major species of pests targeted by Bt toxins showed resistance, but in 2012 five major species showed some level of resistance (Ibid.). The good news in the report is there are effective strategies for delaying resistance indefinitely. In two studies there was complete susceptibility to Bt after 15 years (Tabashnik et al. 2014). One involved Bt cotton grown in Australia where from 1996 to 2003 the mean percentage of non-Bt cotton planted was 73%. The other study involved Bt corn grown in Iowa, where from 1996 to 2012 the mean refuges of non-Bt corn planted was 53% (Tabashnik et al. 2013). Tabashnik et al. draw the following conclusion: “Both in theory and practice, using Bt crops in combination with other tactics as part of integrated pest management may be especially effective for delaying pest resistance. We hope that the lessons learned from the first billion acres of Bt crops will improve resistance management strategies in the future” (Tabashnik et al. 2013). In general terms, it seems that the revenge effect of resistance can be significantly delayed, perhaps indefinitely, by (1) using Bt crops that are effective at killing pests (i.e., the meet high-dose standards), (2) having regulations requiring scientifically-based refuge strategies, and (3) educating and enforcing efforts that encourage high levels of grower compliance (Ibid.). By way of summary, the development of genetically engineered Bt crops clearly fits the magic bullet strategy. These GE crops are engineered to contain naturally occurring biopesticides that are narrowly targeted at pests while not harming crops. In terms of the side effect of pollution Bt crops are a significant improvement over petrochemical insecticides. These genetically engineered crops are an exceptional magic bullet. However, in terms of the revenge effect of resistance nearly 20 years of experience demonstrates that evolution is omnipresent. The reductive, magic bullet strategy must be coordinated with a holistic, IPM strategy that, to be effective, must include cultural, political and economic factors. Looking into the future, there are two possible scenarios for Bt crops. In one scenario Bt crops are simply another turn of the insecticide treadmill. However, the treadmill metaphor does not seem to be descriptively accurate. The phenomenon seems to be a positive feedback loop where, with each round on the treadmill, farmers are in a more difficult position. The revenge effect of the loss of Bt proteins and Bt crops seems more like a vicious

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spiral than a treadmill. In the other scenario Bt crops are widely and consistently placed within well-designed IPM strategies that are enforced to insure compliance. The evolution of resistant pests is carefully monitored and delayed indefinitely. In this story Bt crops become a paradigm (in the sense of an exemplar or model) where reductive, magic bullet GE strategy and holistic IPM strategy work in concert. The Bt story becomes an exemplar for combining biotechnology with IPM. In a sense it becomes a new myth that revises and replaces the magic bullet myth, and contributes to the writing of a narrative of sustainability. The second above scenario seems highly unlikely at the moment. Nonetheless, it remains a possibility. The prospects for the second group of GE crops analyzed in this chapter, those engineered to be GE herbicide resistant crops (HRCs) is even less bright. The 20-year history of this technology is a story of what happens when the defects of the magic bullet strategy are not corrected with some sort of holistic strategy. The short history of HRCs is of cautionary tale and points to an ongoing tragedy, and catastrophe.

4.3  GE Herbicide Resistant Crops Most HRCs on the market are engineered to be resistant to the herbicide, glyphosate, or are glyphosate-based. Monsanto trademarked glyphosate as Roundup®. More glyphosate is sold in the world than any other herbicide. It has been described as a “once-in-a-century technology” and the closest approximation to a “perfect herbicide” (Duke and Powles 2008). Monsanto scientists developed glyphosate in 1976. It is a broad-spectrum herbicide. Glyphosate is no magic bullet; it kills the pests and the crops. Nonetheless it is one of Monsanto’s most successful products. This was in part due to the fact that it was safer for humans and for the environment than most other chemical herbicides on the market. It degrades relatively quickly; it is less toxic to non-target organisms; and it binds tightly to the soil, which makes it less likely to be leached into aquatic ecosystems (Duke 2015). Early in the biotech revolution Monsanto saw the market potential of pairing glyphosate with crops engineered to be resistant to glyphosate (GRCs). However, some at Monsanto were disturbed by this possibility. Daniel Charles notes that matching a chemical herbicide with a GE plant troubled some scientists in the biotechnology division at Monsanto. He quotes one scientist as saying “If all we can do [with biotechnology] is sell more damned herbicide we shouldn’t be in business” (Charles 2002, 80). One of Monsanto’s European executives felt that the technology was an “ethical problem” (Ibid.). As noted earlier, many scientists working on biotechnology saw genetic engineering as creating the possibility for the industry to make a break from a harmful chemical legacy (Charles 2002, 80–81). Nonetheless, glyphosate plus GRC is one of Monsanto’s most financially successful technologies. It was a difficult process, but Monsanto scientists eventually discovered an agrobacterium that could metabolize glyphosate. They were able to isolate an agrobacterium gene and use it to engineer soybean plants that are resistant to Roundup®. In

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1996 Monsanto began selling the technological package: Roundup Ready soybean with Roundup®, glyphosate resistant (GR) cotton and corn soon followed. GRCs allow glyphosate to become a near perfect magic bullet herbicide. Glyphosate kills most weeds (pathogens) but does not harm GR soybean, cotton or corn (the hosts). GRCs are one of the most rapidly and widely adopted technologies in the history of agriculture. The reasons for this are clear: farmers were convinced that it had strong economic and practical benefits over other weed management systems. It significantly increases profits for producers and greatly simplifies the complex and challenging task of weed management. In comparison to other herbicides it has fewer health and environmental side effects, and reduces the need for tillage, which degrades soils and emits greenhouse gasses (Duke 2015). Monsanto has made billions of dollars from selling glyphosate and GRCs. This fact makes the general HRC, magic bullet strategy extremely attractive to biotechnology companies. Despite these many benefits the magic bullet criticisms of unintended consequences, side effects and revenge effects raise significant problems for the future of GRCs. Producers are overusing and misusing this technology in the same way that popular antibiotics have been overused and misused. Robert Service, a journalist for Science, notes that, “some experts referred to [GRCs] as agricultural heroin because [they were] so effective and easy to use that farmers quickly became hooked” (Service 2013). The fact the GRCs are economically profitable and greatly simplify the difficult tasks of weed management has lead to overuse. Enormous quantities of glyphosate are being put into the environment, which has raised suspicions that unwanted side effects are inevitable.

4.3.1  Side Effects/Pollution While Bt crops have contributed to a decrease in pesticide use, GRCs have lead to an increase, primarily with glyphosate-based herbicides (Coupe and Capel 2015). When GRCs were first introduced there was a decrease in the application of herbicides for soybean but, starting in 2000, the amount of herbicide applied to fields started to increase and, by 2009, it was substantially higher than before GR soybean were introduced (Ibid). However, glyphosate replaced more toxic herbicides. The same pattern is observed for GR cotton: an initial decrease in the quantities of herbicides used is followed by rising rates of application. Over the last 20 years the popularity of GRCs has led to hundreds of millions of pounds of glyphosate being put into the environment. In terms of the side effect criticisms of GRCs the first thing to notice is that problems are not a direct result of genetic engineering. The transgene in GRCs has not been identified as a source of health or environmental concern. There are legitimate concerns about gene flow with all GE crops. In GCR this means that the GR trait could be conferred to wild relatives. However, this has not been shown to be a serious problem with GR soybean, cotton or corn. The pollution/side effect criticisms of magic bullets do apply to the HRC strategy since it requires the application of chemical herbicides. The rapid and widespread adoption of GRCs has led to a six-­

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fold increase in the use of glyphosate in the United States: In 1998 producers applied approximately 50 million pounds of glyphosate; in each of the years, 2012, 2013 and 2014 producers used 300 million pounds (USGS.gov). In the tradition of Rachel Carson, the pollution/side effect criticisms that apply to synthetic pesticides in general would potentially apply to glyphosate. One would suspect that putting hundreds of millions of pounds of glyphosate into the environment each year would raise health and environmental concerns. Predictably, glyphosate has been in the news in recent years. Glyphosate has been in use for over 40 years and numerous studies indicate that it is relatively safe for humans and poses few environmental risks. Nevertheless, because it is being used at such high levels and throughout the planting season many people think this warrants further examination. In 2015 a New York Times articles announced: “Weed Killer, Long Cleared, Is Doubted” (Pollack 2015). The article reported on a decision by the International Agency on Cancer Research (IACR) to classify glyphosate as a “probable cause” of cancer. The label, “probable cause,” is a term of art that can be misunderstood. It is a precautionary label that is applied to many substances people encounter on a daily basis. Probable cause indicates that there is sufficient empirical evidence to raise suspicions about the safety of a substance. It does not mean that it is carcinogenic. IACR’s decision is because glyphosate is now the most used pesticide in the history of agriculture (Benbrook 2016). Also, the ways glyphosate is being used are bringing people into closer contact with this substance. Prior to GRCs glyphosate was primarily used to clear fields of weeds prior to planting and after harvest. Traditional applications of glyphosate did not result in detectable levels of glyphosate in foods (Myers  et  al. 2016). With the advent of GRCs producers could apply glyphosate throughout the growing season, including late season applications. This has led to greater human exposure to glyphosate. For example, in 2011 the USDA tested 300 samples of soybean and found that 90.3% of the samples tested positive for glyphosate (Ibid.). In 2016 a group of scientists and health experts published a statement of concern in the journal, Environmental Health. The authors explain: “Our focus is on the unanticipated effects arising from the worldwide increase in use of GBHs (glyphosate-based herbicides), coupled with recent discoveries about the toxicity and human health risks stemming from use of GBHs” (Ibid.). For the sake of space, I will briefly mention two reasons for reevaluation and further study. The first concern is that earlier safety analyses could be based on inadequate assumptions. More specially, given increased exposure to glyphosate researchers need to examine a wider range of pathways where glyphosate could cause cancer. From their review of recent studies, the authors of the 2016 statement of concern write: “Studies from laboratory animals, human populations, and domesticated animals suggest that current levels of exposure to GBHs can induce adverse health outcomes. Many of these effects would likely not be detected in experiments adhering to traditional toxicology test guidelines promulgated by pesticide regulatory authorities” (Ibid.).

The second concern arises from the fact that producers are mixing glyphosate with other chemical herbicides. The reason for mixing herbicides is that numerous weeds have developed resistance to glyphosate—this will discussed in the next section.

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Mixtures of herbicides could increase human and environmental risks that need to be researched (Ibid). These two general points, which are developed and supported in the 2016 letter of concern, lead the authors to conclude that glyphosate toxicity should be systematically reexamined and that the relevant agencies should monitor glyphosate levels in foods and humans (Ibid). The other suspected side effect in the news in recent years is that GR soybean and corn grown in the Midwest region of the United States are harming Monarch butterflies. A 2014 Slate article led with the title, “The Missing Monarchs, Monsanto’s Roundup and Genetically Modified Crops are Harming Everyone’s Favorite Monarch” (Cornwall 2014). This online article reported on research that implicated GRCs in the decline of Monarch butterfly populations. It did this by identifying a correlation between an observed decline in Monarch butterflies wintering in Mexico, the adoption of GRCs by soybean and corn farmers in Iowa and Wisconsin, and a decline in milkweed populations. Over 90% of soybean and 80% of corn grown in the U.S. Midwest are GRCs. While milkweed is a pest to farmers it plays an important role in the Monarchs’ lifecycle. Monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed and the larvae feed on this plant. The GRCs/glyphosate magic bullet is extremely effective in eliminating milkweed in and around agricultural fields (Pleasants and Oberhauser 2012). Through careful data collection the researches correlated the reduction of milkweed populations in the Midwest, which is attributed to the adoption of GRCs, with the reduction of Monarch populations overwintering in Mexico. However, there are other factors contributing to the decline in Monarch populations, such as climate change and loss of habit in other parts of the Monarch’s lifecycle. For instance, in 2016 Monarch populations showed some signs of rebounding, which has been correlated to more favorable weather conditions. Nonetheless, the significant reduction in milkweed populations due to GRCs in the Midwestern U.S. remains a legitimate reason for concern for the fate of this iconic species of butterfly (biologicaldiversity.org). In sum, the ways GRCs/glyphosate magic bullets are being used follows the familiar pattern that characterizes the history of magic bullets in agriculture (pesticides) and medicine (antibiotics): overuse. This is leading to suspicions that the high levels of glyphosate being put into the environment pose significant unintended consequences from glyphosate pollution. GRCs are being used as if naïve conceptions of magic bullets as ultimate solutions were true. But again, the omnipresent reality of evolution has long dispelled the magic bullet myth that scientific progress will find ultimate cures for pests or pathogens. Effective magic bullets are short-­ term solutions unless they are integrated into more holistic strategies.

4.3.2  Revenge Effect/Super Weeds The title of a 2013 article that appeared in the journal Science asks: “What Happens When Weed Killers Stop Killing?” (Service 2013, 1329). The article goes on to state that “weeds resistant to glyphosate…are now present in the vast majority of

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soybean, corn and cotton farms in the U.S. (Ibid.). The revenge effect of resistance is quickly rendering this near ‘perfect herbicide’ ineffective” (Duke and Powles 2008). Stephan O. Duke is an award winning scientist and an international expert on pesticides. Duke has been researching and writing on HRCs and glyphosate for over 20  years. He edited the first book on HRCs in 1995 (Duke 1995), a year before Roundup Ready soybean entered the market. In reading Duke’s occasional updates on GRCs and glyphosate-resistant weeds, one gets the sense that he has been a Cassandra about the revenge effect of the evolution of resistance. Duke and many others have been unheeded prophets of doom. It is insightful to examine comments taken from Duke’s publications on HRCs that span 20 years. In Duke’s 1995 volume on HRCs a contributor states that, “it will be necessary to design proactive, preemptive resistance strategies to delay evolution of resistant populations by lowering selection pressures, or by other means” (Gressel 1995). A decade later Duke coauthored a paper discussing the current status of, and future prospects for, glyphosate resistant weeds. The article notes: “in recent years, the intense use of glyphosate in GR crops has increased selection pressure to evolve natural resistance to glyphosate in several weed populations” (Nandula et al. 2005, 183). Duke and his coauthors list eight weeds that had evolved resistance to glyphosate as of 2005. They point out how the rapid adoption of GR soybean, cotton and corn has reduced weed management to a single strategy. The article ends by warning that famers must become conscious of using diverse weed management strategies or this problem will intensify. In 2009 Duke provided another update. Rather than heeding earlier warnings and diversifying strategies the trend toward the single GRCs/glyphosate magic bullet had grown in scope. The continued heavy spring of glyphosate was creating strong selective pressures driving the evolution of resistant weeds. Duke and Powles once again warned: “It is well known that herbicide resistance evolution will be fastest where diversity is minimal. There can be no better example of this lack of diversity in weed control than multiple applications of glyphosate on the same field every year in GR crops” (Duke and Powles 2009). In 2014 Duke provideds a 20-year retrospective on GRCs. The article is a eulogy for glyphosate. They write that “In spite of the exceptional technical success and market dominance of glyphosate and GRCs, as with many antibiotics, overuse has resulted in evolution of serious resistance problems…. It was too good to last” (Duke 2015). Finally, in a 2015 paper Duke writes that “for those who had the opportunity to use GRCs during what many farmers consider to be the golden age of weed management, the cost of squandering this ‘once-in-a-century’ technology through poor stewardship is painfully clear” (Duke 2015). For 20 years Duke and many others watched the unfolding of this preventable revenge effect. In terms of developing a narrative of sustainability, it is important to speculate on the reasons why so little was done to mitigate the revenge effect of superweeds.

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4.3.3  Stacked Traits and Revenge Effects The story of GRCs is a cautionary tale. If this magic bullet had been incorporated into a more holistic, integrated weed management (IWM) strategy (e.g., crop rotation, cover crops, limited tillage) the life of the GRCs could have been extended, perhaps indefinitely (Mortensen et al. 2012). As with Bt crops, in broad strokes one can imagine possible futures for HRCs. In one scenario, the next generation of HRCs will simply represent another round on the pesticide treadmill, or vicious spiral. Driven by short-term economics biotech companies and producers will follow the historical pattern of magic bullets: overuse and misuse leading to side effects and revenge effects. In a brighter scenario that could contribute to constructing a narrative of sustainability, biotech firms and producers learn from the last two decades and future practices are changed to make HRCs a part of an overall IWM strategy that greatly mitigates side effects and revenge effects. What are the chances of avoiding the first scenario and realizing the second? Given current realities the future looks like the past, more of the same. In the first scenario the latest generation HRCs simply turn the crank driving the pesticide treadmill another round. A Reuters article states: “the weed resistance problem has become such a significant problem for crop production that farmers are seeking alternatives, and Monsanto and its rivals in the agrichemical industry are racing to introduce new options for glyphosate and Roundup Ready crops” (Gilliam 2015). Given the spectacular economic success of Roundup Ready crops, it is not surprising that Monsanto and other companies are highly motivated to repeat that success. Monsanto and Dow Agroscience are currently marketing their latest weed management systems: Roundup Ready Xtend Crop Systems (monsanto.com) and Enlist Weed Control System (enlist.com), respectively. To respond to glyphosate-­ resistant  weeds these HRCs are engineered with stacked traits; they can tolerate multiple herbicides. Monsanto’s HRCs are resistant to glyphosate and dicamba (Monsanto.com). Dow Agroscience’s products are resistant to glyphosate and another synthetic herbicide, 2, 4-D (inlist.com). These new magic bullets clearly raise serious concerns about side effects and revenge effects. In terms of the side effect of pollution, if these new herbicide mixtures are used at the same high rates as glyphosate, even more unintended health and environmental concerns should be expected. Dicamba and 2, 4-D provide more cause for concern than does glyphosate. While there is not space to list those concerns here, it is a straightforward inference that the mixtures create more pollution side-effect problems. In terms of the revenge effect of the evolution of resistance, many scientists are warning biotechnology companies and producers to diversify weed management practices with these new HRCs. There are reasons to be pessimistic that the new HRCs will be integrated into IWM strategies without new policies and incentives.

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One reason for pessimism is that for 20  years scientists and others have been warning that GRCs were being used in ways that would accelerate the evolutions of glyphosate resistant weeds. In 2000 the National Research Council published recommendations for the use of pesticides. Their first recommendation is that “No single pest-management strategy will work reliably…. Indeed, such “magic bullet” fantasies historically have contributed to overuse and resistance problems” (NRC 2000). In agriculture and medicine the myth of magic bullets leading to ultimate solutions had long been dispelled but unheeded. In terms of the latest strategy of engineering crops with stacked traits, an editorial in the journal Nature states: “Stacking up tolerance traits may delay the appearance of resistant weeds, but probably not for long. Weeds are wily” (Nature editorial 2014). The dangers of the pesticide treadmill, and the antibiotic treadmill, have been known for decades—although just how dangerous this revenge effect is is now becoming clearer. Unless something is changed, the fact that nothing was done to prevent the evolution of glyphosate-­resistant weeds provides little reason to think things will be different for the latest generations of HRCs. Acknowledgement of the problem and expressions of good intentions are not enough. There are at least two broad explanations as to why corporations and producers could continue to drive the pesticide treadmill. The first is that there are short-term incentives for agbiotech corporations to promote the overuse of these technologies. The second is there are short-term benefits for producers to overuse these technologies and to avoid using IWM strategies. I will briefly elaborate on these possible explanations and then conclude by placing these discussions within the broader themes of the narrative of progress and the narrative of sustainability.

4.3.4  Patents, Treadmills and a Tragedy of the Commons The current intellectual property rights (IPR) system provides agbiotech corporations with exclusive rights to patented GE products for 20 years. The patent period for Roundup Ready soybean ended in 2015. From its introduction in 1996 to the end of the patent period this product captured over 90 percent (84 million acres in 2015) of the U.S. soybean seed market. Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybean is the first successful GE crop to come off patent—in the pharmaceutical industry when the patent period ends for a profitable drug, competitors begin producing generic versions and selling them at reduced prices. If this pattern is repeated in the agbiotech industry then Monsanto’s profits from its Roundup Ready products could soon evaporate due to competition from low-cost generic seeds. However, due to the evolution of glyphosate-resistant weeds the value of GRCs is diminished. In a 2015 article in MIT Technology Review that discussed the end of the patent period, Antonio Regalado writes that “Monsanto says it’s not worried about the patent expiration. It developed a new version…several years ago that it says works better and whose patents are still in force. A third generation is pending approval” (Regalado 2015). Monsanto developed a second generation of Roundup Ready in 2005, which

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remains under patent. And as noted above, Monsanto is now marketing its new HRCs with stacked traits as a technological fix for glyphosate resistant-weeds. It is possible that speculate that the IPR system creates a perverse incentive for agbiotech companies to encourage producers to use HRCs in ways that drive the evolution of resistant-weeds during the patent period. The journalist Nathanael Johnson observes that producers are not solely at fault for the evolution of glyphosate-­ resistant weeds. He points to Monsanto literature that references research demonstrating that producers will not benefit from alternating glyphosate with other herbicides. The study also demonstrates that yields dramatically decrease when rates of applications of glyphosate are reduced below company recommended rates (Johnson 2013). The research Monsanto cites is no doubt accurate if the sole goal is to maximize short-term profits for producers and Monsanto. However, the repeated use of a single herbicide is “a textbook method for breeding glyphosate-­ resistant weeds” (Ibid.). That said, Monsanto does acknowledge that the evolution of glyphosate-resistant weeds is a problem for agriculture and that producers should take measures to mitigate this problem. The company has a web page devoted to a 10-point plan that includes strategies to prevent the evolution of resistant weeds. The web page states that producers should not depend on a single herbicide and a single strategy and that they should not reach for glyphosate too quickly (Monsanto. com). Monsanto’s efforts, and the biotech industry’s efforts in general, focus on education to prevent the evolution of resistant weeds (WeedSmart.org). One has to wonder about Monsanto’s mixed messages to producers, and whether or not information sharing and education efforts alone are adequate to mitigate the evolution of resistant weeds. Again, information on strategies to mitigate the problem of resistant weeds has been widely available for decades. In a highly competitive market environment there are incentives for companies to sell as much product as possible before the patent period ends. This fact would seem to encourage a business strategy where the evolution of resistant weeds would ideally be delayed until researchers can develop new generations of HRCs. But it is in a company’s interests that the value of an HRC is diminished after the end of the patent period so that generics are not competitive with newly developed HRCs under patent. Producers are also driven by the logic of short-term interest to use HRCs in ways that drive the evolution of resistant weeds. Recalling a comment mentioned earlier, some experts compare the addictive power of GRCs to “heroin” for farmers (Service 2103). Over the last two decades farmers have been habituated to this simpler system of weed management. This technology reduces the knowledge, time and effort required for effective weed management and it increases profits. As long as each new generation of HRCs is cost effective and easy to use, in an unregulated competitive market, producers would seem to be driven to purchase HRC/herbicide magic bullets. It will be recalled that the advantage of the reductive, magic bullet strategies is simplicity, while the disadvantage of holistic strategies is complexity. IWM strategies are knowledge-intensive and add complexity to the task of managing weeds. It would be difficult for producers to switch from a single tactic HRC strategy to IWM strategies without support and cooperation. Mortensen et al. note that, “Unfortunately, the knowledge infrastructure needed to practice IWM…may be atrophying…. IWM

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approaches… are based on knowledge-intensive practices, not on salable products, and lack a powerful market mechanism to push them along” (Mortensen et al. 2012). They go on to comment that “IWM knowledge serves as a public good, and it requires locally adapted and ongoing public research, combined with effective extension education programs” (Ibid.). IWM requires such things as crop rotations, cover crops, judicious tillage, and limited application and timely use of a variety of herbicides, among other practices. Further, even if a producer adds the extra time and effort to implement an effective IWM strategy, these efforts could be wasted due to infecting weeds from poorly managed neighboring fields (Nature Editorial 2014). One could hypothesize that the combination of the IPR system, the evolution of resistant weeds and the short-term benefits of using a single strategy HRC system creates a type of tragedy of the commons (Hardin 1968). The biotech companies are driven by highly competitive markets for HR seeds and herbicides to gain maximum benefits from their intellectual property during the patent period. Producers are also driven by the benefits of a magic bullet HRC strategy. However, the goal of maximizing benefits during the patent period would encourage behaviors that drive the evolution of resistant weeds, which has tragic results. The commons in this scenario would include the limited resource of effective, low-toxicity herbicides and the environment as a pollution sink for herbicides. The tragedy, then, is the loss of low-­toxicity herbicides, like glyphosate, and an environment that is overloaded with potentially harmful synthetic chemicals. This tragedy will be relentlessly driven forward by the logic of short-term interest until resistant weeds become a revenge effect, i.e., a problem worse than the original problem that a technology was designed to solve. The solution to this tragedy of the commons would be policies and incentives that require and encourage magic bullet HRCs to be used within an overall IWM strategy. It seems likely that the future of this new generation of HRCs with stacked traits will be similar to the historical pattern of magic bullet herbicides: overuse and misuse leading to the side effects of pollution and revenge effect of resistant weeds. To break this pattern and work toward a better future, the HRC magic bullet strategy must be used within a holistic, IWP strategy. This will require new policies and incentives. Mortensen et al. offer four general policies to counter this eminent, unfolding tragedy: “(a) regulatory mandates for resistant-weed management, (b) enhanced funding for IWM research and education, (c) collaboratively designed herbicide stewardship plans, and (d) environmental payment incentives for the adoption of IWM practices” (Mortensen et al. 2012). Implementing these kinds of changes will be politically difficult, but there is likely a heavy price for not instituting these changes.

4.4  The Magic Bullet Myth, Progress and Sustainability Uncorrected, the magic bullet myth drives the pesticide treadmill that could, in turn, drive Cochran’s technological treadmill. The treadmill metaphor undermines the idea of progress, but “running in place” could indicate some sort of sustainable process if the discovery of magic bullets could keep pace with the revenge effect of

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resistance. However, mounting side effects and revenge effects are a vicious, downward spiral. In many ways, “treadmill” is not an apt metaphor. Given longer time scales, by overusing and misusing pesticides we could be creating worse problems than these technologies were intended to solve. The environment is being overloaded with pesticides, creating health risks and superbugs and superweeds that are requiring more pesticides, and so forth. In 2017 the United Nation’s Human Rights Commission published a special report on pesticides and human rights. It claims the overuse and misuse of pesticides are violating many people’s human rights (United Nations, Human Rights Council 2017). The report states: “Hazardous pesticides impose substantial costs on Governments and have catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole, implicating a number of human rights and putting certain groups at elevated risk of rights abuses” (Ibid). The report attributes 200,000 deaths a year to pesticide poisoning (Ibid.).

Further, the increased costs of developing new generations of pesticides will likely drive the technological treadmill discussed in Chap. 2, where more expensive technologies favor large producers. This could raise additional social justice concerns. This chapter began by referencing articles celebrating the centennial of the magic bullet concept. Paul Ehrlich’s insight created a new paradigm that set the objective for much medical and agricultural research. Ehrlich was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1908. Paul Müller was also awarded a Nobel Prize for his discovery that DDT was toxic to insects in 1939. The contributions of antibiotics and pesticides to humanity should not be undervalued. The magic bullets of agriculture have likely saved millions of lives by increasing yields, and the search for magic bullets have created a huge and powerful industry. Because of these contributions the magic bullet myth has inspired scientists to continue to search for toxins that target pests and pathogens. This myth has played an important role in the narrative of progress because it created an expectation that the diseases and pests that caused the plagues and famines of history could be eliminated. Unfortunately, the narrow magic bullet strategy did not adequately account for the complex and dynamic web of cultural, ecological and evolutionary factors. Steven Palumbi writes in his article, “Humans as the world’s greatest evolutionary force,” that “Ignoring the speed of evolution requires us to play an expensive catch-up game when chemical control agents and medications fail. Because our impact on the biosphere is not likely to decline, we must use our knowledge about the process of evolution to mitigate the evolutionary changes we impose on species around us” (Palumbi 2001).

Technological civilization seems to be perilously slow in learning the lesson that the omnipresent forces of evolution make ultimate, magic bullet solutions to pestilence and disease an impossible dream. In all three cases – antibiotics, insecticides and herbicides – the reductive magic bullet strategy must be embedded within an overall, holistic as possible strategy to mitigate side effects and revenge effects. In a 2014 review of synthetic pesticide use over the 50 years since the publication of Carson’s Silent Spring, the University of California-Davis Plant Pathologist, Lynn Epstein, writes: “The data [on the evolution of resistance] indicates that (a) IPM programs need to be incorporated…to [GE] crops, (b) that [GE] crops can be

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useful in reducing pesticide use and risk...but simply [GE] crops—even with traits for pest control and, particularly herbicide tolerance—does not necessarily result in a reduction of pesticide use” (Epstein 2014). The examination of Bt crops indicates that this technology can help in reducing pesticide pollution. As long as the Bt magic bullet is placed within an overall IPM strategy this genetically engineered crop could make a contribution to writing a narrative of sustainability. The story of HRCs is much more complicated. This magic bullet strategy requires the use of chemical herbicides. However, if HRCs are paired with low-toxicity herbicides and used within an IWM strategy they could also make a substantial contribution to a narrative of sustainability, particularly by helping to reduce tillage.

4.5  Conclusion By way of summary, this chapter has critically examined the two most economically significant GE crops to date, those with insect resistant traits and those with pesticide resistant traits. Both of these technologies were engineered using the magic bullet strategy. The ultimate goal of this inquiry was to discover philosophical insights into the influential magic bullet myth that could contribute to understanding the possible roles agricultural biotechnology might play in a narrative of sustainability. The magic bullet strategy must be completely revised to contribute to this narrative. There are at least three elements that need to be considered in this revision: • The reductive magic bullet strategy must be placed within holistic strategies like IPM and/or IWM.  This will help mitigate the interrelated unintended consequences of the side effect of pollution and the revenge effect of superpests. • The tenacious, implicit myth of ultimate solution must be uprooted. The dynamics of evolution and the interconnectedness of ecology have taught by merciless repetition that there are no ultimate solutions in pest management. The narrative of sustainability must tell a story that requires constant vigilance against the temptation to overuse and misuse magic bullets. • The current free-market incentives system does not provide adequate disincentives to counteract the treadmill phenomenon and the revenge effect of superbugs and superweeds. The tragedy of the commons created by the current incentive system must be recognized. As in Chap. 2, the competition-driven conception of progress favors magic bullets over IPM. There is enormous institutional inertia toward the discovery of magic bullets in modern biomedical and agricultural research that must be overcome. The magic bullet criticism is not a blanket critique of agricultural biotechnology: it only applies to GE crops that are designed using the reductive, magic bullet strategy. The essence of the criticism is to point out the dangers of using too narrow of a research paradigm. The next two chapters will explore how technological fix criticisms are used against agricultural biotechnology. These explorations will contribute more suggestions for writing a narrative of sustainability.

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Mortensen, D.A., J.F. Egan, B.D. Maxwell, M.R. Ryan, and R.G. Smith. 2012. Navigating a critical juncture for sustainable weed management. Bioscience 62 (1): 75–84. Myers, J.P., M.N. Antoniou, L. Blumberg, T. Carroll, L.G. Colborn, M. Hansen, P.J. Landrigan, B.P.  Lanphear, R.  Mesnage, L.N.  Vandenberg, F.S.  Vom Saal, W.V.  Welshons, and C.M. Benbrook. 2016. Concerns over use of glyphosate-based herbicides and risks associated with exposures: A consensus statement. Environmental Health 15: –19. Nandula, V.K., N.R.  Krishna, S.O.  Duke, and D.H.  Postom. 2005. Glyphosate-resistant weeds: Current prospect and future outlooks. Outlooks on Pest Management 16: 183–187. Nature Editorial. 2014. A growing problem. Nature 187 (510). Nicolia, A., A. Manzo, F. Veronesi, and D. Rossellini. 2014. An overview of the last 10 years of genetically engineered crop safety research. Critical Reviews in Biotechnology 34 (1): 77–88. Pimentel, D. 2005. Environmental and economic costs of the application of pesticides primarily in the United States. Environment, Development and Sustainability 2 (7): 229–252. Pleasants, J.M., and K.S. Oberhauser. 2012. Milkweed loss in agricultural fields because of herbicide use: Effects on the monarch butterfly population. Insect Conservation and Diversity 2 (6): 135–144. Pollack, A. 2015. Weed killer, long cleared, is doubted. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes. com/2015/03/28/business/energy-environment/decades-after-monsantos-roundup-gets-an-allclear-a-cancer-agency-raises-concerns.html. Accessed 27 February 2017. Palumbi, S.R. 2001. Humans as the world’s greatest evolutionary force. Science 293 (5536): 1786–1790. Regalado, A., 2015. As patents expire, farmers plant generic GMOs, MIT Technology Review. 30 July. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/539746/as-patents-expire-farmers-plant-genericgmos/. Accessed 13 Mar 2017. Service, RF. 2013. Agriculture: What happens when weed killers stop killing? Science 341 (6152): 1329. Strebhardt, K., and Axel Ullrich. 2008. Paul Ehrlich’s magic bullet concept: 100 years of progress. Nature Reviews Cancer 8 (6): 473–480. Tabashnik, B.E., T. Brévault, and Y. Carrière. 2013. Insect resistance to Bt crops: Lessons from the first billion acres. Nature Biotechnology 31 (6): 510–521. ———. 2014. Insect resistance to genetically engineered crops: Successes and failures. ISB New Report. January. United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. Recent trends in GE adoption. USDA. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/adoption-of-genetically-engineeredcrops-in-the-us/recent-trends-in-ge-adoption.aspx. Accessed 3 January 2016. United Nations Human Rights Council. 2017. Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food. https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/1701059.pdf. Accessed 25 March 2017. University of California, Integrated Pest Management. Home page. UC ICPM. http://ipm.ucanr. edu. Accessed 15 January 2017. WeedSmart. What we do. WeedSmart. http://weedsmart.org.au. Accessed 13 March 2017. World Health Organization, Media Center. 2017. WHO publishes list of bacteria for which new antibiotics are urgently needed. WHO. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2017/ bacteria-antibiotics-needed/en/. Accessed 13 March 2017.

Chapter 5

Technological Fixes I, Origins, Philosophy and Criticisms

Abstract  “Technological fix,” like “magic bullet,” is a key term in many critiques of agricultural biotechnology. And, like the magic bullet, the idea of a technological fix is a central element in the narrative of progress. Despite being a largely derisive label, the technological fix strategy continues to guide research in agricultural biotechnology. The objective of this chapter is to identify and clarify criticisms of the technological fix strategy. Carefully examining the technological fix strategy provides insights on how to move beyond the narrative crisis created by the conflict between technological optimism and technological pessimism. I argue that neither sweeping endorsements nor sweeping rejections of genetic or technological fixes in agriculture are justified. Rather, we need pragmatic critiques that identify defects and limitations inherent in of this strategy. Similar to the inherent defects of the reductive magic bullet strategy, the technological fix strategy needs to be corrected by placing innovations within a larger, more comprehensive context. Lessons from this chapter will be applied to evaluate examples of genetically engineered crops and production animals in Chap. 6.

5.1  Introduction Along with magic bullet criticisms, it is common to hear critics of agricultural biotechnology label genetically engineered crops and production animals as technological fixes. For example, in his essay, “The Myths of Agricultural Biotechnology,” University of California agroecologist Miguel Altieri writes: By challenging the myths of biotechnology, we expose genetic engineering for what it really is; another “technological fix”, or “magic bullet” aimed at circumventing the environmental problems of agriculture (which themselves are the outcome of an earlier round of technological fixes) without questioning the flawed assumptions that gave rise to the problems in the first place (Altieri 2000).

It is not clear from Altieri’s remarks, but the notions of a “magic bullet” and a “technological fix” are historically and conceptually distinct. Both concepts play important roles in the narrative of progress. The magic bullet strategy uses science © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 N. D. Scott, Food, Genetic Engineering and Philosophy of Technology, The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics 28, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96027-2_5

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and technology to address the problems of pests and pathogens. The technological fix strategy uses science and technology to address problems that are fundamentally social and political in nature. The last two chapters focused on the magic bullet strategy; this chapter and the next turn to criticisms of the technological fix strategy. The objective of this chapter is to identify and clarify the various criticisms of the idea of a technological fix. These criticisms will then be applied in Chap. 6 to select GE crops and production animals that can be characterized as technological fixes. Critically examining the technological fix strategy in this chapter will shed light on the epistemological, or narrative, crisis caused by the conflict between technological optimism and technological pessimism, or the narrative of progress and the pessimistic narrative. Critically examining specific innovations in biotechnology in light of the technological fix criticisms in the next chapter will make specific contributions to the ultimate goal of this book, to unearth insights into possible roles agricultural biotechnology could play in developing a narrative of sustainability.

5.2  The Idea of a Technological Fix The technological fix criticisms of biotechnology are most often raised over the social dimensions of agriculture, particularly those focusing on population growth, chronic food shortages and malnutrition due to poverty. However, as in Altieri’s remarks above, it is also used in disputes over the environmental impacts of industrial agriculture. The term “technological fix” has become a common rhetorical tool in debates over emergent technologies. It is a focal point in the conflict between the narrative of progress and the pessimistic narrative. In a collection of essays, The Technological Fix, editor Lisa Rosner writes: The term technological fix is ubiquitous: it is found everywhere in commentaries on technology. Perhaps that is why the phrase is so hard to define… It has become a dismissive phrase, most often used to describe a quick, cheap fix using inappropriate technology that creates more problems than it solves (Rosner 2004).

As Rosner states above, the common understanding of a technological fix is that it is an attempt to solve problems using technology that will ultimately prove to be counterproductive; the criticism is that technological fixes make things worse in the long run. The notion of a technological fix occupies a paradoxical status in societies: while the term is often used as a derisive label, technological civilization seems to be compelled to attempt to solve problems with technological fixes. As was noted in Chap. 1, the often-demonstrated preference for solving social and environmental problems with technology is driven by deep-rooted habits of thinking and tremendous institutional momentum within public and private research, the result of 300 years of inertia initiated by the Enlightenment Project. This is particularly the case in modern, industrial agriculture where the problems of agriculture are most

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often approached by intensive scientific research that generates new technologies, like GE crops and production animals. It will be helpful to begin by looking at the origins of the concept of a technological fix. While technological fix has become a derisive and dismissive label, it started as a recommendation for a positive course of action. Alvin Weinberg coined the term in his book Reflections on Big Science (Weinberg 1969). Weinberg argued that while technological fixes cannot replace “social engineering” they should be used as a “positive social action” (Teich 1993). He characterizes a technological fix as the solution to a problem that results from reframing a social and political problem as a technological one. Like the magic bullet strategy the technological fix strategy is reductionist: it reduces seemingly insurmountably complex social and political problems to manageable engineering puzzles. Weinberg lists the major benefits of technological fixes. First, technological problems are much simpler than social problems; they are easily defined and prescribed a solution. He writes that “the availability of a crisp and beautiful technological solution often helps focus on the problem to which the new technology is the solution” (Teich 1993). Second, technological problems do not have to deal with the complexity and unpredictability of human behavior. Technological fixes, for better or worse, factor out the human element. Third, they provide policy makers with more options—additional means for addressing social problems. Finally, they can buy time until the problem can be dealt with on a deeper level. In sum, the technological fix idea denotes a problem that depends on methodological reductionism; it reduces the complexity of social and political problems to something like an engineering puzzle. Once this is done, the only factors that will be considered are those that can be interpreted in terms of a technological system. However, as with the magic bullet strategy, reducing the complexity of a problem may exclude many important factors, generating unforeseen consequences. That is, in “fixing” one problem technological fixes can generate others that can be in the form of side effects, tradeoffs or revenge effects, problems that are worse than the one the technological fix was designed to solve. Weinberg is aware of this, and lists the defects associated with technological fixes. As is commonly noted, quick technological fixes address the “symptoms” and not the “disease”. They do not focus on the root social and political causes of the problem, human behaviors, systems, customs, institutions and the like. For instance, Rudi Volti draws the following generalization about technological fixes: “Technological solutions only eliminate the surface manifestations of the problem and do not get at its roots” (Volti 1995). Nonetheless, even with these qualifying remarks, the overall impression of Weinberg’s essay is that “social engineering,” or a political solution, rarely works, while technological fixes are quick, efficient, and effective. Throughout his career, Weinberg remained an enthusiastic and unapologetic champion of technological fixes—he subtitled his 1994 memoir, The Life and Times of a Technological Fixer.

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5.3  Technological Pessimism and Technological Fixes 5.3.1  Criticisms from Cultural History The philosophical and cultural criticisms of technological fixes are part of the larger pessimistic critique of the narrative of progress. They aim to undermine faith in this narrative by exposing cracks in its intellectual foundations of Western, technological culture. While these ideas were covered in Chap. 1, it will be helpful to review and draw a quick sketch of major features of the technological pessimism. The cultural historian, Leo Marx, expresses the sweeping philosophical criticisms of technological fixes as an essential element of the idea of progress. He writes: To dismiss the possibility of a scientific or technological “fix” is a commonplace of contemporary intellectual discourse. But too often the idea is treated as if it were a single, discrete, isolable, vulgar error—a tiny speck of bad thinking easily removed from the public eye. Unfortunately, the dangerous idea of a technical fix is embedded deeply in what was, and probably is, our culture’s dominant conception of history (Marx 1983).

While Marx’s comments are over 30 years old they are still an accurate representation of technological pessimism. For Marx, technological fixes are defective because they derive from uncritical philosophical commitments to scientific and technological progress and an anthropocentric conception of the human relationship to the rest of nature. Langdon Winner expresses this in terms of a commitment to the idea of progress. He writes: “In the twentieth century it is usually taken for granted that the only reliable sources for improving the human condition stem from new machines, techniques and chemicals. Even the recurring environmental and social ills have rarely dented this faith” (Winner 2004). Marx’s critique focuses on the seventeenth century Enlightenment’s philosophy of history. That philosophy asserted the inherent progressiveness of science and technology. In this view, technological fixes are not an alternative means for solving problems; science and technology are the only way to advance civilization. Marx writes that “the assumption is that the achievements of scientists and engineers translate more or less naturally and predictably—in the ordinary course of events— into solutions of such grave problems” (Marx 1983). Marx calls this assumption a “logical abyss in our thinking” and responds to it by asserting that “few arguments could be more useful today than one aimed at persuading the world that science and technology, essential as they are, cannot save us” (Ibid.). He elaborates by saying that “the most urgent problems on the human agenda inhere in the man-made, not the natural environment. They are political, not scientific, and thus scientific progress cannot be the basis for their resolution” (Ibid.). For Marx, the philosophical criticisms of technological fixes point to the Enlightenment’s discredited philosophy of history that is at the foundation of the narrative of progress. In doing so he calls into question the unjustified habit of behaving as if the narrative of progress were true with an undue focus on technological fixes. The applicant science and technology do not necessarily lead to social progress. The reality of scientific and technological change is fundamentally ambiguous; it can represent progress or, as

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was seen in previous chapters, it can drive treadmills and vicious circles. According to Marx, the problems humanity now faces are not technological; they are social, political, and moral. In his view the time has passed when we can address environmental problems with technological fixes, and must get to the root of the problem, the dysfunctional narrative or progress. Another cultural historian, Lynn White, provides an influential critique of technological fixes in terms of the familiar theme of the domination of nature. White’s much-discussed and cited essay, “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,” appeared just as environmentalism was entering popular consciousness in the late 1960s during the development of technological pessimism (White 1967). His thesis is that the origins of the twentieth century’s ecological crisis are found in Western Christianity’s anthropocentric conception of the relationship of humans to nature and in the merging of science and technology. Stated differently, our present environmental troubles are the result of the enormous power created by the union of science and technology along with a narrative or worldview that justifies the use of that power to dominate and control nature. White speculates that the soil, if you will, for these developments was prepared by the transition from the scratch plows to the heavy plow in northern Europe. The heavy plow, with its vertical knife blade, sliced deep into the rich soils of the region, opening up the earth. The application of this agricultural technology, according to White, transformed how people understood their relationship to the natural world. Prior to the heavy plow, comments White, “man had been part of nature; now he was the exploiter of nature” (Ibid.). Like numerous environmentalists’ critics of technological civilization White references Francis Bacon’s influential seventeenth century utopian vision in The New Atlantis, which helped create the narrative of progress. The creed of Bacon’s utopia, and the culture it has come to represent, is “scientific knowledge means technological power over nature” (Ibid.). White’s moral critique aims to undermine the views that technological power is essentially a benign and progressive force and the idea that we humans have the right to dominate the earth to satisfy our needs. The moral critique of the “domination of nature” is a key feature of the technological pessimism causing the current epistemological crisis.

5.3.2  Criticisms from Deep Ecology The philosopher Alan Drengson’s critique of technological fixes is derived from the perspective of the influential environmental philosophy and political movement of the 1970s and 1980s, Deep Ecology. Deep Ecology sees the arc of the narrative of progress and technological civilization ending in an environmental tragedy, a dystopian nightmare. In articulating the Deep Ecology alternative narrative, Drengson reiterates many of the above themes in his essay, “The Sacred and the Limits of the Technological Fix.” Drengson defines a technological fix as “the attempt to repair the harm of a technology by modification” (Drengson 1984). Arne Naess, the founder of the Deep Ecology movement, labeled this approach Shallow Ecology

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(Naess 1973). Deep Ecology was a green revolutionary movement that had at its core an alternative Arcadian vision for humanity as civilization’s final purpose or good. This Arcadian narrative tells a story where the end of history is an earth with a greatly reduced human population living in harmony with natural systems, counterpoised with the technological utopian vision of the narrative of progress. Like White and Marx, Drengson’s Deep Ecology critique seeks to expose weaknesses in the intellectual foundations of Western technological optimism and the idea of progress. Drengson, like Miguel Altieri, points out how technological fixes have created a pattern of problem solving where the same approach that created a problem is used to find solutions, when a completely different way of thinking about the problem is needed. Further, this pattern of problem solving is underwritten, echoing White, by the belief that humans have “power as masters and controllers of nature” (Ibid.). Drengson labels this way of ordering reality as the technocratic and instrumentalist view. He writes that “the technocratic and instrumentalist view values science primarily as an activity which produces knowledge with predication power and capacity for control” (Ibid). For Drengson and Deep Ecologists, the threat of modern technologies is so great that they could destroy the biosphere, and yet these very technologies, it is argued, are necessary for human security and happiness. Paradoxically the escalation of technological power has brought less security. The level of hazard tends to expand with the level of power. It is in such a context that the limits to the idea of a technological fix become clear…. The “technocratic and instrumentalist” worldview that is driving the repeated application of ever more powerful technological fixes poses severe risks for the earth (Ibid). The solution, according to Deep Ecology, is to transform our values and goals; once we do this we will see the limits of a technological fix (Ibid.). One of the fundamental principles of the Deep Ecology Platform is that nature has intrinsic value. That is, people in the Deep Ecology movement are committed to rejecting the modern, progressive narrative that sees the Earth as raw material to be used to satisfy “more and more consumption” (Drengson, DeepEcology.org). The Deep Ecology movement requires a commitment to “respecting the intrinsic values of biodiversity” (Ibid.). As will be seen in the final chapter, the way this commitment is interpreted places Deep Ecologists fundamentally at odds with biotechnology.

5.4  Technological Pragmatism 5.4.1  Criticisms from Philosophy of Science The next element in the critiques of technological fixes and the narrative of progress came during the same period as the historical and environmental critiques listed above, but from the history and philosophy of science. In the late 1960s and early 1970s historians and philosophers of science began to dispute the common sense understanding of scientific progress, which was built on the idea that scientific

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discoveries are cumulative. Several influential philosophers and historians of science called into question the idea that modern science is providing an increasingly detailed and objective description of physical reality. By far the most influential book of this period was Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn 1996). In that book, Kuhn challenged the cumulative thesis with a revolutionary account of major changes in scientific theories. He writes that “[S]cientific revolutions are here taken to be those non-cumulative developmental episodes in which an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one… like the choice between competing political institutions, that between competing paradigms proves to be a choice between incompatible modes of community life” (Ibid.). There are numerous interpretations of Kuhn’s work and his thesis remains controversial, particularly regarding the notion of a paradigm. However, it is safe to say that, after Kuhn, it is no longer possible to hold an uncritical belief in scientific progress, which is devastating for the narrative of progress. Rather, scientific progress is circumscribed. It is best characterized in terms of the successes of normal science in solving the puzzles within a paradigm or, as Kuhn later calls it, a disciplinary matrix. Since modern technology is intrinsically linked to modern science, challenges to scientific progress have consequences for the optimistic view of technological progress. If science is not necessarily progressive, neither is the technology that is based upon its theories that ground and guide the manipulation of nature for human purposes.

5.4.2  Criticisms from Philosophy of Agriculture In his 1995 book, Spirit of the Soil, Paul B.  Thompson develops a philosophical critique of agricultural research and development that uses Kuhn’s notion of a paradigm. Over the last 100  years or so the habitual way of addressing problems in agricultural science is via intensive scientific research aimed at creating technologies that increase productivity. Thompson writes: Agricultural scientists regard their work as successful when it is widely adopted, and the surest path toward adoption is to increase productivity of farming operations… Agricultural disciplines, departments, and universities are measured by their success in the creation of production enhancing technology (Thompson 1995).

Thompson labels the reigning paradigm in the agricultural sciences “productionism”. Productionism follows the pattern of “aggressive applied scientific research, followed by equally aggressive effort of technological transfer” (Ibid). While being more focused and specific, Thompson’s philosophical critique of the culture of agricultural research shares some elements with the philosophical criticisms of technological fixes mentioned above. One major defect of productionism is an unquestioned belief that science and technology are naturally progressive. Thompson writes: The cumulative effect of [productionism] is an industrial agriculture for which the goal of making two blades grow where one grew before is never questioned, where those who

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5  Technological Fixes I, Origins, Philosophy and Criticisms s­ ucceed at this quest are bestowed with honors, and where those who fail to take it up are regarded with puzzlement (Ibid.).

Thompson’s analysis of the paradigm guiding the agricultural research provides a useful framework for criticizing research leading to technological fixes. His critique calls into question suppressed philosophical assumptions guiding mainstream agricultural research. Importantly, Thompson’s criticisms are far less sweeping, and more pragmatic, than the historical (White and Marx) and environmental (Deep Ecology) critiques mentioned earlier; they are confined to research and development in the agricultural sciences. With this brief sketch of the elements of the philosophical challenges to the narrative of progress and technological fixes in mind, it will be helpful to see how they apply to technological fixes to developing world agriculture. Using Thompson’s language, the productionist paradigm creates blinders that can cause technologists to be insensitive to existing local practices and environmental settings when applying a new technology. One example of these criticisms is found in Stephen Lansing’s discussion of the introduction of high yield rice in Bali in his book, Temples of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Indonesian government established a policy requiring framers to grow high-yield varieties of rice, which were developed at the International Rice Institute in the Philippines. To support this policy a group of international advisers reengineered the local agricultural systems to fit the needs of the new strains of rice and the accompanying package of technological inputs. In this case, the high-yield varieties can be seen as a technological fix to solve the problem of food insecurity through increasing yields. Initially this strategy was a success. However, after a few years, unintended consequences began to multiply. Due to the new agricultural techniques, specifically new irrigation practices, insect pests overwhelmed farmers. In response they began using pesticides at increasing rates. The high rate of pesticides use caused severe environmental side effects, leading to pervasive pollution of soil and water resources (Machbub et al. 1988). Prior to the application of this technological fix, Balinese agriculture was organized by a system of water temples whose priests controlled the schedule for allocating irrigation water. These temples and the water schedules evolved over hundreds of years and were an important feature of Balinese society. However, the scientists and technicians who engineered the new agricultural production system were blind to the role the water temples played in the local agricultural, economic, and social systems. They saw these institutions as having only religious functions. In reality, the temples played a significant role in pest management. The water temples coordinated large regions of small farmers using a synchronized irrigation schedule to either flood or burn fields to control pests. This coordinated effort was an effective means for reducing pest populations. When pesticides replaced this system, it created many problems and local farmers favored returning to the old system. Lansing writes: By the mid-1980s, Balinese farmers had become locked into a struggle to stay one step ahead of the next pest, by planting the latest resistant variety of Green Revolution rice.

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Despite the cash profits from the new rice, many farmers began to press for a return to the older systems of scheduling by the water temples in hopes of cutting down the pest populations. Foreign consultants at the irrigation project, however, interpreted any proposals to return control of irrigation to the water temples as a product of religious conservatism and resistance to change. The answer to the pests was pesticide, not the prayers of priest (Lansing 1991).

In reengineering Balinese agriculture, the narrowness of the technologists’ approach to problem solving caused them to fail to see the water temples’ function as a social-­agro-­ecological system. The traditional systems of managing irrigation practices through the water temples had evolved over 800 years to “minimize the exposure of native crops to insects, disease, drought, flood and other natural enemies” (Toulmin 2001). Removing this system put the Balinese farmers in an environmentally harmful arms race against pests. The philosopher Stephen Toulmin draws the following point form this story: Professionals who are committed to particular disciplines, technical or economic, too easily assume that economic and technical issues can be abstracted from situations in which they are put to use, and so can be defined in purely disciplinary terms. They assume, for instance, that economists and engineers can know in advance what things are (or are not) relevant to their policy decisions (Toulmin 2001).

The technologists’ error can be attributed to the productionist paradigm. It caused them to narrowly frame problems in terms of technological fixes; the only solution for a pest outbreak was technological: pesticides. They were unable to see the multiple functions of the local social and religious practices that had developed in a particular ecological setting. That is, they failed to see the temple water schedules as an alternative, agro-ecological form of pest management. On Lansing’s analysis, the use of technological fixes as an approach to problem solving creates a sort of tunnel vision that lead technologists to see all problems as technological. This narrowness of vision causes them to exclude alternative existing social practices and institutions as effective means of problem solving. Put in terms of the philosophical criticisms of technological fixes, the predicament just described is due to uncritical commitments to technological progress and scientific mastery of nature. Technological fixers seem to be held captive by a habitual belief that “the achievements of molecular biology [and chemistry] will be translated into social progress” (Marx 1983). By way of summary, to a large extent the philosophical criticisms of technological fixes of White, Marx and Drengson that developed in the 1980s can be taken together as a philosophy of technology, technological pessimism. The scope of their criticisms is vast. It applies to Western, technological civilization since the scientific and industrial revolutions that created the narrative of progress. Their pessimistic take on progress is critiquing a philosophy of history that sees scientific and technological progress as a means for controlling nature for human benefit. They challenge the morality of a worldview, or narrative, that gives humans the right to dominate nature. Thompson’s technological pragmatism provides criticisms of the modern agricultural sciences, which rely on Kuhn’s philosophy of science that does not see science as necessarily progressive, are far narrower in scope. He criticizes a

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p­ aradigm or disciplinary matrix with a narrow focus on developing technologies aimed at increasing production, while being blind to alternative ways of conceptualizing the problems of agriculture. It should be cautioned that the philosophical criticisms are not inevitably against the use of science and technology. Instead technological pragmatism challenges the habitual way of thinking that sees technological fixes as the dominant way to solve our most urgent problems.

5.4.3  The Problem of Simply Changing Problems In the next three sections I will attempt to illuminate three well-known practical criticisms of technological fixes by examining cases taken from the mining and agricultural industries. Two of these criticisms are closely linked. First, technological fixes do not solve problems and, second, they create new problems. The third criticism is that technological fixes preserve, or fix, systems that should be abandoned in favor of better alternatives. They are in this sense conservative. In an article on technological fixes in the mining industry, Timothy LeCain provides an interesting study of technological solutions for problems created by the smelting of copper in Ducktown, Tennessee and Anaconda, Montana. In Ducktown, the smelting process released sulfur dioxide gas emissions that denuded the countryside. This created a strong backlash against the mine from the local community. In Anaconda, the smelting process released arsenic gas that killed local livestock. Again, this created a strong reaction from the local community. The technological solution at the Ducktown site was to convert the sulfur dioxide air pollutant into sulfuric acid, which was then used to make superphosphate fertilizer and sold to farmers. The technological fix at the Anaconda site was to precipitate the arsenic from the smoke stream then sell it for use as a wood preservative and for the production of pesticides. In both cases, at the time, these were seen as win–win technological fixes. However, LeCain concludes that “the success of the technological fixes in [Ducktown and Anaconda are] finally ambiguous. Transforming, relocating, and delaying effects of smelter smoke arsenic [and sulfur dioxide] eliminated a pressing local environmental danger” (LeCain 2004). The chemists working on these problems did find a technological solution for the problems they set out to solve: removal of the toxic pollutant from the immediate environment and resolution of the conflict between the mining companies and the local communities. However, in the case of Ducktown, while the environmental toxins were transformed and relocated, there were unforeseen environmental consequences from the fertilizers made with the sulfur dioxide gas. In the case of Anaconda, the problem was both delayed and relocated, as the arsenic treated lumber eventually created environmental hazards, as did the pesticides made from the precipitated arsenic. LeCain’s analysis provides for a more nuanced criticism of technological fixes than what is found in popular rhetoric. As the first practical criticism claims, technological fixes to environmental problems are frequently dismissed as only treating

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the symptoms and not the problem. LeCain points out that “data would suggest that, contrary to popular perceptions, environmental technological fixes have indeed solved many environmental problems” (LeCain 2004). However, this is true only in a restricted sense; a major characteristic of these solutions is that they are ambiguous. The judgment that these technological fixes provided a “solution” depends on who is defining the criteria for success and how they are defined. For example, from the perspective of the mining companies, the technological solutions at Ducktown and Anaconda were successful, at least in the short term. If a problem is narrowly framed as an engineering puzzle, then a technological fix can be said to solve that problem. However, from the perspective of the long-term environmental problems, it would be much harder to judge these fixes as successes. As the second practical criticism points out, when one takes a wider and longer view, technological fixes generally delay, relocate, or create new problems. For example, the Anaconda smelter did not close until 1980, and it left a 300 square mile Superfund site. In this sense problems are not solved. As was seen in the cases of the Ducktown and Anaconda mines, the technological “solutions” actually transformed, relocated or delayed problems; they did not eliminate problems altogether. LeCain’s analysis of technological fixes is consistent with the 1973 study, Technological Shortcuts to Social Change. In that book the authors, Amitai Etzioni and Richard Remp, examine several technological fixes; among them are fixes for heroin addiction, drunk driving and gun control. Etzioni and Remp reached the following conclusion: When all is said and done, what did we find in our examination of specific technological shortcuts? Do the shortcuts we studied work? In view of the preceding analysis, obviously the answer will not be a simple yes or no. The question is: What works for what and whom? Do technological shortcuts solve the problem? None of the technologies we studied does that…. Do the technological shortcuts work for important segments of the problem? In our considered judgment… the answer is a positive one (Etzioni and Remp 1973).

These conclusions naturally lead to the third practical criticism of technological fixes: they can preserve systems that should be abandoned in favor of better alternatives. In both Ducktown and Anaconda, the technological fixes resolved the mining operations’ conflicts with the local community by mitigating harms to local vegetation and livestock. The fix was designed to solve a problem within existing technological systems so it could continue to function. Nevertheless, looking back at environmental legacy of both mining systems, it might have been better to look for different alternatives to extracting copper from these sites.

5.4.4  The Problem of Defining Success To see the relevance of these practical criticisms for agricultural biotechnology it will be helpful to see how they apply to modern, industrial agriculture. The Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s is a paradigm of the use of technological fixes in modern agriculture. This important episode in the history of agriculture has been

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praised and condemned. Was the Green Revolution with its high-yield varieties and accompanying package of technological inputs successful? Since technological fixes are often ambiguous, the answer is likely to be yes and no. It depends on who defines the criteria for success and how they are defined. From the perspective of the defenders of the Green Revolution, it was a great triumph in the history of scientific agriculture. It was a major event that confirmed the status of scientific research leading to new technologies that increased yields as the way to solve the problems of population growth and hunger. In the 1950s and 60s, Norman Borlaug spearheaded the development of high-yielding varieties of wheat, which sparked the Green Revolution. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for this work. Many see Borlaug as a hero whose technological breakthroughs saved millions from starvation. For instance, in the article mentioned in Chap. 2, titled “Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity,” Gregg Easterbrook writes: [Borlaug] received the Nobel in 1970, primarily for his work in reversing the food shortages that haunted India and Pakistan in the 1960s. Perhaps more than anyone else, Borlaug is responsible for the fact that throughout the postwar ear, except in sub-Saharan Africa, global food production has expanded faster than the human population, averting the mass starvations that were widely predicted (Easterbrook 1997).

Again, these technological breakthroughs that greatly increased yields are seen as a model of a successful technological fix in agriculture. However, its success is narrowly defined in terms of increasing yields through genetic improvements and the associated technological package of industrial fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, irrigation and mechanization. The genetic improvement of crops that initiated the Green Revolution is used to justify the next generation of technological fixes. In his many articles defending biotechnology, Borlaug champions agricultural biotechnology as the next technological breakthrough that will raise the yield ceiling. For example, in an article titled “Ending World Hunger,” Borlaug writes: “For the genetic improvement of food crops to continue at a pace sufficient to meet the needs of 8.3 billion people projected to be on this planet by the end of the quarter century, both conventional technology and biotechnology are needed” (Borlaug 2000). While Green Revolution technologies dramatically increased production and fed millions of people, they did not solve the problems of population growth, poverty and hunger. Borlaug writes that “Despite the success of the Green Revolution, the battle to ensure food security for hundreds of millions of miserably poor people is far from won. Mushrooming populations, changing demographics, and inadequate poverty intervention programs have eroded many of the gains of the Green Revolution” (Ibid.). One can readily see the ambiguity of Green Revolution technologies as a solution to the problem of hunger in South Asia. On the one hand, it did solve the problem for which it was created: it greatly increased yields and staved off dire predictions of widespread malnutrition and starvation in South Asia. On the other hand, the practical criticisms of technological fixes point out that it did not solve the problem but delayed it. Populations continued to grow, and in his last years, Borlaug felt the

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need to argue for agricultural biotechnology as a new technological fix to raise yields and keep pace with population growth. In addition to its inability to keep pace with population growth in the long term, critics argue that the Green Revolution technologies relocated problems and created new ones. While it is a fact that Green Revolution technologies raised yields, it is also true that they generated many negative social and environmental side effects. The negative environmental consequences may, in the long run, be revenge effects that undermine the vaunted Green Revolution successes. In their review of the consequences of the Green Revolution, Robert Evenson and Bill Gollen write that the critics of the Green Revolution have “raised concerns about the sustainability of intensive cultivation—e.g., the environmental consequences of soil degradation, chemical pollution, aquifer depletion, and soil salinity—and about the differential socioeconomic impacts of new technologies. These are valid criticisms” (Evenson and Gollin 2003). David Tilman also observes that “It is unclear whether high-­ intensity agriculture can be sustained, because of the loss of soil fertility, the erosion of soil, the increased incidence of crop and livestock diseases, and the high energy and chemical inputs associated with it” (Tilman 1998). Tilman concludes that “it is not clear which is greater—the success of modern high intensity agriculture, or its shortcomings” (Ibid.). The cost of raising yields with Green Revolution technology is a tangle of environmental problems that threaten to undermine the successes of the last 40 years. This conclusion helps illustrate the first two linked practical criticisms of technological fixes: they do not solve problems and they create new problems, side effects and revenge effects, treadmills and vicious cycles, or spirals. In addition to environmental problems, for many the Green Revolution technologies have generated negative social side effects in the form of inequalities and injustices. One unintended consequence of the Green Revolution is that these technologies have indirectly provided an advantage to large industrial style farmers over small farmers. As a consequence, large farms have systematically displaced small farms. This points to another problem in using technological fixes in agriculture, the “technological treadmill” discussed in Chap. 2. The agricultural economist Willard Cochrane introduced the notion of the technological treadmill in agriculture in the 1950s. The technological treadmill phenomenon illustrates that the determination of the success of a technological fix is a matter of perspective and judgment. The treadmill phenomenon also challenges the supposed link between technological fixes and the idea of progress. To review material covered in Chap. 2, the general idea of a technological treadmill is that new production-increasing technologies, like most new technologies, create winners and losers. In the case of agricultural technologies winners are technology companies, early adopters and consumers. The losers are late adopters and small, resource-poor farmers. Paul B. Thompson writes: “New technologies fuel a process where better-off farmers get bigger, and worse-off famers leave the land” (Thompson 2009). Very briefly, the way the treadmill works is that farmers who are early adopters of new technologies reap the financial benefit of higher yields for a short period, until prices begin to fall due to increased production. In order to remain competitive, late adopters must purchase the technology but they do not reap the

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financial benefits of increased production—their costs have increased but their profits have decreased. Because of this cost-price squeeze many late adaptors are driven out of business. This further benefits the wealthier farmers who were the early adopters as they have the financial resources to purchase the farms of the unfortunate laggards. It seems that farmers are forced to purchase the latest production-­ increasing technology just to stay in business; and, as the prices of crops continue to fall with increased production farmers must, as the saying goes, get big or get out. The metaphor of a treadmill once again is opposed to the idea of progress. However, to recall, the technological treadmill is only a treadmill from the farmers’ perspective; from the consumers’ perspective falling food prices can appear as real social progress. When evaluated in terms of a utilitarian calculus lower food prices can easily represent a net increase in utility. Since there are generally more consumers than producers the increases in utility of lower food price outweigh the loss of utility experienced by some farmers. Utilitarian agricultural science, guided by the production paradigm, has been the driving force behind the technological treadmill. However, from an ethical perspective that focuses, for example, on liberty, human rights, equity and environmental values the consequences of the technological treadmill are morally ambiguous, or worse. Returning to the example of the Green Revolution, using a criterion of social justice for the poor, some have judged the Green Revolution to be a tragedy. This judgment is made clear in an open letter to the director of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), signed by 670 nongovernmental organizations. The letter criticized a 2004 FAO report, “Agricultural Biotechnology: Meeting the Needs of the Poor?” The report advocates the use of agricultural biotechnology to address the problem of poor farmers. The letter challenged the use of “any ‘technological fix’ as a response to food problems in poor countries” (Paarlberg 2005) and makes explicit reference to the Green Revolution as an unsuccessful technological fix. [The FAO’s 2004 report on biotechnology] proposes a technological ‘fix’ of crops critical to the food security of marginalized peoples… If we have learned anything from the failures of the Green Revolution, it is that technological ‘advances’ in crops genetics for seeds that respond to external inputs go hand in hand with increased socio-economic polarization, rural and urban impoverishment, and greater food insecurity. The tragedy of the Green Revolution lies precisely in its narrow technological focus that ignored the far more important social and structural underpinning of hunger. The technology strengthened the very structures that enforce hunger (An Open Letter to the Director General of FAO 2004).

Earlier, I noted how the success of Green Revolution technologies is used to justify agricultural biotechnology as a new technological fix to solve the problems created by intensive agricultural practices. Here we see the downsides of the Green Revolution as a technological fix being used as an argument against moving forward with agricultural biotechnology when framed in the narrow manner of a technological fix. As Paul B.  Thompson notes, “Skeptics of mainstream development and mainstream agricultural science have powerful reasons to believe that it is time for an alternative approach” (Thompson 2009). The argument is that the technological fix approach generated unacceptable, if unintended, social injustices. The Green

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Revolution illustrates an important observation about technological fixes: like magic bullets, this reductive approach generates side effects and revenge effects. The determination of their success depends on how success is defined, who defines it, and whether the definition of successes includes unintended consequences. For example, if success is narrowly defined in terms of increasing production, increasing food availability and lowering consumer costs, the technological fixes of he Green Revolution were a success. If success is defined in terms of longer-term environmental impacts and the consequences of the technological treadmill phenomenon on resource-poor farmers, it is much less clear that the Green Revolution was a success. The Green Revolution resolved the problems for which it was designed: it increased yields. But the problem was only solved for a time and generated new environmental and social problems.

5.4.5  The Problem of Conservatizing Questionable Systems In terms of the third practical criticism mentioned at the beginning of this section, technological fixes are often designed to solve problems within a technological system; in that sense they are conservative. This is an important point in looking at the relationship between agricultural biotechnology and Green Revolution technologies. Supposedly, biotechnology is a way of fixing the side effect problems created by Green Revolution technologies. This way of conceiving of biotechnology thinking is illustrated in an essay by Anthony Trewavas, who writes: “The benefits of modern agricultural technology are well understood; now is the time to reduce the undoubted side effects from pesticides, soil erosion, nitrogen waste, and salinization. GE technology certainly offers some good solutions” (Trewavas 2001). For example, in the last chapter it was seen how GE crops with insecticidal traits are touted as a fix for chemical insecticides. The caution here is that technological fixes for the problems of intensive agriculture are designed to preserve the current technological system by fixing it rather than looking for alternative systems that have fewer unwanted social and environmental side effects. Again, this was seen in the last chapter with new generations of herbicide resistant crops with stacked traits. These new herbicide resistant GE crops conserve a system of weed management that is extremely problematic. In some cases, it may be wiser to question that system itself – to ask, in effect, is the current system worth conserving and are there better alternatives?

5.5  Conclusion The above investigations divided technological fix criticisms in to two general categories: technological pessimism and technological pragmatism. As a philosophy of technology, technological pessimism provides sweeping rejections of the narrative

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of progress and its habitual use of technological fixes. These criticisms came from several sources, including cultural history, environmental philosophy, and many other sources that were not mentioned. The philosophical criticisms from cultural history and environmental philosophy focus on how technological fixes are used to thoughtlessly dominate nature, which is the source of our ecological crises. Technological pessimism seeks to expose the immorality of a purely anthropocentric and instrumental interpretation of nature of the narrative of progress and its technological optimism. They warn that the idea of progress, driven by science and technology, is ultimately immoral because it degrades the natural word. Technological pragmatism provides criticisms from philosophy of science and philosophy of agriculture that are far less sweeping. These criticisms undermine the common sense idea that science and technology are progressive in an ultimate sense. From this view, as was seen in Chap. 2, progress can be made but it is progress within the boundaries of a paradigm or disciplinary matrix. For example, progress can be made toward the goals of increasing yields, lowering food costs and maintaining the general welfare. But these goals are bounded within the productionist paradigm that habitually uses technological fixes. These philosophical criticisms expose the implicit philosophical assumptions in the arguments of many technological optimists, like Trewavas and Borlaug, that agricultural biotechnology is the way for solving the challenges of twenty-first century agriculture, which will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter. The pragmatic or practical criticisms do not reject technological fixes. They do serve to caution against the ambiguous nature of technological fixes by pointing to the defects and limitations of this reductive strategy. The practical criticisms of technological fixes serve as a warning against the inherent dangers of addressing complex, multifaceted problems that are fundamentally social and political in nature with the inherently narrow technological fix strategy. Technological fixes only “solve” problems in terms of the narrow frame of an engineering puzzle. That is, they can solve the problem for which they were designed but when one pans back to the larger complex dynamic webs that compose the world of humans and nature, a different judgment might be made. When one takes a wider and longer view technological fixes tend to transform, relocate, or delay the problems, or create new ones. In a similar way that the inherent defects of the reductive magic bullet strategy need to be corrected by being placed within a larger holistic strategy, so does the reductive technological fix strategy. The criticisms from technological pragmatism do not necessarily require abandoning the technological fix strategy any more than the criticisms of magic bullets necessarily require abandoning that strategy. Technological fixes can serve an ameliorative role that may be good enough or all that can feasibly be done. For example, in the field of  health care, while the source of a person’s heart disease might be decades of poor diet and the lack of exercise, at some point in the development of this person’s heart disease there is little use prescribing lifestyle changes. The patient’s only options may be the technological fixes of medication and/or surgery. Turning from this example to more general points, one should have clear and lim-

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ited expectations about what new technological fixes, like agricultural biotechnology, can accomplish and what new problems could arise. Technological fixes generally evolve trade-offs and side effects, and possibly could result in revenge effects, problems that are worse than the original problem. With these final points in mind, the next chapter will begin with a more carefully consideration of technological optimism, then examine two genetically engineered organisms that can be characterized as technological fixes in light of technological pragmatism.

References Altieri, M. 2000. Genetic engineering and agriculture: The myths, environmental risks, and alternatives. Oakland: Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy. Borlaug, N. 2000. Ending world hunger: The promise of biotechnology and the threat of antiscience zealotry. Plant Physiology 124 (2): 487–490. http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/124/2/487. Accessed 24 May 2016. Drengson, A.R. 1984. The sacred and the limits of the technological fix. Zygon 19 (3): 259–275. Drengson, A.R. Some thoughts on the deep ecology movement. Deep Ecology. http://www.deepecology.org/deepecology.htm. Accessed 12 Dec 2016. Easterbrook, G. 1997. Forgotten benefactor of humanity. Atl Mon 279 (1): 75–82. Etzioni, A., and R. Remp. 1973. Technological “shortcuts” to social change. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Evenson, R.E., and D. Gollin. 2003. Assessing the impact of the green revolution, 1960 to 2000. Science 5620 (300): 758–762. Kuhn, T. 1996. The structure of scientific revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press. Lansing, J.S. 1991. Priests and programmers: Technologies of power in the engineered landscape of Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lecain, T.L. 2004. When everybody wins does the environment lose? The environmental techno-­ fix in twentieth-century mining. In The technological fix: How people use technology to create and solve social problems, ed. L. Rosner, 137–153. New York: Routledge. Machbub, B., H.F. Ludwig, and D. Gunaratnam. 1988. Environmental impact from agrochemicals in Bali (Indonesia). Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 11 (1): 1–23. Marx, L. 1983. Are science and society going in the same direction? Science Technology and Human Values 8 (4): 6–9. Naess, A. 1973. The shallow and the deep, long-range ecology movement: A summary. Inquiry 1–4 (16): 95–100. Paarlberg, R. 2005. From the green revolution to the gene revolution. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 47 (1): 38–40. Rosner, L., ed. 2004. The technological fix: How people use technology to create and solve social problems. New York: Routledge. Teich, A.H. 1993. Technology and the future. 6th ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Thompson, P.B. 1995. The Spirit of the soil: Agriculture and environmental ethics. New  York: Routledge. Thompson, P.B. 2009. Can agricultural biotechnology help the poor? The answer is yes, but with qualifications. Science Progress. http://scienceprogress.org/2009/06/ag-biotech-thompson/. Accessed 25 May 2016. Tilman, D. 1998. The greening of the green revolution. Nature 396: 211–212. Toulmin, S.E. 2001. Return to reason. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Trewavas, A. 2001. The population/biodiversity paradox: Agricultural efficiency to save wilderness. Plant Physiology 125: 174–179. Volti, R. 1995. Society and technological change. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Weinberg, A.M. 1969. Reflections on big science. Cambridge: MIT Press. White, L.T. 1967. The historical roots of our ecologic crisis. Science 3767 (155): 1203–1207. Winner, L. 2004. Technology as forms of life. In Readings in the philosophy of technology, ed. D.M. Kaplan, 103–113. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield.

Chapter 6

Technological Fixes II, Genetic Engineering, Technological Pragmatism and Planetary Boundaries

Abstract  This chapter begins by examining specific, sweeping endorsements of genetically engineered, technological fixes based on a progressive interpretation of the history of agriculture. It then shows how a pessimistic interpretation that counters the optimistic view by emphasizing the harmful, unintended consequences of technological agriculture. These rival interpretations cancel each other out: we need a more balanced, pragmatic philosophy of technology to understand and evaluate innovations in agricultural biotechnology. I then apply the pragmatic criticisms of technological fixes developed in this chapter to evaluate two proposed genetically engineered, technological fixes. One is a genetically engineered pig designed as a fix for phosphorus pollution. For the other example, I return to Golden Rice as a fix for the sociopolitical problem of poverty leading to micronutrient malnutrition. This case-by-case examination avoids the sweeping pro and con positions of technological pessimism and technological optimism that drive the polarized debate over agricultural biotechnology.

6.1  Introduction The fundamental challenges of twenty-first century agriculture are feeding nine to ten billion people over the next 50  years while creating sustainable agricultural systems. Soil scientist Daniel Hillel observes that, “at the same time that the people of the earth are proliferating, their treatment of the earth is diminishing its capacity to support them” (Hillel 1991). These are tremendously difficult challenges that will require immense social and political efforts, and GE technological fixes will undoubtedly play significant roles. However, given the current state of the polarized GE debate between optimists and pessimists wise decisions on how to use these technological fixes seems unlikely. Recalling a quote from Paul B. Thompson mentioned at the end of Chap. 2: It is…past time…to discard simplistic thinking on agriculture…. No blanket endorsement or condemnation of biotechnology makes any sense at all. Each proposal will have to be

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6  Technological Fixes II, Genetic Engineering, Technological Pragmatism… evaluated case by case. But doing that will require a discourse that is capable of following an argument of some sophistication and complexity. (Thompson 2009).

The first part of the last chapter examined the technological pessimists’ blanket condemnations of biotechnology as part of the instrumentalist worldview and the domination of nature. The second half of the chapter outlined the more sophisticated and complex pragmatic criticisms of technological fixes. The first part of this chapter will discuss the technological optimists’ blanket endorsements of  technological fixes. These endorsements are based on sweeping arguments that presuppose the truth of the narrative of progress, which is derived from a selective interpretation of the history of technological change in agriculture. However, the technological pessimists can counter this sanguine interpretation by pointing to the record of unintended consequences of technological agriculture. As will be discussed, taken together these rival interpretations cancel each other out and call for a more realistic and pragmatic understanding of technological change. It seems a more balanced and pragmatic philosophy of technology that requires greater responsibility for directing innovations is the way forward. The second part of this chapter will use technological pragmatism’s criticisms of technological fixes to critically examine two proposed GE technological fixes, one aimed at addressing environmental problems and the other social problems. Examining these two case studies will provide insights for evaluating GE technological fixes on case-by-case bases.

6.2  Technological Optimism 6.2.1  Human-Centered Ethics The philosophical arguments for technological fixes presuppose the narrative of progress outlined in Chap. 1. Luminaries such as the billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates and the late Nobel Prize-winning agronomist Norman Borlaug argue that GE crops are examples of technological optimism that see biotechnology as the way forward to help feed the world’s poor while creating more sustainable agricultural systems. Their arguments contain nuances, especially Gates’, but it is clear that their worldview assumes that scientific and technological progress is driving history forward to a better world. Given both men’s successes and life histories, one can understand why they adopt this worldview. Technological pessimists condemn this worldview as the troubling and immoral human domination of nature. As will be seen, technological optimism dismisses this charge and doubles-down, if you will, on a human-centered ethics that provides a blanket endorsement of technological fixes. This purely anthropocentric ethics lacks the sophistication needed to evaluate the roles of GE technological fixes in a narrative of sustainability. In this way the optimist’s view is similar to the pessimist’s view, but where one sees good the other sees bad, and vice versa.

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There are at least two books on agricultural biotechnology and ethics that represent this optimistic philosophy of technology: Gregory Pence’s Designer Foods (2002) and R.  P. Thompson’s Agro-Technology: A Philosophical Introduction (2011) advocate exclusively for human-centered agricultural ethics. (To avoid confusion, it is key to distinguish R. P. Thompson from Paul B. Thompson, who is referenced throughout this book. They offer contrasting views.) These books affirm the market-driven narrative of progress and the productionist paradigm, which Paul B. Thompson methodically critiques in his 1995 book, The Spirit of the Soil. For Pence and R.P.  Thompson technological agriculture, whose telos, or end, is to increase yields, is essential for the larger social good of maximizing human welfare. These authors reject philosophical criticisms of technological fixes discussed in the last chapter, the moral critique of the technocratic instrumentalist worldview and the human domination of nature (White 1967, Drengson 1984). For Pence and R.  P. Thompson existential concerns about the human domination of nature are either dangerously wrongheaded or not worth discussing. Pence devotes a full chapter of his book to a diatribe against efforts to articulate an ecocentric or biocentric ethic, such as Deep Ecology. He asserts that the arguments for the intrinsic value of nature in environmental philosophy are logically flawed and, worse, they lead down the slippery path to an anti-humanist “ecofascism” (Pence 2002, 125–129). For his part, R. P. Thompson simply ignores the whole field of environmental ethics in his list of the relevant ethical theories for considering ethics and agricultural biotechnology. The human-centered ethics of Pence and R. P. Thompson is reactionary rather than visionary. They provide arguments to justify the status quo of technological optimism and the productionist paradigm as if there is no substance to the technological pessimists’ arguments against the human domination of nature. In their view technological progress will solve the problems created by technological progress. Both thinkers argue that GE crops will have positive environmental benefits that will in turn benefit a growing human population. But this seems more like an article of faith than an ethics and philosophy of technology capable of providing guidance for technological change to meet the challenges of twenty-first century agriculture. The human-centered, utilitarian ethics of the narrative of progress simply provides a blanket endorsement for the manipulation of plant and animal genomes to meet human needs. This narrow view fails to acknowledge or comprehend the many nonhuman values in the world that are being harmed by human activity. For example, their human-centered ethics fails to see that the current catastrophic rates of loss of biodiversity presents a deeply troubling moral problem in itself, and not simply because it impacts human welfare. As will be discussed in the final two chapters, a new ethics of responsibility that moves beyond narrowly conceived human concerns is needed to confront the new realities of the Anthropocene. That said, Pence’s and R.P. Thompson’s ethics is concerned about the environmental impacts of agriculture. The degradation of the environment can and is undermining the goal of maximizing human welfare.

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6.2.2  Optimistic Interpretations of History Again, Pence and R. P. Thompson support their advocacy for biotechnology with a selective and optimistic interpretation of the history of technological agriculture. R. P. Thompson begins his book by quoting Jeffry Sachs, who writes: “I believe that the single most important reason why prosperity spread, and why it continues to spread, is the transmission of technologies and the ideas underlying them (Sachs 2005, 41–42). Both Pence and R. P. Thompson devote sections of their books celebrating the successes of the Green Revolution. As mentioned several times in preceding chapters, the humanitarian successes of the Green Revolution are used to justify the Gene Revolution. The Green Revolution denotes the period from the 1960s to the 1980s when technological inputs and high yield varieties of wheat, rice and corn greatly increased food production in South Asia and South America. To recall, Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to the Green Revolution. In his later years he saw biotechnology as the next big advance and became one of the Gene Revolution’s strongest and most outspoken advocates. In an essay with the provocative title, “Ending world hunger: The promise of biotechnology and the threat of antiscience zealotry,” Borlaug affirms the narrative of progress: “Genetic modification of crops... is the progressive harnessing of the forces of nature to the benefit of feeding the human race…. The genetic engineering of plants at the molecular level is just another step in humankind’s deepening scientific journey into living genomes” (Borlaug 2000). Borlaug is one Bill Gates’ inspirations to fight world hunger; Gates states that “Some critics say the world’s efforts to improve poor people’s lives are doomed. But Dr. Borlaug is proof that large-scale progress is possible. He is a genuine hero, and his story should make us optimistic about the future” (World Food Prize, emphasis added). The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website on agricultural development begins with a reference to the Green Revolution, stating: “[The Green Revolution]…helped to double food production and saved hundreds of millions of lives” (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). From this optimistic interpretation of history of technological agriculture, the past successes of scientific and technological innovations justify continuing progress toward maximizing human welfare. However, as was seen in Chap. 1, there are other pessimistic interpretations of the history of modern technological agriculture and the Green Revolution. There is substance to the pessimistic interpretation of the history of technological agriculture that optimists cannot dismiss. The technological pessimists can undermine the sanguine interpretation of the optimists, and taken together they seem to cancel each other out. It is well documented that the high yields generated by Green Revolution technologies and practices have come with high environmental costs: loss of biodiversity, nitrogen and phosphorus pollution of surface and ground waters, degradation of soils from over-tillage, and pollution from chemical pesticides. In an article in Nature assessing the legacy of intensive production practices, Tillman, et al. highlights “the need for more sustainable agricultural methods” (Tillman et  al. 2002, 672). Technological optimists are, of course, aware of these problems. In an article

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arguing that agricultural biotechnology is needed to solve the problem of feeding people and conserving the natural environment, Anthony Trewavas writes: All technologies have problems because perfection is not in the human condition. The answer is to improve technology once difficulties appear; not, as some would wish, discard technology altogether. Remove the problems but retain the benefits! The benefits of modern agricultural technology are well understood; now is the time to reduce the undoubted side effects from pesticides, soil erosion, nitrogen waste, and salination. GE technology certainly offers some good solutions.

Along the same lines, in a speech announcing a 150 million dollar funding initiative for agricultural research aimed at poor farmers, Bill Gates remarks: The world should draw inspiration [from the] Green Revolution…[but] as scientists, governments, and others strive to repeat the successes of the original Green Revolution, they should be careful not to repeat its mistakes, such as the overuse of fertilizer and irrigation…. The next Green Revolution has to be greener than the first (GatesFoundation.org).

The technological optimists are convinced that progress in biotechnology will allow agriculture to meet the twenty-first century challenges of food security and create sustainable agriculture systems. But, again, this seems more like an article of faith than the basis for an ethics and philosophy of technology. And, the opponents of agricultural biotechnology are quick to point out that the challenges of twenty-­ first century agriculture are social and political in nature, not technological. But the pessimists’ view also seems more like an article of faith; that the social and political change will be adequate to meet the challenges of twenty-first century agriculture. From the pessimistic interpretation of the history of technological agriculture, GE-technological fixes will only address symptoms, not the root cause of problems. In the long run this next round of technological fixes will make problems worse. Peter Rosset, a prominent researcher and alternative agricultural activist writes that, “The real causes of hunger are poverty, inequality and the lack of access. Too many are too poor to buy the food that is available” (Rosset 2002). Opponents of biotechnology frequently repeat these kinds of statements and, in a literal sense, they are true; the ‘root’ causes of hunger are social and political. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the world produces enough food to provide every person on the planet with enough calories to meet daily requirements (FAO 2012). Chronic poverty and lack of access to arable land are the often-cited reasons for hunger and food insecurity, and not a lack of technology. Advocates for biotechnology are familiar with this standard technological fix criticism. They respond with standard technological fix arguments. While strictly speaking there might be enough food to feed the current population, the excess food is in wealthy countries and severe poverty and malnutrition are in poor countries. There are multiple complex reasons for chronic poverty and malnutrition involving issues of war and peace, the history of colonialism, poor governance, and much more. Solving these often multifaceted and intractable problems with social and political solutions is an overwhelming task with long time horizons. Solving the technological puzzle of conjuring “more food from the plants we grow” (Trewavas 2002) can be accomplished in timeframes that matter for millions of hungry people.

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This type of back and forth over technological fixes between pessimists and optimists is common and indicative of the polarized debate over biotechnology. To repeat the claim made in the introduction of this chapter, the opposing, and sweeping claims of technological optimism and technological pessimism are based on incompatible interpretations of the history of technological agriculture. Taken together they seem to cancel each other out and call for a pragmatic philosophy technology. Looking at the problem of polarization from another perspective, Paul B. Thompson identifies a key divide in agricultural philosophy corresponding to the split between advocates and critics of technological fixes (Thompson 2014). On the one hand, technological optimists see the central mission of agricultural sciences as increasing yields to feed growing populations. They make sweeping claims that the agricultural biotechnology is necessary to solve the challenges of twenty-first century agriculture. On the other hand, there are technological pessimists who oppose technological fixes and claim that social and political movements and agroecology offer the only real solutions. Sweeping claims from both sides of the divide seem naïve and simplistic. On the one hand, the arguments of opponents of technological fixes and biotechnology would seem to be analogous to arguments opposing the use of medical technologies to treat cardiovascular diseases: it is as if cardiovascular diseases should only be treated with social, behavioral or environmental interventions. On the other hand, the arguments of proponents of technological fixes and biotechnology would be analogous to asserting that cardiovascular diseases can only be treated with medical technologies. These are false oppositions; some combination of actions and treatments would be best. Unnecessary ideological oppositions are driving the polarized debate over agricultural biotechnology. This in an obstacle to the careful, deliberations needed to build sustainable societies.

6.3  Technological Pragmatism and Technological Fixes There are numerous examples where technological fixes to problems that often have social, behavioral or political roots are seen as good enough and the best that can be done. For example, due to the failure of timely social and political actions to mitigate greenhouse gases causing global climate change many coastal cities are increasingly confronted with rising sea levels. These cities may be forced to construct massive floodgates or sea walls to counter an influx of salt water and storm surges. In situations where problems are severe; eminent; and there is strong resistance to political, social or behavioral change; quick technological fixes may be the best that can be done. However, there is a flipside to these pragmatic uses of technological fixes. It is easy to list problems whose “root” causes are said to be social, political, environmental or behavioral that are almost reflexively reframed using the technological fix strategy. The habitual overuse of technological fixes can be counterproductive by undermining efforts to get at the root of a problem. In some cases technological fixes are justified, but in many others they are not. As with the magic bullet strategy, the main concern is modern societies are overusing and misusing the

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technological fix strategy. The goal of the remainder of this chapter is to use the pragmatic criticisms of technological fixes developed in the last chapter to examine two proposed GE technological fixes. This case-by-case examination will hopefully avoid the sweeping pro and con positions of technological pessimism and technological optimism. The next section will examine a case study of a GE animal that is engineered to reduce phosphorus pollution. However, a larger context is needed to gain insights into using GE animals as a technological fix that is capable of contributing to a narrative of sustainably. That larger context is planetary boundary theory.

6.3.1  Planetary Boundaries In 2009 a team of scientists lead by Johan Rockström published an influential paper introducing the Planetary Boundary approach (PB) titled, “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity” (Rockström et al. 2009). The idea behind the PB approach is human civilizations have developed over the last 10,000  years during a relatively stable period in the earth’s history, the Holocene. Scientists predict that without human interference in the earth’s systems this stable period would likely continue for thousands of years (Ibid.). Unfortunately, human-caused global environmental change is pushing the earth’s systems into unpredictable and unstable states, the Anthropocene. This new geologic period will be characterized by human-caused environmental instability. The Anthropocene threatens to be a time of great hardships for humanity (Steffen et al. 2011). In an effort to stave off the worse consequences, Rockström et al. identify nine planetary boundaries “associated with the planets’ biophysical subsystems and processes” (Rockström et  al. 2009). These boundaries roughly identify “the safe operating space for humanity” (Ibid.). The notion of staying within the “safe operating space for humanity” can make an important contribution to deliberations on biotechnology, technological fixes and creating sustainable agricultural systems. The PB approach provides a readily understood heuristic. Most people are familiar with the notion of keeping systems within operating boundaries to avoid problems. To use the medical analogy again, routine health check-ups are recommended to identify problems before they become serious risks. Health practitioners meet with patients to measure and monitor indicators that predict increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, e.g., total blood cholesterol, blood pressure, body mass index and so forth. If any of these indicators falls outside of “safe operating boundaries” they could indicate a heightened risk of cardiovascular disease. However, these indicators are insufficient, and physicians also track social and behavior factors, such as tobacco use and alcohol consumption. Physical check-ups and patient histories greatly simplify the multitude of things that could be involved in maintaining bodily health; nonetheless, they provide valuable indicators that serve as warnings of increasing risks that can motivate action. The PB approach can serve a similar function. The PB approach provides measures that serve as a “check-up” for the planet. It proposes nine boundaries for interrelated earth system processes: climate change,

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rate of biodiversity loss, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, stratospheric ozone depletion, ocean acidification, global fresh water use, change in land use, atmospheric aerosol loading, and chemical pollution (Rockström et al. 2009). There is sufficient data and levels of understanding for Rockström et al. to propose quantitative measures for seven of the nine earth systems processes. For instance, the pre-industrial concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide of 280 parts per million (ppm) is taken as a reference point. Based upon current understandings of the climate system, they propose 350 ppm as a safe operating space for humanity. Since the current atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is 400-ppm humanity is currently operating beyond safe levels. This is a high-risk situation because it puts “stress” on other earth systems and could lead to dangerous tipping points. The climate change situation is analogous to a person going for a check-up year after year and each year total blood cholesterol levels are higher than the last. Finally, the total blood cholesterol levels are above boundary conditions and this person is now at risk for serious heart disease. The PB approach is much more complicated than this brief discussion indicates, and it has its critics. Nonetheless, it is an excellent model or heuristic. The nine boundaries serve as a simple and understandable way of conceiving complex and difficult challenges of global environmental sustainability. The challenge of operating within boundaries should spur political and scientific energy and creativity to keep humanity within a safe operating space. World agriculture exerts one of the strongest influences on earth systems processes. It is one of the main drivers of climate change, rate of biodiversity loss, nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, global freshwater use, and chemical pollution. In terms of the PB approach, the challenge for twenty-first century agriculture is to feed nine to ten billion people while keeping humanity within a safe operating space. Humanity is already exceeding, or close to exceeding, the seven boundaries for which there are measures—these measures are revised as more is learned about these systems. Like a person  who receives a poor health report, these seven risk indicators should motivate action. Some of those actions may be social, political and behavioral and some may be to implement technological fixes. One area that could require both types of actions is the phosphorus cycle. Agriculture is responsible for human interference with the earth’s phosphorus cycle. About 20 millions tonnes of phosphorus are mined each year and 90 percent is used in agriculture (Cho 2013). Unlike atmospheric carbon dioxide pollution that is quickly distributed around the planet, phosphorus pollution is regional. It is a limiting nutrient in aquatic ecosystems and agricultural runoff causes algae blooms, which create anoxic events and aquatic dead zones—areas where almost no marine organisms can survive. There are over “405 dead zones in coastal waters worldwide, affecting an area of 95,000 square miles, about the size of New Zealand” (Diaz and Rosenberg 2008). Between 1995 and 2007 the number of dead zones increased by over 30% (Ibid.). Marine dead zones are now a major global environmental problem. Approximately 9 million tonnes of phosphorus flow into world’s oceans each year (Rockström et al. 2009). This is over eight times preindustrial rates. Rockström et al. estimate “that the planetary boundary for influx of phosphorus into the oceans should not exceed 11 million tonnes annually” (Rockström et al. 2009). However,

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while phosphorus pollution is a global problem its consequences are experienced regionally. Critical thresholds of phosphorus pollution have already been surpassed for many estuaries and freshwater systems (Ibid.).

6.3.2  GE Animals and Technological Fixes Pig production is a major source of global phosphorus pollution. Pork is the most consumed animal product in the world and this trend is increasing. In 1999 scientists at the University of Guelph developed a line of GE pigs as a technological fix for phosphorus pollution, which they trademarked, Enviropig™. Enviropig has not been a commercial success. Nevertheless it serves as fruitful case study of a GE animal engineered to be a technological fix. Also, insights can be gained by examining the reasons for its failure to make it into the market place. The cereals and grains that are fed to pigs are high in phytate, a phosphorus-­ containing compound. Pigs need phosphorus as a nutrient but lack the enzyme, phytase, to digest the phosphorus in feed. The result is phosphorus passes through the pig’s digestive system and is concentrated in its manure. Farmers either add digestible phosphorus to feed as a supplement or the phytase enzyme to cereals and grains at extra cost. Enviropig is engineered to synthesize phytase in its salivary gland (Golovan et al. 2001). Depending on the pig’s age and diet the manure of an Enviropig can contain up to 75 percent less phosphorus than non-GE pigs (Ibid.). It is unclear if the primary benefit of Enviropig was seen as agricultural efficiency, lowering costs associated with adding supplements to help the animals digest phosphorus and with disposing of phosphorus-containing waste, or as a technological fix for phosphorus pollution. Enviropig demonstrates a confusion of values inherent in the current system for funding research and development in biotechnology, discussed at length in Chap. 2. Enviropig is advertised as a technological fix for the problem of phosphorus in industrial pig farms. However, it is not clear if Enviropig was created to increase the economic efficiency of the Canadian hog production industry, in line with the values of the productionist paradigm, or to address the global environmental problem of phosphorus pollution. In the current system for funding research driven by the needs of the private sector the primary goal would need to be economic efficiency. However, despite years of efforts Enviropig has not made it into the marketplace and its commercial future is currently in doubt. There are multiple reasons for this. Public resistance to GE animals in the food chain is often cited as the main reason. Environmental and health activists mounted vigorous campaigns against this technology. For these reasons, regulatory agencies have been extremely reticent to approve GE animals for human consumption. Another reason is North American pig producers have alternative technologies for aiding the digestion of phosphate that are cost-effective and non-controversial. For example, a fungus has been genetically engineered to produce the enzyme, phytase, which can be used as an additive. In 2012 the scientists at the University of Guelph lost their funding from the industry

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association, Ontario Pork. In 2013 the herd of GE pigs was euthanized. The researcher collected sperm to preserve the line. Enviropig could be brought back if the political environment changes and it is seen as a competitive product. In 2014 the team of scientists at the University of Guelph published a paper in the Journal of Animal Science reporting significant improvements in the GE pig. One of the co-authors of the paper, Cecile Forsberg, remained cautiously optimistic that the public would eventually see the benefits of GE animals and Enviropig would ultimately make it onto the market. Enviropig demonstrated proof of concept. Forsberg remarked that “we have demonstrated that the gene can be transferred by breeding through many generations in a stable fashion. Further, the pigs are healthy” (Phys.org). Again, public resistance to GE animals and regulatory uncertainty makes GE animals too risky for most investors. Nonetheless, this GE animal serves as an excellent case study to examine possible roles GE production animals as technological fixes might play in helping humans stay within planetary boundaries. The Enviropig captured public attention and frequently appeared in the press over the years. Opponents of biotechnology immediately characterized it as a technological fix. In a 2001 Mother Jones article the Sierra Club’s Laurel Hopwood asserted that “this is just another quick fix...The way to reconcile [the problem of phosphorus pollution] is to stop factory farming” (Vestel 2001). The article continued, saying “Greenpeace and other environmental groups have echoed the Sierra Club’s message, arguing that the only real solution is moving away from massive industrial-style hog-growing and instead raising fewer pigs in bigger outdoor spaces” (Ibid). Historically, livestock were commonly pastured near crops and their manure was recycled onto fields as fertilizer. Increasingly the trend is for industrial production systems to be located near cities and away from croplands, making it more costly and difficult to recycle manure as fertilizer. Also, these large industrial systems produce far more waste than can be recycled as fertilizers. High nitrogen and phosphorous containing waste often leaches, spills and leaks into waterways, becoming major pollutants. Intensive pig farms provide pork at lower costs. This saves consumers money that, in the utilitarian terms of the productionist paradigm, increases the general welfare. However, there are numerous other problems with intensive productions systems. Critics argue that consumers are not paying the true costs of pollution. Also, the “costs” born in pain and suffering by production animals are not included in the calculations of the general welfare. As seen in the above remarks, environmental and alternative agriculture activists want to deal with these problems on the social and political level. Societies should greatly reduce pork consumption and pay the “true” costs of production. This would allow a return to sustainable farming practices where livestock manure can be recycled onto croplands and animal welfare is improved. From this view, Enviropig is a superficial solution that addresses symptoms and not the root causes, which are industrial agriculture and the social preference for inexpensive meat. This technology would only transform, relocate, and delay problems, as well as create new one. These arguments have been effective. They indicate that at least in the area of GE animals the philosophical and practical criticisms of technological fixes are having

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an impact. Public resistance and regulatory scrutiny are having a chilling effect on scientists and companies interested in researching and developing GE animals. However, one can wonder that in this instance, the pendulum has swung from an uncritical acceptance of technological fixes to an uncritical rejection of technological fixes. There are pragmatic arguments for considering genetically engineering production animals that are at least worth considering. The Enviropig might not be the right technological fix to help mitigate the global problem of phosphorus pollution, but the concept of engineering less polluting animals could fit into more realists’ versions of a narrative of sustainability.

6.3.3  Pragmatic Arguments for the Enviropig Concept Livestock production is a rising source of global pollution. This problem will get much worse before it gets better. Global meat production doubled from 1980 to 2004; it tripled in developing countries during this period (FAO 2005). The FAO predicts that worldwide meat production will double again by 2050 (FAO 2007). Nearly all of this increase will be in developing countries and will be produced in intensive, industrial-style farming systems (Ibid.). Pork and chicken are the fastest growing subsector of animal products and this trend is expected to continue. Increased meat and poultry consumption in developing countries is closely tied to rising incomes. China is the world’s fastest growing economy and the largest producer of pork, and briefly examining trends in this country will be helpful in understanding what these larger global trends portend. Pork is culturally significant in China. Mindi Schiner, a sociologist at Cornell University, remarks that for the Chinese, “pork is wrapped up in ideas of progress and modernity. Until the 1990s typical families only ate meat at Chinese New Year” (Ibid.). In the period of rapid economic growth during the 1990s swine production doubled in China and consumption is likely to increase as economic growth increases (Davison 2013). The Chinese pig industry currently produces twice as much as Europe and nearly five times as much as United States (Pork.org 2016). Since the 1980s, when poverty and malnutrition were widespread in China, meat consumption has risen 400-percent (Ibid). This pattern is being repeated in countries in Southeast Asia; as incomes increase there is a corresponding increase in pork consumption. Strong and effective environmental regulations are not keeping pace with the rapidly growing pork industry in this part of the world. Ninety percent of the phosphorus pollution that flows into the South China Sea is from industrial pig farms in China, Viet Nam and Cambodia (FAO 2005). Phosphorus pollution is “severely degrading seawater and sediment quality in one of the world’s most biologically diverse shallow-water marine areas, causing ‘red tides’ and threatening fragile coastal, marine habitats including mangroves, coral reefs and sea grasses” (Ibid.) The Chinese government recognizes the environmental and other problems created by unregulated pig farms. The government’s strategy is to phase out small producers

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and increase the number of large-scale intensive production systems. China’s program to industrialize pig farming has moved, and continues to move, in the opposite direction of the small, mixed farming systems favored by environmentalists and alternative agriculture activists. It is hard to imagine how this trend could be reversed by political means in the near future. Further, given the growing demand for pork and the lack of effective regulations of smaller producers, the move to industrial scale pig farms will likely help the pollution problems in China. The story of the rapid increase of industrial pig farms in China and Southeast Asia focuses attention on the pragmatic arguments for technological fixes. Two of Weinberg’s arguments for technological fixes are that they provide policy makers with additional options for addressing problems and they can buy time until the problem can be dealt with on a deeper level. Marine ecosystems are being pushed past tipping points at an alarming rate resulting in large, creating regional dead zones. The increase in dead zones is a major factor in driving the high rates of biodiversity loss. The predicted doubling of global livestock production by 2050 will certainly threaten to push phosphorus pollution (and nitrogen pollution) beyond planetary boundaries of this system. Given the social momentum of rising incomes in developing countries, which are driving increases in livestock production, it is hard to envision how social and political solutions alone will be adequate for this problem. For instance, it is a difficult and time-consuming to enact effective environmental regulations. It takes times, money, training and political will to develop an effective bureaucracy capable of monitoring and enforcing environmental regulations. In addition, many governments could lack the political will to intact and enforce environmental regulations, as they could see political benefits from low-­ cost pork and poultry. Also, it would be a long and difficult process to change people’s food preference for animal products. This would be particularly true in places like China where pork has cultural significance and a growing number of people have only recently been able to access this item. In light of these challenges, the technological fix strategy of low-polluting GE animals could be seen as an additional option for policy makers and a way to buy time while the problem can be dealt with on a deeper level.

6.3.4  Problems with the Pragmatic Arguments for the Enviropig Concept However, the pragmatic arguments for GE technological fixes do not hold in all contexts. People who have long had access to inexpensive meat can be convinced to reduce meat and poultry consumption. And, people in wealthy countries have shown a willingness to pay higher prices to support better farming practices. In the United States beef consumption peaked in the 1970s and has steadily declined ever since, most likely due to broadly advertised health concerns. Meat consumption is holding steady or decreasing in most well off countries. In the European Union livestock

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production has seen a slight decline over the last decade and environmental regulations and compliance have steadily improved (ec.europa.eu). Further, people in Europe are increasingly concerned with environmental issues and animal welfare. In many places social and political efforts to promote better agricultural practices could be effective in mitigating phosphorus pollution. Again, as a rule of thumb, addressing social and political problems with social and political solutions is preferable to technological fixes. There is another related problem with Enviropig serving as a technological fix for phosphorus pollution. The Yorkshire pigs that were genetically engineered to be low phosphate emitting (Enviropig) were engineered for markets that do not necessarily need this technological fix. The Canadian industry association, Ontario Pork and the Canadian government funded the development of Enviropig. It should be no surprise that with industry funding it was designed to benefit Canadian producers. Phosphorus pollution is a serious environmental problem in Canada and Enviropig might help. But Canada is a wealthy country with good governance, effective bureaucracies and an educated and environmentally aware population. It has many options other than GE animals for reducing phosphorus pollution and aquatic dead zones. The projected doubling of livestock production by 2050 will be in places that do not have Canada’s many social and political resources. Enviropig was not designed in and for the countries where a low-polluting GE animal could have the greatest impacts as a technological fix to mitigate phosphorus pollution. The breeds of pigs used for production in China, Viet Nam, and Cambodia are part of their culture and history. The Yorkshire pigs are, of course, not native to those regions. This does not mean that Chinese producers and consumers could not adapt to the GE, Yorkshire pigs, but it is a major obstacle. In addition, there are numerous issues arising from intellectual property rights and GE animals. There are costs associated with user technology licensing fees. Also, countries need to have a well functioning legal and bureaucratic system to protect patents. These would be obstacles to widespread adoption of patent-protected GE-animals in many countries. This raises the same issues that were discussed at length in Chap. 2: there is a fundamental problem with free-market conceptions of the narrative of progress that is driving research and development in biotechnology. To return to the point made at the beginning of this section, Enviropig demonstrates a confusion of values inherent in the current system for funding research and development. This GE animal is advertised as a technological fix for the problem of phosphorus in industrial pig farms. However, it is also advertised as means for increasing the economic efficiency for the Canadian hog production industry. This is to be expected, as this industry group was an important funder of this research. These goals could be complementary, but in the current system for funding research through the private sector the primary goal would need to be economic efficiency. There will be a flood of phosphorus-rich animal waste covering the planet by 2050. If GE animals are to help mitigate this serious problem the primary goal of research should aim at this goal, and increasing economic efficiency would be a secondary goal. Rockström and Klum observe that we must give markets a helping hand to

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direct research in innovation to keep humanity within a safe operating space. They write that “we all know that markets are social constructs…. They’ve always required a ‘helping hand’ to keep them focused on their primary goal, to provide human wellbeing. New legal regulations, norms, and values will be needed, including every individual’s right to a resilient and well functioning Earth system” (Rockström and Klum 2015). One of the major themes of this book, which was the focus of Chap. 2, is the need to take greater responsibility for directing research and development of emerging technologies. If GE technological fixes are to be used intelligently to help keep humanity within a safe operating space then changes in the funding systems for research need to be made. The current incentive system for research and development is missing the target. This could mean creating a pay for performance system, as discussed in Chap. 2, for technologies that make measurable progress in addressing specific global environmental problems like phosphorus pollution. There are many tools for directing markets to stimulate innovation in specific directions. However, as will be discussed in the final chapter, we need to take greater ethical responsibility as planetary stewards for technological development in the Anthropocene. In the final section I briefly return to Golden Rice, which was discussed extensively in Chap. 2. It will be informative to examine Golden Rice as an example of a technological fix for a public health problem.

6.3.5  Golden Rice Golden Rice is a textbook example of a technological fix. As was seen in Chap. 2, Golden Rice is designed to be the technological solution for vitamin A deficiency disease (VAD). Vitamin A deficiency can compromise the immune system and increase the risks of common childhood infections (Ibid.). VAD exists in roughly 40% of the children in the developing world; in areas where people depend upon a diet of mainly rice, the number of children suffering from VAD is extremely high, as rice contains no provitamin A. In Southeast Asia, a staggering 70% of the children eat diets deficient in vitamin A. Again, as was discussed in detail in Chap. 2, VAD is a social and political problem because it is the direct result of poverty. Millions of poor people have no choice but to subsist on a diet of inexpensive rice. Widespread vitamin A deficiency in children can be appropriately identified as a symptom of economic injustice. Economic injustice leading to world poverty is a complex, seemingly intractable socio-political problem. Addressing the root problem of VAD—poverty—seems unrealistic in the short time frame of a child developing into a healthy adult: each year hundreds of thousands of children are suffering from the horrible consequences of VAD. Hence, VAD seems like a perfect candidate for a technological fix. It is the result of a complex and intractable social and political problem that can be readily reframed as a technological problem. Once the problem is reframed, the solution to VAD becomes a well-defined engineering puzzle: genetically engineering rice

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plants to produce enough provitamin A in the endosperm of rice plants would allow a child eating 100–200 g of rice per day to receive the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of vitamin A (300 g) (Golden Rice 2009).

6.3.6  Pragmatic Arguments for Golden Rice Advocates for Golden Rice list the attributes of technological fixes found in Weinberg’s original discussion of technological fixes. First, vitamin A deficiency is rooted in deep social and political pathologies of poverty, inequality and social injustice. By reframing the social and political problem as a technological problem, a technological “solution” becomes clear. Second, technological fixes avoid the problem of changing people’s attitudes and behavior. To address chronic poverty on the social level would require governments in the developed world to become more generous, and many of those in the developing world would need to become more competent and less corrupt. The technological solution avoids the troubling problem of trying to make people morally better: it simply aims to supply new biofortified rice seeds to the needy free of charge. Third, since poverty is such a complex problem, Golden Rice is touted as another front for attacking chronic malnutrition. The Golden Rice Project web site states: “Golden Rice offers developing countries another choice in the broader campaign against malnutrition” (Ibid.). Fourth, Golden Rice will lessen the severity of the problem, making it easier for a social solution to work. In his defense of golden rice, Gordon Conway of The Rockefeller Foundation says that Golden Rice provides an “excellent complement” to their existing diets. Finally, while Golden Rice may not solve the problem of malnutrition, it can buy time until the root problem of poverty can be addressed. The proponents of Golden Rice admit that it is not the solution to vitamin A deficiency. As Weinberg conceded, technological fixes do not get to the root of the problem. Gordon Conway writes that “[The Rockefeller Foundation does] not consider Golden Rice to be the solution to the vitamin A deficiency problem” (Conway 2002). Also, The Golden Rice Project Website says: The Golden Rice Humanitarian Board encourages further research to determine how the technology may play a part in the ongoing global effort to fight VAD in poor countries. While Golden Rice is an exciting development, it is important to keep in mind that malnutrition to a great extent is rooted in political, economic and cultural issues that will not be solved by a technological fix (Golden Rice).

Golden Rice is addressing a symptom—VAD—of a larger problem, economic injustice. This practical argument for Golden Rice makes no appeal to the sweeping philosophical arguments grounded in the narrative of progress and an optimistic interpretation of the history of technological agriculture. Unlike the philosophical argument for biotechnology, pragmatic arguments make no claims about t­ echnology as being the way to solve the problems of twenty-first century agriculture. Rather, Golden Rice provides a concrete technological fix to address a pressing and tragic

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social problem. However, because Golden Rice is a technological fix it is open to the practical criticisms that raise three cautions. The first caution is to have sober, limited expectations about what technological fixes can accomplish and to expect new problems to arise. Technological fixes offer trade-offs, not solutions. Golden Rice will not solve the problem of vitamin A deficiency but it can serve an ameliorative function. The second caution is to be aware that technological fixes define problems and evaluate solutions in the narrow terms of technological systems. Because of this, one should expect side-effect problems, and possible revenge effects. Third, technological fixes are frequently conservative. This third caution is particularly important when considering Golden Rice and GE animals. Like GE animals, critics argue that this new Golden Rice technology is designed to correct a defect in the current industrial, technological system of agriculture that has given rise to VAD. As such it is fundamentally conservative as it aims to preserve rather than replace a flawed system (Shiva 2002).

6.3.7  Arguments Against Golden Rice The pragmatic argument for Golden Rice makes no appeal to an optimistic history of technological agriculture and the narrative of progress; nevertheless, it is still open to certain philosophical criticisms of technological fixes. Bill McKibben combines elements of the practical and philosophical criticisms in his argument against Golden Rice in his book, Enough. According to McKibben, and many others, vitamin A deficiency is an unintended consequence of the application of Green Revolution technologies in the developing world. McKibben writes that “everywhere the Green Revolution went it did two things: increase grain yields and increase micronutrient deficiencies” (McKibben 2003). Micronutrient deficiencies, like vitamin A deficiency (VAD), are due to several factors. One that is commonly cited is an unintended consequence of widespread herbicide use. Herbicide spraying kills or makes inedible a variety of plants that grow in the margins of fields; these plants had traditionally provided peasant farmers with a more varied diet as a source of micronutrients. Also, the costs of high-yield varieties and the technological input combined with the profits made from increased yields encouraged farmers to plant as much of their land as possible in the high yield corps. This decreased the availability of a variety of foods and access to micronutrients. McKibben’s argument may or may not be convincing. However, it is a serious argument that warns against a reflexive tendency to look to technological fixes. The big push to increase research into biotechnology may be more the result of entrenched habits of thought and institutional inertia of the narrative of progress. It is worth questioning if some lines of research into biotechnology are the result of this entrenched paradigm and the narrative of progress, rather than being scientifically and ethically justified. Thus, even if the arguments for Golden Rice, or GE animals, are couched in pragmatic terms, making no appeal to the sweeping philosophical idea of progress, they are still open to certain philosophical criticisms. That

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is, philosophical criticisms draw attention to a habitual pattern of using technology to solve problems that is guided by a specific research paradigm. This habit of thought lead to using technological fixes when they are not the most appropriate means of addressing a problem.

6.4  Conclusions The pragmatic criticisms alert one to the ambiguity of technological fixes. They can be said to solve problems only when the criteria for success is narrowly defined in the manner of an engineering problem. For example, in the case of Enviropig, its success would be defined in terms of isolating the problem of phosphorus pollution for the industrial pork production system. This creates the danger of ignoring the systems-level view that would question the whole intensive pig production system and the political, economic and cultural systems that support it. Or, using Golden Rice to address that problem of VAD creates the danger of ignoring the systems-­ level view that would challenge the social, political, economic and agricultural systems that give rise to poverty and chronic malnutrition. In addition, the pragmatic criticisms warn that once GE biofortified crops and GE animals enter the food system they will open the door to wider public acceptance of this technology. This could perpetuate the habit of looking for technological fixes at the expense of the hard work of addressing problems on the social and political level. Wide adoption of this technology could take the ideology of domination of nature to new and dangerous levels, as this powerful and fecund technology will soon make manipulating animal genomes and plant genomes for human purposes much quicker and easier. Technological fixes like GE animals could help conserve agricultural practices that treat animals in ways that many people are increasingly finding ethically troubling. Nevertheless, GE technological fixes can serve an ameliorative role that may be the best that can be done. The pragmatic arguments for low polluting GE animals and biofortified GE crops do not make sweeping philosophical claims about the future direction of agriculture. These technologies could be engineered to be specific ameliorative responses to narrowly defined, concrete problems. There are real world contexts that sometimes limit what is possible by social and political effort and that require technological fixes. Our current technological civilization, built on the idea of progress, seems to be overvaluing technological fixes and undervaluing social, political and behavioral interventions. Again, it is important to be conscientious in asking if, in pursuing GE technological fixes, we are reinforcing a habit of thinking that blinds us to looking for alternative approaches, like agroecology, to solving problems. To return to the comment by Paul B. Thompson from the beginning of this chapter, “It is…past time…to discard simplistic thinking on agriculture…. No blanket endorsement or condemnation of biotechnology makes any sense at all. Each ­proposal will have to be evaluated case by case” (Thompson 2009). Biotechnology can provide technological fixes to help humanity stay within a safe operating space.

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But “it depends on people of good will taking the time to understand and consider the arguments in some detail” (Ibid). The current political environment over biotechnology continues to be polarized. On one side, technological optimists are focused on scientific and technological progress almost to the exclusion of social and political solutions. Technological pessimists are focused on social and political solutions almost to the exclusion of technological solutions. In his essay, “Moving beyond the GE debate,” Ottoline Leyser writes: We need to move well beyond the GE debate to a much wider debate about food production. What methods of farming provide reliable and high yields in a sustainable way? What is the role of multinational companies in delivering food security? What political and societal changes are needed to drive more equitable food distribution? How can waste be reduced? These are big complex questions with big complex answers and no simple dogmatic solution (Leyser 2014).

GE technological fixes like low-polluting GE animals and biofortified GE crops should be part of these wider deliberations. Given the realities such as widespread, chronic micronutrient malnutrition and doubling of livestock production by 2050, GE technological fixes create a genuine dilemma that does not allow for easy answers. Practical deliberations about GE technological fixes would need to include the pragmatic criticisms of technological fixes as well as the philosophical and practical arguments for technological fixes. The confident answers of technological optimists and technological pessimists hinder the kind of deliberations that need to be taking place. In the final two chapters I will turn to one of the most stubborn obstacles to productive, practical deliberation over biotechnology, the international debate over the precautionary principle. As was seen in Chap. 2, precautionary regulations have prevented Golden Rice from entering the food system for almost two decades, and are keeping GE animals out of the food system. The debate over the precautionary principle is a philosophical debate. The next chapter will examine the philosophical and ethical underpinnings of the precautionary principle.

References Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill Gates Calls for Support of World’s Poorest Farmers. Gates Foundation. http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2009/10/ Bill-Gates-Calls-for-United-Action-to-Support-Worlds-Poorest-Farmers. Borlaug, N. 2000. Ending world hunger: The promise of biotechnology and the threat of antiscience zealotry. Plant Physiology 2 (124): 487–490. http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/124/2/487. Accessed 24 May 2016. Cho, R. 2013. Phosphorus: Essential to life—are we running out? State of the planet. Earth Institute, Columbia University. 1 April. http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2013/04/01/phosphorusessential-to-life-are-we-running-out/. Accessed 24 Mar 2017. Conway, G. 2002. Open letter to Greenpeace. In Genetically modified foods: Debating biotechnology, ed. D. Castle and M. Ruse, 63–65. Amherst: Prometheus Book.

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Davison, N. 2013. China’s taste for pork serves up pollution problem. The Guardian. https://www. theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/01/china-taste-pork-pollution-problem. Accessed 14 Jan 2016. Diaz, R.J., and R. Rosenberg. 2008. Spreading dead zones and consequences for marine ecosystems. Science 321 (5891): 926–929. Drengson, A.R. 1984. The sacred and the limits of the technological fix. Zygon 19 (3): 259–275. Food and Agriculture Organization. 2005. Livestock policy brief 02: Pollution from industrialized livestock production. FAO http://www.fao.org/3/a-a0261e.pdf. Accessed 15 Dec 2016. ———. 2007. Livestock’s long shadow, environmental issues and options. Rome: LEAD. ———. 2012. Feeding the world. FAO. http://www.fao.org/docrep/015/i2490e/i2490e03a.pdf. Accessed 20 Mar 2017. Golden Rice Humanitarian Board. 2009. The golden rice project. Golden Rice. http://www.goldenrice.org. Accessed 28 Oct 2005. Golovan, S.P., R.G. Meidinger, A. Ajakaiye, M. Cottrill, M.Z. Wiederkehr, D.J. Barney, C. Plante, J.W. Pollard, M.Z. Fan, M.A. Hayes, J. Laursen, R.R. Hacker, J.P. Hjorth, J.P. Phillips, and C.W.  Forsberg. 2001. Pigs expressing salivary phytase produce low-phosphorus manure. Nature Biotechnology 19: 741–745. Hillel, D. 1991. Out of the earth: Civilization and the life of the soil. Berkley: University of California Press. Leyser, O. 2014. Moving beyond the GM debate. PLoS Biology 12 (6): e1001887. McKibben, B. 2003. Enough: Staying human in an engineered age. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Paarlberg, R. 2005. From the green revolution to the gene revolution. Environment 47 (1): 38–40. Pork Checkoff. Top 10 pork-producing countries. Pork Checkoff. http://www.pork.org/ pork-quick-facts/home/stats/u-s-pork-exports/top-10-pork-producing-countries/. Rockström, J., and M. Klum. 2015. Big world, small planet. New Haven: Yale University Press. Rockström, J., W.  Steffen, K.  Noone, Å. Persson, F.S.  Chapin, E.F.  Lambin, T.M.  Lenton, M.  Scheffer, C.  Folke, H.J.  Schellnhuber, B.  Nykvist, C.A. de Wit, T.  Hughes, S. van der Leeuw, H. Rodhe, S. Sörlin, P.K. Snyder, R. Costanza, U. Svedin, M. Falkenmark, L. Karlberg, R.W. Corell, V.J. Fabry, J. Hansen, B. Walker, D. Liverman, K. Richardson, P. Crutzen, and J.A. Foley. 2009. A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 461 (24): 472–475. Rosset, P. 2002. Taking seriously the claim that genetic engineering could end world hunger: A critical analysis. In Engineering the farm: Ethical and social aspects of agricultural biotechnology, ed. B. Bailey and M. Lapppé, 81–93. Washington: Island Press. Shiva, V. 2002. Golden rice hoax: When public relations replace science. In Genetically modified foods: Debating biotechnology, ed. M. Ruse and D. Castle, 58–62. Amherst: Prometheus Books. Steffen, W., Å. Persson, L.  Deutsch, J.  Zalasiewicz, M.  Williams, K.  Richardson, C.  Crumley, P.  Crutzen, C.  Folke, L.  Gordon, M.  Molina, V.  Ramanathan, J.  Rockström, M.  Scheffer, H.  Joachim Schellnhuber, and U.  Svedin. 2011. The Anthropocene: From global change to planetary stewardship. Ambio 40 (7): 739–761. ———. 2002. GM food is the best option we have. In The ethics of food: A reader for the twenty-­ first century, ed. G. Pence, 148–155. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Thompson, P. B. 2009. Can agricultural biotechnology help the poor? The answer is yes, but with qualifications. Science Progress. 8 June. http://scienceprogress.org/2009/06/ag-biotechthompson/. Accessed 25 May 2016. ________. 2014. The GMO quandary and what it means for social philosophy. Social philosophy today 30: 7–27. United Nations Foundation. What we do: Millennium development goals. UN Foundation. http:// www.unfoundation.org/what-we-do/issues/mdgs.html. Vestel, L.B. 2001. The next pig thing. Mother Jones. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2001/10/next-pig-thing. Accessed 20 Mar 2017. White, L.T. 1967. The historical roots of our ecologic crisis. Science 155 (3767): 1203–1207.

Chapter 7

Genetic Engineering, Precautionary Ethics and Responsibility to the Future

Abstract  “Precaution,” like “technological fix” and “magic bullet,” is a key term in the agricultural biotechnology debate. Discussions about precautionary ethics and precautionary principles are the result of changing attitudes about the notion of technological progress. Precautionary discourse is a response to concerns over scientific uncertainty and complex risks to human health and the environment associated with climate change and emerging technologies like GE. This chapter examines Hans Jonas’ precautionary ethics with the purpose of identifying philosophical insights capable of contributing to a narrative of sustainability. The first part of this chapter situates Jonas’ ethics for the future within a larger historical context. The second part discusses three of the main elements in his ethical theory: (1) comparative futurology, (2) casuistry of the imagination, and (3) the precautionary rule. The rest of the chapter examines a high profile debate between two important public intellectuals over precautionary ethics and biotechnology. The debate demonstrates “casuistry of the imagination” in deriving the moral principles we need to confront the dangers of powerful new biotechnologies.

7.1  Introduction The polarized debates over precautionary ethics and the precautionary principle (PP) are key elements in the larger societal conflict over emerging technologies and the idea of progress. Supporters of the PP see it as a means to slow the possible harmful effects of the technological juggernaut. Opponents of the PP see it as a tool of people who are ideologically averse to the risks of new technologies that would drive social progress. More explicitly, on one side of this polarized debate, supporters praise the PP as representing a new ethical standard for evaluating emerging technologies in the face of incomplete information on possible health and environmental harms. Schettler and Raffensperger write: The precautionary principle, based on the ethical notions of taking care and preventing harm, is a new institution that will allow people to respond in wise and innovative ways. It arises from recognition of the extent to which scientific uncertainty and inadequate © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 N. D. Scott, Food, Genetic Engineering and Philosophy of Technology, The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics 28, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96027-2_7

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7  Genetic Engineering, Precautionary Ethics and Responsibility to the Future e­ valuations of the full effects of human activities have contributed to ecological degradation and harm to human health (Schettler and Raffensperger 2004, 81).

On the other side, detractors criticize the PP as being vague, incoherent, unscientific, counter productive, and an obstacle to progress (Ahteensuu 2007). The argument of incoherence is found in Cass R. Sunstein’s book, Laws of Fear: The real problem with the Precautionary Principle in its strongest forms is that it is incoherent; it purports to give guidance, but it fails to do so, because it condemns the very steps that it requires. The regulation that the principle requires always gives rise to risks of its own— and hence the principle bans what it simultaneously mandates…The principle threatens to be paralyzing, forbidding regulation, inaction, and every step in between (Sunstein 2005, 14–15).

In regards to the PP and the international controversy over agricultural biotechnology, Henk van den Belt concludes that “it appears that the polarized debate on the [precautionary principle] is just a proxy for a larger debate on the future of world agriculture” (van den Belt, 2003). The larger debate over the future of agriculture includes deep philosophical and political disagreements over ethics, philosophy, social justice, technology, food, culture, economic development and globalization, among others. In terms of this book’s organizing theme, these disagreements are part of the epistemological crisis over the narrative of progress caused by the conflict between technological optimism and technological pessimism. As will be discussed in Chap. 8, the rise of discussion over precautionary ethics is an expression of the pessimistic ethos of the 1970s. Discussions about precautionary ethics and precautionary principles are the result of changing attitudes about the notion of technological progress. In an important sense, precautionary ethics and the PP are designed to put the breaks on out-of-control technological progress. This broad area of discussion is a response to concerns over scientific uncertainty and complex risks to human health and the environment associated with climate change and emerging technologies, like GE. For example, while it is common to refer to the precautionary principle, in reality there are multiple versions of precautionary principles that are open to varied interpretations—for example, it is common to divide statements of the precautionary principle into strong and weak versions. There is a large body of scholarship that is devoted analyzing and debating s versions of a precautionary principle. This chapter will examine Hans Jonas’ precautionary ethics found in his landmark book, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age (1985). Jonas is often mentioned as one of the originators of discussions about the PP, though rarely more than in passing as an interesting historical source. Jonas’ ethics is a neglected source on the theme of precautionary ethics. The purpose of examining Jonas’ ethics is to identify philosophical insights capable of contributing to a narrative of sustainability. In pursuing this goal I will reference some arguments and debates over the precautionary principle. But it is important to keep in mind that my goal is not to resolve ongoing debates over the various articulations of the PP (e.g., strong and weak versions), scientific uncertainty and regulations for GE crops. My purpose in discussing various arguments

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over the precautionary principle is to help identify insights for developing a general precautionary ethics that can contribute to developing in a narrative of sustainably. In the first half this chapter I will discuss the problem to which Jonas is responding in developing his new, precautionary ethics of the future. This will be followed by discussions of the three main elements in his ethical theory: (1) comparative futurology, (2) casuistry (i.e., the search for moral principles) of the imagination, and (3) precautionary rule. The second half will examine a high profile debate between two important public intellectuals over the precautionary principles and biotechnology. The debate will demonstrate the role Jonas’ notion of “casuistry of the imagination” should play in helping derive the moral principle we need to confront the dangers of powerful new biotechnologies. Chapter 8 will be devoted to the relationship between Jonas’ duty of comparative futurology and his precautionary ethics.

7.2  A New Ethics for the Technological Age 7.2.1  Modern Technology and the Need for New Ethics The central thesis of Jonas’ The Imperative of Responsibility is that traditional ethical theories are inadequate for the technological age. Humanity needs a new ethics to respond to new realities. The modern scientific-technological enterprise, born out of the Enlightenment project and the idea of progress, has profoundly extended the range of human action to the whole planet and the distant future. The result is that humans now have sufficient power over nature to transform humanity and the biosphere. However, the scope of Western ethical theories is largely limited to other humans living here and now. At the time Jonas was writing his book in the late 1970s there was a growing pessimism about technological civilization. As was mentioned in Chap. 1, this pessimism was fueled by such deep troubles as nuclear proliferation, industrial pollution and, most importantly, concerns over exponential population growth overshooting the limits of finite planetary resources causing environmental collapse. The environmental historian, Donald Worster, writes of this period: “Henceforth, the United States and other nations would never go back to old assumptions about the conquest of nature and infinite horizons that had characterized the past few centuries” (Worster 2016, 185). Jonas’ major works should be understood as a response to the new environmental consciousness about planetary limits, and the pessimistic ethos about technological progress of the 1970s. Jonas’ arguments about the scope and power of the technological enterprise to transform the planet anticipate the notion of the Anthropocene. In 2002 the Noble Prize-winning atmospheric chemist, Paul Crutzen, introduced the idea that humans are now the dominant force driving evolutionary and ecological change on the planet (Crutzen 2002). “Crutzen argued that these changes, which can be traced to

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the industrial era in the late eighteenth century, mark the beginning of a new geological period, the ‘Age of Man” (Minteer and Pyne 2015, 5). The Anthropocene is the result of the rapid growth of the human population combined with accelerating technological power over nature. Jonas’ new ethics of responsibility to the future can be seem as an effort to develop a stewardship ethics for the Anthropocene. Jonas sees modern technologies as being fundamentally different from earlier technologies. In a 1979 essay, titled “Toward a Philosophy of Technology,” Jonas writes: The Promethean enterprise of modern technology speaks a different language [than earlier technologies]. The word “enterprise” gives the clue, and its unendingness another…. [T]he effect of its innovations is disequilibrating rather than equilibrating with respect to the balance of wants and supply, always breeding its own new wants. This in itself compels the constant attention of the best minds, engaging the full capital of human ingenuity for meeting challenge after challenge and seizing the new chances (Jonas 1979).

Modern technologies do not simply function as specific means to satisfy stable ends, such as a potter crafting a clay pot to hold grains or liquids. As scientific knowledge grows and new technologies develop, these new technologies create new ends and desires that did not previously exist. New ends or desires motivate further research that generates a fresh round of technological innovations, and the process spreads and branches at increasing rates. For example, when the scientists at Intel first introduced the microprocessor chip in 1971 no one could have predicted that four decades later personal computers, tablets, and smartphones would become a necessity for much of the world’s population. The rapid development of the computing power of microprocessors, following Moore’s law (the observation that the processing power of computers doubles approximately every two  years), has fundamentally transformed the social and work life of  billions of people. There seems to be no end in sight to the digital revolution as it rapidly branches and spreads into the robotics revolution, and beyond. Similarly, when Watson and Crick first described the double helix structure of the DNA molecule in 1953 no one could have predicted the new ends and desires that are now realistically being considered as a result of the biotech revolution, which is on the cusp of revolutionizing medicine, agriculture and energy, among many other fields. The most recent example of the accelerating power of the modern technological enterprise is the discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing technology. There has been a rapid burst of interests in the bacterial system CRISPR–Cas9, which is used to target and cut specific “DNA sequences in the vast expanse of the genome” (Ledford 2016). In 2013 and 2014 Jennifer Doudna published foundational papers on genome editing. In a 2015 essay, titled “Genome-editing revolution: My whirlwind year with CRISPR,” Doudna writes, “I had been astounded at how quickly labs around the world had adopted the technology for applications across biology, from modifying plants to altering butterfly-wing patterns to fine-tuning rat models of human disease” (Doudna 2015). Academic scientists and biotech companies have rushed to this new technology for its possibilities to advance basic scientific research, cure diseases, and better engineer agricultural crops and production

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a­ nimals, among many other potential uses. Sara Reardon summarizes the current impacts of these discoveries: Until now, researchers had the tools to genetically manipulate only a small selection of animals, and process was often inefficient and laborious. With the arrival of CRISPR, they can alter the genes of a wide array of organisms with relative precision and ease. In the past two years alone, the prospects of gene-editing monkeys, mammoths, mosquitoes, and more have made headlines as scientists attempt to put CRISPR to use for applications as varied as agriculture, drug production and bringing back lost species. CRISPR-modified animals are even being marketed as sale for pets (Reardon 2016).

It seems that the community of scientists interested in genetic/genomic engineering are quickly gravitating toward genome editing (Ibid.). It promises to mark major and unexpected advances in the biotech revolution. The discovery of genome editing illustrates traits of the modern-scientific enterprise described by Jonas’ in his philosophy of technology. These are: (1) “technological fields do not reach equilibrium or saturation,” successful technologies continually take further steps in “all kinds of directions” (Jonas 1979, 35). And (2) technological innovations spread quickly through the technological world community (Ibid.). The unpredictable, rapid spread of powerful innovations makes the technological enterprise fascinating and fearful. Doudna writes: Some 20 months ago, I started having trouble sleeping. It had been almost two years since my colleagues and I had published a paper describing how a bacterial system called CRISPR–Cas9 could be used to engineer genomes. I had been astounded at how quickly labs around the world had adopted the technology….At the same time, I’d avoided thinking too much about the philosophical and ethical ramifications of widely accessible tools for altering genomes (Doudna 2015).

These comments illustrate how the scientific-technological enterprise can generate innovations at a rate that far outpaces an ethics of responsibility to the future. Doudna’s trouble sleeping caused her to join with a group of scientists to call for a worldwide moratorium on using genome editing on human embryos (Ibid.). In the case of genome editing, ethical responsibility is playing catch-up as this powerful technology rapidly spreads through the scientific community. This is true for many other emerging technologies in the digital, robotic and biotech revolutions. For this reason, Jonas argues for anticipatory, imaginative reflection about the trajectories of powerful emerging technologies. Humanity needs to exercise imagination in wrestling with the moral quandaries that could be created before powerful new technologies arrive. Scientific and imaginative speculations play crucial roles in Jonas’ account of an ethics of responsibility to the future. He writes that the “first duty of an ethics of the future is visualizing the long-range effects of [the] technological enterprise” (Jonas 1985, 27). The “second duty” is to engender the appropriate emotional response to “what has been visualized” (Ibid. 28). Highly disciplined science is required to fulfill the first duty; the creative imagination is required for the second duty. In what follows I will briefly examine and illustrate the complementary duties of the sciences and the imagination in Jonas’ account of an ethics of the future under the headings of comparative futurology and casuistry of the imagination.

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7.2.2  Comparative Futurology Jonas’ ethics is not anti-science. He is pessimistic about the implicit utopianism of the narrative of progress or, as he puts it, the “‘Faustian soul’ innate in Western culture” (Jonas 1979, 36). Scientific knowledge plays a crucial role in his ethics of the future. An ethics of responsibility in the Anthropocene requires highly advanced science and supporting technologies to identifying possible catastrophic scenarios. The duties of science are to follow current trends to predict “certain, probable, or possible outcomes…. We thus need a science of hypothetical prediction, a ‘comparative futurology,’ which has indeed begun to appear on the scene” (Jonas 1985, 26 & 29, emphasis is added). As will be discussed in detail in Chap. 8, Jonas’ reference to comparative futurology that has begun to appear on the scene is likely a reference to the 1972 book, Limits to Growth. The team of scientists led by Donella Meadows who authored Limits of Growth were using the relatively new fields of computer modeling and systems theory to map out future trends. They varied the data for five factors—population, agricultural production, nonrenewable resources, industrial output, and pollution—in a global computer model, World3, to provide future scenarios for humanity (Clubofrome.org). This highly influential book is an effort to fulfill Jonas’ duty of comparative futurology. The book concluded that “man can create a society in which he can live indefinitely on earth if he imposes limits on himself and his production of material goods to achieve a state of global equilibrium with population and production in carefully selected balance” (Ibid.). Knowledge of the earth’s systems and computing power have both grown exponentially since the early 1970s. The sciences involved in studying global change have made enormous strides in the ability to fulfill the duty of comparative futurology. The importance of fulfilling Jonas’ first duty of an ethics of responsibility is illustrated by the science of global climate change. One of the defining features of the Anthropocene is human-driven climate change, which contributes to many other problems such as the rate of biodiversity loss and sustaining agricultural production. The predictive capacity of science through extensive data collection and global climate modeling is playing an indispensible role in helping civilization understand and plan to address dangerous climate change. While industrial era science and technologies helped create the climate crisis, it is in large part the predictive sciences of climate modeling (global climate models, GCMs) that is informing humanity of the extent and nature of this slow moving crisis. The work of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an excellent illustration of comparative futurology. The IPCC was founded by the United Nations in 1988 and, since that time, it has released six assessment reports on climate change summarizing the current state of scientific knowledge. The 2014 IPCC’s Summary for Policymakers makes it clear that it is fulfilling Jonas’ first duty of an ethics of responsibility. The report states that “this summary…addresses the following topics: Observed changes and their causes; Future climate change, risks and impacts; Future pathways for adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development” (IPCC 2014, emphasis added). The various scenarios produced by GCMs predict several

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scenarios that could result from a range of human responses to climate change. The IPCC is fulfilling its moral duty by providing information that helps humanity take responsibility for our actions in the Anthropocene. In other words, climate scientists are fulfilling, in Jonas’ terms, the first duty of an ethics of responsibility to the future, comparative futurology. The IPCC is attempting to visualize “the long-range effects of [the] technological enterprise” (Jonas 1985, 27). In order to interpret Jonas’ precautionary rule it is essential to include the duty of comparative futurology. In Jonas’ ethics of responsibility, one could substitute “ethics” for “religion” in Albert Einstein’s famous quote: “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind” (Einstein 1954, 45–46). To fulfill our duties in the technological age, Jonas might say that science without ethics is lame; ethics without science is blind.

7.2.3  Casuistry of the Imagination Careful scientific projections are crucial but not enough to support an ethics of responsibility to the future. Jonas observes: “The imagined fate of the future of men, let alone that of the planet, which affects neither me nor anyone else still connected with me by the bonds of love or just coexistence, does not of itself have [the appropriate effect] upon our feelings” (Jonas 1985, 28). The second duty of an ethics of the future, then, is to summon the appropriate feelings to what has been visualized using science. The free-play of the imagination can use scientific speculations to create engaging visions about possible futures that can engage people emotionally. Further, these scenarios can make important contributions toward identifying ethical principles that would be needed to address strange and morally perplexing realities. Jonas labels this “casuistry of the imagination” (Ibid. 30). He explains, “casuistry of the imagination which, unlike customary casuistries of law or morality that serves the trying out of ethical principles already known, assists in tracking and discovering principles still unknown” (Ibid.). Creative speculations of the future serve two roles in Jonas’ ethics of the future: they can be as an aid to identify ethical principles needed to deal with possible new realities, and they are crucial in helping to summon the moral feelings required to take responsibility. One of Jonas’ concerns is that scientific projections of harms to future generations and the earth will become “idle curiosity” or “idle pessimism” if we do not identify fitting ethical principles and develop motivating moral feelings (Ibid. 28). Jonas’ worries about idle curiosity or pessimism have proved to be regrettably on target in the case of the climate change crisis. Scientists have provided plausible projections of future catastrophes, but societies are still struggling to identify the ethical principles and to engender the appropriate emotional responses needed to take effective, collective action. At present, humanity is fulfilling the first duty of an ethics of responsibility, comparative futurology, but we are falling short on the second duty, casuistry of the imagination.

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Jonas singles out Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which is frequently listed as one of the important books of the twentieth century, as an exemplary work for casuistry of the imagination (Ibid. 30). It would be hard to underestimate the influence of Huxley’s book in shaping ethical debates on the applications of biotechnology, especially in the field of biomedicine. Brave New World helped give rise to the proliferation of dystopian literature and film that critiques the inherent utopianism and humanistic eschatology of the narrative of progress. The narrative arc of dystopian literature and film imagines an ironically tragic ending to the Enlightenment project and technological civilization. Brave New World takes the basic premise that progress in science and technology can lead to a utilitarian utopia—a happy and peaceful world free of violence, disease and want. He then takes this premise to its logical conclusion, but rather than a utopia he imagines a sick or ill place. The end or telos of technological progress is a place where people are happy, where happiness is defined by a hedonistic calculus of pleasure minus pain. But to optimize these calculations the occupants of this ironic utopia are destined to a banal, subhuman existence. It is key for understanding Jonas’ ethics to understand how science fiction, at its best, can use imaginative speculations to fulfill the second duty of Jonas’ new ethics, to move us emotionally and to identify the ethical principles needed to take responsibility for the future. To summarize Jonas’ ethics of responsibility thus far, in the technological age, the Anthropocene, the scope of human action has become so large that we must include the distant future in a new ethics of global stewardship. The first duty of this new ethics is to apply the new interdisciplinary science of future studies to generate possible scenarios for humanity. The second duty is to use the creative imagination to visualize and dramatize the future to help identify the moral principles needed to responsibly deal with possible futures. However, despite the best efforts at fulfilling these two duties we will fall short. The future will always remain to a significant degree uncertain and our efforts incomplete. This reality leads Jonas to his precautionary rule.

7.2.4  Precautionary Ethics There are direct relationships between Jonas’ version of the precautionary rule and the casuistry of the imagination and comparative futurology. Because of the illimitable uncertainty in efforts to imagine the consequences of our present actions on the future, Jonas’ ethics requires a duty to exercise precaution. He writes: But just this uncertainty, which threatens to make ethical insight ineffectual for long-range responsibility toward the future, has itself to be included in the ethical theory and become the cause of a new principle, which on its part can yield a not uncertain rule for decision-­ making. It is the rule, stated primitively, that the prophecy of doom is to be given greater heed than the prophecy of bliss (Jonas 1985, 31, emphasis added).

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Jonas’ ethics would have us play it safe with the future by paying greater heed to pessimistic predictions than optimistic predictions. There are at least three reasons to favor pessimistic forecasts. (1) Jonas rejects the inherent technological utopianism and secular eschatology inherent in the narrative of progress. Naïve technological optimism can no longer be justified in the face of nuclear threat and in the growing awareness of planetary limits. (2) Jonas affirms the fundamental goodness of nature. He is a conservationist and preservationist. (3) Finally, his moral theory expands our duty to respect the dignity of coexisting persons to imagine, possible future persons. Michael Hogue writes that to interpret Jonas’ ethics “requires understanding that [he] is not an optimist” (Hogue 2007, 84). Jonas’ pessimism is targeted at the technological utopianism and secular eschatology inherent in the narrative of progress. Jonas’ ethics is “not eschatological” and is “anti-utopian” (Jonas 1985, 17). In a key ethical point, Jonas asserts that the champions of progress are the true pessimists. He remarks, “the greater pessimism is on the side of those who consider the given to be so bad or worthless that every gamble for its possible improvement is defensible” (Ibid. 34). He describes this view as “nihilistic freedom,” in which technological progress aims to satisfy hedonistic desires in the absence of a higher moral law that grounds human dignity. He writes: “Since nothing is sanctioned by nature and therefore everything is permitted to us, we have freedom for creative play that is guided by nothing but the whim of the playing impulse and makes no claim other than to master the rules of the game, that is, the claim of technical competence. The standpoint of nihilistic freedom”(Ibid. 33). Aldous Huxley’s ironic utopia illustrates the nihilism Jonas has in mind. The consumerist and sexualized happiness of Brave New World is not born of human dignity; it trivializes human nature. Brave New World is the absurd conclusion to the modern logic of technocratic utilitarianism. While Jonas rejects the latent utopianism of our technological civilization as nihilistic, he affirms the fundamental goodness of the givenness of nature. This is an important point for understanding Jonas’ stewardship ethics; he is a preservationist and a conservationist. To counter the excesses of technological civilization to transform everything, Jonas asserts that we should cultivate the virtues of “gratitude, piety, and respect as ingredients of an ethics called upon to stand guard over the future in the technological tempest of the present” (Ibid. 33). In a passage that illustrates Jonas’ stewardship ethics, he writes: “There is a heritage of past evolution for us to preserve” and “this heritage can perish” (Ibid. 32). The new ethics of responsibility to the future in the technological age (the Anthropocene) requires precaution when the future of humankind and the planet are at risk. The present generation has a duty to stand guard over the future, and this means exercising precaution. Jonas provides several versions of our obligations to the future. He states this duty in positive terms: “act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life” (Ibid. 11). He then states it in negative terms: “act so that the effects of your actions are not destructive of the future possibility of

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such life” (Ibid.). Elsewhere, he writes, “do not compromise the conditions for an indefinite continuation of human on earth” (Ibid.). In each of these statements it is clear that we have a moral duty to consider how our present actions might endanger the future of humankind. It seems that our duty to the future is at minimum to be consistent with “The Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment” (1972), which states that “Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being” (United Nations 1972). It follows that each generation has a moral obligation to assure that, in its pursuits of a life of dignity and well being, it leaves the planet in a condition so that future generations have the opportunity to pursue lives of dignity and well being. The importance of the above discussion of Jonas’ ethics of responsibility, again, is to place his precautionary rule within his larger philosophical program. For Jonas, in our efforts to improve our lives we have an absolute obligation to consider the long-term consequences of the “excessive dimensions [of our] scientific-­ technological-­industrial-civilization” on the future of human life and the condition of the planet (Jonas 1985, 140). To fulfill our obligations we must fulfill the duties of comparative futurology and casuistry of the imagination. However, all such speculations are imperfect and uncertain. Therefore, the present generation has a duty to exercise precaution by following the rule of giving greater heed to the prognoses of doom than the prognoses of bliss (Ibid. 11). In terms of a contemporary example, the exact negative outcomes of global climate change cannot be predicted with certainty. Global climate models provide future scenarios that indicate probabilities for certain risks, such as sea level rise, increasing intensity of droughts and the like. The global climate models provide a range of scenarios. The present generation might be tempted to choose the optimistic scenarios and take minimal actions to reduce threats to the future for self-interested reasons. Jonas’ precautionary rule says we have a duty to be conservative with the fate of the future and choose the pessimistic scenarios over the optimistic ones. The present generation is to stand guard as grateful stewards of life on earth by being conservative with risks to the future. With that summary of Jonas’ ethics in place, the second half of this chapter will illustrate, develop and analyze the relationship between casuistry of the imagination and precautionary ethics. Chapter 8 will focus on the relationship between the precautionary ethics and comparative futurology. In what follows I examine a debate between Bill Joy and Freeman Dyson. In terms of casuistry of the imagination, both Joy and Dyson use science fiction to identify the ethical principle to deal with the dangers of biotechnology to the future. Joy discusses Frank Herbert’s The White Plague. Dyson uses Michael Crichton’s Prey.

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7.3  Precaution or Liberty 7.3.1  Setting the Stage At the turn of the millennium, Bill Joy published a provocative and widely discussed essay in Wired magazine titled “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” (Joy 2000). One reason Joy’s essay attracted so much attention over the years is because its pessimistic thesis was surprising coming from a computer scientist and high-tech entrepreneur. The physicist and futurist Freeman Dyson replied with an essay titled “The Future Needs Us!” (Dyson 2003). Before examining the debate between Joy and Dyson it will be helpful to set the stage with observations. While Joy and Dyson do not discuss agricultural biotechnology, agriculture is an aspect of the biotech revolutions. The scope and pace of innovation in agriculture are influenced by the scope and pace of developments in biotechnology in medicine, energy, and other fields. For example, hundreds of millions of dollars targeted at biomedical research has driven the rapidly declining costs of full genome sequencing, but the declining costs of genome sequencing has major implications for agriculture biotechnology. The newly discovered genomic-editing technology mentioned above has potential applications in all areas of biotechnology. One of the scientists responsible for discovering the CRISPR-Cas 9 system, Jennifer Doudna, co-founded a company with other University of California-Berkeley scientists, Caribou Bioscience. This company applies proprietary genomic editing science to innovations in the areas of biomedicine, agriculture and industry. Caribou Bioscience is currently working with the DuPont Corporation to develop drought resistant varieties of wheat and corn (Caribou Biosciences 2015). Again, the point of these remarks is to indicate that the agricultural biotechnology is part of the larger biotech revolution, which is the subject of the debate between Joy and Dyson. In 2001 Joy and Dyson debated these issues in person at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The timing of their debate was at a high watermark of the international controversy over “GMOs” and the PP in Europe. That year at Davos there was also a debate between representatives of Africa and representatives of Europe over the GE crops. The European group argued for precautionary regulations of GMOs and the African group argued for more aggressive research and development to solve Africa’s serious agricultural challenges (Dyson 2007). Joy and Dyson were also debating the PP but in a wider context.

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7.3.2  B  ill Joy’s Ethics of Responsibility, Pro-Precautionary Ethics Argument Joy acknowledges the promise of GE to “revolutionize agriculture by increasing crop yields while reducing the use of pesticides: to create tens of thousands of novel species of bacteria, plants, viruses, and animals….” (Joy 2000). He remarks: We know with certainty that these profound changes in the biological sciences are imminent and will change our notions of what life is…. While there are many important issues here, my own major concern with genetic engineering is narrower: that it gives the power – whether militarily, accidentally, or in a deliberate terrorist act – to create a White Plague (Ibid.).

In Herbert’s novel The White Plague a molecular biologist is driven insane by the loss of his family who were killed by a bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army. Grief develops into madness and the molecular biologist genetically engineers a plague. The plague is carried by men but only kills women. He releases the plague into the countries that are related to the act of terrorism that killed his family: Ireland, the country where his family died; England, the oppressing country that is driving the IRA to use terrorist tactics; and Libya, the country that provided training camps for terrorists. The plague quickly spreads beyond these three countries to kills billions of people. The White Plague scenario is an apocalyptic threat to the future of humanity. This is consistent with Jonas’ precautionary rule: “in matters of a certain magnitude—those with apocalyptic potential—greater weight should be given to the prognosis of doom than that of bliss” (Jonas 1985, 34). The scale and magnitude of the threat is important; Joy is not debating GE technologies like those discussed in earlier chapters, e.g. crops that are engineered for herbicide resistance, insect resistance, or are biofortified. There are no plausible scenarios in which these genetically engineered crops pose a direct catastrophic threat to the future of humanity. However, I will return to discuss the PP and these GE crops at the end of this chapter. That said, the biotech revolution is taking humanity down an unpredictable path. It does not matter if many of the specifics of Herbert’s novel are implausible. But to serve as an aid in an exercise of casuistry of the imagination, its basic premise must be believable. It is scientifically plausible that bioterrorism is a catastrophic threat. In their article, “The Promise and Peril of Synthetic Biology,” Tucker and Zilinkas argue that in coming decades the misuse of genetic engineering to harm will become a creditable threat that warrants policy actions (Tucker and Zilinkas 2006). They affirm Herbert’s basic premise: a lone-actor could use a genetic engineered pathogen for malicious intent with catastrophic consequences. Interestingly, Bill Joy, Tucker and Zilinkas all identify the infamous Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, as the type of intelligent but deeply troubled individual who, with the right training, might use biotechnology for terror. Another potential catastrophic threat is military applications of biotechnology. Van Aken and Hammond warn that biotechnology creates new possibilities for weapons that would be “designed for new types of conflicts and warfare scenarios,

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secret operations or sabotage activities” (van Aken and Hammond 2003). They note that these “are not mere science fiction, but are increasingly becoming a reality that we have to face” (Ibid.). A military or a terrorist group could genetically engineer a hypervirulent pathogen to attack an enemy’s staple crop like rice, corn or wheat, which could have devastating economic and food security consequences. Further, once this hypervirulent pathogen is in the environment, evolution and long-term threats would be difficult to predict. Tucker and Zilinkas list another troubling scenario that involves the growing “biohacker” culture. In this scenario a DIY bioengineer accidentally creates a pathogen affecting humans, plants or animals (Tucker and Zilinkas 2006). The biohacker culture promotes the democratization of technology and freedom of information; it distrusts large corporations and government bureaucracies. Biohackers believe that “biology is too important to be left in the hands of experts,” meaning academic and corporate scientists (Wohlsen 2011). They also believe that “computers, genetics, and engineering are fast converging toward a single point where tinkerers and hobbyists without advanced degrees will soon be able to perform sophisticated feats of genetic engineering at home” (Ibid.). The proliferation of these skills and the rapidly falling costs of instruments will create substantial threats. In his book, Biology as Technology, Robert Carlson concedes that potential, nefarious use DNA synthesis technologies is a “looming threat” and we need to be prepared (Carlson 2011). In The White Plague, Herbert implicitly asks the reader to consider the moral principles needed to deal with the possible catastrophic threat of a genetically engineered plague. While Herbert’s novel focuses on bioterrorism against human populations, bioterrorism also poses a threat to the agricultural productions systems and could cripple a nation’s economy and threaten its food security. Joy’s concerns about the dangers of the biotech revolution focus on global catastrophic risks resulting from misuses (intentional or accidental) of genetic engineering rather than the technology itself. Consequently, he is advocating for a much narrower application of a precautionary ethics than how it is currently being applied to GE crops and livestock. The scale and magnitude of the threats of GE crops are not readily seen posing a catastrophic risk to the future of humanity. The current justification for applying PP regulations to GE crops and animals is based on the possible threats of unintended consequences to human health, the environment and the livelihoods of some farmers. These are serious concerns, but have a different scale and magnitude than the White Plague scenario. The question is, can the catastrophic risks associated with the biotech revolution be managed as the branches of the biotech revolution quick grow and spread in new and unpredictable ways, e.g., CRSPR-cas9? In a statement that is consistent with Jonas’ ethics, Joy writes: “Given the incredible power of these new technologies, shouldn’t we be asking how best we can co-­ exist with them? And if our own extinction is a likely, or even possible, outcome of our technological development, shouldn’t we proceed with great caution?” (Joy 2000). The catastrophic threats of bioengineering warrant the application of Jonas’ precautionary rule. Joy provides several suggestions for what a precautionary approach to managing catastrophic threats from biotechnology might look like. (1)

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Have scientists, technologists and business leaders who work in potentially dangerous areas take an oath modeled after the Hippocratic oath: “first, do no harm.” (2) Create “an international body to publically examine dangers and ethical issues of new technology” (Joy 2000). (3) Create an international organization to provide oversight of areas of research in bioengineering that are judged to be “too dangerous to be made commercially available” (Ibid). And, most controversial, (4) have scientists “relinquish pursuit of that knowledge, and relinquish development of those technologies, so dangerous that we judge it better they never be available” (Ibid.). These proposals are consistent with Jonas’ precautionary ethics for technologies that pose catastrophic threats to the future of humanity and the planet.1 These policies would be steps in the direction of fulfilling our duty to the future, that in matters of catastrophic magnitude, we should pay greater heed to the prognoses of doom than the prognoses of bliss.

7.3.3  F  reeman Dyson’s “Libertarian,” Con-Precautionary Ethics Argument Freeman Dyson agrees that there are plausible scenarios where biotechnology poses a catastrophic risk to the future. But in his exercise of casuistry of the imagination Dyson discerns a different ethical principle to deal with future scenarios. In an essay titled “A Debate with Bill Joy,” Dyson writes: “Biotechnology is likely to be the main driving force of change in human affairs for the next hundred years” (Dyson 2007). He goes on to declare that he “is an unashamed optimist,” and characterizes Joy as a pessimist (Ibid.). Further, Dyson states that he “sees no reason the promise of good arising from biotechnology greatly outweighs the evil” (Ibid.). He strongly objects to regulating or relinquishing the pursuit of dangerous information and 1  In an article on the ethics of biotechnology and global catastrophic risks (GCR), Baum and Wilson also argue for the need of an international institution to help oversee and mitigate the dangers the release of deadly bioengineered pathogens into the environment (Baum and Wilson 2014). The United States and other countries have taken some precautionary actions to protect their food supplies. The U.S.’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is charged with enforcing the 2002 Bioterrorism Act, which directs the FDA “to take steps to protect the public from a threatened or actual terrorist attack on the U.S. food supply and other food-related emergencies” (FDA). However, the possibility of the development of genetically engineered super-pathogens for malicious purposes could be done anywhere in the word. As was noted above, due to the rapidly declining costs of genetic engineering, and increasing availability of techniques and technologies, in the near future the ability to engineer dangerous pathogens will be possible for a small group or even an individual. So, while regulations and restrictions for biosafety exist in some countries precautionary regulation would need to be global. “The entire world has a stake in ensuring this technology is used safely” (Ibid.). Baum and Wilson argue that what is needed is a binding international treaty, based on the PP, to regulate bioengineering research on potentially dangerous pathogens. Such a treaty, they note, could prevent a dangerous arms race to weaponize pathogens. By applying the PP to international policy and law scientists would need to demonstrate that the potentially dangerous bioengineered organism could not escape the lab (Ibid.).

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research. He states that this approach “is neither possible or desirable” (Ibid.). In his article, “Why the Future Needs Us!,” Dyson uses Michael Creighton’s novel Prey to provide an imagined future scenario to engage an exercise of casuistry, a search for moral principles to resolve a moral problem (Dyson 2003). Prey shares some similarities with The White Plague. The basic premise of Prey is a lone actor releases an extremely harmful, self-reproducing technology into the environment where it evolves and become a serious threat to human health and ­biodiversity. The technological menace in Prey is nanorobots, which employ recent advances in nanotechnology, genetic engineering and robotics. The scientist in this story works for a Silicon Valley tech firm. Her project is to develop nanorobots for the United States Army, which plans to use them for covert surveillance. However, the nanorobots fail to meet the Army’s specification and her contract is terminated. To save her career and company, she attempts to repurpose the nanorobots for medical uses, to identify disease within the human body by being injected into the blood stream. In desperation she experiments with the nanorobots on herself and becomes infected. The nanorobots drive her insane. The books ends with her death as the nanorobots are released into the environment “where they prey upon wildlife and rapidly increase in numbers” (Ibid.). There are some interesting contrasts between The White Plague and Prey. One difference is the motivations of the two scientists at the center of each story. The catastrophic threat from biotechnology in The White Plague is bioterrorism. The setting in Prey is the Silicon Valley where enormous fortunes are made through taking risks on high-tech innovations. The antagonist in Prey has no malicious intent. She takes extraordinary risks because of her financial and professional investments in the success of her project. Setbacks place the protagonist in a desperate position. Dyson observes: “she is a gambler playing for such high stakes that she cannot afford to lose” (Dyson 2003). The protagonist in Prey represents a segment of modern technological society whose intelligence is matched by their  ambition. Their world rewards risk-taking and is biased toward optimistic prognoses. The protagonist in Prey violates Jonas’ precautionary rule: she wagered the threat of long-term harms to humanity and biodiversity for short-term, self-interested gains. For both Joy and Dyson, the greatest dangers from the biotech revolution do not necessarily arise from the technologies themselves, but in the power they provide to fallible and morally flawed people - people who misuse, intentionally or unintentionally, potent, new scientific knowledge. Dyson writes: The message [of Prey] is that biotechnology in the twenty-first century is as dangerous as nuclear technology in the twentieth century. The dangers do not lie in any particular gadgets such as nanorobots or autonomous agents. The dangers arise from knowledge, from our inexorably growing understanding of the basic processes of life. The message is that biological knowledge irresponsibly applied means death. And we may hope the world will listen (Dyson 2003).

Again, Dyson and Joy are in agreement on that biotechnology can pose catastrophic threats. Dyson writes that “the growth of biological knowledge during the century now beginning will bring grave dangers to human society and the ecology of our planet” (Ibid.). In terms of a duty to engage in casuistry of the imagination,

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Prey, like The White Plague, raises important moral dilemmas to challenge the reader to search for the ethical principles needed to deal with twenty-first century technologies. As was seen, Joy is in agreement with Jonas. We should fulfill our obligations to the future by exercising precaution. Dyson believes we should be optimistic, paying greater heed to the prophecies of bliss. This leads him to a libertarian principle. Dyson’s technological optimism commits him to a moral theory that is consistent with John Stuart Mills’ utilitarianism. In Mills’ philosophy, individual liberty leads to progress by increasing social justice and human welfare. In his influential treaties, On Liberty, Mills argues that restriction should not be placed on individual liberty because it undermines social progress. The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement, being in unceasing antagonism to that disposition to aim at something better than customary, which is called, according to circumstances, the spirit of liberty, or that of progress or improvement (Mills 2003, 70).

Mills identifies liberty with progress or improvement. However, an important element of Mills’ ethics is the Harm Principle. This moral principle sets boundaries on individual liberty. He writes: “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others” (Ibid. 16). Mills is not committed to individual liberty because it is an intrinsic good. He is a consequentialist. Society should allow individuals the liberty to experiment and innovate because this is what drives social progress. In the long run societies that maximize individual liberty will maximize net utility. It is the outliers, the heterodox, who refuse to be confined by existing ideas and norms and who create exciting innovations and discover better ways of living. Dyson has lived his life in accordance with a Millsian conception of liberty. On numerous occasions he has taken contrarian positions to provoke debate and thought. For example, in recent years he has challenged the orthodoxy of climate science (Dyson 2008). Dyson writes: “I’m proud to be a heretic. The world always needs heretics to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy” (Dyson 2007). It is the nonconformist, freethinkers who allow science and society to advance. For Dyson, precautionary ethics limits liberty and is therefore an obstacle to social progress. This, again, is the way many libertarian-minded thinkers see precautionary ethics and specifically the PP as an obstacle to progress. For example, the libertarian thinker, Jonathan Adler, writes: An underlying premise of the precautionary principle is that modern industrial society is unsustainable and threatens the survival of humanity, if not much of the planet as well. This assumption is highly questionable…. Economic growth and technological progress have been a tremendous boon to both human health and environmental protection. Efforts to limit such progress are likely to be counterproductive. Regulatory measures that stifle innovation and suppress economic growth will deprive individuals with the resources necessary to improve their quality of life, and deny societies the ability to make investments that protect people and their environs (Adler 2002).

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The PP is an impediment to innovation because precautionary safety regulations cause lengthy delays and raise the costs of bringing a new technology to market. Also, it likely encourages self-censorship in scientific research, as it makes certain lines of research less attractive. To recall from Chap. 1, Dyson is convinced that the trajectory of history demonstrates that technological progress has overall increased equality and human wellbeing. He acknowledges many of the numerous environmental problems created by technological society, but believes technological innovations can solve these problems. Scientific liberty is the engine of progress and technological progress can make people’s lives happier. This, recalling from Chap. 1, is the reason Dyson is an advocate for DIY biotechnology: it increases liberty by allowing more individuals to experiment and exercise their creativity outside of the orthodoxy of academic and corporate hierarchies. Dyson is a consequentialist and realizes harms or evils will come from GE, but in his calculations he firmly believes that the goods will outweigh the evils. Dyson’s ultimate argument against precautionary policies is based on an analogy between seventeenth century debates over liberty to print books and the liberty to experiment with genetic engineering. During the seventeenth century people feared the danger of “moral contagion” by new printing press technologies that allowed freedom to print and distribute unsanctioned books. Similarly, in the twenty-first century, people fear the danger of “physical contagion by [generically engineered] pathogenic microbes” (Dyson 2003). Dyson defends the analogy by noting that the fears in both cases were “neither groundless or unreasonable” (Ibid.). However, it is abundantly clear that the goods of a free press have far outweighed harms. Dyson quotes John Milton’s speech before the English Parliament to support his opposition to the precautionary principle, which he characterizes as a form of censorship. Milton’s statement reads: “Books should not be convicted and imprisoned until after they have done some damage” (Ibid.). For those familiar with the debate over the PP, the PP is often framed in terms of how to distribute the burden of proof for new innovations in biotechnology. Should GE crops and animals be “guilty until proved innocent,” or should they be “innocent until proven guilty” (van den Belt 2003)? Dyson is a champion of the narrative of progress. This leads him to argue for optimism over pessimism: powerful new biotechnologies should be innocent until proven guilty.

7.3.4  T  he Imperative of Responsibly, Catastrophic Risk and the Precaution Rule The debate between Joy and Dyson is a good illustration of an exercise that attempts to fulfill Jonas’ duty of casuistry of the imagination. Their high-profile debate has stimulated much discussion on these issues. Joy’s argument for a narrow application of precautionary policies and regulation to areas of research that pose catastrophic

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risks, contra Dyson, is both possible and desirable. In my assessment there are at least three serious problems with Dyson’s argument for a libertarian principle. First, Dyson’s strategy relies heavily on an argument by analogy, where a precautionary ethics is viewed as censorship and coercion. His argument is of the form: just as we all agree that societies are better off by allowing freedom of the press to spread novel ideas, even though this comes with risks, societies are better off by allowing freedom of bioengineering to spread novel organisms, even though this comes with risks. In Dyson’s view the freedom to manipulate human languages to spread creative ideas and the freedom to manipulate genomes to spread novel organisms will lead to social progress. Within restraints there is no doubt some truth to this argument. It is possible, for example, that DIY biotechnologists will someday develop solutions to perplexing problems in medicine and agriculture. But Dyson takes the analogy too far: Creating great novel organisms is not analogous to writing great novels or philosophical treaties. The analogy between freedom of the press and the freedom of bioengineering is strained beyond the breaking point. Manipulating the human language is not similar to manipulating genetic codes. Ideas are not organisms; ideas are not subject to the same ecological and evolutionary processes as organisms. Books inhabit the world of human culture; organisms inhabit the ecological and biological world. Releasing dangerous ideas into the world is not analogous to the catastrophic threat of releasing a genetically engineered superpathogen into the environment. It seems we have a duty to the future to enact precautionary policies and regulations to prepare for this threat. Second, because the narrative of progress shapes Dyson’s worldview he has an optimistic interpretation of the history of technology. This interpretation of history coupled with his utilitarian, consequentialist moral reasoning leads him to predict that “the promise of good arising from biotechnology greatly outweighs the evil” (Dyson 2007). This argument is premised on the idea that a progressive interpretation of the history of technology is a good predictor of the future. However, Jonas’ philosophy of technologies sees modern technologies as being fundamentally different from earlier technologies. To recall, Jonas writes that “the Promethean enterprise of modern technology speaks a different language [from earlier technologies]” (Jonas 1979). The rate, scope, power and unpredictability of the modern-scientific-­ technology enterprise are awe-inspiring and terrifying. The history of technology may not be a good predictor of the moral problems humanity faces in the technological age. Humanity is in the midst of numerous fast-moving technological revolutions: biotech, information, robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotech, and more. Jonas argues that we need a new ethics to “stand guard over the future in the technological tempest of the present” (Jonas 1985, 33). Joy’s argument for precautionary ethics and policies is premised on (or consistent with) Jonas’ philosophy of technology and his precautionary rule. The core idea is that technological change is not an arrow aimed at social progress: it is a juggernaut. We have duties as stewards of the future to take responsibility for the modern scientific-technological-enterprise. Finally, Dyson’s libertarian argument is in step with Mill’s liberal philosophy but he does not engage Mills’ Harm Principle. The Harm Principle allows governments to constrain liberty in special cases where other people’s liberty is threatened. There

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are numerous examples where public safety legitimately trumps scientific liberty. Joy’s limited application of precautionary policies that restrict scientific liberty is arguably consistent with the Harm Principle. Precautionary measures should be put in place to mitigate the threats of possible misuses of bioengineering by militaries, terrorists and that accidental release of pathogens into the environment. The parameters of the debate between Joy and Dyson are set in terms of human misuses of biotechnology to create catastrophes. To be clear, Joy is not advocating for a sweeping application of the PP to biotechnology research and development; his application of a precautionary ethics aims at limited applications derived from the White Plague scenario. Importantly, this is a far more limited application of the PP than how it is currently being applied to GE crops and animals in some countries and in some international agreements. In terms of placing the PP in Jonas’ philosophical and ethical program, it is clear that his precautionary ethics only applies to dangers of a certain magnitude, apocalyptic or catastrophic threats to the future. However, how do we know what constitutes a catastrophic or apocalyptic threat? For example, do the misuses and abuses of antibiotic and herbicide magic bullets to create superpests (discussed in Chap. 4) pose a catastrophic threat to the future? The next chapter will explore the issue of identifying catastrophic threats to the future by exploring Jonas’ duty of comparative futurology.

References Adler, J.H. 2002. The precautionary principle’s challenge to progress. In Global warming and other eco-myths: How the environmental movement uses false science to scare us to death, ed. R. Bailey, 265–291. Roseville: Prima Publishing. Ahteensuu, M. 2007. Defending the precautionary principle against three criticisms. Trames 11 (61/56): 366–381. Baum, S.D., and G.S. Wilson. 2014. The ethics of global catastrophic risk from dual-use bioengineering. EBEM 4 (1): 59–72. Caribou Biosciences. 2015. Caribou Biosciences and DuPont announce strategic alliance. Caribou Biosciences. http://cariboubio.com/in-the-news/press-releases/caribou-biosciencesand-dupont-announce-strategic-alliance. Accessed 10 May 2016. Carlson, R. 2011. Biology is technology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Crutzen, P.J. 2002. Geology of mankind: The Anthropocene. Nature 415 (23): 23. Doudna, J.A. 2015. Genome-editing revolution: My whirlwind year with CRISPR. Nature 528 (7583): 469–471. Dyson, F.J. 2003. Why the future needs us! New York Times Review of Books. http://www.nybooks. com/articles/2003/02/13/the-future-needs-us/. Accessed 16 May 2016. ———. 2007. A many-colored glass: Reflections on the place of life in the universe. Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press. ———. 2008. The question of global warming. New York Review of Books. http://www.nybooks. com/articles/2008/06/12/the-question-of-global-warming/. Accessed 2 May 2016. Einstein, A. 1954. Ideas and opinions. New York: Broadway Books. Food and Drug Administration. Public health security and bioterrorism preparedness and response act of 2002. FDA. https://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/ GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/FoodDefense/ucm111086.htm. Accessed 22 Mar 2017.

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Hogue, M. 2007. Theological ethics and technological culture: A biocultural approach. Zygon 42 (1): 77–95. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2014. Climate change 2014: impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability, summary for policy makers. https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/ wg2/ar5_wgII_spm_en.pdf. Accessed 20 March 2017. Jonas, H. 1979. Toward a philosophy of technology. Hastings Center Report 9 (1): 34–43. ———. 1985. The imperative of responsibility: In search of an ethics for the technological age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Joy, B. 2000. Why the future doesn’t need us. Wired. https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/. Accessed May 2016. Ladford, H. 2016. CRISPR: Gene editing is just the beginning. Nature 531: 156–159. Meadows, D.H., D.L. Meadows, J. Randers, and W.W. Behrens. 1972. Limits to growth. New York: Universe Books. Mills, J.S. 2003. On liberty and other writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Minteer, B.A., and S.J. Pyne, eds. 2015. After preservation: Saving American nature in the age of humans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Reardon, S. 2016. The CRISPR zoo. Nature 531: 160–163. Schettler, T., and C. Raffensperger. 2004. Why is a precautionary approach needed? In The precautionary principle: Protecting public health, the environment and the future of our children, ed. M. Martuzzi and J.A. Tickner. Geneva: World Health Organization. Sunstein, C. 2005. Laws of fear, beyond the precautionary principle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tucker, J.B., and R.A. Zilinkas. 2006. The promise and peril of synthetic biology. New Atlantis 12: 25–45. United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. 1972. Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. UN. http://www.un-documents.net/unchedec.htm. Accessed 23 Mar 2017. van Aken, J., and E. Hammond. 2003. Genetic engineering and biological weapons. EMBO Reports 4 (Special Issue): 57–60. van den Belt, H. 2003. Debating the precautionary principle: “Guilty until proven innocent” or “innocent until proven guilty”? Plant Physiology 132 (3): 1122–1126. Wohlsen, M. 2011. Biopunk: DIY scientists hack the software of life. New York: Penguin. Worster, D. 2016. Shrinking the earth: The rise and decline of American abundance. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 8

Towards a Narrative of Sustainability, Genetic Engineering, Responsibility and Technological Pragmatism

Abstract  The guiding thesis for this book is that out of the narrative crisis created by the conflicting optimistic and pessimistic philosophies of technology, a new narrative of sustainability is emerging. In this final chapter I argue that the recent development of planetary boundary theory marks a major advance in fulfilling the duty of comparative futurology, and that it provides a context for evaluating genetic engineering in agriculture. In very broad terms, these three elements, an ethics of responsibility, planetary boundary theory, and a pragmatic philosophy of technology, can make significant contributions in building a narrative of sustainability. The chapter concludes by placing advances in agricultural biotechnology within the context of a precautionary ethics and comparative futurology, as exemplified by planetary boundary theory. Given that the earth’s population is predicted to grow to more than 10 billion people over the next century while global environmental problems like climate change intensify, it seems difficult to imagine we can fulfill our duties to future generations without innovations like genetic engineering in agriculture. However, if emerging technologies are going to help create a more just and sustainable future, we must move beyond the conflict between the progressive and pessimistic narratives and continued to construct a narrative of sustainability.

8.1  Introduction Chapter 1 started with the following quote from Hans Jonas’ The Imperative of Responsibility: In our time, technology has become the dominant force for progress…. In that connection, progress becomes almost equated with material betterment. Advancing technology is expected to raise material well-being of mankind by heightening the productivity of the global economy, multiplying the kinds as well as the quantity of goods which contribute to the enjoyment of life, at the same time lightening the burden of labor (Jonas 1985, 163).

Jonas is describing the modernist worldview that has been labeled the narrative of progress (Jasanoff 2005, 185). To review the main themes that have run throughout these chapters, the idea of progress is rooted in the Enlightenment tradition and © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 N. D. Scott, Food, Genetic Engineering and Philosophy of Technology, The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics 28, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96027-2_8

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has created tremendous institutional inertia and habits of thought that are driving research and development in biotechnology. Understanding the philosophical idea of progress and its optimistic philosophy of technology is key to interpreting and understanding the contentious GE debate. Countering the idea of progress is the ethical idea of precaution. The ethics of precaution is rooted in a growing ethos of technological pessimism that gained momentum in the twentieth century. Making sense of the idea of precaution and the associated pessimistic philosophy of technology is also key for interpreting and understanding the polarized GE debate. The conflict over genetic engineering in agriculture can be interpreted as an epistemological crisis created by the clash between two opposing philosophies of technology: technological optimism and technological pessimism. The guiding thesis of this book is that out of the epistemological crisis created by these conflicting philosophies a new narrative of sustainability will emerge, one that is guided by a pragmatic philosophy of technology and an ethics of responsibility to the future. Following Hans Jonas, societies need a new ethics and a new philosophy of technology to meet the challenges of the technological age (Jonas 1985), or Anthropocene. The objective of these chapters has been to unearth insights that would contribute to the development of a narrative of sustainability. Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 examined and reinterpreted key terms and ideas in the GE debate (progress, magic bullet and technological fix) to identify what positive role these ideas might play in a narrative of sustainability for the Anthropocene. The goal of these final two chapters is to place the ethical idea of precaution within Hans Jonas’ philosophical program to determine what roles it might play in a narrative of sustainability. The main idea of this final chapter is that the ethics of precaution should be seen as a duty within the whole cloth of an ethics of responsibility to the future and a pragmatic philosophy of technology. As introduced in Chap. 1, there is a crucial divide in the GE debate between technological optimists who promote progress through market-driven innovation and technological pessimists who advocate precaution against unintended harms to human health and the environment from new biotechnologies. Those who are committed to precaution have sought to keep the regulatory burden high for GE crops and animals. Where successful, these efforts have led to expensive and lengthy precautionary regulatory processes. There is no question that the champions of precaution have slowed or, in some places, stalled the biotech revolution. This has created a long and heated debate over precautionary ethics and the PP, which was introduced in the last chapter. One of the conclusions reached in Chap. 7 is that Jonas’ precautionary rule applies to threats of a certain magnitude, apocalyptic or catastrophic. This is a much more limited application of precautionary ethics than many applications of the PP. The question, then, is how does Jonas’ precautionary ethics relate to genetic engineering in agriculture? In order to pursue this question it is necessary to understand the relationship between the duty of comparative futurology and the duty to exercise precaution.

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8.2  Comparative Futurology and Precautionary Ethics 8.2.1  Jonas’ Precautionary Rule and The Limits to Growth To review, in Jonas’ new ethics of responsibility the present generation has a duty to stand guard over the future as grateful and pious stewards (Jonas 1985, 33). The immense power of the “technological tempest” (Ibid.) threatens the conditions of future life. This fact creates an imperative of responsibility. The existing generation has a moral obligation to conserve and persevere the earth’s ability to provide future generations with the opportunity to pursue lives of human dignity. Jonas expands the scope of Western moral theories by extending our duties beyond the immediate sphere of coexisting persons to the distant sphere of future persons. Our explicit duty to an imagined but imminent future is to fulfill the simple deontic statement, “the prophecy of doom is to be given greater heed than the prophecy of bliss” (Jonas 1985, 31). The magnitude of the “prophecy of doom” is important; it refers to the apocalyptic. Jonas clarifies this point in a restatement of the precautionary rule: “in matters of a certain magnitude—those with apocalyptic potential—greater weight should be given to the prognosis of doom than that of bliss” (Ibid. 34, emphasis added). But human history is replete with self-styled doomsayers, would-be prophets who we should ignore. For Jonas, the bad prognoses that we should take seriously are those emanating from the interdisciplinary field of future studies, or futurology, that had just come on the scene when he was writing in the 1970s. The duty to exercise precaution is preceded by the duty of comparative futurology. The prognoses of bliss and doom are the alternative future scenarios generated by scientific speculations. It is crucial to understand the influences of 1970s futurology on Jonas’ philosophy. Jonas’ ethics for the technological age was created at a moment in history when the interdisciplinary science of comparative futurology was in its early stages. The discipline was born in the late 1950s as an aid to political planning (Seefried 2011). The development of computer modeling and growing sophistication in systems thinking allowed futurology to become a legitimate science by the 1970s. As mentioned in the last chapter, in 1972 a team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology led by Donella Meadows published The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972). The book presented the results of “twelve scenarios that showed different possible patterns of world development over two centuries 1900—2100” (Meadows et al. 2002). World3, a computer model that used system dynamics theory, generated the scenarios. The book was an immediate international sensation. The German historian, Elke Seefried, writes, “The international response was immense. The Limits to Growth, which belonged to the heterogeneous field of ‘futures studies’ (or futures research/ futurology), became a bestseller and received significant attention” (Seefried 2011). In the first year of publication it sold over two-and-one-half million copies. Within

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its first 2 years The Limits to Growth was the topic for 20 television programs and 50 conferences (Ibid.). It eventually sold 12 million copies and has been translated into 37 languages. Most significantly it popularized and legitimized the science of comparative futurology. Sophisticated computer models and systems thinking now play a vital role in the way policy-makers think about global environmental problems, especially in the areas of global climate change. In an essay on the reception of The Limits of Growth in West Germany, Seefried observes that, “in the summer of 1972, the German weekly Die Zeit commented as follows on The Limits to Growth: ‘In the past, futures researchers mainly occupied themselves by issuing optimistic forecasts about unimaginable prosperity, an excess of leisure, and victory over old age and disease. Today, their prognoses are mainly gloomy’” (Ibid.). Jonas used similar language in The Imperative of Responsibility. Despite the fact the he does not mention or reference The Limits to Growth, Jonas’ views were surely shaped by this book and the growing ethos of technological pessimism of the 1970s. The Limits to Growth is an early effort to fulfill Jonas’ duty of comparative futurology. The book contains examples of “prophecies of doom” or “bad prognoses” to which, according to Jonas’ precautionary rule, we have a moral duty to pay greater heed. The Limits of Growth prepared the German-speaking public for Jonas’ book. Rachel Salamander writes of the reception of Das Prinzip Verantwortung (Imperative of Responsibility) in 1979: Seldom has a book appeared at such a propitious moment. Jonas’ topic resonated with the spirit of the times which after the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth…. Postwar optimism had given way to skepticism toward progress…. The project of modernism—liberation of human beings through the ever increasing control over nature—Hans Jonas countered the new fatalism with his defense of normal human life (Salamander 2008, vii).

For Jonas, the narrative of progress with its goal of controlling nature through science and technology—what he calls “the Baconian program” (Jonas 1985, 140)—was hurling humanity toward overshoot and environmental collapse. Jonas’ philosophy of technology and moral theory provide a positive vision for moving beyond the illusory utopianism and nihilistic materialism of twentieth century technological civilization. He does this by affirming the inherent dignity of present and future persons, and the givenness of nature. However, he is not a naïve, “back-to-­ nature” Arcadian. The new ethics is an imperative to take responsibility for the rapidly increasing power of modern, scientific-technology, not necessarily abandon it.

8.2.2  Neo-Malthusians and Political Polarization There were many influential prophets of doom in the 1970s. Next to Limits to Growth was Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968). Ehrlich is an ecologist and population biologist at Stanford University. His approach is distinct from the World3 computer model of Meadows et al., which evolved out of the science of strategic

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planning developed during the cold war in places like MIT and the RAND Corporation (Seefried 2011). The Population Bomb sees population growth as the root cause of global environmental problems. Ehrlich writes: “The causal chain of deterioration is easily followed to its source. Too many cars, too many factories, too much pesticide… too little water, too much carbon dioxide—all can be traced easily to too many people” (Ehrlich  1968, emphasis added). The book’s prognoses and recommendations are based on simple Malthusian logic. Exponential human population growth corresponds to the rapid depletion of the finite resources needed to support human life. Ehrlich made bold and specific predictions about a looming eco-Apocalypse. The book’s influences can be detected in the Imperative of Responsibly. In the penultimate chapter titled “Responsibility Today: Endangered Future and the Idea of Progress,” Jonas writes that “All holds on the assumption made here that we live in an apocalyptic situation, that is, under the threat of universal catastrophe if we let things take their present course” (Ibid.). He further remarks that “A static population could say at a certain point, ‘Enough’; but a growing one has to say, ‘More’! Today it has become frighteningly clear that the biological success…threatens mankind and nature with an acute catastrophe of enormous proportions” (Jonas 1985, 141). Jonas goes on to note that the “population explosion” is a problem for the “planetary metabolism” (Ibid.). However, it is difficult to see how Jonas’ Kantian affirmations of human dignity can be reconciled with neo-­Malthusian moral philosophy. Neo-Malthusian “lifeboat ethics” (Hardin 1974) is based on ecological necessity. The earth’s resources are limited and cannot support a growing population. In a lifeboat that is smaller than the number of people who want to be save hard decisions must be made. Similarly, on a planet that is too small to accommodate population growth hard decisions must be made. Lifeboat ethics shares traits with reactionary philosophies in a willingness to subordinate human rights and individual liberty. Lifeboat ethics argues for the necessity of coercion to achieve zero pollution growth. This no doubt led to the polarizing label of “ecofascism,” for example, as used by Gregory Pence in Chap. 6. The Population Bomb advocates for policies to reduce fertility rates. Ehrlich writes, “human society can only be saved [from the consequences of overpopulation] by a combination of moral, financial and especially coercive legal incentives, applied on an international scale by the US or a world government” (Ehrlich 1968, emphasis added). Some policy recommendations are a luxury tax on diapers and cribs in wealthy countries and forced sterilization in developing countries (Ibid.). This is an ethics born out of fear and desperation of an impending eco-apocalypse. An ethics of fear and desperation is an extremely unpromising starting point for the critical conversations about global change and sustainability. It is no more helpful than the human-centered ethics of technological optimism. Certain of the Malthusian logic of exponential population growth crashing into the limits of finite resources, Ehrlich’s style was uncompromising. Lifeboat ethics is severe and hardhearted, but it seemingly has the virtue of necessity. Many people were repulsed by this moral philosophy and felt that The Population Bomb’s cure was worse than the disease. While this philosophy was a creature of its times it

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has cast a long shadow. The influence of neo-Malthusian philosophy of technology has further contributed to polarizing these debates. The depth of Ehrlich’s confident and combative style made him a ready debater for those who opposed his apocalyptic message. The most vocal opponents were economists who championed the competition-driven narrative of progress. The biologist versus economist debates came to be known as the Cornucopian versus Malthusian debate. The polarized GE debate between technological optimists and technological pessimists described in earlier chapters is a continuation of the Malthusian versus Cornucopian debates of the 1970s and 1980s. It was a debate between two diametrically opposed philosophies of technology. On the one hand, the Neo-Malthusian pessimists saw technology, population growth and pollution as part of a vicious spiral. New technologies allow for more people and generate pollution; new technologies are then needed to satisfy the needs of a larger population and to respond to added pollution; this leads to more people and pollution. The spiral continues until population and pollution exceed the earth’s carrying capacity. The philosopher, Andrew Feenberg describes this philosophy of technology: All these Malthusian positions treat society as a natural object ruled by deterministic laws. Ehrlich, for example, claims that the “population bomb” is a biological process—human reproduction—gone wild. Technology too is naturalized by the assumption that economic growth implies more [polluting] technology of the sort we have now... (Feenberg 1999, 54).

The Neo-Malthusians’ dogmatic, deterministic philosophy of technology did not account for the complexities of technological change. Technological optimists could easily respond to these technological pessimists by arguing that market forces would drive technological development in an expanding spiral of abundance. The Neo-Malthusians erred by giving “short shrift” to the development of “less harmful technologies” and the ability for societies to substitute “plentiful or renewable resources for diminishing ones” (Feenberg 1999). For Ehrlich, “an increase in human numbers and wealth must bring about a corresponding increase in pollution and resource depletion” (Ibid.) The technological optimists, or Cornucopians, could cite numerous examples where Neo-Malthusian philosophy of technology proved to be false. One of the most famous opponents of the Neo-Malthusian view is the economist, Julian Simon. Simon argued in his The Economics of Population Growth (1977) that as population grew so would human ingenuity. Famine and starvation are not the inevitable result of population growth. In this optimistic view people are the ultimate resource. Resource scarcity and pollution would eventually engage the market forces that drive innovation and technological development. New technologies would allow food production to keep pace with population growth, as human ingenuity is a nearly unlimited resource. This view was illustrated in Chap. 6. As was discussed in that chapter, technological optimists are quick to point out Ehrlich’s failed predictions of imminent famine and starvation in Southern Asia. In a 2015 essay, “The Unrealized Horrors of Population Explosion,” Clyde Haberman describes Ehrlich’s predictions: “Dr. Ehrlich’s opening statement was the verbal equivalent of a punch to the gut: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over.” He later went on to forecast that hundreds of millions would starve to death in the 1970s, that

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65 million of them would be Americans, that crowded India was essentially doomed, that the odds were fair “England will not exist in the year 2000.” Dr. Ehrlich was so sure of himself that he warned in 1970 that, “sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come.” By “the end,” he meant “an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity” (Haberman 2015). Ehrlich’s predictions about India were proven wrong by advances in plant breeding and the applications of industrial techniques that led to the Green Revolution. In an article celebrating Norman Borlaug, Greg Easterbrook writes: Paul Ehrlich had written in The Population Bomb that it was ‘a fantasy’ that India would ‘ever’ feed itself. By 1974 India was self-sufficient in the production of all cereals. Pakistan progressed from harvesting 3.4  million tons of wheat annually when Borlaug arrived to around 18 million today, India from 11  million tons to 60  million. In both nations food production since the 1960s has increased faster than the rate of population growth (Easterbrook 1997).

Ehrlich underestimated the ability of technological innovations to stretch the earth’s carrying capacity. However, as was also seen in Chap. 6, the successes of the Green Revolution technologies came with high environmental costs that are now coming due. The technological optimists are forced to argue that the Gene Revolution will solve the problems created by Green Revolution. As of 2017, Ehrlich continues to argue that his predictions will come true, eventually. Economic technological optimism, like neo-Malthusian technological pessimism, is deterministic. But, rather than foretelling a vicious spiral leading to environmental collapse, free market economic theory of technology envisions an expanding spiral leading to abundance. The debate between the Cornucopian and Malthusian is ultimately irreconcilable because both views can be to some degree supported by selective interpretations of the history of technology. As White et al. note: “The idea that the modern environmental debate can be reduced to two competing parties represented by technocratic versus ecocentric currents, advocates of limits versus advocates of no limits, or growth versus non-growth party becomes hard to sustain” (White et al. 2016). Nevertheless, these battling philosophies have created a lasting legacy that is contributing to the polarized debate over GE crops and the precautionary principle. The important question for Jonas’ precautionary ethics is whether or not his philosophy is tied to the pessimistic ethos of 1970s that is contributing to these dysfunctional debates. In the 1970s Jonas was presented with two distinct approaches to comparative futurology in The Limits to Growth and The Population Bomb. There is textual evidence that both approaches influenced The Imperative of Responsibility. As was just seen, there are serious problems with neo-Malthusian moral philosophy and philosophy of technology. If the neo-Malthusian approach to a science of the future was Jonas’ only option it would create serious problems for his precautionary ethics. The approach to comparative futurology used in The Limits to Growth has proven to be much more flexible. The use of computer models and systems thinking is not necessarily committed to a particular moral philosophy or philosophy of technology. Meadows et al. lamented that Limits to Growth and The Population Bomb have often been lumped together. They felt that this identification led people to

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misunderstand and misinterpret their project (Meadows et al. 2002). While Jonas’ precautionary rule depends on comparative futurology, it is not tied to the state of the field in the 1970s when he was writing. The Planetary Boundaries approach discussed in Chap. 6 is in the lineage of the Limits to Growth. The authors of the PB approach seemed to have learned from the philosophical errors of the pessimistic philosophies of the 1970s. It holds much promise to move beyond the polarizing Cornucopian versus Malthusian debate of that period.

8.2.3  The Precaution Rule and Planetary Boundaries In the last decade there have been at least two noteworthy developments that complement and support Jonas’ ethics of responsibility to the future and his precautionary rule. One is the growing importance of the notion of the Anthropocene, which fits with Jonas’ starting premise that we need a new ethics for the technological age. The other is the rapid acceptance of the PB approach, discussed in Chap. 6. It has been included in and embraced by United Nations programs and influential nongovernmental organizations, such as Oxfam and the World Wildlife Fund. It has the potential to transform the polarized discussions on limits. To review, the PB approach is the result of the efforts led by Johan Rockström from the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Will Steffen from the Australian National University. Their work can be viewed as a major breakthrough in fulfilling the duty of comparative futurology. To quickly review from Chap. 6, Johan Rockström published an influential paper introducing the Planetary Boundary approach in 2009 titled, “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity” (Rockström et al. 2009). The idea behind the PB approach is human civilizations have developed during the stable Holocene period. However, human-caused global environmental change is pushing the earth’s systems into unpredictable and unstable states, the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene threatens to be a time of great hardships for humanity (Steffen et al. 2015). In an effort to stave off the worse consequences, Rockström et al. identify nine planetary boundaries “associated with the planets’ biophysical subsystems and processes” (Rockström et  al. 2009). These boundaries roughly identify “the safe operating space for humanity” (Ibid.). The following will investigate the relationship between Jonas ‘ethics, the PP and the PB approach. To briefly review, in The Imperative of Responsibility Jonas argued that we need a new ethics because the sphere of human action has extended to affect the entire planet and the distant future. Scientific and technological progress is providing humanity with tremendous biological success, but that success now threatens the “planetary metabolism” (Jonas 1985, 141). In the nearly four decades since The Imperative of Responsibility was first published in German, there has been tremendous growth in scientific understanding of human-caused global environmental change and computing power. The environmental historian Donald Worster writes: “Scientists have been increasing human knowledge of the earth exponentially and demonstrating repeatedly that limits exist on many levels—terrestrial, oceanic, and

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atmospheric. To ignore those limits, they warn, would be to put at risk the planet and human life” (Worster 2016, 189). Scientists are now far better able to fulfill Jonas’ duty of comparative futurology than they were in the 1970s, when the discussion of planetary limits or boundaries began in earnest. The conversations over global environmental change and sustainability have been revived and reframed in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. This is likely due to growing concerns over the eminent threat of global climate change and the growth (albeit slow) in the sophistication of the ethical and political discourse around this issue. In particular, the 2016 United Nations Paris Conference on climate change may mark a turning point for serious international discussions on global environmental change and sustainability, although time will tell. Political movement on climate change in developing countries with large populations of people still living in poverty, like India, has had a positive influence on international discourse over sustainability. There is now a greater emphasis on poverty and social justice than there was in the eco-apocalyptic rhetoric of the 1970s. The conversation is no longer obsessed with overpopulation and resource depletion. Rather, the discussions on global sustainability attempt to better balance issues of human rights, social justice and economic development for present and future generations. These are important events for developing a new ethics of global stewardship and a narrative of sustainability. The PB approach is at the leading edge of efforts to fulfill the duty of comparative futurology. In remarks that are consistent with Jonas stewardship ethics, the originators of the PB approach state that “We are the first generation with the knowledge of how our activities influence the Earth System, and thus the first generation with the power and the responsibility to change our relationship with the planet” (Steffen et  al. 2011). Significantly, the PB approach is built around three central themes of Jonas ethics: (1) The duty to take responsibility for actions for the dignity and well being of the future persons, i.e., to be responsible stewards of the planet; (2) the duty to fulfill obligations of comparative futurology, or science of the future; and, (3) the duty to exercise precaution toward the future.

8.2.4  The PB Approach and Jonas Imperative of Responsibility The basic framework for the PB approach, again, is that human-caused global environmental change is pushing the planet out of the stable Holocene period that has allowed civilization to develop and thrive over the past 10,000 years (Rockström et al. 2009). In a statement that makes it explicit how the PB approach is grounded in a precautionary ethics, Steffen et al. write: The precautionary principle suggests that human society would be unwise to drive the Earth System substantially away from the Holocene- like condition. A continued trajectory away from Holocene could lead, with uncomfortably high probability, to a very different state of the Earth System, one that is likely to be less hospitable to the development of human societies (Steffen et al. 2015).

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The human-driven transition into the unpredictable and unstable Anthropocene is cause for great concern. Rockström et  al. write: “This [transition] could see humanity push outside the stable environmental state of the Holocene, with consequences that are detrimental or even catastrophic for large parts of the world” (Rockström et al. 2009). However, environmental catastrophes are not inevitable. Rockström et al. conclude their article by saying that “the evidence suggests that, as long as the thresholds are not crossed, humanity has the freedom to pursue long-­ term social and economic development” (Ibid.). The PB approach uses planetary boundaries to identify “the safe operating space for humanity with respect to the Earth system and are associated with the planet’s biophysical subsystems and processes” (Ibid.). The nine boundaries that represent possible thresholds for irreversible tipping points are: climate change, rate of biodiversity loss, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, ozone layer, ocean acidification, fresh water usage, land use change, aerosols, and chemical pollution. The paper’s contributors attempt to quantify these thresholds but note that these attempts contain large error bars, and they are currently unable to quantify aerosols and chemical pollution. Rockström, Steffen and their co-authors have created a useful model for visualizing threats to the future. The focus on planetary systems and tipping points marks a significant advance in fulfilling the duty of comparative futurology from the eco-apocalyptic rhetoric of the 1970s, with its focus on population growth and resource depletion. Furthermore, the PB approach makes a direct appeal to a precautionary ethics that is exactly aligned with Jonas’ ethics. In an explicit break from the neo-Malthusian approach of the 1970s, Sarah Cornell, one of the coauthors of the 2009 Nature article, notes that the PB approach is not focused on resource depletion and overpopulation, “but instead seeks to determine the risks of destabilizing components in the Earth system arising from human-­ induced changes, triggering new feedbacks, crossing thresholds and unleashing tipping points in the Earth system” (Cornell 2015). She goes on to remark that “the critical thresholds are not based on human demands for resources. Earth’s intrinsic dynamics set non-negotiable constraints on the human enterprise, so in the ‘safe operating space’ analysis, precautionary global boundaries are set based on an assessment of the systemic thresholds in critical biophysical processes” (Ibid., emphasis added). The framework provided by the PB approach has moved the ethical dialogue on limits away from the anti-humanist “lifeboat ethics” and technological pessimism and toward a more positive, stewardship ethics and technological pragmatism. The PB approach has been influential in deliberations on the United Nation’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), about which Rockström and Klum remark: “The SDGs show that we’re entering a new narrative, in which world leaders recognize that human progress [to eradicate hunger and poverty] hinges on Earth’s resilience” (Rockström and Klum 2015). The PB approach provides for the needs of poor countries to develop to eliminate poverty, but in ways that are consistent with planetary stewardship. This is consistent with Jonas’ ethics with its foundational commitment to the right of living and future persons to pursue lives of human dignity and wellbeing. The PB approach provides a sophisticated model for

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identifying and quantifying what Jonas called “bad prognoses” or “prophecies of doom” to which Jonas’ precautionary rule obligates the present generation to pay greater heed.

8.3  T  he Imperative of Responsibility, Precautionary Ethics and GE Crops 8.3.1  T  wo Versions of the Precautionary Principle and Precautionary Ethics Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration and the Wingspread Statement are the two most important articulations of the PP.  The 1998 Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle says that, “when an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically” (Tickner et al. 1999, emphasis added). Principle 15 of the 1992 United Nations Rio Declaration states: “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation” (Principle 15, Rio Declaration, 1992, emphasis added, hereafter, Principle 15). This version of the PP was adapted in Article 3.3 of the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures, taking into account that policies and measures to deal with climate change should be cost-effective so as to ensure global benefits at the lowest possible cost (UNFCCC).

Sandin et al. make a useful distinction between prescriptive versions and argumentative versions of the PP to help understand the differences between Principle 15 and the Wingspread Statement (Sandin et al. 2002). The Wingspread Statement is an example of a prescriptive version, as it prescribes a course of action in the face of scientific uncertainty. Principle 15 is an example of an argumentative version, as it prohibits using scientific uncertainty as an argument for inaction. In their analysis of the PP, Sandin et al. move quickly over argumentative versions of the PP, noting: “the philosophical interest of argumentative versions of the PP are rather limited” (Sandin et al. 2002, 289). They note that this version of the PP is a restriction on dialogue. “It says little more than arguments from ignorance should not be used” (Ibid. 289). There is a different way to interpret the significance of Principle 15 and Article 3.3 versions of the PP that makes them more philosophically interesting. This can be seen by substituting the term deliberative for argumentative. The term argumentative places these versions of the PP in the arena of informal logic, critical reasoning or fallacy theory. However, I believe Principle 15

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and Article 3.3 have more to do with setting ethical standards of conduct for participants in deliberations about the future of humanity.

8.3.2  Deliberative Ethics and the Precaution Rule During group deliberations there should be expectations of right and wrong conduct. It is morally wrong for participants to favor arguments that protect their private interests when these arguments place others and things of significant value in serious danger. Principle 15 and Article 3.3 are important because they prohibit (“shall not” and “should not”) ethically unacceptable behavior in international deliberations over dangerous climate change. Turner and Hartzell note that the authors of Principle 15 “were no doubt addressing skeptics about global warming who would argue for the postponement of regulation of emissions of greenhouse gasses until scientific evidence is in” (Turner and Hartzell 2004, 452). Climate skeptics violate Jonas’ precautionary rule by giving greater weight to the prognosis of bliss than the prognoses of doom. The reason Jonas’ precautionary rule carries such weight in global climate change deliberations is climate science has done much to fulfill the duty of comparative futurology. The work of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is likely the best example of comparative futurology in the history of science. In 1994, when Article 3.3 was written, there was already much scientific evidence supporting the threat of dangerous climate change. Knowledge of this phenomenon has grown exponentially in the last twenty-five-plus years. With each of the six successive IPCC reports humanity has gotten a clearer and more alarming picture of the risks we are creating by exceeding the planetary boundaries for GHG concentrations in the atmosphere. The current generation is confronted with an extremely well supported bad prognosis about climate change. Further, given the eliminable uncertainty in future projections, Jonas’ precautionary rule says we have a duty to give more weight to the bad prognosis. Nevertheless, countries and industries with vested interests in delaying action on climate have continually argued that great weight should be given to “prognoses of bliss” over “prognoses of doom.” These behaviors have been, and continue to be, particularly evident in the United States. It is well documented that think tanks, politicians and corporations have used scientific uncertainty and optimistic projections as a strategy to avoid taking responsibility for the climate crisis for self-interested and/or ideological reasons (Oreskes and Conway 2010). Climate skepticism and optimistic projections have been an effective strategy for postponing cost-effective actions that would avoid catastrophic climate change. It is important to see these efforts as moral failures to fulfill one’s duty to the future, rather than critical thinking errors (i.e., appeals to fallacious arguments from ignorance). Comparative futurology, or future studies, will always contain a degree of uncertainty. This is why Jonas formulated his precautionary rule. To be biased toward the present while placing the future at catastrophic risk is a failure

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to fulfill the duty as grateful stewards. In terms of Jonas’ ethics, Principle 15 and Article 3.3 prohibit being selfishly optimistic about the effects of our present actions on future generations in international deliberations. The fact that deliberative versions of the PP are applied within the context of specific deliberations about catastrophic dangers to the future has important consequence for the GE debate. As will be discussed below, in certain contexts strong versions of the PP are incoherent. However, in others it is coherent; it is a coherent axiological principle for a stewardship ethics confronted with projections of dangerous climate change.

8.3.3  The Precautionary Rule and the GE Debate The philosopher Gary Comstock has argued that the strong version of the PP is incoherent because it supports contradictory conclusions (Comstock 2000): We must develop GE crops and we must not develop GE crops. Comstock’s argument is similar to Cass Sunstein's objections to strong versions of the PP mentioned at the beginning of Chap. 7: The real problem with the Precautionary Principle in its strongest forms is that it is incoherent; it purports to give guidance, but it fails to do so, because it condemns the very steps that it requires. The regulation that the principle requires always gives rise to risks of its own— and hence the principle bans what it simultaneously mandates…The principle threatens to be paralyzing, forbidding regulation, inaction, and every step in between (Sunstein 2005, 14–15).

In Comstock’s argument, he imagines a plausible future scenario where global climate change has become an extreme threat to agricultural production and distribution. In this possible future people are experiencing serious food shortages and facing starvation. Many people are forced to kill wild animals and clear forests to feed themselves in desperation. Further, more agricultural chemicals are used to increase yields on less productive lands (Ibid.). Under these dire circumstances a vicious spiral of land degradation and environmental destruction is created. Increasingly hungry and desperate people take increasingly desperate actions that lead to even more desperate conditions. There is range of possible innovations in agricultural biotechnology that could help respond to Comstock’s scenario. These would include GE crops that reduce tillage. Tillage contributes to GHG emissions and increases fertilizer use and nitrogen and phosphorous runoff. GE crops that are drought tolerant could help decrease fresh water use. GE crops that use less fertilizer would help reduce the impacts of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers. Comstock argues that under such dire conditions strong versions of the PP would recommend using biotechnology, and not using biotechnology. However, I do not think Jonas’ precautionary rule leads to contradictions because it is applied to dangers of a certain magnitude. Contradictions in precautionary ethics arise when sweeping applications of the prescriptive, strong versions of the PP

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are applied to all GE organisms in the abstract at all scales.1 Jonas’ precautionary ethics and rule was specifically created to deal with the inherent uncertainty in comparative futurology at the global scale and catastrophic threats. In contemporary terms, this means the uncertainties associated with identifying planetary boundaries and tipping points in PB theory. For example, it is not certain that carbon dioxide concentrations of 350 ppm are the safe boundary to avoid tipping points and catastrophic climate change; these are the pessimistic projections. There are optimistic estimates that indicate that the dangerous threshold for carbon dioxide concentrations is 550 ppm. Jonas’ precautionary ethics and rule states that, given the current state of scientific knowledge, our duty as stewards is to play it safe with the future and stay within the conservative boundary of 350 ppm. Specific GE crops and animals may pose dangers of a certain scale and magnitude, but those dangers may, or may not, be greatly outweighed by their contributions to reducing the larger dangers of exceeding planetary boundaries. The duty to exercise precaution in a stewardship ethics does not lead to contradictions when deliberation includes common sense discussions about the scale and magnitude of threats to the future. If the duty is to exercise a precautionary ethic at the scale and magnitude of crossing planetary boundaries the kinds of contradictions exposed by Comstock and Sunstein would not arise. But this challenges efforts to apply the strong versions of the PP to regulate GEOs, except for lines of research discussed in the last chapter, such as by the “White Plague” scenario. In fact, at the scale of planetary boundaries a stewardship ethics applying a precautionary rule could endorse GE crops. Agricultural biotechnology could make contributions to reducing biodiversity loss, nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, fresh water use, land use change and chemical pollution form insecticides at relatively low risks. In their recent book on planetary boundaries, Big World, Small Planet, Rockström and Klum outline the connections between planetary boundaries and agriculture. They observe that 1  As was pointed out earlier, one interpretation of the PP is as a principle of applied ethics that morally requires shifting the burden of proof from those who wish to protect human health and the environment to prove that an activity or technology is dangerous, to those who wish to promote an activity or technology to show that it is safe. However, in their analysis of the PP, van den Belt and Gremmen conclude that, on closer examination, “ethical consideration of a more specific character may enter into the balancing of risks and benefits and tilt the outcome one direction or the other” (van den Belt and Gremmen 2002). In other words, in some situations and contexts the application of the PP to shift the burden of proof to those who are promoting an activity may be appropriate, all things considered. However, in other contexts and situations the burden should shift to those who oppose an activity—again, when and how to apply the PP requires good judgment or practical wisdom. Andrew Sterling seems to recognize this in his analysis of the PP. He concludes his analysis by saying that “the main contributions of [precautionary] approaches are to encourage more robust methods in appraisal, make value judgments more explicit, and enhance qualities of deliberation” (Sterling 2016, 17). The point to draw from these various comments is that the application of the PP requires a rich context that includes different kinds of knowledge—scientific, ethical, social, political, and so on—combined with good judgment, political prudence or practical wisdom. Sweeping applications of the PP to shift the burden of proof to the developers of GE organisms in all cases fails to appreciate the role GE might play in the larger task of needing to rapidly transform agricultural practices and keep humanity within safe operating boundaries of the planet.

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Agriculture today represents the single largest cause of biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions (about 30 percent of global GHG emissions originate from agricultural production, roughly half from cultivation and the other half from deforestation). It is also the world’s largest user of land (almost 40 percent the world’s terrestrial surface is under agriculture), and the largest user of freshwater (70 percent of the withdrawals of fresh water from rivers are used for irrigation). In addition agriculture is the main source of nutrient overload from leakage of nitrogen and phosphorus into our water ways (Rockström and Klum 2015).

In order to stay within the planetary boundaries and avoid irreversible tipping points agricultural practices will have to be transformed. Significantly, Rockström and Klum emphasize “nature-based solutions” to create sustainable agricultural systems (Ibid.). For example, they discuss a poor region of Nigeria where farmers have combined nitrogen-fixing trees with crops in an agroforestry system to reclaim hundreds of thousands of hectares of degraded land and to increase yields (Ibid.). Rockström and Klum argue that these types of agroecological, or “nature-based,” solutions are underutilized and can do much to help humanity stay within a safe operating space. Further, societies must find ways to reward and incentivize these types of low-tech, high-intelligence approaches. However, their pragmatic philosophy of technology does not commit them to an ideological—optimist or pessimist, Cornucopian or Malthusian—commitment in the polarized GE debate. Along with nature-based approaches, there are potential roles for agricultural biotechnology to help humanity stay within a safe operating space. Rockström and Klum note: Modern biotechnology can play a critical role in this regard. Combining genes into attractive combinations of healthy, resilient, sustainable, and productive food crops and species, without spreading to wild species or domestic equivalents, could be an essential part of the solution. Here we see the emergence of interesting potentials, moving away from the first generation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) associated with company dependence and uncertain side effects, to step-changes toward sustainable and productive foods, from crops to fish (Rockström and Klum 2015).

Given the time sensitive challenges agriculture faces over the next years the precautionary rule may, or may not, justify more aggressive research and development in certain areas of biotechnology. It depends. For example, many agricultural scientists see engineering nitrogen-fixing cereals as potentially making a major contribution to reducing reliance on inorganic nitrogen fertilizers. In the early 1990s humanity exceeded the safe planetary boundary of no more than 44 megatons per year. The levels in 2015 were at 150 megatons per year (Ibid.). Like phosphorus pollution, nitrogen pollution is a global problem causing large numbers of dead zones in aquatic systems. In deliberations about GE nitrogen-fixing cereals there would be a duty to the future to put aside ideological commitments and make pragmatic judgments about various prognoses of bliss and prognoses of doom. Given the known harms of inorganic nitrogen fertilizers on the earth’s systems processes, aggressive research and development of nitrogen-fixing GE cereals might be justified and the time and costs of precautionary regulations lowered. However, finding ways to reward alternative, non-GE strategies would also be justified.

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The point of the above discussion is not to defend agricultural biotechnology as the way to solve the challenges of agriculture in the Anthropocene. Rather, it is to argue for understanding Jonas’ precautionary rule as a part of a new precautionary ethics that was created for a specific context that is new for humanity. In the language of the futurology of the 1970s’ The Limits to Growth, it is an ethical principle to keep humanity from overshoot and collapse (Meadows et al. 1972). In the language of today’s advanced PB theory, it is a principle to keep humanity within a “safe operating space” (Rockström et al. 2009). The duty to exercise a precautionary ethics is to make sure that the possibility of a life of dignity and well being of future persons and the planet are represented in deliberations.

8.4  Conclusions: Toward a Narrative of Sustainability As stated in the introduction, the main idea in this final chapter is that the ethics of precaution should be seen as a duty within a larger ethics of responsibility and a pragmatic philosophy of technology. Further, PB theory is a major advance in fulfilling the duty of comparative futurology that provides a context for applications of the duty to exercise precaution. In very broad terms, these three elements, ethics of responsibility, planetary boundary theory, and a pragmatic philosophy of technology can make contributions to building a narrative of sustainability.

8.4.1  Ethics of Responsibility In Jonas’ ethics of responsibility, the existing generation has moral obligations to stand guard over the future as grateful stewards. More specifically, we have duties to protect the right of future generations to pursue lives of dignity and to conserve the fruitful givenness of nature. It is difficult to imagine that, in a world of 9–10 billion people, these obligations can be fulfilled without major scientific and technological breakthroughs in the areas of agriculture, energy and more. Genetic engineering can potentially make important contributions in each of these areas. However, in the technological age there is an imperative for humanity to take responsibility for the rapidly increasing power of scientific technology. Jonas was a severe critic of scientific and technological utopianism, the idea that technological progress would lead to a world free of disease, hunger and want. Nevertheless, an ethics of responsibility is neither anti-science nor anti-technology. The first duty of an ethics of responsibility is to use the power of science and technology to understand the future directions of technological civilization and its impacts on the planet. We have a moral obligation to understand how our present actions are shaping the future of life on earth so we can stand guard as grateful stewards.

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8.4.2  T  he Duty of Comparative Futurology and Planetary Boundary Theory The recent development of PB theory is a breakthrough in fulfilling an ethics of responsibility. Scientific-technology has given humanity the power to impact the earth on a global scale, but it also provides the power to understand the consequences of our actions. Over the last 50 years the science of global environmental change and computer modeling has made enormous strides in understanding human impacts on the earth. Planetary boundary theory provides a way to visualize our moral responsibilities in terms of staying within the nine planetary boundaries. In other words, PB theory helps conceptualize the duty of comparative futurology and the duty to exercise precaution. The first duty compels scientists and societies to better understand and quantify planetary boundaries in relation to future scenarios. While we have a duty to the present generation for all people to pursue lives of dignity, that duty cannot place the ability of future generations to pursue lives of dignity in jeopardy. The better job we do fulfilling the responsibility of comparative futurology, the better we will be able to apply the precautionary rule. The more we know about the Earth’s resiliency to human impacts—tipping points and planetary boundaries—the better we will be able to stand guard over the future. Rockström and Klum write: The challenge we face now—to pursue a prosperous future for everyone within the safe operating space of planetary boundaries—calls for bold new strategies for governance at both the global and local levels…. We’re going to need global guardians of planetary boundaries—not as a means to ‘rule the world,’ impose a cap on development, or limit growth, but to make sure we don’t derail Earth from its current stable condition (Rockström and Klum 2015).

The nine planetary boundaries work with the precautionary rule to allow the present generation the opportunity to unselfishly consider how our present actions could harm the future. The clearer the pictures science and the imagination can provide of future scenarios, the greater the force of our duty to safeguard the future. Finally, PB theory is a major advance because it moves beyond the disputes between the neo-Malthusian, technology pessimism and the Cornucopian, technological optimism of the last 50 years.

8.4.3  Technological Pragmatism An ethics of responsibility to the future that uses PB theory entails a pragmatic philosophy of technology. Genetic engineering can help humanity stay within a safe operating space. However, for this to happen we need to move beyond the current polarized GE debate. Technological pragmatism avoids the sweeping pro and con positions of technological optimism and technological pessimism that are driving

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the conflict. The technological optimism of the narrative of progress is deterministic because it presupposes that technological change will somehow lead to a world free of disease, hunger and want. This view is implicitly held despite there being much evidence against it. Technological pessimism is also deterministic because it presupposes that technological change will lead to a polluted and overcrowded world characterized by disease and want. Again, this view is implicitly held despite there being much evidence against it. Because these opposing philosophies of technology contain presupposed, deterministic elements they are both prejudiced toward blanket endorsements or condemnations of GE, respectively. To return to the comment by Paul B. Thompson for a final time, “It is…past time…to discard simplistic thinking on agriculture…. No blanket endorsement or condemnation of biotechnology makes any sense at all. Each proposal will have to be evaluated case by case” (Thompson 2009). These chapters advocated for a technological pragmatism that takes responsibility for research and development in agricultural biotechnology. The discussions of the idea of progress, technological fixes, magic bullets and precaution are efforts to move beyond blanket endorsements or condemnations of GE. These objectives were to provide insights to support more careful case-by-case arguments. Chapter 2 argued for reinterpreting technological progress in common sense and limited terms. This means uprooting the myth of progress, or the modernist fallacy, that free-markets or technological developments are inherently progressive. As Rockström and Klum remark, “markets are social constructs… that have always required a ‘helping hand’” (Rockström and Klum 2015). This would mean taking responsibility for technological “progress” by democratically identifying and characterizing ethical goals and incentivizing research and development to reach those goals. Sheila Jasanoff argues that technological governance needs to “shift from fatalistic determinism to the emancipation of self-determination” (Jasanoff 2016). There needs to be greater democratic participation in technological development and acknowledging that “technology is neither self-propelling or value free” (Ibid.). One way this could be done is to use publicly funded, pay-for-performance incentive systems to steer research and development to fulfill social goals. Ethical goals could be democratically established and private companies would be rewarded for measurable progress made toward fulfilling these goals. Chapter 2 discussed the social goal of reducing population-scale micronutrient malnutrition by incentivizing research and development of GE, biofortified crops through a pay-for-­ performance system. Chapter 6 suggested that some version of publicly funded pay-for-performance could be used to direct research and development of GE animals to mitigate phosphorus pollution in animal production systems. These suggestions may or may not be worth pursuing, but the general conclusion from these discussions is that an ethics for the Anthropocene will require taking more responsibility for steering research and development if GE is to contribute to keeping humanity in a safe operating space. Chapters 3 and 4 discussed problems with overuse of the magic bullet strategy in agriculture (and medicine). The conclusion of those chapters is, governments, corporations and farmers need to take responsibility for how GE insect resistant crops

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and GE herbicide resistant crops are used. The particular problem is that overuse and misuse of the magic bullet strategy with GE crops is leading to the side effect of chemical pollution and the revenge effect of superpests. These are extremely serious problems. These problems raise the question of whether or not Jonas’ precautionary rule should be used to govern their use. Chemical pollution is one of the nine planetary boundaries in PB theory. It was seen that GE herbicide resistant crops are leading to an increase in the application of synthetic chemicals. Chapter 7 argued that the precaution rule should be applied to potential catastrophic threats to the future of humanity. Good arguments can be made that, in these cases, the side effect of chemical pollution and the revenge effect of superpests pose catastrophic threats to the future. Recalling from Chap. 4, the United Nations’ Human Rights Commission published a special report that the overuse and misuse of pesticides are violating many people’s human rights (United Nations, Human Rights Council 2017). The report states: Hazardous pesticides impose substantial costs on Governments and have catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole, implicating a number of human rights and putting certain groups at elevated risk of rights abuses (Ibid).

The report attributes 200,000 deaths a year to pesticide poisoning (Ibid.). Chapter 4 observed that the current free-market incentives system does not provide adequate disincentives to deter the practices that are driving the pesticide treadmill phenomenon leading to greater chemical pollution and the revenge effect of superpests. Current practices are causing two potentially catastrophic problems. The side effects of chemical pollution are leading to much death and environmental harms. The revenge effect of resistance is rendering tremendously useful herbicides and insect-resistant GE crops useless. Future generations could be faced with superpests and few tools to confront them. In this case the precautionary rule would not be directed at GE crops, but the overuse and misuse of GE herbicide resistant crops and GE insect resistant crops. The precautionary rule would justify policies mandating that the reductive magic bullet strategy be placed within holistic strategies like IPM and/or IWM. These policies would mitigate the potential catastrophic consequences from putting millions of tons of synthetic chemicals into the environment and creating superpests that pose serious threats to future agriculture.

8.4.4  The Faustian Bargain and the Narrative of Sustainability This investigation started with two chapters devoted to the ethical idea of progress and has ended with two chapters devoted to the ethical idea of precaution. These final chapters are an effort to place the precautionary principle within a philosophical and ethical framework provided by Hans Jonas’ landmark work, The Imperative of Responsibility. Jonas’ philosophical project was new and ambitious. In the 1970s the world was just becoming aware of the problem of planetary limits or boundaries. The modern world of seven billion people, soon to be nine billion, has unwittingly

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made a Faustian Bargain with the technological enterprise that demands constant effort and striving. The nuclear physicist and influential research director of the United States Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratory, Alvin Weinberg, discussed in Chap. 5, first used the term Faustian Bargain to apply to nuclear technology in 1971 (Spreng et al. 2007). There are two elements to his use of the idea of a Faustian Bargain that apply to powerful technologies like GE. The first is that revolutionary technologies create the temptation of an abundant, carefree life. The second is that the price of the bargain with the technological enterprise is continual striving (Ibid.). In applying the Faustian myth to revolutionary technologies, Weinberg did not think we had to sell our collective soul to the Devil. On the contrary, he was a leading advocate for nuclear power. Weinberg’s use of a Faustian Bargain was to issue a sober warning that societies need to be aware of the terms of the bargain they were entering with nuclear power and fully accept “the challenge of continual striving and vigilance” (Ibid.). The Faustian myth can be seen as a somber correction to the myths of progress, magic bullets and technological fixes, and possibly an important element in a narrative of sustainability. The bargain that comes with the many benefits of technologies like GE in agriculture, medicine, energy and so on, comes with accepting the moral responsibility and challenges of constant vigilance and striving. The apocalyptic vision of the neo-­ Malthusians of the 1970s and 1980s foretold the inevitable collapse of civilization from overpopulation and over-consumption. Hopefully, humanity can prevent the arc of the narrative of progress from ending in this dystopian vision. An ethics of responsibility and PB theory provide ways of conceptualizing hope that humanity can become serious about achieving, for example, the interrelated, United Nations Millennium Development goals of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger and ensuring environmental sustainability (United Nations). Again, this challenge must be accomplished as the earth adds two billion people by 2050 at the same time global environmental problems like climate change are intensifying. It is difficult to imagine how these goals can be achieved without some roles for GE technological fixes and magic bullets. But the myths of progress, magic bullets and technological fixes must be replaced by the sobriety of the Faustian myth that requires constant striving and vigilance. Jonas’ ethics of responsibility, PB theory and technological pragmatism provide contributions for thinking about the Faustian myth of sustainability.

References Comstock, G. 2000. Precautionary principle coherent? Agbioworld. http://www.agbioworld.org/ newsletter_wm/index.php?caseid=archive&newsid=134. Accessed 20 July 2017. Cornell, S. 2015. Planetary boundaries – Some questions and answers. Stockholm Resilience. http:// www.stockholmresilience.org/download/18.3110ee8c1495db744326bf5/1459560166869/Pla netary+Boundaries+Q+and+A+Jan+2015update.pdf. Accessed 20 Mar 2017.

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