By Thomas R. DeGregori
Posted: Monday, June 16, 2003

ARTICLES
Publication Date: June 16, 2003

Those who promote an anti-modern agenda have a number of glib retorts that often carry the crowd in a debate — even when they don't have the facts on their side. Some of these retorts are repeated so often that they seem to be part of a Luddite catechism for the believers. Many of these pithy pronouncements concern the alleged earlier sins of scientists and engineers or their creations.

One campaigner, Michael Hansen (who was active in the effort to prevent Zambians receiving transgenic food — as though the starving are better dead than biotech-fed), has proclaimed that "genetic engineering today is the equivalent of nuclear energy in the 1960s." Of course, he may be more right than he realizes, since every risk analysis has shown nuclear power to be the safest way to generate electricity.

Another ploy is to respond to any current technology that is producing obvious benefits to humanity by comparing it to the pesticide DDT and how useful it seemed until we learned of its many dangers. A brief genuflection to Rachel Carson at this juncture is seen as enough to close the case in spite of the fact that forty years after the publication of Silent Spring, there has yet to be any evidence of harm to humans from DDT but plenty of evidence of harm to humans from not using DDT, evidence that often comes in the form of children dying from malaria.

Every Drug Is the Next Thalidomide

Then there is always thalidomide, as in the sarcastic claim that x, y, or z "was brought to you by the folks who gave us thalidomide." This tragic but unique mishap — birth defects caused by a drug used to fight morning sickness — is used to deny the worth of any modern pharmaceutical or advance in life sciences, including biotechnology, and to impugn the integrity of an entire industry and profession. It matters little that Ciba, the only major pharmaceutical company that had anything to do with thalidomide, found it of no value and gave up on it without any further testing. Thalidomide was picked up and marketed in 1954 by a German soap and detergent manufacturer that decided to enter the pharmaceutical market after World War II. Thalidomide was also licensed for the Commonwealth countries to a British firm whose main business was selling distilled alcoholic beverages. Thalidomide is such a powerful all-purpose image that it is also used to discredit the regulatory process.

The anti-transgenic agriculture activists generally claim that g.m. crops are not regulated. When that is shown to be blatantly false, the sarcastic fallback claim is that it is regulated in the same way that thalidomide was. Unanswered, this is once again a winner. In fact, though, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration never approved thalidomide for any use whatsoever (thanks to the research efforts of Dr. Francis Kelsey). In addition, there were changes in the law mandating the type of animal testing that would have found thalidomide to be teratogenic, but don't tell the animal rights folks that, since they are at pains to deny it. Further weakening the anti-chemical activists' case is the fact that the very characteristics that made thalidomide (or more accurately, its enantiomer) teratogenic make it a possible antiangiogenesis drug for treating forms of cancer and other diseases (as long as it isn't given to pregnant women). But who wants the tough job of rehabilitating thalidomide's public relations status?

Dreaming of a Risk-Free Testing Regime

Unfortunately, slogans such as the "folks who brought you thalidomide" obscure very serious questions in need of discussion. How rigorous should testing requirements be, and for how long do they need to be carried out? The more rigorous the testing and the longer they are conducted, the lower the risk of unwanted side effects — but that also means a greater loss of life or increase in human suffering from delaying the release of good, safe drugs. In other words, we will always have to weigh risk versus risk as there are no risk-free options.

Ironically, the Europeans — who have latched onto the "precautionary principle" since it suits their protectionist impulses — have long been critics of the U.S. FDA for not placing enough emphasis on the human cost of delaying approval of pharmaceuticals. In the 1980s, there were often learned discussions on TV and elsewhere about a promising new treatment for AIDS followed by the caveat that it would not be fully tested and ready for distribution for x number of years. This led activists to run full-page newspaper ads demanding to be "guinea pigs" for the new drugs. After all, AIDS was viewed as a certain death sentence at that time, so why worry about long term consequences? Recognizing these factors, there have been some regulatory changes such as fast track approval, but there should be an ongoing discussion of these regulatory issues, and it should not be obscured by mindless slogans.

The real question should be whether most people prefer to be treated with the pharmaceuticals currently available to us and or those of fifty years or any past period. No testing procedure, no matter how rigorous will identify all possible long-term harmful side effects, so the pharmaceuticals that we have today have come to us at a human price over the preceding decades, and there will no doubt be some mistakes as more progress is made. If we prefer the treatment potential of modern medicine and its technology and pharmacopoeia, then we always have to weigh the benefits against the cost of obtaining them. Once again, it is risk versus risk, and most reasonable people would opt for the present rather than erase all past drug trials and in the process erase the benefits and costs alike. Those who deny the benefits of modernity have to explain why it is that we now live so long and have so many years free of disabilities.

We Haven't Had Time to Evaluate G.M. Foods!

One of the cleverest anti-science retorts is that g.m. foods, for example, have not been around long enough for us to "really" know whether or not they are safe. Therefore, we should have a moratorium on their use. Note the illogic of this argument. It is not how long something "has been around" but whether or not it has been used that will decide its long-term safety. Call a moratorium on its use and we will never have any long-term data on its safety. Of course, no matter how long a product was safely used, no matter how many people safely used it, no matter how rigorously it was tested, and regardless of whether there was ever any reason to expect it to be other than safe, it will never be enough for some critics.

The anti-g.m. forces do not have a single scientist who would be considered a leading member of his or her profession, someone whose work forms the foundation of the research efforts of others, or someone whose writing is routinely-required reading in graduate science programs in leading universities. They have a pitifully small number of scientists, some with advanced degrees but few if any known for work other than their activism. In fact, in my entire adult life, never have I been involved in an issue or even observed an issue in which the scientific community was so nearly unanimous in its support for (or at least lack of opposition to) a new technology. But this does not bother the clever practitioners of anti-technology, anti-science activism.

What Do Those Scientists Know?

Another of the anti-science activists' trump cards is the claim that "scientists told us that cigarette smoking was safe" before the Surgeon General's report. In fact, it was scientists who told us that tobacco was dangerous and who down through the decades have shown us the different ways that it causes health problems (see ACSH's updated volume Cigarettes: What the Warning Label Doesn't Tell You). Has anyone other than scientists demonstrated smoking's causal link to lung cancer and heart disease? The presumed logical syllogism goes as follows: scientists were wrong in the 1950s on the dangers of tobacco, therefore they are wrong today and not to be trusted. By implication, since they were wrong then, they are always wrong or at least wrong whenever they disagree with us. And in the polarized, dualistic mindset of those opposed to modern life, scientist being wrong makes their critics always right.

Let us deconstruct (as the postmodernists say) the phrase "scientists told us that cigarette smoking was safe." What is meant by the use of the term "scientists"? Was there a broad, generally understood consensus in the scientific community that tobacco was safe? Or were most scientists mute on the subject because they did not have evidence of harm sufficient to speak as scientists? Of the scientists who may have spoken out on the subject, were they generally supportive of tobacco use or against it? If so, who were they and what was their position in the scientific community? In the final analysis, other than a few scientists who may have been hired or otherwise funded by the tobacco industry, is there any justification for using the phrase "scientists told us that cigarette smoking was safe"? If readers have evidence of widespread promotion of smoking by the majority of scientists, I would love to hear about it.

But then, most of the anti-science activists aren't interested in what scientists really have to say.

Thomas R. DeGregori is a member of ACSH's Board of Directors, Professor of Economics at the University of Houston, and the author of the forthcoming book Origins of the Organic Agriculture Debate (Iowa State Press: A Blackwell Publishing Company), which formed the basis of much of this article. For an earlier ACSH article on the tobacco/cancer issue and the scientists involved, see "Nazis vs. Cancer: The Flip Side of Fascism?", and for an informative follow-up discussion, see "Winter for Hitler." For more on Michael Hansen and biotech food, see the September 8, 2000 Financial Times article "Divided Over a Diet for the Poor" by Michela Wrong.

Responses: June 18, 2003 The American biotechnology company Celgene for the last four years has been successfully selling thalidomide as an FDA-approved drug to treat leprosy, and they have it in clinical trials for several cancer indications, including multiple myeloma. A great book that details the entire history of thalidomide, including its current successful rehabilitation, is the 2001 book Dark Remedy by Rock Brynner and Trent Stephens. This drug has great benefits and it has risks as well, which can be mitigated by careful monitoring of any women of childbearing age who are taking it. It has become a successful product and treats an import (and mainly Third World) disease. Regarding this type of risk/benefit scenario, it seems to me there may be parallels between thalidomide and the use of DDT today. It is also of note that thalidomide was being widely used in Europe in the late 50s/early 60s while its approval in the U.S. by the FDA lagged, and fortunately it's teratogenic side effects were caught before approval to market the drug was granted. Thus good science and good regulatory mechanisms prevailed, another lesson that the anti-GMO crowd might do well to consider. This example also shows the error of the idea that Americans are somehow less cautious than Europeans in their regulation of businesses and in their concern for public health and wellbeing. Dr. Jeff Hall Genoptix, Inc. San Diego, California June 23, 2003 In your second paragraph you state that "every risk analysis has shown nuclear power to be the safest way to generate electricity." My first thought is: does the analysis take into account the waste product of nuclear power and how it is disposed of? I'm assuming it does, but people might argue that the issue of waste handling does not make nuclear the safest method for producing electricity. Can you provide some insight about how and why nuclear power is one of the safest ways to produce electricity? —Bill