BIO2004 - Why Protests Aren’t NICE

Early this month, protests flared up in San Francisco against the world's largest gathering of the biotechnology industry. Amid complaints about the radical tactics and the polarisation of the debate, John Hepburn argues that when people are denied control of their technological future, the only choice is disobedience.

It truly was a gathering of the biotech glitterati: over 20,000 delegates in attendance at the Bio2004 conference. It was an opportunity for researchers to present their ideas, for corporations to promote their products, and for venture capitalists and investors to assess new opportunities. It was also an opportunity for governments to out-compete one another in the frenzy to attract biotech investment in their region.

The media lapped it up, merging the stream of self-congratulatory press releases into a seamless cry of hope for a biotech future. Technological optimism, it would seem, knows no bounds.

Out on the streets, hundreds of protesters gathered under the banner "Reclaim the Commons". Saying NO to patents on life, NO to corporate-driven industrial agriculture, and saying NO to an industrial medical model where research is focussed on far-fetched solutions for the rich minority, while the majority of people in this world are denied access to basic medicines.

The clash of cultures and of world views on the street was extreme. Bespectacled scientists in tweed jackets carried their briefcases past pink-haired young punks. Young corporate high-flyers dressed by Georgio Armani strolled past elderly women offering flowers and placards saying "food from farms not from the lab!".

The dialogue was almost exclusively visual. Words flew, only to bounce meaninglessly into the swirling mass of police. San Francisco's finest stood unflinching, pumped up with testosterone. Their pose interrupted only by an occassional, sudden, and disproportionate burst of brutality towards an unsuspecting protester.

It seemed like nobody was there to listen. The chieftans of the biotech industry don't need to listen to anyone. They are busy redesigning our future and they certainly don't need any input from dumb non-scientists who can't even pronounce deoxyribonucleic acid, let alone spell it.

For many of the conference delegates, there is no need to listen or to reflect on the social, economic or environmental impacts of their work. The only reflection was from the mirror sunglasses of the cops, as they once more ensured that corporate intests are pursued with minimal disruption by 'the people'.

For our part, we weren't there to listen either. We were there to speak - to raise a voice for the voiceless. We listen to the hype about biotech week in week out. Biotech is where the future is. Biotech is needed to feed the hungry...the familiar, endless string of increasingly lame public relations lines. Today was a day for making heard the voices that are systematically suppressed.

Unfortunately it was also a day when a small number of protesters yelled abuse at every delegate. In my experience, this is rarely a useful tactic. Not everyone attending the conference was an 'evil nazi' as some people seemed to imply. Some attending the conference are no doubt just researchers in some obscure and potentially benign offshoot of biotechnology. While these individuals may be undeserving of verbal abuse, they do need to consider the political and social dimensions of their work and the industry of which they are a part. But having people yell at them is unlikely to trigger the desired critical response.

So on that day at least, the gulf was widened. The walls were built a little higher.

At one level, this seems problematic. Frustration was voiced strongly by the scientists and journalists that I spoke to, as they complained about the radical tactics and the polarisation of the debate. “Why can’t we sit down and talk about these issues instead of having conflict? Surely dialogue is much more useful than protests?”

But when power and money are at stake (as they invariably are), civil and obedient dialogue is ignored. It is as impotent as the rhetoric hurled around on the street. The only dialogue that is heard is the dialogue that happens in a civil disobedient way.

It is understandable that individual scientists are perplexed by this. Many of them think that they are working on projects that will benefit society. Perhaps some of them are. But, regardless of the specifics of various research projects, there are broader and more important issues at stake.

Over the past 100 years, scientists have changed the way we work and the way we live far more than any elected representatives could ever dream of. In so doing, they have felt obliged to justify nothing.

The scientific elite (along with economists) are the new priesthood. Their ‘superior understanding’, combined with the urgent, moral imperative that drives scientific (and economic) progress, apparently grants their work immunity from public scrutiny or any requirement to obtain the consent of the alleged beneficiaries. Hence their surprise and incredulity when their right to define our future is questioned.

The likely impacts of biotechnology are far too important for the decisions to be left to scientists alone. Not that scientists are alone. The attendance list of BIO2004 is testament to this. Scientists are invariably funded by, and working for the benefit of corporations. Science is driven by profit, not by any moral imperative. The myth of science as an objective and politically neutral intellectual pursuit has become so absurd that it is becoming increasingly difficult for it to be explicitly stated while keeping a straight face. It was certainly never true, but the pretense used to at least appear sufficiently credible for thinking people to be able to stand up in public and make the argument.

The corporate enclosure of science is now almost total, but the myth of neutrality has been so deeply internalized that it is almost beyond question for many. It forms much of the foundation of the moral indignation expressed by the conference delegates as they were confronted by protesters on the streets of San Francisco.

The debate over genetic engineering is a debate about conflicting scientific paradigms. It is about the politics of science and technology - about power. It is about who benefits and who bears the risks. It is about a multi billion dollar industry. It is not only a debate about what our future will look like, but about who has the right to define it.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the area of GM food. Biotech companies made a decision many years ago that our basic food crops would be genetically modified. The agriculture industry was in consensus. Genetic engineering was the logical extension of the industrial model of agriculture - it was only a question of how quickly they could bring the products to market.

But something went horribly wrong for the industry. People said NO. And they are still saying NO. In fact, more people are saying NO, more loudly, and more often than ever before.

In the 1950’s when synthetic chemicals came into widespread use, people (at least in the west) believed in science. They believed that companies would do the right thing. They believed that government would protect the people. So, for the large part, people accepted pesticides. This was quite a remarkable achievement given that spraying poison on food is so counterintuitive. But hell, if men in white suits say it is safe then surely it must be ok? But after forty years of mistakes, people are less willing to allow more corporate/scientific experiments with food.

The movement against GM foods will continue to grow. It is growing even in the USA, where people eat the most GM food yet know the least about it. 2004 saw the first US county declare itself a GM free zone after the people of Mendocino county in California passed a ballot despite a massive public relations campaign from the industry. This has inspired other Californian counties to do the same and there are now up to 8 or 9 counties working towards similar ballots. These local, democratic initiatives, combined with the massive farmer rejection (and Monsanto’s corresponding withdrawal) of GE wheat in North America, are signals of an industry on the retreat.

In the face of an unaccountable technological juggernaut, communities around the world will continue to take whatever action they can to protect their interests. When polite, rational arguments are ignored, they will take to the streets and take action in whatever ways they can. They will continue to resist technologies that increase the power and wealth of corporations at the expense of our communities, our health and the environment.

It is impossible to have nice discussions around issues where so much is at stake. “Nice” is just an acronym for Not Insightful or Critical Enough.

John Hepburn is an activist based in Sydney, Australia and has worked on a wide range of environmental campaigns. For the past two years he has been coordinator of the genetic engineering campaign for Greenpeace Australia Pacific.