Touted as a savior to mankind, Biotechnology was ushered in as the next big wave. The year was 1988 and with the help of emerging digital technology, biological sciences were about to be redeveloped into something that mankind would never have imagined twenty years ago. Just reading the headlines would have put us in cloud nine. “Bio-technology-the new frontier to save mankind from famine, disease and old age” reads most news headlines. It was a time when computers were making the world smaller and communication technology was the great promise to waiting obsolescence.
Twenty years later and after touching double digit growth on a yearly basis, biotechnology seems to have promised more than it can deliver. Undoubtedly, biotechnology has progressed immensely. With the help of super computers, man has managed to identify all the human genes. The future looks promising. The time has come for man to design drugs that can cure stubborn diseases. We should be near the stage where human parts can be grown in labs and food to be churned out from laboratories. Food supply would no more be concern, whatever the weather takes. And we would have no more fears for those super bacteria and viruses that seem to be able to mutate.
But alas, with the world under the spell of recession, where money is in short supply, concerns are mounting due to the cut back in venture funds affecting biotechnology startups. With funds shrinking, research and development in the bio-sciences has been shoved to the back seat. Adding to the problem is the mounting backlogs of patents waiting for examination. To be sure, millions of dollars are being wasted due to slow down of commercialization of university researches. With it, thousand of jobs cannot be realized. Still, hope is set on biotechnology with its many possibilities. No other sectors can even come near it. Just think about it; health, food and fuel will drive mankind to do anything to secure them. We will even go to war if any one of these criteria affects our future.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Bear with us
It is your concern. It is also our concern. Well, it is time to reveal what goes on at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). We are talking about the speed at which the department approves new seed; new seed here means biologically modified seed. They used to approve about five new seeds in a year, but of late, especially with the new Obama Administration, things are going slow. They now only approved three. And this has the big three firms going out making noises. Just imagine, we get five new seeds in a year. In a decade, we will get about fifty new ones. It took Mother Nature millions of years to give us those few cash crops like corn, rice and maize. So we are hastening the progress of mankind, or perhaps driving us faster into our graves!
The biotechnology crop advancement was started by Monsanto with its modified and fortified soy bean that can withstand herbicides . Since then, the biologically modified sector has mushroomed into a ten billion dollar industry, and probably will shoot even higher with world weather going into tail spin. The question that has all been put forward is how safe are these seeds? Are we inadvertently eating ourselves to destruction? To be certain, there have been no adverse ill effects, or at least no discernible ill effects. But we can never be sure. Just look at those super-bugs and the mutating flu virus. Things always have a certain trigger point, and we do not have the benefit of a longer term exposure of these modified seeds to know for sure that nothing bad happens.
But who really knows what happens behind those labs? Certainly, the big three, namely, Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta won’t be telling. Too much is at stake. And the Agriculture Department? Well, it is much easier to play ball as well, rather then to go reverse pace. Indeed, the world’s survival will depend on biologically modified seed to overcome food shortage in the very near future. We just might have to take the risk. With climatic changes taking place in ever more countries, planting food crops might just be that riskier and big economies from the third world might not be able to survive a sudden change of weather. So is the supply of water becoming uncertain, which will immediately impact on the food chain. Unlike oil, we cannot store enough of it to mitigate hunger.
And the debate will go on. Will the third world countries take the risk of embracing modified seed for their crop industries? Time is of course running out fast. For one thing, the agriculture department will have to speed up their approval time for these new seeds, never mind whether who ultimately owns the intellectual property of these new seed. However, with the debate on the viability of granting patents for genes, which will somehow impact on the future of these modified seeds, we will have to embrace ourselves for some sudden shake up of how things come to the marketplace. If we are weary of these new seeds, perhaps we should allow ourselves the opportunity to put planting first and then storing up these seeds for the time when natural seed can no longer exist, due to one reason or another. When we are faced with hunger, then bad things don’t count!
The biotechnology crop advancement was started by Monsanto with its modified and fortified soy bean that can withstand herbicides . Since then, the biologically modified sector has mushroomed into a ten billion dollar industry, and probably will shoot even higher with world weather going into tail spin. The question that has all been put forward is how safe are these seeds? Are we inadvertently eating ourselves to destruction? To be certain, there have been no adverse ill effects, or at least no discernible ill effects. But we can never be sure. Just look at those super-bugs and the mutating flu virus. Things always have a certain trigger point, and we do not have the benefit of a longer term exposure of these modified seeds to know for sure that nothing bad happens.
But who really knows what happens behind those labs? Certainly, the big three, namely, Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta won’t be telling. Too much is at stake. And the Agriculture Department? Well, it is much easier to play ball as well, rather then to go reverse pace. Indeed, the world’s survival will depend on biologically modified seed to overcome food shortage in the very near future. We just might have to take the risk. With climatic changes taking place in ever more countries, planting food crops might just be that riskier and big economies from the third world might not be able to survive a sudden change of weather. So is the supply of water becoming uncertain, which will immediately impact on the food chain. Unlike oil, we cannot store enough of it to mitigate hunger.
And the debate will go on. Will the third world countries take the risk of embracing modified seed for their crop industries? Time is of course running out fast. For one thing, the agriculture department will have to speed up their approval time for these new seeds, never mind whether who ultimately owns the intellectual property of these new seed. However, with the debate on the viability of granting patents for genes, which will somehow impact on the future of these modified seeds, we will have to embrace ourselves for some sudden shake up of how things come to the marketplace. If we are weary of these new seeds, perhaps we should allow ourselves the opportunity to put planting first and then storing up these seeds for the time when natural seed can no longer exist, due to one reason or another. When we are faced with hunger, then bad things don’t count!
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