Is There Good Biotech?

We recently read Andrew Kimbrell’s “Seven Deadly Myths of Industrial Agriculture.”  His seventh myth is that “biotechnology will solve the problems of industrial agriculture.”  According to Kimbrell, “New biotech crops will not solve industrial agriculture’s problems, but will compound them.”  He says, “Biotechnology will destroy biodiversity and food security.”  At the end of the essay, he claims, “Biotechnology increases environmental degradation, causes new food safety risks, and threatens to increase world hunger.  It is not the solution, but a major part of the problem.”

I feel that Kimbrell is overly critical of biotechnology.  He makes a blanket condemnation of all biotechnology without exploring (or even considering) the possibility that biotechnology could help the world in some ways.  While biotechnology does pose some dangers, which Kimbrell points out, it also has the potential to benefit society.  Not all biotechnology is aimed at consolidating the power and increasing the profit of multinational corporations.  Some biotechnology could do good for humanity, but it seems that Kimbrell wants to throw all of it out the window.  He rules out any possibility that biotechnology could be beneficial.  He comes across as being extreme and antitechnological.

Biotechnology, for example, could be used to make certain foods more nutritious and better for human consumption.  Vitamin A deficiency, for instance, causes hundreds of thousands of malnourished children to die and go blind every year.  Scientists, through genetic engineering, have produced a new food known as golden rice, which contains beta-carotene, a precursor to vitamin A.  If grown and consumed in developing countries where vitamin A deficiency is widespread, golden rice, a genetically modified food, could put an end to many deaths and cases of blindness among children.  Golden rice, the development of which has been supported in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, might go on the market as early as next year.  This is just one example of how biotechnology could serve humanitarian purposes.

To my objection, Kimbrell likely would reply that biotechnology can have unintended consequences.  For example, he might argue that golden rice indirectly would lead to the destruction of other kinds of rice or that golden rice might be harmful to nonhuman organisms.  Golden rice, which is intended to end vitamin A deficiency, could cause other problems.  It may, for example, lead to vitamin A overdoses if people consume too much of it.  An overabundance of vitamin A in an individual’s system can lead to skin discoloration, hair loss, reduced bone density, intracranial hypertension, liver damage, birth defects, and even death.  By trying to solve one problem with biotechnology, humans unintentionally could create a whole new problem and basically could end up poisoning the people whom they were trying to help.  Kimbrell might suggest that we try to solve problems of hunger and malnutrition through nontechnological means because they are less risky.  He might consider biotechnology to be immoral and probably would recommend against playing eugenics with our food.