Book Reviews

I want to give a thumbs up to one book I read a few weeks ago, and a shaky horizontal thumb to two I am trying to read.

The Unnatural History of the Sea by Callum Roberts was a very interesting read for me. Some reviewers seemed to find it tedious, but hey, I'm the person who enjoyed the cetology in Moby Dick. Roberts shows how the decimation of fishing stocks is not just a result of 20th century factory fishing, but of the whole progress of how humans have regarded the sea and its creatures. The extent of habitat destruction from trawling over the last couple of centuries is a real eye opener. But this book isn't just a lament. Roberts offers stories of the sea's resiliency and many suggestions for what might be done. Most are international restrictions of one sort or another, not out and out bans, even on trawling. I took this book back to the library, but I am going to buy a copy when the paperback comes out later this month.

Now for the two I'm having a hard time with. It's not a problem with readability, but with scientific inaccuracy and sloppiness as well as a tendency to screediness. (I hope I've just coined a new word there.) I found myself wondering if people write non-fiction books these days as though they were blogging. Is there creeping blogitis?

One of these books is The End of Food by Paul Roberts. There are lots of interesting bits in this book. But once I find an inaccuracy, or flippant disregard for distinctions, I find it hard to trust other statements from the author. There's a bit early in the book, where Roberts refers to the energy inputs needed to produce a pound of cattle (the ratio is roughly 10:1, plants:flesh) and then says it's about the same for hogs and poultry. Now anybody who has read anything about the challenge of feeding lots of meat to all on the planet knows that is not true. Even the author knows it is not true, as he gives the full information elsewhere. But I find myself losing confidence in an author who is flippant, lazy, or dumbing down.

Another is Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds by Claire Hope Cummings. I was looking forward to reading this after hearing the author on the radio one morning. She apparently lives somewhere near here - Napa County, I think they said - and is a journalist and farmer. Again, there are many interesting things here. But she really isn't clear - or couldn't be bothered to take the time to be clear - about the species concept. She refers to species before GM as having "strong biological boundaries". She writes of "natural genes" being "governed by biological rules". Genes introduced in the lab are still genes, seems to me. And I want to know what these rules are. She reports many cases of crosses and backcrosses of GM crops with wild and weedy relatives, across species, but does not explain how this happens. I really don't think she's got much of a concept of genetics in the flowering plants.

So, even though I was fascinated to learn about the seed bank in Iraq that we destroyed, taking with it a whole history of adaptation and cultivation from one of the places where agriculture began; and even though I appreciated being reminded of all the havoc being wreaked in Hawaii from the agrochemical companies operating there; and even though I liked the caricature of James Watson, whom I have never admired - I don't quite trust this book. I would want to call to the attention of anyone reading it that this is for the most part a tertiary account - the author is summarizing or synthesizing the work of historians and sociologists of science and technology. She is clear in the notes and introduction that she has overgeneralized in places, and that her values do come into play. For this honesty we can all be thankful.

I'm going to keep trying with these latter two books until they are due back at the library. Or I may just read the bibliographies and see if there is anything in them on which I want to follow up. Meanwhile, the Roberts book goes on the book list to the right.

No Comment

In an article in yesterday's New York Times on breeding and genetically engineering crops for drought resistance (emphasis mine):

"No single approach is likely to suffice for all types of dry conditions. 'Probably no one has found the magic gene yet,' said Jian-Kang Zhu, a professor of plant biology at the University of California, Riverside. 'Probably there is no magic gene.'

Candidates on Agriculture

As we might have predicted from the primaries, Obama doesn't have much of a food platform.

At Science Debate 2008
http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/

we learn from two candidates' responses to 14 key questions that both support GM crops. Obama wants appropriate testing to ensure safety for the environment and human health, and McCain envisions a new "green revolution."

Which basically shows that Obama doesn't know much about the science, or the issues of ownership of genetic material, and McCain participates in the Hope in Science of an earlier time when everybody of his generation did. Better living through chemistry time.

And then there's Sarah Palin, who would probably just keep saying that it doesn't matter if genes exist or not - enough times so that those who fear expertise would believe it. She's the truthiest!

Time to go in search of the green party position.

Watching the News

I've been paying attention to how the media are covering the emerging world food crisis, and it's not a pretty or predictable picture.

Sunday evening I just let the tv run and ended up in the late news on my local ABC affiliate. They mentioned the world food crisis, and then had some talking head comment that there was really no crisis, it was just a matter of getting the food to the people who need it. Where did they get that clip? 1975 archives? The US approach of food aid - trickle down food? - was not sustainable then - why would it be now?

Then last evening my local Fox affiliate had a clip of a demonstration against rising food prices in South Africa, and said, in the 30 seconds allowed, that rising population, drought exacerbated by global warming, and conversion of agriculture lands to growing fuel crops were the main reasons. Who would have thought that Fox would get some of the story right, even if in capsule form?

Meanwhile the NY Times business pages on Monday had an article suggesting that rising prices, particularly for wheat, may make genetically engineered crops more attractive. Global markets - the reluctance of so many other countries to buy our gm crops - had caused Monsanto to abandon the quest for gm wheat. This parallels what I know from folks in the rice growing areas of this diocese. But no longer.

What appalls me about this is that it is a short term solution to a long term issue which will exacerbate global poverty (because of the integrated control through patents and marketing of the company that develops the seed) and affect genetic diversity.

The article even suggests that one might grow gm wheat to increase yields now, and then somehow return to non-gm wheat later. Who are they kidding? Any crop which is wind pollinated (we have corn as an example) can become genetically polluted worldwide before you know it; and experiments have demonstrated backcrossing between rape/canola and its wild cousins.

I'm no luddite. There are reasons to hybridize, to extend the range of crops and increase yields, for example. We will probably need to do some work on staple crops here and there around the globe as populations increase and the climate changes. This will be part of working for sustainable agriculture in the great variety of local climes and soils. But there is no global silver bullet, and there will be no going back from genetic pollution. Diversity lost is lost for good.

But hey - what did I expect - look where this article appeared.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/business/21crop.html?ex=1366516800&en=65aeda9a674a2208&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

It all reminds me of a line from at the Ecumenical Roundtable on Science, Technology and Faith. Larry Rasmussen said, "If you don't think ecological debt is different from other kinds of debt, try making more adamah (topsoil).

Meanwhile, the BBC notes that Britain and the rest of Europe have high biofuel targets contributing to the global rise in food prices. They include a clip of El Presidente Evo Morales calling for an end to the capitalist system and the use of crops to produce energy in Latin America - from the UN conference on indigenous people.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7360485.stm

Whose genes are these anyhow?

The March 2 Science Friday had a segment on gene patents. It wasn't about GM crops, but medical research, yet I found some of the ideas really helpful.

The expert witness, as it were, was Robin Feldman of Stanford Law School. One of the things she pointed out was that patent law developed to deal with mechanical inventions, not parts of complex living systems. So the law may appear to work for those still caught up in a reductionist approach to science, and its lucrative applications.

But this model for the law doesn't work whether the patented genes be medical or agricultural in their use. There are too many interactions, too many feedback loops, too many ripples.

Feldman also discussed a case where a patent was challenged for purposes of pure science, for university experiments. The court disallowed the use, asserting that a university is, in effect, a business. Other countries have experimental use exceptions, but that doesn't seem to be the case for patented genes in the U.S.

If the law is this slow to change, no wonder most mindsets are, too. We continue to see components of living things as machines (actually, "intelligent design" is committed to this - but that's another whole subject!) and institutions as businesses. I wonder when we will start thinking the other way, and use metaphors from living systems to refer to social institutions and organizations. Of course, people did: Paul certainly did in his appropriation of the body metaphor to refer to the Christian community. And poets have before and since. But we seem stuck with the mechanistic and the economic as the only common currency for thinking about things as wondrous as a gene.

The Science Friday web site has podcasts available, and lots of good things in their archives.