To begin with let me make it clear what the issues are that concern the public with regard to GMOs. The first is the human safety issue and whether or not GMOs are safe in the immediate and long term, for instance the production of allergens and their effects. The second is the environmental safety issue and whether or not these organisms are going to be detrimental to other organisms in the environment, for example issues surrounding horizontal gene transfer and the development of super-weeds. This would also include the arguments around the dispersal of GM pollen and the like. It is to these and similar issues that the field trials are clearly important . The third are scientific and technical issues associated with transferring genes between one host and another. Fourth are a technological or political issue centring on who will own the technology, how it will be applied, and who will benefit. All these issues have an ethical dimension but behind peoples' attitudes lies what may be perhaps the most important issue that helps inform individuals about these other aspects and that is their worldview. It is what Prince Charles, in his Reith Lecture has referred to as the, 'wisdom of the heart' and the need to acknowledge that there is a sacred trust between mankind and our creator. And it has to be recognised that a large proportion of the population has sympathy with this view. It is here that the crux of the arguments lie, and it is also here that my arguments with people have eventually all fallen down and we have ended the discussion by just having to beg to differ. Why do some people have such fixed and entrenched ideas about GMOs which make them so abhorrent?

The debate can be simplified as having three components and in order to make progress each of these issues needs to be kept separate and debated separately! The first issue pertains to environmental and human safety and can be approached scientifically through formulating hypotheses and testing them thoroughly. In other words good science can help inform us. The second is the political issue, who is to pay for this technology, who is to benefit from this technology and who is going to control the technology. This is an important issue that needs the widest possible debate. But I would maintain that there is also a third issue which has not really entered the debate so far and that is the view expressed by a large number of the population who just intuitively think it is wrong to move genes around between species. This issue, I have argued in my article 'What makes genetically modified crops so distasteful' (Trends in Biotechnology 19, 424 - 427) that takes a historical perspective, centres on philosophical issues around an essentialist view of the world that dates back to Plato and Aristotle. Briefly, essentialist thinking has the view that the world is made up of a limited number of fixed unchanging forms that can be applied to plants and animals based on Plato's concept of ideal forms. The movement of a gene from one ideal form (species) to another ideal form (species) questions the nature of the ideal form and would naturally seem abhorrent. Most biologists today to not ascribe to essentialist thinking but follow the views of Charles Darwin's population thinking. Darwin's population thinking stresses the uniqueness of everything in the related living world and the species is a statistical abstraction with no reality. These two ways of looking at the world could not be different and although clearly this clash of worldviews is only part of the GMO debate I think it is an important one that has to date been overlooked.

Therefore what about the usefulness of the field trials? They are clearly going to produce some useful data about the movement of transgenes that is going to be invaluable. However, with this goes a warning… the science will only answer scientific questions, questions of human safety and environmental/ecological concerns. They will not address the political questions as to who is going to own this technology and who will benefit and by how much. There is a much broader philosophical debate to be had with those who hold a worldview that intuitively suggests that it is just wrong.

A copy of the article can be found at:
www.princeton.edu/~wws320/biotech/GMO/GMOworldviews.pdf

Keith G. Davies
Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, Hertfordshire, AL5 2JQ