It came as quite a shock when Dr Mae-Wan Ho and her colleague, genetics Professor Joe Cum-mins, died within months of each other in April and January, respectively. Both were vociferous critics of GMOs, but it was Mae-Wan Ho's seminal book, Genetic Engineering, Dream or Night-mare? (1999), that flung the doors open for this unpredictable biotechnology to be hotly debated since the late 1990s.
Her funeral at London's Golders Green was sombre and intimate: a celebration of her many achievements, culminating in the playing of Peter, Paul and Mary's 1960's political anthem, Where have all the flowers gone, when will they ever learn? Poignant lyrics by Pete Seeger, re-flecting Mae-Wan Ho as a teacher and a leader on a world scale.
I first met Mae-Wan, aged 60, in 2001. She was youthful and compelling, a tiny dynamo full of intelligence, independence and a childlike charisma. Yet she inspired the respect of the white, male-dominated Western science community. I joined her Institute of Science in Society to help organise briefings in both the UK and European Parliaments, drawing attention to the threat to bees from the toxic weedkiller, glyphosate, marshalling efforts to keep GM crops out of Europe's fields and launching three groundbreaking reports: Food Futures Now, Which Energy? and Green Energies 100% Renewable by 2050 in response to the crises in food, farming and energy. And we set about circulating the radical journal Science in Society.
Picture yourself in a boat on a lake in the Dalai Lama’s back garden about to explore the Temple of Lukhang. The Wellcome Library pulls off a masterstroke by recreating it in a fascinating exhibition.
In 1645 building began on a winter residence for the 5th Dalai Lama. The Potala Palace looms over Tibet’s capital city Lhasa, and is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site museum cramming in up to 3000 visitors a day. Towards the end of the 17th Century, the 6th Dalai Lama built the Lukhang Temple on the willow covered lake island hidden behind the Potala as a private retreat.
The uppermost chambers of the Lukhang Temple concealed a secret: some 2,500 metres of murals depicting 84 yogis undertaking the vigorous physical and contemplative spiritual practices necessary for enlightenment. In 1986 Thomas Laird, a young photographer, made a complete record of the vivid pink, gold-red, green, white and celestial blue wall paintings known as The Great Perfection (Dzogchen). These life-size, digitised images are the backdrop to the Wellcome exhibition. In 2006, Laird showed the murals to the 14th Dalai Lama, in exile from Tibet since 1959. He had never seen the paintings before and deciphering the arcane symbols, referred to them as ‘motivational tools’ for human development.
Originally accessible only by boat, the Lukhang Temple was designed as a harmonious three dimensional mandala representing outward reality, inner experience and the transcendent state beyond time and space. The three levels built in the Tibetan, Chinese and Mongolian styles reflecting Tibet’s complex political history. Its purpose as a watery sanctuary appeased the Naga and the Lu, the elemental energies that Tibetan Buddhists believe were here long before the emergence of human beings.
19th October 2015
The recent V&A David Bowie and Alexander McQueen’s Savage Beauty exhibitions provided insights into the visionary genius of fashion leaders. It’s current exhibitionTextiles of India explores the origins of producing beautiful fabrics from the earth’s raw, natural resources.
Blues, reds, yellows and greens
India has provided the world with cotton and silk for centuries. Indian cotton was known to the Romans as “woven winds”. By the 1630’s fine quality, cheap fabrics imported from India by the Dutch and the British caused the complaint: “You can’t tell servant from master.”
The art of extracting colour from nature begins with a nod to indigo dyeing. Indigo is the magical blue colour derived from the leaves of the plant Indigofera tinctoria. And, India’s name is inextricably linked with both indigo and Indikon, the ancient Greek word for dye. Issac Newton named the sixth colour of his prism after it in 1660 when the East India Company were importing the pigment into England. An infinite array of patterns can be produced on cloth by string or wax resist dip-dyeing.
From the deepest red to the lightest pink, the shades so indicative of India’s crazily colourful chintz, are extracts from the root bark of the chay plant (Oldenlandia umbellata) which grows around the southern tip of India and in Sri Lanka. Unlike indigo, chay requires a mordant or a fixative to bind colour with cloth. A vibrant golden orange extract of turmeric flowers, plants and roots (Curcuma longa) combines with indigo to make green. Surprisingly, pomegranate rind is rich in tannins from which numerous earthy and yellow tones come.
by Steven M Druker, Clear River Press, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
June 2015
In this revealing book American lawyer Steven Druker uncovers the skullduggery committed since the mid-1970’s by high ranking scientists and organisations on both sides of the Atlantic. It was the US Government’s apathy, with its weak legislation of genetic engineering, that prompted Druker, a public safety lawyer and founder of the Alliance of Biointegrity, to initiate a lawsuit against the US Department of Agriculture in 1998. By forcing the handover of copies of its internal files he made public the blatant collusion with the GM companies in violating its own food safety regulations.
Jane Goodall, the primatologist, writes in her glowing forward that this is the most important book in 50 years for longterm planetary sustainability. She lent her unreserved support at its launch in London in April, timely since, under pressure from the US, the UK and Europe are considering waiving long standing restrictions on GMOs.
Druker dismantles the assumptions that GM is safe and will fulfil its promise of solving the world’s food problems through the manipulation of genes, a process that is imprecise and impossible to recall. He delves into the abuse of science by those intent on reducing the whole of the organism to parts that can be controlled by an elite few. And he explains that engineering a new gene is only possible by first splicing it with a strain of E coli bacteria and a piece of lab constructed, recombinant DNA - two strands of DNA joined together - one being made of a cloning vector such as a tumour or virus.
It was our most august scientific institution, the Royal Society, which targeted Arpad Pusztai when he worked at the Rowett Institute, whose design won out over 30 others as a protocol to test genetically engineered potatoes. Their attempts to crush his findings of significant physiological problems in rats have set off alarm bells that have not stopped ringing. Druker states that since ‘no two GM insertion events are the same’, Pusztai’s potato experiment cannot be repeated because his results were destroyed by the British Government, indicating how much they threatened their agenda to promote GM technology.
1st February 2015
Seedy Sunday festival is the UK's biggest and longest-running community seed swap event [1]. This year as many as 3000 people came along and about 10,000 packs of seed crossed the seed swap tables. Given the boom in growing your own, it’s understandable that so many people are expressing concerns about a proposed new EU law that threatens swapping seed, growing heritage varieties and even saving your own seed from year to year.
Caroline Lucas MP for Brighton Pavilion and Britain’s first Green MP, has raised this threat to civil liberties with the Environment, Food and Farming Minister several months ago. She asked George Eustice to oppose the obligatory registration of seed varieties and to support voluntary rather than compulsory registration and testing for all seeds that are not GM, patented or hybrid. Since then the EU’s proposals have been amended, but not for the better. In fact they now represent an even greater threat to sustainable biodiverse agriculture and consumer choice [2].
In particular the plans further concentrate the EU’s seed market into the hands of just a few corporations, whilst exemptions from the regulations for small scale seed swaps wouldn’t protect Brighton’s Seedy Sunday. Caroline Lucas has written to DEFRA to stand up for gardeners and farmers that want to grow heritage varieties and exchange seeds.
23rd January 2015
The Café Art exhibition in the cosy café in Hampstead School of Art on a cold winter night was a heart-warming event. All of the artists taking part have in some way been affected by homelessness. Café Art was set up in 2012 over a cup of coffee by philanthropists Michael and Paul to give this different group of artists a chance to re-connect with society.
So far around thirty-one cafés in London are participating by lending their walls to Café Art projects (www.cafeart.org.uk) And, this colourful network has outreached to Bristol, Bath and Bournemouth. The Guardian has hosted a Café Art exhibition in their foyer and Christie’s housed a pop-up event. Picture exchanges between Café Art in London, Fresh Arts in New York and Home Ground Services in Melbourne have also helped to highlight the cause and International exposure is a great confidence boost for the artists concerned.
“Fundamentally, Café Art works because it gives an opportunity for ten different homeless charities to get together without the need for competition amongst them. For us, the purpose is to get the artist to the next level and to get the public seeing their work. When an artist sells a piece of work we connect them directly with the buyer and we don’t take a commission,” explained Michael.
Read more: Cafe Art Where Homelessness, Great Art and Coffee Meet
A glowing first review for Garland Flowers of Spirit, published this month in the Brent & Kilburn Times
29th April 2013
Sam Burcher reviews a spate of meetings at Westminster that she attended calling for action to protect the bees
Campaigners are celebrating the EU’s decision at the end of April to ban neonicotinoids on flowering crops for two years, starting this year. The decision comes on the back of some vigorous campaigns and protesting by various UK groups concerned about protecting bees from this type of pesticide.
Several meetings about the detrimental effects of neonicotinoids on bees have taken place at Westminster over the past few months. Most recently the March of the Beekeepers swarmed on Parliament Square in late April to protest the UK Government abstaining to vote for the EU ban.
Dame Vivienne Westwood and Katherine Hamnett CBE, pioneers of British fashion, marched with angry beekeepers to Downing Street to deliver the Save the Bee petition of 2.6 million signatures calling for the UK government to take action. Three days later, a second vote in Brussels banned neonicotinoids with the support of 15 EU countries. The ban will not apply to winter cereals and crops not attractive to bees.
Owen Paterson, the UK’s Environment Secretary, abstained from the EU vote both times in favour of supporting the makers of neonicotinoids, Bayer and Syngenta. In defence of the Government’s abstention, DEFRA has said they await results of their own further studies. Consequently, it’s view that the risk to bee populations from neonicotinoids, as currently used is low, ignores the Precautionary Principle, the scientific research that demonstrates that neonicotinoids harm bees and the fundamental flaws in the pesticides regulatory system.
A JOINT CAMPAIGN BETWEEN THE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE FOUNDATION AND PESTICIDES ACTION NETWORK UK LAUNCH AT THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT ON 21 MARCH 2013.
From left to right: KeithTyrell, Ainsley Harriott, Katherine Hamnett CBE, Sir Bob Russell and Steve Trent.
Sir Bob Russell: This is first time I’ve had to queue to get into an event that I am hosting. I think that demonstrates the seriousness of the event and why so many of you are here. I have hosted other events here. For the 40th anniversary of Dr Who we had a dalek. And one to get darts recognised as a sport. If we can get a dalek in here and get darts recognised as a sport I hope we can achieve the same outcome with the more serious issues.
Why are we here? Because bees are essential to us. Out of 100 crop species worldwide I am told that 71 of these are bee pollinated. We all know that populations of bees and other pollinators have dropped dramatically in recent years and my late paternal grandfather I can recall still seeing two hives at the bottom of the garden. I think he would be aghast about what has happened over the last few decades. So these is little doubt that these declines are complex and wide ranging, but there is little doubt that pesticides play a key part. And other speakers will develop that in due course.
