8th July 2017
A new campaign using portraits and selfie's is letting the UK public have its say about GM crops
GM Free Me is an online visual petition for people deeply concerned about the effects of genetically modified food and farming. So far, more than 2,200 people have put their faces, names and comments on the website http://www.gmfreeme.org. It is the brainchild of Pat Thomas, a former editor of the Ecologist, and to get the campaign going Pat and I toured farmers markets, health food shops, conferences and cities across the UK to find out how ordinary people feel about genetic engineering.
Well-known supporters of GM Free Me include fashion leader Vivianne Westwood, increasingly outspoken about protecting the environment, TV gardener Alys Fowler, organic cosmetics producer Jo Woods and musicians Don Letts and Bez. Westwood commented on her GM Free Me page, “GMOs are a democratic issue. They are a massive, unethical experiment in human and environmental health. People are voicing legitimate concerns about why, if so many unanswered questions remain about GMOs, our government is continuing to try and force them on the British public."
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the best-selling weed killer Roundup, widely used as a crop herbicide and drying agent is a carcinogen. California State agency orders danger labelling. Should the rest of the world follow suit?
Roundup is ubiquitous, much like fast food chains, and can easily seep into communities. On a recent trip to Corfu I saw men in hill villages staggering along shaking from head to foot, wobbling with each step. At first, I thought there might be some sort of genetic problem in the population, or that these were day-time drunks. But, as my walk into the olive groves progressed, I saw plastic canisters strung about the olive trees emblazoned with the words Roundup Gold. The containers were perforated to let the toxins leech out (see photo). Could these damaged men be agricultural workers suffering from tremors, a sure indictor of coming into direct contact with a powerful nerve agent such as Glyphosate?
In October last year, I attended a Tribunal in the Hague to hear testimonies from all over world about the dangers of Glyphosate from academics, toxicologists and victims [1]. In April this year, after months of reviewing the evidence the Tribunal Judges found that glyphosate negatively impacts human health and the environment [2]. Their findings are a vindication for thousands of farmers, agricultural workers, their families and members of the public all over the world who claim to have suffered a range of adverse health effects, including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, from even short exposures to Glyphosate.
In February 2015, Monsanto executive William Heydens emailed his staff to ghostwrite a scientific study saying Roundup is safe, and that he would tell scientists to “just edit and sign their names, so to speak.” [3]. It was a strategy that worked for their initial safety study in 2000 when Glyphosate was successfully launched onto the market. In 2017, sales of Glyphosate account for around a third of Monsanto's $15billion annual revenue. To counteract Monsanto’s safety claims, a group of leading international scientists have written a letter in support of banning Glyphosate [4]. This is an excerpt from their letter:
3rd June 2017
“You are part of the very weave o silken thread,” Rainer Maria Rilke
On the way to the Writing on the Wall festival, St John’s Church, Waterloo, I noticed heavily armed police officers at the train station. Within hours Britain’s latest terror attack had claimed innocent lives at London Bridge. Amidst troubled times and with the currency of care and consciousness as their starting point, living Poets are asking this important question.
Caduceus' poetry Editor Jay Ramsay gathered influential speakers, each prefacing their talk with a poem of choice. Giles Hutchins, business leader turned author of The Illusion of Separation (reviewed in next issue) read a Rilke Sonnet to Orpheus who is entreated to be transparent, transformed and aware of the bigger picture. Giles does not doubt that this is the hour of humanity’s reckoning, a moment to rejoin the hands of science and spirituality. He said timeless wisdom and long understood deep interconnectedness and sacredness replaced in the West by materialism and reason is causing separation and increasing fear, anxiety and individualism. A poetic way of being in the world of harmony, compassion and wisdom is the ground on which we now must walk.
13th May 2017
Jane Goodall, a leading primatologist, conducted a 50 year survey of chimps in Tanzania. Now a Dame and recently named one of the world’s top 100 important scientists of all time, she has turned her attention to the Genetic Engineering debate.
Jane Goodall saw farmers in Africa and Asia experiencing problems with a genetically modified crop during her travels. The crop had a bacteria inserted into it called “bt” (bacillus thurungenesis) which failed because the insect pests they are supposed to kill developed a resistance to the insecticide inside the plants. But non-target butterflies and bees were harmed instead. Farmlands in Africa, Asia and USA are plagued by super-weeds caused by the horizontal transfer of genes from engineered crops to native weeds, grown out of all proportion and impossible to control or contain. Dr Goodall condemmed the plight of farmers intimidated for taking legal action against GM manufacturers whose weeds and contaminated crops spread onto their land.
At the launch of lawyer-turned-activist Steven Druker's book, “Altered Genes and Twisted Truths” for which Goodall has written the introduction, she recalled the independent scientific studies on rats that developed tumours as well as kidney and liver malfunctions when fed GM crops. She expressed her concern about Glyphosate, the world's top selling herbicide, used in agriculture as a drying agent and available over-the-counter for controlling garden weeds. Glphosate has played havoc with the health of lab rats, sows and piglets and is banned in several countries including Sri Lanka because of high rates of kidney disease in farmers. It was recently the subject of an International Tribunal at the Hague and found to be harmful to human health and the environment.
22nd December 2016
At the Tribunal Against Monsanto in the Hague in October, lawyers, witnesses and civil society gave evidence of global harm from Roundup, Monsanto's over-the-counter weedkiller.
This landmark Tribunal comes at a time when transnational companies are failing to adhere to basic codes of conduct, have failed to clean up after themselves and are creating a dirty planet with poisonous sprays, the result of which has wiped out the monarch butterfly and is on the brink of destroying the bees. The imminent merger between Big Pharma giants Bayer and agribusiness Monsanto, designed to make greater profits from pushing the world's bestselling herbicide Roundup, presented an opportunity for a panel of five international judges to hear the testimony of some of its victims.
Monsanto would have us believe that Roundup is non-toxic and say it is as 'safe as table salt.' In 2016 there is no labelling to explain any health risks or precautions, yet just two days' exposure may double or triple the risk of harm. Roundup contains glyphosate, a known carcinogen and a compound found in Monsanto's Agent Orange, a defoliant sprayed by the US military during the Vietnam War, destroying crops and jungle cover. Bayer supplied the nerve gas, Zyklon B, used in the extermination camps during World War II.
December 7th 2016
In a year of striking loss of notable people, David Bowie leaves us a musical to confound our shattered minds.
In a transformed and magical Kings Cross, a spacious pop-up theatre with black walls and dark corridors is playing host to a musical built on songs by David Bowie. The set is ominously taupe; taupe bedcovers are strewn over a bed and the leading actor dressed head to toe in taupe is already on stage as the audience is ushered to their seats. A band is poised to play behind aquarium glass windows hung with taupe curtains.
The story picks up where the film The Man Who Fell to Earth, written by Walter Tevis and starring David Bowie left off. Bowie’s original character the alien Thomas Newton, played admirably here by Michael C Hall, has succumbed to a life of perpetual gin and Twinkies after being abandoned by his lover Mary Lou. His personal assistant Elly, a sexual anorexic, becomes obsessed with Mary Lou, colouring her hair to look like her and wearing her left-behind clothes. As Newton’s mental health unravels, a muse appears in a form of a girl (gifted newcomer 15 year old Sophia Anne Caruso) who tells him she knows a way he can return to his home planet. But with her comes a host of dark entities who commit unspeakable acts and force Newton to do the same. The intensity creates madness, addiction and a desire to escape reality.
Songs from Blackstar, Hunky Dory, Low, Heroes, Scary Monsters, Absolute Beginners, and The Next Day, interpreted by the original New York cast assuage fans as colourful projections, sticky tape, strange liquids, sex and violence animate the taupe. David Bowie’s last public appearance was the opening night of Lazarus off Broadway in December 2015. He has left a musical cannon that will resonate forever and Lazarus reflects the fragility and frustrations of our imperfect life on earth.
Lazarus plays until 21 January 2017 at the Kings Cross Theatre Photo (c) Sam Burcher 2016
September 2016
2016 is the 40th anniversary of Punk Rock and the British Library has a modern collection of punk and new-wave memorabilia on show.
By his own admission curators are always trying to draw attention to their collections. So, an exhibition celebrating punk’s 40th anniversary is Andy Linehan's opportunity to show that the British Library collects modern material as well as Shakespeare, Alice in Wonderland and the Magna Carta, all recent exhibitions.
The British Library sound archives are amongst the most wide ranging in the world and mirror what the written word archive does. Its ambition to get hold of a copy of everything published in the UK relies on donations from record companies. Andy explained in the sunlit piazza overlooked by Paolozzi’s four metre high bronze statue of Isaac Newton measuring time, inspired by a William Blake engraving how the exhibition came about.
“We utilised our own collection of records, fanzines, music press, flyers and personal documents, he said. "But some of the material, for example the letter from EMI Records sacking Glen Matlock, the original bass player with the Sex Pistols, we borrowed from England’s Dreaming author Jon Savage’s punk archives stored in Liverpool John Moore’s University.”
How easy was it to organise and who has seen it?
“It’s a complete mix of material and that’s one of the nice things about it. People of an age reminiscing about their youth and younger people discovering something completely new.
Yesterday someone walked through with a couple of kids aged around 6 years old and one put on the headphones to listen to the Pistols and started reacting to the music, so the idea that kids can get something out of it is brilliant. We got lots of press interest in Japan, France, and America, so tourists put us on their ‘to see’ list."
26 August 2016
It came as quite a shock when Dr Mae-Wan Ho and her colleague, genetics Professor Joe Cummins, 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 Nightmare? (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 Crematorium 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, reflecting Mae-Wan Ho as a teacher and scientist 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.
June 2015
by Steven M Druker, Clear River Press, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
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.