The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

the invention of gmos 133series of individual stepwise reactions. (3) Each single reaction is controlledin a primary fashion by a single gene. . . . The underlying hypothesis, whichin a number of cases has been supported by direct experimental evidence, isthat each gene controls the production, function, and specificity of a particularenzyme.” 1In other words, every biological reaction that characterizes the functioningof a living organism is governed by one gene that expresses a function bytriggering the production of a specific protein. This exclusive idea, whichsome call “all gene,” is the source of one of the greatest misunderstandingsunderlying the development of biotechnology, one that persists today. “In reality,”as Arnaud Apotheker, holder of a doctorate in biology and spokesmanon GMO issues for Greenpeace France, pointed out in 1999, “every dayphenomena turn out to be more complex: a single gene may code for proteinshaving very different primary structures and biological properties dependingon the tissues of an organism or the organism itself. The molecularmachinery of living things is of a complexity that we are barely beginning toglimpse.” 2 We now know, for example, that some genes interact with othersand that it is not a simple matter to extract them from one organism and introducethem into another in order for them to express the protein andhence the function that has been selected. Rather, transferring genes thisway may cause unexpected biological reactions in the host organism.Beginning in the early 1960s, molecular biologists set to work to developtechniques that would enable them to manipulate genetic material to createchimerical organisms that nature never would have been able to produce onits own. To do so, they strove to divide and put together fragments of DNA,to copy and multiply genes with the aim of transferring them from onespecies to another. This genetic tinkering was often justified by a generoushumanitarian vision, expressed, for example, in 1962 by Caroll Hochwalt,Monsanto’s vice president for research, in a commencement speech atWashington University in St. Louis: “It is entirely conceivable that, throughthe manipulation of the genetic information at the molecular level, a cropsuch as rice could be ‘taught’ to build a high protein content into itself, literallyworking a miracle of alleviating hunger and malnutrition.” 3 It shouldbe pointed out that at the time the secrets of DNA were of little concern toMonsanto, which was busy making its fortune in the jungles of Vietnam.So it was at Stanford University, not in St. Louis, that the first genetic manipulationstook place. In 1972, as Monsanto was preparing to launch