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ISIS Book Brief 26 Jan. 2001
The Corporate Take Over of Science
Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain by George
Monbiot, MacMillan, London, 2000.
Review by Mae-Wan Ho.
The corporate take over is here and threatening the foundations of
democratic government. That is the message of George Monbiot’s
explosive and important book Corporations have seized control of our
hospitals, schools and universities. They have infiltrated the government
and come to dominate government ministries, buying and selling planning
permission, dispensing our tax money to research and development that
benefit industry, taking over the food chain. To top it all, the British
Government has colluded in ceding its power to international institutions
controlled by corporations, such as the World Trade Organization, the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Anyone who is under the
delusion that corrupt or corrupted governments are only in the Third World
has better think again.
The chapter on corporate takeover of universities is too close to home.
I have been on the permanent academic staff of the Open University since
1976, but was strongly encouraged to take early retirement last June as I
became more and more involved in the genetic engineering debate.
In the course of the genetic engineering debate, I had begun to realise
that the corporate takeover of science was the greatest threat to
democracy and to the survival of our planet [1]. That was why I co-founded
the not-for-profit Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) to work for
social responsibility and sustainable approaches in science and the
integration of science in society. As part of the agreement for my
retirement, I was to be given an honorary secondment, so I could continue
running ISIS from the University, while making it clear it was independent
from the University. The situation soon began to rapidly deteriorate,
however.
In August, less than two months after my retirement, my research
assistant and I were both officially banned from the University campus.
Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) alleged in a letter and phone-call to my
head of Department that I was in possession of certain internal papers
belonging to them. Huntingdon Life Sciences is a privately-owned
laboratory, at the time doing contract research for the biotech companies,
among them Imutran, a subsidiary of the corporate-giant Novartis.
The University made no attempt to communicate with me or with my
assistant before imposing the ban. Had they done so, they would have found
that HLS’ accusation was false. I was sent some papers by a group
campaigning for animal welfare, who were helping me obtain published
scientific papers on cross-species organ transplant – the experiments
being carried out in HLS for Imutran - so that ISIS could prepare a
scientific critique, which we did [2]. The internal papers were never used
and have been destroyed since, as I judged that there was enough in the
scientific literature to damn the whole project on safety and moral
grounds.
But the chief of HLS, Brian Cass, tried to intimidate me, in phone
calls, and in an e-mail, to get me to reveal the identity of the
campaigning group. I refused to do so.
When I went on campus to prepare my reply to the ban, the Sub-Dean of
Science came into my office and threatened to have me removed physically
with the security guard.
After days on the telephone to my Union representative, the Dean of
Science agreed to see me. Months later, the ban was lifted for myself, but
my for my assistant; the University denied that she had, in fact, been
given an honorary research fellowship a year earlier. I was further barred
from using University facilities for ISIS.
The animal welfare group, Uncaged Campaigns, has gone public since with
a 150 page report leaked to the press, documenting excessive suffering of
animals at HLS, and Imutran’s exaggeration of the success of the pig
to primate organ transplant research. Imutran has brought an injunction
against Uncaged Campaigns to prevent the release of the report. But just
four days after the news broke, Novartis announced the closure of Imutran,
and the removal of the research to the United States. Nevertheless,
Novartis has pursued the case against Uncaged Campaigns to full trial and
won. Since then there has been a plethora of prominent articles in the
mainstream press condemning animal rights activists and defending
Huntingdon Life Sciences.
George Monbiot gives many more examples of similar treatments the
University administrations mete out to academics daring to dissent from
the corporate agenda or to criticise it. The Centre for Human Ecology,
started by distinguished evolutionist and geneticist C.H. Waddington more
than 30 years ago, was hounded out of Edinburgh University in 1996,
essentially for raising questions in both the scientific and popular press
about the Conservative Government’s science policies. Academic and
government scientists are all too often asked to falsify data in order not
to offend corporate funders.
"Today, there is scarcely a science faculty in the United Kingdom
whose academic freedom has not been compromised by its funding
arrangements. Contact between government-funded researchers and industry,
having once been discouraged, is now, in many departments, effectively
compulsory….our universities have been offered for sale, with the
result that objectivity and intellectual honesty are becoming surplus to
requirements."
The sell-out began under the Conservative Government, and with science
research funding which effectively controls what kinds of science would be
done. The 1993 white paper on science called Realizing our Potential,
intended to "produce a better match between publicly funded strategic
research and the needs of industry". The research councils, which
distribute most of the public money for science would be obliged to
develop "more extensive and deeper links" with industry. They
would be required "to recruit more of their senior staff from
industry".
The Labour government extended those reforms enthusiastically. Its 1998
white paper on competitiveness launched a ‘reach-out’ fund to
encourage universities to "work more effectively with business".
The role of the higher education funding councils, which provide the core
money for universities, was redefined " to ensure that higher
education is responsive to the needs of business and industry".
Thus, it comes as no surprise that the Biotechnology and Biological
Sciences Research council (BBSRC), the main funding body for Britain’s
academic biologists with an annual budget of £190m, is chaired by
Peter Doyle, an executive director of the biotech corporation, Zeneca.
Among the members of its council are the Chief Executive of the
pharmaceutical firm Chiroscience, the former Director of Research and
Development of the food company Nestle; the President of the Food and
Drink Federation; the general manager of Britain’s biggest farming
business and a consultant to the biochemical industry. The BBSRC’s
strategy board contains executives from SmithKline Beecham, Merck Sharpe
and Dohme and Agrevo UK (now subsidiary of Aventis, the company
responsible for getting the Department of Environment, Transport and the
Regions (DETR) to support the controversial ‘farmscale’ field
trials with £3 million of taxpayer’s money). The Council has
seven specialist committees, each overseeing the funding of different
branches of biology. Employees of Zeneca sit on all of them.
The BBSRC was established in 1994 to replace the biological program
previously run by the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC).
Whereas SERC’s mandate was to advance science of all kinds. The BBSRC’s
purpose is "to sustain a broad base of interdisciplinary research and
training to help industry, commerce and Government create wealth".
The BBSRC’s press release falls into three categories: news about
the research grants it allocates, news about the findings resulting from
those grants, and fierce attacks on critics of genetic engineering. Arpad
Pusztai’s publication in The Lancet was condemned as "irresponsible".
When Friends of the Earth released the results of research showing that GM
oilseed rape pollen was being carried four and a half kilometres (well
beyond the legal ‘isolation distances’), the BBSRC issued a
statement that the finding was "a distraction from the key issues".
Gene biotechnology research is swallowing up the lion’s share of
the research funds. In January 1999, the BBSRC set aside £15m for "a
new initiative to help British researchers win the race to identify the
function of key genes". In July the same year, £19m was to be
spent on new research facilities to "underpin the economic and
environmental sustainability of agriculture in the UK" through "work
on genetically modified crops". In October, £11m were allocated
to projects that would enable the UK "to remain internationally
competitive in the deveopment of gene-based technologies". Every
year, the Council gives more than £10m in grants to John Innes Centre
in Norwich, the genetic engineering institute which houses the Sainsbury
Laboratory and has a research alliance with Zeneca and Dupont.
The BBSRC also funds the secondment of academics into corporations to "influence
basic research relevant to company objectives". The Council launched
a Biotechnology Young Entrepreneurs Scheme, "aimed at encouraging a
more entrepreneurial attitude in bioscientists". It has paid for
researcher to work for Nestle, Unilever, Glaxo Wellcome, SmithKline
Beecham, AgrEvo, Dupont, Rhone Poulenc and Zeneca.
Most telling of all, scientists working in university departments
receiving BBSRC grants are formally gagged to prevent them becoming "involved
in political controversy in matters affecting research in biotechnology
and biological sciences". In practice, however, scientists can hype
biotechnology to their heart’s content. The gagging is strictly aimed
at critics.
The same pattern of corporate takeover is repeated in the other research
councils, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Medical
Research Council (MRC).
I recently visited the MRC website and found that an extra £1.9
billion is to be committed to "health genomics research" over
the next five years [3]. That is in addition to the Government’s
projected spending of £675m on university infrastructure through the
Science Research Investment Fund, which includes high tech facilities for
studying genes and proteins.
A number of the MRC proposals are controversial to say the least (see "MRC
proposes human experiments in GM foods", and "UK population DNA
database to be established" ISIS press releases <www.i-sis.org.uk>).
George has confirmed what many people already suspect and experienced in
their personal struggles for freedom and democracy in different spheres of
life. What can we do in the face of the ever-increasing consolidation of
corporate control? Monbiot has only one answer: don’t despair, fight
on!
"The struggle between people and corporations will be the defining
battle of the twenty-first century. If the corporations win, liberal
democracy will come to an end. The great social democratic institutions
which have defended the weak against the strong – equality before the
law, representative government, democratic accountability and the
sovereignty of parliament - will be toppled. If, on the other hand, the
corporate attempt on public life is beaten back, then democracy may
re-emerge the stronger for its conquest. But this victory cannot be
brokered by our representatives. Democracy will survive only if the people
in whose name they govern rescue the state from its captivity."
This book is meticulously researched and scholarly, but despite the
seriousness of the subject matter, it is refreshingly well written. The
style of the prose is pleasantly evocative, light and engaging, even when
his message is at its most uncompromisingly radical.
- Genetic Engineering Dream or
Nightmare? Turning the Tide on the Brave New World of Bad Science
and Big Business, by Mae-Wan Ho, Gateway Gill& Macmillan, 1998, 2nd
ed., 1999.
- Xenotransplantation: How bad science and big
business put the world at risk from viral pandemic. ISIS
Sustainable Science Audit #2,
- "MRC SCIENCE BUDGET ALLOCATION ENABLES FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF
HEALTH GENOMICS RESEARCH" MRC Press Release MRC/69/000, 22
November www.mrc.ac.uk
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
Director
Institute of Science in Society
maewan@onetel.net
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