Scott Eastham

Biotech Time-Bomb

128 pages

NZ$21.95 incl. postage

US$24.95 incl. postage overseas

How genetic engineering could irreversibly change our world

Decisions we make today on genetic engineering may well have irreversible repercussions for the future of all life on Earth. The effects of GE have the potential to be cumulatively catastrophic, and to affect all future generations.

Once the genetic genie is out of the bottle (or the lab), there’s no putting it back. Yet it is difficult for ordinary people to evaluate or even take seriously because its effects are, at present, by and large invisible without a microscope. If you explode an atomic bomb over a city like Hiroshima, the immediate catastrophe gives way slowly to residual radiation effects on future generations.

Although drastic and terrible, these are gradually lessened with the passage of time. But the release of genetically modified organisms will follow exactly the reverse trajectory.

Genetic engineering is a biological time-bomb, and the fuse is already ticking...

The winner of a prestigious ecology literature award offered by Fordham Univerity in the USA.

Biotech Time-Bomb is a little masterpiece, reminiscent of the writings of Ivan Illich. This is not just a technical book about the horrors of GE, seen in isolation from other horrors, but a highly erudite and superbly written critique of the ‘modern Western scientific mentality’ that ‘bears the imprint of the very urge to control both the social and the natural world.‘ As Eastham puts it: ‘Our descendants may well look back on us as the last generation of genetically unaltered people, the last generation to know what Nature was like before it was all turned into a batch of bioplasmic commodities for global markets.’ Only a general rejection of this scientific mentality – and its replacement by a worldview in terms of which our welfare, indeed our survival, is seen as dependent on the preservation of the critical structure of the living world – can save us from such a fate.

Edward Goldsmith, founder of The Ecologist

Eastham warns that the release of GE organisms into the environment could herald a legal, political and environmental crisis for us all. He offers a fascinating and unusual perspective on why Western society is obsessed with control and consumption, and how our worldview has gone from seeing Nature as something organic and whole to the current scientific perspective of it as a series of genetic codes to be clinically deciphered.

Clever and original, this book questions the mentality behind genetic engineering and calls for a precautionary approach to an untested technology. His conclusion that New Zealand becomes a GE-free zone – a veritable ‘‘Noah’ Ark’ in the vast, international genetic engineering experiment – should be seriously considered by everyone who values the quality of life in this country.

Sue Kedgley, Green MP

Brilliant in conception and execution, Biotech Time-Bomb sounds an urgent warning for New Zealand and the world. Although I am not against GM in the lab, because of possible medical benefits etc., I want to see stringent controls indeed to prevent things getting out. The escape of genes from crops is almost inevitable. This book is a wake-up call which just might rescue our civilisation from its own arrogance. I hope it receives the attention it deserves.

John Flenley, co-author of Easter Island, Earth Island

This short diatribe against genetic engineering brings an unusual perspective to the debate:  the works of Ezra Pound. It demands a lot of work by the reader to penetrate beneath the depths of the author’s passion for his subject, but GE opponents will find ample arguments to support their views.

Southland Times

It is a well-written, erudite, not easily read book in which the author concedes that our descendants may well look back on us as the last generation of genetically unaltered... Lots of pithy quotes are tucked in such as: Thy life’s a miracle. To treat life as less is to give up on it.

Hawkes Bay Today

This is a book that makes connections. Genetic engineering is viewed as the inevitable result of the ‘modern Western scientific mentality’ and Scott Eastham discusses the problems this mentality causes in a rational and reasonable way. This is not a rant or rave or a passionate diatribe against genetic engineering. It is a well thought out explanation of how this belief that we can control both our social and natural world has given rise to genetic engineering and why it is so dangerous.

EcoLiving New Zealand

While the products of genetic engineering are being foisted upon much of the world’s populace, this gem of a book argues for a pause so we can reassess our values.

Nexus Magazine

On the cover, the Chinese symbol for ‘respect’ is cleverly superimposed over a panoramic view of farmland. We are invited to see our world and each species as ‘gifts’ to be respected rather than as objects for transgenic modification-manipulation.

Tui Motu InterIslands

Excerpt...

The stark outlines of the dilemma facing us today are as follows:-

Either –

a/ The entire evolution of life on this planet, as well as the entire history of human cultures, follows a single line of development, so that our present-day scientific knowledge and technocratic ‘culture’ is its culmination, and therefore the only realistic basis for human life in the future. In this case, we should not mince words. All other cultures are bound to disappear and give way to the modern scientific worldview, and all other forms of life to those either domesticated or engineered or permitted to exist within the utilitarian framework of that worldview. We may proceed ‘cautiously’, and show some vestigial respect to these ‘atavisms’, but we should not raise false hopes or foster illusions of ‘peaceful coexistence’ (for example, between traditional Maori values and those of modern science, or between organic farming and industrial agribusiness).

Or

b/ We recognise that the unfolding of life on this planet, and of human cultural creativity, may follow many paths and take unexpected forms which simply cannot be enclosed in the worldviews of any single system, let alone in the restrictive worldview of modern techno-science. We must therefore begin to work urgently toward a healthy pluralism of cultures and to restore the threatened biodiversity of the planet. All cultures, including modern Western culture, are bound to disappear if they refuse to recognise their own limits. We cannot universalise any single culture’s worldview because nobody has a monopoly on being human, and no single culture has the power to reduce either the diversity of cultures to a single form, or the diversity of species on the planet to single-minded utilitarian purposes.

Is there a middle ground? It’s a fair question, but the brutally honest answer is “No.” On the surface, there can be no compromise. There may, however, still be ways to discover some common ground...