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Corn Study Spurs Debate over
Corporate Meddling in Academia

April 18, 2002, Thursday,

Corn study spurs debate over corporate meddling in academia

By PAUL ELIAS, AP Biotechnology Writer

When a prestigious scientific journal backed away from a study that
found genetic contamination in Mexican corn, it was a big public
relations victory for the biotechnology industry.

But the public debunking of the work of an outspoken opponent of genetic
engineering also renewed questions about the increasing role that
industry plays in funding academic research.

Much is at stake for biotech companies, which are planting more
genetically modified plants each year around the world even as they
battle consumer skepticism.

Their victory in the Mexican corn debate helped compensate for several
embarrassing revelations that genetic experiments had escaped to the
wild - despite repeated promises that such tinkering was tightly
controlled. Researchers now splice foreign genes into a wide variety of
plants to enhance desirable traits such as herbicide tolerance and pest
resistance. Supporters envision growing more food for a hungry world.
But the science involved troubles many who say the consequences of such
tinkering are unknown.

Nature's publication of the corn study in September created a furor.
Ignacio Chapela and David Quist of the University of California,
Berkeley, found that maize in the Mexican state of Oaxaca contained
traces of genetically modified DNA widely used by U.S. biotech
companies.

In 1998, Mexico had banned the planting of genetically modified corn to
protect its indigenous maize.

Nature's publication of the study in September almost immediately
galvanized the Biotechnology Industry Organization into action. Led by
the lobbying group, sympathetic scientists inundated the journal with
complaints that the study's science was sloppy. They also denounced
Chapela and Quist as politically biased.

Nature eventually published the criticism this month after receiving
what it considered to be compelling evidence that the researchers had
not conclusively proved that contamination had occurred.

Despite this episode, many biotech proponents concede that co-mingling
of natural and genetically modified plants is almost inevitable, and
even critics of Chapela and Quist say it's possible that genetically
engineered corn has in fact mixed with native maize in southern Mexico.

But they argue that any contamination is safe and may even benefit the
local varieties by boosting their resistance to herbicides and insects.

"The fact is that the biotech traits really don't pose any unique risk
to the local maize," said Eric Sachs, director of scientific affairs for
Monsanto Co., a St. Louis-based biotechnology company.

Monsanto made a similar argument last week to the Food and Drug
Administration after it learned that its Canadian canola seed has trace
amounts of genetically modified material unapproved in the United
States.

Monsanto wants the U.S. government to declare any food contaminated
by the unapproved canola seed fit for consumption, arguing that its gene
tinkering is safe.

Chapela, an assistant professor up for tenure this year, argues that his
academic reputation is under attack because he continues to speak out
against a growing private-sector involvement in academic research.

In 1998, Chapela led an unsuccessful campaign against a five-year, $25
million deal Berkeley signed with Novartis Corp., a Swiss-based
agriculture giant. A Novartis spinoff, Syngenta, now oversees research
in Berkeley's department of plant and microbial biology.

In exchange, Syngenta gets first commercial rights to much of the
research in the department. Researchers who accept Syngenta's money
are barred from showing some of their work outside the university without
permission, which Chapela and others say limits academic freedoms.

The deal polarized the campus. Some welcomed the money as a godsend
that has brought their research to a higher level; others saw it as a dance
with the devil.

The university recently commissioned Michigan State University to study
the deal's effect and issue a report, which is awaited by several other
institutions said to be considering similar deals.

Department chair Andrew Jackson, who receives $100,000 a year from
the deal for his research, says it has benefited faculty and students with
extra equipment and research they couldn't afford to do otherwise.
Jackson said his research decisions have never been influenced by the
deal.

But Chapela still considers it unethical, and says the money forces
Berkeley to focus most of its energies on biotechnology at the expense
of more traditional crop sciences.

His supporters allege Chapela is the subject of "academic intimidation"
and a "McCarthyist campaign" instigated by a biotechnology industry that
is increasing the amount of genetically modified crops grown around the
world each year.

Chapela's critics deny that charge and say Chapela wouldn't be in the
position he is now if he conducted his study more carefully.

Jackson called Chapela's continued campaign against the Novartis deal
upsetting, but said the Mexican corn debate is based on scientific
disagreements.