O AFEGANISTÃO SEGUNDO EÇA DE QUEIRÓS

Os ingleses estão experimentando, no seu atribulado império da Índia,a verdade desse humorístico lugar comum do sec. XVIII: 'A História é uma velhota que se repete sem cessar'.
O Fado e a Providência, ou a Entidade qualquer que lá de cima dirigiu os episódios da campanha do Afeganistão em 1847, está fazendo simplesmente uma cópia servil, revelando assim uma imaginação exausta.
Em 1847 os ingleses, "por uma Razão de Estado, uma necessidade de fronteiras científicas, a segurança do império, uma barreira ao domínio russo da Ásia..." e outras coisas vagas que os políticos da Índia rosnam sombriamente, retorcendo os bigodes - invadem o Afeganistão, e aí vão aniquilando tribos seculares, desmantelando vilas, assolando searas e vinhas: apossam-se, por fim, da santa cidade de Cabul; sacodem do serralho um velho emir apavorado; colocam lá outro de raça mais submissa, que já trazem preparado nas bagagens, com escravas e tapetes; e, logo que os correspondentes dos jornais têm telegrafado a vitória, o exército, acampado à beira dos arroios e nos vergéis de Cabul, desaperta o correame, e fuma o cachimbo da paz... Assim é exactamente em 1880.
No nosso tempo, precisamente como em 1847, chefes enérgicos, Messias indígenas, vão percorrendo o território, e com os grandes nomes de "Pátria" e de "Religião", pregam a guerra santa: as tribos reúnem-se, as famílias feudais correm com os seus troços de cavalaria, príncipes rivais juntam-se no ódio hereditário contra o estrangeiro, o "homem vermelho", e em pouco tempo é tudo um rebrilhar de fogos de acampamento nos altos das serranias, dominando os desfiladeiros que são o caminho, a estrada da Índia... E quando por ali aparecer, enfim, o grosso do exército inglês, à volta de Cabul, atravancado de artilharia, escoando-se espessamente, por entre as gargantas das serras, no leito seco das torrentes, com as suas longas caravanas de camelos, aquela massa bárbara rola-lhe em cima e aniquila-o.
Foi assim em 1847, é assim em 1880. Então os restos debandados do exército refugiam-se nalguma das cidades da fronteira, que ora é Ghasnat ora Kandahar: os afegãos correm, põem o cerco, cerco lento, cerco de vagares orientais: o general sitiado, que nessas guerras asiáticas pode sempre comunicar, telegrafa para o viso-rei da Índia, reclamando com furor "reforços, chá e açúcar"! (Isto é textual; foi o general Roberts que soltou há dias este grito de gulodice britânica; o inglês, sem chá, bate-se frouxamente). Então o governo da Índia, gastando milhões de libras, como quem gasta água, manda a toda a pressa fardos disformes de chá reparador, brancas colinas de açúcar, e dez ou quinze mil homens. De Inglaterra partem esses negros e monstruosos transportes de guerra, arcas de Noé a vapor, levando acampamentos, rebanhos de cavalos, parques de artilharia, toda uma invasão temerosa... Foi assim em 1847, assim é em 1880.
Esta hoste desembarca no Industão, junta-se a outras colunas de tropa índia, e é dirigida dia e noite sobre a fronteira em expressos a quarenta milhas por hora; daí começa uma marcha assoladora, com cinquenta mil camelos de bagagens, telégrafos, máquinas hidráulicas, e uma cavalgada eloquente de correspondentes de jornais. Uma manhã avista-se Kandahar ou Ghasnat;- e num momento, é aniquilado, disperso no pó da planície o pobre exército afegão com as suas cimitarras de melodrama e as suas veneráveis colubrinas do modelo das que outrora fizeram fogo em Diu. Ghasnat está livre! Kandahar está livre! Hurrah! Faz-se imediatamente disto uma canção patriótica; e a façanha é por toda a Inglaterra popularizada numa estampa, em que se vê o general libertador e o general sitiado apertando-se a mão com veemência, no primeiro plano, entre cavalos empinados e granadeiros belos como Apolos, que expiram em atitude nobre! Foi assim em 1847; há-de ser assim em 1880.
No entanto, em desfiladeiro e monte, milhares de homens que, ou defendiam a pátria ou morriam pela "fronteira científica", lá ficam, pasto de corvos - o que não é, no Afeganistão, uma respeitável imagem de retórica: aí, são os corvos que nas cidades fazem a limpeza das ruas, comendo as imundices, e em campos de batalha purificam o ar, devorando os restos das derrotas.
E de tanto sangue, tanta agonia, tanto luto, que resta por fim? Uma canção patriótica, uma estampa idiota nas salas de jantar, mais tarde uma linha de prosa numa página de crónica...
Consoladora filosofia das guerras!
No entanto, a Inglaterra goza por algum tempo a "grande vitória do Afeganistão" - com a certeza de ter de recomeçar, daqui a dez anos ou quinze anos; porque nem pode conquistar e anexar um vasto reino, que é grande como a França, nem pode consentir, colados à sua ilharga, uns poucos de milhões de homens fanáticos, batalhadores e hostis. A "política" portanto é debilitá-los periodicamente, com uma invasão arruinadora. São as fortes necessidades dum grande império.
Antes possuir apenas um quintalejo, com uma vaca para o leite e dois pés de alface para as merendas de verão...

QUANDO A ECOLOGIA PROFUNDA ENCONTRA O TERCEIRO MUNDO

There is a movement afoot in the United States that environmentalists call deep ecology (Tobias, 1985). In a nutshell, its basic tenet is that all living things have a right to exist—that human beings have no right to bring other creatures to extinction or to play God by deciding which species serve us and should therefore be allowed to live. Deep ecology rejects the anthropocentric view that humankind lies at the center of all that is worthwhile and that other creatures are valuable only as long as they serve us. Deep ecology says, instead, that all living things have an inherent value—animals, plants, bacteria, viruses—and that animals are no more important than plants and that mammals are no more valuable than insects (Blea, 1986). Deep ecology is similar to many Eastern religions in holding that all living things are sacred. As a conservationist, I am attracted to the core philosophy of deep ecology. Like the Buddhists, and Taoists, and supporters of the Earth First! movement, I also believe that all living things are sacred. When human activities drive one of our fellow species to extinction, I consider that a betrayal of our obligation to protect all life on the only planet we have.
Where I run into trouble with the philosophy of deep ecology is in places like rural Central America or on the agricultural frontier in Ecuadorian Amazonia—places where human beings themselves are living on the edge of life. I have never tried to tell a Latin American farmer that he has no right to burn forest for farmland because the trees and wildlife are as inherently valuable as he and his children are. As an anthropologist and as a father, I am not prepared to take on that job. You could call this the dilemma of deep ecology meeting the developing world.
The dilemma is softened somewhat by the realization that the farmer in the developing world probably appreciates the value of forest and wildlife better than we do in our society of microwave ovens and airplanes and plastic money. The Third-World farmer appreciates his dependence on biological diversity because that
dependence is so highly visible to him. He knows that his life is based on the living organisms that surround him. From the biological diversity that forms his natural environment he gathers edible fruit, wild animals for protein, fiber for clothing and ropes, incense for religious ceremonies, natural insecticides, fish poisons, wood for houses, furniture, and canoes, and medicinal plants that may cure a toothache or a snakebite.
There are indigenous peoples in some parts of the world who have an appreciation for biological diversity that puts our own conservation theorists to shame. I stayed once in southeastern Mexico with a Maya farmer who expressed his view this way:
“The outsiders come into our forest,” he said, “and they cut the mahogany and kill the birds and burn everything. Then they bring in cattle, and the cattle eat the jungle. I think they hate the forest. But I plant my crops and weed them, and I watch the animals, and I watch the forest to know when to plant my corn. As for me, I guard the forest.”
Today, that Maya farmer lives in a small remnant of rain forest surrounded by the fields and cattle pastures of 100,000 immigrant colonists. He is subjected to the development plans of a nation hungry for farmland and foreign exchange. The colonists have been forced by population pressure and the need for land reform to colonize a tropical forest they know nothing about. The social and economic realities of a modern global economy are leading them and their national leaders to destroy the very biological resources their lives are based upon.
The colonists are fine people who are quick to invite you to share their meager meal. But if you want to talk with them about protecting the biological diversity that still surrounds them, be prepared to talk about how it will affect them directly. If you look a frontier farmer in the eye and tell him that he must not clear forest or hunt in a wildlife reserve and that the reason he must not do these things is because you are trying to preserve the planet’s biological diversity, he will very politely perform the cultural equivalent of rolling his eyes and saying, “Sure.”
But he will not believe you. Instead, you should be prepared to demonstrate how he can produce more food and earn more money by protecting the biological resources on his land. The developing world colonist may understand his dependence on biological diversity, but his interest in protecting that diversity lies in how it can improve his life and the lives of his children. Colonists on the agricultural frontier do not have the luxury of debating the finer points of deep ecology.
The same thing can be said for the government planner in the nation where the pioneer farmer lives and the development banker in Washington, D.C. The planner and the banker may appreciate the moral and aesthetic values of biological diversity. They may lament the eradication of wilderness and wildlife. But if you want them to protect a critical area of forest or place their hydroelectric dam outside a protected area, be prepared to talk about the economic value of watersheds, income from tourism, and cost-benefit analysis.
In the developing world, as well as in our overdeveloped world, we are obligated to present economic, utilitarian arguments to preserve the biological diversity that ultimately benefits us all. Deep ecology makes interesting conversation over the seminar table, but it won’t fly on the agricultural frontier of the Third World or in the board rooms of the Inter-American Development Bank.
The day may come when ethical considerations about biological diversity become our most important reason for species conservation. But in the meantime, if we want to hold on to our planet’s biological diversity, we have to speak the vernacular. And the vernacular is utility, economics, and the well-being of individual human beings.
In the 1980s, the question seems to be, “What has biological diversity done for me lately?” The good news is that the answer to that question is, “Plenty, and more than you realize.” Our lives are full of examples of the logic of preserving the plants and animals that we depend upon as a species.
Our food is a good example. Human beings eat a wealth of plants and animals in the home-cooked meals and restaurant dinners that we live on day-to-day. Yet one of the most immediate threats posed by the loss of biodiversity is the shrinkage of plant gene pools available to farmers and agricultural scientists. During the past several decades, we have increased our ability to produce large quantities of food, but we have simultaneously increased our dependence on just a few crops and our dependence on fewer types of those crops. As much as 80% of the world food supply may be based on fewer than two dozen species of plants and animals (CEQ, 1981). We are eroding the genetic diversity of the crops we increasingly depend upon, and we are eradicating the wild ancestors of those crops as we destroy wilderness habitats around the world.
We are dependent on biological diversity in ways less visible than the plants and animals we eat and wear. We also depend on them for raw materials and medicines. We depend on the diversity of plants and animals for industrial fibers, gums, spices, dyes, resins, oils, lumber, cellulose, and wood biomass. We chemically screen wild plants in search of new drugs that may be beneficial to humankind. We import millions of dollars worth of medicinal plants into the United States and use them to produce billions of dollars worth of medicines (OTA, 1984).
We use animals in medical research as well, though sometimes with brutal results. We import tens of thousands of primates for drug safety tests and drug production (OTA, 1984). We use Texas armadillos in research on leprosy. When human activities threaten the survival of these animals and their wild habitats, they threaten human welfare as well.
At the same time, we have to acknowledge that we will never be able to demonstrate an immediate, utilitarian reason for preserving every species on Earth. Some of them may have no use for humankind beyond being part of the great mystery. But who will tell us which species are unimportant? Who can tell us which level of extinction will seriously disrupt the web of life that we depend upon as human beings?
Environmental writer Erik Eckholm says that one of the key tasks facing both scientists and governments is to identify and protect the species whose ecological functions are especially important to human societies. And “in the meantime,” Eckholm continues, “prudence dictates giving existing organisms as much benefit of the doubt as possible” (Eckholm, 1978).
One of the important factors in providing those species with the benefit of the doubt they deserve is educating ourselves and our governments’ policy makers about our dependence, as human beings, on biological diversity. That education tends to emphasize the utilitarian value of species protection. One of the results is that there is a growing, pragmatic ethic among scientists and conservationists. It is an ethic that centers on the realization that our ability to preserve biological diversity depends on our ability to demonstrate the benefits that diversity brings to human beings (Fisher and Myers, 1986).
On one level, these benefits take the form of immediate economic income through activities like wildlife harvesting, tourism, and maintaining agricultural production. On another level, they focus on unfulfilled potential—new crops, new medicines, new industrial products. Taken together, the benefits of biological diversity provide short-term income to individual people and improve the long-term well-being of our species as a whole.
These two levels of benefits work together in the sense that if we hope to see the long-term benefits of biological diversity, we have to focus first—or least simultaneously—on the immediate, short-term benefits to individual people. Few of the wild gene pools—the raw materials for future medicines, food, and fuels—are likely to survive intact in places where people have to struggle simply to provide their basic, daily needs (Wolf, 1985).
One of our long-term goals as a species is to enjoy the uncounted benefits that our planet’s biological diversity can eventually bring us. But in the short term, at a minimum for the next few decades, our basic strategy must concentrate on ensuring that people here and on the frontiers of the developing world receive material incentives that will allow them to prosper by protecting biological diversity rather than by destroying it (Cartwright, 1985). That done, we can return to the ethical and aesthetic arguments of deep ecology with the knowledge that when we look up from our discussion, there will still be biological diversity left to experience and enjoy.
The authors of the three chapters that follow are counted among the most successful and most dedicated of the scientists now working to point out the short-term and long-term benefits of biological diversity—three scientists who are working as quickly as possible to discover the unread books of our planet’s genetic diversity and to translate those discoveries into practical advantages for their fellow human beings.

HUMANS WILL LEARN TO LEARN FROM DIVERSITY

Daniel L. Everett

I am optimistic that humans might finally come to understand that they can learn from other humans who are not like them. The supposed 'curse' of the Tower of Babel, the diversity of languages and cultures, is perhaps our greatest hope for continued healthy occupancy of this rock we all share in our unforgiving universe. Sure, there are dangers in this diversity that have led to murder and suffering. Diversity can all too easily be interpreted as 'incomprehensibility, inferiority, wrong-headedness'. But I am optimistic that our species has grown tired of this view of diversity. And I am optimistic that groups we have heard very little from will motivate us all to learn new solutions to old problems in the coming years.
However we define the group to which we belong, ethnically, geographically, linguistically, or nationally, I believe that 2007 could be the year in which we come to embrace a symmetry of status between groups and a cross-pollination of ways of living and ways of thinking about the world.
Let me say what I think it means for people groups to learn from one another and then why I am optimistic about it.
The world presents us all with similar problems at the level of biological and emotional need. We need shelter, food, companionship, affection, sex, and opportunities to develop our abilities, among other things. As humans we also have intellectual and social needs that go beyond other species. We need affirmation, we need respect, we need to feel good about our lives, we need to feel like we are useful, and we need to feel optimistic. And we need to know how to get more meaning out of the world around us. And, especially, we need to learn to love more and tolerate more. But how do we learn these things? Where can we go for new ideas for the problems we are still beset by in 2007? Anthropological linguistics can offer some suggestions. We can learn from the stories and values of smaller, overlooked groups, endangered peoples, and even extinct peoples that we have records of, about how to live more harmoniously in the world.
For example, when we look back to the now extinct cultures of the Narragansett Indians the Northeastern British colonies in the early 18th century and before, we learn about their tolerance of difference. When Increase Mather and his father Cotton Mather expulsed Roger Williams from the colony of Massachusetts in 1735, during a ferocious winter, Mather expected Williams to do the right thing and freeze to death. Williams had expressed views of tolerance and respect for others and against tenets of the church of Mather that Mather and Governor Winthrop found intolerable. But Williams was taken in by the Narragansett and spent the winter safely with them, learning about their language and their philosophy of tolerance, of which he was living proof. When Williams later wrote about these people, his writings influenced the thought of Thomas Jefferson and eventually the Narragansett philosophy seems to have influenced, though indirectly, the writings and thought of William James as he helped to develop American Pragmatism, perhaps the only uniquely American contribution to world philosophy — a philosophy that evaluates ideas by their usefulness, by their tolerance of diverse ideas, and by their rejection of the idea that any one group holds a monopoly on Truth.
We have spent most of our existence on this planet in an attempt to homogenize it. To remove uncomfortable differences. But I believe that we are growing weary of this. I believe that this year the hurt and pain that our species is inflecting on itself will surpass, for many of us at least, what we are willing to bear. We are going to look for other answers. And we are going to need to turn to humans who have mastered the art of contentment and peace and tolerance. These people are found in various parts of the world. Zen Buddhists are one example. But there are others.
My thirty years of work with the Pirahãs (pee-da-HANs) of the Amazon rain forest, for example, has taught me a great deal about their remarkable lack of concern about the future or the past and their pleasure in living one day at a time, without fear of an afterlife, with full tolerance for others' beliefs. The Pirahãs know that people die, that they suffer, that life is not easy, through their daily struggle to provide food for their families without being bitten by snakes or eaten by jaguars and from loved ones they bury young, dead from malaria and other diseases. But this doesn't dampen their joy of life, their love for other Pirahãs or their ability to look at death without fear and without need for the idea of heaven to get them through this life, to them the only life.
Religions have a concept of Truth that lacks tolerance, a Truth that wants to missionize the world to eliminate diversity of belief. Western history has shown what that leads to. But peoples like the Narragansett, the Pirahãs, Zen Buddhists, and many others offer alternatives to homogenizing and destroying the diversity of the world. They show us how different people can solve the same problems of life in ways that can avoid some of the by-products of the violent homogenization of Western history. I believe that the impact of the internet and of rapid dissemination of research in popular and professional forums, coupled with widespread disgust at some of the things that our traditional cultural values have produced, can be the basis for learning from other peoples.
What is there to learn? Let me give some examples from my own field research among Amazonian peoples.
Cooperation: I once thought it might be fun to teach the Pirahã people about Western games. So I organized a 'field day', with a tug of war, a foot race, and a sack race, among other things. In the foot race, one Pirahã fellow got out in front of everyone else. He then stopped and waited for all the others to catch up so they could cross together. The idea of winning was not only novel but unappealing. We cross the line together or I don't cross it. And the same went for the sack race. The tug of war contest was a joke — just guys keeping the slack out of the rope talking. The people loved it all, laughing and conversing all day and told me they had a good time. They taught me more than I ever taught them: you can have a great time and have everyone win. That is not a bad lesson. That is a fine lesson.
Pluralism: The Pirahãs, like the Narragansett and other American Indians, believe that you use your knowledge to serve yourself and to serve others in your community. There is no over-arching concept of Truth to which all members of society must conform.
Communalism: The Pirahãs seem to accept only knowledge that helps, not knowledge that coerces. Think of our English expression 'knowledge is power'. The concept as practiced in most industrial societies is really that 'knowledge is power for me so long as I have it and you don't'. But to many peoples like the Pirahãs, knowledge is something for us all to share. It is power to the people, not power to a person. The Pirahãs don't allow top secret conversations. Every member of their society knows what every other member is doing and how they are doing it. There is a communal mind. There is freedom and security in group knowledge.
Toleration: In Western society we associate tolerance with education — the more you learn, the more you tolerate. But there is little evidence for this thesis when we look at our society as a whole (where education is even compatible with religious fundamentalism, one of the worst dangers for the future of our species). Yet among some hunter-gatherer societies, toleration of physical, mental, and religious diversity can be much greater than our so-called pluralistic Western societies. Not everyone has to look alike, act alike, behave alike, or believe alike. In fact, they don't even have to pretend to do so. In the 1960s there was a similar optimism among my fellow hippies, as many of my generation went into fields like anthropology, literature, and science to learn more about diverse facts and truths and to give us a cornucopia of coping lessons for life. We are ready now for a new 60s-like exploration of diversity and I am optimistic that we will do this. I am optimistic that we will learn the simple and useful truths of cooperation, pluralism, communalism, and toleration and that no one Idea or Truth should be the ring to bind us all.

President Obama's speech at Nobel ceremony

Following is a text of his remarks as they were prepared for delivery at the award ceremony in Oslo:

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Distinguished Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, citizens of America, and citizens of the world:

I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility. It is an award that speaks to our highest aspirations - that for all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.
And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage. Compared to some of the giants of history who have received this prize -- Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela -- my accomplishments are slight. And then there are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened of cynics. I cannot argue with those who find these men and women -- some known, some obscure to all but those they help -- to be far more deserving of this honor than I.
But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by forty three other countries -- including Norway -- in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.
Still, we are at war, and I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill. Some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the cost of armed conflict -- filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other.
These questions are not new. War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease -- the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences.
Over time, as codes of law sought to control violence within groups, so did philosophers, clerics, and statesmen seek to regulate the destructive power of war. The concept of a "just war" emerged, suggesting that war is justified only when it meets certain preconditions: if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the force used is proportional, and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.
For most of history, this concept of just war was rarely observed. The capacity of human beings to think up new ways to kill one another proved inexhaustible, as did our capacity to exempt from mercy those who look different or pray to a different God. Wars between armies gave way to wars between nations – total wars in which the distinction between combatant and civilian became blurred. In the span of thirty years, such carnage would twice engulf this continent. And while it is hard to conceive of a cause more just than the defeat of the Third Reich and the Axis powers, World War II was a conflict in which the total number of civilians who died exceeded the number of soldiers who perished.
In the wake of such destruction, and with the advent of the nuclear age, it became clear to victor and vanquished alike that the world needed institutions to prevent another World War. And so, a quarter century after the United States Senate rejected the League of Nations -- an idea for which Woodrow Wilson received this Prize -- America led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace: a Marshall Plan and a United Nations, mechanisms to govern the waging of war, treaties to protect human rights, prevent genocide, and restrict the most dangerous weapons.
In many ways, these efforts succeeded. Yes, terrible wars have been fought, and atrocities committed. But there has been no Third World War. The Cold War ended with jubilant crowds dismantling a wall. Commerce has stitched much of the world together. Billions have been lifted from poverty. The ideals of liberty, self-determination, equality and the rule of law have haltingly advanced. We are the heirs of the fortitude and foresight of generations past, and it is a legacy for which my own country is rightfully proud.
A decade into a new century, this old architecture is buckling under the weight of new threats. The world may no longer shudder at the prospect of war between two nuclear superpowers, but proliferation may increase the risk of catastrophe. Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale.
Moreover, wars between nations have increasingly given way to wars within nations. The resurgence of ethnic or sectarian conflicts; the growth of secessionist movements, insurgencies, and failed states; have increasingly trapped civilians in unending chaos. In today's wars, many more civilians are killed than soldiers; the seeds of future conflict are sown, economies are wrecked, civil societies torn asunder, refugees amassed, and children scarred.
I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war. What I do know is that meeting these challenges will require the same vision, hard work, and persistence of those men and women who acted so boldly decades ago. And it will require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace.
We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.
I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago -- "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life's work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak, nothing passive, nothing naive in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.
But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.
I raise this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter the cause. At times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world's sole military superpower.
Yet the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions -- not just treaties and declarations -- that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest -- because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.
So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another -- that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier's courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause and to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.
So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths -- that war is sometimes necessary, and war is at some level an expression of human feelings. Concretely, we must direct our effort to the task that President Kennedy called for long ago. "Let us focus," he said, "on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions."
What might this evolution look like? What might these practical steps be?
To begin with, I believe that all nations -- strong and weak alike -- must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I -- like any head of state -- reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards strengthens those who do, and isolates -- and weakens -- those who don't.
The world rallied around America after the 9/11 attacks, and continues to support our efforts in Afghanistan, because of the horror of those senseless attacks and the recognized principle of self-defense. Likewise, the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait -- a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression.
Furthermore, America cannot insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don't, our action can appear arbitrary, and undercut the legitimacy of future intervention -- no matter how justified.
This becomes particularly important when the purpose of military action extends beyond self defense or the defense of one nation against an aggressor. More and more, we all confront difficult questions about how to prevent the slaughter of civilians by their own government, or to stop a civil war whose violence and suffering can engulf an entire region.
I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That is why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace.
America's commitment to global security will never waiver. But in a world in which threats are more diffuse, and missions more complex, America cannot act alone. This is true in Afghanistan. This is true in failed states like Somalia, where terrorism and piracy is joined by famine and human suffering. And sadly, it will continue to be true in unstable regions for years to come.
The leaders and soldiers of NATO countries -- and other friends and allies -- demonstrate this truth through the capacity and courage they have shown in Afghanistan. But in many countries, there is a disconnect between the efforts of those who serve and the ambivalence of the broader public. I understand why war is not popular. But I also know this: the belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Peace requires responsibility. Peace entails sacrifice. That is why NATO continues to be indispensable. That is why we must strengthen UN and regional peacekeeping, and not leave the task to a few countries. That is why we honor those who return home from peacekeeping and training abroad to Oslo and Rome; to Ottawa and Sydney; to Dhaka and Kigali -- we honor them not as makers of war, but as wagers of peace.
Let me make one final point about the use of force. Even as we make difficult decisions about going to war, we must also think clearly about how we fight it. The Nobel Committee recognized this truth in awarding its first prize for peace to Henry Dunant -- the founder of the Red Cross, and a driving force behind the Geneva Conventions.
Where force is necessary, we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct. And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe that the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight. That is a source of our strength. That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America's commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not just when it is easy, but when it is hard.
I have spoken to the questions that must weigh on our minds and our hearts as we choose to wage war. But let me turn now to our effort to avoid such tragic choices, and speak of three ways that we can build a just and lasting peace.
First, in dealing with those nations that break rules and laws, I believe that we must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to change behavior -- for if we want a lasting peace, then the words of the international community must mean something. Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable. Sanctions must exact a real price. Intransigence must be met with increased pressure -- and such pressure exists only when the world stands together as one.
One urgent example is the effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and to seek a world without them. In the middle of the last century, nations agreed to be bound by a treaty whose bargain is clear: all will have access to peaceful nuclear power; those without nuclear weapons will forsake them; and those with nuclear weapons will work toward disarmament. I am committed to upholding this treaty. It is a centerpiece of my foreign policy. And I am working with President Medvedev to reduce America and Russia's nuclear stockpiles.
But it is also incumbent upon all of us to insist that nations like Iran and North Korea do not game the system. Those who claim to respect international law cannot avert their eyes when those laws are flouted. Those who care for their own security cannot ignore the danger of an arms race in the Middle East or East Asia. Those who seek peace cannot stand idly by as nations arm themselves for nuclear war.
The same principle applies to those who violate international law by brutalizing their own people. When there is genocide in Darfur; systematic rape in Congo; or repression in Burma -- there must be consequences. And the closer we stand together, the less likely we will be faced with the choice between armed intervention and complicity in oppression.
This brings me to a second point -- the nature of the peace that we seek. For peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict. Only a just peace based upon the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting.
It was this insight that drove drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after the Second World War. In the wake of devastation, they recognized that if human rights are not protected, peace is a hollow promise.
And yet all too often, these words are ignored. In some countries, the failure to uphold human rights is excused by the false suggestion that these are Western principles, foreign to local cultures or stages of a nation's development. And within America, there has long been a tension between those who describe themselves as realists or idealists -- a tension that suggests a stark choice between the narrow pursuit of interests or an endless campaign to impose our values.
I reject this choice. I believe that peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please; choose their own leaders or assemble without fear. Pent up grievances fester, and the suppression of tribal and religious identity can lead to violence. We also know that the opposite is true. Only when Europe became free did it finally find peace. America has never fought a war against a democracy, and our closest friends are governments that protect the rights of their citizens. No matter how callously defined, neither America's interests -- nor the world's -- are served by the denial of human aspirations.
So even as we respect the unique culture and traditions of different countries, America will always be a voice for those aspirations that are universal. We will bear witness to the quiet dignity of reformers like Aung Sang Suu Kyi; to the bravery of Zimbabweans who cast their ballots in the face of beatings; to the hundreds of thousands who have marched silently through the streets of Iran. It is telling that the leaders of these governments fear the aspirations of their own people more than the power of any other nation. And it is the responsibility of all free people and free nations to make clear to these movements that hope and history are on their side.
Let me also say this: the promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without outreach -- and condemnation without discussion -- can carry forward a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door.
In light of the Cultural Revolution's horrors, Nixon's meeting with Mao appeared inexcusable -- and yet it surely helped set China on a path where millions of its citizens have been lifted from poverty, and connected to open societies. Pope John Paul's engagement with Poland created space not just for the Catholic Church, but for labor leaders like Lech Walesa. Ronald Reagan's efforts on arms control and embrace of perestroika not only improved relations with the Soviet Union, but empowered dissidents throughout Eastern Europe. There is no simple formula here. But we must try as best we can to balance isolation and engagement; pressure and incentives, so that human rights and dignity are advanced over time.
Third, a just peace includes not only civil and political rights -- it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want.
It is undoubtedly true that development rarely takes root without security; it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive. It does not exist where children cannot aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within.
And that is why helping farmers feed their own people -- or nations educate their children and care for the sick -- is not mere charity. It is also why the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, famine and mass displacement that will fuel more conflict for decades. For this reason, it is not merely scientists and activists who call for swift and forceful action -- it is military leaders in my country and others who understand that our common security hangs in the balance.
Agreements among nations. Strong institutions. Support for human rights. Investments in development. All of these are vital ingredients in bringing about the evolution that President Kennedy spoke about. And yet, I do not believe that we will have the will, or the staying power, to complete this work without something more -- and that is the continued expansion of our moral imagination; an insistence that there is something irreducible that we all share.
As the world grows smaller, you might think it would be easier for human beings to recognize how similar we are; to understand that we all basically want the same things; that we all hope for the chance to live out our lives with some measure of happiness and fulfillment for ourselves and our families.
And yet, given the dizzying pace of globalization, and the cultural leveling of modernity, it should come as no surprise that people fear the loss of what they cherish about their particular identities -- their race, their tribe, and perhaps most powerfully their religion. In some places, this fear has led to conflict. At times, it even feels like we are moving backwards. We see it in Middle East, as the conflict between Arabs and Jews seems to harden. We see it in nations that are torn asunder by tribal lines.
Most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan. These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded. But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint -- no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or even a person of one's own faith. Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but the purpose of faith -- for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
Adhering to this law of love has always been the core struggle of human nature. We are fallible. We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us.
But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached – their faith in human progress -- must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.
For if we lose that faith – if we dismiss it as silly or naive; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace -- then we lose what is best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass.
Like generations have before us, we must reject that future. As Dr. King said at this occasion so many years ago, "I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him."
So let us reach for the world that ought to be -- that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls. Somewhere today, in the here and now, a soldier sees he's outgunned but stands firm to keep the peace. Somewhere today, in this world, a young protestor awaits the brutality of her government, but has the courage to march on. Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty still takes the time to teach her child, who believes that a cruel world still has a place for his dreams.
Let us live by their example. We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of depravation, and still strive for dignity. We can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that -- for that is the story of human progress; that is the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth

MÁRIO SOARES SEGUNDO MARINHO PINTO

MÁRIO SOARES E ANGOLA
A polémica em torno das acusações das autoridades angolanas segundo as quais Mário Soares e seu filho João Soares seriam dos principais beneficiários do tráfico de diamantes e de marfim levados a cabo pela UNITA de Jonas Savimbi, tem sido conduzida na base de mistificações grosseiras sobre o comportamento daquelas figuras políticas nos últimos anos.
Espanta desde logo a intervenção pública da generalidade das figuras políticas do país, que vão desde o Presidente da República até ao deputado do Bloco de Esquerda, Francisco Louçã, passando pelo PP de Paulo Portas e Basílio Horta, pelo PSD de Durão Barroso e por toda a sorte de fazedores de opinião, jornalistas (ligados ou não à Fundação Mário Soares), pensadores profissionais, autarcas, «comendadores» e comentadores de serviço, etc.
Tudo como se Mário Soares fosse uma virgem perdida no meio de um imenso bordel.
Sei que Mário Soares não é nenhuma virgem e que o país (apesar de tudo) não é nenhum bordel. Sei também que não gosto mesmo nada de Mário Soares e do filho João Soares, os quais se têm vindo a comportar politicamente como uma espécie de versão portuguesa da antiga dupla haitiana «Papa Doc» e «Baby Doc».
Vejamos então por que é que eu não gosto dele(s).
A primeira ideia que se agiganta sobre Mário Soares é que é um homem que não tem princípios mas sim fins.
É-lhe atribuída a célebre frase: «Em política, feio, feio, é perder».
São conhecidos também os seus zigue-zagues políticos desde antes do 25 de Abril. Tentou negociar com Marcelo Caetano uma legalização do seu (e de seus amigos) agrupamento político, num gesto que mais não significava do que uma imensa traição a toda a oposição, mormente àquela que mais se empenhava na luta contra o fascismo.
JÁ DEPOIS DO 25 DE ABRIL, ASSUMIU-SE COMO O HOMEM DOS AMERICANOS E DA CIA EM PORTUGAL E NA PRÓPRIA INTERNACIONAL SOCIALISTA. Dos mesmos americanos que acabavam de conceber, financiar e executar o golpe contra Salvador Allende no Chile e que colocara no poder Augusto Pinochet.
Mário Soares combateu o comunismo e os comunistas portugueses como nenhuma outra pessoa o fizera durante a revolução e FOI AMIGO DE NICOLAU CEAUCESCU, FIGURA QUE CHEGOU A APRESENTAR COMO MODELO A SER SEGUIDO PELOS COMUNISTAS PORTUGUESES.
Durante a revolução portuguesa andou a gritar nas ruas do país a palavra de ordem «Partido Socialista, Partido Marxista», mas mal se apanhou no poder meteu o socialismo na gaveta e nunca mais o tirou de lá. Os seus governos notabilizaram-se por três coisas: políticas abertamente de direita, a facilidade com que certos empresários ganhavam dinheiro e essa inovação da austeridade soarista (versão bloco central) que foram os salários em atraso.

INSULTO A UM JUIZ
Em Coimbra, onde veio uma vez como primeiro-ministro, foi confrontado com uma manifestação de trabalhadores com salários em atraso. Soares não gostou do que ouviu (chamaram-lhe o que Soares tem chamado aos governantes angolanos) e alguns trabalhadores foram presos por polícias zelosos. Mas, como não apresentou queixa (o tipo de crime em causa exigia a apresentação de queixa), o juiz não teve outro remédio senão libertar os detidos no próprio dia. Soares não gostou e insultou publicamente esse magistrado, o qual ainda apresentou queixa ao Conselho Superior da Magistratura contra Mário Soares, mas sua excelência não foi incomodado.
Na sequência, foi modificado o Código Penal, o que constituiu a primeira alteração de que foi alvo por exigência dos interesses pessoais de figuras políticas.
Soares é arrogante, pesporrento e malcriado. É conhecidíssima a frase que dirigiu, perante as câmaras de TV, a um agente da GNR em serviço que cumpria a missão de lhe fazer escolta enquanto presidente da República durante a Presidência aberta em Lisboa: «Ó Sr. Guarda! Desapareça!». Nunca, em Portugal, um agente da autoridade terá sido tão humilhado publicamente por um responsável político, como aquele pobre soldado da GNR.
Em minha opinião, Mário Soares nunca foi um verdadeiro democrata. Ou melhor é muito democrata se for ele a mandar. Quando não, acaba-se imediatamente a democracia. À sua volta não tem amigos, e ele sabe-o; tem pessoas que não pensam pela própria cabeça e que apenas fazem o que ele manda e quando ele manda. Só é amigo de quem lhe obedece. Quem ousar ter ideias próprias é triturado sem quaisquer contemplações. Algumas das suas mais sólidas e antigas amizades ficaram pelo caminho quando ousaram pôr em causa os seus interesses ou ambições pessoais.
Soares é um homem de ódios pessoais sem limites, os quais sempre colocou acima dos interesses políticos do partido e do próprio país.
Em 1980, não hesitou em APOIAR OBJECTIVAMENTE O GENERAL SOARES CARNEIRO CONTRA EANES, NÃO POR RAZÕES POLÍTICAS MAS DEVIDO AO ÓDIO PESSOAL QUE NUTRIA PELO GENERAL RAMALHO EANES. E como o PS não alinhou nessa aventura que iria entregar a presidência da República a um general do antigo regime, Soares, em vez de acatar a decisão maioritária do seu partido, optou por demitir-se e passou a intrigar, a conspirar e a manipular as consciências dos militantes socialistas e de toda a sorte de oportunistas, não hesitando mesmo em espezinhar amigos de sempre como Francisco Salgado Zenha.
Confesso que não sei por que é que o séquito de prosélitos do soarismo (onde, lamentavelmente, parece ter-se incluído agora o actual presidente da República (Jorge Sampaio), apareceram agora tão indignados com as declarações de governantes angolanos e estiveram tão calados quando da publicação do livro de Rui Mateus sobre Mário Soares. NA ALTURA TODOS METERAM A CABEÇA NA AREIA, INCLUINDO O PRÓPRIO CLÃ DOS SOARES, E NEM TUGIRAM NEM MUGIRAM, APESAR DE AS ACUSAÇÕES SEREM ENTÃO BEM MAIS GRAVES DO QUE AS DE AGORA. POR QUE É QUE JORGE SAMPAIO SE CALOU CONTRA AS «CALÚNIAS» DE RUI MATEUS?».

«DINHEIRO DE MACAU»
Anos mais tarde, um senhor que fora ministro de um governo chefiado por MÁRIO SOARES, ROSADO CORREIA, vinha de Macau para Portugal com uma mala com dezenas de milhares de contos. *A proveniência do** dinheiro era tão pouco limpa que um membro do governo de Macau, ANTÓNIO **VITORINO, *foi a correr ao aeroporto tirar-lhe a mala à última hora. Parece que se tratava de dinheiro que tinha sido obtido de empresários chineses com a promessa de benefícios indevidos por parte do governo de Macau. Para quem era esse dinheiro foi coisa que nunca ficou devidamente esclarecida. O caso EMAUDIO (e o célebre fax de Macau) é um episódio que envolve destacadíssimos soaristas, amigos íntimos de Mário Soares e altos dirigentes do PS da época soarista. MENANO DO AMARAL chegou a ser responsável pelas finanças do PS e Rui Mateus foi durante anos responsável pelas relações internacionais do partido, ou seja, pela angariação de fundos no estrangeiro.
Não haveria seguramente no PS ninguém em quem Soares depositasse mais confiança. Ainda hoje subsistem muitas dúvidas (e não só as lançadas pelo livro de Rui Mateus) sobre o verdadeiro destino dos financiamentos vindos de Macau. No entanto, em tribunal, os pretensos corruptores foram processualmente separados dos alegados corrompidos, com esta peculiaridade (que não é inédita) judicial: os pretensos corruptores foram condenados, enquanto os alegados corrompidos foram absolvidos.
Aliás, no que respeita a Macau só um país sem dignidade e um povo sem brio nem vergonha é que toleravam o que se passou nos últimos anos (e nos últimos dias) de administração portuguesa daquele território, com os chineses pura e simplesmente a chamar ladrões aos portugueses. E isso não foi só dirigido a alguns colaboradores de cartazes do MASP que a dada altura enxamearam aquele território.
Esse epíteto chegou a ser dirigido aos mais altos representantes do Estado Português. Tudo por causa das fundações criadas para tirar dinheiro de Macau. Mas isso é outra história cujos verdadeiros contornos hão-de ser um dia conhecidos. Não foi só em Portugal que Mário Soares conviveu com pessoas pouco recomendáveis. Veja-se o caso de BETINO CRAXI, o líder do PS italiano, condenado a vários anos de prisão pelas autoridades judiciais do seu país, devido a graves crimes como corrupção. Soares fez questão de lhe manifestar publicamente solidariedade quando ele se refugiou na Tunísia.
Veja-se também a amizade com Filipe González, líder do Partido Socialista de Espanha que não encontrou melhor maneira para resolver o problema político do país Basco senão recorrer ao terrorismo, contratando os piores mercenários do lumpen e da extrema direita da Europa para assassinar militantes e simpatizantes da ETA.
Mário Soares utilizou o cargo de presidente da República para passear pelo estrangeiro como nunca ninguém fizera em Portugal. Ele, que tanta austeridade impôs aos trabalhadores portugueses enquanto primeiro-ministro, gastou, como Presidente da República, milhões de contos dos contribuintes portugueses em passeatas pelo mundo, com verdadeiros exércitos de amigos e prosélitos do soarismo, com destaque para jornalistas. São muitos desses «viajantes» que hoje se põem em bicos de pés a indignar-se pelas declarações dos governantes angolanos.
Enquanto Presidente da República, Soares abusou como ninguém das distinções honoríficas do Estado Português. Não há praticamente nenhum amigo que não tenha recebido uma condecoração, enquanto outros cidadãos, que tanto mereceram, não obtiveram qualquer distinção durante o seu «reinado». Um dos maiores vultos da resistência antifascista no meio universitário, e um dos mais notáveis académicos portugueses, perseguido pelo antigo regime, o Prof. Doutor Orlando de Carvalho, não foi merecedor, segundo Mário Soares, da Ordem da Liberdade. Mas alguns que até colaboraram com o antigo regime receberam as mais altas distinções. Orlando de Carvalho só veio a receber a Ordem da Liberdade depois de Soares deixar a Presidência da República, ou seja logo que Sampaio tomou posse. A razão foi só uma: Orlando de Carvalho nunca prestou vassalagem a Soares e Jorge Sampaio não fazia depender disso a atribuição de condecorações.

FUNDAÇÃO COM DINHEIROS PÚBLICOS
A pretexto de uns papéis pessoais cujo valor histórico ou cultural nunca ninguém sindicou, Soares decidiu fazer uma Fundação com o seu nome. Nada de mal se o fizesse com dinheiro seu, como seria normal. Mas não; acabou por fazê-la com dinheiros públicos. SÓ O GOVERNO, DE UMA SÓ VEZ DEU-LHE 500 MIL CONTOS E A CÂMARA DE LISBOA, PRESIDIDA PELO SEU FILHO, DEU-LHE UM PRÉDIO NO VALOR DE CENTENAS DE MILHARES DE CONTOS. Nos Estados Unidos, na Inglaterra, na Alemanha ou em qualquer país em que as regras democráticas fossem minimamente respeitadas muita gente estaria, por isso, a contas com a justiça, incluindo os próprios Mário e João Soares e as respectivas carreiras políticas teriam aí terminado. Tais práticas são absolutamente inadmissíveis num país que respeitasse o dinheiro extorquido aos contribuintes pelo fisco. Se os seus documentos pessoais tinham valor histórico Mário Soares deveria entregá-los a uma instituição pública, como a Torre do Tombo ou o Centro de Documentação 25 de Abril, por exemplo. Mas para isso era preciso que Soares fosse uma pessoa com humildade democrática e verdadeiro amor pela cultura. Mas não. Não eram preocupações culturais que motivaram Soares. O que ele pretendia era outra coisa. Porque as suas ambições não têm limites ele precisava de um instrumento de pressão sobre as instituições democráticas e dos órgãos de poder e de intromissão directa na vida política do país. A Fundação Mário Soares está a transformar-se num verdadeiro cancro da democracia portuguesa.»

In «Diário do Centro», 15 de Março de 2000

O livro de Rui Mateus, que foi rapidamente retirado do mercado após a celeuma que causou em 1996 (há quem diga que "alguém" comprou toda a edição), está disponível em:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/12699901/Livro-Contos-Proibidoso

http://www.ferrao.org/documentos/Livro_Contos_proibidos.pdf

http://rapidshare.com/files/23967307/Livro_Contos_Proibidos.pdf

ALIMENTOS MODIFICADOS GENETICAMENTE: SÃO SEGUROS?

Judging the “safety” of food is hardly an exact science.
Through experimental testing it is possible to
certify that some foods will be dangerous for human
consumption, but certifying a complete absence of
danger is (like any effort to prove a negative) beyond
the capability of experimental science.


Sixty-five percent of the Americans queried for an international sur-
vey on genetically modified foods got the answer to the following ques-
tion wrong: “Do ordinary tomatoes contain genes, or is it only
genetically modified tomatoes that do so?” All of our food contains
genes—all our plant food and all our animal food. As one biologist
explained in a teaching module for middle schools, “A pound of broc-
coli, for example, contains about a tenth of an ounce of DNA.” Accord-
ing to a 1997 study, people eat up to a gram of DNA a day. (One ounce
is equivalent to about 28 grams.) Of that, less than 1/250,000 was in-
troduced by genetic engineering. The rest was always in our diet.
When it is eaten, a gene from any source, whether from an animal,
an insect, a plant, a virus, or a bacterium, is broken down during diges-
tion into the building blocks of DNA, the nucleotides adenine (A),
thymine (T), guanine (G), and cytosine (C). The process begins in the
mouth. Saliva contains an enzyme, called deoxyribonuclease, specifi-
cally designed to dismember deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA. More of this
enzyme is produced in the pancreas and in the small intestine. The
stomach also contributes to the process: Stomach acid attacks DNA at
two of the nucleotides, A and G, inactivating the whole molecule.
The breakdown is not 100 percent efficient. Bits and pieces—short
stretches of DNA—escape, a fact that has been trumpeted by certain
activists. It might be the source of the Europeans’ fears, as documented
by another survey, that eating genes will alter their own genes, a con-
cept scientists call “horizontal” gene transfer (“vertical” gene transfer
is what happens when you pass your genes on to your children).
Studies showing that bits of genes persist for a while during the
digestive process have been done in chickens, sheep, and people, as
well as in laboratory mice. The first two digest their food differently
from the last two. In chickens, digestion starts in the crop, the stone-
filled bag in the bird’s throat. Sheep, like people, use saliva at first, but
unlike us they have two stomachs.
In chickens, researchers at the University of Leeds in England
found an antibiotic-resistance marker gene from genetically modified
corn in the crops of all five birds studied. The gene could be found in
the stomachs of two of the chickens, but not in the lower intestines of
any of them. When the scientists looked for a natural plant gene, they
found it in the same places.
The same researchers fed sheep kernels of corn that had been ge-
netically modified to produce the insecticide Bt, a toxin from the bac-
terium Bacillus thuringiensis. Earlier they had sampled fluid from a
sheep’s first stomach, the rumen, and found it inactivated naked DNA
in a test tube within a minute. Five hours after the sheep ate the corn,
the scientists could detect in the rumen the gene encoding the Bt toxin.
But when the experiment was done using silage, only a small fragment
of the gene could be found in the rumen, and that no longer than three
hours later. Silage is made by letting the corn ferment: by the time the
sheep ate it, the plant cells had begun to decay. The DNA was easier to
digest because the enzymes could reach it more easily.
A group at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, led by Harry
Gilbert, used human volunteers—though they were not normal,
healthy subjects. Each had undergone an ileostomy, in which the il-
eum, part of the digestive tract, is removed. Each wore a bypass bag,
which collects the waste produced by that drastically shortened gut.
The scientists fed these seven ileostomists a burger and a shake con-
taining genetically modified soy. After waiting a suitable time, they
sampled the contents of the bypass bags, looking for the transgene,
which was a gene that made the soy plant resistant to an herbicide.
“Whilst the amount of transgene that survived passage from the small
bowel was highly variable between subjects, the nucleic acid was de-
tected in all seven subjects,” the researchers write. In one person 3.7
percent of the total amount of transgene he or she had eaten made it to
the bag. In the others the amount was less. Gilbert’s team then repeated
their study with healthy volunteers, sampling their feces. “No transgene
DNA was detected in the faeces,” they write, “indicating that the nucleic
acid did not survive passage through the complete intestine.” The ile-
ostomy bags had given the researchers a peek into the digestive pro-
cess. At midpoint in digestion a small percentage of the gene remained
whole. By the time digestion was complete the DNA had been broken
down.
Walter Doerfler, in the Institute of Genetics at the University of
Cologne in Germany, has been studying the fate of DNA eaten by labo-
ratory mice for 10 years. He and his colleagues have reported that some
DNA can escape being digested and pass through the intestinal wall. It
can enter the bloodstream and interact with the mouse’s own cells.
The DNA they used at first came from a bacteriophage called M13. It
was natural DNA, not a transgene. They detected the M13 DNA in the
small intestine, the large intestine, and the blood, as well as in the feces.
They found it in spleen and liver cells, and in one out of a thousand
white blood cells. They even found it in the cells of a mouse fetus,
meaning that it had traveled through the placenta from mother to un-
born child.
Doerfler’s work has been used as proof that eating genetically
modified food is dangerous. Yet, as a report prepared for the U.K.’s
Secretary of State for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs noted
in 2003, “It is important to emphasise that these studies are not fo-
cused on transgenes and they are relevant to the fate of all consumed
DNA.” They apply equally to the tenth of an ounce of DNA in an ordi-
nary pound of broccoli as to the pesticide-coding gene engineered into
transgenic Bt corn.
Also important to keep in mind is how Doerfler’s methods made it
possible to detect even the tiniest bit of foreign DNA. In the M13 ex-
periments the mice were fed 50 micrograms (50 millionths of a gram)
of a single, small DNA molecule, one only about 6,400 base pairs
long—a very big dose of a very small DNA sequence. In 50 micro-
grams of M13 DNA the concentration of any one particular segment is
much, much higher than in 50 micrograms of, say, the soybean DNA
used by Gilbert and his colleagues. The soybean DNA is a billion base
pairs long. To sample mouse blood or spleen cells for foreign DNA,
Doerfler and his colleagues used the PCR technique, which can am-
plify the smallest trace of any DNA. PCR doesn’t understand the word
foreign. You must give it a specific DNA sequence to look for, a list of
A’s, T’s, G’s, and C’s in exactly the right order. Perhaps that sequence is
1,000 base pairs long. If so, it will represent more than 10 percent of
the M13 DNA, but only a millionth of the soybean DNA.
To make it a fair search you’d need to feed a mouse a hundred
thousand times more soybean DNA than you fed it M13 DNA. To
match 50 micrograms of M13 DNA—an amount that would disap-
pear in the bottom of a tiny salt spoon—you’d have to feed the mouse
a couple of teaspoonfuls of pure soybean DNA. Yet people—and
mice—do not eat pure soybean DNA. A soybean is mostly starch and
protein. To eat a teaspoonful of soybean DNA in the usual way would
mean eating pounds and pounds of soybeans—a distinctly unnatural
scenario. So feeding a mouse the pure DNA of a simple bacteriophage
is not at all like feeding it food from a genetically modified plant.
What these experiments show, however, is that some DNA does
escape the process of digestion. A little will incorporate itself into our
blood and liver and perhaps even pass through into our unborn chil-
dren. Does that mean it could alter our genes? Yes, in principle, it could.
But has it? People have been eating DNA-rich foods for all of their
evolutionary history. Humans have a particularly eclectic diet, con-
suming foods derived from or containing bacteria and fungi, as well as
a great variety of different plants and animals. That is, we’ve been ex-
posing our digestive tracts to foreign DNA for untold eons before re-
combinant DNA techniques were invented. Because plant genes,
bacterial genes, and animal genes are different from human genes, we
should be able to identify the foreign genes in the human genome—if
they’re there—using computers to compare the vast DNA sequence
databases available today.
Animal genes, plant genes, human genes, and even bacterial genes
all work by the same rules. How genes are transcribed and translated
into proteins is common to all of life. But that’s like saying all books
contain words. Words belong to different languages. A Japanese word
is easy to tell apart from an English one. Even if the two words mean
the same thing in both languages, they can be distinguished. Bacterial
genes have a different structure from plant genes, and plant genes have
a different structure from animal genes. The genes of bacteria are gen-
erally not interrupted by introns, for instance, while both plant and
animal genes have them. The protein-coding sequences are different as
well. A human hemoglobin gene looks very much like a mouse hemo-
globin gene, but very different from a plant hemoglobin gene.
Proteins change more slowly than the DNA sequences that encode
them, so the correspondence between two genes can often be identi-
fied when the protein sequences are compared. So, for instance, when
scientists analyzed the DNA in the mitochondria of plant and animal
cells and the DNA in the chloroplasts of plant cells, they found that in
both structure and sequence these genes were more similar to those of
certain bacteria than they were to the genes in the nuclei of animals
and plants. This discovery confirmed biologist Lynn Margulis’s theory
that both mitochondria and chloroplasts were descended from bacte-
ria that had invaded and taken up residence in cells, creating a symbi-
otic partnership. Other studies found that in plants, at least, the
symbiosis is not at all static: genes from the chloroplast, for instance,
migrate into the plant’s nucleus at a surprisingly high rate.
That we can read in the genes the history of the partnership be-
tween chloroplasts and plants means that we should also be able to
detect plant, viral, and bacterial genes in the human genome—if they
were there. Viral genes are certainly there, but they’re not from plant
viruses or bacteriophage. They’re from viruses that infect animals and
humans. It is true that a handful of human genes do look more like
bacterial genes than like any other kinds of genes. When the human
genome was first sequenced, it was reported that there were about 200
human genes that might have come directly from bacteria—out of the
more than 30,000 genes in the human genome. After more investiga-
tion that number was reduced by half, then three-quarters. Some of
the candidate bacterial genes turned out to be what they appeared to
be: genes from bacteria that had contaminated the sequence analysis
and were not part of the human genome at all. The experts are still
arguing—and probably will for a while—about how to interpret the
rest. Are they due to horizontal gene transfer from bacteria to humans?
Or do they look out of place because all of their other relatives were
lost over the course of evolution? It seems more and more likely that
the relatives do exist, but just haven’t yet been detected. As more and
more animal genomes are sequenced and searched the number of such
genes becomes smaller and smaller. Relatives of the candidate genes
keep turning up.
So despite all of the opportunities cells have had to exchange genes,
genomes maintain their identities. Rather than being surprised that
there are bacterial genes in our genomes, we should perhaps be sur-
prised that there are so few of them.

One set of bacterial genes is often singled out in reports on the
safety of genetically modified foods—such as the reports by the Soci-
ety of Toxicologists in 2003, the American Medical Association in 2000,
and the World Health Organization and U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organization in both 2000 and 2001. These genes are treated as being
somehow different, somehow more suspicious. These are genes that
make the bacteria resistant to antibiotic drugs.
Antibiotic-resistance genes were, from the beginnings of genetic
engineering, commonly used as markers to identify the plant cells that
had picked up the new DNA. When Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer
patented their gene-splicing technique in 1980, they pointed out that a
crucial step was being able to separate the transformed cells carrying
the recombinant DNA from the parent cells. By linking an antibiotic-
resistance gene to the gene to be introduced, and then growing the cells
in petri dishes containing the antibiotic, it was easy to pick out the cells
that got the new genes: they were the only ones that survived on the
antibiotic.
Antibiotic resistance wasn’t the only marker Cohen and Boyer sug-
gested. Resistance to heavy metals, or an ability to manufacture a cer-
tain amino acid or another growth factor, would also mark the
transformed cells as different. The antibiotic-resistance markers, how-
ever, were easy to work with and they became a standard tool. When
introducing new genes into plants, the marker gene used most often
was one that conferred resistance to kanamycin, an antibiotic rarely
used in human medicine.
As crops developed using these new techniques got closer to the
marketplace, alarms were raised, both inside the scientific community
and by such groups as Consumers Union (publisher of Consumer Re-
ports magazine). Could eating antibiotic-resistance genes in food in-
crease the rate at which harmful bacteria became resistant to the
antibiotics that doctors depend on to cure diseases? The issue wasn’t
that eating an antibiotic-resistance marker gene could make a person
resistant to—and therefore unable to be cured by—antibiotics. No one
suggested that. The fear was that the ability to survive a dose of antibi-
otics would be transferred from the person’s food to the bacteria that
normally live inside a person’s gut—again, that hypothetical horizon-
tal gene transfer—and that resistance would then spread from an in-
testinal bacterium to disease-causing bacteria.
Theoretically, such a possibility exists, conceded a 2000 report on
agricultural biotechnology by the Subcommittee on Basic Research of
the U.S. House of Representative’s Committee on Science. “But it is
exceedingly unlikely,” the report continued, “because it demands nu-
merous steps, each of which also is highly unlikely.” The resistance gene
would have to escape the plant cell, yet not be degraded by saliva and
stomach acids. It would have to make contact with a bacterium, avoid
being cut to pieces by the bacterium’s restriction enzymes, and recom-
bine with the bacterial chromosome in just the right place and in just
the right way to be inserted.
But that’s only the first step, because the intestinal bacterium
would then, in a separate horizontal transfer, have to pass that very
gene on to a bacterium with a different lifestyle, one that caused a dis-
ease that a doctor would need to treat with the drug in question. For
the kanamycin-resistance gene, that means tuberculosis, one of the few
diseases occasionally treated with kanamycin (which has substantial
enough side effects in people to be used only as a drug of last resort).
This second horizontal gene transfer, too, is rather unlikely, particu-
larly in countries with modern sanitation systems, where surviving gut
bacteria are eliminated in sewage treatment plants.
Considerable effort has been invested in trying to detect such a
transfer—so far without success. The U.K.’s GM Science Review Panel,
formed by Margaret Beckett, the Secretary of State for the Environ-
ment, Food, and Rural Affairs, published a report in 2003 summariz-
ing nearly 20 scientific studies on horizontal gene transfer. In none of
them was such a heritable horizontal transfer detected. Yet the percep-
tion remains that antibiotic-resistance marker genes can move out of
food and into a gut bacterium and cause a health problem.
The researchers’ response has been quite practical. They have de-
vised different approaches, and identified different markers. For ex-
ample, the gene from jellyfish that codes for a green fluorescent protein
has been used as a marker. Cells that contain the gene coding for the
fluorescent protein (together with the gene being introduced) look
green under ultraviolet light. Cells that failed to take up and insert the
new gene remain dark. Another approach uses the sugar mannose. Or-
dinary plant cells growing in petri dishes are fed the sugars sucrose or
glucose for energy. Transformed cells, by contrast, survive when fed
another sugar called mannose, because they have received a gene that
can convert mannose into glucose. Without that gene, the cells starve.
A third approach is to remove the antibiotic marker after it has served
its purpose and before the plant is propagated.
It is worth noting that some of the most common genetically
modified food plants never did contain an antibiotic marker. In
Roundup Ready and other herbicide-tolerant crops, the herbicide it-
self was used to select the plant cells that had picked up the new genes
and to eliminate the cells that didn’t. The herbicide was simply added
to the petri dish together with the transformed plant cells. The cells
that survived were the ones that had incorporated the herbicide-resis-
tance gene.
-----------
Another DNA sequence that has been singled out as being some-
how different is the CaMV 35S promoter. The idea that crops pro-
duced using the CaMV 35S promoter could cause problems for plants
and people seems to have come from an article published by the jour-
nal Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease in 1999. “Cauliflower Mo-
saic Viral Promoter—A Recipe for Disaster” was written by Mae-Wan
Ho and Angela Ryan of the Department of Biological Sciences in the
U.K.’s Open University, together with Joe Cummins, a retired professor
of genetics at the University of Western Ontario. It is an opinion piece,
which means that it wasn’t subjected to peer review, the process by
which journals assess the logic and scientific validity of what they pub-
lish. Mae-Wan Ho is a founder of the Institute of Science in Society,
whose mission, according to its website, is to “work for social responsi-
bility and sustainable approaches in science.” Ho’s biography on the
website says that she has a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Hong Kong
University and is “a leading exponent of a new science of the organism
which has implications for holistic health and sustainable systems.”
Among her writings is “The Golden Rice—An Exercise in How Not to
Do Science,” in which she called Ingo Potrykus’s Golden Rice “a useless
application.” It would not provide better nutrition for the poor, she
argued; it was “worse than telling them to eat cake.”
The CaMV 35S promoter is widely used. According to Michael
Hansen of Consumers Union, “all GE [genetically engineered] crops
on the market contain it.” The reason is simple: all genes need pro-
moters. Without a promoter, a gene can’t be transcribed into messen-
ger RNA. If it is not transcribed, it can’t be translated into a protein.
That is, a gene simply doesn’t work without a promoter. But the tran-
scription machinery in a plant cell is different from that in a bacterial
cell; the promoters that work in plant cells are different from those
found in bacteria. To add a bacterial gene to a plant requires adding a
promoter that will work in a plant cell. The CaMV 35S promoter does.
To work well, as Beachy found out in his first experiments with viral
coat protein genes, a promoter also has to direct a plant to produce an
effective amount of the transcript. The CaMV 35S promoter works
well in plants, ensuring that the gene is transcribed often. It is also
expressed in many different plant tissues throughout the plant’s life.
For these reasons it quickly became popular among molecular biolo-
gists. It’s reliable, so it has been used extensively.
Like Ho, Hansen believes the CaMV 35S promoter is “unstable”
and will, in addition to the job it was meant to do, activate some “nasty
dormant genetic material.” It can cause “large-scale genomic rearrange-
ments,” say Ho and her colleagues. It could activate dormant viruses,
and perhaps even generate new ones. The “promiscuity” of the CaMV
promoter could cause it to trigger cancer. Ho and her colleagues are
particularly alarmed by the fact that plants have lots of transposons—
jumping genes—in their DNA. They say: “The fact that plants are
‘loaded’ with potentially mobile elements can only make things worse.”
Most transposons in plants, as Barbara McClintock found in corn, are
silent or asleep—Ho calls them “tamed.” She and her colleagues worry
that the 35S promoter might somehow awaken them and therefore
“destabilize the transgenic DNA,” and allow it to “generate more exotic
invasive elements.” They conclude that all transgenic plants—those in
which a gene has been transferred from another organism—should be
immediately withdrawn from commercial use. “The available evi-
dence,” they say, “clearly indicates that there are serious potential haz-
ards associated with the use of the CaMV promoter.” But there is no
such evidence.
The finding that frightened Ho and Hansen came from a study
published in Plant Journal in 1999. The study reported that the CaMV
promoter contained a site that is cut-and-pasted with other DNA more
often than usual. The researchers called that site a recombination
hotspot. The hotspot was very close to the end of the promoter. Break-
ing the DNA at such a hotspot would most likely disrupt the promoter’s
activity. But being easily disrupted does not mean that the CaMV pro-
moter is unstable or that it poses a hazard. If the promoter is dis-
rupted—separated from the gene—the gene does not work. The plant
does not express the trait, such as virus resistance, sought by the plant
breeder. Such a plant, in a breeder’s eye, is a loser, a cull. It is discarded.
No matter which promoter is used, precisely where the DNA is
inserted into a plant’s genome is more or less random. A few insertions
affect the plant’s ability to grow and be productive. These plants, or
their progeny, are discarded as well. For this reason, breeders create
many transformed lines. They cross the transformed plants to varieties
that perform well, then evaluate the progeny in the greenhouse and the
field. They check each generation to make sure that it expresses the
new trait. The best plants in the field trials are saved; the rest are dis-
carded. Just as Luther Burbank burned tens of thousands of rejected
blackberry bushes, the developer of a virus-resistant squash will grow
and select plants for 5 to 10 generations or more, weeding out the
underperformers. Among those rejected, obviously, will be any plant
in which the inserted DNA causes a lethal mutation. Even if a het-
erozygote that contains a good copy of the mutated gene grows well,
those that have two copies of such a gene will not grow at all or will die
before setting seed. Such plant families are discarded. Even small ef-
fects on the plant’s growth rate or its yield are noticed and, if deleteri-
ous, cause the breeder to cull. The new trait must be expressed and it
must continue to be expressed in subsequent generations. In fact, one
of the biggest problems for breeders is not that crops created through
molecular techniques acquire extraordinary new traits—that “nasty
dormant genetic material” is turned on—but just the opposite. The
newly introduced genes tend to turn off after a few generations.
Could the CaMV 35S promoter activate something nasty? If it is
nasty enough to affect the plant’s ability to grow and produce a good
crop, the plant and its siblings and progeny will be discarded. Could it
awaken dormant viruses, as Ho and her colleagues assert? Thousands
of copies of dormant viruses have been identified in plant genomes,
and their gene sequences have been analyzed. The viruses are defective
in ways that make it impossible for a promoter to turn them on. They
contain single base changes, and usually short insertions and deletions,
that make them gibberish to the protein-making machinery—with or
without a strong promoter. Moreover, even if such an “activation”—
however unlikely—were to happen in a plant, the result would be that
this one plant would suffer from a viral infection. If the virus stunted
the plant’s growth or reduced its yield, this plant too—or its prog-
eny—would be discarded.
The charge that the CaMV 35S promoter could cause cancer was
constructed in the following way. Ho and her colleagues call the CaMV
promoter “promiscuous” because it works in plants, yeast, algae, and
bacteria. “It has the possibility of promoting inappropriate over-ex-
pression of genes in all species to which it happens to be transferred,”
they claim, adding, “One consequence of such inappropriate over-ex-
pression of genes may be cancer.” That is quite a leap of logic, and it
rests on no facts.
Because the CaMV promoter works in plants, yeast, algae, and bac-
teria does not mean that it is expressed in human cells. Indeed, it
doesn’t work particularly well other than in plants. Even if it did work
in humans, to cause cancer it would not only have to get into a human
cell, it would have to insert itself into the human genome in just the
right spot to turn on a cancer gene. Lots of cancer-causing genes have
been identified and sequenced, along with their promoters. There are
indeed rearrangements of human chromosomes that bring a promoter
together with a cancer-causing gene. But none of them are plant pro-
moters, despite the fact that humans have, over the centuries, eaten a
lot of plant viruses in their food.
CaMV 35S is naturally found in the cauliflower mosaic virus. A
cauliflower—or a cabbage or broccoli or any other of the brassicas—
infected with cauliflower mosaic virus often doesn’t show any symp-
toms. The plants might be stunted. Sometimes the veins in the leaves
of a cauliflower look clear or are banded in green. On the leaves of
certain turnip varieties, particularly one called Just Right, the virus pro-
duces clear spots making the leaf look mottled. On cabbages and Chi-
nese cabbages, black specks called pepper spot or fly speck can develop
after the vegetable has been picked, although some scientists believe
these spots are caused by the turnip mosaic virus, a related virus that
often infects the plants at the same time. The virus is spread by aphids
from a number of weed hosts, including mustard, penny cress,
shepherd’s purse, charlock, and chickweed. “Management is difficult,”
notes a flyer from the University of California at Davis. If the edges of
fields are not conscientiously weeded, the crops will most likely be in-
fected. If the cauliflower or broccoli head shows no sign of infection
(and generally it doesn’t), it is sold, cooked, and eaten, along with
its viruses.
Ho and her colleagues assert that the viral DNA, and particularly
the CaMV 35S promoter, in a virus-infected cauliflower is somehow
different from the CaMV 35S in a genetically modified plant. The
CaMV 35S promoter in the latter is “naked,” they say, and it is known
that human cells take up naked DNA. But, in fact, the CaMV 35S pro-
moter is much less naked in a plant cell than it is in the original virus.
A virus is generally a piece of DNA (or RNA) wrapped in a protein
coat. By contrast, the DNA in a plant is hidden inside a cellulose box
(the plant cell itself), inside the membrane-bound nucleus, and
wrapped up in proteins inside of chromosomes. The CaMV promoter
is much better dressed in a plant cell than it was in the virus.
What’s more, the CaMV 35S promoter is much more dilute in the
plant than it is in the virus. In the virus, the CaMV 35S promoter con-
stitutes roughly 10 percent of the virus’s whole genome. (The length of
the promoter used varies between 350 and 1,200 base pairs; the whole
CaMV genome is 8,000 base pairs.) Put into corn, the same promoter
is only about 0.004 percent of the 2.5 billion base pairs in the corn
genome. In other words, one cauliflower cell might release hundreds
of viruses, and each of those virus particles will contain a CaMV 35S
promoter. But if that promoter were in a corn cell instead, that cell
would have just two copies: one in the paternal genome and one in the
maternal genome. So on both grounds, eating a virus-infected head of
cauliflower brings us into contact with much more of the CaMV 35S
promoter than eating an ear of genetically modified corn. Eating cauli-
flower isn’t high on the list of cancer-causing behaviors.
-------------
If eating genes isn’t hazardous, then, are genetically modified foods
safe to eat? That depends on the gene or genes added. But more im-
portantly, it depends on the food itself. As political scientist Robert
Paarlberg notes in his book The Politics of Precaution: Genetically Modi-
fied Crops in Developing Countries, “Eating any food can be dangerous.”
Many familiar foods naturally contain toxic chemicals—poisons
the plant uses to defend itself against insects and browsing animals.
Lima beans contain a chemical that breaks down during digestion into
hydrogen cyanide, which is poisonous. Toxic psoralens in celery cause
skin rashes. Moreover, psoralen cross-links the strands of DNA to each
other, which can cause cancer. A chemical in cauliflower can make the
thyroid enlarge. Carrots contain a nerve poison and a hallucinogen.
Peaches and pears promote goiters. Strawberries contain a chemical
that prevents blood from clotting and can lead to uncontrollable
bleeding. Peas, beans, cereals, and potatoes contain lectins, which cause
nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, as do the glycoalkaloids also found in
potatoes. Mushrooms, squash, cucumbers, chickpeas, mustard, manioc,
olives, coffee, and tea all contain chemicals that are toxic to humans.
Yet people generally know from experience how to prepare and eat
these foods safely. Few even know about the toxins, because they are
present at levels too low to harm someone eating a varied diet. (You
would have to eat 400 carrots at a time to receive a toxic dose of nerve
poison.) But some foods contain enough of a harmful chemical to be
toxic in the amounts ordinarily consumed. By trial and error over mil-
lennia, people have learned to eliminate the toxins while preparing the
food. In the Andes bitter potatoes are detoxified through freeze-dry-
ing. In Mexico and the American Southwest they are dipped in clay.
Both methods keep the glycoalkaloids from causing stomach pains and
vomiting.
Manioc, from which cassava meal is ground, “is more poisonous
than the potato,” noted Jack Harlan in The Living Fields. “It contains
cyanogenic glycosides which when broken down by enzymes release
prussic acid, HCN, one of the most deadly compounds known to man.”
To be safely eaten, a manioc tuber must be peeled, grated, and pressed
to expel the juice. The meal must be sun dried, fermented, or heated
overnight until all possible HCN is formed. Then, when the cassava
cake is cooked, the HCN is destroyed by the heat. To eat olives or olive
oil, the extremely bitter oleuropein must first be pressed out—the ancient
Romans used it as a weed killer and insecticide; it is now considered a
pollutant. Yet olive oil, cassava, and potatoes are not only considered to
be safe foods, they are staple foods on which cultures depend.
Because proving “a complete absence of danger is,” in Paarlberg’s
words, “beyond the capability of experimental science,” the practical
definition of a safe food has long been based on experience. “If a food
has been a familiar component of the human diet for some time with-
out any known adverse effects,” Paarlberg explains, “it comes to be ‘gen-
erally recognized as safe’—or GRAS, to use the terminology of the
United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).”
A novel food can achieve GRAS status if it can be shown to be
chemically equivalent to a food with which we are already familiar.
Such was the case with canola oil when it was approved for sale in the
United States in 1987. Canola oil was the result of a conventional breed-
ing project to modify rapeseed, Brassica napus. Cooking oils pressed
from the seeds had been popular until nutritional experiments in the
1940s showed that erucic acid, one of the major fatty acids in rapeseed
oil, was toxic. By 1968 Canadian plant breeders had reduced the levels
of erucic acid in rapeseed oil dramatically. In 1974, having coined the
term canola (from Canadian Oil) to describe varieties containing less
than 2 percent erucic acid, they began the process of marketing canola
oil in the United States.
Yet the new canola oil was not equivalent to the familiar—and
harmful—rapeseed oil. Nor did it compare exactly with any other com-
mon vegetable oil, because oils vary considerably depending on the
plant and its growing conditions. Instead the Canadian breeders com-
pared the individual fatty acids in canola oil to the fatty acids in soy,
corn, peanut, safflower, sunflower, and olive oils. They checked toxico-
logical databases and did feeding studies in both animals and humans.
They—and the FDA, which accorded it GRAS status in 1987—con-
cluded that canola oil was safe.
Canola oil was used as a case study when the question of how best
to assess the safety of new genetically modified foods was discussed by
the international working group called together by the Organisation
for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) in the early
1990s. Thirty countries belong to the OECD, including 23 in Europe,
Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Canada, and the United
States. The process they agreed upon depends on the idea of familiar-
ity or, to use the FDA’s term, substantial equivalence. As members of
the Food Directorate of Health Canada recently wrote, “Stated most
simply, substantial equivalence encourages investigators to compare a
product which they have to assess with one with which they are already
familiar.”
Substantial equivalence is often misunderstood. For example,
Michael Pollan in the popular book The Botany of Desire writes, “The
Food and Drug Administration told me that, because it operates on
the assumption that genetically modified plants are ‘substantially
equivalent’ to ordinary plants, the regulation of these foods has been
voluntary since 1992.” Pollan’s errors are common ones. As a 2002
handbook for scientists, Genetically Modified Crops: Assessing Safety,
points out, such criticisms follow from “the mistaken perception that
the determination of substantial equivalence was the end point of a
safety assessment rather than the starting point.” The end point in the
United States is GRAS status—the food is generally recognized as safe.
To reach that point plant breeders compare their new crop with one
with which they are familiar, that is, a popular variety of the same plant.
They look for differences in how well and where the two crops grow, as
well as for changes in levels of nutrients and toxic chemicals in the
food. As a group of botanists and nutritionists writing in Nature Biotechnology
pointed out in 2002, “Only those plants that meet the most
stringent performance and safety criteria will advance to the regula-
tors’ desks where the results of the safety studies will be independently
assessed.”
The first part of this assessment is one that plant breeders have
been performing—voluntarily—for years. (The fact that the assess-
ment is voluntary has nothing to do with the idea of substantial equiva-
lence, as Pollan implied.) When the colorful sweet corn called Indian
Summer—whose red, white, yellow, and purple kernels intensify in
color when cooked—and the gourmet orange-fleshed watermelon
called New Queen were developed in the late 1990s, for example, they
were tested through voluntary field trials overseen by All-America Se-
lections. The judges were horticultural professionals; the site of each
trial was a garden at a university, a seed company, or a horticultural
institution. There Indian Summer and New Queen were grown side by
side with the crops most like them then on the market. The judges
compared such traits as yield, time of harvest, and how easy they were
to grow. They looked at the plants’ resistance to pests and diseases, and
marked down idiosyncrasies about each plant’s shape and growth hab-
its (for instance, New Queen needs 9 feet of garden space, while Indian
Summer has to be isolated from any other corn pollen). They judged
each crop’s taste by eating it and its quality by how it looks and keeps. A
crop that outperforms its closest market rival—as both Indian Sum-
mer and New Queen did—is given the stamp of an All-America Selec-
tions Winner.
The second step in determining substantial equivalence is new. As
the authors of Genetically Modified Crops: Assessing Safety note, “Nor-
mally, new varieties of foods and crops have not been subjected to tra-
ditional toxicological testing.” Determining if the bright colors of
Indian Summer and New Queen marked a rise—or fall—in the level
of a nutrient or a toxic chemical was not part of the All-America Selec-
tions trial or any other official test. As Jim Maryanski of the FDA notes,
“This is in contrast to what is done with engineered varieties, where
there are far more tests being done for nutrients, toxins, vitamins and
minerals, and so forth.”
In the late 1960s Wilford Mills of the Pennsylvania State Univer-
sity crossed the popular potato variety Delta Gold with a wild potato
relative from Peru. He called the new variety Lenape. The wild genes
made Lenape highly resistant to attack by insects and potato blight.
“Lenape was a wonderful potato,” remembers Mills’s colleague Herb
Cole. “It chipped golden.” A Pennsylvania potato chip manufacturer
earmarked it as a favorite. A potato breeder in Ontario thought Lenape
would be a good variety for early potatoes, the kind harvested young
and boiled with peas. “He cooked up a batch of potatoes and peas,”
Cole said, telling the story in 2003, “and he got very nauseous. He fig-
ured it was just an accident, so he cooked up some more the next week.
He got even sicker.” He asked a biochemist at his university to analyze
the potatoes. It turned out that they were exceedingly high in
glycoalkaloids, the potato’s natural toxins. He reported the results to
Mills, who enlisted Cole in analyzing the variety further. “The result
was that Penn State recalled the Lenape potato,” Cole said.
Lenape had been released as a public variety, not patented. Recall-
ing it meant contacting every grower of seed potatoes and requesting
that they not market Lenape seed tubers. Cole and Mills did so. “But
some of Lenape’s heritage has carried forward and been bred into other
varieties used today,” Cole added. A list of potato cultivars compiled by
the crop and soil science department of Michigan State University in-
cludes Lenape in the parentage of 13 varieties. “In making the cross,”
Cole concluded, “Bill did what all the people opposed to biotechnol-
ogy say you ought to do. He went back to the origins of the potato and
brought along genes for insect and disease resistance. He also brought
along genes for glycoalkaloids.” But he didn’t know it.
There were no such surprises when Roundup Ready soybeans were
first eaten. Before any were marketed they were compared with regular
soybeans to see if there were differences either in the raw seeds or in
toasted soybean meal. Monsanto’s researchers checked the fatty acid
composition of the oil and its total quantity. They looked at the
amounts of fiber, ash, and water, and compared the carbohydrates and
proteins. They gave special attention to chemicals typically found in
soybeans that could be toxic at higher levels or act as antinutrients.
They did feeding studies in rats, chickens, catfish, and cattle to show
that there were no nutritional differences between Roundup Ready soy
and its market rivals. They found no substantial differences.
Other scientists reported in 1999 that Roundup Ready soybeans
contained 12 to 14 percent less of a substance, called isoflavone, that
might help prevent heart disease, breast cancer, and osteoporosis. Still
a third group of scientists, though, found that Roundup Ready soy
contained too much isoflavone—enough to cause uterine cancer in
laboratory mice. According to scientists from Colorado State Univer-
sity, the difference among the three results is due to environmental
conditions, “the kind of variation in isoflavone levels that can occur
from year to year. . . . Wine afficionados know that the weather can
influence the quality of grapes, causing ‘good’ years and ‘bad’ years for
wine.” The same is true for soybeans. Monsanto’s experiments are the
most trustworthy, in terms of assessing the safety of the crop, the Colo-
rado State researchers confirmed, because Monsanto grew both kinds
of soybeans, the conventional ones and the genetically engineered ones,
in the same fields. With the two types growing side by side, the effects
of the weather can be discounted. Neither of the other experiments com-
pared crops from the same field grown in the same season. As
Genetically Modified Crops: Assessing Safety concludes, “The choice of
the comparator is therefore crucial to the effective application of sub-
stantial equivalence in establishing the safety of a GMO-derived food.”
Some critics of genetically modified food, such as Michael Hansen
of Consumers Union, want to see plant breeders do more. In a chapter
in the 2001 volume Genetically Modified Organisms in Agriculture: Eco-
nomics and Politics, he argued that the FDA should require plant breed-
ers to identify the total number of copies of each gene they insert into a
plant, the location of each one on a chromosome, the structure of each
insert, including a complete genetic map and the full DNA sequence,
and the sequence of at least 10,000 base pairs of DNA on either side of
it. He further believes that the FDA must demand evidence of both the
structural and functional stability of the insert over multiple plant gen-
erations. In 2003 the FDA included Hansen on a committee to review
their guidelines. Jim Maryanski was asked specifically if there was any
case, out of the 50 or more that the FDA has dealt with so far, in which
knowledge about the insertion site said anything of value about food
safety. Maryanski’s answer was a resounding “No.”
To someone familiar with the genomes of plants, suggesting such
requirements is puzzling. Even two inbred strains of the same crop will
show differences in their gene sequences. Rearrangements and trans-
positions are quite common. As for stability, hybrids—whether cre-
ated through new methods or old—are not stable over time. After a
while they decline in performance—leaving the market looking for the
next new variety. Wide crosses, too, trigger instability. Nor are these
necessarily the work of scientists and plant breeders. Some simply hap-
pen naturally, such as the distant crosses that gave rise to our contem-
porary strains of wheat. Avraham Levy and his collaborators at the
Weizmann Institute in Israel have recreated those crosses and studied
what happens to the genes and the genomes. They found many genetic
changes in these wide hybrids: genes shut down, transposons were ac-
tivated, and many genes were simply deleted.
At the molecular level, instability is a fact of life. Making sure the
DNA around the new gene doesn’t change—as demanded by
Hansen—doesn’t provide any information about the safety of the food.
The FDA advisory committee came to the conclusion that having more
information about the inserted gene and the DNA sequence surround-
ing it wasn’t nearly as important as having more information about
the chemical composition of the food produced from the plant.
Indeed, plant geneticists have been surprised at how few gene in-
sertions have a visible effect on plants. Scientists studying the little
laboratory weed Arabidopsis thaliana have used Agrobacterium to make
thousands upon thousands of T-DNA insertions in and near genes to
see what effect disrupting a particular sequence has on the plant. Most
of the time, inserting a new gene has no effect at all; the plants grow
normally. A few insertions cause mutations, but for every hundred only
one or two make a visible change in how the plant looks, grows, or
reproduces.
Gene-activation libraries have been made in which the T-DNA has
a CaMV 35S promoter at its very end to activate genes. In these experi-
ments scientists are doing quite deliberately what Mae-Wan Ho feared
the 35S promoter might do on its own. To the investigators’ disap-
pointment, most of the insertions don’t have any effect. The same is
true of transposon insertions—most don’t cause much change. The
vast majority of plants with new insertions—and their offspring, too—
are quite normal.
How a plant grows and reproduces is simply not as sensitive to the
disruption or activation of any one gene as we might fear. These ex-
periments tell us—if we haven’t yet learned it from irradiating plants,
culturing them, and treating them with chemical mutagens—that
plants and their information storage systems are quite robust. A gene’s
location, while not unimportant, is less important than what the gene
is and what it codes for. Nor is the loss of a gene necessarily a catastro-
phe. Many genes are represented by several copies—sometimes hun-
dreds of copies. Though each copy might be a bit different, they can
often cover for each another so that the loss of one copy goes unno-
ticed. There can also be more than one way to carry out a needed bio-
chemical function; if one route is blocked, another is often available.
The contemporary molecular plant breeder can be confident that
a corn plant with an extra gene is still a corn plant—a fact that Luther
Burbank simply took for granted. And if an insertion is bad for the
plant, the contemporary breeder does precisely what Burbank did—
throws the plant out. But modern breeders have analytical tools avail-
able to them that Burbank didn’t have. They can analyze the proteins,
nucleic acids, fats, and starches, as well as all of the many molecules
(called secondary metabolites) that the genetically modified plant
makes. They can compare this analysis to the chemical profile of the
variety from which the plant was derived and ask, Is this the same plant,
except for that one protein encoded by the added gene?
Calgene’s FlavrSavr tomato was the first genetically modified whole
food. When Calgene brought it to the FDA in 1992, the tomato was
subjected to $2 million-worth of testing by the FDA on top of the test-
ing done by Calgene. In a public meeting the FDA scientists brought
the results of their extensive and sophisticated chemical analyses to a
panel of external advisors; the panel included representatives of public
interest groups and industry, as well as scientists whose specialties
ranged from nutrition to basic plant science. The concluding slide of
the FDA’s presentation had a simple message: Calgene’s transgenic to-
mato . . . is a tomato.