Silence of the Frankenfoodies - They care about turnips, not people

National Review, August 20, 2001 by Jonah Goldberg

'This warfare against nature must end once and for all," Michael Fox declared at a rally. "We are very clever little simians, aren't we? Manipulating the bases of life and thinking we're little gods." Fox-not the actor, but the senior scholar for bioethics at the Humane Society- later told a newspaper that genetic research violates "the sanctity of life and may be regarded as an act of violence."

Alas, Michael Fox wasn't referring to embryonic-stem-cell research and the sanctity of human life. Rather, he was referring to the far greater holiness of the turnip. Indeed, Fox and his compatriots in the various anti-biotech, anti-"Frankenfood," and anti-globalization movements have been completely silent during all of the furor over embryonic-stem-cell research. Odder still, the media seem not to have noticed.

Imagine if, in the last two years, pro-life groups had smashed, burned, or otherwise destroyed about 50 labs and facilities involved in research on embryonic stem cells. Al Hunt would have cartoon smoke coming out of his ears. On the Senate floor, Hillary Clinton would demand to know why George W. Bush hadn't yet federalized the National Guard. Kate Michelman's head would be spinning a complete 360 degrees.

Well, in recent years various fringe-and not-so-fringe-groups have been doing exactly that, but against biotech facilities. While Greenpeace activists merely shut down supermarkets and coffeehouse chains for selling "biohazard" food products, other groups take nastier action. With names like "Seeds of Resistance" and the "Bolt Weevils," these cadres go around burning university labs and chopping down research crops. In Britain, even clothing stores offering apparel made from enhanced cotton are being threatened with violence. So far, of the mainstream environmental groups, only Environmental Defense has gone out of its way to denounce these violent radicals.

After destroying a corn crop-setting back years of research-Seeds of Resistance boasted that they'd sent "a message to those who seek to benefit from the risky endeavor of genetically engineering the food supply." The Bolt Weevils recently declared that "crops, research facilities, and corporate offices are all sources of this technological threat and should be targeted." In a typical untraceable e-mail "communique," one outlaw pro-carrot group announced: "All of a sudden 'venture capitalist' scum realize that biotechnology is not such a great investment and they flee with their bags of cash with them. . . . Our view is that if corporations, governments, and universities have any relationship to biotechnology, they are targets."

Unless, that is, the biotechnology is directed at tampering with human beings; then, these groups are silent. It appears that extremism in defense of potatoes is no vice, but extremism in defense of human beings is no virtue. Why? There are several answers. When pressed, the anti-Frankenfood crowd says that biotech for human beings and biotech for apples and oranges are, well, a case of apples and oranges. With food, the technology in question transplants genes from one species to another in order to grow a better cauliflower. With human beings, the technology in question-stem-cell manipulation-involves destroying a human embryo in the hope of being able to grow a better spleen or liver, albeit without the aid of genes from another species.

Such subtlety of distinction is, however, almost entirely missing in the rhetoric of the opponents of genetically modified food; their language is typically laced with more religious and spiritual hyperbole than that of many pro-lifers. They insist that we must, e.g., "protect the fabric of life," "stop playing God," "preserve the natural order," and so on.

But there are two much more fundamental reasons for the conspicuous silence of the anti-biotech Left on stem-cell research, the most publicly debated scientific ethical question in a generation. The first, quite simply, is that, increasingly, the Greens don't like people. You can't be accused of tampering with the "sanctity" of human life when human beings are anything but sanctified. At the same rally where Michael Fox declared his concern for "preserving the sanctity of life," he also pronounced that "the only acceptable application of genetic engineering is to develop a genetically engineered form of birth control for our own species."

The Green movement is rife with anti-human ideology. A mainstream school textbook reflects this bias: "As human activity interferes with the earth's capacity to maintain a maximum range of tolerances for life, history traces the roots of degrading activity to: the advent of agriculture and the rise of civilization; the Judeo-Christian view of human beings as having domination over the earth; the industrial and scientific revolutions; and the rise of capitalism."

Indeed, the only species the enviros would like to see endangered is ours. A writer for Wild Earth magazine summed it up nicely. "Voluntary human extinction," he wrote, "will solve every problem on Earth, social and environmental." The founder of the "Voluntary Human Extinction Movement" told The Economist, "I realized that the best thing for the planet would be for us to phase ourselves out completely." The San Francisco Chronicle recently reported on the growing trend among young men in the environmentalist movement to have vasectomies before they have any children. Bill McKibben, the noted environmental writer, wrote an entire book-Maybe One: A Case for Smaller Families-describing in icky detail the rationale for and processes of getting fixed. McKibben particularly dislikes human Americans. "My daughter, 4 at this writing, has already used more stuff, added more waste to the environment, than most of the world's residents in a lifetime," he writes.