2. A Moral Code for a Finite World
By HERSCHEL ELLIOTT and RICHARD D. LAMM
The Chronicle November 15, 2002
• The ethics of the commons builds on Hardin’s idea that
the best and most humane way of avoiding the tragedy
of the commons is mutual constraint, mutually agreed
on and mutually enforced.
• Humans cannot have a moral duty to deliver the
impossible, or to supply something if the act of
supplying it harms the ecosystem to the point where life
on earth becomes unsustainable.
• Moral codes, no matter how logical and well reasoned,
and human rights, no matter how compassionate, must
make sense within the limitations of the ecosystem; we
cannot disregard the factual consequences of our
ethics.
3. Moral code
• If acting morally compromises the ecosystem, then
moral behavior must be rethought. Ethics cannot
demand a level of resource use that the ecosystem
cannot tolerate.
• Many activities are right -- morally justified -- when
only a limited number of people do them. The same
activities become wrong -- immoral – when
populations increase, and more and more resources
are exploited.
• A Moral Code for a Finite World
• By Richard Lamm Volume 14, Number 3 (Spring 2004)
• http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc
1403/article_1223.shtml
4. Fighting GMO Labeling in California is Food
Lobby’s 'Highest Priority'
• http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/08/07-5
• In case you had any doubt that California’s Prop 37—which
would require labeling of food containing genetically modified
organisms (GMOs)—is a significant threat to industry, a top food
lobby has now made it perfectly clear.
• In a recent speech to the American Soybean Association (most
soy grown in the U.S. is genetically modified), Grocery
Manufacturers Association President Pamela Bailey said that
defeating the initiative “is the single-highest priority for GMA this
year.”
5. http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/23944
• GMO Corn Headed
for US Supermarket Shelves
• SustainableBusiness.com News
• Genetically engineered sweet corn from Monsanto is headed for Walmart store
shelves, the first GE product to travel from farms directly to consumer plates.
• Other Monsanto GE foods have first been processed into animal feed, sugars,
oils, fibers and other ingredients found in a wide variety of conventional food,
says Beyond Pesticides.
• And you won't even know it, since there is no federal labeling requirement for
GMO foods in the US. The most recent attempt at labeling was removed from
the Farm Bill in late June when Congress succumbed to corporate lobbyists.
6. Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch 10/24/02
SCOTTS PUTS PLANS FOR SLOW-GROWING GRASS
ON HOLD; Company, partner hope to answer
regulators' questions, try next year BY: Michael
Hawthorne
• Scotts officials are convinced that homeowners and golf-
course operators would be eager to pay for grass that grows
slowly, withstands weed killers and requires less water.
• Allison Snow, a professor at Ohio State University conducted
a study with researchers from the University of Nebraska
and Indiana University, found that genes artificially inserted
into crop plants to fend off pests can migrate to weeds and
make them stronger.
• http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/attack-of-the-superweed-09082011.html
http://oneartworld.com/artists/P/Paul+Hoppe.html
7. Biotech grass & Lawns
http://www.organicconsumers.org/gefood/grass102902.cfm
Associated Press New York Times 10/24/02
Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch 10/24/02
• Researchers at an Oregon seed company
reported last year on tests of genetically
altered grass that genes from the altered plants
routinely spread to other varieties, and pollen
containing the genes spread farther than
researchers had predicted.
• The makers of a grass genetically designed to
help keep golf courses free of weeds have
withdrawn their application to begin selling it
after getting several questions from the
Agriculture Department.
8. Biotech grass & Lawns
http://www.organicconsumers.org/gefood/grass102902
.cfm
Associated Press New York Times 10/24/02
Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch 10/24/02
• Scotts Co. and Monsanto Co., developed the biotech
grass through a joint venture, said they will submit a new
application next year. A spokesman for the USDA's
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said the
letter was part of the routine review process and was not
prompted by biotechnology critics (The International
Center for Technology Assessment) who complained the
creeping bentgrass, can be a weed and that giving it
resistance to Roundup would make it harder to kill and
that the herbicide tolerance gene might spread to other
grassy weeds.
9. Biotech grass & Lawns
http://www.organicconsumers.org/gefood/grass102902.cfm
Associated Press New York Times 10/24/02 Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch
10/24/02
• "People who want to control it will have to
use more harmful chemicals, and (the
grass) can invade into plantations of other
turf grasses," he said. environmentalists and
the American Society of Landscape
Architects have petitioned the Agriculture
Department for more independent research
• Jim King, a spokesman for Scotts, said that
creeping bentgrass was not a type suitable
for consumer lawns and would not be sold
that way.
10. Ethics in Animal Science
Annual Meeting 2002
• The Animal Production industry has succeeded in its aim to
produce lots of good, cheap food.
• The industrialisation of animal production has created new
problems for human health, animal health and welfare, and
environmental pollution.
• The new role for animal science is to protect life from the perils of
mindless productivity. To achieve this we must be wedded to
science (and supported in our marriage), not the trophy mistress of
industry.
• Animal science lacks panoramic vision. Scientists are always
directed to focus. An unnecessary exhortation since many have
acquired tunnel vision by the completion of their PhDs.
11. UK Government Systematically Lied to the British
Public About the Mad Cow Epidemic
http://www.organicconsumers.org/meat/cjduklied.cfm
• LONDON, Oct. 26 2000 - For 10 years, British
officials consistently misled the public by
deliberately playing down the possibility that
mad-cow disease could be transmitted to
humans, an official report said today.
• The 4,000-page report cost $42 million and was
published after a three-year investigation. It took
care not to blame anyone but severely criticized
the "culture of secrecy" of the government's
response to a crisis that forced the slaughter of
almost four million cows and led to the deaths so
far of 77 Britons. The disease is thought to be
caused by putting animal protein into cow feed, a
practice since banned.
13. • In addition to the 77 who have died, seven
people are known to be suffering from a
variant of Creutzfeldt- Jakob disease that
results in progressive dementia and loss of
physical functions, leaving the brain with a
spongelike consistency. Mad-cow disease -
bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or
B.S.E. - is always fatal. Creutzfeldt-Jakob
can have an extremely long incubation – 25
years or more - and people who ate infected
beef in the early 1980's may be still at risk.
• The UK government failed to inform the
public about the new evidence because of
"a consuming fear of provoking an irrational
public scare."
14. • It was this fear that caused a government veterinary
pathologist to label "confidential" his first memo on mad-cow
disease in 1986; that led John Gummer, then the agriculture
minister, to make a show of publicly feeding a hamburger to
his 4-year-old daughter, Cordelia, in 1990;
• and that led Britain's chief medical officer in 1996 to declare,
"I myself will continue to eat beef as part of a varied and
balanced diet."
At the same time, government policy was marred by
bureaucratic bungling, a lack of coordination between
departments and the fact that the Ministry of Agriculture,
Fisheries and Food had two somewhat
contradictory missions: to protect consumers and to support
the beef industry.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/369625.stm
15. Prions
• Unlike the Brits the US has prion disease in
wild game (deer and elk) as well as
"domesticated" herds (elk farms and
millions of sheep). The carcasses of infected
animals are not burned but are eaten or
otherwise enter the food chain in order for
ranching profits to be maximized.
Prions in the wild: CWD in deer and elk
Elizabeth Williams ...
www.sgm.ac.uk/pubs/micro_today/pdf/110309.pdf
16. REboot
• We can't realistically cull all the potentially infected
American sheep and start over again with "clean" herds
because the sheep browse the same (usually BLM public
land) forage that the prion-infected wild deer and elk
browse and would just passage the disease back to the
uninfected sheep herds.
New York Times, Friday, October 27, 2000
· Deer prions could jump, study says -
JSOnline
www.jsonline.com › Features › Health
NewsShare
17. CWD
• There is evidence of CWD showing up in young deer and elk hunters, for
example, and the spread of infected game herds across growing geographical
areas [Colorado, Wyoming and now the Dakotas and game farms all over])
that indicates the problem to be obviously growing; yet it is still publicly and
officially ignored apparently out of economic concerns for the hunting and
ranching industries with the sad-sack rationalization that sheep and elk/deer
prion disease cannot be transmitted to humans...
• New York Times, Friday,
• October 27, 2000
18. Captive elk (Courtesy: Ryan Maddox,
CDC)
About CWD
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a prion disease that
affects North American cervids (hoofed ruminant
mammals, with males characteristically having antlers).
The known natural hosts of CWD are mule deer, white-
tailed deer, elk, and moose. CWD was first identified as a
fatal wasting syndrome in captive mule deer in Colorado
in the late 1960s and in the wild in 1981. It was
recognized as a spongiform encephalopathy in 1978. To
date, no strong evidence of CWD transmission to humans
has been reported. www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/cwd/
20. Ethics in Animal Science
British Society of Animal Science Annual Meeting 2002
• Hormonal manipulation of animal
production and reproduction was seen as
repulsive by European society who then
embraced organic or welfare-friendly
farming and joined animal welfare and
animal rights organisations.
• Animal Science should be directed
towards understanding the role of farmed
and wild animals in maintaining
productive, sustainable ecosystems that
meet the needs of society and the long-
term viability of the living environment.
21. Eat this or die The poison politics of food aid
Mon 30 Sept 2002, ZAMBIA/Lusaka
http://www.greenpeace.org//news/details?news
%5fid=40528
• Zambian president Levy Mwananwasa's rejection this
month of US food aid shocked the world: with child
malnutrition soaring to 59 percent in his drought-
stricken country. The US refused to mill the seed
before sending it.
• Mwananwasa thinks that the future of his country's
agricultural production is at stake. Africans fear genetic
contamination because they can trade on the GE-free
value of their grain and organically-raised livestock in
profitable EU markets. Yet over the next six months,
GMO-laced US supplies will make up at least half of
World Food Programme food aid to thirteen million
Southern Africans facing severe food crisis. Zambia's
neighbours Zimbabwe and Malawi accepted milled GE
maize.
22. Eat this or die The poison politics of food aid
Mon 30 Sept 2002, ZAMBIA/Lusaka
http://www.greenpeace.org//news/details?news%5fid=40528
• According to the Bush administration and industry it is the
environmentalists who are wrong. Not so. If the choice really
was between GE grain and starvation then clearly any food
is the preferable option -- but that's a false and cynical
picture of the choice. Is the US government acting out of
concern for the starving of Africa, or acting on behalf of a
multinational industry with a sales and image problem?
• Genetically engineered organisms are being forced on
Africa because the US can't sell them abroad, has an
economic interest in reducing its grain surplus, chooses to
deny the existence of non-GE grain supplies, and is
developing a deep imperial disdain for the opinions and laws
of other countries which contradict their own interests.
23. Eat this or die The poison politics of food aid
Mon 30 Sept 2002, ZAMBIA/Lusaka
http://www.greenpeace.org//news/details?news%5fid=40528
• Corn exports to the EU dwindled from 426 million dollars in 1995 to
one million dollars in 1999.
• The US government has increasing surpluses of corn and soy. Since
1996, the US has been subsidising exports by dumping these
genetically engineered surpluses into the UN World Food
Programme (WFP). Countries getting GM food aid in the past two
years - often in breach of national regulations - include the
Philippines, India, Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua and
Ecuador, as well as many African countries. The Genetic Engineering
industry's bet is that starvation will overcome many "developing"
countries' resistance to genetically engineered food and they will
inevitably plant them, even if it violates their country's regulations.
24. http://www.scidev.net/en/news/mexico-confirms-gm-maize-contamination.html
• The government of Mexico learned this lesson
the hard way. They forbid the planting of
genetically engineered maize. But they did import
such maize as food aid some of which was
illegally planted by campesinos in need of seed.
Researchers later discovered that genes from the
genetically engineered maize had crossed over to
conventional plants, contaminating Mexico's
globally important centre of diversity for maize.
• http://www.naturalnews.com/031295_M
exico_GMO_corn.html
25. • While starvation may be Southern Africa's greatest
immediate threat, GE foods are still an unknown
quantity when it comes to health safety.
American consumers have served as unwitting guinea
pigs for years, but scientists are still debating how to
adequately test GE foods for safe human consumption
or monitor for effects. No long-term studies exist, and
none that consider the state of a malnourished
population.
The research picture is even murkier when it comes to
understanding the effects of genetically engineered
organisms on animals and the environment. The
British Medical Association (BMA) claimed that GM
crop trials in Scotland should be halted immediately as
a "precautionary measure" to safeguard public health
in a submission to the Scottish Parliament's health
committee on Wed 20 Nov 2002. It said that concerns
are "serious enough" to justify an immediate end to the
trials.
26. Eat this or die The poison politics of food aid
Mon 30 Sept 2002, ZAMBIA/Lusaka
http://www.greenpeace.org//news/details?news%5fid=40528
• Clear rules for moving GMOs around are violated
by the current traffic in GE food aid. The Biosafety
Protocol is a UN treaty that obligates signing
nations to assess the impact of these crops before
they import them. The parties to the London
Convention on Food Aid have consistently noted
that it is preferable to provide monetary resources,
rather than aid-in-kind, to support regional buying
of appropriate foodstuffs. The EU allows aid
recipients to choose their food aid, buying it locally
if they wish. This practise can stimulate
developing economies and creates more robust
food security.
27. • Widespread support for Zambia and condemnation
of US
• A coalition of 184 NGOs (including ISIS) registered their
opposition to the way in which USAID is foisting
biotechnology on Africa during a time of famine. They
support a country’s right to refuse GM food aid and call
on USAID to untie its food aid policy to donating GM food
in kind.
• More than 140 representatives from 26 countries in
Africa signed up to a statement from African civil society
in support of Zambia’s rejection of GM food aid, and
refusing to be used as "the dumping ground for
contaminated food".
• OECD and the World Bank criticised USAID’s self-
serving agenda: "Among the big donors, the US has the
worst record for spending its aid budget on itself - 70
percent of its aid is spent on US goods and services."
28. • Oxfam condemned the
distribution of food aid
contaminated with GMOs.
• UK’s chief scientist David
King denounced the United
States’ attempts to force the
technology into Africa as a
"massive human experiment". He
questioned the morality of the
US’s desire to flood genetically
modified foods into African
countries, where people are
already facing starvation in the
coming months.
• Director-general of the UN’s
Food and Agriculture
Organisation (FAO), Jacques
Diouf, said: "We don’t need
GMOs to feed the 800 million http://agbioforum.org/v14
people who are hungry in the n3/v14n3a06-novy.htm
world today."
29. • Jean Ziegler, UN official said, "Genetically modified
organisms could pose a danger to the human organism and
public health in the medium and long term. The argument
that GMOs are indispensable for overcoming malnutrition and
hunger is not convincing."
• James Clancy, president of Canada's National Union of
Public and General Employees said, "[A]ll some folks in the
US government and business communities can think of is how
to make even more money off [Africa’s] suffering"
• Dr Charles Benbrook, leading US agronomist and former
Executive Director of the Board on Agriculture for the
US National Academy of Sciences, said, "There is no
shortage of non-GMO foods which could be offered to Zambia
and to use the needs of Zambians to score "political points"
on behalf of biotechnology was "unethical and indeed
shameless".
• Carol Thompson, a political economist at Northern
Arizona University, commented, "It is highly unethical not
to just cover the costs for milling. Tell me how much it costs
to drop one bomb on Afghanistan. Who is starving whom
here?“
30. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/
2459903.stm
• Roger Moore, goodwill ambassador for
UNICEF, said, it was "inhumane" for the US
to refuse other aid to Zambia, because of its
rejection of GM food.
• Many countries have given non-GM and
financial assistance. According to Zambian
government sources, South Africa sent 10
000 tonnes, and China, 4 000 tonnes of non
GM maize. EU gave €15 million to purchase
non-GM food. Japan also proffered financial
assistance. (See Norfolk Genetic Engineering
Network website for details
http://ngin.tripod.com/forcefeed.htm
31. Starving Zambians turn to poison plants in desperation
By Basildon Peta in Chimbe, Zambia
The Independent 09 November 2002
www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1718598.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2459903.stm
• With desperation among the rural population intensifying, people have
started using the elderly as guinea pigs to test untried and potentially
poisonous varieties of roots.
• This must be a person who is already too ill either because of hunger,
disease or age that he is going to die sooner or later anyway. If he lives
after eating the roots, we then feed them to the children. If he dies, we
won't," Mr Hamonga added.
• Other villagers experimented with the roots in a nearby small dam
before it dried up because of lack of rain. They spread the roots on top
of the water. Every living creature in the dam perished.
• By the time we reach the home of the Malambo family, a group of about
100 women and children has already assembled. They think we have
come to distribute food. "If they had known that you are only here to
hear stories of our suffering, they wouldn't have assembled."
32. US to give hungry Zambia food despite GM spat
Reuters ZAMBIA: December 9, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsi
d/18938/story.htm
• The United States, while condemning Zambia's rejection of genetically-
modified food to save its people from starvation, was reported last week
to have promised the country 30,000 tonnes of unmodified grain.
• "I am pleased to announce that the United States has secured 15,000
tonnes of sorghum and 15,000 tonnes of wheat to help Zambia in this
time of need," the government-owned Zambia Daily Mail quoted U.S.
ambassador in Lusaka Martin Brennan as saying.
• US ambassador to the United Nations food agencies Tony Hall chiefly
targeted Zambia on Thursday when he said leaders refusing food aid
should be put on trial. "People that deny food to their people, that are in
fact starving people to death, should be held responsible...for the
highest crimes against humanity in the highest courts in the world," Hall
said in Brussels.
33. Why academe gets no respect The Chronicle Nov 22, 2002
By BILLIE WRIGHT DZIECH
A mixture of idealism, arrogance, and remoteness from the
hard realities of the market causes academics to spend
other people's money without concern for the future or
consideration for those who pay the bills.
When funds are flowing freely a profusion of new projects,
programs, centers, and institutes springs up almost
overnight. It's a great success story until a budget crisis
hits. Then, the story is about support personnel whose
jobs are gone, students and faculty members left in the
cold.
Universities spend state appropriations as the money comes
in, without planning for the future. Private institutions are
bingeing on donor funds, student tuitions, and what can
be shaky endowments. Since state appropriations and
undesignated funds from the general budget and many
gifts and grants often come with "spend it or lose it"
restrictions, there is a disincentive to save money.
34. Leadership and
Ambiguity
• Cohen and March, in Leadership and Ambiguity: The American
College President, call the "organized anarchy" or "garbage
can" structure the diffused authority system of higher education
which invites waste and abuse of trust. Unlike businesses that
have clearly defined powers structures, universities have such
dispersed authority that dozens of separate units regard
themselves as virtually independent of a centralized
bureaucracy, free to act and spend as opportunities present
themselves.
35. The Chronicle of Higher Education Friday, November 15, 2002
Discipline and Punish By STANLEY FISH
• In 2001 the Board of Trustees of my university amended the
university statutes by adding a section titled "Severe
Sanctions Other Than Dismissal For Cause."
• The list of infractions under this section include "engaging in
professional misconduct in the performance of university duties or
academic activities"; "neglecting or refusing to perform reasonable
assigned academic duties"; "acting ... so as to willfully harm, threaten
physical harm to, harass or intimidate a visitor or a member of the
academic community"; and "willfully damaging, destroying or
misappropriating property owned by the university.“
• Before this the only sanction a faculty member might suffer
was dismissal for cause, and no one had actually been dismissed.
This is not surprising since the standard for dismissal is
very high.
36. Grounds for dismissal:
You have to have falsified your credentials or been
convicted of, or admitted to, a felony or have disappeared
from the scene of teaching entirely or have manufactured and
sold a controlled substance or physically assaulted a member
of the university community or engaged in sexual misconduct so
egregious that you are likely to go to jail anyway.
And even if there is evidence that you have done one of these things, you
are protected against hasty judgment by procedures so elaborate and
time consuming that the appropriate officials in your university will
either be reluctant to set them in motion or fail to execute them
properly… you decide instead to let this cup pass and adjourn to the
faculty club. One suspects that the reluctance to act is a principle
rooted in something like class prejudice. The idea is that, generally
speaking, people like us -- people who have degrees and publications
– are "naturally" responsible.
37. • In a 1994 report, the Senate Subcommittee on Tenure of the
University of Michigan Faculty Senate states its belief "that tenure
should include certain expectations and responsibilities of the faculty
member that rise above the minimal level necessary to avoid
dismissal." "We think faculty should be encouraged to meet these
responsibilities, but we are uncertain what punishment, if any, is
appropriate.“
When someone is not pulling his or her weight, the burden falls to
others who will take up the slack but with a (justifiable) sense of
unfairness. The entire operation of a department will be deformed as
everyone gets into the bad habit of working around the colleague no
one is willing to discipline. And the longer a "rogue" faculty member
"gets away with it," the more difficult it will be to turn around a
situation to which all have contributed. Irresponsible, unprofessional
behavior depends for its success on the complicity of those it
victimizes or terrorizes. He -- and it is usually though not exclusively
a "he" -- becomes stronger every time his behaviour goes
unchallenged.
38. Conduct unbecoming: International code of conduct for
biological scientists being considered. The Scientist Inc.,&
BioMed Central. Nov 12, 2002. | By Pat Hagan
UK's Royal Society is developing an international code of conduct
establishing ground rules for the responsibilities of biological
scientists' in ensuring their work is not used for the purposes of
warfare or the development of biological weapons.
It sets out an ethical framework within which all scientists are
expected to work. “It starts with the way research is funded and
managed, then to the responsibilities of supervisors, laboratory
directors and individual scientists."
The Royal Society says many are guilty of "considerable
ignorance" about agreements such as the 1972 Biological and
Toxin Weapons Convention. It's envisaged the code would also
allow for "whistle blowing" on colleagues or bosses.
39. International code for scientists
It's also likely that the code will include unspecified
penalties for those failing to adhere to its principles. "it
brings scientists closer to society. To a certain extent
science has been seen as remote from society. This a
real attempt to make scientists recognize their
responsibilities and apply this to their work.“ “in a
changing world, there is a need for scientists to be
more accountable for their actions, or even inaction.
"Part of the job of being a scientist is to be ethical. But we
live in a world where we need more and more
guidelines for things that we used to think of as
common sense. "We used to believe that because
people were scientists, doctors or teachers that they did
not possess human frailties. These things already apply
to doctors and teachers and there's no reason why
scientists should be exempt.
40. A new social contract for science Jane Lubchenco,
1998. President, American Association for the
Advancement of Science, 1996
• Objective, value-free science is being replaced by a
science in which social conditions, ethical conduct, and
identification with the research subjects are integral
components.
• This new science would include widespread involvement in,
if not a total democratisation of, science. This type of
science produces 'socially robust knowledge' with three
aspects: it is valid inside and outside the laboratory; its
validity is achieved through involving an extended group of
experts, including 'lay' experts; and thirdly this participatory-
generated knowledge is likely to be less contested.
• Externalities such as health and safety of living things,
resource and energy use and other societal goals would be
internalised in this type of science.
