How Is Science Affecting Your Life?

DEPENDING on where you live, you may have had some genetically modified (GM) food in your breakfast, lunch, or dinner today. It might have been in the form of potatoes with a built-in insect repellent or tomatoes that stay firm longer after being picked. In any case, the GM food or ingredient may not have been labeled, and your palate could hardly distinguish it from the natural one.

Even as you read these lines, such GM crops as soybeans, maize, rapeseed, and potatoes are growing in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Mexico, and the United States. According to one report, “by 1998, 25 percent of corn, 38 percent of soybeans, and 45 percent of cotton grown in the United States were genetically altered, either to make the crops resistant to weedkillers or to produce their own pesticides.” By the end of 1999, an estimated 100 million acres [40 million ha] were covered with GM crops in commercial cultivation worldwide, though not all of these are food crops.

Is genetically altered food safe for you? Do the scientific techniques used to produce GM crops pose any threat to the environment? In Europe the debate over GM foods is heating up. Said a protester from England: “My only objection to genetically modified foods is that they’re unsafe, unwanted and unnecessary.”

How Is Food Genetically Altered?

The science behind GM food is called food biotechnology—the use of modern genetics to improve plants, animals, and microorganisms for food production. Of course, the concept of tinkering with living things is almost as old as agriculture itself. The first farmer who bred his best bull with the best cow in his herd to improve the stock, instead of allowing the animals to breed randomly, was implementing biotechnology in a rudimentary sense. The first baker who used yeast enzymes to make bread rise was likewise using a living thing to produce an improved product. The one feature common to these traditional techniques was the use of natural processes to bring about changes in foods.

Modern biotechnology likewise employs living organisms to make or modify products. But unlike traditional methods, modern biotechnology allows for modifying the genetic material of organisms directly and precisely. It enables the transfer of genes between completely unrelated organisms, allowing for combinations unlikely to occur by conventional means. Breeders can now take qualities from other organisms and put them into the genome of a plant—for instance, frost tolerance from fish, disease resistance from viruses, and insect resistance from soil bacteria.

Suppose that a farmer does not want his potatoes or apples to turn brown when they are cut or bruised. Researchers come to the rescue by removing the gene that is responsible for this browning and replacing it with an altered version that blocks browning. Or let us assume that a beet grower would like to plant earlier in order to reap a better harvest. Ordinarily he couldn’t because the beets would freeze in the cold weather. Biotechnology comes into play when genes from fish that easily survive in cold water are transplanted into the beets. The result is a GM beet that can withstand temperatures as low as 20°F. [-6.5°C], more than twice as cold as the lowest temperature beets can typically withstand.

Such traits that are the result of single-gene transfers, however, have limited effectiveness. To alter more complex traits, such as growth rate or drought resistance, is quite another matter. Modern science is still unable to manipulate whole groups of genes. After all, many of these genes have not even been discovered yet.

A New Green Revolution?

Even the limited genetic modification of crops fills biotechnology’s proponents with optimism. They say that GM crops promise a new green revolution. A leader of the biotechnology industry declares that genetic engineering is “a promising tool in the effort to provide more food” to a global population that grows by about 230,000 people every day.

Already, such crops have helped to hold down the cost of food production. Food plants have been fortified with a gene that produces a natural pesticide, eliminating the need to spray clouds of toxic chemicals over acres of crops. Modified crops in the works include beans and grains with much higher levels of protein—of no small benefit to poorer parts of the world. Such “superplants” could pass their useful new genes and traits on to succeeding generations, yielding more bountiful harvests on marginal land in poor, overpopulated countries.

“There is certainly much to be said for improving the lot of the farmers of this world,” said the president of a leading biotechnology firm. “And we’ll do that—by using biotechnology to do on the molecular and single-gene level what plant breeders have been doing with ‘whole plants’ for centuries. We will create better products, that meet specific needs and will do it faster than ever before.”

However, according to agricultural scientists, the rush to promote genetic engineering as a solution to world food shortages is undermining current research on crops. Although it is less exotic, this research is more effective and could also benefit the poorer parts of the world. “We shouldn’t be driven by this unproven technology when there are many more efficient solutions to food problems,” says Hans Herren, an expert on fighting crop diseases.

Ethical Concerns

On top of possible public-health and environmental risks, some feel that the genetic modification of crops and other living organisms presents moral and ethical challenges. Scientist and activist Douglas Parr observed: “Genetic engineering crosses a fundamental threshold in the human manipulation of the planet, changing the nature of life itself.” Jeremy Rifkin, author of the book The Biotech Century, put it this way: “Once you can cross all biological boundaries, you begin to see a species as simply genetic information that is fluid. That brings us into a whole new way to conceptualise not only our relationship with nature, but how we use it.” He therefore asked: “Does life have intrinsic or just utility value? What is our obligation to future generations? What is our sense of responsibility to the creatures with which we coexist?”

Others, Prince Charles of England included, argue that transferring genes between utterly unrelated species “takes us into the realms that belong to God, and to God alone.” Students of the Bible firmly believe that God “is the source of life.” (Psalm 36:9) However, there is no real evidence that God disapproves of the selective breeding of animals and plants, something that has helped our planet to sustain the billions of people living on it. Only time will tell if modern biotechnology will harm humans and the environment. If biotechnology really does encroach upon “the realms that belong to God,” then—out of love and concern for humankind—he can reverse such developments.

Potential Dangers?

Biotechnology has moved at such a dizzying pace that neither the law nor regulating agencies can keep up with it. Research can scarcely begin to prevent unforeseen consequences from arising. A growing chorus of critics warn of unintended results, ranging from severe economic dislocation for the world’s farmers to environmental destruction and threats to human health. Researchers warn that there are no long-term, large-scale tests to prove the safety of genetically modified (GM) food. They point to a number of potential dangers.

● Allergic reaction. If a gene producing a protein that causes allergic responses ended up in corn, for instance, people who suffer from food allergies could be exposed to grave danger. Despite the fact that food-regulating agencies require companies to report whether altered food contains any problem proteins, some researchers fear that unknown allergens could slip through the system.

● Increased toxicity. Some experts believe that genetic modification may enhance natural plant toxins in unexpected ways. When a gene is switched on, besides having the desired effect, it may also set off the production of natural toxins.

● Resistance to antibiotics. As part of the genetic modification of plants, scientists use what are called marker genes to determine if the desired gene has been successfully embedded. As most marker genes provide resistance to antibiotics, critics fear that this could contribute to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance. Other scientists, however, counter that such marker genes are genetically scrambled before use, thus alleviating this danger.

● Spread of “superweeds.” One of the biggest fears is that once modified crops are planted, genes will escape via seeds and pollen to weedy relatives, creating “superweeds” that are able to resist herbicides.

● Harm to other organisms. In May 1999, researchers from Cornell University reported that monarch butterfly caterpillars that ate leaves dusted with pollen from GM corn sickened and died. While some question the validity of this study, there is still some concern that other nontargeted species could be harmed.

● Demise of safe pesticides. Among the most successful GM crops are some that contain a gene that produces a protein toxic to insect pests. However, biologists warn that exposing pests to the toxin produced by this gene will help the pests develop resistance and thus render pesticides useless.SOME persons are convinced that science holds the key to freeing mankind from many of its great enemies. They feel that hunger, poverty, sickness and perhaps even death itself may someday be conquered through science. Man’s journey to the moon has reinforced this conviction in their minds.

However, many others are now having second thoughts about what science is doing. They wonder if it is doing more harm than good in the long run. As the Melbourne Herald noted: “Vice-Admiral Hyman Rickover, whose development work made him known as the father of the U.S. nuclear submarine, warned man . . . that unbridled use of technology ‘may become a Frankenstein destroying its creator.’”

There can be no doubt that science has produced many things for man’s benefit. In the Western world science has affected the lives of almost everybody by producing things that are useful. If you look around your home you will likely find something for which science has been, at least in part, responsible—the radio, television, washing machine, electric iron, various fabrics, electric lights and a host of other things.

Properly controlled, the products of science can be a help to man. But the question many are now asking is whether science has gotten out of control. They see that science has produced things that are plaguing mankind. They wonder if the bad effects will eventually outweigh the benefits.

Effects of Chemicals

Because of their effects upon public health, many chemicals are now coming under close scrutiny by governments and other agencies. This is particularly true of chemicals used in the agricultural and food industries.

One after another of the chemical additives has had to be withdrawn from use. Examples of some are the ‘butter yellow’ dyes and the cyclamates used to sweeten foods. Even the taste enhancer, monosodium glutamate, is under suspicion. Some chemicals have produced serious damage to experimental animals.

DDT and other pesticides were at first heralded as ‘saviors,’ freeing man from dreaded diseases such as malaria and yellow fever. These pesticides also initially tended to increase crop yields by destroying insects. But now many governments have decided to phase out the use of some of these chemicals.

Why? Because it has been found that they are destroying much animal life, some species being pushed toward extinction. Contamination from DDT has spread earth wide. Traces have been found even in Antarctic animals. Indeed, it has been said that there is no water or land, or life of any kind that has not been affected by DDT. This includes man. And in experiments, heavy doses of pesticides caused serious damage to animals.

These bad effects of what was thought to be for man’s benefit have alarmed authorities. What then can be said of man’s scientific inventions that are deliberately designed to exterminate human life? Chemicals for warfare have been developed that are so lethal that only a tiny droplet on the skin will cause death. And some of the bacteria that science has cultivated can annihilate entire populations.

Harmful Effects of Machine Age

While producing things that have worked for man’s good, this scientific machine age has also produced effects that harm man. First of all, to manufacture the products designed to help man, large factories’ were needed. This resulted in people crowding together in large cities. The sad consequences of city life, its congestion and frustration, are becoming more evident each year.

Then too, many of the products produced for man’s benefit have turned into killers. In the United States alone, automobiles kill more than 50,000 persons and injure millions each year!

Also, large industrial complexes damage man’s environment. They consume huge amounts of clean air and clean water. This air is then often polluted with poisonous gases and solids belched out into the atmosphere. Much clean water is contaminated and poured into the streams and lakes, often making them unfit for use by either man or animal.

The problem is further worsened because many of the machines made in factories become polluters themselves. The automobile is a chief offender. In Tokyo, traffic policemen return regularly to headquarters for oxygen inhalation. For pedestrians, oxygen-vending machines in shops and arcades offer whiffs of oxygen for about 25 cents. And according to William Steif, a Scripps-Howard writer, “some 25 million tons of carbon monoxide go into the air of the 10 most populated areas of the United States annually from vehicles.” In New York city alone vehicles spew out more than five million tons each year!

It is said that a person breathing air that contains only 80 parts per million of carbon monoxide for over an eight-hour period will have his body’s hemoglobin affected. Hemoglobin transports oxygen to the body’s tissues and takes away wastes. The 80 parts of carbon monoxide is reported to make about one sixth of the body’s hemoglobin temporarily useless. This is equivalent to the loss of about one pint of blood.

Yet, carbon monoxide is only one of many pollutants released into the atmosphere by man’s scientific inventions. Time magazine of January 12, 1970, said: “Man is filling the air with more than 800 million tons of pollutants per year.” As a result, scientists at the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center in New York said that by about 1980 some 10,000 people will die in a metropolitan area because of pollution. The New Haven Register of December 21, 1969, reports that these scientists predicted the following: “In 10 to 15 years from now every man, woman and child in the hemisphere will have to wear a breathing helmet to survive outdoors. Streets, for the most part, will be deserted. Most animals and much plant life will be killed off.”

Then there is another harmful effect of the machine age—noise pollution. Nerve-racking sounds come from everything from power lawn mowers to jet engines. This sound level is said to be doubling about every ten years. Now it is reaching such alarming proportions that it is considered a hazard to the well-being of all exposed individuals. According to Dr. Lester Sontag of Fes Research Institute in Ohio, even unborn babies are being harmed by noise pollution.

If these unintentional effects of the machine age are so harmful and alarming, what are we to say about those instruments science has fashioned to annihilate life? What of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, missiles, tanks, bombers, submarines and a host of other weapons that have already been used to take the lives of millions of persons? Has science saved that many lives?

Medical Disappointments

Disappointment is now appearing even in medical science. The hope held out by such things as heart transplants is not being fulfilled.

‘With the advance of complicated instruments, another harmful side effect has developed—that of hospital electrocutions. At a meeting of the American Hospital Association in Chicago, Dr. Carl W. Walter stated that 1,200 people are electrocuted annually in hospitals. He noted the irony of the situation in that hospital personnel are “so concerned in life-saving of an individual patient that they never unravel the maze of wires that fills up most intensive care (power) receptacles.”

Blood transfusions, once highly regarded, are now found to be disease carriers and also a cause of death. As Dr. M. Simon of Poughkeepsie, New York, stated: “The computed annual death rate from blood transfusions now exceeds that reported for many common surgical illnesses [conditions requiring surgery] such as rectal cancer; appendicitis or intestinal obstruction.”

Growing Disenchantment

In increasing numbers, scientists themselves are beginning to question the ability of man to solve his huge problems by science. In recent months many articles have appeared in scientific journals discussing this problem.

The public is questioning science’s role even more. People in growing numbers are regarding science as a threat to health and life. They note the hideous inventions such as atomic weapons, pesticides that threaten the extinction of wildlife and endanger man’s health, chemicals such as thalidomide that were supposed to help but ended up crippling, chemical food additives that proved harmful, and the industrial pollution that is poisoning the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat.

Dr. Harvey Brooks, Harvard University’s dean of engineering and applied physics, noted the extent of the public’s growing disenchantment with science. He stated: “This hostility has spread in our time from a small literary elite to a wide section of the educated public, especially some of our most highly educated youth.”

Thus, for all the good that science has done, it is now faced with the hard reality that many of its inventions are damaging the environment and threatening human and animal life. How plain it is becoming that man, however well meaning and intelligent, cannot solve his problems by himself.

Chemistry and the World Around Us

AS A child, when you watched your mother mix and bake a cake, did you realize that she was a “chemist”? You ate the cake for its good taste. But did you know that your body was a highly complex chemical laboratory, digesting the cake and building it into body tissues for you?

Now that you are grown, you may not have made chemistry your career, but you know that nothing could live if it were not for chemical processes. Probably you appreciate also that many things we use today would be missing if some men had not taken up chemistry as a vocation.

Chemists, of course, do not make the laws by which chemicals react. They can only study, experiment and use tools such as microscopes to discover and understand these laws, and to know how to apply them to achieve certain results.

Some of the products of chemists’ research that have had deep influences on our world are explosives, fuels, plastics, paper, steel, glass, detergents, medicines and other things too numerous to mention. These things have influenced our work, our eating, our building, the clothing we wear, our modes of travel—just about everything in our way of life.

An Ancient Science

We do not know to what extent the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians and Hebrews understood chemistry. The Bible’s historical record does reveal, however, that even before these early civilizations, yes, before the global flood some 4,300 years ago, men had knowledge of metallurgy, which involves chemistry. (Gen. 4:22) And later on, Job, who lived before Israel became a nation, said: “Iron itself is taken from the very dust and from stone copper is being poured out.” (Job 28:2) Israel’s King Solomon had copper casting done. (1 Ki. 7:46, 47) Also, other industries requiring some knowledge of chemistry existed, such as wine making and the manufacture of dyes and inks. Drugs were used, and embalming was practiced.

The Atomic Theory

In modern history, however, extremely rapid progress has been made in chemistry because of the development of the atomic theory concerning the structure of matter (actually postulated by the ancient Greeks). In fact, chemists have had a large share in the development of the atomic theory.

This theory teaches that atoms are made up basically of three particles: protons, neutrons and electrons. Combinations of these particles in varying numbers make up the elements. An element is a substance that cannot be separated into simpler substances by ordinary chemical means. So, for ordinary chemistry, elements are the building blocks. The next unit in order is the molecule, which may consist of one or more atoms. Then come compounds, made up of the union of two or more elements.

There are ninety-two elements that are commonly found in the natural state. Hydrogen, a gas, is the lightest of these. Platinum is one of the heaviest. Some others have been made artificially, so that the total number of known elements today is more than one hundred. The most abundant element in earth’s crust and in its waters is oxygen, essential to both animal and plant life. Oxygen also constitutes about one fifth of the air by volume.

Most elements have an affinity or attraction for others. Very few are considered inert, or practically inactive. There is virtually an endless number of arrangements and combinations, making up every kind of material that exists. The most complex molecules are found in living things. Massive molecules of various proteins, consisting of many hundreds of atoms in a very complicated arrangement, have recently been given much attention by scientists. Massive as these are, for molecules, they can be “seen” only by means of an electron microscope.

Laws of Chemistry Work for Man’s Welfare

Even though chemical combinations beyond number have been discovered, it is found that there is great stability in the arrangement. Tables of atomic numbers and atomic weights compiled from observation of the elements are therefore very reliable and useful to the chemist. Some of the laws controlling chemical reactions are of the highest complexity, yet, when understood, they are seen to govern all matter with a most marvelous orderliness.

The elements sometimes bond together to produce compounds that have properties much different from the elements alone. An example of such a compound is table salt, composed of chlorine and sodium, both poisonous substances. Water, a liquid made up of gases, two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, displays characteristics that in several ways affect our life and comfort. Water has the unusual characteristic of having its molecules more tightly packed in its liquid state than when frozen. Ice, therefore, floats. Otherwise, as it settled to the bottom of lakes they would become permanently frozen.

We can also be happy that water has a higher heat capacity than any other common liquid. This has much to do with the moderation of climate near large bodies of water. Also, no other liquid can equal water as a solvent.

Oxygen is a very active element, combining readily with many other elements. This makes it an ideal purifier of air and water, quickly oxidizing and rendering harmless certain poisonous substances.

Does Chemistry Have the Answer for Man’s Problems?

Because of the important part chemistry plays in man’s world, it is a most enjoyable study as well as a source of things convenient and useful to mankind. Chemists have learned much, but actually they have only “scratched the surface” of this enormous field of endeavor. Chemists still do not know exactly how a blade of grass grows, nor fully understand photosynthesis, by which plants manufacture food for all animal life. No chemist has yet reached the heights of accomplishment of one cell of the human body, which, it is said, can carry on from one to two thousand different chemical reactions simultaneously.

The things that chemistry has developed have had good potential, but lack of knowledge of their ultimate effect, and abuse in using them, have caused many problems. Plastics, detergents, drugs and advances in chemical means of destruction have helped to bring mankind to a time of crisis. Certainly science as represented in chemistry, just as in its many other branches, has demonstrated man’s inability to create a world of peace, health, life and security.