interview by Jeff Conant
12.12.04

Dr. Ignacio Chapela, Professor of Microbial Ecology at the University of California, Berkeley, has been at the center of ongoing controversy in the scientific community since 1998, when he vocally opposed a $25 million deal between UC Berkeley's Department of Plant and Microbial Biology and the Swiss biotech firm Novartis (now Syngenta). In November 2001, Chapela and his research partner David Quist published a paper describing their discovery that native corn varieties in Oaxaca, Mexico had been contaminated by genetic material from Genetically Modified, or GM, corn. The paper, published in the highly respected scientific journal Nature, caused a storm of controversy—and struck at the heart of the biotechnology industry's assertion that there is no ecological risk associated with their products. Chapela, a professor of microbial ecology in the College of Natural Resources at the University of California, Berkeley, has since been denied tenure, despite a spotless academic record.

LiP: In 2001, you discovered that native corn crops in Oaxaca, Mexico, had been contaminated by genetic material from genetically modified corn. Can you explain the implications of this discovery?

Chapela: First of all, the discovery of the contamination of native corn varieties in Oaxaca was startling because Mexico had, and continues to have, a ban on the planting of transgenic corn. The biological consequences, though, are probably even more startling: They have to do with the maintenance of the reservoir of genetic diversity that we all need, Mexico as well as the rest of the world. We need that diversity to maintain the productivity of our crops. The corn that is planted in the corn belt of the United States contains many crosses of those local varieties of corn from Mexico. And the risk we run with that manipulation is very great; it's a risk of food security for the world.

Was this an isolated incident?

The discovery has been verified by five other studies, most of them initiated by the Mexican government. The interesting thing, though, is that [the scientists who did the verification] have not been able to publish these results anymore. What we are living under right now in the scientific community—especially in the biological community—is very close to a reign of terror. There are certain things you cannot ask, and many researchers know better than to even start asking these questions—because when you get into the publication stage, you get into trouble. You might lose your funding. So on the one hand, we have confirmed that [transgenic corn] exists [in Mexico]; on the other hand, it is very difficult to continue this research. Nobody has done a very widespread geographical study, which would be easy to do. Nobody has yet been able to establish responsibility—biological, scientific, legal, political responsibility—mostly because of lack of research.

Has the Mexican government contacted you about the results of your studies?

I contacted the Mexican government first. I knew this was going to be a very startling discovery, I knew it was going to be controversial, and I really wanted these officials to be prepared. My feeling was that if they were confronted with a discovery from a reporter, just saying, "What do you think about the contamination problem?" they wouldn't know what to do, because they hadn't had time to think about it. And in those circumstances, they probably would have run to the only people who know about it, and who are those? [People in] the industry. I didn't want them to do that, and I felt they deserved the time to think about what they wanted to do.

How did they react?

The reaction of the Mexican government was schizophrenic. The positive, responsible way was to tell me, "Thank you very much for calling us, we need to have this confirmed independently." Which is perfectly fine—they didn't know where I was coming from, why I was doing this research, and whether I was telling them the truth, because it hadn't yet been published. But they took it seriously. On the other hand, several ministries—specifically, the Agriculture and Economics Ministries—first tried to intimidate me into not publishing, and then they tried to derail the publication with whatever resources and influences they had. Eventually, what they did was to take the [same] steps as the industry—which were to [first] deny it, and once they couldn't deny it [any longer] they diminished its importance. And up to this day, years after the discovery, the Mexican government has not done anything to really solve the problem. I think they recognize it's a problem. There are massive demonstrations on the street that tell me that it's something people consider to be very important, and yet the government has been inactive.

What happened when you published the results of your study?

To get to the publication, you have to go through peer review. So there is a period of time when the paper is being read by other scientists, but it's not published yet, and you do not have a response from the editor. The first reaction of [Nature] was very positive, but as the months of the peer review process went by, it was obvious that they were getting signals from somewhere else, saying, "You shouldn't publish this." So they started trying to find reasons to not publish it, [claiming] that it was not interesting. Fortunately, by that time a leak had reached the media, and the French newspaper Le Monde was running the story on the front page. And fortunately, someone sent me a copy of the paper. So all I had to do was to send it over to Nature, and to say, "Please tell me again that this is not interesting." At that point, they had to publish it. But by that time, it was obvious that there had been a lot of discontent among corn geneticists, molecular biologists, and the industry in general, who were trying to prevent the publication of the paper. As soon as the paper was published on the web-not even in print yet-a discreditation campaign began against it, trying to present the idea that the paper was flawed, that this was not happening, that the research in my lab was illegitimate, and that nobody should worry about it. The Guardian in England investigated and found that a PR company hired by [the biotech company] Monsanto was running the discreditation campaign.

How did Nature respond?

The way that Nature talks about it today is that they "removed their backing" for the paper. They have explicitly said they have not withdrawn it, and that we, the authors, have not withdrawn it, either. But they did publish two cautionary editorials that were unprecedented in their 133-year history—and for the public in general, that reads like a withdrawal of support.

With the growth of the biotechnology industry, the field of genetics within the science of biology has grown enormously, and more and more students want to work for the industry. How has this affected your role in the scientific community and in the university?

What we're seeing in biology today is what in the 1930s happened to physics. All of a sudden, a whole field of thought and enquiry became identified with a potentially very important political and economic field. So there was a central decision by the executive branch of the U.S. government—as well as by the executive branches in the European community—to promote only one set of activities. It channeled what had been a diverse field of enquiry into [just] one way of looking at life. So the problem now is that we've put all our eggs in that basket, we've hired all these professors, built all these buildings, put all this research money into this one-track field. And the products are not coming—the benefits, all the things that were advertised 25 years ago, haven't really materialized. We have a massive infrastructure, in terms of scientists, students, programs, that has crowded out other fields of study like integrative pest management, sustainable agriculture. And yet, we still don't have any solutions to any problems. It ended up being a technology in search of a problem rather than a problem in search of solutions. When you have that situation, the whole field [changes] from having been science-based [to being] totally politically driven.

You've been accused of politicizing what some see as a strictly scientific debate. You have a record of speaking out against genetically modified organisms and against the biotech industry, while you're supposed to be an objective scientist. How do you respond to this charge?

The decision to put all the eggs of this nation—and of the world—in the biotech basket was a political decision. So from the beginning, these developments have not come as simple accidents of curiosity of one scientist in one corner or the other. They have been politicized from the beginning—as any scientific activity is. I think anybody who says that science is apolitical is either naive or is lying. I am biased, because I have spent 20 years of my life working in biology. I must be biased because I know, for example, that there are many studies that should have been done with genetically modified organisms before releasing them into the environment, certainly before planting hundreds of millions of acres of them. I know that we should have done those studies, and I have to say that. If people call that political, I agree—it's political because science is political, because everything we do operates in a political context: what research areas we fund and which ones we don't; where we hire people from; what faculty we hire, which programs we promote, which students we take in. All those are decisions that continuously shape the profile of science-making with a very strong political element.

So the politics of this debate have affected you and a number of other scientists in the university and in the scientific community, but the larger impact will be felt by peasant farmers around the world and by future generations. The biotech industry claims to be using its research to feed the world, but this has been shown by many independent scientists and economists to be false, and you—among others—suggest that GM crops will lead to more hunger. How do you see the future of GM crops in Mexico?

The introduction of these organisms into the ecology of Mesoamerica and Mexico in general is a very definite threat to national security—to food security for Mexico and for the world, as well as the more general security provided by biological diversity. There is a political [aspect], too. Even though these genetically modified organisms have not come up with the benefits we were promised they would produce, they continue to reproduce and to carry the pieces of DNA that were introduced into them. The reason we're using them today is not because of the benefits it might produce, but because it gives control over that seed, that plant, to an owner, a specific corporation. Think of it as a brand, internalized into every single cell of a seed or a plant. Once you have that brand on those plants—no matter how it got there—you have claims on it. So [transgenic crops are] removing control and independence from the hands of the farmers and putting that control in the hands of a few corporations who are not answerable to anybody, to any national government. It creates a very large political and economic problem that, in the long run, pales in comparison to the biological one.

A longer version of this interview was originally taped for Making Contact, a program of the National Radio Project.

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