LORD OF UNREASON - Part 2

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GMW: LORD OF UNREASON - Part 2

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Sun, 13 Mar 2005 23:06:41 GMT

 

 

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LORD OF UNREASON - Part 2

 

 

Lord Dick Taverne - a GM Watch profile

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=127

 

Lord Dick Taverne is the Chairman of the pro-GM lobby group, the

Association of Sense about Science, and the author of The March of

Unreason

(March 2005). Although he has no background in science, his long career

has taken in politics, the law, business, lobbying, quite apart from

supporting biotechnology. His other roles have included:

 

*Liberal Democrat peer in the House of Lords

*Non-Executive Deputy Chairman of Industrial Finance Group.

*Chairman of AXA Equity & Law Life Assurance PLC.

*Former Director of BOC Group plc.

*Former Chairman of the Institute of Fiscal Studies

*Founding Director of PRIMA Europe, rising to Chairman in 199l and

President in 1993 until 1998

 

Taverne has long enjoyed an extremely close relationship with Lord

Sainsbury. In the late 1980s Taverne, originally a Labour MP, served with

Roger Liddle and David (later Lord) Sainsbury on the Steering Committee

of the Social Democrat Party, which David Sainsbury bankrolled.

Sainsbury also bankrolled the Institute of Fiscal Studies, after being

approached by Taverne. Taverne became the first Chairman of the IFS.

 

Taverne and the director of Sense about Science, Tracey Brown ,

co-authored the article, 'Over-precautionary tales: The precautionary

principle represents the cowardice of a pampered society' (Prospect,

September

2002). Brown used to work for PR firm Regester Larkin, whose client

list includes Aventis CropScience, Bayer and Pfizer. She is part of the

Living Marxism network as is Ellen Raphael - Brown's lieutenant at Sense

about Science.

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=78

 

Taverne also has a background in PR consultancy. In the late 1980s Dick

Taverne and Roger Liddle founded the consultancy firm Prima Europe. In

1990 Prima published The case for Biotechnology, a paper authored by

Taverne. Liddle and Taverne were joined on Prima's board in 1996 by Derek

Draper. Prima's clients included Unilever, RTZ, BNFL, and Glaxo

Wellcome.

 

In April 1998 Lord Taverne resigned from Prima, as a result of

lobby-firm rules prohibiting employment of sitting MPs and peers,

after its

merger with GPC Market Access. GPC's clients included Pfizer, Novartis

and

SmithKline Beecham. Three months after Taverne's departure his former

Prima co-directors Derek Draper and Roger Liddle were at the centre of

the 'lobbygate' 'cash for access' scandal .

 

Taverne is keenly concerned to prevent 'media distortion' in relation

to biotechnology. Taverne claims the media's 'sloppiness' on GM issues

is 'undermining the health of our democracy'. Taverne served on a Forum

established by the SIRC and the Royal Institution which laid down a

Code of Practice and Guidelines on the Communication of Science and

Health

issues in the Media, which tells journalists how to report GM and other

contentious issues. (see Science for Sale) Taverne commented on these

guidelines in a debate in the House of Lords in which he said he hoped

'that the Press Complaints Commission will enforce this code toughly and

come down heavily on the kind of irresponsible and reckless disregard

for fact and evidence which has characterised the reporting of many

scientific issues in the past.'

 

Taverne was also amongst those involved in the setting up of the

biotech-industry supported Science Media Centre directed by Fiona Fox

who is

also part of the Living Marxism network. Also part of this network is

Michael Fitzpatrick, who served on the SIRC Forum on science

communication with Taverne. Fitzpatrick is also a trustee of Sense

about Science.

 

Despite his preoccupation with the accurate reporting of science

Taverne told his fellow peers in the House of Lords, 'The Pusztai saga

and

the GM food scares are a shameful indictment of British journalism. It

all started when Dr Pusztai fed harmful lectins inserted in potatoes to

rats, which he claimed poisoned them.' Pusztai's experiments, in fact,

involved a type of lectin that is not normally harmful to mammals.

 

In July 2002 Lord Taverne was reprimanded in the House of Lords after

he called for Prince Charles to be made to relinquish the throne if he

made any more statements critical of GM crops. On another occasion

Taverne told his fellow peers that, 'There is a moral imperative for the

Government to do everything they can to encourage and promote the spread

of this technology [ie GM]'.

 

Taverne's attitude to organic agriculture is somewhat different. he

describes it as 'voodoo science'. According to Taverne, not just the Soil

Association but even the National Consumer Council base their

opposition to GM 'on ideology, and they will not allow evidence to

disturb their

preconceived opinions.' He is even more scathing about Greenpeace,

'With its anti-science dogma, Greenpeace is in some ways our

equivalent of

the religous right in the US' (Against Anti-science, Prospect magazine,

December 1999). Taverne is, however, a great admirer of Sir John Krebs

who he has described as, 'the excellent and admirable chairman of the

Food Standards Agency'.

 

In November 2002 Taverne chaired the Scientific Alliance conference

on GM called 'Fields of the Future'. In April 2004 Prospect published a

further article by Taverne, Safety Quacks . Although this piece was not

co-authored with Tracey Brown , it drew extensively on a book by

Brown's husband, the sociologist Adam Burgess, another LM contributor.

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=78

 

In Safety Quacks Taverne is critical of public involvement in decision

making about technologies but says he is willing to see some public

discussion where there are 'ethical' concerns. However, public

discussion,

he says, 'needs to be structured carefully to prevent domination by

special interests'. Here Taverne gives two contrasting examples - the

'public discussion that took place in a largely non-adversarial

atmosphere

before the parliamentary votes on the use of human embryos for stem

cell research was an example of effective consultation. On the other

hand,

the botched public debate on GM crops was not. Anti-GM lobby groups

were allowed to dominate the exercise, while the public in general showed

little interest.'

 

What is interesting about this partisan account of the two debates is

that while the UK's official public debate on GM was very poorly funded

and so minimally advertised, it attracted far more public attention and

involvement than the 'public discussion' of human embryo cloning for

research. That debate, it has been suggested, was orchestrated by lobby

groups like the Genetic Interest Group (GIG) and Progress Educational

Trust , with connections to the pharmaceutical-biotechnology industries.

Key figures at the time in GIG ( John Gillott) and PROGRESS (Juliet

Tizzard ) are part of the LM network.

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=78

 

In the Prospect piece Taverne criticises GM campaigners for not

protesting against GM drugs while protesting against GM foods. After

all, he

says, the same technology is used for both. He ignores the point that

drugs are extensively tested before being released and that, moreover,

they are taken by choice, by people who consciously weigh the risks of

taking the drug against the risk of leaving their disease untreated. An

individual's choice to take such a drug also does not limit another

individual's right to avoid it. GM food crops are quite different in all

these respects.

 

Also open to question is Taverne's account of research findings like

those relating to the 'Love Canal' issue in Niagara, New York where 'a

community living in homes built on top of an old chemical waste tip

claimed that they suffered an unusual incidence of birth defects, cancers

and other diseases'. Such claims are dismissed by Taverne as baseless,

yet five separate studies, two of them by the New York Department of

Health, showed that children at Love Canal suffered an excessive

number of

major and minor birth defects, chronic illnesses, and stunted growth.

(WAS ANYONE HARMED AT LOVE CANAL?)

 

When crops burn, the truth goes up in smoke, was the headline of an

opinion piece by Taverne in The (London) Times. In it Taverne denounced

the " anti-GM campaign " as " a crusade " led by " eco-fundamentalists " . He

warned, " when campaigns become crusades, crusaders are more likely to

turn to violence " . He also referred to farmers being " terrorised " and

claimed that " the tactics of animal welfare terrorists " were being

adopted

against GM researchers. These assertions were entirely unsupported.

http://www.gmwatch.org/p2temp2.asp?aid=60 & page=1 & op=2

 

 

 

 

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