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Under the Sun
Cynthia Oi
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What we don't know could be our downfall
IN the category of unintended consequences, the story of the mongoose's arrival in the islands counts among the most notorious.
As many people who live in Hawaii know, sugar planters imported the weasel-like creatures to control rats that were damaging cane crops, only to discover that mongooses mostly work days and rats at night.
Oops.
Another hitch: Though mongooses do relish rats, the islands offered lots of other goodies more easily gained, like native birds and their eggs.
Oops again.
The rat-mongoose misadventure was a clumsy attempt at biological control, but that was way back in 1883 when experts didn't know as much about the interactions of nature as they do today. But now that we've learned much, much more, now that we've untangled many mysteries of our world, we can engineer, manage and construct plants and animals to fit human needs.
At least that's what biotechnology proponents believe.
Despite its lofty-sounding identification, biotechnology simply combines technological and biological procedures to change or enhance natural substances to produce something useful or desirable. Even in prehistoric times, humans stirred together different plants to brew concoctions for medicinal purposes.
In many applications, biotechnology appears to have worked well, resulting in better food production, such as in stemming a virus that attacked local papayas. It has promising applications that could generate renewable fuels from plants, reducing dependence on oil, which is of particular importance to Hawaii.
But it's also kind of scary because as much as we know about nature, we really don't know everything, and, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we don't even know what we don't know.
For example, when people began burning coal, it is doubtful they anticipated the gases would eventually work to warm the Earth, which would, in turn, kill off plants and animals. Now we know that fossil fuels and other human activity affects the atmosphere.
Criticism of biotechnology in Hawaii has centered on agricultural aspects since the islands' year-round growing climate has attracted more crop experiments than any other state.
People on Molokai, especially Hawaiians, worry that genetically engineered test crops might affect native plants. Organic farmers are concerned that their products will be tainted by pollen drift from engineered plantings. A project to grow engineered algae in open-air biopharms on the Big Island was halted for the lack of environmental reviews.
Though these concerns are sometimes labeled alarmist, there is no reason they should not be evaluated.
The biotech industry contends that what they are doing is benign and helpful to humans and the environment. Instead of spraying harmful pesticides over corn fields, plants have been engineered to make them unappetizing to worms, thus reducing the number of worms by truncating their life cycle.
While decreased use of pesticides is a good thing, the connecting assumption is that the pesky worms have no place in nature, no importance in the ecosystem.
Those who resist bio-engineering have misplaced values, said one industry representative during a meeting with Star-Bulletin editors and reporters last week. How can anyone deny malnourished children in Third World countries bio-engineered rice that could prevent them from going blind, he said.
Well, no one would, but that is the kind of straw-man argument that clouds the issue of how far the research on bio-engineering has looked in predicting consequences.
I think there's much to celebrate and much promise in biotechnology. But the arrogance of humans in believing we have all the tools to alter and manipulate the living beings with which we share the planet -- for our sole benefit -- might become our downfall.
"What our companies do is speed up evolution," said one industry representative. Let's hope we aren't hastening our own extinction.
Cynthia Oi has been on the staff of the Star-Bulletin since 1976. She can be reached at
coi@starbulletin.com.