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The markets have been particularly unkind to biotech
stocks. The business pages retell stories of promising companies
finding it tough to raise capital. And in an irony that is either
sad or wonderful, PPL Therapeutics, which blazed the biotech trail
by cloning Dolly the sheep, may be closing because it cannot find
a buyer willing to pay the $700,000 it is asking for her.
Yet the general assumption is that the gold rush is still on in
the biotech industry. Why else has B.I.O. (the Biotechnology Industry
Organisation, which claims to represent over 1,000 member firms
world wide) been so relentlessly determined to invest millions of
dollars in its pro-cloning campaign on the Hill when it continues
to suffer substantial losses in goodwill and public opinion? I ask
the question in truth. It puzzles me, and it puzzled me when I called
the Washington, D.C.-based B.I.O. office last year and got into
a debate with its chief lobbyist, Michael Werner. Biotech surely
has a bigger interest in long-term stable markets and a positive
public profile than it does in whatever profits may or may not lie
in the cloned-embryo industry, I argued. He was not convinced. I
am. Increasingly so, in fact, and it is that conviction which is
a source of encouragement in an otherwise bleak landscape. It harks
back to Adam Smith, founder of economics who, like Dolly (and me),
hailed from Scotland. The market can have a corrective effect on
our private, selfish, short-sighted initiatives. And it may yet
bring sanity into the unfolding development of biotechnology.
Truthfully, I am perplexed that B.I.O. has backed itself into such
an unpopular corner on Capitol Hill. Most of its members make their
money on aspirin, not stem-cells. Yet because of its staunch defence
of embryo farms and uncontrolled stem-cell experimentation, the
biotech industry is now known both on the Hill and in millions of
homes around the nation as a pariah. It has alienated the conservative,
pro-family community by taking them head-on in its aggressive pro-cloning
agenda. Likewise, it has disillusioned countless others because
of its belligerent tone and its deceptive techniques, such as minting
new terms for cloning as fast as its focus groups can test them.
I remember watching them proudly roll Christopher Reeve out in front
of the Senate with his "duty of government is to do the greatest
good for the greatest number" mantra. I remember wondering
if they really think they can fool 'enough of the people enough
of the time' to make money out of confused celebrities and painfully
slick public relations tricks.
Yet the issue is much wider for the biotech industry, and in this
broader realm pro-life conservatives are the least of its troubles.
For B.I.O. comes to the cloning debate fresh from a bruising defeat
at the hands of environmentalists who in Europe have declared genetically
modified (GM) foods "Frankenfoods" and driven them from
the store shelves and restaurant menus across the entire continent.
The GM issue is also beginning to gain traction in the United States,
and there is a special reason why B.I.O. should be worried here.
Essentially, the cloning debate has brought together activists from
both ends of the political spectrum for the first time, in a manner
that has surprised everyone involved. Pro-choice luminary Judy Norsigian,
editor of the feminist handbook Our Bodies, Ourselves, testified
in favour of a comprehensive cloning ban side-by-side with Richard
Doerflinger of the Conference of Catholic Bishops. Lori Andrews,
a leading biotech legal writer and litigator and a major figure
in pro-choice feminist circles, joined me in an op-ed to celebrate
that occasion (Chicago Tribune, August 8, 2001).
So it is not simply that B.I.O. has succeeded in causing deep-seated
(and growing) disaffection and suspicion on both the "left"
and the "right" of the spectrum but that these two previously
warring parties have begun to make common cause. One inevitable
effect will be the spread (rightly or wrongly) of the GM/Frankenfood
agenda among American conservatives as a result of rising distrust
in biotech companies.
If I were a biotech executive, I would get a headache knowing the
industry had succeeded in alienating the two most powerful centres
of political and cultural energy in the Western world. Recognising
that the outcome of this debate has serious implications for the
non-West, as is evident in the story of maize in Zimbabwe or of
GM foods in Asia. This is the way to a non-profit future. Yet it
is all so unnecessary. Biotech holds enormous promise for conducting
positive, ethical research and development. Yet even if ethics does
not weigh enough with its leaders, the market will weigh it for
them. Above all, the industry needs stability in its markets so
long-term product development can be successful. It needs a positive
image that is Frankenstein-free. And it needs to start mending fences
to the left and to the right. B.I.O. needs to change its tune and
some of its people, and it needs to start pulling back from the
systematic destruction of its industry's reputation. It is hard
to believe that anyone who knows the names of Enron and Arthur Andersen
can believe ethics is somehow the enemy of profit.
First published on www.biotechpolicy.org
Nigel Cameron is a consultant for CARE, with
particular expertise in bioethics. He served as bioethics advisor
on the U.S. delegation to the United Nations ad hoc committee discussions
of an international treaty on human cloning in February of this
year.
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