One does not need to be a marxist to realize the basic rule of our capitalist economic system : production begins by investing money to buy the equipment, raw materials, energy, etc. and hire workers to produce a commodity and ends up with money when the sale of the commodity closes the process. Such a process makes sense if, and only if, the amount of money received in the end is higher than the amount invested, namely if there is a profit. A business enterprise exists in so far as it produces profits.

The commodity produced, be it cars, pesticides, armaments, or drugs etc., is simply a means to that end. If bombs are more profitable than food, food production will collapse and investments will flow into bomb factories. Millions of people have recently starved to death because it had become more profitable to produce necro-fuels rather than food, but for capital these sufferings were irrelevant. Not only what is produced but where (China, Brazil or Rumania), by whom (by slave labor, prisonners or by unionized workers), how (in a safe environment or in a toxic one) and when it is produced (strawberry in winter or summer) are as irrelevant as are pollutions, depletion of natural ressources, damages to the environment, workers’ and consumers’ health, etc. This is because of competition. Under the pressure of competition, a business enterprise must move to the most profitable location, use the most profitable source of labor whatever the consequences. If it does not, competitors will, and it will die. Obviously, ethical considerations have no place under such a rule except as a talk show smokescreen or during Sunday services.

Likewise, under the pressure of competition, a business enterprise must, in turn, reinvest its profits into a new cycle of production with more efficient machinery, speeded up production methods, « new » products, etc. If not, it will fall behind its competitors and die. So that capitalism is condemned to permanent growth. It must expand geographically. It must deepens by destroying former systems of production. It must turn public goods that use to be free into new sources of profit. It must subvert all the autonomous dimensions of our lives.

Such a ferocious beast can only be tamed for a limited time. Social struggles during the 1930’s and WWII imposed some ties that were soon broken. In the 1980’s, the liberal ideology loosened the chains of the beast which became increasingly free to roam over the planet in search for new sources of profit. Thus, a seed industry which was unconcentrated (with the exception of so-called « hybrid » seed), into a large number of small entrepreneurs/breeders and small companies was consolidated by the self proclaimed « life science industry », namely a cartel of transnational manufacturers of pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides – the « death science industry ».

Over the last fifteen years, the system made a far reaching discovery : it could make immense profits out of nothing and without producing anything, be it usefull, useless, or noxious. This is called finance. The miracle worked for a while : the inflated speculative virtual wealth it created indeed stimulated a frenzy of debt-based consumption of commodities particularly in the US and England, but in the end, the day of reckoning has come : it was a gigantic « Ponzi scheme ».

Briefly stated, a business enterprise will produce anything or even nothing, provided it is profitable.

In this regard, life confronts capitalism with a difficult problem : living organisms, plants, animal reproduce and multiply gratis, for nothing. Indeed, some living organisms even have pleasure reproducing, which makes this injustice of Nature doubly scandalous.

As long as the harvested grain is next year seed, breeders, seedmen and their likes have no market worth the name. No market, no profit. More generally, as long as plants and animals reproduce and multiply gratis in the farmer’s field, no profit can be made. This was recognized long time ago, in fact as soon as the first breeders/businessmen appeared :

"Take, for instance Ephraim Bull [1], who gave the world the Concord grape, now a standard variety, cultivated in thousands of vineyards, found in nearly ever section where grapes will grow. He created wealth, luxury, refreshment and food for millions. His work is today precisely as valuable as it was on the day he first gave it to the world. The first mother-vine which thrives to this day at Concord, Mass., has multiplied its potency into the tens of millions of vines, unchanged, not losing an iota from any one of the many qualities which gave its peculiar value. Ephraim Bull died in poverty...at the age of 89 and the passers-by are informed by the epitaph on the plain slab marking Ephraim Bull’s grave that:

’HE SOWED, OTHERS REAPED’ [2]

The law of life runs contrary to the law of profit. Life, then, must be wrong. This is what the infamous transgenic technology « control of gene expression » [3], nicknamed Terminator by its opponents, revealed in march 1998. Terminated seeds germinates normally, the plant grow normally, it flowers normally, the grain develop normally and the plant produces a normal crop – but for the fact that a transgenic device has killed the germ of the grain. If sown, the harvested grain will not germinate. It is sterile.

In our light, Terminator – the sterilization of life - appears as the greatest triumph of two centuries of plant breeding and applied genetics. For this is the very goal that plant and animal breeders have consistently pursued, ever since the first commercial breeders-seedmen appeared, during the last decades of the eighteenth century for farm animals and about one century later for plants.

I shall not deal here with animals since wresting life from the hands of farmers into those of investors/breeders was fairly easy. Reproduction could be controlled by keeping the males and females locked while property rights were asserted by a bureaucratic system– the « herd book ». Earlier, during the eighteenth century aristocrats had pioneered the device for their lucrative passtime, horses racing, and not suprisingly, they patterned their system of control of the blood (i.e., the profit) of their « purebred » horses after their aristocratic own « pedigreed » system of transmission of « blood » (i.e., power and wealth). In the early nineteenth century, farm animal breeders extended it to cattle and sheep, thus gaining a tight control over the « blood » (profit) of their animals. [4]

For plants, the task was daunting. It implied separating what life confounds, separating production from reproduction. The first could remain in the hands of farmers, the second was to become the monopoly of investors/breeders. It meant expropriating the founding practice of agriculture, sowing one’s harvested grain. It meant creating a breeder’s priviledge over reproduction at the expense not only of farmers, but of the entire society. Life had to be « enclosed » just like common land had been enclosed in England, thus creating a revolutionary new social figure, the free proletariate, entirely divorced from any means of production, but his labor force. This process laid the ground for the Industrial Revolution and to the present industrial world.

Expropriating life is even a more revolutionary project. It will affect all dimensions of our lives, economic, social, political, symbolic. It will separate humanity from life itself. Our depossession will be total, our alienation absolute. The shift of political power brought about by two centuries of industrial advances makes this maddening project within completion, at least in industrial countries. Farmers were the most numerous social category, they have been wiped out in few decades. It is only by (a lazy) habit that we call survivors « farmers » for they are now simple cogs – « technoserfs » - of an immense agro-industrial-financial complex ; seed companies were small family companies, and carried little economic and social influence while now they are part of the powerful cartel of the « death science industry » ; and last, Life that was sacred has been reduced to unspectacular strings of DNA. [5]

Until recently no breeder/seedman could claim : my goal is to sterilize life. [6] Such a goal had to be carefully cloaked into secrecy to be achieved. A corrupt and misleading vocabulary turned out to be the best way to protect the « Great Secret » of breeders and agricultural genetics. If Terminator finally revealed it, this is because the « death science industry » feels it has now the political clout to assert its priviledge over life.

In the following pages, I shall deal with both issues : how the system managed to expropriate reproduction and how its corrupt vocabulary concealed its deeds.

* * *

Peasant farmers grow varieties in the original sense of « character of being varied, diversity, the contrary of uniformity ». In fact, as late as 1880, the Vilmorin in France used indifferently the word « varieté » (« variety ») and « race » to describe « Les meilleurs blés » grown in France. A variété of wheat is made up of plants that share a number of particularly visible characters such as height, shape of the ear, color, earlyness, etc. This makes it possible to identify a particular set of plants as variety X or Y. But upon scrutiny, within such varieties there exist large variations. Such is the case for human and animal « races ». Industrial farmers grow also « varieties ». At present, law requires that such « varieties » be Homogeneous (all plants of a given variety must be identical) and Stable (the plants must remain identical to the original model). The third criteria Distinction follows from homogeneity and stability : clone A is distinct from clone B provided that all plants of clone A differ from all plants of clone B by the same set of characters. All « varieties » sold in industrial countries must conform to the Distinction, Homogeneity, Stability criteria. The task of a seed producer is to make exact copies of a plant which is deposited in the vault of an official organism, namely to clone it. Modern « varieties » are clones - whatever their mode of reproduction.

Industrial farmers and indeed everyone including scientists (who usually are extremely touchy to the point of esoterism about precision of vocabulary) use the word « variety » to designate this exact opposite : clones, that is a set of DHS plants. It is my contention that this semantic confusion is deliberate. For the term « clone » illuminates the forces that drove the bisecular course of breeding and agricultural genetics from homozygous clones (the « pure line » « varieties » of the 19th and 20th century) (I), to heterozygous clones (the so-called « hybrid » « varieties » of the 20th) (II), and to the so-called « Gmos », namely Patented Pesticide Chimerical Clones (Ppccs) of the 21st (III). In the same way that a mouse click changes instantly the display of a computer screen, the word « clone » will dispell a century of genetic confusions and mystifications about breeding and genetics, particularly about « hybridization », the dominant breeding method of the 20th century. Thus, in this historical perspective, Dolly simply extends to mammals what breeders and geneticists have done or attempted to do to plants for two centuries. How can we explain this two centuries long devotion of breeders and geneticists to cloning ?

II. Homozygous cloning or line breeding

Early in the nineteenth century, British gentlemen farmers realized that their cereals, wheat, barley and oats, « breed true to type », the expression meaning that each plant keeps its individual characters from one generation to the next. They had no explanation for this observation but it did not prevent them from making use of it. When they discovered a naturally « isolated » plant that seemed to carry some valuable characters, they grew it individually to multiply it, that is they cloned it. If the clone proved to be valuable, they would grow it year after year.

« The old Chidham wheat, wrote J. Percival, the first English Mendelian wheat breeder, grown in this country from about 1800 to 1880 or later was derived from a single ear found growing in a hedge at Chidham in Sussex" [7] "The variety Fenton, also an excellent sort much cultivated last century was discovered by Mr. Hope of Fenton Barns, Scotland, in a quarry in 1835 ... [8] " "In Scotland, P. Shirreff developped his wheat Mungoswell from a plant which had well survived the severe 1813 winter [9] " etc.

The second phase in the development of the method began in 1831, when John Le Couteur, a gentleman farmer from Jersey, took his visitor, the Spanish botanist Mariano La Gasca, to his wheat fields. La Gasca pointed out that a field which Le Couteur considered "tolerably pure" was a mixture of twenty-three sorts "of which some have been discovered, through the experimental researches made by the Author, to be three weeks later in ripening than others" [10]. Le Couteur went to work : scouting his fields, he « isolated » (selected) the very rare promising plants – healthy plants that carried a set of favorable characters such as a good root system, a strong stem, a heavy ear, color, standability etc., grew them individually to multiply – to clone – them - tested the various clones and finally selected the best one (or ones). In 1836, he wrote a book to describe his « isolation » method : "...no previous writer had yet called the attention of the agricultural world to the cultivation of pure sorts, originating from one single grain, or a single ear" [11] . His pride is justified. La Gasca and Le Couteur invented the modern breeding improvement technique : cloning.

We should note here that improvement stems from : a) visual selection (isolation) of the very rare plants that carry a set of favorable characters ; and b) selection of the best clone among the clones extracted from the variety.

Three reasons explain this two centuries old devotion to cloning.

The first one is its logic. There will always be a gain (according to whatever criteria) to replace a variety of « anythings » by copies of the best « anything » (or any « anything » superior to the average of the variety of « anythings ») extracted from the variety.

This logic has a supremely important consequence : improvement by cloning is independent of the reproductive system of an organism. The breeder should be able to extract superior clones from a variety. Period. This appears tautological at this stage, but this evidence runs, as we shall see, against a century of genetic teachings. It follows that any attempt to justify breeding/cloning by biological considerations or, for that matter, by any consideration hides some kind of dishonesty or swindle.

I should add that what is logically inescapable can be bio-logically wrong. Organic farmers have been increasingly joined by more thoughtful farmers, agronomists and biologists rediscovering the importance of biological diversity. Furthermore, it is obvious that such a method contributes to the destruction of biodiversity. Criticisms have focussed so far on industrial monoculture while ignoring that our industrial monoculture is monoclonal. It is likely that the use of the word ‘variety’ instead of clone has contributed and still contributes to delay recognition of one of the major threat to diversity.

The second reason is that the Industrial revolution was not limited to coal, steam engines, textiles, iron, railways, but was a model for all activities, including agriculture. Gentlemen farmers were Ricardian – capitalist - farmers. These entrepreneurs invested in agriculture in order to produce profits. They shared the implicit values of the Industrial Revolution, the search for industrial uniformity, the drive to produce normalized, standardized, homogeneous and stable (that would remain identical year after year) commodities for distant anonymous markets.

The third reason is property rights. True, these Ricardian farmers were interested in improving the profit of their domains. Realization that breeding could be a direct source of immense profits came later, in the second part of the nineteenth century. Yet, with hindsight, the link between industrial uniformity and property rights is obvious. No property rights can be defined on a variety because it is heterogeneous and changing or unstable. A clone is Homogeneous and Stable over time. It is a living dead. It suffice to describe it with enough details to Distinguish a clone from another one. In the late 1920’s, French cereal (essentially wheat) breeders adopted these three criteria, Distinction, Homogeneity, Stability (D.H.S.) to set up the first system of property rights on plants [12].

Two observations can be made : first, these criteria describe the steps of small grain (autogamous) cereal breeding : crossing two plants having complementary characters which, when found together in a plant would Distinguish it from others plants, and selecting for these characters within the successive generations of the cross until reaching clonal Homogeneity and Stability. Briefly stated, the D.H.S. gave a legal basis to the La Gasca/Le Couteur cloning method – and, in effect, outlawed varieties. Only clones can be offered for sale.

Second, such property rights were directed against seedmen selling clones of their competitors under a different name. At the time, no one knew for sure what was traded. From the point of view of an anonymous market, it was legitimate to define exactly what was sold. In 1961, the six countries which founded the Common market adopted this system of breeder’s rights under the Treaty of the Union pour la Protection des Obtentions Végétales (UPOV). At present, 60 countries had adopted it, but it is now threatened by patents which not only protect a breeder from the competition of seedmen but terminates the so-called « farmer’s privilege » [13]. .

The « farmers’ privilege » designates the practice of using the harvested grain as next year seed. It founded agriculture. Surprisingly, neither the ancien régime landlords nor our present capitalist moneylords ever attempted to wrest such a privilege from their peasant tenants to grow crops by themselves.

So that the « death science industry » and its allies denounce a non-existent farmer’s privilege in order to wrest a privilege on the reproduction of plants and animals ! And it demands this privilege in the name of « free » markets, of liberalism – another imposture.

II. Twentieth century : heterozygous cloning

Nineteenth century breeders invented cloning for plants that « breed true to type », such as wheat, barley or oats – namely autogamous plants ; twentieth century breeders strove to apply the same method to plants that do not « breed true to type », to plants that lose their individual characters in the farmer’ field because, like mammals, they are cross-fertilized – to allogamous or, rather, heterozygous plants. With an obvious consequence : farmers would have to buy back their seeds every year.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, in 1908, George Shull in the United States discovered a method to extract clones out of maize varieties. We are celebrating at present the one hundredth birthday of his technique based on the newly rediscovered Mendelian laws (Box 1). The road to commercial success was long, tortuous, full of setbacks and required a decisive « Lissenkoist » intervention of the State in February 1922 to impose cloning to recalcitrant traditional maize breeders. The mobilisation of public research and large public expenses in favor of the new breeding technique finally succeeded : by the mid 1930’s, public breeders had managed to extract clones that were consistently better than the unselected farmers’ varieties from which they were extracted.

In what follows, I shall not deal with the rich hagiography which, under the deceitful expression « hybrid corn » and « hybridization », extravangantly celebrated the triumph of this cloning method but concentrate on what is the most enduring, the most lucrative, [14]the most subtle scientific mystification of the 20th century. It is all the more brillant that it rests on a slight twist of vocabulary, the use of the expression « hybrid » [15]rather than « clone » or anything equivalent such as Le Couteur’s « pure sort ». That was enough to send astray breeders and agricultural geneticists for a century into the black hole of the mysteries of hybridity, hybrid vigor, heterosis, dominance, overdominance, pseudo-overdominance, epistasy and the likes.

We have seen that breeding/cloning is based on an inescapable logical principle. Maize varieties grown in the Corn-Belt exhibited until the 1930’s very large individual variations. Applying the La Gasca/Le Couteur isolation/cloning method could make sense.

This is the idea that Shull expressed in the first part of the first sentence of his first famous seminal article « The composition of a field of maize » presented before the annual meeting of the American Breeders Association (a professional body, not an academic one) at the end of January 1908.

"While most of the newer scientific results show the theoretical importance of the isolation methods, and practical breeders have demonstrated the value of the same in the improvement of many varieties … ».

At this point, Shull should have pursued « at last, I have found a Mendelian method to extract clones from maize varieties » (Box I) and apply the La Gasca/Le Couteur improvement method. » No more was necessary. But this, he did not do : the second part of his sentence introduced the biological discussion of « hybridity » which occupies the rest of his article : « … the attempt to employ them in the breeding of Indian corn [16] has met with peculiar difficulties, owing to the fact that self-fertilization, or even inbreeding between much wider that individual limits, results in deterioration » [17] (p. 296).

Shull’s theorizing is that maize being a cross-fertilized species, a field of maize is made up of complex « hybrids ». His experiments with corn had shown that self-fertilizing corn reduces its vigor (« deterioration ») and that crossing (hybridizing) self-fertilized corn plants restaures vigor. According to Mendel’s laws, each self-fertilization halves the percentage of genes in the heterozygous state, namely it halves the « hybridity » or heterozygosity of maize while crossing restaures hybridity. From this correlation, Shull jumped to concluding that hybridity is the cause of vigor. The breeder’s task then is to keep maize in its highest state of « hybridity » and the only method to do so and to improve corn is his « corn hybridization » technique – indeed, an overwhelming argument in favor of this invention.

Shull’s theorizing is brillant - so brillant that it has blinded almost everyone for a century. If we leave aside the logical flaw that correlation between hybridity and vigor is not causation [18] , it is very convincing… once the reader has been trapped into his « hybrid » black hole [19] ! But we know that improvement by cloning does not require any justification. Even if is theory had been without a flaw, its mere formulation is the evidence of a mystification.

What is the corpse that Shull hid in the closet ?

Suppose Shull had been scientifically honest. He would have described La Gasca/Le Couteur cloning method of improvement for true breeding plants and given due recognition to de Vries’ « great book ». He would have then explained his Mendelian trick to extend them to maize (Box 1).

The result ? Everyone would have realized that his method, not only ran contrary to the well established breeding principles « Breed from the Best » and « Like engenders like », but was unlikely to deliver anything but unworthy gains. [20]

We have seen that improvement brought about by the La Gasca/Le Couteur cloning (isolation) method stems from two sources : visual selection of the rare plants carrying as many as possible favorable characters ; and selection of the best clone. Shull’s method eliminates the phase of visual selection. It is as if breeders went blindfolded into the maize field to randomly pick up a few maize plants - the future clones. The chances to extract a superior clone from a maize variety by such a method are none.

If Shull’s clones could not improve maize, what could they improve ? The answer is : BREEDER’S PROFIT. A maize plant is the result of a cross. Like a mammal, it has, so to speak, a mother which differs from its father. Such a plant cannot keep its individual characters from one generation to the next, whether cross-fertilized or self-fertilized. If a clone has been selected for its exceptional qualities, its offsprings will not keep these exceptional selected qualities. In Shull’s words : « When the farmer wants to duplicate the splendid result he has had one year with hybrid corn, his only recourse is to return to the same hybridizer from whom he secured his seed the previous year and obtain again the same hybrid combination. »

Shull’s maize cloning method does not aim at improving maize for farmers, but at creating property rights for breeders. It is turned against farmers. It is the first Terminator.

It was a momentous achievement : "I could have raised a monument to myself, wrote Shull, which would be worthy to stand with the best biological work of recent time" [21].

Indeed : Shull had solved the only problem that matters in a capitalist society : creating a new source of profit at the expense of farmers, at the expense of society as a whole. And at the same time, he had obfuscated it by an extraordinary semantic subtelty. No wonder that Shull has been celebrated as a scientific hero.

We may stop here to ponder about the gullibility of the entire scientific community, biologists, agronomists, sociologists, and economists when it comes to the genetics [22]. How could any one delude himself into thinking that improving maize required that it did not reproduce in the farmer’s field ? How could any biologist not suspect a trickery ? Is not reproduction the most fundamental character of Life ? At least, farmers suspected it : they dubbed the revolutionary « terminated » corn « mule corn » (the mule is sterile). But because it had been « Hi bred », these clones yielded more than their unselected varieties and they had no choice but to put the rope around their neck and purchase it.

Who could believe that terminating corn could help farmers and serve the welfare of mankind ? Orthodox economists manage to built up the evidence that it was the case [23] ! But, it is not only a matter of gullibility. It is also a matter of power, with one side disposing of such an arsenal of institutional, economic, scientific, ideological, and political weapons that the idea of speaking the truth could only germinate in the mind of the few dissidents willing to engage in a lost battle. It is also a matter of devotion to the Cartesian scientific method as we shall see. The few critical voices which, at the time, had enough common sanity to remain unconvinced by the lights of the new science of Genetics were called « obscurantist » and silenced by an owerwhelming propaganda. We should keep this in mind when dealing with the latest attempt to mystify the latest development of industrialisation of life, the so-called « Gmos ».

III. Twenty first century : a new round of mystifications, the so-called Gmos

So-called Genetically Modified Organisms or « Gmos » pursue bi-secular process of the industrialization of agriculture and privatization of life, introduce a new and irreversible form of pollution, genetic pollution, thus accelerating the pace of destruction of biodiversity so that no return will be possible, and close the historical process of our depossession. The drive for profit and social control takes place, as usual, behind a philanthropic smokescreen - fighting hunger, curing deseases, protecting the environment, depolluting East Saint-Louis [24] and what not. As usual, this smokescreen deploys two weapons : corruption of vocabulary and a powerful scientific ideology, the DNA.

Corruption of vocabulary

All living organisms being constantly « genetically modified », the term Gmo has little meaning. It was chosen to avoid the term ‘chimera’ that was used by scientists at the beginning of the transgenic era. For instance, the patent of Cohen and Boyer on their first transgenic manipulation (1973) was on a « functional chimera » (or ‘genetic chimera’ since the term function and gene at the time had the same meaning). Cell biology defines a chimera as an organism composed of two genetically distinct types of cells. In a transgenic organism, a construction made up of genes coming from differents species, genera, kingdom has been added to the normal organism. Transgenic plants for instance carry a promoter (in most cases a gene from the cauliflower mosaïc virus), a gene from any kind of organism (insect, mammal, virus, plant, fish, man …) conferring some valuable character or function and a marker gene (initially, a bacterial gene conferring an antibiotic resistance) to sort out the cells that have been transformed.

The term ‘genetic chimera’ then describes exactly an artificial construct involving genes from various origins. But from a marketing point of view, genetic chimeras would have been unpalatable, so more so that consumers are particularly distrustful when it comes to food [25]. Monsanto proposed or rather imposed the term Gmo so that these revolutionary techniques could be pictured as the continuation, by more reliable, more precise, more predictable and safer methods of what humanity had done since the beginnings of the domestication of plants and animals. That the immense majority of biologists accepted to sacrifice scientific precision to marketing tells a lot about the commodification of biology.

A more precise expression to designate cultivated Gmos would be Patented Chimerical Pesticide Clones, or Pcpcs. Such plants are now grown on some 100 million hectares, and are, as usual, clones. Since more 99% of the Pcpcs now cultivated are either producing an insecticide, or tolerant to an herbicide, or both, the term « pesticide » does not require an explanation. Even Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has talked critically of « pesticide plants », but his government is still trying to sneak them into French agriculture.

The death science industry has taken over seed production to increase the sale of its poisons but their propaganda asserts that their so-called Gmos will protect the environment ! As to farmers (the technoserfs of the agro-industrial complex), they are sinking deeper into an addictive [26] and inefficient pesticide system, [27] that destroys soils, pollutes waters, poisons the environment in general, and ruins public health.

The adjective chimerical has been explained. The last term « patented » accounts for recent legal developments : so-called Gmos are patented. In North America, it means that the farmer cannot sow his harvested grain anymore, nor exchange it with his neighbours for seed. Patents are Terminators by law, without the costs, hassles, and unreliability of biological solutions such as « hybridization » or the biological Terminator. In Europe, the directive 98/44 on « Patenting of biotechnological inventions » prepares the end of the « farmer’s privilege » - in the name of liberalism ! The death science industry managed to obtain from the Commission, the Council of Ministers and the Parliament what candlemakers petitionning in 1845 against the unfair competition of sun asked in vain :

« … a law requiring the closing of all windows, dormers, skylights, inside and outside shutters, curtains, casements, bull’s-eyes, deadlights, and blinds—in short, all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures through which the light of the sun is wont to enter houses, to the detriment of the fair industries with which, we are proud to say, we have endowed the country, a country that cannot, without betraying ingratitude, abandon us today to so unequal a combat. (…)

« First, if you shut off as much as possible all access to natural light, and thereby create a need for artificial light, what industry in France will not ultimately be encouraged? » [28]

Thus the expression Patented Chimerical Pesticidal Clones, Pcpcs designates precisely what the death science industry and his biotechnicians try to force sell. A single company, Monsanto hold some 90% of the market and is the spearhead of the US government to secure, thanks to gene patenting, a monopoly over life and a control over the world food supply.

The ideology of DNACf. [29]

The scientific smokescreen of DNA is difficult to dispell because not only scientists, but all of us are ideologically committed to a mechanical reductionist and determinist world view so well expressed by Descartes, some four centuries ago. So that the propaganda about biotechnologies solving the problems of humanity from hunger to deseases was listened to with awe and credulity. This Cartesian approach is at the center of the « molecular vision of life » [30] of the Rockefeller foundation that was to lead to molecular biology and to biotechnologies. The objective was to apply to biology the Cartesian model that had proven to so sucessful in the physical sciences. The strength of the new biology would be « grounded in the study of the ultimate littleness of things. …control over nature was to be derived from manipulating miniaturized bits of nature » [31]. The success of the program was rapid.

The discovery of the structure of the double helix (1953), raised the challenge of the elucidation of the genetic code. In 1957-58, Crick formulated two hypotheses that simplified the task : the « sequence hypothesis » and the « central dogma » : a gene (the sequence of nucleotides) determines exactly and univoqually the sequence of aminoacids of a protein. The diagram

gene ==> protein

where the arrow goes from gene to protein captures the paradigm (to use Thomas Kuhn’s word [32] ) of molecular biology [33].

Paradoxically, the triumph of the elucidation of the genetic code by the late 1960’s had several perverse consequences.

First, since Crick’s hypotheses worked, almost everyone jumped to the conclusion that they were true. Crick himself reiterated them in 1970 after an earlier Nature editorial had noted their “considerable oversimplification” of reality : …"the discovery of just one type of present-day cell which would carry out any of the three unknown transfers (Protei==>Protein, Protein==>DNA, Protein==>RNA, NDA) would shake the whole intellectual basis of molecular biology." [34]

Second, it entrenched DNA as the « molecule of life », the « code of codes » from which life proceeded just like the Creation proceeds from the Creator. Biologists rewrote the first sentence of the Bible as: « In the beginnings was DNA ». The doctrine of DNA became an ideology.  [35]

Third, the remaining task of biologists was to decipher, to « sequence », the « book of life » (the genome) of as many organisms as possible. Biology became a matter of industrial organisation, investment, finance, marketing, division of labor and propaganda : huge investments in sequencing machines, computers, software were necessary ; raising funds required to convince private investors and governments that a new era of total mastery was coming. Top biologists mutated into entrepreneurs and propagandists and their laboratories into corporate organisations. They multiplied extravagant promises and ended up believing them after their own public relations officers, investors and the media had had enormously amplified them.

Fourth, the first genetic manipulation in 1973, opened up the biotech era. After the initial worries were placated, a new Eldorado appeared at hand since moving genes around would make it possible to produce any corresponding protein/function. Hunger and deseases would be scourges of the past.

Fifth, since genes were defined entity producing well defined proteins, they could be patented. Out of this financial/scientific euphoria grew the Human Genome Project. On top of all the inflated claims, at last « we would know what it is to be human » as Nobel laureate W. Gilbert claimed.

In the words of B. Commoner [36]: « That the industry is guided by the central dogma was made explicit by Ralph W.F. Hardy, president of the National Agricultural Biotechnology Council and formerly director of life sciences at DuPont, a major producer of genetically engineered seeds. In 1999, in Senate testimony, he succinctly described the industry’s guiding theory this way: "DNA (top management molecules) directs RNA formation (middle management molecules) directs protein formation (worker molecules)."33 After all, at a time of a triumphant capitalism, it should not be surprising that Life itself be a capitalist enterprise.

Alas, the worldwide extravagant celebration of the sequencing of the human genome could not hide that the bubble had burst : the human species has about 30.000 genes (this number appears now to be even lower), and from 3 to 10 times more proteins. So the precise mechanism of information transfer from DNA to proteins does not exist. Alternative splicing – the possibility for a gene to be involved in the making of many proteins [37] -, well documented by the early 1980’s appeared to be the rule. Many other ‘anomalies’ called the molecular biology paradigm into question. They were and still are largely ignored. Technological developments (biotechnologies) proceed unabatted while the scientific foundation that made them possible has disapeared. This is a threatening situation. It does not seem that the nuclear experience has taught anything. The only hope is that public opinion in Europe and elsewhere will manage to stop the biotech flood before it is too late and impose a reasonable approach to agriculture and food.

* * *

This short history of industrial breeding reveals that breeders and geneticists have constantly deceived themselves while deceiving us without ever deceiving the interests that they had to serve. Such is the rôle of science. Important features about biology, applied and theoretical, under industrial capitalism emerge : the drive for commodification of heredity and social control mystified by scientific constructs based on the systematic use of a corrupt Orwellian vocabulary ; the dramatic reduction of our liberties with the historical completion of the « enclosures » of life with patents ; the entrusting of Life to the death science industry ; the denial of democracy consisting in making decisions « on sound science » (namely the science concocted by the death science industry, as the US government, international bodies and our complacent elites want), etc., ; all this occuring within a general ruin of soils, seas, fresh waters, biodiversity, health. I have little doubt that the same holds true for most if not all scientific fields under industrial capitalism.

The idea that another scientific knowledge can be developed has been ridiculed for decades. Rightly so, but for a wrong reason : proletariate science and bourgeois science were essentially the same, pursuing the same goal of of domination of Nature and enslavement of men. As Hannah Arendt has shown [38], the scientific enterprise stands by nature, outside our humanity. So that it will pursue its course, blind to its destructive consequences. This enterprise deals with entities that do not belong to the world that has shaped us as humans, and to do so, it has to use a special langage, mathematics. To take one example : Einstein’s paradox of twins aging differently, because one twin is travelling at light speedlight while the other remains on earth is only comprehensible with the mathematical tongue.

While Arendt has a point about the inner dynamic of science, she neglects that scientists have to solve the problems of the « society » they live in. They are part of this society, and as such are submitted to its power structure. What are then the problem of « society », if not the problems that confront the ruling class ? The problem that scientists have to solve are the problems that the ruling class wants to be solved. And it wants them to be solved in such a way that solutions will increase its profits and social control over society, not in a way that will increase our autonomy and liberties. Thus, science has always worked for the military. I do not know any important innovation that is not linked to the military, from ready-to-wear clothe to nuclear power, internet or computers. After all, one should not forget that Galileo was working next to the most important arsenals of the Renaissance, Florence and Venice at a time when it was of growing relevance that cannon bullets reached their destination.

In spite of Hannah Arendt’s argument, I think another science is possible, one that would serve not the ruling class, but one that would promote our liberties and our autonomy. I would define it as agronomy, or agroecology : the science and art of a friendly cooperation with Nature to make it do gratis, for free, what the our capitalist agro-industrial complex does with industrial oil based inputs, fertilizers, irrigation, pesticides, machinery that are economically, socially, and environmentally, ruinous.

Here is an example of such a science. [39]

In Kenya, maize is attacked by an Asiatic stem borer and by Striga, a plant that wraps itself around the maize roots systems and parasites it. The stem borer and Striga can destroy entire fields. The cow-boy methods of industrial agriculture – pesticides and herbicides – were unable to control these scourges.

The International Center in Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) was set up in 1970 to develop ecological methods to control pests and weeds. After studying and testing hundreds of plants associations practiced by peasants, Icipe researchers deviced a « push-pull » method consisting in growing Desmodium, a leguminous plant, in combination with maize. Desmodium has an unpleasant odor for the moth of the corn borer and repels it (the « push » part). The « pull » part consists in surrounding the maize field with Elephant grass (Pennisetum purpureum), a very good fodder grass which is also very attractive for the corn borer moth which lay its eggs on it. After the first stages of development, the young caterpillars bore into the stem, where most of them are destroyed by the mucilage produced by the Elephant grass. The Asian corn borer is thus controled. As to Striga, it does not grow in the presence of Desmodium. Third, this association is an agronomist’s dream : it associates a legume plant (that fixes the nitrogen of the air) with maize, a plant that requires nitrogen. And last, Desmodium protect the fragile soils against erosion and the sun.

This wonderful scientific work was done with the participation of farmers. It assures them a bountiful and stable maize crops without insecticides, herbicides and fertilizers. Farmers increase their cattle, the droppings of which contribute to increase soil fertility. Higher incomes make it possible to send children to school.

The welfare of Kenyan peasant farmers increases.

But GDP (the commodified part of the economy) and profit decrease.

In a capitalist world, this is truly catastrophic: under pressure, the Kenyan government has authorized Ppccs.

Starving Kenyan populations is all right, so long as profits increase.

---

Box 1

Maize is cross pollinated because the male flower (the tassel) on top of the plant is separated from the female flower on the stem. Pollen is carried away by wind and insects. A maize plant inherits different characters from its two parents. It is, in the genetic vocabulary, heterozygous. Shull imagined that a heterozygous corn plant such as A1A2 B3B1 C2C3... (A1, A2, …An being the various versions or alleles of genes A ; B1, B2, … Bn, the alleles of gene B, etc.) resulted from crossing the two "pure" (homozygous) lines A1A1 B3B3 C2C2... and A2A2 B1B1 C3C3... These pure lines can be cloned by growing them in isolated fields to prevent contamination by foreign pollen. The next step is to grow the two pure lines side by side and to castrates one of them by pulling off the male flower. This castrated "female" (seed-bearing) plant will be pollinated by the "male" pure line. The last step is to harvest the cloned seeds A1A2 B3B1 C2C3... on the female plant.

How is the breeder to obtain the pure lines A1A1 B3B3 C2C2... and A2A2 B1B1 C3C3... ? The question has no answer. However, Shull found a method that apparently escaped the difficulty. It was founded on Mendel’s law of segregation which had just been « rediscovered » in 1900. This law states that self-fertilization halves the percentage of heterozygozity. After six (6) generations of self-fertilization of maize, only 1/26 (1,4 %) of the genes originally in the heterozygous state remain so. The breeder has then a set of different depressed « pure lines » which he crosses two by two to obtain clones made up of ordinary maize plants, no more no less « hybrid » and vigourous than any plant randomly extracted from the original variety. The last step is to test the clones for several years to select the best and replace the variety.

The 6 generations of self-fertilization generate an astronomic number of pure lines and crossing them two by two squares this astronomic number. Since two depressed « pure lines » can combine into a good clone, no selection is possible until clones have been extracted and tested. For cost reasons, only a very small number of lines can be randomly extracted. 100 lines, an extremely small number, generates 4 950 clones that have to be tested in several location for several years. Shull’s cloning is impracticable.

Briefly stated, Shull’s method is long, costly, unlikely. Moreover, it runs against the two basic tenets of selection. « Breed from the best » and « likes engenders like »…

---