Why Not Just Genetically Engineer Women For Milk?
MAdGE (Mothers Against Genetic Engineering in Food and the Environment) today launched a highly controversial billboard
campaign in Auckland and Wellington to provoke public debate about the social and cultural ethics of genetic engineering
in New Zealand.
The billboards depict a naked, genetically engineered woman with four breasts being milked by a milking machine, and GE
branded on her rump.
"New Zealanders are allowing a handful of corporate scientists and ill-informed politicians to make decisions on the
ethics of GE. Our largest science company, AgResearch, is currently putting human genes into cows in the hope of
creating new designer milks. The ethics of such experiments have not even been discussed by the wider public. How far
will we allow them to go? Where is the line in the sand? Why is the government lifting the moratorium on GE when we have
not even had a public debate on ethics?" said Alannah Currie Madge founder and billboard designer.
Fonterra, New Zealand's largest milk company recently purchased the patent rights to large amounts of human DNA from an
Australian genetics company. (Dominionpost 15.9.2003) "The mothers of New Zealand would like to know exactly what our
milk company are doing with this human DNA. We at MAdGE want an assurance from Fonterra that they will continue to keep
our milk GE Free now and in the future and not use human genes in cows to boost milk production." said Ms Currie.
MOTHERS, MILK AND COWS By FRANCES EDMOND
What is a mother? What does motherhood mean?
"Our experience of our mother is immense and long-lasting, from the beginning of our life onward; [She]... fills our
childhood. This woman accompanies us all the days of our lives...we are nourished for years through her efforts, her
devotion." She gives us... "wisdom beyond knowledge, benevolence, sheltering, sustaining, the... [gift].. of fertility,
growth, nourishment." [Aeppli] She gives us life. And as each generation of women become mothers they pass these things
on to their daughters so they in turn can become mothers and so on and so on through the centuries.
What is the first thing a mother does when she gives birth? She puts her baby to the breast and feeds it. It is the
most profound and the most intimate of relationships. It is the way we bond with our children. And mother's milk is the
natural food for a baby, balanced, sustaining, nourishing. No commercially made formula has ever been able to replicate
mother's milk. Doesn't that tell us something, not just about its complexity, but about its uniqueness, its perfect
natural design?
What gives us the right to think that we can tamper with 'mother' nature? What arrogance is it that allows mankind to
think that he can improve on millennia of evolution? A woman is not a cow, nor is a cow a woman. Do we, as human beings,
have the right to blur the boundaries between species, especially when we do not know what the long term consequences
may be? As an experiment it transgresses the fundamental integrity of both woman and cow. Not just physically, though to
permit human genes to be put into cows so that cow's milk is more like human milk is an affront to both of us. But
morally and spiritually as well. The taking of land from indigenous peoples here in New Zealand and in other countries
around the world took away from those peoples not just their identity but their life force. If women's essence, their
milk, their means of nourishing their young is taken away from then, usurped and commodified, the damage to their life
force is unimaginable. What monstrous arrogance to even contemplate interfering with the material essence of womanhood.
Or for that matter, of cowhood. We must not allow it to happen.
Think of some of the scientific experiments of the twentieth century. Thalidomide, so women didn't have to suffer the
perfectly natural discomforts of morning sickness. And the consequences of that? Deformed babies. The agricultural
pesticides that leave poisonous residues in our food, the chemicals in timber that have left some environments so
contaminated they are uninhabitable. How long did it take to recognise the appalling damage of nuclear radiation? We
meddle with the natural world at our peril. Let us not do it again. Keep genetic engineering in the laboratory and out
of the environment.
Who knows what mother earth will do to us this time if we, yet again, fail to respect her integrity.
Human Animals by Peter R Wills, Associate Professor Department of Physics University of Auckland
Some time in the very near future it will probably be possible to use genetic engineering to create human animals. The
cells and organs of human animals would be virtually the same as ordinary humans, except the creatures would have
underdeveloped minds. Scientists may be able to develop and breed lines of human animals that behave as nicely as
friendly pets or other domestic animals. The existence of farm animals whose with genuinely human cellular biology could
solve major problems facing medical industries. Females could be engineered to overproduce human proteins of
pharmaceutical interest in their milk, with production being turned on and off by the administration of hormones.
Most people find this idea repugnant and our moral code is constructed as if we should treat anything of human origin
with proper respect. We do not condone killing other members of our species. We do not eat human flesh. We sometimes
care for injured or sick people for years when there is only a faint hope of their ever recovering consciousness. The
legal systems of most modern societies allow individuals to claim certain basic rights that restrict the power of
authorities.
But when it comes to other species we act differently. Cruelty is generally outlawed, but animals are killed for sport
and the consumption of their flesh is allowed. We are only just in the process of developing laws that may protect our
closest evolutionary relatives, the other hominids, from virtual extinction. Their closeness to humanity has made them
targets for medical experimentation. They are still hunted and driven off their lands, just as indigenous peoples were
by colonizing powers. In the meantime, the use of domesticated species like cows has been industrialized in modern
societies.
Large numbers of farm animals are conceived by human design and action. Virtually every aspect of their exploitation
has been mechanized or modified by the application of some sort of technology. Now it is possible to manipulate the
molecular details of their biological constitution by using genetic engineering to create animals whose organs, down to
the level of their metabolism, have modified functions that serve commercial goals.
New Zealand has been at the forefront of using genetic engineering to turn animals into material commodities, being the
first country to grant a patent on the kin of Herman, the Dutch bull who carried a human gene in his chromosomes. Our
scientists have genetically engineered farm animals in various ways to make them humanoid. We have allowed the insertion
of human genes into goats. Flocks of sheep that produce a human protein have been bred in the Waikato. Now cows are
being genetically engineered at Ruakura for a mixture of medical, scientific and commercial purposes, in many cases by
inserting human genes into them.
All of this has been approved and taken place in what amounts to an ethical vacuum. There has been scant attention paid
to the ethical, cultural and spiritual aspects of interference with the genetic make-up of animal species. We have
adopted applications of genetic engineering in the same way as we have adopted new technologies in warfare. As long as
some new instrument is considered to be appropriately goal-oriented and an argument can be made that its effect is
somehow the same as what we are used to, no further discussion is necessary, except to allay the concerns of Luddites.
It has been normal in history for the desires and concerns of those who have no power to be trampled on by those who
serve to gain from exploiting the world around them. But never before has this been done with so little foresight as is
happening now with genetic engineering. The use of animals for GE experimentation is a particularly poignant
demonstration of the determination of modern humans to push aside even biological restrictions on their pursuit of
material power. But in the end it is humanity, not animalhood, which is denigrated.
If we want to respect both ourselves and our evolutionary kinsfolk, our animal friends, we should start by thinking
about what rights we might extend beyond the boundaries of our own species, like the right not to be genetically
engineered. The rights we claim over the integrity of our biology, like the right not to be exploited through genetic
engineering, should apply somehow to species whose biology is similar to our own. We would enhance human rights by
finding appropriate ways of extending them beyond narrow definitions of who we are.