BY RAYYAR FARHAT
Justice Michael Kirby wearily told the Young Lawyers' Forum on "Community participation in genetics and law" that he'd seen it all before. The controversy surrounding the mapping of the human genome and all the subsequent technologies for manipulation was generated by a few uninformed but vociferous opponents, he said, and it would all be over in a few years. Few present were reassured.
Even his two fellow panellists were unconvinced. Dr Kristine Barlow-Stewart, a genetic counsellor with the Human Genetics Society of Australasia and director of the Genetics Education Program, and Dr Michael Carey, a lecturer in ethics in the faculty of nursing at the University of Technology Sydney, both opposed fast-tracking the debate without public consultation.
The implications of genetic developments are only just emerging, such as in news reports of people refused health insurance and jobs on the grounds of undesirable results in genetic tests.
Although the Australian Medical Association and the Insurance and Financial Services Association have argued against genetic testing of insurance clients and potential employees, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has refused to prohibit such discrimination, on the grounds that it would be anti-competitive.
While federal health minister Dr Michael Wooldridge has announced a government inquiry into the impacts of gene technology on human health, legislation to deal with the human rights issues will not be in place for several years.
Kirby argued against a "simple" view of rights, rejecting one audience member's claim that genetic engineering was a neo-colonial attempt to dispossess people, especially indigenes, of the virtual territories of the human genome. Corporations may have the right, he said, to the sophisticated data, as non-experts lacked to capacity to either understand or utilise it.
Finger-wagging from behind the podium, Kirby warned that Australian research would suffer a backlash if it restricted genetic manipulation. He failed to make any distinction between research and its commercialisation: an assault on commercial opportunities would inevitably be anti-research, he argued.
Carey, in contrast, spoke of how market pressures can cause human rights violations in gene technologies, just as elsewhere. Could a corporation not claim that it was the right of stockholders to employ healthy employees, he asked, putting the rights of the individual and the corporation into direct conflict? Could a corporation not refuse employment to those who don't undertake gene therapy, on the same grounds?
Carey further alluded to how powerful interests have set the agenda as to what is and isn't an ethical issue, in an attempt to prevent people challenging the real corporate motivation behind genetic research. It was no use talking of ethics after the fact, he said, after commercialisation has occurred.
Kirby was decidedly unimpressed by audience calls for greater and more representative public participation in the genetics discussion, claiming it to be unnecessary. The level of debate has become so sophisticated, by virtue of the subject matter, he argued, that not even the brightest of us, not even Kirby himself, could hope to participate.
Barlow-Stewart, who, unlike Kirby, is an expert, was quick to dispute this. Her own research has indicated that laypeople are extremely well-informed about genetics and the human genome project, she said.
Unfortunately being well-informed wasn't the same as being involved in the discussion, she said, and, like Carey, called for the establishment of more forums for public debate. She strongly criticised the lax time frame of the parliamentary inquiry.
While Kirby might claim to have seen it all, those of us active in genetically engineered food issues are feeling much the same weariness.
The same argument, "relax and let the experts handle it", has been used by the federal government to disarm critics of the unlawful release of GE products into our food supply. The government has also similarly argued that genetic engineering is all a done deal and can't be unravelled and that people will soon forget about it.
Such claims about GE food have been shown to be wishful thinking. Under pressure from grassroots opposition, Novartis, McDonald's, Burger King and Lays chips have all now announced an end to their use of GE ingredients.
Central to this struggle against GE food is the rejection of corporate monopoly of the food supply. Imagine the struggle against corporate monopoly of our very beings?