Gore and Biotech from Investor's Business Daily.
NATIONAL ISSUE
WILL GORE PUT BRAKES ON BIOTECH?
Environmental Views Could Impede Innovation
Date: 7/2/99
Author: John Berlau
Vice President Al Gore often portrays himself as a champion of technology. His ''Gore 2000''
Web site describes his agenda as ''building American prosperity in the Information Age.''
But Gore hasn't always been friendly to one form of high tech that could be critical to U.S.
prosperity: biotechnology.
Although he hasn't said much about it lately, ''Gore has a long history of antagonism toward
biotech,'' said Henry Miller, former head of the Office of Biotechnology at the Food and Drug
Administration and a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Gore's concerns about biotech, which involves manipulating genetic material, go back more than
20 years, when he was a member of the U.S. House and Senate.
Miller, author of ''Policy Controversy in Biotechnology: An Insider's View,'' claims that, as vice
president, Gore has used his bias against biotech to shape federal policy.
Many familiar with Gore's views worry about both his trade and regulatory policies toward
biotech should he become president. While Gore has praised biotech medicines, he's remained
skeptical of its uses in farming.
That skepticism worries some analysts.
''The promise that biotech holds in feeding the starving, reducing the use of land and almost
miraculously treating disease could be stifled enormously by policies that only look at the risk of
innovation and not the risk of stagnation,'' said Fran Smith, executive director of the free-market
consumer group Consumer Alert.
''Anyone who looks closely at Gore's record on biotechnology and his whole attitude toward
biotechnology cannot look with confidence to the future,'' said Bonner Cohen, a fellow at the
Lexington Institute and editor of the newsletter EPA Watch.
In his 1992 book ''Earth in the Balance,'' Gore wrote: ''We have now taken the ancient process
of seed and plant selection to a technological extreme, splicing genes and consciously choosing
exactly those characteristics that we believe are ideal.''
He added: ''(W)e have overestimated our own omniscience and underestimated the complexity
and subtlety of the natural system with which we are interfering.''
In the book, Gore called biotech one of ''a set of dangerous bargains with the future worthy of . .
. Doctor Faustus.''
Gore also derided biotech investors in a 1991 article in the Harvard Journal of Law and
Technology. He called the biotech drug firm Genentech's initial stock offering in 1980 ''the
selling of the tree of knowledge to Wall Street.''
And he's showered praise on one of biotech's staunchest critics. ''Jeremy Rifkin has given us a
framework for critical consideration of future technological advances,'' Gore, then a
congressman from Tennessee, wrote in a blurb for Rifkin's book ''Algeny'' in 1983. '' 'Algeny' is
an insightful critique of the changing way in which mankind views nature.''
In this critique, Rifkin wrote that biotechnology ''in time could very well pose as serious a threat
to the existence of life on this planet as the (atom) bomb itself.''
In an interview, Rifkin recalled that Gore ''had similar concerns to the ones that I have. . . . I think
he shared my reservations that we ought to learn a lesson from petrochemicals and ask some of
the tough questions upfront.''
Gore invited Rifkin to speak at congressional hearings and at meetings of the Congressional
Clearinghouse on the Future. Rifkin says they spoke many times from the late 1970s, when Gore
came to Congress, to the early 1990s.
What are Gore's views on biotech today? Spokeswoman Melissa Bonney-Ratcliff referred
Investor's Business Daily to a speech Gore made June 17.
In it, he promised to build 20 centers of biomedical computing to ''deliver on the limitless potential
for new treatments, diagnostics and personalized medicine'' from the government's Human
Genome Project, which maps genetic information.
But Gore's remarks didn't set aside reservations he had expressed in his 1991 Harvard journal
article.
Does he still condemn the creation of r-bST, which replicates a natural cow hormone that's
injected into cattle to boost milk production? Gore called development of the hormone ''a kind of
thinking aimed at profits, not progress.''
Does he still think ''a unified federal regulatory system'' is needed to increase rules affecting
''new and strange technologies such as biotechnology''?
Or is he now closer to the view expressed in the 1980s by the National Research Council of the
National Academy of Sciences that genetic modification isn't that strange or new and poses risks
''no different from . . . classical genetic methods'' of breeding?
The NRC and other science societies have noted that plants have been bred for specific genetic
traits for centuries, creating new strains of plants. Methods like gene splicing are just more
precise.
The NRC concluded that governments should look at the specific risks of the ''product of genetic
modification'' rather than regulate them based on the ''process by which the products were
obtained.''
Does Gore still believe that ''the problem with biotechnology may be that it succeeds too well''?
Is he still worried that ''overproduction of key crops (will drive) up the cost of government
subsidies worldwide''?
Or does he now agree with former President Carter that biotech is crucial to feeding a Third
World population that's expected to skyrocket over the next century?
Gore says he hasn't changed his environmental views since he became vice president.
Commenting on ''Earth in the Balance'' to Gannett News Service in March, Gore said flatly,
''There is not a single passage in that book that I disagree with or would change.''
Still, Alan Goldhammer of the Biotechnology Industry Organization trade group believes Gore's
dismissive views of biotech are safely in the past.
''We certainly haven't seen any of those (past views) lately,'' Goldhammer said. ''That's the
trouble with being a public figure - you've got a long record for people to look at.''
Goldhammer said he's pleased with the Clinton administration's support for biotech products in
trade disputes with Europe. He also says Gore's efforts at making government more efficient
have eased regulatory burdens. ''I don't think things would be markedly different in a Gore
administration,'' he said.
Indeed, some big biotech companies are trying to get close to Gore. David Beier, Gore's chief
domestic policy adviser, used to be a vice president at Genentech.
Monsanto, maker of the r-bST hormone Gore once bashed, is establishing close ties to Gore and
other Democrats.
Marcia Lee Hale, a Washington lobbyist for the company, gave Gore's campaign $1,000 in
March.
CEO Bob Shapiro has given $1,000 each to the recent campaigns of Sens. Chris Dodd of
Connecticut, Tom Harkin of Iowa and John Kerry of Massachusetts. Shapiro's given thousands
more to the Democratic Leader's Victory Fund.
Monsanto also appointed Mickey Kantor, Clinton's former secretary of Commerce, to its board of
directors.
BIO and some large biotech companies have even backed a proposed Environmental Protection
Agency rule that would regulate genetically engineered pest-resistant plants as pesticides.
The rule, which some believe Gore had a hand in, was called ''scientifically indefensible'' by a
group of 10 scientific societies, including the Institute of Food Technologists and the American
Society for Plant Physiologists.
Critics like the Hoover Institution's Miller suspect that big companies are backing the rule
because it would hamstring their smaller rivals. They say this rule may be a model for biotech
policy in a Gore White House.
Big agribusiness companies wanted regulations to hinder the seed companies and start-up
biotech firms that were developing these disease-resistant plants, Miller says.
Others say similar lobbying battles could follow if there's a dust-up over biotech, like the dispute
between the U.S. and the European Union over U.S. exports of hormone- treated beef.
In a crisis, ''you need an administration with a proven ability to focus on sound science,'' said Jim
Lucier, a technology analyst for Prudential Securities Inc.
Rifkin and other biotech foes are upset that Gore hasn't fought harder to restrict the technology.
But some still see opportunities to advance their agenda if he wins.
''(Gore) acknowledges and understands that there are risks to the technology,'' said longtime
biotech foe Margaret Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists. ''(There's going to be) a new
set of pressures to which I expect Gore would respond.''
(C) Copyright 1999 Investors Business Daily, Inc.
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