Ignacio Chapela Press Conference
April 18th 2005
A special bit of first-hand journalism today — Ignacio Chapela was an assistant professor at UC Berkeley, who was denied tenure last November for reasons he and many others believe to be corporate or political in nature. Chapela did key research indicating that modified genes in Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) were being transferred to pristine plants in nature, specifically untouched corn crops in Mexico. He also did research into the effects of GMO foods on animal development, which, once published in 2001, swept him into a vortex of corporate interests attempting to defame the research. It culminated last year when Chapela was denied professorship, and he is now suing the Regents of the University of California, saying that there were corporate conflicts of interest in the tenure decision process. Read more about the situation (second article on the page).
Chapela held a press conference today at 2PM, and I went with camera and digital recorder in hand. You can download audio Chapela’s wonderful introduction (mp3, 1.4 MB), or the full conference (mp3, 8 MB) (sorry about the wind). Here are some of key quotes catching the general theme:
“The university used to be the place where people could ask any questions and hear the answers no matter how uncomfortable they were — we used to call that science. And it seems as though the university has lost that capacity to do science.”
“This is not a lawsuit against the university. It is a lawsuit for the university and against the people who have bastardized and taken away the incredible privelage of this campus.”
My own opinion on the subject is near complete support of Chapela and his lawsuit. My only concern is that he brings up the racial factor, which is completely understandable. Still, I believe it detracts from the scientific and academic focus. It absolutely needs to be addressed, but perhaps not at the same time as the scientific point.
In every conversation I have had with scientific minds on this subject (GMOs), I have always felt shunned for bringing up the slightest doubt. When faced with even solid science like Chapela’s, many scientists still will not consider both sides of the argument. This one-sided view on GMOs has very likely been influenced by large corporations funding research at universities like Berkeley, and the effect has been devastating to the scientific process in the field. I can only hope this lawsuit causes some stir in the system, and hopefully lessens the impact of politics and corporate interest on scientific research in genetic engineering.
The lack of comment about this is remarkable - not only here, but in the media as well. In the world of science this is a very big deal… but no one speaks.
Absolutely. Also consider that this post went out to approximately 70 students in a class dealing with this very subject. Seems they should be more interested, but it’s just not even given much importance even in class.
I did speak with the professor, and it’s interesting to note that he agreed with my analysis, and added that Chapela’s case seems a little “over the top” I guess you could say. First he brought in racial issues with tenure as a 2nd facet of the lawsuit, which I really believe shouldn’t have been mixed with the scientific part. In a more general sense, his lawsuit seems more personal than scientific. I think his heart is in the right place though; he knows that the impact on the scientific community could be great, and he’s really trying to aim for that.
Publicize it! No one says you can’t. Except maybe Novartis… and that’s really the whole question. None of us are attached to their puppet strings — we can make this a big deal if we want. Even then, given the power that these scientific industries have, no one could get far, and I’m sure that’s what’s been happening so far. [try Robert Kuehn - "Suppression of Environmental Science" (pdf)]
One of the profs implicated in conflict of interest, MCB’s Jasper Rine has been caught up in some interesting stuff recently as well. Seems someone stole his laptop and then threatened that person hardcore during one of his lectures and it was caught on video and distributed on the web. I have the whole thing linked from my blog as well as a brief cataloguing of his involvement in this case.
[...] otech company Novartis. Just a month ago, he sued the university for several things, and I reported on the press conference. This is great news. Chapela’ [...]
Joshua — I saw the video of his threats to the student. Apparently, they were not only empty threats, but the student also did not return the laptop.
My own pingback above is great news and a good followup to this post.