sketch for a biotech future

1980

· US Supreme Court rules it legal to patent genetically created life. Money begins to pour into biotechnology. Many small research firms set up.

1995-6

· A massive upheaval takes in the pharmaceutical industry. The larger firms suddenly begin to swallow countless smaller ones - especially biotech firms, whose research has come of age - turning themselves into monopoly interests in the process. The largest single deal is the union of Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy to form Novartis, valued at $27 billion. This makes Novartis the world's number one agrochemical corporation, its second largest seed firm, its third largest pharmaceutical firm and its fourth largest veterinary medicine company.

1998

· European parliament follows US Senate in allowing patenting of genetic material.

· 'Terminator technology' patented - a genetic manipulation that ensures that proprietory seeds will only produce sterile seeds themselves, thus preventing farmers from saving money by keeping back some of their harvest for replanting the following year.

· Leading agro-corp Monsanto, manufacturers of Roundup herbicide (most popular in world) and 'Roundup ready soya' - genetically engineered to be herbicide resistant - start a image-improving ad-campaign in Britain.

· Prince Charles criticises Monsanto, although his central argument - that genetic engineering is impinging on the rights of God - is regarded by sympathisers as somewhat weak.

1999

· Controversy over work of Dr. Arpad Pusztai of the Aberdeen-based Rowett Institute leads to political storm over biotech in the English press. The various news media scrabble to become the new moral voice of the country. Cauliflower mosaic virus, phage, snowdrop lectin become household phrases.

· Scientific issues become hopelessly muddied by politics and spindoctoring. The British Conservative party announces itself 'the natural party of natural food and launches enormous campaign against the British Labour Party, which it accuses of walking hand in hand with 'big biotech business barons.' The Labour Party falls foul of this strategy, despite being relatively blameless in comparison to their predecessors, after a breakdown in their spin-coordination results in a series of media gaffes.

· Monsanto and Novartis PRs patiently explain to the rest of the world in pitying tones that the reason for all the noise coming from Britain is that as a nation we have still not got over the BSE crisis.

2002

· Human Genome Project finally completed. However, total database not available to any one group, because all genes were patented along the way as soon as they were discovered and the large bulk of the information now considered proprietory. Much of the research, therefore, is rendered useless. Parallels with Frankenstein's monster, the reciting of the names of God, and the Enlightenment project of the Encyclopédie are drawn in the press. Many feel a bad precedent has been set for the new century.

· Riots in Thai countryside when it is discovered that atempts to prevent the patenting of the variety of Jasmine 105 rice that has been a recommended strain in Thailand for nearly half a century.

· New album by Cauliflower Mosaic tops the charts. 'The new Radiohead' - Q Magazine.

2005

· Many new kinds of 'novelty' genetically modified food become widely available. Soya beans that taste of hamburger. Flavr Savr tomatoes with added lycopene to 'protect against cancer'. Nutritionally enhanced strawberries with an added anti-freeze gene from the winter flounder fish that has allowed them to have been grown in the Arctic. Oranges with a less fibrous pith which are advertised as practically peeling themselves.

· 'Biotech hobbyist' movement gathers momentum. Dream of producing an orange that contains THC, the psycho-active constituent in cannibis - an idea that circulated western media in the form of a hoax in 1999 - finally realised. Organic farming lobby promotes 'Moral Maize'.

· In the wake of too many 'politically insensitive' cash interventions, such as those which helped to shore up the Suharto regime, the International Monetary Fund sets up an auxiliary organisation to provide aid: the International Seed Bank. This body is designed to help poorer countries by providing agricultural and biotechnological know-how, but is quickly dominated by biotech interests whose technology displaces native crop lines with proprietary strains and further shackles countries politically and economically to donors.

2007

· 75% of all major crops grown in North America are genetically engineered.

2011

· All major seed companies have by now adopted terminator technology to protect the crops they regard as their intellectual property. Meanwhile, half the world's farmers are too poor to afford to buy new seeds every season and can only survive by saving seed from one season to replant the next. Angry scenes in the UN as southern leaders protest at Northern standards of copyright being applied to universals, such as food.

· Further international outrage at practice of 'Growers Contracts', common since the 1980s. When a farmer buys seed, s/he has to sign a contract promising to use only the seed company's own fertiliser on the crop, taking responsibility for all illegal use of the seed produced by the crop for three years from the date of harvest, and granting the compnay rights of access and inspection to the crop at any time. Many farmers, unable to afford insurance, are forced to put up their farms as collatoral against possible claims for damages by the company.

· Recently elected Icelandic government loses legal battle to reclaim patent rights on Icelandic genome from deCode Genetics, the US-financed Rekjavík-based company that acquired them in 1998.

2016

· Massive PR campaign by biotech industry, which claims that it not only has the answer to world hunger, but also to world peace, since wars and famine aren't good for business and seed sanctions against recalcitrant states are likely to be more effective than weapons of destruction. Also, as promised back in the 1990s, biotech has led to a reduction of herbicides in food production. Of 3%. In the US.

· Reorganisation of many developing world economies as farmers, unable to 'grow on' seed, starve and move to increasingly populous cities having sold their land to the seed corporations. Seed companies make PR mileage out of setting up 'soya kitchens' to feed this new urban poor.

2023

· Dr. Arpad Pusztai posthumously awarded sainthood by the First American Church of the Unadulterated Corn of God.

· The first blue rose is grown.

2028

· New and severe food allergies begin to appear, as well as various novel and virulent alimentary cancers. Row rages over evidence of colon extension on humans born in the 1990s and brought up on babyfood rich in GM soya. Biotech corporations fund research into psycho-somatics.

· A venerable George Monbiot begins campaign to have Monsanto held legally responsible for decimation of British skylark population, claiming destruction of their food chain by widespread deployment of monocultural techniques. Monbiot dies of a 'heart attack' in mysterious circumstances.

· Failure to ban the routine use on farms of drugs that are related to human anti-biotics has led to development of several strains of multi-drug-resistant bacteria, capable of killing people with weak immune systems. AIDS, which was being successfully contained (many people managing to lead full lives despite being HIV positive) becomes a problem again. Medical researchers hampered by legal tangles surrounding drug and bacterial DNA patents. Drugs produced by the commercial biotech interests often prohibitively expensive and rarely properly tested.

2033

· Legal claims over seed misuse in the North enable seed corporations to seize vast tracts of land. This coupled with similar land acquisition techniques from developing world farmers forced to keep seed back for regrowing - so putting them in breach of their Grower's Contracts - makes them the largest and most powerful landowners on earth. Monsanto and Norvartis now own more land than most countries.

· Sweden attempts and fails to take Norvartis to court for destruction of ancient meadowlands by escaped transgenes.

· Efforts of biotech terrorists to create 'superweeds' by crossing pesticide-resistant crops with homozygous weeds and releasing the results into the environment begin to have an effect - farmers begin to find GM fields increasingly infiltrated. Pesticide use creeps back up to and surpasses pre-GM levels.

2039

· Countryside in industrialised countries a genetic desert, with minimal bio-diversity. Local ecologies destroyed by monoculture and escaped genes. Previously common insect and wildlife becoming extinct. New international trade begins in genetically engineered insects, which are brought in to pollinate crops but which won't survive beyond five generations. Arthur Herzog's 'The Bees' reprinted. Press draws parallels with biblical plagues of locusts etc.

· Friends of the Earth announce that the dream of organic farming is over - it is no longer possible to find crops uncontaminated with rogue strains, or land uncontaminated with herbicides.

2044

· International scandal as Columbia, now openly run by a government made up of drug barons, discovered to be paying for DuPont-led research into a genetically improved coca plant. US Congress attempts to declare war on Columbia, but prevented by powerful Congressional biotech interests who are benefiting from peace.

2049

· DuPont discovered introducing addictive elements from coca gene into staple foodcrops. By the time an international treaty to ban the practice is organised, it is too late - large chunks of the world's population are addicted to one type of soya rather than another, or to one particular variety of tomato. More riots. Defence departments the world over begin to test and deploy new range of 'containable use' biotech weapons.

· It is announced that world oil reserves are exhausted. Primary replacement is (genetically engineered) agricultural oils - oil-seed rape, linseed etc. Even more power put into hands of agrobusiness.

2052

· Norvartis tries to implement a 'Consumers Contract', similar in form to the old 'Growers Contract'. Now if you buy a genetically engineered product you have to agree to serve it only with other food products from the same company, and agree to let company inspectors into your home at any time to check you're complying with this rule. Food riots occur throughout major northern cities.

· Governments have less and less say about agricultural practices in their own countries. Many articles in the press about the end of nationhood. Factions within Norvartis begin to push for statehood and a seat on the UN. Media coverage and criticism of biotech begins to wane - biotech companies now hold controlling interests in most of the major media corporations.

2060

· Jainism becomes the number one world religion. Many now wear face masks (in order not to accidentally kill any of the few remaining insects) and refuse to eat any food harvested by machine.

· New figures suggest that 65% of world population now suffer from food-induced digestive problems and intestinal cancers.

· US Congress legalises human cloning. Clinics open offering cloned fetuses pre-adapted to GM food. Worldwide media scare that human race will split into two or more species. Representatives of the biotech corporations claim this has no basis in fact.