A recent advertisement for a brand of Granola describes it as "SuperNatural." The image this provides, of cereal boxes filled in the light of a waning moon by warlocks employing satanic rituals, is probably not what the makers had in mind. However, it makes a point: today, the words "organic" or "natural" have strong appeal to consumers. People are willing to pay extra for products that bear those labels.

Our ancestors of 300 years ago faced no such decisions. Chemistry was only just becoming a science, emerging from the mists of alchemy. All fertilizers, and hence all foods, were organic and natural. Also, most people believed that living things contained a "vital force" which made plants and animals inevitably different from inorganic forms. They thought it would never be possible to synthesize, from chemical components, the substances found in living things.

It was easy to hold this view when nothing in the human body could be made in the alchemist's retorts. Doubts began to grow as tests and equipment became more refined. The famous 18th century (and 19th - he lived to be 103) chemist, Michel Chevreul, could detect no difference between many fats that occurred in both plants and animals. However, the key step came in 1828, when Friedrich Woehler was able from simple chemicals to make urea, a substance that supposedly only living organisms could produce.

>From that beginning, chemists during the 19th and 20th centuries produced, one by one, a huge variety of the sugars, fats, proteins and vitamins found in the bodies of animals and humans. They did this starting from simple chemicals, and the idea of the "vital force" became less and less plausible. Chemists were, of course, far from able to manufacture a whole, living organism, which is much more than the sum of its chemical components. On the other hand, they could synthesize, without reference to any living thing, chemical fertilizers which, applied to the land, made a huge difference to the vigor and productivity of food crops. In this limited sense, they were "creating life."

At first, such fertilizers were seen as nothing but a good thing. Later, their careless or immoderate use led to the loss of topsoil and to the growth of unpleasant algal bloom on lakes and rivers that received waters rich in fertilizers. Later still, food grown using inorganic fertilizers came to be regarded as less desirable than food with natural fertilizers, even in cases where the two were chemically indistinguishable.

Away, then, with chemists and their "unnatural" products. At this point, the biologists step forward. They say, don't worry about chemical fertilizers. We can design new varieties of plants able to thrive on poor soils or in dry or salty areas. More than that, they will be insect-resistant and wilt-resistant and they will yield better than the old varieties. There is only one catch: these new plants will be genemod (genetically modified) versions, genetically tailored to their environments.

This time there was no honeymoon period in which the genemod plants were seen as a good thing. Genemod foods are banned in many countries. In a sense, people have already made a trade-off: we would rather get by with somewhat less food, provided that we are sure that our foods are safe. I feel that this decision makes sense only in countries where there is more than enough food to go around. However, it does represent a conscious choice, and not an unreasonable one.

Now let me complicate the issue. This time the group that will step forward is not the community of biologists, but the community of physicians. The product is not food, but lifesaving medications. Sometimes these are not available in nature in sufficient quantities, sometimes they occur in not quite the right form, and sometimes obtaining them has other undesirable consequences.

Let me offer just two examples. Without a supply of insulin, many diabetics cannot live. For many years, that insulin was provided from the pancreas of a pig. However, pig insulin and human insulin seem to be not quite identical. An alternative and preferred method is to splice a human insulin-producing mechanism into the genetic makeup of a readily available bacterium, such as E. coli, which will then by its rapid reproduction guarantee an abundance of insulin. There is no possible way to view this process, except as a genemod activity with the resulting insulin as a genemod product.

As a second and rather different example, consider the drug paclitaxel. Under its trade name of Taxol, this has been recognized for 35 years as a powerful drug, useful in fighting ovarian cancer, and, more recently, lung and breast cancer. However, the demand for a long time exceeded the supply. The main source for Taxol was the bark of a certain tree, the Pacific yew. Just to complicate the issue, that tree grows mainly in old-growth forests of the northwestern United States - the same forests that are home to the spotted owl. You can see here the makings of a gigantic struggle involving dying cancer patients, environmental groups, and logging interests. This particular struggle was averted only because it proved possible to synthesize Taxol completely from inexpensive materials.

We have here two cases: Taxol, in which the "unnatural" synthesized product has almost completely replaced the "natural" and "organic" original; and insulin, in which a genemod product is not merely equal to but superior to the "natural" variety of insulin obtained from a pig's pancreas.

As our skills in chemical synthesis and in genetic modification methods continue to grow, there are going to be more and more such choices to make. Do we insist on all-natural products, or will we make what some feel to be a Faustian bargain, and accept synthetic and genemod products increasingly into our lives?

I think that the two examples I have given provide a clear answer. If you are dying, of starvation or disease, you take the route that offers you a chance to survive. And if we, today, often have the luxury of a choice between the products of nature and the products of science, we should consider ourselves truly fortunate

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