The creativity of science needs to serve the common good

Johannesburg, SACC hosts Global Consultation on Genetics and New Biotechnologies and the Ministry of the Church.

Dr Puleng Lenka-Bula, the SACCs Vice President, set the tone in the opening session for some 45 participants. Dr Lenka –Bula said “Biotechnology in many of its current applications is like the apartheid system; it thrives on and leads to the indignity of persons and communities.”

Participants in this consultation, held in Johannesburg from Dec 2 to 5, acknowledged South Africa’s role as a science and technology centre on the African continent. This opportunity for networking among concerned people, members of advocacy groups, theologians and scientists, representatives of churches and ecumenical partners, faced the complexity of the issues born of scientific advance and commercial interests.

The churches convictions and perspectives

The SACC General Secretary, Eddie Makue pointed to the fact that “Genetic advances and new biotechnologies force the churches to reaffirm the dignity of human beings and the integrity of the web of life. The creativity of science needs to serve the common good.” This note was a shared theme in all theological contributions to the consultation. Dr Lenka-Bula stressed that “where the dignity is violated because human beings are reduced to mere commodities, churches are compelled to speak and act.” She continued saying that “where the web of life is threatened or disrupted by human intervention, churches will advocate for the restoration of just relationships between human beings and other forms of life.”

Conference agreed that the teachings of the churches need to be further developed in response to the challenges of biotechnology and the impact it has on peoples’ lives. Underlying assumptions about the value and trajectory of life require deeper theological reflection. “These are a common task that depend much on the contextual realities and benefits from shared discernment” Makue emphasised. Participants who are closer to peasant communities and other marginalized groups underline their experience that communities can be devastated by the intrusion of genetically modified seeds and bio-piracy. They even conclude: “Biotechnology now serves primarily to enhance corporate profit and thereby reduces human beings to mere consumers.”

Effects on people and cultures – in different parts of the world

Indigenous peoples have been guardians of biodiversity and cultivated many of the plants used for agriculture. Their knowledge is essential to future life and survival of humankind. This is not recognized. Instead, Mexico, though the heirs to 12000 years of a corn (maize) culture, come to face the risk of the demise of their culture. For generations they belief, “the maize made people and people made the maize.” Contamination of their fields through the illegal import and use of genetically modified corn and the dumping of surplus production are seriously undermining the lives and livelihoods of people. More devastating still, such practices destroy their identity, spirituality and culture.

These themes were echoed again and again from the canola fields of Canada, to the sugar cane fields in the Caribbean, Africa and the Pacific, to those who struggle with the agro-export model of genetically modified soy in Latin America, and to 120,000 Bt cotton farmers who committed suicide in India because of crop failure.

Driven by the global market economy and unjust political systems, biotechnology promised increased production, but in the context of injustice and violence it results in increased dependency and a threat to biodiversity. The new emphasis on agro-fuels threatens to further monocultures, expulsion of peasants, land speculation, pollution, and disease while raising food prices.

Beyond the human species

Poor communities are more at risk during drug development - for example in clinical trials for HIV, reproductive technologies and diabetic research - and lack of access to pharmaceutical products that are expensive under patent regimes and other legal, political and social machineries which prevent access to drugs. Lenka-Bula warned that “perhaps the greatest arrogance to be confronted is any claim to “perfect” all life and in particular the human species. This irreverence denies the sacred relationship between creator and creatures. It ignores the vulnerability and finiteness of life. It opens the door for new divisions in human community that go far beyond the past and present experiences of racism, sexism, ableism and other deeply entrenched denials of human dignity.” The commodification of human life in pre-natal diagnostics, some forms of research cloning and stem cell research as well as enhancement techniques must now increasingly be faced by churches and the wider public.

The prophetic voice of the ecumenical community

“There is a great need for global ecumenical literacy on the many dimensions of the new convergent technologies” Lenka-Bula pleaded. A central commitment of the consultation was the restoration of the churches’ prophetic voices and public witness in the growing debate regarding the ethical use of genetics and biotechnologies. “The kind of networking modelled at the consultation and to be pursued in the future can enable the churches and ecumenical partners to find their voice and speak their truth within local settings, in national and global advocacy and in a religiously pluralistic world” Makue concluded.

The following steps, among others, have been agreed upon by the participants and are first steps in fulfilment of these commitments. They are to be carried forward by sub-groups of the consultation:

• Education: Envisioned here is the development of a compendium of educational resources, which can be electronically circulated to colleagues.
• Theological Discourse: exploring issues of unequal power distribution also in the ways they affect the discourse through the sharing of written materials and an ongoing consultative process (South-South, North-North, South-North); encouragement of societies to work on issues related to genetics and biotechnology in the widest possible sense including environmental issues.
• The ethics of embryonic stem cell research: the group pledged to follow developments in genetic research and its human applications, carefully reflecting on their theological implications and effects of each development.
• Genetically modified organisms in agriculture: support the proposal of a commercial moratorium on the export and import of agro-fuels; strict standards for the planting and transborder trade of GMO products; protect the human rights of the farmers that are being affected by monoculture GMO crops and also the economic violence they are subjected to, resulting in migration and hunger.
• Converging technologies: exchange of materials on nano-, bio-, information-, cognitive technologies and synthetic biology and sharing of information with the group as a whole.
• Advocacy, locally and globally: concerted efforts to improve the impact of multi-faceted political intervention through greater cross-sectoral and cross-regional sharing of information, models and practices; improving the churches capacity for public witness through co-operation with civil society actors and ethical and theological reflection provided by other groups in the network.

For Further Information: Contact Mr Eddie Makue, The General Secretary of the SACC at 011 241 7817 or 082 853 8781