Editor: Keith Davis Writers: Shana Gulko '00, Dave Maley Publisher: Office of Public Information Volume 22, No.13   March 13, 2000

Bioengineered Food to Be Topic of C. P. Snow Lecture Series A plant biologist who shut down her laboratory when she felt her research was contributing to social ills and a senior fellow at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy concerned with the patenting of genes will be the speakers for this year’s C. P. Snow Lecture Series. The speakers will visit the campus in March to discuss "Bioengineered Food: Promise or Peril?" Both lectures are free and open to the public. The C. P. Snow Lecture Series has been held at the College since 1965 in order to bring speakers to campus who actively combine scientific and humanistic perspectives. "The thrust of this year’s series isn’t whether or not we should be afraid of biotechnology itself," says Susan Swensen, assistant professor of biology and chair of the C. P. Snow Committee, "but rather what happens to biotechnology in the hands of commercial entities." On Thursday, March 23, Kristin Dawkins, a program director at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, will speak on "Agricultural Biotechnology: Battle Royal of the 21st Century." Her lecture will begin at 7:30 p.m. in 102 Textor Hall. Also at this event, the C. P. Snow Scholar’s Award will be presented to an outstanding student who has demonstrated scholarly work that integrates science and the humanities. The author of Gene Wars: The Politics of Biotechnology, Dawkins is concerned with food security, environmental policy, and corporate control of food plant genes. In building her case against the patenting of genes, she argues that the technologies now practiced in agricultural research and production are narrowing the gene pools of the planet’s food crops. That, ironically, puts the world’s food supply at risk and increases the number of people who will go hungry. On Tuesday, March 28, Martha Crouch, an associate professor of biology at Indiana University, will speak. Her lecture, "From Golden Rice to Terminator Technology: The Trouble with Biotechnology in Agriculture," will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the recital hall in the James J. Whalen Center for Music. Crouch, a recipient of the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, closed her research lab at Indiana in 1990 when she felt the results of her research on plant embryos and pollen development were adversely affecting independent farmers, local communities, and the environment. One of the major problems of biotechnology, Crouch says, is the way it reduces the landscape to an undiversified gene pool, which not only puts the food supply at risk but also adversely affects the human cultures whose livelihoods depend on agriculture. For more information call Susan Swensen at 274-3511.

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