Why not just genetically engineer women for milk?
News and
Events | MAdGE Press Releases
1 October 2003
MAdGE (Mothers Against Genetic Engineering in Food and the
Environment) today launched a highly controversial billboard
campaign in Auckland and Wellington to provoke public debate about
the social and cultural ethics of genetic engineering in New
Zealand.
The billboards depict a naked, genetically engineered woman with
four breasts being milked by a milking machine, and GE branded on
her rump.
“New Zealanders are allowing a handful of corporate scientists
and ill-informed politicians to make decisions on the ethics of
GE. Our largest science company, AgResearch, is currently
putting human genes into cows in the hope of creating new designer
milks. The ethics of such experiments have not even been discussed
by the wider public. How far will we allow them to go? Where
is the line in the sand? Why is the government lifting the
moratorium on GE when we have not even had a public debate on
ethics?” said Alannah Currie Madge founder and billboard
designer.
Fonterra, New Zealand’s largest milk company recently purchased
the patent rights to large amounts of human DNA from an Australian
genetics company. (Dominionpost 15.9.2003) “The mothers of New
Zealand would like to know exactly what our milk company are doing
with this human DNA. We at MAdGE want an assurance from Fonterra
that they will continue to keep our milk GE Free now and in the
future and not use human genes in cows to boost milk production.”
said Ms Currie.
For further information: Phone Maike Nevill 0272
471 375
Mothers, Milk and Cows
by Frances Edmond
What is a mother?
What does motherhood mean?
"Our experience of our mother is immense and long-lasting, from
the beginning of our life onward; [She]... fills our childhood. This
woman accompanies us all the days of our lives...we are nourished
for years through her efforts, her devotion." She gives us...
"wisdom beyond knowledge, benevolence, sheltering, sustaining,
the... [gift].. of fertility, growth, nourishment." [Aeppli] She
gives us life. And as each generation of women become mothers they
pass these things on to their daughters so they in turn can become
mothers and so on and so on through the centuries.
What is the first thing a mother does when she gives birth? She
puts her baby to the breast and feeds it. It is the most profound
and the most intimate of relationships. It is the way we bond with
our children. And mother's milk is the natural food for a baby,
balanced, sustaining, nourishing. No commercially made formula has
ever been able to replicate mother's milk. Doesn't that tell us
something, not just about its complexity, but about its uniqueness,
its perfect natural design?
What gives us the right to think that we can tamper with 'mother'
nature? What arrogance is it that allows mankind to think that he
can improve on millennia of evolution? A woman is not a cow,
nor is a cow a woman. Do we, as human beings, have the right to blur
the boundaries between species, especially when we do not know what
the long term consequences may be? As an experiment it transgresses
the fundamental integrity of both woman and cow. Not just
physically, though to permit human genes to be put into cows so that
cow’s milk is more like human milk is an affront to both of us. But
morally and spiritually as well. The taking of land from indigenous
peoples here in New Zealand and in other countries around the world
took away from those peoples not just their identity but their life
force. If women's essence, their milk, their means of nourishing
their young is taken away from then, usurped and commodified, the
damage to their life force is unimaginable. What monstrous arrogance
to even contemplate interfering with the material essence of
womanhood. Or for that matter, of cowhood. We must not allow it to
happen.
Think of some of the scientific experiments of the twentieth
century. Thalidomide, so women didn't have to suffer the perfectly
natural discomforts of morning sickness. And the consequences of
that? Deformed babies. The agricultural pesticides that leave
poisonous residues in our food, the chemicals in timber that have
left some environments so contaminated they are uninhabitable. How
long did it take to recognise the appalling damage of nuclear
radiation? We meddle with the natural world at our peril. Let us not
do it again. Keep genetic engineering in the laboratory and out of
the environment.
Who knows what mother earth will do to us this time if we, yet
again, fail to respect her integrity.
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