“We believe that European Life Sciences can do much more to help solve the very big problems of the developing world, especially illness, hunger and environmental degradation

Illness, hunger, food security, water quality and environmental degradation are some of the major problems facing the developing world that could benefit very much from the use of life sciences. Addressing Europe’s responsibilities towards the developing world is the main goal of European Action on Global Life Sciences (EAGLES). In the first place it is a communications programme to enhance the collaboration between European scientists and researchers in the developing world to fight hunger and disease by increasing the use of the life sciences. EAGLES, launched by Dr Diderichsen, former President of the European Federation of Biotechnology, is currently being supported by the 6th Framework Programme of the European Commission. Members of the EAGLES Steering Committees include prominent scientists from China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Mexico, South Africa, Syria and Thailand. EFB: Why such an initiative on European Life Sciences? David McConnell: “We believe that European Life Sciences can do much more to help solve the very big problems of the developing world, especially illness, hunger and environmental degradation. We do not think Europe is doing enough at the moment and what is being done is actually not very effective. Millions of people continue dying in the developing countries of horrible diseases, which are rare in Europe, such as AIDS, TB and Malaria. Over 40,000 people die every day from starvation and between 20 and 30 million people die every year of infectious diseases. We can do much more in Europe to find scientific solutions which may help solve these problems.” EFB: How can EAGLES help? DM: “EAGLES is primarily a communications programme to explain to the people in Europe the scale of the major problems in the developing countries and the fact that European Life Sciences could do much more to help solving them. We believe that the members of EAGLES from the developing countries have a vast knowledge of the major problems in their countries. I’m thinking of very fine scientists such as Dr. Ismail Serageldin (Chairman of EAGLES), Dr. Florence Wambugu, Prof. Huanming Yang (Co-Vice-Chairman of EAGLES) and Prof. Luis Herrera-Estrella. That’s why we want them to be listened to in Europe and find opportunities for them to speak, so that Europeans can hear first hand from outstanding scientists in the developing countries what actions are needed. These people can be very persuasive. Europe needs to listen to them.” EFB: EAGLES has received funding from the European Commission for two projects targeting Health and Food in developing countries. What are the aims of both initiatives? DM: “Both are communications programmes. The idea is to try to stimulate an interaction between outstanding scientists from the developing countries and European decision makers. We will be organizing various workshops in South Africa, the Philippines and China on different aspects of modern food production and also various symposia on HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis in West Africa, Thailand and China. We will try to bring together experts from less wealthy countries and officials and leaders of public opinion in Europe, so that they can learn from the people in the developing countries how important biotechnology is for them. We will also be producing a series of reports, at different stages, about the major problems in the area of food production and health in the developing world.” EFB: The first major EAGLES meeting was held in Egypt as part of BioVision Alexandria 2006. What were the outcomes of that encounter? DM: “BioVision Alexandria is a very significant biennial symposium which focuses on the role of biotechnology in the developing countries. As part of that, EAGLES organised two symposiums, one on drought tolerant agriculture, organized by the President of the European Federation of Biotechnology Prof. Marc Van Montagu, and a second one on diabetes, in association with the World Diabetes Foundation. Both were really successful. For example we had several talks on the identification of single genes that confer drought tolerance on plants, some discovered by Prof. Jennifer Thomson in South Africa, some discovered by Prof. Luis Herrera-Estrella in Mexico, and some by Professor Shinozaki in Japan. This is, from my point of view, really extraordinary work and it could be quite significant in extending the range of some of the major crops into drier areas. The second symposium, focusing on diabetes in developing countries, also gathered scientists from different parts of the world such as China , India and Egypt to describe the impact of diabetes on their countries. Several hundred people attended the symposium over three days to hear about how devastating a disease like diabetes can be in the developing countries. I believe that more people die every year of diabetes that die of HIV-AIDS, and people don’t seem to realize. That’s an example of EAGLES bringing attention to something that is extremely serious but it’s not widely acknowledged.” EFB: The Commissioner for Research, Mr. J. Potocnik, has recognized the work of EAGLES. DM: “It was very pleasing for us to hear the Commissioner for Research, Mr. J. Potocnik, giving a splendid video address to the conference on the opening day of BioVision Alexandria 2006. He referred to the work of EAGLES as a major part of his talk, as an example of how Europe was working to do more to bring the European Life Sciences to the developing countries.” EFB: How can biotechnology help improve the daily life of farmers in Third World countries? DM: “There are some very simple ways and some more complicated ones. Dr. Florence Wambugu, member of the EAGLES Food Steering Committee from Kenya, points out the importance of finding ways of distributing information to the farmers, even in the most remote villages, about the use of fertilizers, pesticides, and warning them of major climatic problems, invasions of locusts and so on. Another idea from Dr. Wambugu is the need for high quality seed production for local crops, as there are too few seed production companies in Africa producing high quality seeds at the moment. And then of course, there’s also the whole question of using old fashioned but highly effective plant breeding technology to produce more effective varieties of plants for Africa. Most of the work of the Green Revolution was done on rice and wheat, but these are not major crops in Africa. There should be major programs on the most important African crops, which then could extend of course to GM technology.” EFB: Is EAGLES targeting specific Third World countries? DM: “EAGLES is focusing on those countries which have the largest problems and I think most people are aware that Africa presents the biggest challenges. But also the arid regions of the world deserve special attention. EAGLES will also begin focusing soon on the former states of the Soviet Union, regions which are currently still facing very big problems concerning food production and health. Life expectancy and birth rates have actually fallen since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the incidence of HIV is very high in parts of these countries. When you think of countries such as India and China, the problem there is not about food production, which has been increasing very significantly, but about distribution. There’s no doubt these countries have great scientific capacity and it’s growing strongly, but that doesn’t mean Europe should not be helpful. We have to listen to the Chinese and Indian scientists and find out what their needs are to start working together. Why should we think we know better than the Indian scientists about GM plants in India?” EFB: In your opinion, is Europe giving enough voice to scientists from developing countries? DM: “The problem in Europe is that the Life Sciences have gained a bad reputation through such things as the foot and mouth disease epidemic, salmonella, listeriosis and the triple vaccine MMR. People should never oppose GM crops without first listening to the plant scientists from developing countries who know best how valuable for them these technologies are. We should be using European expertise to help the people in the developing countries breed new strains of cassava and so on. Instead, we have the extraordinary negative reaction to GM crops in Europe, which not only face a lot of opposition but also very strict regulations, often irrational and very damaging.” EFB: Who’s at fault for these misconceptions? DM: “I blame two groups of people fundamentally. The politicians, who have shown very poor judgement and poor leadership, and the media, including some of the otherwise responsible media, who have misled the public very seriously on many of these issues and have done very great damage to GM and vaccine technologies. They have shown very poor judgement informing the public about the real issues which face us in science worldwide. The reality is that the 90% of the research in the world is of interest to only 10% of the people. There are very few scientists in the developing world and only a tiny amount of money is being spent on the problems which are specific to those countries. We need to get a better balance.” EFB: How? DM: “We should be spending a much higher proportion of the research budgets on the problems of the Global South. We need to encourage the European Commission and European governments, in general, to pay more attention to the problems of the developing countries. Otherwise, Europe (and indeed other OECD regions) won’t meet the UN Millennium Development Goals set for 2015, when we are supposed to have made a very big impact on poverty, hunger, diseases, environmental sustainability, literacy and so on. We have hardly made any impact on most of these problems yet, which means that we in the North should be ashamed if we don’t accomplish what we said we should and could do by 2015.” EFB: EAGLES has submitted a critique to the draft Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). Why? DM: “The main conclusion that we have is that it’s extremely important that FP7 is organized so that European scientists can work very closely with developing country researchers on problems of the Third World. The proportion of FP7 budget spent on the developing country problems should be more significant. The percentage should be trying to be at least 5% instead of 3%, and hopefully even more. Scientists from the Global South need to have rather efficient ways of dealing with the European Commission and special mechanisms need to be put in place to smooth the interaction between the developing countries and Europe. We also feel that the draft FP7 did not do justice to the principles that the Commission has already adopted. The EC believes that we should do a lot to help the developing countries and to apply our science to solve their major problems, and that’s laudable. The draft has some initial excellent ideas, even though if you dissect the programme there’s hardly any mention of the Millennium Development Goals. The presentation is poor and it needs to be refined. The relationship and the focus on the developing countries need to be much sharper.” EFB: How is the legislation on biotechnology in developing countries compared to Europe? DM: “The problem I think is that the European legislation is very heavy handed. It’s excessive, counterproductive. It’s inhibiting the application of biotechnology in Europe; especially I would say in agriculture. Unfortunately, that’s not probably so important in Europe at the moment because there’s plenty of food, but it has the effect of leading developing countries to believe that there’s something dangerous about certain kinds of biotechnology and that’s wrong. Biotechnology is not an especially dangerous technology. There’s no evidence, for instance, to think that GM food is more risky than non-GM food. There’s scientific illiteracy in Europe and that’s extremely serious because it misleads the leaders of developing countries and it suggests that there should be very complicated regulations when, in fact, these regulations are not necessary for the most part. I’m not saying there should be no regulations, but they should be much more modest and more sensible, like the type of regulations that exist in the United States, more proportionate to the risks.” "Source":[ http://www.efb-central.org/index.php/Main/interview_david_mcconnell_co_vice_chairman_of_eagles]

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