Editorial: GM inquiry starts on sensible note

The keenly awaited Royal Commission on Genetic Modification has begun in the best possible way. On the first day of hearings, two of the "big six" multinationals doing genetic research conceded there could be no absolute guarantee of safety. There was, they pointed out, no such guarantee in any human endeavour.

It ought to go without saying - but it needed to be said, and said right at the outset of this inquiry, because a great deal of popular distrust of science and technology has been whipped up by impossible demands for absolute assurance of safety. Fears of everything from cereals to cellphone towers have been fanned because responsible scientists will not deny that even negligible harm can happen.

If that concession clinches the issue for some of the groups represented at the inquiry, they can rest their case right now, saving the inquiry the time and expense of their continued questioning of witnesses. But if they choose to remain, they can contribute to a serious attempt to propose some principles and precautions that could govern genetic research and its applications.

Another issue also ought to be laid to rest right at the outset. Promoters of genetic modification are liable to argue that any rules New Zealand might devise may be in breach of the country's trade agreements. No principle of free trade precludes a sovereign nation setting any safety standard it wishes. It has merely to ensure that its chosen standard is set honestly and soundly - that it is not a disguised trade barrier - and that it treats domestic and imported products equally. If the royal commission keeps its focus firmly on scientific and ethical issues, it need not consider foreign consequences.

If this is indeed the world's first full-scale inquiry into the subject, its conduct and progress will be watched in the United States, where most of the leading research companies are based, and parts of Europe where consumer resistance to modified products has been strongest. Sir Thomas Eichelbaum and his panel will have to tread a careful path between some highly charged political and economic interests.

Members of the public with no axe to grind probably want three questions answered: What can go wrong? How likely is it? Are the benefits worth accepting that degree of risk?

The answer to the last question might depend on whether the product is a food, a pharmaceutical or a surgical procedure.

The ethical questions may pose the most acute challenge to the panel's impartiality. Many, probably most, people shudder at any report that human DNA has been implanted in the cells of another organism, even when the hope may be to develop a way of repairing or replacing diseased tissue.

The outcry that greeted a recent patent application of that kind reinforces confidence that the sanctity of human life will not lightly be compromised.

But transgenic experiments with other species raise hackles about vivisection that long predate genetic science. That may be an ethical issue on which the royal commission needs to state a position quickly so it can move on to its particular brief. It has crop experiments, the problems of containing accidental pollination from field trials and much else to consider. The inquiry is close to the heart and political interests of the Green Party, but the commission cannot allow itself to become a political sounding board.

If it continues as well as it has started, it offers the promise of a rigorous but impartial insight to a sometimes terrifying science - and the benefits it might bring.

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