Genetic Engineering, Eugenics and the Ideology of the Rich

By Colin Todhunter

Whatever the publicly stated aims of the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) sector, and however terrible its impact is on health, the environment and cotton farmers in India, there is a much more sinister side to this industry. 

In order to govern and control a population, apart from the use of violence, people’s consent must be achieved via what Louis Althusser once called ideological state apparatuses: the education system, entertainment, religion, the political system and so on. Noam Chomsky’s book ‘The Manufacture of Consent’ discusses the important role of the media in this, and Antonio Gramsci wrote much about hegemony – the methods used by the dominant class to legitimize their position in the eyes of the ruled over – a kind of ‘consented coercion’ that disguises the true fist of power.

However, possibly the most basic and arguably effective form of social control is eugenics, a philosophy that includes reduced reproductive capacity of ‘less desired’ people.

There is a growing fear that eugenics is being used for the purpose of population control – to get rid of sections of the world population that are ‘surplus to requirements’. In the West, due to automation and the outsourcing of jobs, there is likely to be a large section of the population that will be permanently unemployed or underemployed. In places like China, Africa and India, promoting birth control has been high on the agenda for some decades.

Millionaire US media baron Ted Turner believes a global population of two billion would be ideal and billionaire Bill Gates has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to improve access to contraception in the developing world. Based on the misguided premise that the world is getting overpopulated, fewer people means elites and the better off can reduce the competition for the resources they covert so much and maintain their current high levels of material consumption. Gates has also purchased shares in Monsanto valued at more than $23 million. His agenda is to help Monsanto get their genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into Africa on a grand scale.

Bill Gates

Here’s where things get interesting. In 2001, Monsanto and Du Pont bought a small biotech company called Epicyte that had created a gene that basically makes the male sperm sterile and the female egg unreceptive. In the US, GM foods are already on the market and unlabeled. The GM sector has spent millions to ensure this remains the case. US citizens thus have no idea of what could be in their food. These foods where not independently tested for their impact on health.

Would you like to know whether you are eating stuff that (according to Professor Seralini of the University of Caen in France) damages health?

Would you like to know if what you are eating contains something that could make you sterile?

Bill Gates’ father has long been involved with Planned Parenthood:

“When I was growing up, my parents were always involved in various volunteer things. My dad was head of Planned Parenthood. And it was very controversial to be involved with that.”

The above quotation comes from a 2003 interview with Bill Gates.

Planned Parenthood was founded on the concept that most human beings are reckless breeders. Gates senior is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a guiding light behind the vision and direction of the Gates Foundation, which is heavily focused on promoting GMOs in Africa via its financing of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

 The Gates Foundation has given at least $264.5 million to AGRA. According to a report published by La Via Campesina (The Peasants’ Way) in 2010, 70 percent of AGRA’s grantees in Kenya work directly with Monsanto and nearly 80 percent of the Gates Foundation funding is devoted to biotechnology. The report also explains that the Gates Foundation has pledged $880 million to create the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), which is a heavy promoter of GMOs.

Rather than embrace a move towards genuine food sovereignty and address the underlying political and economic issues that cause poverty, the Gates Foundation has chosen the promotion of corporate-controlled agriculture which has led to the disempowerment of farmers.

As the GM sector continues to hammer at India’s door, we have every right to be concerned, not only because of the much reported impact of seed monopolies and GMOs’ 

well-documented detrimental effects on health and the environment, but also because of concerns over just which genes may be in the foodstuffs that we eat and are unknown to us.

Researcher F  William Engdahl states that genetic engineering cannot be understood without looking at the global spread of US power. Leading figures in the US financed ‘Green Revolution’ in the agriculture sector of developing countries in order to create new markets for petro-chemical fertilizers and petroleum products, as well as to expand dependency on energy products. Food has now become weaponised to secure global dominance.

The world’s problems are not being caused by overpopulation, but by greed and a system of ownership that ensures wealth flows from bottom to top. It’s not about stopping population growth in its tracks, but about changing a widespread global system and mindset that is based an over reliance on oil and unsustainable depletion of natural resources, with the US being the biggest culprit.

Millionaires like Ted Turner believe it should be a case of carry on consuming regardless, as long as the population is cut. This is the ideology of the rich who regard the rest of humanity as a problem to be ‘dealt with.’ He says there are “too many people using too much stuff.” He couldn’t be more wrong. For instance, developing nations account for more than 80 percent of world population, but consume only about one third of the world’s energy. US citizens constitute 5 percent of the world’s population but consume 24 percent of the world’s energy. On average, one American consumes as much energy as two Japanese, six Mexicans, 13 

Chinese, 31 Indians, 128 Bangladeshis, 307 Tanzanians and 370 Ethiopians (mindfully.org)

So, should we be weary of a hugely politically connected sector that has ownership of technology that allows for the genetic engineering of food and a gene that could be used (or already is) for forced sterilization? Of course we should. This is a sector whose stated objective is to control the world’s food chain and, by implication, the global population.

In today’s technologically-driven world, state-corporate concerns are using the full panoply of hi-tech means to control us. Some decades ago, theorist and social philosopher Herbert Marcuse summed up the problem facing modern society by saying that the capabilities— both intellectual and technological— of contemporary society are immeasurably greater than before, which means that the scope of society’s domination over the individual is also immeasurably greater than ever before. It appears none more so than where the GM sector is concerned.