The controversial, life-altering technology, genetic engineering, took 10 years to pass through the European Parliament. By the time it finally gained approval last month an emerging voting pattern had crystallised. Dissenting voices had been loud and largely female, as women from across party lines consistently voted against biotechnology patenting. Meanwhile their male colleagues threw their considerable collective weight behind the new technology. Voting in the EU merely mirrored what was taking place where ever debate focused on genetic engineering. At the highest level, female commissioners charged with health and consumer affairs were clashing with their male counterparts who were engaged in promising the World Trade Organisation that Europe's health and environmental regulations would not prove a barrier to "free trade" in genetically altered crops, animals and human DNA.
Similar battle lines have been drawn in the scientific world where the most outspoken opponents of life-altering technology are all women. The eminent Indian scientist, Vandana Shiva, observing voting patterns in the EU decided the time was ripe for women's fragmented efforts in opposition to be united.
Along with female parliamentarians she set up the worldwide organisation, Diverse Women For Diversity, in what she herself admits is an 11th hour attempt to keep big business's favourite invention off the supermarket shelves. With representatives in 20 countries, conferences have taken place in Slovakia and the Czech Republic and a concerted campaign is now underway.
How are we to greet such a reaction? Is it illogical, indeed hysterical, or has it sprung from a wise and reasoned appraisal of the situation? The answer to this question leads back to the European Parliament and the mindset of the women and men voting there. According to Irish Green MEP, Nuala Ahern, female parliamentarians typically expressed concerns about biotechnology's health-care implications and worried whether genetically modified food would be safe. Meanwhile male MEPs dwelt on job-creation implications and the prospect of upsetting free trade and, by implication, the US multinationals pushing biotechnology.
Wendy Edwards, head of the UK group which opposed biotechnology patenting, had very specific reasons for getting involved. Coming from a family where mortality was easily traceable to breast cancer, she opted to have a DNA test which identified the disease as likely to cause her death. This prompted her to have a mastectomy as a preventative measure. She campaigned against the patenting directive because it allows companies to own the rights to genetic techniques, and to name their price whenever a technique is used in health checks. Edwards's claims appear to have been borne out: the breast cancer test for which she paid a small fee now costs £2,000, thanks to the ownership rights won by multinationals.
Scientists and parliamentarians, women at the coalface of the campaign, argue that a deep, age-old, force is splitting the sexes on the issue. Mae-Wan Ho heads the Bio-Electrodynamics laboratory of the UK's Open University and has written widely on biotechnology. "Science for a long time has been dominated by reductionism. Its methodology involves isolating and investigating factors one at a time, and it has been responsible for some of the greatest scientific disasters because it fails to take account of the real world where a variety of factors operate in unison."
Dr Ho cites BSE as an example, saying scientists maintained that feeding bone meal to cattle would be safe because it appeared so when tested in a reductionist manner. This did not take account of the effects of grazing, soil pollution and a number of other factors which, acting together, may have contributed to the disease.
She added that the inability to identify smoking as a health hazard is further proof of the ineffectiveness of reductionism as a scientific approach. Because it was impossible to prove that smoking was damaging using a cause and effect model, some scientists deemed the habit safe. According to Dr Ho the ill effects of smoking were clearly proven using an ecological scientific model, which takes in a multitude of interacting factors, and approaches subjects in a holistic manner.
"Men seem to find holistic ideas too difficult because they can't pigeon-hole things, which is what they are used to doing. It's a patriarchal thing, they like to have very clear rules. Whereas women are much more able to cope with the blurring of boundaries."
Dr Ho points out that reductionism is not a tendency that is limited to science but a mind-set pervading every aspect of our lives. "Look at the behavioural sciences or psychology. Look at the volumes that are churned out on violence and aggression when, by comparison, there is so little written on love. Society seems to be obsessed with competitiveness and where has it got us? Now they are trying to control, to patent and to own life itself."
Vandana Shiva maintains that the manner in which multinational companies are using genetic engineering amounts to a violent assault on every living thing. "The worst violence comes from the greatest fear. That's what this is about, fear of everything that is alive and free. These companies want nothing less than total slavery."
Shiva is currently involved in the court challenge taken by the Indian government against a US biotech giant which is attempting to gain exclusive rights to the Indian staple, basmati rice. The company slightly altered the genetic make-up of the rice and then claimed the right to patent it, effectively ?the Indians of a food that has sustained them since cultivation began. Shiva believes the Indian challenge must succeed, saying that failure would allow the multinational to demand royalties from peasant farmers for simply growing the crop.
Shiva cannot but be bleak about the future, pointing out that last month the biotech multinational, Monsanto, which has been attempting to get planning permission to grow genetically modified test crops in Ireland, managed to purchase a research company part owned by the US government which has developed what has been dubbed the "terminator technology". The company has managed to modify seeds genetically so that crops will no longer have the capacity to reproduce and farmers who sow these seeds will be obliged to buy seeds from the company again the following year. According to Shiva, Indian women are already taking the only avenue open to them - collecting and hoarding seeds to safeguard against their eventual disappearance.