I MET him in the supermarket. I was wondering whether to buy chicken 鈥淔ed on
a Non-Genetically Modified diet鈥� when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Big guy, bad
skin, yellow eyes. Prominent piercing. He mumbled something about setting the
record straight. Well, he looked like he needed a square meal, so I invited him
to dinner.
His table manners were primitive鈥攈e slurped his soup. To be fair, he
had been living wild, subsisting on roots, nuts and berries, so a little
roughness around the edges should be forgiven. But I was surprised to find him
articulate and intelligent. His story was poignant. Over the main course, he
explained how he had woken up in the lab of Victor Frankenstein. Tragically,
having created him, Frankenstein promptly rejected him. Unloved and newly
homeless, he hid in a hovel next to a woodcutter鈥檚 cottage, where he watched
through a chink in the wall the family who lived there. It was during months of
observing French lessons they were giving to a foreign guest that he learned the
language. He even managed to read Milton鈥檚 Paradise Lost.
His creator had not only given him a fine brain, he had also endowed him with
exceptional physical attributes. 鈥淚 was more agile than they and could subsist
upon a coarser diet,鈥� he told me. 鈥淚 bore the extremes of cold with less injury
to my frame; my stature exceeded theirs.鈥� Picking bits of GM-fed chicken from
his teeth, he assured me that Hollywood had got him wrong. The family he watched
had fallen on hard times. They were struggling to feed themselves, and my friend
had done his best to help, unseen.
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鈥淚 thought (foolish wretch!) that it might be in my power to restore
happiness to these deserving people,鈥� he told me over coffee, absent-mindedly
fingering the bolt through his neck. 鈥淚 formed in my imagination a thousand
pictures of presenting myself to them, and their reception of me. I imagined
that they would be disgusted, until, by my gentle demeanour and conciliating
words I should first win their favour, and afterwards their love.鈥� Of course, it
didn鈥檛 work out like that. When he finally showed his face, the family was
horror-struck and from that moment my friend became an outcast.
After decades of slanderous movies, and the more recent Frankenfood slur, he
has finally caught sight of a way to rehabilitate himself. Last month, a UN
report invited GM in from the cold, saying it could benefit the poorest farmers
by increasing yields, improving nutrition and combating pests and drought. So
are we learning to love the monster?
Unfortunately, hate and fear are a powerful combination. Greenpeace saw red,
attacking the report鈥檚 鈥渋ll-advised pro-biotech prescriptions鈥�. Its opposition
to field trials is implacable. So it seems the zealots will continue to gather
at dead of night with their firebrands and pitchforks intent on destroying the
scientists鈥� vile creation.
As my departing dinner guest put it: 鈥淚 have good dispositions; my life has
been hitherto harmless and in some degree beneficial; but a fatal prejudice
clouds their eyes and where they ought to see a feeling and kind friend, they
behold only a detestable monster.鈥�