1. Lord Sainsbury's Thought Police - new media control initiative
2. New independent media centre aims to give scientists a voice
3. Blair's billionaire with a passion for biotech
4. "Lord Frankenstein Food"
---
The UK's food and biotech industry connected Science Minister, David Sainsbury, has had a pretty good deal out of his New Labour involvement. Recently we've seen Sainsbury well to the fore, with Blair in his wake, in the successful campaign to launch the UK, ahead of other more ethically reticent countries, down the path of embryo cloning. A similar successs accrued from Sainsbury's high profile involvement in the campaign to save Huntingdon Life Science. Meanwhile, and entirely coincidentally, New Labour quietly scrapped the promised Home Office enquiry into the xeno research at HLS.
There is particular delight at the cloning vote whch is seen as having for once put Britain's biotech industry ahead of even US competition. As Simon Best, vice-chairman of the Bio- Industry Association commented, "The potential market is huge. It is a completely new area." (Sunday Business January 28, 200, Pg. 10, 'GENE RULING GIVES UK AN EDGE')
Nobody should assume, however, that Lord Sainsbury and his pals are resting on their laurels. Last week a leading Fellow of the Royal Society and New Labour peer, Lord Winston, who supports not just embryo cloning but human genetic modification, lambasted the media over some of its reporting on stem cell research during the cloning debate, as well as bemoaning the lack of a higher profile from scientists in support of HLS.
This week comes news of Lord Sainsbury's involvement in a new science communication initiative involving a special "media centre":
"A new independent centre, less encumbered by past perceptions, is expected to do a better job of communicating scientists' views to sceptical and impatient journalists on controversial issues such as animal research, cloning and genetically modified food." (see item 2 below)
The new initiative should be seen in the light of ongoing efforts in the UK to control media science communication, not least as one of the main organisers of the initiative, together with Sainsbury, is none other than Prof Susan Greenfield.
Greenfield, as well as being the director of the Royal Institution, is on the Advisory Board of the food-industry funded SIRC. Greenfield also co-convened the SIRC Forum which laid down guidelines for the media -- guidelines which had largely originated with the Royal Society -- and which called for the establishment of a secret directory of "expert contacts" with whom journalists should check out their science stories prior to publication. That database it now seems will be operated from the new centre (see item 2).
Interestingly, there is no mention of the SIRC or the Royal Society in relation to the new initiative. This will be a new body "less encumbered by past perceptions" -- almost certainly an admission that the SIRC are damaged goods and that the kind of media rebuttal operation that's been operating out of the Royal Society, which has been heavily involved in the media-control project from its inception, has suffered from the Royal Society's clearly partisan involvement in issues like the GM debate and its highly cavalier efforts to damn Pusztai's research.
Greenfield offers the reassurance that, "Where there is a range of scientific opinion, we will present that diversity", but the Greenfiedl/SIRC proposals make it perfectly clear that they see as a major aim, the placing of scientists' views "in their context" - ie the critics will be marginalised.
It's all aprt of the Sainsbury-New Labour project or, as the government's chief spokesperson on biotech, Mo Mowlam, put it, "Rest assured, the government is ready to support and enhance the competitiveness of the biotechnology industry. We believe you are a real success story in the UK...We want the UK to remain a leader in this field" [Reuters, Jan 25, 2000, Mowlam tells UK biotech firms to defend products]
Items 3 and 4 are recent press profiles of Sainsbury. For more on Greenfield and the other players in the media control campaign see: http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/scisale.htm
---
2. New independent media centre aims to give scientists a voice
Financial Times; Jan 30, 2001
By CLIVE COOKSON
Scientists, fed up with failing to get their message across to the public, are to set up an independent science communications centre in London. To avoid possible accusations of bias, this new voice of science will derive financial support from a wide range of organisations - but not from the government.
The Royal Institution has office space available to house the centre beside its imposing 200-year-old building in Mayfair. Susan Greenfield, the RI's director, is one of the main organisers of the initiative, together with Lord Sainsbury, the science minister, and leading scientists and politicians from the three main parties. Lord Bragg, the broadcaster, is chairing an advisory board.
The mission of the Science Media Centre, as it is provisionally called, is "to provide a focal point from which scientists explain the nature of their work, discuss its consequences, and engage in public discussion over the benefits and risks". That is an updated version of a phrase in the RI's 1799 charter: "To diffuse science for the common purposes of life."
The centre will start by providing a service to journalists and the media but, if it is successful, it may go on to provide scientific information to the general public.
Professor Greenfield and her colleagues are reluctant to criticise the public relations activities of existing organisations such as the Royal Society, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, medical and research-based trade and professional associations, the Office of Science and Technology and other government bodies. But many of these are handicapped by slow decision-making processes, which mean they either put out anodyne statements or react to events too late to meet media deadlines. A new independent centre, less encumbered by past perceptions, is expected to do a better job of communicating scientists' views to sceptical and impatient journalists on controversial issues such as animal research, cloning and genetically modified food.
The running costs, estimated at Pounds 200,000 a year, will be provided by a wide range of science-based businesses, charities and individuals - none of which will contribute more than 5 per cent. Although Lord Sainsbury is supporting the centre, "we are not getting a penny from him or the government", Prof Greenfield said. "But we do hope to get money from the trade unions."
She hopes the funding will be in place and a director appointed to run the centre by the summer. The latter will play a high-profile role "communicating the views of a wide variety of scientists to the public".
"Where there is a range of scientific opinion, we will present that diversity," Prof Greenfield said. The centre will maintain a database of scientists in all disciplines who are happy to talk to journalists and will also have resources to research scientific opinion.
---
3. Blair's billionaire with a passion for biotech
The Independent (London) January 5, 2001, Friday
PARTY FUNDING: BILLIONAIRE WITH A PASSION FOR SCIENCE
Marie Woolf
LORD SAINSBURY of Turville, the Labour Party's biggest single donor, is an intellectual billionaire with a passion for biotechnology. The softly spoken former chairman of his family's supermarket chain - made a peer in 1997, and later a Science minister, by Tony Blair - has given at least pounds 4m to the party and millions more to fund advances in scientific research.
Lord Sainsbury owes his fortune - estimated at pounds 3.3bn - to the supermarket business but he appears more interested in pushing back the frontiers of genetics than groceries. "If a fairy godmother waved a wand and said I could be a Nobel Prize winner in plant genetics or a successful chairman of Sainsbury, I would find it a very difficult choice," he once said.
Critics say the peer's financial involvement in the Labour Party amounts to a conflict of interest, particularly because he is a keen advocate of genetically modified foods and is in a position to influence government policy. He sat on the cabinet committee on the controversial issue.
Environmentalists have long feared that the persuasive Science minister may have influenced Downing Street policy in the GM foods debate, particularly before the crop trials advanced, when the Prime Minister publicly sought to play down fears about their safety. Lord Sainsbury established the Gatsby Charitable Foundation in 1987. It has donated about pounds 2m a year to plant science since 1990.
But the Labour peer's donations to the party while serving as a minister have provoked accusations of cronyism from the Tories. The peer used to fund the now defunct Social Democratic Party but he switched support to Labour when Mr Blair became leader in 1994. When he joined the Government as a Science minister he set up a blind trust to administer his share portfolio, including those in his family firm.
---
4. "Lord Frankenstein Food"
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON) January 05, 2001
Billionaire's labour of love Lord Sainsbury
SARAH WOMACK
LORD SAINSBURY works unpaid as the minister for science but is worth more than pounds 2 billion thanks to his family supermarket business.
One of only a handful of multi-millionaire business leaders who supported Tony Blair in 1994, after he became Labour leader, he was listed as giving Labour more than pounds 5,000 in 1997 - the year he was made a life peer. But the true figure is believed to be closer to pounds 3 million, and in 1999 he gave pounds 2 million. He matched that figure yesterday.
Lord Sainsbury's two lifelong passions are, he says, politics and science - which he combines in his job at the Department of Trade and Industry. Dubbed "Lord Frankenstein Food" for supporting genetically modified food, Conservatives say his supermarket connection, ownership of biotechnology firms, and support for GM represent a conflict of interest, and he should resign. He argues that his life-long interest in genetic science and experience in food retail are vital, and there should be more ministers like himself.
David Sainsbury was born in 1940 and is the great-grandson of John Sainsbury, the founder of the supermarket chain, who opened his first store in Drury Lane, London, in 1869. Thepeer joined the business in 1963 after reading psychology at King's College, Cambridge, and was chairman of the company from 1992 to 1998. After a brief spell chairing the Prime Minister's University of Industry he was propelled into the Government.