Famous People Against KGI

Ralph Nader, in October 2000, said: "Here you have [the Bernard Field Station], 80 acres of land, and you're developing a tight relationship with a number of companies like Du Pont, Genentech, Bayer, Allergan - founding members, board members, CEOs of these corporations are on KGI's board of trustees - watch out! Watch out when you corporatize an educational institution. The traditions of the academy and the public purpose of non-profit education institutions are not the same as the traditions of corporations and what they pursue as their objectives. Who is gonna dominate? . . . Rupture number one: the free exchange of scientific information and peer group review. The second thing that happens is that the corporation begins to distort the research priorities that might be not profitable, but very important for human beings. The third thing that happens is that the results of this research are held secret as well, as they are moved into production market outlets. But there's something else that happens. Just ask yourself - who is likely, in this partnership, to be more seductive, more aggressive, more determined, and have more stamina - the college, or the corporation? It's not a contest. Not a contest. Ask yourself whether all of the agreements between the college and this corporation are being made public on the college web site. Are you able to get them? Are you able to discuss them? Ask in many other ways what you're gonna have to do as students here - are you gonna start saying, 'Well, you know, my professor's working in this area of biotech - I'd rather do this kind of thesis, or this kind of paper. No . . . she wants me to do this kind.' Pretty soon, the academy becomes a subsidiary of the corporation." See the full text of his comments on KGI here.

Howard Lyman [www.madcowboy.com] (author of Mad Cowboy; educates the public about organic sustainable agriculture and the dangers of current methods of food production), in October 2000 spoke out vehemently against KGI, criticizing biotechnology for moving too recklessly and saying that the colleges were wrong to be destroying a natural and biological resource like the Field Station for a corporate-controlled biotech school.

Jeremy Rifkin (author of The Biotech Century; founder and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends), when he visited Pomona in Spring 2000 spoke on the dangers of biotechnology and said: "tell the colleges that you don't want a biotech school on your biological field station." He signed the Biotech Conference Letter.

Wes Jackson (co-founder of The Land Institute and proponent of sustainable agriculture grounded in sound biology), at the same Biotech Conference, "guaranteed" that we will get "more real science" from the Field Station, as a functioning ecosystem, than we ever will from KGI. (He signed the Biotech Conference Letter, but Students for the Field Station lost the copy that he signed.)

Martha L. Crouch [http://www.bio.indiana.edu/people/faculty/Crouch.html] signed the Biotech Conference Letter.