Hi everyone, I'm Lucas Vanhaelewyn. A PhD researcher from Ghent University and
it's a great honor to be here today with professor Marc Van Montagu for this
interview on behalf of ASPB and CONVIRON
Professor Marc Van Montagu is a very well known scientist
especially known for the discovery of the TI plasmid and he is actually the father of
the modern plant biotechnology. So, maybe we can start with your current responsibilities
how does a normal working day looks like for you at this moment
oh well that is a story. That is surprising because indeed
I retired 17-18 years ago. Now I live in Brussels and I commute every day to
Ghent so I get up at 6:30. I have the luck to have a house that has an indoor
swimming pool. So, I swim that is important this physical and then I take care
of breakfast because well, we are both more than 80. And her, my wife's
health is not perfect so I take care of that and then I try to leave the house
around 9:20 most duties are done and then, I take, I have a car that takes me
to a place where there is a metro station and go to take the train to Ghent
it's only half an hour, it is flexible.
[More on this topic in the written report]
If we look back at your career
so I read that since young you are really fascinated about science and
eventually you've got to work with plants. If you look at your career as a whole
are there certain things you really found rewarding and then the other way around
were there some things you would have done differently
I think everybody would have done things differently after all what we learn, that's clear
rewarding was to have good secondary school where people really
explain science and get good mathematics and physics so that you can understand
"what is the physical world" and trough organic chemistry
got interested in Biochemistry. It was just after the war, so in those days examples of Biochemistry
Were rather rare rare
Everything was done in that period mostly in the States
Good
If you have some good tutors that understand that it exists
choose that and then, rewarding was to have as a student in chemistry for the
course in biology, a person. Local hero I call him, Lucien De Coninck. Who started at
the same time humanistic organization. So to have
directly the link between biology and society and biology and what we call the
fundamental sciences like chemistry, physics
and that brought rapidly then the possibility to start a PhD with somebody in the
Faculty of the medical school but who had also an interest in fundamental
science. So each time I see one is the fundamental science
then you see it immediately all what we don't know. You are not frightened, you
know everything we don't know
In the medical field, daily people
have other solutions for their medical problems than science and and you need
you see each time what science needs but later on you understand that for plants
it's the same what we know at the moment is a very very little but we should know
and how it goes in the field especially recently when people accept the whole
microbial world and over all the living organism in the soil
play an enormous role in the way plants grow and develop just parallel because
the medical field has seen that we have three trillion maybe four trillion
microorganisms in all our orifices and that there is a lot of exchange not only from
small molecules but probably from peptides RNA and all this has to be done
Well, so the medical field does it and has the money to have the equipment to do it
So lets hope that for plants people will understand and we will also and the next generation
Will have the possibilities to do it
You have been strongly promoting GMO technology, so I can imagine this comes with challenges
Especially, criticism. How do you deal with criticism about GMO and what you are doing.
And, what would you advice to young scientists on how we should talk about our work to the general public
An interesting question because in our education we learn about science but we
don't learn about society and we don't learn about the economics of the society
who really gives us the means to do science and to cope with a society where we have
been so reckless to grow grow grow and seven billion eight billion nine million
where will it stop we cannot go back, so we have to find solutions. - yes - so Malthus
thought we will all starve it's impossible to feed. But Human
ingenuity made that we found solutions, chemicals but by doing that we
destroyed the environment. So finally we we understand a bit more that we have to see
not only human ecology but all the living organisms on the planet
So, that are all kind of approaches
that have been taken us
very very serious and if you explain that, I think at that moment people should understand
That GMO is just a step forward. But it is difficult to explain it because you can not expect
that people know science. We don't know the detail of nuclear science, we don't
know about physics we don't know about the plan, we also listen to our peers, so
we have to learn to listen to society who wants explanations and be able to
talk to them and not just say oh you, you are silly, you don't know science, we are
as silly as all the others because all the other science, we also don't know, so
what is the difference and if people are convinced of that and are sincerely in
understanding that we have rationality and that life is not rationality because
then we would be robots everything would be simple but we have and that evolved
on neurobiology with all the other steps that are involved and that we have to
able to communicate that the beauty of life that we feel is the emotions
and all the emotions who are there to survive because if the life is too
harsh and you don't have hope and you don't have fantasy you cannot survive
before all the technology was there. If you have fear of science but you need
to have fear because in the world before when humans 30 40 50 thousand
years ago if they didn't have fear they were a eaten or bitten or destroyed, so we are
with a neurobiology that the unknown gives fear. So try through rationality to say
that it's good that fear for the unknown but what is an unknown and and explain what
is the technology but a car is extremely dangerous but nobody is afraid of a car
and because we have a system to work with it. Explain that making crosses
with a new organsim
could be very dangerous and poisonous but the way it is done and scientists does it, it works well
So, GMOs is nothing else than that
Ok, then the next question apart from your academic research career you also
founded several companies such as CropDesign. Are there any advices you can
give to young entrepreneurs which would like to start a company - let's say
biotech related. - Well we understand the economic world that we are in at the moment
don't dream of another solution first go to the reality, otherwise you
will not survive. So see if the product that you want to make has a meaning
economically, not scientifically - that's true
I didn't start with CropDesign. I started with Plant Genetic Systems in
the early 80s and there, after some years because people thought after what we had done
that we knew it, we had about 70 projects because everything was important
and luckily we met the person Suri Sehgal who had before made Pioneer International
and pioneer company everybody agrees that's a serious
company because they have more than 60% of all the corn worldwide. So he had run
tropical corn all the international activities of Pioneer and he came and
wisely said yes yes yes that's interesting but maybe then...
And after two hours of discussion of the 70 projects, 8 projects were left and that made the
success of a Plant Genetic Systems and that is what you have to do: focus
and see that there and also see that you have the tools to make very rapidly the
product you want to make and already know that we live in a world of
regulatory and that you will use/need most of the money for lawyers
and regulatory sequences and not for science. Don't think
that you make a science lab making a product is completely different then
than doing science and if you think you can enjoy that, do it, otherwise stay in
science because we need a lot of people also in science although there you know
you will not make money, you will have the the pleasure of knowledge but
it is important it's a it's a kind of artificial system that we have created
to say that money is is the answer. That's just away at the moment that our
economy economy goes. In theory people want other possibilities.
It's impossible at the moment so ok, out of that, see what it gives. - Ok, thank you!
Then a last question is about a recent development in Africa. What is your
opinion about the new biotech law which has been passed in Uganda which
basically opens the door for GMO. - Well, finally I would say and that's the wisdom
of the President of Uganda that he took this step and I hope that at least the
neighboring countries with who they are in kind of economic union. Kenya, Tanzania,
Rwanda's that that they will follow because it's badly needed. It's a real vision
that all the arguments on fear are absolutely wrong and confidence in
science that he shows. If the products will be there
how the multinationals will handle that, how Europe and the people who have
such a strange understanding of what Nature is and what the environment is
And how we can depend on them, if they will follow and just do this sterile fight agains science
analogies with the Middle Ages where the church was also against the first
science is very appropriate with me
some hundred years is nothing we are exactly the same persons with
the same feeling and the same knowledge that we can find ourselves but in a
group if we talk to each other and we explain, that's why we have an enormous
responsibility of trying to explain. And we should also see that in Africa
There is an enormous oral tradition. So people listen and if you talk about arguments
You will have a chance. Let's be optimistic.
Scientists are optimistic that their working hypothesis will be the good one
So, let's hope that they will do the same
On behalf of ASPB, I want to thank you very much Professor Van Montagu
for your time and sharing your perspectives and advices with us
You have to do it
It's the young people of ASPB who have to do it
So, it's not me who will do it
Very important!
but we are inspired by you. So we thank you very much
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