Re: The Ciba-Geigy Effect
Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2014 8:18 pm
Guido Ebner and Heinz Schürch arrived at the lab that day thinking it would be just another day. They hung their overcoats and donned the knee length white lab smocks, ready for business as usual.
But it wouldn’t be so.
Just another day. Or business as usual.
They had been working for some time now, with Seeds. More to the point, they had been trying to understand – and see for themselves – the strange effects that occurred with its exposure to an "electrostatic field", that is, to a high voltage field in which no current flows.
They had started with Fern seeds, given their simplicity and ease of breed. And then, having seen the strange (very strange) effects on these, Guido and Heinz enthusiastically decided to move on, and try that “field” on corn and wheat seeds.
Why ?
Firstly, because those two cereals and their byproducts represented more than 75 % of the world’s cereal’s diet. Wheat alone was the second most produced cereal, only beaten by rice and, on occasion, by maize …. a cereal commonly known, yes, by the name of corn.
Secondly, their Employer was a major player in the Seeds business, selling them around the globe on some 90 countries.
Thirdly, there were rumors that the Seeds in-house department was getting so big and lucrative it could even be spun-off in the near future, and made a player by its own autonomous merit.
Fourthly, the company they worked for, Ciba-Geigy, was yet also a major player in the domain of pesticides, ever since 1939. That year, one of their chemists, Paul Hermann Müller, discovered that DDT was effective against malaria-bearing insects, a discovery seemingly “simple” but that had been enough for him to be awarded, in 1948, the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Therefore, corn and wheat seeds’ genetic engineering with a view to make them stronger and resistant to draught and plagues …. was only natural, and a seemingly good idea.
So, Ebner and Schürch went ahead with it … but not by manipulating genes.
After the Ferns experiments, they knew they didn’t need to.
But that day, when they entered the lab and examined the plants that had sprouted from the "electrostatic field" enhanced corn and wheat seeds … they were dumbstruck !
It was simply too strange, and too big a thing ! They had to try it on something else. Something “living”…. something “animal”. And see what “it” would do.
That day, they decided to try it.
And so it began.
It would never be the “same business”.
(to be continued …)
Credits (some left out by reason of story presentation) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novartis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngenta
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat
But it wouldn’t be so.
Just another day. Or business as usual.
They had been working for some time now, with Seeds. More to the point, they had been trying to understand – and see for themselves – the strange effects that occurred with its exposure to an "electrostatic field", that is, to a high voltage field in which no current flows.
They had started with Fern seeds, given their simplicity and ease of breed. And then, having seen the strange (very strange) effects on these, Guido and Heinz enthusiastically decided to move on, and try that “field” on corn and wheat seeds.
Why ?
Firstly, because those two cereals and their byproducts represented more than 75 % of the world’s cereal’s diet. Wheat alone was the second most produced cereal, only beaten by rice and, on occasion, by maize …. a cereal commonly known, yes, by the name of corn.
Secondly, their Employer was a major player in the Seeds business, selling them around the globe on some 90 countries.
Thirdly, there were rumors that the Seeds in-house department was getting so big and lucrative it could even be spun-off in the near future, and made a player by its own autonomous merit.
Fourthly, the company they worked for, Ciba-Geigy, was yet also a major player in the domain of pesticides, ever since 1939. That year, one of their chemists, Paul Hermann Müller, discovered that DDT was effective against malaria-bearing insects, a discovery seemingly “simple” but that had been enough for him to be awarded, in 1948, the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Therefore, corn and wheat seeds’ genetic engineering with a view to make them stronger and resistant to draught and plagues …. was only natural, and a seemingly good idea.
So, Ebner and Schürch went ahead with it … but not by manipulating genes.
After the Ferns experiments, they knew they didn’t need to.
But that day, when they entered the lab and examined the plants that had sprouted from the "electrostatic field" enhanced corn and wheat seeds … they were dumbstruck !
It was simply too strange, and too big a thing ! They had to try it on something else. Something “living”…. something “animal”. And see what “it” would do.
That day, they decided to try it.
And so it began.
It would never be the “same business”.
(to be continued …)
Credits (some left out by reason of story presentation) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novartis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngenta
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat