The Nature Institute: a Center of Excellence in Holistic Research

The Nature Institute may be the only scientific research institute in North America dedicated to developing and practicing a scientific methodology that can gain insight into living, organic nature. The Institute is entering a new phase in its growth and development at a time when the limitations of modern science and technology in this regard are becoming increasingly clear. John Barnes writes us that “the excellent research and educational courses occurring there are laying the groundwork for a further development in science that will lead to a far deeper, more living, and mutually healing relationship with nature.”

An Institute project, nontarget.org, collects reports on “unintended effects of genetic manipulation”:

“Much of the public debate concerning genetically modified organisms, their widespread use in animal and human food, and their impact upon the environment could be raised to an entirely new and more productive level if certain undisputed facts were more widely known. The facts at issue have to do with the unintended and systemic consequences of genetic manipulations, as revealed in one research report after another. Putting the matter plainly: when foreign genes are introduced into an organism, creating a transgenic organism [GMO or GenTech organisms], the results for the organism and its environment are almost always unpredictable. The intended result may or may not be achieved in any given case, but the one almost sure thing is that unintended results—nontarget effects—will also be achieved. These facts have been, and are being, widely reported in the scientific literature. While they are correcting our understanding in important ways, they are not at all controversial. And they bear directly upon the wisdom of virtually all the current genetic engineering practices.

“If there has been limited reportage of unintended effects in the popular press, it may be because the facts are often buried in technical scientific articles. And within genetic engineering research itself, scientists are mainly concerned with achieving targeted effects and not with investigating beyond the range of their own intentions and reporting unexpected effects. But when they do investigate, there is usually plenty to see. It is the purpose of this project to make evidence about the wide-ranging and never wholly predictable effects of genetic engineering readily accessible to concerned citizens, policy makers, and scientists...”

Along with searchable short reports, natureinstitute.org has a major collection of longer articles covering the whole field.