Nina Fedoroff begins as science and technology adviser to the US state department.
Nina Fedoroff is a plant geneticist who has won many accolades for her work in crop productivity and is a staunch proponent of sowing genetically modified (GM) crops in Africa. She could now be facing her toughest challenge yet. Fedoroff is the new science and technology adviser to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The woman who was the first to clone transposons — segments of DNA that can switch position on the genome, changing the expression of genes — is now charged with briefing Rice and other officials on the scientific aspects of foreign policy and improving science literacy in the department. But some of her well known opinions could cause friction. She's opposed to the push to produce ethanol from maize (corn), which the Bush administration supports. And her stance on genetic engineering contrasts with those of many African countries and of the Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa, a partnership founded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Fedoroff, who recently won a National Medal of Science, is also an author of Mendel in the Kitchen (National Academy Press, 2004), which argues that GM crops are the most environmentally responsible way to feed the world.
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What's your stance on maize ethanol?
People need to understand that if you grow maize for ethanol, you drive up the price of the maize. Brazil turns sugar into ethanol and it drives up the price of sugar. Now the World Food Programme can buy less and feed fewer people. Ethanol from maize is not going to solve the world's energy problems, it is going to exacerbate them. And ethanol combustion produces the same carbon dioxide emissions as gasoline. Besides, think about the millions of years of photosynthesis that are deposited in oil that we burned through in 100 years. You can't recreate that process from an annual photosynthetic harvest.
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