Tracey Brown
Tracey Brown is the Director of the pro-GM lobby group Sense About Science. In October 2002 Tracey Brown attended a meeting about the design of the UK government's official Public Debate. She was invited as part of a group of eight 'social scientists familiar with the GM debate and public engagement processes' who were brought together for advice. In fact, 'public engagement processes' are not part of Brown's area of specialism which is the sociology of law.
Prior to working for Sense about Science Tracey Brown was a senior analyst at the 'risk analysis unit' of the London-based PR company Regester Larkin (staff profile). Clients include Aventis CropScience, Aventis Pharma, Bayer Inc, BioIndustry Association, and Pfizer.
Before that Brown was a Research Associate in the Sociology Dept. at the University of Kent, Canterbury, where she studied under the sociologist Frank Furedi. Furedi and Brown co-authored the paper Complaining Britain (Society Vol.36 No.4 May/June 1999) on the growing litigiousness of British society.
The contact details for Sense about Science are given as:
Email tbrown@senseaboutscience.org, Telephone 01795 537322
This telephone number is also that of Global Futures 'a charitable foundation sponsoring research and publications on new social trends'. The only publication on the charity's web-site is one by Frank Furedi. Furedi under the alias Frank Richards, was the chief theoretician of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) - a faction that evolved into the publishers of the magazine Living Marxism (later LM). Tracey Brown, has worked with Furedi for a number of years and with Global Futures since its inception.
According to the Charity Commission, the administrative contact for Global Futures is Ellen Raphael who, at the time Sense about Science was established, also worked for Regester Larkin alongside former Monsanto PR man Harry Swan. Raphael also studied in Frank Furdei's department at the University of Kent, Canterbury. Raphael has subsequently joined Brown at Sense about Science as Assistant Director.
One of Global Futures' two trustees is Phil Mullan (aka Phil Murphy). Mullan, a central member of the RCP and a regular contributor to LM, is also the registrant of the Spiked website which was set up 3 years ago by the man who headed the RCP, LM's ex-editor Mick Hume. Global Futures' other trustee is Michael Fitzpatrick (aka Mike Freeman), another RCP/LM stalwart. Fitzpatrick is also a trustee of Sense about Science.
Tracey Brown and Frank Furedi have worked with both LM and Spiked and have also both worked with the Institute of Ideas, which has published a book co-authored by Brown: Compensation Crazy. The Insitute of Ideas was established by Claire Fox, LM's co-publisher. Like Spiked it arose from the ashes of LM.
Brown is also given as the administrative contact for the domain name: senseaboutscience.org
Her contact details are given as:
tracey.brown@ukgateway.net
56 Newton rd
Faversham
Kent
ME13 8DZ
GB
01795 537322 fax 123 123 1234 .
The Faversham address appears to be shared by sociologist Adam Burgess, another senior member of the Living Marxism network, who has also written for LM and whose book Cellular Phones, Public Fears and a Culture of Precaution received a positive review from Bill Durodie for Spiked. Like Brown, Burgess previously worked in the Sociology Dept. at the University of Kent, Canterbury.
Tracey Brown is on the Stakeholder Platform of the Innogen Centre - the ESRC Centre for Social and Economic Research on Innovation in Genomics - along with a number of other GM proponents, including Dr Andrew Cockburn of Monsanto, Phil Dale of the John Innes Centre and John Hillman of the Scottish Crop Research Institute.
Appearing on BBC Radio 4's Today programme in December 2002, she said, 'Time and time again now we see a pull-back from a willingness to judge evidence, from a willingness to put forward policy based on evidence, and a desire to try to push the discussion in different directions but without ever taking responsibility for the consequences in terms of progress. There's a vacuum' (12 Dec, 2003).
Brown's analysis is precisely that of the LM network who claim that as, in their opinion, there is no empirical information to show that GM foods are dangerous, the job of government, scientists and business is to defend the technology and the importance of innovation and experimentation which are the basis of progress.
