John Gillott

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John Gillott in 2004

John Gillott has a degree in applied mathematics. Between 2009 and 2013 Gillot was registered as a Phd student at the ESRC Innogen Centre in Development, Policy and Practice in the Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology, Open University.[1] He formerly worked at the Genetic Interest Group (GIG) London, as a policy officer, and was also on the staff of the online clinical genetics resource Genepool along with Juliet Tizzard of Progress Educational Trust.[2] As a contributor to Living Marxism, (between 1992 and 2000, in which he sometimes used the 'Party name' John Gibson) Spiked (between 2001 and 2010 at least),[3] a speaker at Institute of Ideas events (for example on Wednesday 14 March 2007)[4] he is associated with the LM network.

Education

Gillott has a first degree in Mathematics.

Between 2009 and 2013 Gillot was registered as a Phd student at the ESRC Innogen Centre in Development, Policy and Practice in the Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology, Open University.[5] In 2009 this was listed as being on 'How Government and regulators pursue their objectives through public and stakeholder engagement'.[6]

By June 2010 this had changed to 'The Changing Governance of Science? A critical inquiry into the contemporary politics and governance of research as explored through the human tissue and embryo cases in the UK'[7]

John Gillott from the Innogen website, 2011

The 'Patents on Life' Directive

For more detail see Main Article Genetic Alliance UK

In 1997 the Genetic Interest Group became embroiled in controversy over the lobbying activities of Gillott's colleague, GIG's Director, for the EU Directive on the Legal Protection of Biotechnological Inventions (popularly known as 'Patents on Life'). What was controversial about Alastair Kent's lobbying for the Directive was that it was at total odds with GIG's declared policy of opposing attempts to patent genes. [8]

This policy departure is interesting when viewed in the context of the attitude of GIG's Policy Officer towards those that GIG should have been allied with in opposition to the Directive. Gillott was busy vehemently attacking those with whom he and GIG should have been allied in opposition to the Directive. 'The Directive has been vigorously opposed,' Gillott noted in an article at the time, 'by environmental campaigners who say it is an aspect of the 'race to commodify life' which amounts to 'biopiracy' '. Gillott dismisses such views as 'the rubbish peddled by the environmentalists.'[9]

Gillott's article appeared on the website of LM (formerly known as Living Marxism) of which Gillott was the science editor. That same year Gillott appeared in the Channel Four TV series Against Nature which presented environmentalists as comparable to the Nazis and as responsible for the deprivation and death of millions in the Third World.

Since the demise of LM magazine in 2000, Gillott has been a regular contributor to the Spiked website edited by LM's ex-editor, Mick Hume. Both Gillott and his GIG colleague Alastair Kent have also spoken at events run by the Institute of Ideas, an organisation headed by LM's former co-publisher.

Targeting Environmentalists

John Gillott and Manjit Kumar, Cover of the 1995 edition of their Science and the Retreat from Reason. 'It is difficult to understand', wrote one reviewer 'how a book that began with such a brilliant defense of science and reason... could lead in the end to such a state of unreason'

Environmentalists are consistently a key target in Gillott's writing. In 1999 Gillott appeared, like Juliet Tizzard, in the Channel Four TV series, Against Nature, directed by Martin Durkin. The series painted environmentalists as doom-mongering Nazi's responsible for the deprivation and death of millions in the Third World. In one of his Spiked-science articles from 2001, Gillott claims that the apparent scientific consensus on global warming is 'rigged through a media compliant to Environmentalists' extremism'[10]

Gillott's preoccupation with opposing and attacking the environmental movement is also a marked feature of a book he co-authored with Manjit Kumar, who was once a prominent member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. In Science and the Retreat from Reason (Monthly Review Press, 1997) - first published in Britain by Merlin Press (1995) - Gillott and Kumar argue that progress requires the unfettered growth of science. This it sees as threatened by the irrationality of the environmental movement.[11]

Despite being published by the Monthly Review Press, Gillott and Kumar's book attracted a review in their journal Monthly Review that contained some unusually scathing criticisms. In his review John Bellamy Foster argues that although the book advances a ' strong and in many ways brilliant defence of science and reason', in the end it 'turns, in my view, into the opposite.' The book, according to Bellamy Foster, takes on 'all the assumptions' of 'the current "brownlash" against environmentalism', ie the attempt to minimize the seriousness of environmental problems in order to fuel a backlash against environmentalism and 'green' policies.[12]

Bellamy Foster is also highly critical of the authors' thesis, advanced particularly in the book's penultimate chapter, that environmentalists are 'the main contemporary enemies of science and reason'. He also notes the authors' 'naive willingness to accept all technology without question' - something which 'is evident throughout Science and the Retreat from Reason.'[13]

The authors, he says, 'write as if the left is simply being irrational in being skeptical about the wisdom of obtaining "cheap electricity from atomic power" or the application of "genetic engineering" (p. 173) --as if these technologies did not raise quite horrific possibilities.' Gillott, by contrast, is no skeptic but a true believer, writing of 'an imperative to crack on with genetic engineering: it will help improve the human condition. Diseases will be cured, new drugs will be developed, and, in the distant future, we might want to make more fundamental changes to our genetic constitution.' [14]

Bellamy Foster continues, 'Not ones to stop half-way in their criticisms, Gillott and Kumar go on to contend that all of those who believe that there are ecological limits to economic growth (even ecological limits to capital accumulation) have succumbed to "a mass psychosis about limits in nature" (p. 166). Such views, we are told, are anti-science and anti-reason. Yet the fact remains that they are held by many, probably most, scientists, and hence cannot simply be presented--as Gillott and Kumar are wont to do--as attacks on science from without...'

Bellamy Foster continues, 'Ultimately, it is not just environmentalists who come under attack in Gillott and Kumar's book but all of those, among scientists and philosophers, who have raised questions about the role of science in contemporary society. Thus among those who are supposed to have retreated from science and reason we find, astonishingly, such names as Robert Oppenheimer (because of his quote from the Bhagavad Gita--"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds"--when viewing the first atomic blast), Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead (pp. 22, 113, 197).'[15]

Bellamy Foster concludes his review, 'It is difficult to understand, in fact, how a book that began with such a brilliant defense of science and reason, and indeed of realism, could lead in the end to such a state of unreason.'[16]

Publications

2000-2009

  • John Gillott Choosing our children’s traits Should parents be free to create ‘saviour siblings’? To have boys and no girls? What about making sure their baby is deaf? A fascinating new book explores these modern moral dilemmas.Spiked Friday 30 July 2010
  • John Gillott The party poopers at Darwin’s 200th birthday. Following mainstream scientists’ celebration of Darwin’s big birthday last year, two new books argue that Darwin’s theory is not all it’s cracked up to be. Are they on to anything? Spiked Friday 26 March 2010
  • John Gillott A history of quantum weirdness Manjit Kumar’s new book charts the historic clash between Einstein and Bohr over quantum mechanics, and the science and philosophy that shaped their arguments. Spiked Friday 24 October 2008
  • John Gillott Keeping the research in an embryonic state For research using human embryos to move forward, and to reap benefits for humanity, scientists will have to break free of overregulation. Spiked Wednesday 21 March 2007
  • John Gillott Who’s afraid of ‘Frankenbunnies’? Scientists should vigorously oppose the UK authorities' clampdown on research involving 'hybrid' embryos. Sunday 7 January 2007
  • Human Rights, Privacy and Medical Research; analysing UK policy on tissue and data, Genetic Interest Group, 2006 (available online as a pdf: http://www.gig.org.uk/docs/hrprivacypdf190506.pdf).
  • John Gillott Stemming scientific endeavour. Research involving the transfer of a nucleus from a human cell into an animal cell is being stifled by religious and government officials. Spiked Tuesday 21 November 2006
  • John Gillott IVF babies: life chances. The birth of IVF ‘saviour sibling’ Jamie Whitaker in the USA should prompt the UK to re-think how it regulates fertility treatment. Spiked Tuesday 24 June 2003
  • John Gillott The Skeptical Environmentalist John Gillott reviews the book that has landed like a bombshell on environmental debates. Spiked Monday 10 September 2001
  • John Gillott 'Screening for disability: a eugenic pursuit?' J. Med. Ethics 2001, 27: 21-23.
  • John Gillott Genetic engineering: a cautionary tale, LM 128 - March 2000, p. 18.

1990-1999

Affiliations

Genetic Interest Group

GenePool

References

  1. ↑ Internet Archive of dpp.open.ac.uk/people/gillott.html, accessed 8 December 2013
  2. ↑ GM Watch 'John Gillott', Accessed 1st August 2007.
  3. ↑ Spiked Articles by John Gillott, accessed 11 March 2011
  4. ↑ Institute of Ideas Health forum, accessed 11 March 2011
  5. ↑ Internet Archive of dpp.open.ac.uk/people/gillott.html, accessed 8 December 2013
  6. ↑ Development Policy and Practice John Gillott, Open University, Retrieved from the Internet Archive of 8 October 2009 on 8 December 2013.
  7. ↑ Development Policy and Practice John Gillott, Open University, Retrieved from the Internet Archive of 16 June 2010 on 8 December 2013.
  8. ↑ George Monbiot, Emotional blackmail, The Guardian, 7th May 1998, accessed 4 May 2011
  9. ↑ 12-02-97: 'Gene Patenting: piracy or progress?' - John Gillott, co-author of Science and the Retreat from Reason, looks at the brouhaha surrounding gene patenting.
  10. ↑ Spiked Online 'Global Warming - where's the consensus?', 22 May 2001, Accessed 1st August 2007.
  11. ↑ John Gillott and Manjit Kumar Science and the Retreat from Reason, London : Merlin Press, 1995.
  12. ↑ Science in a Skeptical Age by John Bellamy Foster, Review of, John Gillot and Manjit Kumar, Science and the Retreat from Reason (Monthly Review Press, 1997), 288 pp., $18. Monthly Review, Accessed 1st August 2007.
  13. ↑ Science in a Skeptical Age by John Bellamy Foster, Review of, John Gillot and Manjit Kumar, Science and the Retreat from Reason (Monthly Review Press, 1997), 288 pp., $18. Monthly Review, Accessed 1st August 2007.
  14. ↑ 'Progress: Designer Genes', Living Marxism Issue 66, April 1994.
  15. ↑ Science in a Skeptical Age by John Bellamy Foster, Review of, John Gillot and Manjit Kumar, Science and the Retreat from Reason (Monthly Review Press, 1997), 288 pp., $18. Monthly Review, Accessed 1st August 2007.
  16. ↑ Science in a Skeptical Age by John Bellamy Foster, Review of, John Gillot and Manjit Kumar, Science and the Retreat from Reason (Monthly Review Press, 1997), 288 pp., $18. Monthly Review, Accessed 1st August 2007.
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