New Turf

HARVARD MEDICAL School's $23 million agreement with the Monsanto Company is not exactly what the University would have you believe. The official Harvard press release on the agreement waxed eloquent on the proposition, calling it the "best of both worlds" and a "mutually advantageous partnership" that "seeks to bring the complementary strengths of the University and Monsanto into fruitful cooperation."

That's a lot of highflown language, but it describes is relationship that is classically simple: Monsanto pays Harvard a great deal of money, more than the University is getting from any of its government or foundation grants, and gets in return the commercial rights to whatever comes out of the research, if anything. Despite all the lofty talk. Monsanto is in effect renting Harvard labs and scientists; although the Harvard researchers are free to run their own projects within certain parameters, those parameters are set by Monsanto.

For its part Monsanto is insisting that it has little or no idea what will come out of the research it is financing here, except that the chances of its producing anything at all are, its spokesmen say, "about 5 per cent." But that kind of public stance seems naive or deceptive coming from a multinational corporation with $3.5 billion in annual sales. A company like Monsanto doesn't invest up to $2.3 million unless it has some expectation of making a profit.

What Harvard and Monsanto appear to be reluctant to admit is that for the first time the University is entering into a commercial deal with private industry, a substantial and unfortunate shift--even if only because it is blatantly acknowledged--from present policy here. The research Monsanto is funding here appears to be aimed toward cancel related treatments, and it is disturbing that such important treatments will be packaged and marketed by the same company that gave the world Astroturf, Administrators say they entered into the deal with Monsanto in order to get the most public good out of the products of Harvard research, but it's hard to believe that Monsanto will operate on the principle of distributing the greatest good to the greatest number.

At least Harvard feels nervous enough about the Monsanto deal to have set up a special nonpartisan committee to oversee it. The University should be giving similar scrutiny to Monsanto itself and its marketing practices, as well as the myriad policies and processes underlying its research for the federal government and all the other aspects of its substantial and unexamined effect on the world outside.