Big business, research chiefs and politicians quietly co-operate on a major scientific programme but ignore the dangers to the public. Then a brave, solo whistle-blower sounds a warning blast. For his pains, he is sacked and vilified. Only later is he vindicated. It could be a script for a Hollywood biopic - at least, if you believed the standard version of events surrounding the Lancet 's publication last week of Arpad Pusztai's paper on the dangers of genetically modified foods.
Life is never that neat, however.
Professor Ray Baker, head of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council denounced the Lancet for being 'irres-ponsible' for publishing an 'unworthy' paper, and the Nobel laureate Sir Aaron Klug, president of the Royal Society, attacked the journal for giving Pusztai's paper an 'authenticity it does not deserve'. One of the scientists who refereed the study, Professor John Pickett, of the Institute of Arable Crop Research, lashed out at the Lancet for publishing despite his rating the paper as an inadequate shambles. Character attacks of such ferocity do not normally feature in popular heroic fiction, and show that the story of Arpad Pusztai defies easy attempts to pigeon-hole him. Pusztai is a small, intense individual with an attractive, self-deprecating sense of humour. The son of a Hungarian resistance hero, he fled to Britain in 1956 when the uprising against the Soviet Union failed.