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Of corn stalks, Latinos and genomics

Why Latinos should embrace the biotech industry.

At first glance, Latinos and genomics seem to have as much in common as bed knobs and corn stalks.

But appearances can be deceiving, and in these fast-changing times, often are.

Shirley Agnos, director of the semiannual Arizona Town Hall, and her board of directors recognized the looming importance of genomics in Arizona. That’s the reason they made genomics the topic of the 87th Town Hall held in November. The session’s focus was “Maximizing Arizona’s Opportunities in the Biosciences and Biotechnology.”

However, Agnos contacted me before the forum to get advice on how to get more Latinos to attend.

Why?

Only because a vibrant biotech industry has the potential to diversify Arizona’s economy, create jobs that pay higher than service jobs, improve the education of our young, cure diseases like diabetes and pancreatic cancers that affect Latinos, and generally improve the quality of life and health for all state residents.

These are all areas Latinos list as priorities in surveys: Better jobs, education, health and quality of life. So why the reluctance to get involved with the dynamics of genomics? Perhaps because we aren’t really thinking beyond what we can immediately see. Or perhaps our leaders are waiting until they can grasp where Latinos fit into the genomics picture.

Latinos might look to the example of one man regarding future thinking and acting on genomics. Ivan Makil is the past tribal leader of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. Under Makil’s leadership the tribe created a diverse economy of casino gaming and shopping-mall development on tribal lands. In 2000, Makil persuaded the tribal council to kick in a million dollars to help fund the creation of the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix.

Why? “I convinced them that one day these people might find a cure for diabetes, which plagues our people,” Makil told me.

Sounds like the last thing a tribal government building a budding economy should be doing, right? Makil says to the Native American way of thinking, it was a perfectly logical thing to do.

“It’s an example of our Seven Generations way of thinking,” Makil explains. Put simply, tribal people carefully measure the impact of an action today against its intended and unintended consequences on community members seven generations in the future.

Makil plans to practice Seven Generations thinking in an innovative national training program he helped to create at ASU for newly elected Indian officials.

“What I’ve always found very interesting is that there are a lot of critical issues that people face today,’ he says. “And what happens is they get so focused on short-term issues. In our democracy we put issues on ballots right away and vote on them. Sometimes there are unintended consequences, like with Prop. 200. People can get stuck on Band-Aid approaches and reactions. And you don’t really see the real issues because you are so busy dealing with the symptoms.”

However, a Seven Generation state of mind  requires the patience to gather a consensus among one’s own community before taking action in the context of the larger society, he says.

So, under Seven Generations thinking, Latinos need to look at the recommendations that came out of the Arizona Town Hall.

The Town Hall recommendations:
• Arizona should build on its biosciences and biotechnology strengths, such as the research centers at universities and medical centers. Large populations of senior citizens, Latinos and Native Americans provide opportunities to study diseases.
• The quality of schools must be improved with innovative curricula, better and higher paid teachers and integrated programs in all levels of schools and universities.
• The state should take a more active role in providing financing or incentives to build research facilities and start-up companies. These could include companies owned and operated by Latinos.

I would only hope that Latino leaders don’t wait too long to get on the genomics bandwagon. Waiting and studying is one thing; sleeping is another.

Oh yeah, and the corn stalks and bed knobs comparison is not as far fetched as one might think.

University of Arizona genomics researchers recently received a $29 million federal grant as part of a consortium to unlock the genetic code of the corn plant. The knowledge gained will enable farmers to breed bigger and better strains of corn.

Latinos may have more in common with genomics than we realized.