Profile of Mae-Wan Ho

Mae-Wan Ho obtained her B.S. degree in biology in 1964 and her Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1967 from Hong Kong University. She was a postdoctoral fellow in biochemical genetics from 1968 to 1972 at the University of California in San Diego, during which time she won a competitive fellowship of the U.S. National Genetics Foundation.

Since 1994, Ho has been scientific advisor to the Third World Network and has played a major role in informing policy makers and the public during negotiations of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, an international agreement regulating the trade of genetically engineered products. Ho continues to play a prominent part in exposing what she calls "the bad science" of genetic engeneering that's driven both by a Darwinian perspective of the world and the mistaken view that organisms are hardwired in their genes.

In April 2003, she initiated the Independent Science Panel to oppose the corporate takeover of science, and drafted an influential report,The Case for a GM-free Sustainable World, in which independent scientists will be joining forces with all sectors of civil society in a bid to make our food system sustainable, that would also ameliorate the worst excesses of global warming and provide food security for all. In April 2006, she co-authored an extremely influential Which Energy report sponsored by dozens of civil society organisations which sets out clear options for shifting to a zero-carbon economy.

She has more than 300 publications and a dozen books spanning several disciplines, including The Rainbow and the Worm, the Physics of Organisms (1993, 1998), Genetic Engineering Dream or Nightmare? (1998, 1999), and Living with the Fluid Genome (2003). She also edits the radical science magazine, Science in Society.

Ho heads the Bio-Electrodynamics laboratory at the Open University in Milton Keynes in the UK.

• Weblinks
• Third World Network
• Institution of Science in Society
• Interview, "A GM-Free World: Leading Geneticist Exposes the Bad Science of Biotech", Acres USA
• Article by Mae Wan Ho, "Dance of Life", Resurgence
• Independent Science Panel