MONDAY 8 MARCH 1999

PROFESSOR PHILIP JAMES and DR ANDREW CHESSON

  220. Spiked with ConA?
  (Dr Chesson) Spiked with ConA, and I think that is simply where the confusion came in, that this had been presented, and certainly implied in the World In Action programme, that these were actually transgenic potatoes when, in fact, they were not.

  221. Who wrote the press release, on the Monday; who wrote that?
  (Professor James) It was a mixture of three of us, Dr Pusztai, Dr Chesson and myself.

  222. But Dr Pusztai denies that he did it; you said he saw it and had ratified it?
  (Professor James) That, strictly speaking, is not true. I first drafted something, and I cannot now remember the sequence. Dr Pusztai rewrote a whole segment of it and Dr Chesson did. The error on that one was not only that I wish I had delayed it for two days. In fact, that would have helped us a lot, at the Institute, but the other thing was, none of us actually double-checked the press release, so Dr Pusztai did not see that final check, I think.

  223. On that Monday morning, when there was all the publicity, should you not just have called Dr Pusztai to come to see you, and all of this confusion of the ConA would have been resolved in five minutes, over coffee?
  (Professor James) I am terribly sorry, you have not understood. I had two and a half hours with my deputies and senior managers, interrogating the team about all their research, and, on the basis—

  224. Including Dr Pusztai?
  (Professor James) Yes, of course.

  225. And yet there was this confusion about experiments that had not been carried out, over ConA?
  (Professor James) Yes.

  226. As we understand it, Professor James, you decided not to renew Dr Pusztai's contract before you had got the results of the audit: why was that?
  (Professor James) As I made clear in my submission, Chairman, that decision was only made on Tuesday night, and it was not a dismissal, which were the words used, Dr Pusztai was not sacked.

  227. A failure to renew contract, is what I used, and I think you will probably agree that was correct?
  (Professor James) That is correct, and the decision was made, as I specified, that, in fact, Dr Pusztai had actually presented information which turned out not to be true. There was confusion in his group as to what studies had actually been conducted; his collaborators, as I point out in the paper, were outraged, in two different dimensions of calibration, and said that they now wanted to have a completely new arrangement in working with the Institute. That was not at my initiative, that was spontaneous, on the Monday and the Tuesday, and I have had to cope with that, systematically, since. And the third issue was very simple, that, as I again put in the paper, Dr Pusztai had now gone through seven, or whatever it is, post-retirement contracts. He was now coming up to the 68th birthday, his 69th year of the time, and we normally deal with a series of three-year programmes; we had agreed that he would not go beyond 70. I was confronted: if I gave him another contract, and he came up with some lectin experiment that was startling in its nature, people are going to turn round and say: "Have you had that audited, and was the experiment right?". And, on that basis, I decided that, in fact, it was inappropriate to actually continue his contract; but we took explicit care to make sure that his expertise could continue in a consultant mode, and we went through great trouble to do that.

  228. Were all decisions at that time taken by you, your colleagues and the Institute, free of any interference from London, or Whitehall, or the Cabinet Office?
  (Professor James) Totally free from any influence, at any level, whether it is political, industrial, please name it, it was based exclusively on the whole issue of how one conducts a world-class institute, where it is not allowed to present unpublished material.

  229. And you had no `phone call from Whitehall or the Cabinet Office, suggesting that what was going on might be detrimental to the nation, and you should do something about it?
  (Professor James) If I had, I would have ignored it, Chairman. I did not have it.

  Chairman: So the answer is, you did not.

  230. Dr Pusztai said that the Rowett Institute's press officer was present at the filming; is that correct?
  (Professor James) Only for the first part; she had to leave, for complex reasons, which I only discovered much later, to my horror.

  231. And, in relation to this confusion over the ConA—I have just looked at the transcript and there is no mention of ConA in the transcript; I have only had a quick look.
  (Professor James) No, no; if I try—but do you want to answer that?
  (Dr Chesson) There is an implication, because the transcript refers to two series of long-term experiments, and the only two, long-term, 110-day experiments conducted at the Institute were one with the spiked ConA and one with a transgenic modified potato.

  232. Yes, but, surely, if people were familiar with the work of Dr Pusztai, they would realise that ConA is obviously a very damaging toxic compound, whereas the GNA is much milder, so it is much more likely that he would be working with GNA in these kinds of experiments, surely? Surely, your experts would have realised that? Where did this ConA come from?
  (Dr Chesson) It was part of Dr Pusztai's experimental programme, and it was used—

  233. But not on GM?
  (Professor James) Yes.
  (Dr Chesson) Yes, it was, actually.
  (Professor James) Here is a statement, which is in the transcript of the World In Action programme, the whole of which effectively states that two different transgenic potato lectin preparations were being tested; and I, of course, on Monday night, assumed that was true.

  234. Is it cloned, the gene, into another promoter, the ConA; had you got it cloned?
  (Dr Chesson) The ConA potatoes have never been tested; they were produced, but the programme ran out before they were ever actually tested.

  235. They have never been tested, and you mention ConA; it might be understandable if you had put both of them in, but you have only mentioned the ConA, not the GNA. I just cannot understand it. You said, Professor James, that Dr Pusztai had become confused about which experiments had actually been completed; it seems that the Institute is very confused about what ...
  (Professor James) I am astonished that you should say that, except in relation to the event. You were quite right that we were really very confused about what experiments had been conducted. We knew that there were two experimental transgenic potatoes that were going to be tested, and we were shown, the only data that we were shown on a long-term basis, on the Monday morning, was the ConA data.

  236. So, in relation to this press release, you say that Dr Pusztai rewrote a paragraph; what does that paragraph refer to? Which particular bit would you say he had a hand in?
  (Professor James) If you are talking about the first press release—

  237. The one on 10 August?
  (Professor James) He had the opportunity of looking at it all, of course.

  238. So, even though he did not see the final press release, he would have seen—
  (Professor James) He effectively saw it.

  239. He would have seen a press release which referred to ConA experiments and not to GNA experiments?
  (Professor James) Absolutely; that is absolutely right.