Lord Taverne

Lord Taverne - Dick Taverne QC - is a Liberal Democrat Peer in the British House of Lords. He is a prominent champion of biotechnology in parliament.

He was born in 1928, and educated at Charterhouse School, then Balliol College, Oxford. He was called to the Bar in 1954, becoming a QC in 1965. [1]

Taverne believes that opponents of GM are "eco-fundamentalists, followers of a new kind of religion, to whom evidence is irrelevant" [2]

"Lord Dick Taverne [is] a politician/barrister with no background in science but a long history of supporting GM. Taverne has claimed that the media's "sloppiness" on GM issues is "undermining the health of our democracy". As part of his "media distortion" crusade, Taverne sat on the SIRC forum that produced the media Guidelines telling journalists how to report contentious science and health issues. Also on this forum were Steve Connor, science correspondent for the Independent, and a representative of the Royal Society.

"Taverne commented on these guidelines in a debate in the House of Lords in which he said he hoped 'that the Press Complaints Commission will enforce this code toughly and come down heavily on the kind of irresponsible and reckless disregard for fact and evidence which has characterised the reporting of many scientific issues in the past' [3]

Directorships, etc

• Sense about Science, Chairman
• Axa Sun Life plc, Chairman, Monitoring Board
• IFG Capital Limited, Non-executive Deputy Chairman
• Alcohol & Drug Prevention Treatment Ltd, Chairman
• Oxford Centre for the Environment, Ethics and Society, Chairman of the Advisory Board
• Iran Aid Foundation, Chairman of Trustees
• The Health and Science Communication Trust, Trustee
• AXA Equity and Law Life Assurance Society plc, Director
• BOC Group plc, Director
• Institute for Fiscal Studies, Chairman until 1982.
• International Review Body, member
• Public Policy Centre, Chairman until 1987
• PRIMA Europe, founding Director, President until 1998
• OLIM Investment Trust, Chairman until 1999
• Central European Growth Fund, Deputy Chairman
• Patron of Supporters of Nuclear Energy (SONE) [4]

External links

• Lord Taverne biography, Liberal Democrats website, accessed Dec 2003
• Dick Taverne, "Thunderer: When crops burn, the truth goes up in smoke", The Times, November 18, 2003
• "The Royal Society: best of British science or corporate rentboy?", GMWatch Newsletter Number 6, 8 February 2003
• Dick Taverne, The costly fraud that is organic food: Its main contribution will be to sustain poverty and malnutrition The Guardian, Thursday May 6, 2004.
• Dick Taverne, Believe in facts not fads The Guardian, Thursday March 17, 2005.
• Dick Taverne, The Real GM Food Scandal Ekogaia, November 28, 2007.