Can the global food problem at last be solved – without using genetic engineering? In his new book the "Primeval Code" (Munich 2007) Swiss journalist Luc Bürgin unveils the secret of a sensational biological discovery at the pharmaceutical giant Ciba (now Novartis), which unfortunately has been ignored by the experts up to the present day. In laboratory experiments the researchers there Dr. Guido Ebner and Heinz Schürch exposed cereal seeds and fish eggs to an "electrostatic field" – in other words, to a high voltage field, in which no current flows.

Unexpectedly primeval organisms grew out of these seeds and eggs: a fern that no botanist was able to identify; primeval corn with up to twelve ears per stalk; wheat that was ready to be harvested in just four to six weeks. And giant trout, extinct in Europe for 130 years, with so-called salmon hooks. It was as if these organisms accessed their own genetic memories on command in the electric field, a phenomenon, which the English biochemist, Rupert Sheldrake, for instance believes is possible.

The Swiss pharmaceutical group patented the process – and then stopped the research in 1992. Why? Because "primeval cereals" generated by an electric field, in contrast to modern strains of seeds, require hardly any fertilisers or pesticides – i.e. crop protection agents, sold as priority products by Ciba at that time. The discovery was soon forgotten, without the global scientific community taking any notice.