Ignoring the other countries that have seen success, Floridians are decrying their role as the "guinea pigs." Kiera Butler, writing for Mother Jones, describes the situation as "a biotech firm unleash[ing] genetically engineered bloodsuckers." A Change.org petition has even gathered more than 140,000 signatures in the effort to protest this terrible instance of disease prevention. While this story is unique for its focus on a GMO animal, as opposed to crops, this whining is all too familiar.
For some unintelligible reason, mainstream American liberals always tend to viciously oppose, in any way they can, genetically modified foods. Not only do the stereotype valley-girl, hippy-dippy, Whole-Foods type think (though I would use that word loosely) that GMO's are some terrible sort of bad, but this border-line hysteria has also been supported by sources ranging in seriousness from The Nation to the Huffington Post, as well as some Fox-News-esque "documentaries". Unfortunately for the yoga types, the anti- GMO position belongs in its proper place among the rest of popular pseudoscience.
The fact of the matter is that practically every popular liberal contention about the field of genetic engineering is demonstrably false. In the interest of rational public discourse and the betterment of the human condition, we must all recognize and accept the following facts.
1. Genetically-modified foods are not dangerous to health.
This fantasy is definitely the king of anti-truth in the GMO realm. The pesky, stupid, fringe cult of professionals who perpetuate this claim simply refuses to die, and they are actually convincing people of their lunacy. In fact, sixty percent more people believe that genetically engineered foods are dangerous than believe the contrary. As I have already said, and as deserves repeating, this statement is diametrically opposed to reality.
Now we can detail the evidence.
For starters, the entire international scientific community agrees on the safety of GMO's including the following organizations:
- Food and Agriculture Organization (United Nations)
- European Commission
- World Health Organization
- Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development
- Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
- Royal Society of London
- German National Science Foundation
- Brazilian Academy of Sciences
- Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Indian National Science Academy
- Mexican Academy of Sciences
- Third World Academy of Sciences
- National Academy of Sciences (United States)
- American Society of Microbiology
Unbearable is the irony of the hoards of tow-the-line Democrats who decry the Republicans for believing in a "global conspiracy of scientists" to invent climate change, but who also turn and do the same thing with regards to GM foods. But perhaps we should trust the types of news sites that would have a page dedicated to hot dogs wrapped in fried chicken over the tens of thousands of Ph.D. scholars in the aforementioned groups. Or nah.
Another refuge of this crowd is the perennial cop out "we need more research." Again, the parallelism is striking. Just as the creationists and climate deniers try to masquerade around as honest skeptics, this particular circus troupe whines about a lack of research. Of course, in doing so, they are wrong.
The consensus of the scientific community is not awarded to claims without sufficient research. That simply does not happen. The truth is that there have been scores of studies every year about GMO's in a wide array of subject areas. A directory of these studies can be found here.
The consensus of the scientific community is not awarded to claims without sufficient research. That simply does not happen. The truth is that there have been scores of studies every year about GMO's in a wide array of subject areas. A directory of these studies can be found here.
The body research on GMO's is so vast that a team of scientists from the Italian University of Perugia conducted a meta analysis of 1,783 published studies. The analysis concludes:
"We have reviewed the scientific literature on GE crop safety for the last 10 years that catches the scientific consensus matured since GE plants became widely cultivated worldwide, and we can conclude that the scientific research conducted so far has not detected any significant hazard directly connected with the use of GM crops."
(emphasis added)A full list of the studies examined can be found here.
Of course, there are those studies people point to which supposedly validate the idea that "Frankfoods are going to get use after all!" As soon as these studies pop up, they are shot down by the peer-review process. But this does not stop people from trotting them up over and over again. Cornell University professor Per Pinstrup-Andersen explains:
"Several tired old chestnuts concerning the dangers of GM plants crop up again and again in the debate about genetic engineering. We have heard that a diet of GM potatoes killed rats in a laboratory in Scotland; that GM crops could kill harmless insects, even the beautiful monarch butterfly; and that GM soybeans carrying a gene from Brazil nuts contained a substance that could cause severe allergic reactions in consumers. As we have noted in earlier chapters, for all these stories either the results have been disproved by extensive research or the potential problem died a natural death during routine checking procedures."A particularly popular junk study for the hippie food brigade is one conducted by French scientist Gilles-Éric Séralini, called "Long-term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize." This study was doomed from the start, suffering from basic procedural errors. In the end, the study was ultimately retracted by the journal that published it and ended up discrediting its primary author.
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| Researchers have also been criticized for relying on sensational images of cancerous rats. |
There are few stances in mainstream discourse that we should call out as simply untenable, but one is that GMO's are toxic.
Agriculture's response to medicine's antivaccers are so wrong that you, you there who is reading these words, if you are in the US, are living proof of the non-toxicity of GMO's. This is because you eat genetically modified food every single day. Among other crops, more than 90% of our corn has been genetically modified. So, for all intents and purposes, every corn cob you've eaten, every high-fructose-corn-syrup-laden snack you've inhaled, and every animal served to you from a corn-feed diet, have all been products of GMO's. And as we can see, the entire population of the United States does not look like the poor rats pictured above. If the anti-science buffoons were correct, we could simply not survive as a country who eats 70% GMO food.
2. GMO foods actually help people all over the world.
It is easy for the anti-science crowd to point out to atrocious actions of Monsanto, and thereby justify opposition to GM technology as a whole. Yes, Monsanto did support and enable the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam. Yes, Monsanto is monopolistic. Practically all of the accusation hurled at that company hold water, but that should not distract us from the wonderful humanitarian potentials of GMO's. To do so would be to dismiss telephones because of the AT&T monopoly, or to throw out Gandhi for early racist statements. We must not forget the beneficial innovations of GMO's.
The most prominent of these benefits is probably the potential for relieving hunger in the developing world. I definitely recommend for anyone to read Seeds of Contention, a book on the subject written by the previously cited Cornell professor.
The fact of the matter is that genetic modification can solve some of the issues in the poorest parts of the planet, and everyone should support that. Because foods can be modified in such a wide variety of ways, we have seen many positives already. For instance, I accord to Seeds of Contention:
"In Kenya, prolonged efforts to render sweet potatoes resistant to viral attacks yielded no useful results until the advent of genetic engineering. A simple technique performed during propagation, a tissue culture that some farmers can carry out themselves, ensures healthy cuttings from the new, viral-resistant variety, which is expected to reach the market by 2002. Further work is also being done to make the new variety resistant to a particular beetle, another of its enemies. This doubly strong variety should be ready by 2004. In a really bad year, viral attacks alone can reduce the sweet potato crop by as much as 80 percent, and losses are seldom less than 20 percent when the virus is rife in the field
...
In Kenya, a careful analysis was made of the likely impact of the improved varieties of sweet potatoes. These tubers are typically a poor persons' fare, more often than not grown by women. Most are eaten by the smallholder families themselves and the rest sold at the local market in the poorest square of the town. The GM varriety with a combined resistance to both virus and beetles is expected to increase yield by 43 percent, reducing the growing costs per hectare by 36 percent."Another impact on the developing world comes in the fight against blindness. The Royal Society Journal of Medicine reports:
"An important example of the potential of this technology is the ‘Golden Rice Project’. Vitamin A deficiency is widespread in the developing world and is estimated to account for the deaths of approximately 2 million children per year. In surviving children it has been identified as the leading cause of blindness. Humans can synthesize vitamin A from its precursor β-carotene, which is commonly found in many plants but not in cereal grains.18 The strategy of the Golden Rice Project was to introduce the correct metabolic steps into rice endosperm to allow β-carotene synthesis. In 2000, Ye et al. engineered rice that contained moderate levels of β-carotene and since then researchers have produced the much higher yielding ‘Golden Rice 2’. It is estimated that 72 g of dry Golden Rice 2 will provide 50% of the RDA [recommended daily allowance] of vitamin A for a 1–3-year-old child. Golden Rice was developed for farmers in the poorest countries, and from the beginning, the aim of the scientists was to provide the technology free of charge, which required the negotiation of more than 100 intellectual and technical property licenses. Golden Rice will be given to subsistence farmers with no additional conditions and is an impressive example of a health solution that can be offered by plant biotechnology."
Surely every bleeding heart wants to help save these kids from blindness. There is a reason that groups like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation support further research into genetic engineering.
For anyone wanting to learn more humanitarian benefits of GMO's, here are a few:
- Third-world farmers can save money raising cattle
- Antioxidant-rich tomatoes can help prevent cancer
- GM goat's milk can help stop childhood diarrhea
- GM pigs can reduce phosphorous pollution
- Farmers can grow crops in increasingly desolate soil
- GM crops help ensure farmer income in the developing world
3. The environmental impacts of GMO's aren't all bad.
What seems to be the only legitimate objection to GM technology is that pesticide resistant crops enable the spread of pesticide resistant pests. (See here and here and here.) While it is important to note that this is a problem specific to only one usage of GM technology, and that it is irrelevant to the previous two points, it is a true problem nonetheless.
But if we take a balanced look at the environmental impacts of genetically modified foods, we can see that the story is much more even, and perhaps even preferential to GMO's.
I've already mentioned EnviroPig, the pig with sans-phosphorous scat, but he is the least of the potential benefits for the Earth.
For starters, we can tackle the herbicide issue. Again acknowledging the fact that GMO's have increased herbicide use and resistance, the current status quo is still better than the situation before GM crops.
This is because the herbicide that has become more and more used is glyphosate, more commonly known as Monsanto's Roundup. The benefit arises when we remember that (1) glyphosate is considerable less harmful (to mammals, other plants, and the soil) than its predecessors, and (2) our increased use of it has offset the older, more dangerous chemicals. A mixed benefit is still a benefit.
Moving away from herbicides and pesticides, the remaining category of harmful chemical is the fertilizers. Nitrogen based fertilizers, after being washed into rivers and oceans, massively over-stimulate native algae, thereby creating an absence of oxygen in the water. This causes a condition called hypoxia, or a "dead zone." These appropriately named areas become lethal to any marine life therein. Thankfully, this is another problem waiting to be resolved by genetic engineering. In fact, researchers in the European Union have found that the use of GM crops can reduce nitrogen fertilizer use by 30%. No one can call themself an environmentalist if they oppose this technology.
There are numerous other benefits to GMO farming. It encourages no-till agriculture. It reduces carbon emissions. It helps preserve biodiversity. We can go on and on. The point is that we should not throw the baby out with the glyphosate, especially when we have so much to environmentally gain from GMO's.
In the end, Florida needs to accept Oxitec's mosquitoes. And liberals need to make up their minds. Either they can continue to be environmentally-minded, healthy-living advocates for the global poor, or they can persist in being disciples of ostracized scientists and failed yoga instructors. Meanwhile, the world is waiting, and it needs GMO's.
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