GMOs, Go, Go, Go!

It seems the pseudo-scientific issue that bears the most weight with the people in my life is anti-GMO activism, so I once again find myself evaluating an article on that topic. This time around, Roberta L. Millstein attempts to take a middle road, but falls into a standard anti-science trap. “Just label it,” says the pseudo-scientist, “let the people decide.” Sure, label the GMOs. Teach the creationists’ “controversy”. Let the parents decide whether to vaccinate their kids. Oops, was my opinion leaking through here? I’ll get back to that in a bit.

She takes issue with the argument that the anti-GMO movement, and even the suggestion to label GMOs, is anti-science. She has conveniently listed her reasons in a numbered list, so let me take a specific look at these arguments.

Problem 1: The anti-science charge falsely assumes that science is value free

Here she argues that all science is value laden, giving the example that Climate Science is concerned about “the benefits of using fossil fuels as energy but are concerned about harms to humans and other species.” This is hard to disprove, but I have a strong opinion here, based on listening to people like Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Lawrence Krauss, Richard Dawkins, etc. Science in general is not concerned about anything. Scientists certainly have values, but science is merely knowledge, and the pursuit of knowledge. Even the desire to advance knowledge is a human value, but science is not a human, it’s a process.

What we do with the knowledge that comes from this process is motivated by human values, but that’s a whole different argument.

Problem 2: The anti-science charge falsely assumes that GMO science is value free

Again, a hard point to disprove, but luckily it ties back to the previous point. “GMO science” is a misnomer, the science we’re talking about is genomics. Again, science is the pursuit of knowledge, and modification of the genomes of organisms we eat is one of the ways that scientists apply the knowledge that comes from this science. I actually like Millstein’s list of motivations - as long as she doesn’t try to rank them, she’s absolutely correct, and in fact these are probably only samples, I’m not aware of any polls of the motivations of genetic engineers.

From here though, she claims that the risks of genetically modifying our food are untested and unmeasured, and therefore until the tests are administered and the measurements taken we should be assuming they are too great to pursue the benefits. There is value in that opinion, except that it’s based on a falsehood - and I say falsehood here intentionally, as opposed to misunderstanding, because she refers in this very article to a meta-analysis that reviews thousands of scientific studies. Now, she criticizes the fact that many of them were carried out by businesses with vested interests in particular results - but they still did the studies. Who performed or paid for the study is not nearly as important as how they performed them, and in order to get published in the first place they would have to have had a section on methodology, and the reviewers would have used these methodologies to narrow down which studies to include in the review. And so after reviewing thousands of studies, they come to the conclusion that genetically modified foods are safe. Don’t believe them? Here’s another review, covering thousands of studies performed over the course of a single decade. There’s probably overlap in their source material, but it’s a new set of reviewers, a new set of standards, and the same conclusion.

And of course, another significant point to raise here is that not only have they been studied, but they have been studied far more than any foods found in nature or produced by so-called traditional or conventional breeding methods. In fact, the fact that they’ve been introduced only in the past few decades means they’ve been studied in ways and with a thoroughness that would not have been possible for other types of invented foods. The banana certainly wasn’t tested in a modern lab when we made them bigger, softened the rind, and used mechanical grafting to twist their reproductive system to the point where they can no longer reproduce. That’s right, the modern banana is sexually sterile - we’ve bred out the seeds! The Wikipedia article has an explanation and bibliography, in case you want to know how that’s possible. And of course the biotech companies are funding tests - if they created and released a product that killed their customers, they’d undermine their own cash flow!

Problem 3: The anti-science charge fails to recognize that questions about rights involve questions about values.

I don’t think it does. The anti-science charge merely says that the labels you’re asking for are meaningless, and would serve only to trigger a fear of what the consumer doesn’t understand, especially in the context of a society that has allowed ignorance and alarmism to so thoroughly inundate us with the idea that biotech is evil.

As the studies referenced above have concluded, genetic modification as a method of developing food sources is safe. We have more precise control over the changes we are imposing on our foods than we ever had before. But it is those changes that are important; there are a lot of different modifications that are so far approved for use in the developed world, and there will surely be a great deal more in the near future. For the GMO label to be meaningful it would have to detail exactly which genes were added, removed, or duplicated, and for the average consumer it would just be another paragraph of unpronounceable words and unintelligible symbols that sound terrifyingly unnatural.

So the end result of this is that to label GMOs would deprive the farmers of cash flow, the consumer of an option that may well have had real benefits, and it would deprive these corporate giants of the motivation to continue pushing science forward.

Problem 4: There really is something biologically new about GMOs

Again, she’s getting into the need for testing. She talks about individual genes being put into new contexts and potentially expressing themselves in new ways. My answer to this is as I said before, the products are tested. They are allowed to develop through the lifecycle of the organism, the dead remains are tested, and by the time they make it to our plates, the organism has (presumably) been dead long enough that the genes have long since stopped expressing themselves in any way. We don’t eat zombies.

Problem 5: We lack good evidence for GMO safety

Then what were all those studies we both talked about? In fact this is where she cites her review.

She also brings up another very good point here, which is that each species of GMO is different. Now we’re getting to a point that I made a few paragraphs back: labelling them as GMOs is useless. While food products that come from genetic engineering are - as Millstein says - generally recognized as safe, at least among people who know what they’re talking about, they still should be and are tested and approved individually.

Problem 6: Saying GMOs are safe overlooks environmental concerns

Wrong again, the WHO has looked at environmental studies, and this article includes some relevant quotes and references. Also, the FDA themselves include environmental scientists among the core group in their consultation process, and supplement that group as appropriate for each individual consultation.

Of course, there is always the potential for a problem that even the experts couldn’t expect - but we live in a universe where nothing is ever 100% certain, but based on available evidence, we certainly evaluate the risks, and - when we’re satisfied that they are outweighed by the benefits - take the chance. That’s how progress is made. But that evaluation needs to be done by experts in the field, people who have devoted years of their lives to studying the science involved, not lay people whose view of scientists have been manipulated to resemble the vocal activists’ image of Mad Doctor Frankenstein.

Other important values in the GMO debate

Here she mentions that pesticide use has increased with the introduction of GMOs. This may be true for certain specific pesticides, such as glyphosate, since they were next to useless before the genetic resistance was added to the crops, but overall use of pesticides in GMO fields has actually decreased. This is because synthetic pesticides are much more effective than organic certified pesticides, and often a single application will do the job, as opposed to several larger applications over the course of the growing season. This also has serious implications for the environment, since organic pesticides are often much more dangerous than their carefully designed counterparts.

As for her claim that there are better ways of increasing crop yields, I’m not even going to look it up. I don’t care. Use them too. Just because you’re growing a diverse range of crops doesn’t mean that individual species can’t be genetically modified to be more resilient or nutrient-rich.

She talks about the effects on farmers, and again, gives us the links to counter arguments. She says the context of the crops' introduction - the fact that farmers weren’t properly educated in how to maximize their advantage - is important in considering whether GMOs are worthwhile. The answer to this one obvious. A lot of people barely know how to use their computers, and certainly don’t experience the full advantage of how they can improve the efficiency of everyday tasks. Does that mean we need to take computers off the market? Of course not! We simply need to make a better effort to educate the user.

Final Thoughts

On top of the misconceptions I’ve talked about above, Millstein has gone out of her way to evaluate a technology based on the values of the user. The same logic could be used to label computers as time-wasters, or ban space exploration because rockets are weapons.

Millstein’s “middle road” is pandering to the anti-science views, if for no other reason than the fact that she advocates we put the decision whether to support GMOs in the hands of people who don’t understand the issues involved.