Agriculture Genetically Modified Organisms Environment

The GMO Debate – The Irrational Versus Science

June 1, 2015

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June 1, 2015 – The diagram below depicts the world of irrational nonsense coming from belief systems such as religion, the paranormal, pseudoscience and pure quackery. None of these systems are evidence based and yet they persist in society and often fuel the irrational over the rational.

So why have I reproduced it here in a blog that is both scientific and technological in scope? Because I want to discuss genetically modified organisms (GMO), a world where common opinion seems to be governed by anything but scientific reason.

In the last week here in Toronto and many other places organized street demonstrations condemned GMO. The arguments which could be read on posters and placards stated that GMOs cause cancer, that they are frankenfoods, that they represent Monsanto-inspired corporatist evil, genetic pollution, and that they are being forced down our throats all across the planet without the public’s right to know. GMO haters proclaimed that farmers planting these crops were using more pesticides and herbicides than non-GMO farmers, that GMO fields were causing both birds and bees to die.

People who I have respected for rational thought like David Suzuki, proclaim GMOs are “unproven.” Absolute nonsense!

Talk show hosts like Bill Maher, who is liberal and open-minded on almost every subject and a believer in evidence based proof, condemns GMOs outright because he sees Monsanto as evil. Greenpeace, an organization which I respect for its fight against carbon polluters, and those who continue to hunt whales, rails against GMO in demonstrations and on its website quoting the same anecdotal nonsense as Maher. One would think there is moral equivalency in opposing whalers, energy polluters and GMO agribusiness. Not even close. In all cases one can only state that these individuals and groups are using belief systems or irrational nonsense in pursuing their anti-GMO campaigns.

As I read the scientific literature surrounding GMO, the pure genomic science that is playing a significant part in the third agricultural revolution, and not Monsanto press briefs, I see the important role GMO can play in helping humanity address one of the two major impending crises of this century, the human population bomb. The other of course is global warming which by now you know I write a lot.

Searching for the Science Behind GMO

Today when one goes on the Internet to search the topic of GMO, results come back overwhelmingly negative, couched in almost hate speech. Articles and opinion pieces abound berating our journey into genetic manipulation of plant DNA. We are told to be alarmed about transgenic crops that alter our body chemistry, that destroy surrounding biodiversity, and that pollute the water we drink.

Where is the science?

It appears not to get equal time in Google searches, hardly ever appearing on the first page results. You have to go deep into search before you start finding published papers in reputable scientific journals that describe the research in the field. Books such as The GMO Handbook can help you to understand the molecular biotechnology and science behind the GMO revolution but they tend not to do it in the language of laypersons, but rather in science speak.

This is one reason why the non-scientific arguments get proffered first. Genomic scientists seldom get quoted in popular press. Rather public media focuses on the controversy and protests such as the recent third annual March Against Monsanto on May 23rd held in 400 cities and 40 countries around the world. Hence a picture like the one seen below.

Hard to resist a young child declaring “I am not a science experiment.”

Even scientific bodies get caught up in not telling the whole truth. For example, recently the World Health Organization (WHO) published an article on its website on Roundup, the Monsanto-created, glyphosate-based herbicide. In the content it stated that glyphosate has potential as a cancer source.

Among the most popular GMO crops planted today are transgenic Roundup-ready corn, soybeans and alfalfa, all created by Monsanto through bioengineering genes to produce an enzyme to make the plants glyphosate resistant. Glyphosate isn’t in these plants but the distinction between the herbicide chemical and GMO crops gets muddied when the press gets the facts wrong. The vitriol spilled over to the GMO crops rather than the herbicide itself. Monsanto was likened to “bio-terrorists.” Some of the signs at the Monsanto march made no bones about it.

Of course the truth was lost, that glyphosate could raise the potential for cancer above the norm just as much or as little as any other commonly used pesticide or herbicide including those used domestically to manage weeds in a garden.

The WHO report was hardly scientific and involved a review of the literature published on glyphosate rather than any new research. In Lies, Damned Lies, and Science, a book I highly recommend, its author Sherry Seethaler, exposes the glyphosate canard and its origins. The initial association of glyphosate with a cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, first appeared in an article in July 2001. Since then studies of exposure to glyphosate have been indeterminate in making the link with non-Hodgkin’s or any other cancer. But the initial article sowed the seeds of doubt even though the “scientific proof” came from a single epidemiological study where people were asked about exposure to pesticides. The authors of that study noted in a large uncontrolled population survey, that 4 reported having non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and exposure to glyphosate, while 3 with no exposure also had non-Hodgkin’s.

So what are we to conclude from this? A random large population sample in which 7 report having cancer with a 4 to 3 split between exposure and non-exposure is no proof whatsoever. And without any other control on exposures that may or may not have influenced the cancer’s appearance, including genetic studies, one can only conclude the hypothesis fails to meet scientific rigor. The authors themselves admitted that the data was no proof, just observed, but that didn’t stop the writer in July 2001 making the correlation to causation leap.

For a direct correlation with GMO foods themselves, a European study which first appeared in a scientific journal in 2012 has far more relevance. The French and Italian research team fed Roundup-ready corn to a control group of rats. The researchers subsequently reported that the rats developed massive tumors. They presented their results to the press displaying the poor animals with lumps all over their bodies. The worldwide exposure raised the frankenfood scare to new heights. But a year later the journal article was retracted. The authors admitted to unscientific methods from the selecting of control animals predisposed to cancer to the reporting of data that supported a preconceived conclusion. Causation, correlation and falsifiability. The researchers failed in all three.

Like those who deny climate change and wrap themselves in some cases in religious proof (remember Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, who recently stated, “the arrogance of people to think that we human beings, would be able to change what He [God] is doing in the climate is to me outrageous”), anti-GMO crusaders are guilty of “I’m not a scientist” thinking. They don’t study the 2,000 research articles that document two decades of GMO science. They don’t look at the overwhelming evidence that repudiates their claims – that GMO crops have been fed to tens of billions of farm and lab animals with no anecdotal or scientific results indicating health problems any greater than found with non-GMO feeds, that humans who ate meat from GMO sources showed no trace of genetically modified DNA in their bodies, no difference at all from results where non-GMO fed animals were eaten. Nor have any humans tested after eating food created using GMO crops shown any trace of GMO DNA in their bodies or any occurrences of disease greater than that found where non-GMO products were consumed.

In fact in a recent meta-data study (a study that aggregates data from many studies) covering GMO use in many countries, a study that appeared in PLOS|One, another canard was laid to rest, one that appears commonly on anti-GMO sites. It is the claim that GMO crops use more herbicides and pesticides than non-GMO planted fields.

The meta-study showed quite the opposite. GMO technology “reduced chemical pesticide use by 37%.” The same study showed GMO crop yields were 22% higher than comparable non-GMO crops, and that yield gains were higher in the Developing rather than the Developed World. The importance of this latter point cannot be underestimated because it is in the Developing World where we are witnessing the largest global population growth.

And finally a quick word about golden rice, a GMO food source that is changing child health in South Asia. First developed in 1999, golden rice addressed a dietary deficiency, the lack of Vitamin A in a rice-heavy diet. The deficiency was considered a leading cause of childhood blindness affecting a half-million annually. The arrival of golden rice which contains genetic information from squash, carrots and melons, strong food sources of Vitamin A, may end this common scourge forever.

Maybe it will be GMO breakthroughs like golden rice that will finally silence the non-GMO purveyors of irrational nonsense. It would be nice but I doubt it. And maybe the media will finally understand the difference between science and nonsense and report more of the former than the latter. I doubt that too!