“This assertion is wrong on two counts: first because it draws a parallel between issues where there is a clear scientific consensus (evolution, climate change) and an issue where there is not (GMOs)”
It is factually wrong to say there isn’t scientific consensus on GMOs. There is actually *more* consensus in the scientific community on GMO safety than there is for climate change in America, where the NYT and the Washington Post are reporting. (I suspect the UK, where the Economist is published, would have similar poll results.) I haven’t seen poll results for France or New Zealand, but I suspect worldwide polls would have results similar to the Pew Poll.
“A Pew Research Center study on science literacy, undertaken in cooperation with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and released on January 29, contains a blockbuster: In sharp contrast to public skepticism about GMOs, 89% of scientists believe genetically modified foods are safe.
That overwhelming consensus exceeds the percentage of scientists, 88%, who believe global warming is the result of human activity. However, the public appears far more suspicious of scientific claims about GMO safety than they do about the consensus on climate change.”
Nassim Taleb (of Black Swan fame) did a great rundown on risk analysis of GMOs, as it related to the Precautionary Principle. (See: http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf)
The PP is generally the motivating factor for much regulation in Europe, but has far less adoption in the US. Using the PP as a motivating factor for GMO regulation has merit, but denying the scientific consensus for GMO safety does not.
“If independent research can prove that GM technology is safe, if we can devise economic models that would allow us to apply such technology in a way that is beneficial to society as a whole and not just to a few large corporations, and if society as a whole wants such technology”
In effect, this has already happened. The scientific consensus is that GMOs are safe. They are *already* being applied to great benefit worldwide, not just by the corporations designing and selling GMOs, but by the people buying and using them. Of separate issue from GMO safety is the business of corporate agriculture, but can’t tease that out in the space of a comment. =)
Unless long term epidemiological studies are carried out on the potential toxicity of GMOs it is impossible to say that such products are safe. And unless products containing GMOs are labelled as such it will be impossible to carry out such studies. A majority of AAAS members may think that GMOs are safe but it is impossible to prove or disprove this position given the current state of scientific knowledge.
I had not come across Nassim Taleb’s paper before but if I had I would certainly have included it in my article.
In deciding when to evoke the precautionary principle, Taleb and his co-authors state:
“We believe that the PP should be evoked only in extreme situations: when the potential harm is systemic (rather than localized) and the consequences can involve total irreversible ruin, such as the extinction of human beings or all life on the planet.”
They examine GMOs as a case study and conclude that GMOs present precisely such a systemic risk and should therefore NOT be allowed given the current state of scientific knowledge. They repeatedly stress that GMOs have never been proven to be safe, either for human consumption or as animal feed and that the impacts of GMOs on the environment is not understood. Here are a couple of quotations below:
“The FDA has adopted as a policy the approach that current scientific knowledge assures safety of GMOs, and relies upon Monsanto or similar companies for assurances. It therefore does not test the impact of chemical changes in GMO plants on human health or ecological systems. This despite experiments that show that increased concentrations of neurotoxins in maternal blood are linked to GMOs [21]. A variety of studies show experimental evidence that risks exist [22], [23], [24], [25] and global public health concerns are recognized [26]. We note that it is possible that there are significant impacts of neurotoxins on human cognitive function as a result of GMO modification, as FDA testing does not evaluate this risk.”
…
“For the impact of GMOs on health, the evaluation of whether the genetic engineering of a particular chemical (protein) into a plant is OK by the FDA is based upon considering limited existing knowledge of risks associated with that protein. The number of ways such an evaluation can be in error is large. The genetic modifications are biologically significant as the purpose is to strongly impact the chemical functions of the plant, modifying its resistance to other chemicals such as herbicides or pesticides, or affecting its own lethality to other organisms— i.e. its antibiotic qualities. The limited existing knowledge generally does not include long term testing of the exposure of people to the added chemical, even in isolation. The evaluation is independent of the ways the protein affects the biochemistry of the plant, including interactions among the various metabolic pathways and regulatory systems—and the impact of the resulting changes in biochemistry on health of consumers. The evaluation is independent of its farm-ecosystem combination (i.e. pesticide resistant crops are subject to increased use of pesticides, which are subsequently present in the plant in larger concentrations and cannot be washed away). Rather than recognizing the limitations of current understanding, poorly grounded perspectives about the potential damage with unjustified assumptions are being made. Limited empirical validation of both essential aspects of the conceptual framework as well as specific conclusions are being used because testing is recognized to be difficult.”
…
“Labeling the GMO approach “scientific” betrays a very poor—indeed warped—understanding of probabilistic payoffs and risk management. A lack of observations of explicit harm does not show absence of hidden risks. Current models of complex systems only contain the subset of reality that is accessible to the scientist. Nature is much richer than any model of it. To expose an entire system to something whose potential harm is not understood because extant models do not predict a negative outcome is not justifiable; the relevant variables may not have been adequately identified.”
They conclude where my own article begins:
“It has became popular to claim irrationality for GMO and other skepticism on the part of the general public - not realizing that there is in fact an “expert problem” and such skepticism is healthy and even necessary for survival.”
That is correct. But your article is an appeal to authority (“scientific consensus”), while Tableb’s piece is an appeal to statistics and probability. One is a logical fallacy, one is not.
“long term epidemiological studies are carried out on the potential toxicity of GMOs it is impossible to say that such products are safe”
I’ll just direct you to a slow of long-term epidemiological studies:
Further, all of the seeds in use by humans have been genetically altered by humans. Many have been altered by using chemical baths or radiation to randomly mutate the genes. Organisms modified in this way are not “GMO” but “organic”, because they don’t use modern gene transfer techniques, relying on totally random mutations, instead.
Which is ironic. And, as Bruce M. Chassy, Professor Emeritus of Food Safety and Nutritional Sciences, Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, points out:
“I can’t resist pointing out that long-term tests have never been required for any new seed variety or crop. GM crops are the only crops to be subjected to premarket safety assessments, in spite of the fact that crops produced, using other methods of genetic modification and having identical new traits, are not tested before their use. It makes absolutely no scientific sense to single out GM crops for premarket testing while ignoring others that are made using older less exact methods. Of course, we don’t require premarket testing of crops because crop breeding has, over many years and thousands of new varieties introduced, proven to be a safe science. And there’s no scientific reason to believe that GM crops are any different with regard to safety, in spite of the well-financed and professionally orchestrated global campaign aimed at making consumers believe that GM crops are inherently different, inherently unsafe.” https://gmoanswers.com/ask/are-there-any-long-term-30-years-studies-done-full-spectrum-ecological-impact-transgenic-gmo
My favorite part of this piece was the comment section. It should have it’s own headline. As a non science person interested in this subject, I appreciate Sean Spear taking the time to rebut.
Especially “your article is an appeal to authority (“scientific consensus”), while Tableb’s piece is an appeal to statistics and probability. One is a logical fallacy, one is not.” sums it up. Products can label ‘non GMO’ if they want and the public can buy if they want, but do not subject the rest to the expense if it’s not scientifically valid. We have a drought to worry about.
I have just been rereading the paper by Taleb et al. and it is a really thought-provoking piece. Beyond the fact that the authors reach the same skeptical conclusions as I do about GMOs what impressed me the most is the inherent humility of their position. They point to the inbuilt tendency of any group of specialists to think that their discourse represents the truth rather than an incomplete approximation of the truth - they characterize this as “the expert problem”.
I am an author, an environmentalist and an investor and what Taleb et al. are saying seems so true; moving between my three different worlds I can see how each ‘système de pensée’ has its limitations, even if it is not always easy to admit this.
There are certain things that geneticists don’t know and indeed that they cannot know given the current parameters within which they work. It doesn’t invalidate their entire discipline to say this but we are all conditioned to associate doubt with weakness, dig in our heels and pretend we know more than we do. Especially when we feel threatened by those from outside our camp.
What Taleb and his colleagues point to (and it is worth noting that the five authors are all from different academic disciplines) is that unless we listen to the voices from outside we will remain unaware of our own shortcomings. And, depending on our line of work, this lack of awareness could potentially have very serious consequences.
Agreed: the Taleb piece is great. What’s interesting though, is he doesn’t separate out the dangers from older, more imprecise methods of genetic modification—he focuses on transgenic modification, which is orders of magnitude more precise than the old methods. And it’s worth remembering that those old methods (which use chemical baths or straight up radiation bombardment) are still labeled “organic” because they don’t use transgenic modifications.
The article below highlights the issues with Taleb’s position on GMOs, not least of which is he—and the other authors of the paper—are not at all experts on biology or related fields. (Below, “Mutagenesis” is the term for the old “organic” method of genetic modification that, apparently, environmentalists have zero issue with, even though, from a scientific standpoint, it would be massively more fraught with issues than transgenic modifications.)
“One of the paper’s central points displays his clear lack of understanding of modern crop breeding. He claims that the rapidity of the genetic changes using the rDNA technique does not allow the environment to equilibrate. Yet rDNA techniques are actually among the safest crop breeding techniques in use today because each rDNA crop represents only 1-2 genetic changes that are more thoroughly tested than any other crop breeding technique. The number of genetic changes caused by hybridization or mutagensis techniques are orders of magnitude higher than rDNA methods. And no testing is required before widespread monoculture-style release. Even selective breeding likely represents a more rapid change than rDNA techniques because of the more rapid employment of the method today.
In essence. Taleb’s ecocide argument applies just as much to other agricultural techniques in both conventional and organic agriculture. The only difference between GMOs and other forms of breeding is that genetic engineering is closely evaluated, minimizing the potential for unintended consequences. Most geneticists–experts in this field as opposed to Taleb–believe that genetic engineering is far safer than any other form of breeding.”
-http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/11/03/is-nassim-taleb-a-dangerous-imbecile-or-just-on-the-pay-of-the-anti-gmo-mafia/
Whenever anyone says they have an issue with GMOs, the first question to them should always be: what specific method do you take issue with? Transgenic modification? Hybridization? Mutagenesis? Selective breeding?
If your interlocutor can’t define those terms, then their opinion on the subject is probably just fear mongering rather than any informed opinion. It’s like when people complain about “toxins” and “chemicals” in food, without any clue what a toxin is, or that everything is chemicals.
The challenge with GMO foods is that you have to imagine the inverse: what would happen if we *didn’t* use GMOs? Their benefits are real, tangible, and actually in effect. You have to weigh the costs of stopping all transgenic modification against the risk of a theoretical harm (that, to date, is nil) or the harm from mutagenesis, which is far more dangerous but, again, is never mentioned by the anti-GMO crowd.
Farming without GMOs is very common outside of the US.
I mention three countries in my article (France, Switzerland and New Zealand) that do not grow transgenic crops. If you had the possibility to visit one of these countries that could be a good way to get an idea of what farming without GM crops looks like. Other countries without GMOs include Thailand, Russia, Japan and much of the European Union.
Closer to home here is a recent article from the Wall Street Journal looking at Midwestern farmers who are switching back to non-GM varieties because the returns are better:
Farming with GM seeds can also be profitable but it tends to be a high-volume, low-margin business; if all your neighbors are growing the same variety as you the only real way to make money is to be bigger than them. That is why I have doubts about the economics of these techniques, particularly in the developing world where genetically diverse smallholdings are the dominant model.
Very healthy exchange. I was trained in Bio-dynamic farming and farmed in the 70’s and 80’s using this approach which is based on the concept that every farm is a unique individuality and the farmer’s job is to recognize how best, in their particular setting, to bring the soil alive so that the farm becomes self-sustaining. So dependence on any seed company that requires the farmer to buy again each year is considered fundamentally inefficient, albeit convenient. That is just one issue with GMO’s.
In the ‘90’s I was involved with a company that had developed peptide based therapies that could be grown in tobacco, for example. I learned how the peptides, weighted with gold were shot like gunshot into the germ and the ones that took could be grown with new characteristics. This, it seemed to me at the time was not terribly different from grafting different varieties of a fruit onto a a rootstock. Peptides are simply small chain proteins made of amino acids. The plants this company grew were healthy, resistant to multiple problems, not resistant to herbicides and pesticides and replicated beautifully.
I think the real issue is the business model of the GMO seed companies, The purpose of their seed is to get farmers to use more herbicides, plain and simple. And of course to become dependent on their hybrid seeds which, I imagine are designed not to replicate.
I am an environmental microbiologist/retired senior research scientist from the US EPA where I was in charge of the GMO biosafety program for some 16 years. Mr. Speer, let’s clarify the term are GMOs safe and let’s first take a look at regulatory history.Does one really believe that regulators are “right” 100% of the time and never make mistakes? Were chemicals like DDT, PCBs, bisphenol A, phthalates, neonicotinoids, Agent Orange, organophosphate pesticides, including chlorpyrifos used on grain, fruit, and GMO crops, and brominated flame retardants known as PBDEs, hormone replacement therapy estrogens, supportive testosterone, OK to bring to the public use? Perhaps these compounds would not have made it to commercialization if scientists and medical professionals (including industry employees) had not wrongly convinced regulators of their safety. Several studies within the last 3-5 years have strongly implicated glyphosate and/or its industrial formulations more commonly known as Roundup, as having estrogenic activity and toxicity in animal and tissue culture assays. Are GMOs safe? The answer is currently not clear. Hence the need to consider the precautionary principle. Here are some other facts to consider.
There are no genes in GMO crops that enhance crop yields. There are no genes that “cause” a plant to make more corn kernels, or make larger soybeans, or inherently make more alfalfa leaves, etc. Scientific studies conducted from massive amounts of long term (50 years and more) data collected before and after the advent of GMO crops, show no consistent mathematically detectable increase in yields after GMO crops were deployed.
Industry states and the main stream media parrots industry that synthetic chemical use has declined since GMO crops were used. Independent research and factual information available through U.S. States and USDA demonstrate an actual increase in the use of neonicotinoid-based chemicals as coatings on GMO seeds. Pyrethroids, fungicides, and organophosphates may also be placed into the soil when seeds are planted. Estimates show that actual use of synthetic insecticides has increased significantly during the last 10 years. We are just learning these chemicals are persistent in the environment and leave farms in runoff waters exposing numerous species of beneficial insects and other invertebrates with unknown environmental impacts. Industry promised these insecticides would remain locked in place associated with the seeds and soil.
Studies in Europe and the U.S. have shown that glyphosate is widespread in our food, water, air, rain, and other aquatic habitats and is excreted in human urine and breast milk. Industry promised that such long term exposures would not happen. Pollinators carry glyphosate contaminated nectar and corporate owned transgenes that contaminate honey, cross pollination, seed comingling events and lack of crop acceptances abroad have collectively cost American and Canadian farmers and grain shippers billions of dollars and spurred numerous law suits. GMO pesticides kill pollinators and glyphosate kills milkweed, the food for larval Monarchs. Are these observations regulatory mistakes? So now an environmental scientist can ask, “Is this prudent, safe agriculture? Are GMOs safe?”
Great points all around. Note that I’m not suggesting that we *not* adopt a precautionary principle. Instead, I think the original article had a serious issue with appeals to authority and getting basic facts wrong (such as no scientific consensus on GMO safety). I take issue with method, not conclusion.
Of course regulators have been wrong in the past, and will continue to be wrong in the future. But also note that glyphosate is a chemical danger, not a genetic one or GMO one. And many of the issues people have with the application of GMOs relate to how industrial agriculture is practiced in the US (and elsewhere) and are *also* not dangers inherent in GMO technology. They’re political, social, and economic challenges. But this original article was specifically about GMO technology.
And it is almost always the case that when people say they are “anti-GMO”, what they mean is they are “anti-transgenic GMO.” But mutagenic processes that were in use for decades before transgenic modification was invented are orders of magnitude more dangerous than transgenic processes, primarily because they are completely random.
Mutagenic modification involves bombarding plants with high levels of radiation to induce completely random mutations that may or may not express desirable traits. No testing of the actual genetic changes that happened are made on these plants. We simply hope they make changes we like and, if they do express positive traits (and any number of negative ones we have no idea about), then they go into production. Thousands of strains have been created this way, many in use in Europe. And yet, in Europe, as elsewhere, plants modified in this manner are deemed “organic” because they were made with “natural” processes.
If folks are really concerned about dangerous genetic modification, we’d need to start with these plants first. And quickly.
Similarly, there are dangers in simply saying “Estimates show that actual use of synthetic insecticides has increased significantly during the last 10 years.” Synthetic pesticides may be increasing in use but they are ingested in orders of magnitude less that natural pesticides. And natural pesticides are frequently much more toxic than the synthetic ones in use. This is a common logical fallacy used by environmentalists: that something “natural” is inherently better than something “synthetic”, simply because of their place of origin.
“show no consistent mathematically detectable increase in yields after GMO crops were deployed.”
Depends on what you mean by “yield”. Since you haven’t linked to any sources for any of your statements, it’s hard to know. This brief article gets to the challenge here:
“So what gives?
Turns out, this is largely an issue of terminology.
“Intrinsic yield” means something very specific, and something different from what most of us think when we hear the word “yield”. Because of this, both those sets of data that I’ve seen can be right, at the same time. The UCS is correct that GMOs plants don’t seem to produce higher intrinsic yields — that is, there aren’t more kernels per cob. But the data that shows GMO plants can produce more than conventionally bred plants is also correct, because that’s looking at a bigger picture of “yield” — one that takes into account the fact that it’s easier to protect those plants against pests. Fewer pests = fewer lost plants = a higher bushel-per-acre yield. Even if the plants, themselves, aren’t yielding more.”
There are definitely many reasons to adopt the precautionary principle when dealing with GMOs. But we need to be careful about how to frame those arguments and be clear about what we’re really discussing. Making poor arguments through appeals to authority and natural fallacies won’t help the environmental cause. Good science, good debate, and being equally informed on all sides is the path forward.
(p.s. Ramon: I would love to see supporting articles for your statements—simply to educate myself.)
I would like to begin by asking the author and the commentators to review their contributions and answer the following question: Each time you use the pronoun “we,” the noun “farmers,” the adjective “worldwide,” the noun “society,” who - very specifically - are you talking about? In other words, who are you talking about, to what historical period are you referring, and to where geographically are you referring? I would encourage you – as an exercise – to situate each of your claims in regards to the group of people to whom you refer, the historical period, and the geographical location. To do so is a tremendous task, and I am more than willing to wager that many of your claims will have to be altered or abandoned when the flat terrains of decontextualized, de-politicized, de-historicized, space-less, and place-less arguments of the preceding discussion are looked at in all of their messy, political, social, historical, moral and ethical, and geographical contexts. The complexity and heft of the task I pose, I hold, would be a better exercise in the cultivation of humility than appeals the science of statistics, probabilities, or epidemiological studies, all though these certainly must be a part of the conversation.
Part of the preceding discussion touches on appeals to authority, which is categorized as a rhetorical fallacy. Fair enough. However, statistics and probabilities are in turn given as an exemplar of the opposite, to which “we” all can agree. How and why can “we” all agree? Well, because messiness of the inescapably political, social, moral, ethical, historical, geographical, etc. contexts have been pared away as simplifying assumptions so as to arrive at the statistics and probabilities cited. The terrain of discussion has been flattened, and not by consensus. So, the brief contribution I would like to make is about power.
Within the tendencies of your (the preceding contributors’) language above I am able to note the assumption that the world is flat. This flattening of the world is indicative of how you are thinking about “we,” “the world,” “the farmers,” and, most importantly, yourselves and the subjective relations and understandings with which you identify and define yourselves and how you understand and interact with “the world.” It is indicative, to me, of how you situate yourselves (or, more precisely, fail to do so) in relation to “the rest of the world” (whoever, whenever, and wherever this is). It also is indicative to me that there are unexamined assumptions about “progress” and “development” and the historical trajectories of the former and the latter. There are assumptions about the directionality of “the world,” of “progress,” of “development,” of “science” and “technology” and “economy” and of what these look like. And within these assumptions are inevitably value judgments that, through your flattening of the world, you impose upon the world. The ability to do so is possible only through the leveraging of power and an authority that has had to be consolidated and won over time and space. In other words, each of you is situated in the world, but your failure to recognize this situatedness, or your adversity to its recognition and a careful consideration of its implications, is itself – not an appeal to authority or power – but an explicit exercise of authority and power.
The science to which you appeal as an escape for situatedness is precisely a political technology that consolidates power and authority. It achieves objectivity precisely through a rhetorical de-contextualization, de-historicization, de-politicization, and space and place defying discourse and methodology. However, these are always already and always only techniques for consolidating rhetorical power.
This said, in the above discussion, it seems to me that one “appeal to authority” is simply ruled invalid by another political, situated subject who in turn not only appeals but exercises the power and authority of a hegemonic discourse of quantitative, factual, objective [human] manipulations whose power is gained precisely by refusing to situate itself as inevitably human – and thus social, political, ethical, and so on – act that is historically, geographically, politically, and socially contingent.
The discussion on GMOs, in my opinion, seldom fails to remain within the imperial and colonial tendencies and subsequent trajectories and relationships of the modern history of Western Europe, Western European settler states, and “the rest of the world.”
Well, I don’t “we” with you. So I find your arguments troubling and short-sighted.
GMO technologies’ (whether of the mutagenic or transgenic type, or other) diffusion has very specific, very traceable directionality, and this directionality has been determined by exercises of power and interests. It has, as in the past, moved from the Western European or Unitedstatesian north to “the rest of the world,” just as within the United States it moves from academic or industry laboratory to scientific field plot to the farmer, or “operator.” And any claim as to the absolute “benefits” or “goodness” of such power-laden diffusion to “the rest of the world” is highly debatable and very complex. Therefore, to move to exclude these considerations from any discussion of “GMOs” is itself a technique of power. In this sense, new bioengineering regimes are inextricable from what a previous commentator called “industrial agriculture,” because “industrial agriculture” does not merely refer to science and technology. Industrial agriculture, and its science and technologies, are and have been political processes. And that they have been, and are, beneficial for “all” – beyond the power inherit in the flattening effect of such a claim – is highly contestable, and highly contested, within academic circles and without. The current pushing for ever-new iterations of expert-lead engineering solutions has been likened to a second Green Revolution by its proponents. This is, I feel, very apt. Technical solutions for problems caused by previous technical solutions that – as must occur in sound science and statistics – bracketed out the messiness of “the world” so as to arrive at objectively modeled solutions for this “the world.”
Here are two sources that I think can help begin to break this discussion out of the limited parameters within which it is usually confined:
On the inextricably intermeshed politics of the Green Revolution and the science and technologies of the Green Revolution (in an effort to begin to situate the discussion here):
Cullather, Nick (2010). The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Good article. I was the one who penned the question to GMOAnswers that was mentioned in the comment above. I wasn’t really satisfied with the nebulous answer, which basically says that "we have no idea what the long term effects are for people and the ecology around GMO crops, but we’re "experts" and so far things seem fine."
Nowadays we have experimental vaccines for covid with the same type of "experts" who also have no idea about the long term effects of the vaccines, but they think things are going fine…
COMMENTS
BY Sean Speer
ON April 14, 2015 01:38 PM
“This assertion is wrong on two counts: first because it draws a parallel between issues where there is a clear scientific consensus (evolution, climate change) and an issue where there is not (GMOs)”
It is factually wrong to say there isn’t scientific consensus on GMOs. There is actually *more* consensus in the scientific community on GMO safety than there is for climate change in America, where the NYT and the Washington Post are reporting. (I suspect the UK, where the Economist is published, would have similar poll results.) I haven’t seen poll results for France or New Zealand, but I suspect worldwide polls would have results similar to the Pew Poll.
“A Pew Research Center study on science literacy, undertaken in cooperation with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and released on January 29, contains a blockbuster: In sharp contrast to public skepticism about GMOs, 89% of scientists believe genetically modified foods are safe.
That overwhelming consensus exceeds the percentage of scientists, 88%, who believe global warming is the result of human activity. However, the public appears far more suspicious of scientific claims about GMO safety than they do about the consensus on climate change.”
http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/01/pewaaas-study-scientific-consensus-on-gmo-safety-stronger-than-for-global-warming/
Nassim Taleb (of Black Swan fame) did a great rundown on risk analysis of GMOs, as it related to the Precautionary Principle. (See: http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf)
The PP is generally the motivating factor for much regulation in Europe, but has far less adoption in the US. Using the PP as a motivating factor for GMO regulation has merit, but denying the scientific consensus for GMO safety does not.
“If independent research can prove that GM technology is safe, if we can devise economic models that would allow us to apply such technology in a way that is beneficial to society as a whole and not just to a few large corporations, and if society as a whole wants such technology”
In effect, this has already happened. The scientific consensus is that GMOs are safe. They are *already* being applied to great benefit worldwide, not just by the corporations designing and selling GMOs, but by the people buying and using them. Of separate issue from GMO safety is the business of corporate agriculture, but can’t tease that out in the space of a comment. =)
BY Rufo Quintavalle
ON April 16, 2015 05:23 AM
Hi Sean, and thank you for your remarks.
Unless long term epidemiological studies are carried out on the potential toxicity of GMOs it is impossible to say that such products are safe. And unless products containing GMOs are labelled as such it will be impossible to carry out such studies. A majority of AAAS members may think that GMOs are safe but it is impossible to prove or disprove this position given the current state of scientific knowledge.
I had not come across Nassim Taleb’s paper before but if I had I would certainly have included it in my article.
In deciding when to evoke the precautionary principle, Taleb and his co-authors state:
“We believe that the PP should be evoked only in extreme situations: when the potential harm is systemic (rather than localized) and the consequences can involve total irreversible ruin, such as the extinction of human beings or all life on the planet.”
They examine GMOs as a case study and conclude that GMOs present precisely such a systemic risk and should therefore NOT be allowed given the current state of scientific knowledge. They repeatedly stress that GMOs have never been proven to be safe, either for human consumption or as animal feed and that the impacts of GMOs on the environment is not understood. Here are a couple of quotations below:
“The FDA has adopted as a policy the approach that current scientific knowledge assures safety of GMOs, and relies upon Monsanto or similar companies for assurances. It therefore does not test the impact of chemical changes in GMO plants on human health or ecological systems. This despite experiments that show that increased concentrations of neurotoxins in maternal blood are linked to GMOs [21]. A variety of studies show experimental evidence that risks exist [22], [23], [24], [25] and global public health concerns are recognized [26]. We note that it is possible that there are significant impacts of neurotoxins on human cognitive function as a result of GMO modification, as FDA testing does not evaluate this risk.”
…
“For the impact of GMOs on health, the evaluation of whether the genetic engineering of a particular chemical (protein) into a plant is OK by the FDA is based upon considering limited existing knowledge of risks associated with that protein. The number of ways such an evaluation can be in error is large. The genetic modifications are biologically significant as the purpose is to strongly impact the chemical functions of the plant, modifying its resistance to other chemicals such as herbicides or pesticides, or affecting its own lethality to other organisms— i.e. its antibiotic qualities. The limited existing knowledge generally does not include long term testing of the exposure of people to the added chemical, even in isolation. The evaluation is independent of the ways the protein affects the biochemistry of the plant, including interactions among the various metabolic pathways and regulatory systems—and the impact of the resulting changes in biochemistry on health of consumers. The evaluation is independent of its farm-ecosystem combination (i.e. pesticide resistant crops are subject to increased use of pesticides, which are subsequently present in the plant in larger concentrations and cannot be washed away). Rather than recognizing the limitations of current understanding, poorly grounded perspectives about the potential damage with unjustified assumptions are being made. Limited empirical validation of both essential aspects of the conceptual framework as well as specific conclusions are being used because testing is recognized to be difficult.”
…
“Labeling the GMO approach “scientific” betrays a very poor—indeed warped—understanding of probabilistic payoffs and risk management. A lack of observations of explicit harm does not show absence of hidden risks. Current models of complex systems only contain the subset of reality that is accessible to the scientist. Nature is much richer than any model of it. To expose an entire system to something whose potential harm is not understood because extant models do not predict a negative outcome is not justifiable; the relevant variables may not have been adequately identified.”
They conclude where my own article begins:
“It has became popular to claim irrationality for GMO and other skepticism on the part of the general public - not realizing that there is in fact an “expert problem” and such skepticism is healthy and even necessary for survival.”
BY Sean Speer
ON April 16, 2015 08:46 AM
That is correct. But your article is an appeal to authority (“scientific consensus”), while Tableb’s piece is an appeal to statistics and probability. One is a logical fallacy, one is not.
“long term epidemiological studies are carried out on the potential toxicity of GMOs it is impossible to say that such products are safe”
I’ll just direct you to a slow of long-term epidemiological studies:
http://www.skepticink.com/smilodonsretreat/2012/10/24/a-survey-of-long-term-gm-food-studies/
Further, all of the seeds in use by humans have been genetically altered by humans. Many have been altered by using chemical baths or radiation to randomly mutate the genes. Organisms modified in this way are not “GMO” but “organic”, because they don’t use modern gene transfer techniques, relying on totally random mutations, instead.
Which is ironic. And, as Bruce M. Chassy, Professor Emeritus of Food Safety and Nutritional Sciences, Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, points out:
“I can’t resist pointing out that long-term tests have never been required for any new seed variety or crop. GM crops are the only crops to be subjected to premarket safety assessments, in spite of the fact that crops produced, using other methods of genetic modification and having identical new traits, are not tested before their use. It makes absolutely no scientific sense to single out GM crops for premarket testing while ignoring others that are made using older less exact methods. Of course, we don’t require premarket testing of crops because crop breeding has, over many years and thousands of new varieties introduced, proven to be a safe science. And there’s no scientific reason to believe that GM crops are any different with regard to safety, in spite of the well-financed and professionally orchestrated global campaign aimed at making consumers believe that GM crops are inherently different, inherently unsafe.”
https://gmoanswers.com/ask/are-there-any-long-term-30-years-studies-done-full-spectrum-ecological-impact-transgenic-gmo
BY Deb Marsteller
ON April 16, 2015 01:43 PM
My favorite part of this piece was the comment section. It should have it’s own headline. As a non science person interested in this subject, I appreciate Sean Spear taking the time to rebut.
Especially “your article is an appeal to authority (“scientific consensus”), while Tableb’s piece is an appeal to statistics and probability. One is a logical fallacy, one is not.” sums it up. Products can label ‘non GMO’ if they want and the public can buy if they want, but do not subject the rest to the expense if it’s not scientifically valid. We have a drought to worry about.
BY Rufo Quintavalle
ON April 16, 2015 01:43 PM
I have just been rereading the paper by Taleb et al. and it is a really thought-provoking piece. Beyond the fact that the authors reach the same skeptical conclusions as I do about GMOs what impressed me the most is the inherent humility of their position. They point to the inbuilt tendency of any group of specialists to think that their discourse represents the truth rather than an incomplete approximation of the truth - they characterize this as “the expert problem”.
I am an author, an environmentalist and an investor and what Taleb et al. are saying seems so true; moving between my three different worlds I can see how each ‘système de pensée’ has its limitations, even if it is not always easy to admit this.
There are certain things that geneticists don’t know and indeed that they cannot know given the current parameters within which they work. It doesn’t invalidate their entire discipline to say this but we are all conditioned to associate doubt with weakness, dig in our heels and pretend we know more than we do. Especially when we feel threatened by those from outside our camp.
What Taleb and his colleagues point to (and it is worth noting that the five authors are all from different academic disciplines) is that unless we listen to the voices from outside we will remain unaware of our own shortcomings. And, depending on our line of work, this lack of awareness could potentially have very serious consequences.
BY Sean Speer
ON April 16, 2015 02:03 PM
Agreed: the Taleb piece is great. What’s interesting though, is he doesn’t separate out the dangers from older, more imprecise methods of genetic modification—he focuses on transgenic modification, which is orders of magnitude more precise than the old methods. And it’s worth remembering that those old methods (which use chemical baths or straight up radiation bombardment) are still labeled “organic” because they don’t use transgenic modifications.
The article below highlights the issues with Taleb’s position on GMOs, not least of which is he—and the other authors of the paper—are not at all experts on biology or related fields. (Below, “Mutagenesis” is the term for the old “organic” method of genetic modification that, apparently, environmentalists have zero issue with, even though, from a scientific standpoint, it would be massively more fraught with issues than transgenic modifications.)
“One of the paper’s central points displays his clear lack of understanding of modern crop breeding. He claims that the rapidity of the genetic changes using the rDNA technique does not allow the environment to equilibrate. Yet rDNA techniques are actually among the safest crop breeding techniques in use today because each rDNA crop represents only 1-2 genetic changes that are more thoroughly tested than any other crop breeding technique. The number of genetic changes caused by hybridization or mutagensis techniques are orders of magnitude higher than rDNA methods. And no testing is required before widespread monoculture-style release. Even selective breeding likely represents a more rapid change than rDNA techniques because of the more rapid employment of the method today.
In essence. Taleb’s ecocide argument applies just as much to other agricultural techniques in both conventional and organic agriculture. The only difference between GMOs and other forms of breeding is that genetic engineering is closely evaluated, minimizing the potential for unintended consequences. Most geneticists–experts in this field as opposed to Taleb–believe that genetic engineering is far safer than any other form of breeding.”
-http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/11/03/is-nassim-taleb-a-dangerous-imbecile-or-just-on-the-pay-of-the-anti-gmo-mafia/
Whenever anyone says they have an issue with GMOs, the first question to them should always be: what specific method do you take issue with? Transgenic modification? Hybridization? Mutagenesis? Selective breeding?
If your interlocutor can’t define those terms, then their opinion on the subject is probably just fear mongering rather than any informed opinion. It’s like when people complain about “toxins” and “chemicals” in food, without any clue what a toxin is, or that everything is chemicals.
The challenge with GMO foods is that you have to imagine the inverse: what would happen if we *didn’t* use GMOs? Their benefits are real, tangible, and actually in effect. You have to weigh the costs of stopping all transgenic modification against the risk of a theoretical harm (that, to date, is nil) or the harm from mutagenesis, which is far more dangerous but, again, is never mentioned by the anti-GMO crowd.
BY Rufo Quintavalle
ON April 17, 2015 05:47 AM
Hi Sean,
Farming without GMOs is very common outside of the US.
I mention three countries in my article (France, Switzerland and New Zealand) that do not grow transgenic crops. If you had the possibility to visit one of these countries that could be a good way to get an idea of what farming without GM crops looks like. Other countries without GMOs include Thailand, Russia, Japan and much of the European Union.
Closer to home here is a recent article from the Wall Street Journal looking at Midwestern farmers who are switching back to non-GM varieties because the returns are better:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/fields-of-gold-gmo-free-crops-prove-lucrative-for-farmers-1422909700
Farming with GM seeds can also be profitable but it tends to be a high-volume, low-margin business; if all your neighbors are growing the same variety as you the only real way to make money is to be bigger than them. That is why I have doubts about the economics of these techniques, particularly in the developing world where genetically diverse smallholdings are the dominant model.
Best wishes,
Rufo
BY G. Benjamin Bingham
ON April 18, 2015 06:34 PM
Very healthy exchange. I was trained in Bio-dynamic farming and farmed in the 70’s and 80’s using this approach which is based on the concept that every farm is a unique individuality and the farmer’s job is to recognize how best, in their particular setting, to bring the soil alive so that the farm becomes self-sustaining. So dependence on any seed company that requires the farmer to buy again each year is considered fundamentally inefficient, albeit convenient. That is just one issue with GMO’s.
In the ‘90’s I was involved with a company that had developed peptide based therapies that could be grown in tobacco, for example. I learned how the peptides, weighted with gold were shot like gunshot into the germ and the ones that took could be grown with new characteristics. This, it seemed to me at the time was not terribly different from grafting different varieties of a fruit onto a a rootstock. Peptides are simply small chain proteins made of amino acids. The plants this company grew were healthy, resistant to multiple problems, not resistant to herbicides and pesticides and replicated beautifully.
I think the real issue is the business model of the GMO seed companies, The purpose of their seed is to get farmers to use more herbicides, plain and simple. And of course to become dependent on their hybrid seeds which, I imagine are designed not to replicate.
BY Ramon J. Seidler
ON April 19, 2015 09:31 AM
I am an environmental microbiologist/retired senior research scientist from the US EPA where I was in charge of the GMO biosafety program for some 16 years. Mr. Speer, let’s clarify the term are GMOs safe and let’s first take a look at regulatory history.Does one really believe that regulators are “right” 100% of the time and never make mistakes? Were chemicals like DDT, PCBs, bisphenol A, phthalates, neonicotinoids, Agent Orange, organophosphate pesticides, including chlorpyrifos used on grain, fruit, and GMO crops, and brominated flame retardants known as PBDEs, hormone replacement therapy estrogens, supportive testosterone, OK to bring to the public use? Perhaps these compounds would not have made it to commercialization if scientists and medical professionals (including industry employees) had not wrongly convinced regulators of their safety. Several studies within the last 3-5 years have strongly implicated glyphosate and/or its industrial formulations more commonly known as Roundup, as having estrogenic activity and toxicity in animal and tissue culture assays. Are GMOs safe? The answer is currently not clear. Hence the need to consider the precautionary principle. Here are some other facts to consider.
There are no genes in GMO crops that enhance crop yields. There are no genes that “cause” a plant to make more corn kernels, or make larger soybeans, or inherently make more alfalfa leaves, etc. Scientific studies conducted from massive amounts of long term (50 years and more) data collected before and after the advent of GMO crops, show no consistent mathematically detectable increase in yields after GMO crops were deployed.
Industry states and the main stream media parrots industry that synthetic chemical use has declined since GMO crops were used. Independent research and factual information available through U.S. States and USDA demonstrate an actual increase in the use of neonicotinoid-based chemicals as coatings on GMO seeds. Pyrethroids, fungicides, and organophosphates may also be placed into the soil when seeds are planted. Estimates show that actual use of synthetic insecticides has increased significantly during the last 10 years. We are just learning these chemicals are persistent in the environment and leave farms in runoff waters exposing numerous species of beneficial insects and other invertebrates with unknown environmental impacts. Industry promised these insecticides would remain locked in place associated with the seeds and soil.
Studies in Europe and the U.S. have shown that glyphosate is widespread in our food, water, air, rain, and other aquatic habitats and is excreted in human urine and breast milk. Industry promised that such long term exposures would not happen. Pollinators carry glyphosate contaminated nectar and corporate owned transgenes that contaminate honey, cross pollination, seed comingling events and lack of crop acceptances abroad have collectively cost American and Canadian farmers and grain shippers billions of dollars and spurred numerous law suits. GMO pesticides kill pollinators and glyphosate kills milkweed, the food for larval Monarchs. Are these observations regulatory mistakes? So now an environmental scientist can ask, “Is this prudent, safe agriculture? Are GMOs safe?”
BY Sean Speer
ON April 19, 2015 12:10 PM
Hi Ramon,
Great points all around. Note that I’m not suggesting that we *not* adopt a precautionary principle. Instead, I think the original article had a serious issue with appeals to authority and getting basic facts wrong (such as no scientific consensus on GMO safety). I take issue with method, not conclusion.
Of course regulators have been wrong in the past, and will continue to be wrong in the future. But also note that glyphosate is a chemical danger, not a genetic one or GMO one. And many of the issues people have with the application of GMOs relate to how industrial agriculture is practiced in the US (and elsewhere) and are *also* not dangers inherent in GMO technology. They’re political, social, and economic challenges. But this original article was specifically about GMO technology.
And it is almost always the case that when people say they are “anti-GMO”, what they mean is they are “anti-transgenic GMO.” But mutagenic processes that were in use for decades before transgenic modification was invented are orders of magnitude more dangerous than transgenic processes, primarily because they are completely random.
Mutagenic modification involves bombarding plants with high levels of radiation to induce completely random mutations that may or may not express desirable traits. No testing of the actual genetic changes that happened are made on these plants. We simply hope they make changes we like and, if they do express positive traits (and any number of negative ones we have no idea about), then they go into production. Thousands of strains have been created this way, many in use in Europe. And yet, in Europe, as elsewhere, plants modified in this manner are deemed “organic” because they were made with “natural” processes.
If folks are really concerned about dangerous genetic modification, we’d need to start with these plants first. And quickly.
Similarly, there are dangers in simply saying “Estimates show that actual use of synthetic insecticides has increased significantly during the last 10 years.” Synthetic pesticides may be increasing in use but they are ingested in orders of magnitude less that natural pesticides. And natural pesticides are frequently much more toxic than the synthetic ones in use. This is a common logical fallacy used by environmentalists: that something “natural” is inherently better than something “synthetic”, simply because of their place of origin.
See: http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/06/synthetic-v-natural-pesticides/
See: http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cpdb/text/handbook.pesticide.toxicology.pdf
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogsscientificamericancomscience-sushi20110718mythbusting-101-organic-farming-conventional-agriculture/
“show no consistent mathematically detectable increase in yields after GMO crops were deployed.”
Depends on what you mean by “yield”. Since you haven’t linked to any sources for any of your statements, it’s hard to know. This brief article gets to the challenge here:
“So what gives?
Turns out, this is largely an issue of terminology.
“Intrinsic yield” means something very specific, and something different from what most of us think when we hear the word “yield”. Because of this, both those sets of data that I’ve seen can be right, at the same time. The UCS is correct that GMOs plants don’t seem to produce higher intrinsic yields — that is, there aren’t more kernels per cob. But the data that shows GMO plants can produce more than conventionally bred plants is also correct, because that’s looking at a bigger picture of “yield” — one that takes into account the fact that it’s easier to protect those plants against pests. Fewer pests = fewer lost plants = a higher bushel-per-acre yield. Even if the plants, themselves, aren’t yielding more.”
http://boingboing.net/2013/03/29/do-gmos-yield-more-food-the-a.html
There are definitely many reasons to adopt the precautionary principle when dealing with GMOs. But we need to be careful about how to frame those arguments and be clear about what we’re really discussing. Making poor arguments through appeals to authority and natural fallacies won’t help the environmental cause. Good science, good debate, and being equally informed on all sides is the path forward.
(p.s. Ramon: I would love to see supporting articles for your statements—simply to educate myself.)
BY Robert
ON August 22, 2015 01:35 PM
I would like to begin by asking the author and the commentators to review their contributions and answer the following question: Each time you use the pronoun “we,” the noun “farmers,” the adjective “worldwide,” the noun “society,” who - very specifically - are you talking about? In other words, who are you talking about, to what historical period are you referring, and to where geographically are you referring? I would encourage you – as an exercise – to situate each of your claims in regards to the group of people to whom you refer, the historical period, and the geographical location. To do so is a tremendous task, and I am more than willing to wager that many of your claims will have to be altered or abandoned when the flat terrains of decontextualized, de-politicized, de-historicized, space-less, and place-less arguments of the preceding discussion are looked at in all of their messy, political, social, historical, moral and ethical, and geographical contexts. The complexity and heft of the task I pose, I hold, would be a better exercise in the cultivation of humility than appeals the science of statistics, probabilities, or epidemiological studies, all though these certainly must be a part of the conversation.
Part of the preceding discussion touches on appeals to authority, which is categorized as a rhetorical fallacy. Fair enough. However, statistics and probabilities are in turn given as an exemplar of the opposite, to which “we” all can agree. How and why can “we” all agree? Well, because messiness of the inescapably political, social, moral, ethical, historical, geographical, etc. contexts have been pared away as simplifying assumptions so as to arrive at the statistics and probabilities cited. The terrain of discussion has been flattened, and not by consensus. So, the brief contribution I would like to make is about power.
Within the tendencies of your (the preceding contributors’) language above I am able to note the assumption that the world is flat. This flattening of the world is indicative of how you are thinking about “we,” “the world,” “the farmers,” and, most importantly, yourselves and the subjective relations and understandings with which you identify and define yourselves and how you understand and interact with “the world.” It is indicative, to me, of how you situate yourselves (or, more precisely, fail to do so) in relation to “the rest of the world” (whoever, whenever, and wherever this is). It also is indicative to me that there are unexamined assumptions about “progress” and “development” and the historical trajectories of the former and the latter. There are assumptions about the directionality of “the world,” of “progress,” of “development,” of “science” and “technology” and “economy” and of what these look like. And within these assumptions are inevitably value judgments that, through your flattening of the world, you impose upon the world. The ability to do so is possible only through the leveraging of power and an authority that has had to be consolidated and won over time and space. In other words, each of you is situated in the world, but your failure to recognize this situatedness, or your adversity to its recognition and a careful consideration of its implications, is itself – not an appeal to authority or power – but an explicit exercise of authority and power.
The science to which you appeal as an escape for situatedness is precisely a political technology that consolidates power and authority. It achieves objectivity precisely through a rhetorical de-contextualization, de-historicization, de-politicization, and space and place defying discourse and methodology. However, these are always already and always only techniques for consolidating rhetorical power.
This said, in the above discussion, it seems to me that one “appeal to authority” is simply ruled invalid by another political, situated subject who in turn not only appeals but exercises the power and authority of a hegemonic discourse of quantitative, factual, objective [human] manipulations whose power is gained precisely by refusing to situate itself as inevitably human – and thus social, political, ethical, and so on – act that is historically, geographically, politically, and socially contingent.
The discussion on GMOs, in my opinion, seldom fails to remain within the imperial and colonial tendencies and subsequent trajectories and relationships of the modern history of Western Europe, Western European settler states, and “the rest of the world.”
“We” already know the outcomes, don’t “we”? “We” know what’s best, don’t “we”?
Well, I don’t “we” with you. So I find your arguments troubling and short-sighted.
GMO technologies’ (whether of the mutagenic or transgenic type, or other) diffusion has very specific, very traceable directionality, and this directionality has been determined by exercises of power and interests. It has, as in the past, moved from the Western European or Unitedstatesian north to “the rest of the world,” just as within the United States it moves from academic or industry laboratory to scientific field plot to the farmer, or “operator.” And any claim as to the absolute “benefits” or “goodness” of such power-laden diffusion to “the rest of the world” is highly debatable and very complex. Therefore, to move to exclude these considerations from any discussion of “GMOs” is itself a technique of power. In this sense, new bioengineering regimes are inextricable from what a previous commentator called “industrial agriculture,” because “industrial agriculture” does not merely refer to science and technology. Industrial agriculture, and its science and technologies, are and have been political processes. And that they have been, and are, beneficial for “all” – beyond the power inherit in the flattening effect of such a claim – is highly contestable, and highly contested, within academic circles and without. The current pushing for ever-new iterations of expert-lead engineering solutions has been likened to a second Green Revolution by its proponents. This is, I feel, very apt. Technical solutions for problems caused by previous technical solutions that – as must occur in sound science and statistics – bracketed out the messiness of “the world” so as to arrive at objectively modeled solutions for this “the world.”
Here are two sources that I think can help begin to break this discussion out of the limited parameters within which it is usually confined:
From UC Berkeley’s Blum Center, on the problem of expertise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jqEj8XUPlk
On the inextricably intermeshed politics of the Green Revolution and the science and technologies of the Green Revolution (in an effort to begin to situate the discussion here):
Cullather, Nick (2010). The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
BY Mark
ON April 17, 2021 12:47 AM
Good article. I was the one who penned the question to GMOAnswers that was mentioned in the comment above. I wasn’t really satisfied with the nebulous answer, which basically says that "we have no idea what the long term effects are for people and the ecology around GMO crops, but we’re "experts" and so far things seem fine."
Nowadays we have experimental vaccines for covid with the same type of "experts" who also have no idea about the long term effects of the vaccines, but they think things are going fine…