It's Neither Ignorant Nor Misdirected to Oppose GMO

Last month, biologist PZ Myers, whom I greatly admire, took a shot at those who oppose Genetically Modified Organisms as unscientific woo-peddlers.

Much of the dissent with GMOs is based either on ignorance, or is misdirected.

SNIP

This strange unfounded fear of GMOs is unfortunately most strongly expressed in the political left. It’s embarrassing that political progressives are being made to look bad by raging superstition and unscientific claims.

I cut no slack for woo-peddlers or for knee-jerk attacks on modern science.  But PZ is focusing on the woo-ish anti-science tiny minority of anti-GMO activism and ignoring the much bigger fight: stopping one giant company - Monsanto - from using GMO to make all agriculture subject to corporate ownership and control.

He calls on anti-GMO-ers to engage in that fight as if there were not millions of people already engaged in global activism against Monsanto.

As for the scientific case against GMOs, here's the latest from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

In the decade and a half since the agricultural biotechnology industry in the United States staged its first field trials, federal and state governments and private corporations have spent billions of dollars on research, commercial development, and regulation. This paper focuses primarily on the environmental successes and failures of that investment and the implications of that experience for U.S. readiness to deal with the next generation of agricultural biotechnology products.

SUMMARY

The American experience with genetically modified food crops, while encouraging, does not justify complacency about potential risks for several reasons. First, our experience is quite limited in important ways. Only two traits, herbicide and insect resistance, have been significant commercial successes. Crops with other traits have failed to achieve commercial success, have been held back by companies, or never made it through the research and development pipeline.

Second, the U.S. government provides very little post-market oversight of biotech foods. A recent report by the U.S.-based Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology (cited above) questions the ability of the government's weak monitoring and enforcement systems to detect unexpected human health and environmental problems and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.⁵⁹ In fact, the current "don't look, don't find" approach to monitoring is likely to detect only the most dramatic, highly visible effects.

Third, the scientific underpinnings of risk assessment and risk management are chronically and severely underfunded. Compared with the amount of U.S. taxpayer funds spent on biotech product development and related research, very little is earmarked for research on risks of engineered products. For example, in the 11-year period of 1992 to 2002, the USDA spent approximately $1.8 billion on biotechnology research and approximately $18 million on risk-related research.⁶⁰ Many features of genetically modified food crops, for example, impacts of stacked genes and unresolved issues about Bt allergenicity, raise concerns that have simply not been adequately investigated.

Fourth, the diversity promised in future products and the new, more complex issues they are likely to raise are expected to severely challenge a regulatory system already straining under the comparatively light weight of today's products. This point is made by a trio of studies produced by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The first report, Genetically Modified Pest-Protected Plants: Science and Regulation, after reviewing the risks of crops engineered to produce insecticidal toxins and evaluating the EPA's program for regulating these crops, recommended that the agency strengthen its oversight.⁶¹

Two years later, a second report focused on the USDA and its regulation of engineered crops. The Environmental Effects of Transgenic Plants: the Scope and Adequacy of Regulation found serious shortcomings in the department's oversight of biotech products and recommended significant changes in its regulatory program.⁶² The report particularly noted that the USDA was ill prepared to protect against the risks of a new generation of biotech products nearing the end of the research and development pipeline.

Also in 2002, NAS published Animal Biotechnology: Science-Based Concerns, the academy's first report devoted solely to animals produced through modern biotechnology methods.⁶³ That report found that the federal government's regulatory efforts have not kept pace with the advances in animal biotechnology research. As a result, they concluded that the current framework might be inadequate to oversee new animal biotech products as they move from laboratories towards commercialization.

Finally, the scientific evidence available to date, while encouraging, does not support the conclusion that genetically modified crops are intrinsically safe for health or the environment. The next generation of products—crops engineered to produce drugs and industrial chemicals⁶⁴ and crops engineered to alter regulatory and metabolic pathways⁶⁵—offer far more numerous traits and appear to be more obviously dangerous than Bt and herbicide-tolerant crops. It would be a serious misstep to overread the positive early experience with Bt and herbicide-tolerant crops and conclude that the weak regulation currently in place will suffice to control the risks of these and other new crops.

 The attacks on GMO dissenters are the same attacks leveled at J. Robert Oppenheimer for his doubts about the safety of nuclear power, and Rachel Carson for sounding the alarm about artificial pesticides.  "Hysterical luddites! Ignore them!"

Maybe this time the GMO cheerleaders are right. I hope so. But the corporate track record on scientific dangers is one of 100 percent failure. So I doubt it.