In the eighties, lots of young ideologues were worried about a Malthusian future; there would be more people in the world than we could feed. They decided that genetic engineering was going to save the world by adding micro-nutrients to rice, by making essential food crops drought resistant and higher yielding, et cetera. So they studied genetic engineering in University and joined Monsanto, which was obviously the company that was most likely to make this happen.<p>Thirty years later, they are vilified by very similar ideologues.
> While the debate about the impact of GM crops on the environment continues, the question of their effect on human health looks increasingly settled. The National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, Britain’s Royal Society, the European Commission, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, among others, have all surveyed the substantial research literature and found no evidence that the GM foods on the market today are unsafe to eat. One of the few dissenting research papers, a 2012 study in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology that found tumors in rats fed modified maize, was retracted by the journal last fall after questions were raised about the researchers’ methodology.<p>There is still a huge sentiment against GMOs, everyone think they are harmful to health here in France. I don't know how long it will take for the mentality to change.
There's is an old article by Michael Specter in the New Yorker about Robert Shapiro, the CEO who in the 1990s turned Monsanto from a chemical company into a biotechnology company. Shapiro is a fascinating CEO-- an anti-war activist from New York and former folk musician who was on a mission to save the world through biology. Two of his daughters founded the alt-rock band "Veruca Salt" who had a hit song "Seether" in the 1990s. Here's a PDF of the New Yorker article:
<a href="http://www.michaelspecter.com/wp-content/uploads/pharmageddon.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.michaelspecter.com/wp-content/uploads/pharmageddo...</a>
One of the big complaints I hear about Monsanto is that using their seeds forces farmers to throw away their seeds each year (cannot use the seeds that their crops produce). I spoke with a farmer about this once, and he said they almost always throw away their seeds, regardless of supplier. Using those seeds would result in variable growing since you have no clue what cross pollination happened in the previous season.<p>Any experience farmers or biogeneticists care to comment?
I'm a died-in-the-wool leftish vegetarian, and honestly, I actually am annoyed by the GMO issue because I think it distracts from the far more important concern about other modern farming practices that have far more serious impact.<p>Excessive pesticides, monocultures, over-intensive factory farms, fossil-fuel-based fertilizers. Those things worry me far more than GMOs, and they're far lower on everyone's priority-list.
I just started a new job at Climate Corporation and it has been interesting seeing the other side of the "Monsanto is the devil" story. Also, David Friedberg is so smart and impressive.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb ( 2014 July 1. ) :<p><i>"The latest version of our precautionary principle, with application to GMOs, refined thanks to more fallacies in arguments countering it. For discussion before we move to the final version."</i><p><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8nhAlfIk3QIbGFzOXF5UUN3N2c/edit" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8nhAlfIk3QIbGFzOXF5UUN3N2c/...</a><p>---<p><i>"What people miss is that the modification of crops impacts everyone and exports the error from the local to the global.<p>I do not wish to pay —or have my descendants pay — for errors by executives of Monsanto.<p>We should exert the precautionary principle there —our non-naive version — simply because we would discover errors after considerable damage."</i><p><a href="http://blog.longnow.org/02013/07/08/the-artangel-longplayer-letters-nassim-taleb-writes-to-stewart-brand/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.longnow.org/02013/07/08/the-artangel-longplayer-...</a>
I understand the benefits of GMOs but my question is this: do we really need the technology?<p>In other words, is it impossible to grow enough food without using GMOs?
I'm not personally afraid of GMOs, but I do not fault people for being skeptical of them.<p>Completely synthetic foods and food processing have a mediocre track record, and in many cases have caused actual harm (e.g. trans fats) for a long time before that harm was uncovered. Even in cases where there is no active harm, heavily processed foods very often have lower nutritional content than their less processed "whole" cousins. Take wheat for instance. We bleach it, denuding it of its nutritional value, and then try to add back the missing nutrients. Why?<p>Obviously that's apples and oranges -- GMO foods don't do the same thing that food processing, oil hydrogenation, etc. do... they're totally different technologies. But for the average person who doesn't deeply understand these issues, it's easy to look at the poor track record of "better living through chemistry" and be skeptical.<p>The general perception is that anything that "messes with" food is either reducing its nutritional content or adding something harmful.<p>Another reason for skepticism about GMOs stems from the poor track record of medical studies on the relative benefit or harm of various nutrients and foods. Take saturated fats for example, which were demonized for decades. Instead people were encouraged to eat trans fats like margarine, which turned out to be worse for you. Now apparently saturated fats are not too bad in moderation, or something. I don't know. That will probably be reversed next month, then reversed again, then reversed again, and each time the media will trumpet the news. Each big new finding about nutrition seems to contradict previous findings, leading to a general view among many people that nutritional science has no idea what it's talking about.<p>We can't even figure out after decades of study whether or not fat is bad for you and you're telling me we're <i>absolutely 100% sure</i> GMOs are safe...? Get the picture?<p>Finally, I think there's a problem of institutional trust. I've asked some organic hippie type friends before if they'd be more open to GMOs if they were made by non-profits working toward the public interest, if they were open source, and if all results of all studies were completely public. I've mostly gotten nods to that. People don't trust closed for-profit companies not to hide negative results, engage in research study "payola," push things to market that have known problems, etc.<p>The trust issue is huge. Any time this comes up around here I tend to post and bring it up, and for the most part nobody gets it.<p>People are afraid of GMO foods and parents are not vaccinating their children because the Bush administration lied about Iraq (to give one example). For some reason that is just flatly obvious to me. Why does nobody else see this?
Monsanto is not only active on GMOs, they also have a terrible track record promoting harmful products like their Roundup.<p>See "The world according to Monsanto", it's quite edifying (<a href="http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-world-according-to-monsanto/" rel="nofollow">http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-world-according-to-monsan...</a>).