Are You Anti-GMO? Then You’re Anti-Science, Too.

by Michael Gerson (The Washington Post) ... My boycott is rooted in the fact that there is no reputable scientific evidence that direct genetic modification — instead of slower genetic modification through selective breeding — has any health effects of any kind. None. Here is a 2016 analysis of about 1,000 studies by the National Academy of Sciences: “The committee concluded that no differences have been found that implicate a higher risk to human health safety from these [Genetically Engineered] foods than from their non-GE counterparts.” The NAS was joined in this judgment by the Royal Society, the French Academy of Science and the American Medical Association.

Mark Lynas’s new book, “Seeds of Science: Why We Got It So Wrong on GMOs,” tells the story from a unique perspective. Lynas was an early anti-GMO activist in Britain — participating in everything from late-night crop destruction to delivering a pie in the face of Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg. The logic of Lynas’s conversion is an implicit challenge to both the American right and the left. In an earlier book, “Six Degrees,” Lynas took a deep dive into climate science (winning the Royal Society’s 2008 Science Book Prize in the process). He found the scientific consensus on climate change to be compelling. But he found the evidence for the safety of GMOs to be at least as strong. “I couldn’t deny the scientific consensus on GMOs,” he writes, “while insisting on strict adherence to the one on climate change, and still call myself a science writer.”

It was, he says, “a decisive turning point in my life.” But the public debate on GMOs turned in exactly the opposite direction. Just as scientists were becoming more confident in the safety of GMOs, global anti-GMO activists, led by Greenpeace, were making the issue a hot potato (including a genetically modified insect-resistant potato cultivated in Canada). On the strength of myths (that using genetically modified seeds somehow resulted in suicides among Indian farmers) and deception (tying GMOs to autism or cancer), supermarket chains, food companies and eventually governments were frightened into anti-GMO stances. In the developing world, anti-GMO activists spread rumors that GMO consumption resulted in homosexuality and infertility.

There is more than a hint of cultural imperialism when Westerners — grown fat on the success of modern farming — lecture subsistence farmers on the benefits of heirloom breeds and organic methods. The greatest need among farmers who spend part of the year hungry is increased productivity. Plant varieties engineered to resist cassava brown streak, banana bacterial wilt or maize lethal necrosis can be a matter of life or death. New, drought-resistant crops will be essential as the climate continues to change. And crops designed to resist insects require the use of far less insecticide — which reduces the risk of pesticide poisoning. READ MORE