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Anti-GMO Activist Recants
Freddybear writes "Former anti-GMO activist Mark Lynas, who opposed genetically modified food in the 1990s, said recently, at the Oxford Farming Conference: 'I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologize for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonizing an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment. As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely. So I guess you'll be wondering — what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist.' To vilify GMOs is to be as anti-science as climate-change deniers, he says. To feed a growing world population (with an exploding middle class demanding more and better-quality food), we must take advantage of all the technology available to us, including GMOs. To insist on 'natural' agriculture and livestock is to doom people to starvation, and there’s no logical reason to prefer the old ways, either. Moreover, the reason why big companies dominate the industry is that anti-GMO activists and policymakers have made it too difficult for small startups to enter the field."
Kepler figured out he had it all wrong after a career spent trying to prove bad theories (Platonic model of the universe? Really?) ... and arguably launched the age of the scientific enlightenment.
I'm anxious read Mr. Lynas' coming works.
I find this refreshing. If only everyone would take the time to reevaluate their beliefs from time to time we might be so much better off.
Cross contamination & subsequent loss of organic certification isn't an issue then?
How about Monsanto dragging innocent farmers into court?
Sounds like he has already found someone else to vilify.
I have not read the article, but a couple of things in this summary ringed some bells: current GMOs use is not to feed the world population, for instance USA corn monopoly is empowered with Monsanto GMO corn to make farmers and countries even more dependent and them. There is a whole vicious circle involving subsidies, monoculture, corn industrial derivatives, corn feedstock, antibiotics that has nothing with "feeding the world population" but with empowering monopolies". Furthermore "'natural' agriculture", is he talking about traditional agriculture? I couldn't agree more that it's doomed. But the UN has studied Agro-ecology and found out that it could double agriculture production http://is.gd/oxtixy
Burgeoning bourgeoisie: For the first time in history more than half the world is middle-class—thanks to rapid growth in emerging countries. John Parker (interviewed here) reports. http://www.economist.com/node/13063298?story_id=13063298&source=hptextfeature
In all cases, follow the money. While I'm not completely anti-GMO, the companies producing GMOs have not been honest, not been honest, and not been honest. As a long time hater and now a big advocate, I wonder who's payroll he made it on too in order to now back GMO foods. There is a tremendous amount of science showing how bad GMOs are, much worst than the anti-GMO crowd initially thought! So his "because of Science" answer is pure bullshit!
Studies have shown that GMO foods are not only unhealthy for humans, but often harm the environment. As a simple example, Poland found that a GMO corn was killing off whole colonies of bees. Poland outlawed GMO corn.
Studies showed that long term, GMO foods can cause some nasty cancers in lab rats. When mixed with a certain pesticide, the cancer was insanely fast growing and abnormally massive tumors would be found.
A very large GMO company ran smear campaigns trying to keep hiding what was GMO and what was not. Do you really trust eating foods that they don't want to tell you are genetically modified? Not only not tell you, but spend nearly a billion dollars to keep you from knowing?
That same very large GMO has been suing people left and right for having seed gone awry grow on their own farms. They have monopolized and killed off competition in many markets, many of which are overseas and impoverished areas. Interestingly, after the Mississippi river flooding, guess who bought most of the farm land? Of course it's only those Chinese and Russians that can influence the weather though, and hell an upstanding US company would never do such a thing would they?
Needless to say at this point, I don't trust anyone that changes sides based on a lie.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
So truue. All those papers you cited made for quite the convincing case.
This is great and all that he saw the light when it comes to science... but with technology and science comes responsibility as well. Two key issues come to mind:
(1) Cross pollination of farmers crops, and then demanding royalties from the seed owners,
(2) and engineering the crops to disable re-planting the same seeds for the purpose of profit.
One actual example would be allowing a patent to monsanto on basmati rice...
link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/jan/31/gm.food
Roundup used in commercial agriculture (food crops) only eliminated weeds for a few decades, now there are superweeds that have evolved its own immunity to Roundup.
what happens in the lab and used in the fields will find its way in to the wild (it is unavoidable)
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Seriously, there is plenty of science that shows issues related to GMO crops. If not the crops themselves, the fact that a round up ready corn means several times more round up applied to the ground. This is scienfitically documented.
So I am of the opinion this guy is probably just some bought out loon.
Science, and advocate of real science, would concede there is far too much we just do not know at this point. And MANY fears that were pointed to, have been proved valid. Like infection of wild specieis.
That's SCIENCE...
The two options aren't unquestioning acceptance and total ban. GMO with strict regulations can be useful. Without it, it's a disaster waiting to happen. He is just a professional activist who can't accept that the world isn't black and white.
Don't worry... If we get hungry enough, we'll eat the Monsanto Board of Directors....
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Some of us don't like the idea of corporations eventually holding patents on all our food. Sorry but if we can't sustain ourselves without giving up something so basic then we need fewer people on the planet.
Cross contamination & subsequent loss of organic certification isn't an issue then? How about Monsanto dragging innocent farmers into court?
I would personally advocate slicing GMO issues into separate bins. What you're referring to is the Intellectual Property bin which is a problem with (at least the US) most countries and the ownership (whether an instance of or the general use of) genetic material. Put all those lawsuits and patents and copyright crap in one bin.
Then you have another bin where we analyze the human element of consumption of GMO foods. What is the process to determine when something has undergone enough testing and is ready to push it forward? How many years of human trials must be held before it can be released? We do this with drugs but strangely, I haven't heard of much about this with GMO crops -- why is that?
Lastly we have a more open problem like environmental issues both surrounding the plant's effect on its environment and also the adjusted actions of the humans cultivating this crop. For example: with Roundup ready plants from Monsanto, have we really analyzed what the increased usage of chemicals like Roundup has on the immediate vicinity of the fields? Do we know that these genetic constructs that are taken from an insect and inserted into a plant do not adversely affect the pollen and have indirect affects on hay fever or honey bees? Again, how do we test this and how long should it be tested before it's pushed nationwide.
Lynas raises an interesting point I had not considered -- that my above desires for process and bureaucracy will prevent a small company from venturing into this field. On the other hand, we've been using selective breeding to move past a lot of the hurdles Lynas mentioned that GMO crops are supposed to move us even further past. It's unfortunate but this isn't a black and white issue and I'm against the unfettered proliferation of gene constructs that have been taken from other organisms and inserted into plants without sufficient testing.
The process of DNA -> Amino Acid -> Protein is still a very difficult puzzle for us as humans and I feel we should not openly experiment with inserting stuff at Point A when we don't know the full effects that yields in points B and C. I feel like there is still a lot to be achieved with selective breeding and until we have a better understanding of protein folding, we should shy away from smashing DNA into strands of plants unless it's absolutely critical to humanity. Go ahead and do that stuff in a lab to better understand it but leave it in a lab until there's a process that ensures it is safe.
My work here is dung.
research has shown some GMO's are harmful.
Research has shown that some humans kill. What's your point?
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Congratulations, that doesn't mean GMO is always good.
It is a bad thing to breed pesticides into our food supply without absolute certainty of they are safe.
It is not a bad thing to have to label GMO foods for what they are.
....population reduction.
This can be in part accouplished with sterilizing GMO's
The real reason he changed his mind
for the science - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umFnrvcS6AQ
population reduction is as well in United Nations Agenda 21 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21
Exactly. To here these Occupy types blather you'd think the middle class is sleeping under a bridge.
The standard of living for an American poor person is very high for most of the world, and mostly not so far behind socialist paradises in the EU. I'll give you that we need some sort of means-tested max-out-of-pocket universal single payer health care, but other than that it's a bunch of crybabying and class envy.
A few years ago the closest grocery store to where I was living was a Coop. Which was great in the summer because it was stocked with a lot of fresh stuff from local farmers (it was a rural college town).
Well one of my biggest sources of income is the family farms I've inherited along with my Dad that we lease out. We're semi involved helping the farmer with trying new methods on our farms trying to boost yields (Rice & Soybeans are the primary crop, some years corn). This is mainly my father as he's retired and it gives him something to do, but as he's gotten up into his 70's I've started to take a more involved role in things.
One time I was at the Coop and commented about rice and lack of a particular brand that we sold our rice to which led to a conversation with one of the patrons who flipped out when I mentioned we had switched to a new hybrid seed. She went on this total anti-GMO rant at which point there were several people looking on and I said, "I said Hybrid. As in Rice A was bred with Rice B to produce the strain we plant. Farmers have been doing this for centuries now. Pretty much everything in your bag has been Genetically Modified using cross breeding."
Then I left and went on about my business leaving her red in the face not exactly sure how to respond to that.
And that's what I've never understood. To these people using cross breeding and classical Mendelian genetics to modify plants are fine. But go in scientifically and do the same thing in a sophisticated lab and suddenly it's evil.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Who cares what he has to say?
Any blanket assertion of GMOs being bad for you is just as idiotic and pointless as a blanket assertion GMOs are not bad for you.
Every case must be judged on the merits and it must not stop with the question of the qualities of the product. One must also consider the secondary effects playing god has on the environment and fucked up geopolitics of globalization meets Monsanto.
When they stop being the patented and wholly owned product of megacorperations simply trying to control the world's food supply.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
Since when are terminator genes good for the environment?
"Terminator genes" are a perfect example of the scaremongering on the anti-GMO side. They were never really deployed, and Monsanto has vowed not to do so.
And even if they were, you've got the idea wrong. They weren't an environmental threat - rather, terminator genes were scary because they'd make poor farmers reliant on big industry for their seeds (Terminator genes prevent the resultant plants from having viable seeds). They COULD actually be good for the environment, as they'd prevent GM plants from spreading uncontrolled (which is another scare story).
There's pluses and minuses to GM plants for food. But the debate is dominated by people with bizarre, uninformed emotional connections to one side or the other. Like yourself. Are you as brave and open minded as the guy in the OP? Having found out you're double-wrong on this, are you going to reconsider the issue and perhaps take a moment to learn about what's at stake?
I doubt it. I think it's much more likely that you'll lash out at me because I'm mean, or something equally productive.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Thanks only to an extremely broad definition of middle class that would include many that westerners would describe as working poor.
Anyone with merely the potential to escape poverty is considered middle class by this definition. That includes, e.g., the minimum wage fry cook because one day he could in theory become manager.
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What exploding middle class? The one in China and maybe India?
In some places in Africa, too.
And? Are you saying that those people are somehow not middle class?
Nonsense.
People are earning less and working more. Meanwhile access to basic physical needs like health care are on the decline. We are headed for a next Guilded Age and many people seem to be all for it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I grew up in farm country. I know what Roundup is. Anything that is engineered to be "Roundup Ready" is something I would rather avoid. I want LESS chemicals in my food rather than MORE.
Perhaps we should leave genetic meddling to agronomists. As things are now, most of the genetic meddling is being done by POISON SALESMEN to help the sales of POISON.
Public policy is a little more complex than some lab results.
The whole "anti-science" smear is just a red herring as well as being bad form just for being an insult.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I wasn't aware of the French study most of my reading had to do with observations made by farmers, and scientist on the ground working with these crops.
Here is an article on the French study if anyone is interested, because I was curious to see why posting this would be embarrassing.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/19/gmcrops-safety-idUSL5E8KJAGN20120919
Will I get into a post war pasting links and shouting "discredited" with you or anyone else? No. What's the point? What I believe and what you believe make no difference.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food_controversies
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The Gini coefficient of the US is increasing. That's income inequality. It lends weight to phrases like "the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer". While it could be that the poor are getting richer while the rich are getting ludicrously richer, that's still seems, you know, kinda unfair. It's certainly class envy, if you want to be a dick about it. But when profits are privatized while losses are socialized, as they were in the 2007 econopocalypse, you get a little angry about the weight of the yoke we bear.
I'm actually going to challenge your assertion. I'd argue that the vast majority of the world's starvation problems are distribution-related, not yield related.
How much food goes to waste every year? (Quite a bit!) And how many people suffer because of a lack of food production in their immediate area, while other parts of the world produce more than enough to feed them?
"Every increase in crop yields due to the use of GM crops saves the lives of some people that would otherwise die from starvation. It's a direct and obvious relation - there's no need to do a scientific study here."
If one understands how the pesticide works, it's not so scary. Per WikiP: "When insects ingest [BT] toxin crystals, the alkaline pH of their digestive tract denatures the insoluble crystals, making them soluble and thus amenable to being cut with proteases found in the insect gut, which liberate the cry toxin from the crystal. The Cry toxin is then inserted into the insect gut cell membrane, forming a pore. The pore results in cell lysis and eventual death of the insect."
Humans, and I believe all vertebrates, have acidic digestive tracts, so BT is not active and cannot hurt you.
Not to say, in some remote universe, you couldn't be allergic to it, but that's true with any new molecule introduced into your person.
I would also add that the mindless gasbag has presented a fallacy of false choice; use GMO or starve. We are told to believe that despite Monsanto's business plan of enslaving the world's farmers, that they are just doing this out of the kindness of their hearts to feed an overpopulated world. Here's a thought, reduce population growth instead. Statistics show that free access to education and contraception reduces population growth without imposing martial law. But no one gets rich off of giving something necessary away for free. So we are doomed.
Plant have evolved to produce a tremendous amount of pesticide and herbicide, fungicide chemicals to compete and survive. They have also evolved to be tolerant of herbicides produced by other plants and viruses. Thus even organic produce has large numbers of completely untested chemicals that are naturally produced by the plants themselves. I think many people somehow form a cognative dissonance if they think about this too much, so they basically do doublethink.
Some of these natural defensive chemicals in plants that we know are quite deadly to us (say glycoalkaloids like solanine in greenish potato skins which are nerve toxins). Although most foods that we eat today have gone through many informal "trials", I doubt anyone can tell you what the process was, nor what the acceptably safe levels is of the various toxins are. We simply have "grandfathered" these foods into or diets. For example, the potato isn't even that old, although cultivated for ~7000 years, it only made worldwide since the 16th century and is now one of the top 5 food crops in the world. A similar food is Cassava root which is outside of south america/africa/asia is only consumed as Tapioca. Cassava is much more poisonous to humans than potatos (via cyanide poisoning), yet widely consumed as a food-security crop in much of Africa and some of Asia.
Certainly testing should be done on all things sold for food (I'm not advocating no testing), but I doubt that any level of testing would be sufficient to avoid all risk, nor even if it could, it would not satisfy many of the folks opposed to GM.
I imagine the real fear that most folks have about GM crops is not about the technology at all, it is simply the unrealized angry feeling of helplessness that as a society that we have evolved to be completely dependent on others for our own survival. We do not grow our own crops, we do not hunt, we do not forge our own tools, we do not build our own homes, basically we are at the mercy of greater society to provide us with the means of survival and we are angry about anything that might upset the current status quo. Simultaneously we discount/ignore all the massive changes and risks we have taken just to get us to our current point in history as a sunk cost.
Certainly there is much to fear, but I think much of our fear is just a reflection of our hidden anger about our evolution into helplessness. Typically fears are conquered by knowledge, experience and (when conditions warrant it) conditioning, but since in many folks these fears don't appear to be quelled by these factors, it's likely not fear at all, but emergent anger. People are just angry about having to be dependent for their sustinance from someone else, but supress that anger until some proposes a change and that event sets them off. Only when people get over their anger, they can tackle the fear and use it constructively to make sure that the proper risk/reward/testing tradeoffs are being made.
Why should everyone who reads your comment do research they are probably not qualified to do when apparently you already have? Or are you just ignorant and spouting your beliefs without proof? Your comment is completely useless as-is.
So you say. Anyone can say that, or the opposite. Here, watch: "Research has shown some GMOs are beneficial." Oh, and one more thing: "Research has shown some naturally occurring (non-GMO) organisms cause agonizing death."
Popper-falsifiability is rarely possible for much of scientific research and Popper has said that it should not be a strict requirement for scientific claims. Just because the nature of the universe is such that not everything fits into the nice little boxes we've made up far doesn't mean that it's not possible to investigate and make determinations about.
I'm not actually sure whether you're joking. In any case, gene contamination risk is (rightly, I think) seen as a benefit of terminator genes: if modified gene content does spread somehow, it would be less likely to continue to spread (over generations) further afield from the original contamination. There's a natural stop to the spreading of plants with limited ability to reproduce.
To the extent you're serious, I suppose that, yes, you've identified a potential concern. Also a potential concern is the possibility that consuming GM plants will turn us into zombies. Either of these scenarios would require mechanisms to exist that we have no evidence of, but there's no absolute reason either of those things couldn't happen.
However, there's a lot of risks that are much more likely and that should probably be higher up on the list of concerns. I certainly don't dispute there are legitimate risks to using GM technology, but there's also serious risks to closing off those avenues - and if demands a real, informed debate where pros, cons, risks and rewards are all weighed seriously.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
My problem with GMO crops has got buggerall to do with gene manipulation itself. The current GMO foodcrops are being genetically manipulated not for higher yields, but for greater resistance to frighteningly strong pesticides. Quite predictably this particular regime of blasting weeds with weedkiller that left "most" of the weeds dead have also now bred "superweeds" which need multiple times the originally recommended dose of GMO-crop pesticides to keep them at bay. The worst-case scenario is that this arms-race against nature is probably going to end up with some version of Paolo Bacigalupi's "windup" universe. At best we can look forward to an increasingly toxic food supply.
Reference : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19594335
There is something very fishy about this guy's sudden "enlightenment".
How is the parent post flamebait? What has happened to people's ability to comprehend a rephrasing the same question into a "cautionary tale"?
Pointing out the fact that even people have been unjustly demonized by a label is both informative and insightful. It does not equate anyone's view with that of the Nazi's, but (for anyone who knows their history) it is a vivid description of the power a label can have over human behavior. The Irish did it differently, when the English forced them to wear green, they turned it into a symbol of pride.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Terminator genes seem like a good idea to me - wouldn't they reduce the chance the GMO would successfully cross pollinate with other strains?
What does it break down into?
Structurally, Glyphosate is a remarkably simple-looking compound, as far as organic structures go. You have a carboxyl group on one end, a secondary amine in the middle, and a phosphate on the other end. There are no halogen groups, heavy metals, or other exotic hetero-atoms. It can be degraded to common biological substrates, by common microorganisms, in a remarkably short sequence of steps: http://umbbd.ethz.ch/gly/gly_map.html
Obtaining "magic bullet" selectivity with a structure this simple is only possible thanks to engineering the crop itself. You can be sure that pesticides intended for non-engineered targets (like the weed killers people put on their lawns) are more complex-looking beasts.