Some people who have less information about biotechnology have asserted that animals won’t touch or eat GMO corn, and only non genetically modified corn. This is pretty unlikely on the face of it, since farm animals have been feed GM corn for nearly 20 years with zero problems. In addition, GM corn is identical in smell, taste and nutrition. However, some people have published such claims here, here and here.
We carried out an early experiment in 2013 to illustrate that this is not the case, finding the squirrels and chipmunks had no such preferences. However, we had no way to know exactly which corn varieties we were buying at the supermarket, and a more controlled experiment seemed desirable.
The non-profit organization Biofortified has undertaken a very large controlled Citizen Science experiment of the same kind, but using corn isolines. The GM corn and the non-modified corn are exactly the same breed, but one of them has had genes added to create Bt insecticide and Roundup resistance. The corn was grown by Monsanto for Biofortified in two adjacent fields in Hawaii, separated by the usual buffer zone, so the climates were as identical as possible. You can read more about the experiment here.
Then volunteers were recruited on line to order the corn kits and see how wild animals like them. We are one of about 400 such experimenters who donated money to cover shipping and are now part of the experiment. Each kit comes with 4 ears of corn, two marked Experiment 1 and two marked Experiment 2. Each ear of corn comes with a numbered bar code label to distinguish it. However, you do not know which are GM and which are not, other than one of the two ears in each experiment is GM and the other not.
End of first experiment
We did our first experiment this weekend, and found that the squirrels (and maybe 1 chipmunk) ate all of the corn starting with the ear with looser kernels, but eventually ate all of both of them.
This is a fun experiment for you to try, too. It is suitable for both children and adults and could make an interesting Science Fair project. There are still a couple of hundred kits available, and you or your family can join in the experiment by going to the Biofortified web site.
During the experiment, you are asked to take pictures and log observations on their web site, and report the beginning and end weight of each numbered ear. When the experiment is concluded, you will have a chance to see the results, and a paper on this work will be published.
We recently came across this paper by V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai and P. Deonikar titled “Do GMOs Acuumulate Formadehyde and Disrupt Molecular Systems Equilibria? Systems Biology May Provide Answers.” We decided that checking the credibility of this paper might make an interesting tutorial in scientific skepticism. To start with, we are only dealing with the evidence presented by the paper, and not any public claims the author has since made.
So let’s take a look at this paper’s claims and pedigree and see how we can decide how seriously to take it. It’s worth undertaking this little exercise, because it seems to indicate the genetically modified plants (in this case soybeans) produce significant levels of formaldehyde, which is at some level toxic, and frankly this seems quite unlikely to have just been discovered now.
Is this a real journal? Let’s see if it is indexed in PubMed. Go to PubMed and click on Journals in the NCBI Databases. Search for “Agricultural Sciences.” Oops, it’s not there.
Does the journal exist? Yes, you can go to Agricultural Sciences web site and find that there are papers published in it. You have to pay a publication fee of $1000.
Does the journal have an impact factor? Impact factor is a measure of the number of citations this journal receives in other journals. This scheme was developed by the Institute for Scientific Information. On such tabulator is CiteFactor, who does not list this journal. The journal’s web site gives a “Google Impact Factor” of 0.77, whichwe are unable verify.
Who is the publisher? Is it a predatory publisher? The publisher is Scientific Research, registered in the state of Delaware, but with a business address in East Lake High-Tech Development Zone, Wuhan 430223, Hubei Province, China. Uh-oh.
To find out if this is a predatory publisher who just collects fees and has little intellectual credibility, check Beall’s list, maintained by librarian Jeffrey Beall at the University of Colorado/Denver. And sure enough, he lists Scientific Research among those predatory publishers.
So we’ve found out a lot about the paper’s standing and credibility without even reading it, except to learn from the title that the author is claiming that “GMOs” contain formaldehyde.
Reading the Paper
The paper is over 30 pages, and few non-experts would plow through the entire thing (we did), but there are some things you can look for pretty quickly. The opening sentence of the introduction gives us a clue to the author’s mindset:
“The safety assessment of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is a particularly contentious subject.”
First of all, this is simply not true. After thousands of papers and many thousands of studies, the overall scientific consensus is that crops created using biotechnology are as safe as conventional crops. And the real red flag is the term “GMOs.” No biologist uses this misleading term, because it does not distinguish between the many types of plants that have been created using biotechnology: herbicide resistant, those containing genes to create insecticides (Bt) and those resistant to viruses (like the Rainbow Papaya), and those that resist browning. Further any cross between two plant varieties creates a new plant variety that is genetically modified from the originals.
The author also completely and intentionally confuses the doctrine of “substantial equivalence,” which the OECD clearly says means that if a conventional crop and a GM crop are substantially equivalent, it means that that is the starting point for further testing.
The author’s thesis for this paper is also stated in the introduction:
“However, in the GMO case of soybean, or RRS, there is a significant accumulation of formaldehyde and a concomitant depletion of glutathione…”
We should note that your body always contains some formaldehyde (2-3 µg/ml); it is produced as a normal part of our metabolism. A pear contains 38-60 mg/kg, so finding some in plants is not uncommon. Okay, good, let’s thumb through paper for the data. His Figure 10 shows a curve of formaldehyde increasing in “GMO soybeans” over about 9 days. And the figure caption says
Simulation results of GM of soybean stress on formaldehyde concentration in C1 metabolism model.
Uh-oh, again. This is a simulation of what his computer program believes will happen. Where’s the data? (quickly thumbing through the remaining pages). There is no data. The author has based his somewhat worrisome health claim on simulations using a computer program he devised using the same computers he used for playing video games with resources from sites like http://overwatchsrpros.com/news. He has done no measurements.
So what’s our conclusion? This is not a very important claim, because the author has not carried out the experiments. And why hasn’t he? He says on the third page (632) that “it is difficult to acquire source material in an objective and independent manner while maintaining compliance with existing legal constraints on the use of such GMO source material.” This is patently untrue. Every major university has a research license with the major seed companies to carry out this research. And even if the author’s small think tank (International Center for Integrative Systems) does not have such a license, there is nothing to keep him from buying some GM soybeans from any farmer, as long as he doesn’t replant them. And incidentally, there are many, many types of GM soybeans. Which ones is he referring to? He skips over that.
So with this simple evaluation, you can see how to check the credibility of a paper whenever you hear some unlikely claim.
About Shiva Ayyadurai
Well, we got through the paper analysis without discussing the author, who has managed to become the Donald Trump (or maybe Ben Carson) of wild claims. Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai also claims to be the inventor of E-mail, although from his photos he must have aged awfully well to have done that. What he actually did was develop an electronic mail system for the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey when he was a 14-year old student volunteer. This was a really clever piece of work for the time and for his age, and he copyrighted the term “EMAIL” after he did it. These claims were deconstructed by Gizmodo, who pointed out the Ray Tomlinson was generally given credit for sending the first text message (on Arpanet) in 1971. Boston Magazine also published a skeptical article about this claim.
In order to get even more attention Ayyadurai has challenged Monsanto to “prove GMOs are safe,” offering them a $10 million building in Cambridge as a reward. Actual scientists know that you cannot prove anything safe. You can only look at the accumulating evidence and conclude that there is precious little evidence (actually none) that “GMOs” are harmful. This is just a stunt. And where did he get this building? Perhaps his recent marriage to actress and crackpot Fran Drescher made this property available? He hasn’t said, since there are many properties in all the states sinces big buildings, houses or burnaby condos for sale. However, Amanda Zaluckyj (the Farmer’s Daughter) deconstructed this nonsense pretty well, as did the Genetic Literacy Project.
This last gossip may be entertaining, but the criticism of the paper stands without it. It makes no sense whatever, and you can do this same sort of analysis on any crazy paper you come across.
It all started with a new organization called US Right to Know (USRTK) filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests against more than a dozen scientists at public universities who work in or advocate for biotechnology. USRTK is run by Gary Ruskin, a California anti-GMO activist. It’s a small organization, funded apparently entirely by the Organic Consumers Association. A great deal of background information on this small organization run out of Ruskin’s house can be found here.
This drama that we describe below ended with the complete silencing of a public scientist.
These FOIA requests were essentially for all E-mails the scientists had sent that mentioned Monsanto and other biotech companies, and seemed to be a fishing expedition to discredit these scientists. Some of those scientists include retired biochemist and food safety expert Emeritus Professor Bruce Chassy who wrote a rebuttal here. Science Magazine discussed the FOIA in this article. Washington State University nutritionist Michelle McGuire also received an FOIA request for her Emails even though her work is on lactation, not biotechnology, because she had the temerity to run experiments showing that breast milk does not in fact contain Roundup as Moms Across America had insisted.
But the most egregious and extensive attacks were reserved for Professor Kevin Folta, the chairman of the Plant Science department at the University of Florida . Kevin Folta is a truly nice guy, who will take the time to explain science to anyone that asks, in the clearest imaginable terms. His research is in the effects of various colors of light on strawberries, but he also has created some varieties using biotechnology for these experiments. Because of his involvement in this research and his lack of connection to the biotech industry, he has been a popular speaker and teacher explaining how biotechnology (“GMOs”) works and why all science has shown that is not a safety concern. His debate with Michael Hansen of Consumer’s Union is a model of his clear speaking style.
Because of how clearly he can defuse the fear and emotion of people who are worried about biotechnology, he has been invited to give many talks to farmers on how to discuss what they do and to students at various universities. He also records a weekly podcast called Talking Biotech in which he interviews various players in the field, and writes a blog called Illumination in which he corrects misconceptions and analyzes biotech papers that have been misconstrued. Here’s a clever one, where he shows that the amount of Roundup spread on an acre of farmland is less than would fit in a 12 oz soda can.
But, this outreach work is not part of his actual job, and in order to give more talks, he needed to find a way to pay for the travel expenses and the sandwiches he often provides to the classes. Monsanto, with whom he has no professional relationship, and who does not pay him in any way, offered his university $25,000 to fund his outreach program, which Folta agreed to. In his talks, he gratefully acknowledged Monsanto’s support, but did not take a penny for himself or his research program.
It was at this point that all hell broke loose when USRTK found the E-mail offering his university that $25,000 in the E-mail dump they had requested on Folta. They immediately began attacking Folta as a “liar” and a paid “Monsanto shill,” even though they had no specific evidence of any such thing. Folta, along with dozens of others contributed to the web site GMO Answers. This site is supported by all the major biotechnology companies (including Monsanto), and anyone can contribute answers to the site.
Things began to come to a head when New York Times writer Eric Lipton wrote a piece about Folta which Folta called a “hatchet job.” Lipton managed to draw a false parallel between Folta who has never been paid by Monsanto and (then) Washington State researcher Charles Benbrook, whose pro-organic and anti-GMO articles and his entire salary were paid for by the Organic Consumer’s Association. By all reports, Chuck Benbrook is also a nice guy, but his research being wholly funded by an organization with a clear agenda makes him somewhat less transparent in his findings.
Seeing all the trouble this small donation caused, Folta told the University of Florida to return the money, and when that couldn’t be done quickly, the University donated it to a campus food pantry.
Then another piece by Brooke Borel appeared on Buzzfeed which summarized the attacks on Folta’s Email and managed to again suggest that his actions were somehow less than ethical. She suggested that Folta’s podcast alter ego “Vern Blazek” was somehow misleading, when he was clearly a satiric character used as a foil.
But now, the personal attacks on Folta had gotten completely out of hand, all claiming he was a lying Monsanto shill and the like. To see how bad it became, take a look at Mike Adam’s Natural News post calling him “the most discredited scientist in America,” and a “discredited Monsanto puppet.’ Mike Adams is, of course, not a scientist nor even a reporter. His Natural News site is recognized as a collection of completely made up conspiracies and other fantasies.
About this time, an advertisement appeared in the Gainesville Craigslist repeating these accusations and calling him “a lying Monsanto puppet.” It also published his home address, which made Folta fear for his young family.
These relentless attacks on Folta began to take their toll, as you can see as he describes them in a talk he gave at the Trottier Symposium McGill University. It was clear that these attacks could not be allowed to continue.
Yesterday, Folta published this announcement on his blog, podcast page and Facebook page:
Hi Everybody. I’ll keep it short. The attacks are relentless, I’m under a lot of pressure on many fronts. I’m taking the opportunity to disappear from public visibility and focus on my lab and my students. It has been a challenging time. I appreciate the support, I’m grateful for your wishes, but this battle is vicious and one-sided, and I think I’m well served bowing out of the public science conversation for the foreseeable future. Thank you.
In other words these shameful attacks on a highly qualified public scientist were so relentless he dropped all of his public science outreach work and went back to his lab. Of course, cranks like the Food Babe were delighted, but most of us who have spent their lives working in science were deeply saddened. It is much easier to use irrational personal attacks to silence opinions you don’t agree with than we ever could have imagined!
Last night we heard a talk by Diane Lewis, MD on The Great Healthy Yard Project (their web site is tghyp.com, run by Lewis from her home in Bedford, NY. Trained as a nephrologist (kidneys) and an internist, Lewis is not currently practicing medicine but devoting her time to promoting her project: reducing groundwater pollution by reducing the use of lawn chemicals. The talk was co-sponsored by Wilton Go Green, the Wilton Conservation Commission and the Wilton Garden Club, who introduced the speaker. The talk was recorded and will soon be on the Wilton Library’s website.
Lewis’ thesis is that “chemicals” from our lawns and gardens run off into the groundwater and eventually are found in our drinking water. As to which chemicals are of greatest concern, Lewis was quite vague as she mentioned none specifically. Were insecticides of more concern than fertilizers? Probably, but she didn’t actually say so.
Lewis feels that this runoff into our drinking water is a serious problem and that it may be cumulative and could “damage our DNA,” although she presented no evidence for this somewhat surprising conclusion.
Endocrine disruptors
Central to her argument is that these (unspecified) chemicals are endocrine disruptors which even at very low levels may cause harm to humans. The whole idea of endocrine disruptors is controversial, however, and has not been definitively established.
The Endocrine Society has published two reports in this area. The 2009 report described the problem but noted that “Unfortunately, it is virtually impossible to make direct links between such epidemiological observations and exposure to given chemicals.” And, a key scientific paper in Science was withdrawn because of apparent scientific misconduct.
Needless to say, there are naysayers in this area, and one published by EndocrineScience.org criticizes the Endocrine Society, but this report was published by a manufacturer’s group, the American Chemistry Council.
Lewis suggested that these endocrine disruptors could be the cause of increased breast cancer, prostate cancer, diabetes, ADHD and autism, but really offered no science to support these views. When I talked with her afterwards, she said there were papers on rats showing that they take on autistic symptoms after treatment with some “chemicals,” but did not cite one specifically. She suggested that these chemicals could be one of many contributing causes, and this is borne out in papers (also here and here). But one problem with this hypothesis is that recent work shows that there has been no increase in autism occurrence in the past 30 years.
She also suggested that the decline in Monarch butterflies was caused by the planting of “GMO” crops, but backed off when I pointed out that large agriculture plowing fields to remove milkweed as well as eliminating by herbicide is the actual cause. This whole issue is explained here by Amber Sherwood-K and Jon Entine. The slide that suggested that a solution would be “Don’t eat GMOs,” was thus complete nonsense.
She also went astray in suggesting that the WHO had declared that glyphosate (Roundup) was carcinogenic. In fact this was done by the IARC, a subcommittee of the WHO and in doing so they ignored substantial evidence to the contrary, as described in this report in Scientific American. And they have also found caffeine, alcohol, sunlight, and the hairdressing profession in that same category.
Meanwhile the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment completed a 4-year assessment for the EU, considering 150 new toxicological studies, all available existing toxicological studies (more than 300) and nearly 900 peer-reviewed publications, concluding that
the available data do not show carcinogenic or mutagenic properties of glyphosate nor that glyphosate is toxic to fertility, reproduction or embryonal/fetal development in laboratory animals.
Gardening advice
In the last part of her talk she suggested growing more local plants that would require less care and fertilizers that could run off. Some of particular interest were cardinal flowers, Joe Pye weed and Monarda (bee balm).
We found it surprising that in this talk she avoided mentioning any “chemicals” by name, and she told us this was because this was a layman’s talk. Without naming them, she mentioned that some were listed in her NY Times article. These were glyphosate, carbaryl, malathion and 2,4-D. Of these, glyphosate and 2,4-D are herbicides of very low and relatively low toxicity. Carbaryl (also called Sevin) and malathion are moderately toxic to humans (and carbaryl to bees), but are generally used only in small amounts in gardens and probably are not major runoff candidates. Glyphosate binds to the soil and is seldom found in runoff.
During her talk Lewis had a great deal of trouble pronouncing bacillus thuringiensis, which might indicate that she is uncomfortable pronouncing these chemical names and thus leaves them out of her talks.
Overall, as a chemist, I was not happy with her demonizing the entire class of “chemicals” as all bad without any specific science to back up her assertions. However, her heart is generally in the right place in wanting to reduce runoff from suburban lawns into our water supply. We haven’t treated our lawn with anything in years, so we are way ahead of her, perhaps primarily because we are lazy or cheap, but our lawn still looks fine when it rains enough.
Moms Across America is a group of well-meaning moms, who, concerned about their children’s health, have become anti-GMO activists. Led by well-meaning uber-mom Zen Honeycutt, whom we interviewed last year, they attend demonstrations, publish their views and have been holding some streaming video interviews and seminars. However, none of them are scientists or have much scientific training, and if you scroll to the bottom of their web page, you will find they have extensive support from the organic industry.
As we noted before, much of the anti-GMO movement has changed from claiming GMOs are poison to focusing on glyphosate (Roundup) being sprayed on GMOs as the actual agent that they believe is causing health problems. Of course, there is simply no evidence for this, as Roundup is generally only present as minute traces which have never been shown to have any adverse health effects, even in long-term studies such as Snell’s, as summarized here by Entine.
Recently, Honeycutt met Priya Advani and asked if she could give an interview on their web site. The interview, which occurred last night was probably as frustrating for Honeycutt as it was for the viewers. It is now available for streaming from the MAM site.
Priya Advani calls herself “Dr Advani,” but her doctorate is a Doctorate in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, which is not recognized by any medical board and is essentially mystical quackery. As QuackWatch notes, you should “Beware of Acupuncture, Quigong and Chinese Medicine,” because there is no evidence they work, and have no scientific basis. Science Based Medicine also has a recent piece condemning NPR for implying the acupuncture and alternative medicine have any measurable effect.
Nonetheless, Advani held forth for the better part of any hour, claiming that she cured patients of their ills, which included sinus infections and more serious ailments by removing “GMOs” from their diets, combined with meditation and acupuncture.
She quickly made it clear that she only recently even heard of genetically modified crops and concluded that since nearly all soy and corn in the US is genetically modified, she recommended her patients adopt alternative diets to eliminate these GMOs. She did not even mention any cause and effect relationship, nor did she seem to know that the overwhelming scientific consensus is that GM foods are no more dangerous than conventional crops.
It is probable that Advani is a really nice woman in person, with a lot of charm, but on the video, her halting valley-girl style of speech made her less than credible, even as she was advocating meditation, acupuncture, detox (which doesn’t do anything either), and removal of “GMOs” from your diet.
Here’s a brief excerpt:
Zen: Tell us a little bit more about your patients recuperating.
Priya: So basically things like that with a lot of allergies, a lot of chronic sinus issues. I’ve had patients with, you know, diabetes, cholesterol, basically things like that. It was interesting, I had a patient, who was a new patient who came just to do a detox, and when I sat down with her, I spent an hour and a half for consultation, sat down with her and talked about GMOs versus organic; she’d never heard of GMOs before, she actually was on board with changing out her food…she heard what I had to say about it and she did her own research and she was again shocked…
But after this word salad, Honeycutt kept pressing for details of her treatments and patient reactions, and Advani kept skating across the surface, avoiding answering directly. You could see that this really wasn’t a productive interview.
Advani did claim that on an organic diet, you don’t need to eat as much because it is “the chemicals that make you hungry,” again a claim without any actual scientific basis. She also mentioned Samsel and Seneff’s publications in 3rd rate pay-to-play journals that claim that Roundup causes dozens of diseases, but not mentioning that that paper contained no research data to support its claims and has been pretty thoroughly discredited.
She also claimed that glyphosate is a chelator (it is but not a very effective one) that robs food of its nutrition (again never shown) and even of its Vitamin D. But there is no science to support her fantasies. It’s just made up!
Overall, Advani is not a doctor, barely understands science, and should not be treating patients. She is a practitioner of alternative medicine and the definition of alternative medicine remains “things we don’t know work and things we know don’t work.” Detox is quackery, acupuncture is quackery and herbology is quackery. She does seem like a nice person, though.
McCormick has announced plans to “significantly increase the number of organic and non-GMO offerings in 2016.” And, based on the spices already on the shelves, this will be at a significant price increase. We looked at a few McCormick spices and found that organic oregano was $5.19 and regular was $3.29. And organic basil was $5.99, while conventional was $3.39 for an even bigger bottle.
And what are consumers getting for all this money? Scammed! Both organic and conventional crops are sprayed regularly: just with different sprays, and the organic plants are usually sprayed more often, because the organic-approved insecticides are much less effective.
And, as Bruce Ames pointed out in a classic PNAS paper, most plants make their own carcinogenic insecticides, and they are present at a level 10,000 times that of any applied insecticide. Further, since spices come from all over the world. Huy Fong Sriracha Seasoning Sticks is barely credible that the baroque organic rules can be enforced uniformly.
Finally, McCormick also is making a big deal of their spices being “non-GMO,” even though there is not a shred of evidence that GM crops pose any sort of harm despite being in use for nearly 20 years. But what does this mean? There are no GMO version of any spice plant!
Vanillin
It seems that this all comes down to vanilla. Not vanilla extracted from vanilla beans, but vanillin, the synthetic version of the principal component of vanilla flavoring. Vanillin can be synthesized in a number of ways, and one us through the use of synthetic biology, in which yeast are bred or designed to create vanillin by fermentation. The process was developed by the Swiss company Evolva, in partnership with International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF).
Now, if the bacteria Evolva/IFF use are genetically modified, some paranoid consumers might think that the pure vanillin the bugs produced is somehow “genetically modified.” This is chemical nonsense, of course, vanillin is a simple 8-carbon compound and easily purified such that its precursors do not matter. While the GMO Compass organization believes that vanillin so produced would not have to be labeled because it is the same, pure compound, Food Navigator reports that it would not qualify for the “non-gmo” stamp. This seems to be more of a theological than a scientific dispute.
The Motley Fool has a good summary of the business considerations in making vanillin using biotechnology.
Meanwhile, McCormick, ever ready to trash science in the name of gouging consumers decided to use vanillin in the artificial vanilla products that was not produced using biotechnology.
Just yesterday we learned of a hedge fund weasel, Martin Shkreli who bought up rights to the 62-year old drug Daraprim, and raised its price from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill for no good reason except to line his pockets. This, frankly, is little different than what McCormick is doing, trading on consumer ignorance and the fictional organic halo created by lobbyists, recognizing that fear sells.
In today’s New York Times, reporter Eric Lipton reports that the “Food Industry Enlisted Academics in GMO Lobbying War, Emails Show.” This article is based partly on the Email fishing expedition conducted by PR flack Gary Ruskin and his industry-supported US Right to Know web site. We wrote of that slanderous campaign last week. Lipton takes the Emails released by USRTK and some additional ones he requested and attempts to paint all biotechnology academic researchers as corrupt.
The article as printed starts on page 1, column 3, above the fold and continues on page 20. Before the page jump, it asserts that “The use by both sides of third-party scientists, and their supposedly unbiased research, helps explain why the American public is often confused as it processes the conflicting information.”
However, while it slanders scientists and claims their research is questionable on the front page, the rest of the article provides not a single instance of any scientist’s research being influenced or corrupted.
After the page jump, the first actual quote is from Charles Benbrook, who has had all of his “research” funded by the organic foods industry and is scarcely unbiased, who suggests that academics who have accepted travel funds to lecture or testify about science start to smell like the skunks they are associated with.
Benbrook, has been an unrelenting opponent of GMOs, but in fact is an agricultural economist, not a biologist or scientist. His most recent scientific paper which suggests that herbicide use has increased after GMOs were introduced has been widely criticized for failing to include calculations on the reduced toxicity and environmental impact of more recent herbicides such as Roundup. This is one of Lipton’s “experts.” Benbrook’s position at Washington State University was paid for by the organic industry and was “recently severed.”
Lipton then goes on to suggest that “the biotech industry has published dozens of articles, under the names of prominent academics, that in some cases were drafted by industry consultants,” without citing a single such article or explaining how such articles could have circumvented the rigorous peer-review process scientific journals impose. In other words, this seems to be hogwash.
In fact Lipton even admits that “there is no evidence that academic work was compromised.”
But, he suggests, without proof, that academics have shifted from [being] researchers to actors in lobbying and corporate PR campaigns. Of course, if academics really had abandoned their research to become “industry lobbyists,” they would be out of jobs in short order.
Lipton suggests that there is a “fight between competing academics” about GMOs and about the safety of various herbicides, when there is no such disagreement going on. Science has firmly established the safety of herbicides like Roundup, and the only disagreement is with the organic industry lobbyists like Benbrook.
Much of the remainder of the article seems to be a smear campaign about Professor Kevin Folta, chairman of the department of horticulture at the University of Florida, who donates his time in scientific outreach to explain science and biotechnology to farmers and the public. Lipton is determined to paint Folta as a Monsanto-paid lobbyist, when in fact he accepted one $25,000 grant to pay for his outreach travel, and following excessive threats on Facebook got the University to donate the money to a campus food bank. Folta has called Lipton’s article a “hatchet job” on social media, and has published two rebuttals, one on his public speaking and one on his non-relationship with Monsanto.
The only other academic Lipton mentions is David R Shaw, the vice-president of research and economic development at Mississippi State University. Among his hundreds of research papers and students shown on his extensive vita, he did one piece of Monsanto funded research on Roundup used in a cropping system, for $880,000. Considering the many millions of dollars of grants shown on this vita and his extensive academic career, this is simply insignificant, and if he were asked to testify before a Congressional committee, it would be because of that extensive expertise.
Finally, Lipton suggests that the amount the organic industry spends on lobbying is a tiny fraction of that spent by biosciences companies. This may not be true, as Henry Miller showed in Forbes, that the amount the organic industry spends is upwards of $2.5 billion a year!
In summary, Lipton’s article gets his facts wrong and fails to prove any of his points. It’s clearly not one of the Time’s better articles on biotechnology.
If you’ve read about biotechnology and the several ways that plant breeders can make new plant varieties, you may have heard the fairly shrill accusations coming from the organic food lobby that plants that are genetically modified using scientific techniques are somehow untested and dangerous. (They have no evidence for these claims, however.) Surprisingly, despite the amount of noise that these “anti-GMO” activists make, most citizens really don’t care much about this.
In 2012, two studies, one in the US and one in the UK found that only about 2% of survey respondents suggested that food products should have a “contains GMOs” label, when they are asked an open-ended question about changes in food labeling. And estimates this year from a talk given at the National Academy of Sciences suggest that that number may have reach 7%. Further, a recent study by Kolodinsky reported that products labeled as containing GM ingredients are not considered negatively by most consumers.
Given the overall consumer disinterest in an issue dear to the hearts of the organic lobby, who want to scare people into buying organic-labeled products, new organizations are ramping up the intensity of their anti-GMO activism, despite the overall scientific consensus that GM crops are no more harmful than conventional crops.
One such new group, formed in January of 2015 is called US Right to Know, and is led by Gary Ruskin, a former activist in California’s anti-GMO labeling campaign, and staffed by 3 other activists. Rather than just creating web sites and demonstrations, USRTK filed Freedom of Information requests (FOIA) for all the E-mails of some 40 scientists working in biotechnology at public universities. Some universities refused and a few complied, notably the University of Florida, where Kevin M. Folta is the chairman of the department of Horticultural Sciences.
Kevin Folta is well known for his research on the influence of different light wavelengths on small fruits such as strawberries, and the breeding of new strawberries using both conventional and GM techniques for this research. He is also a well-known speaker on the advantages of biotechnology, with a weekly podcast called Talking Biotech. Folta funds his research as do most university scientists by a combination of federal and state grants, but has not taken any money from any biotechnology company for his research or his salary.
But, in addition to his formal academic research program, Folta has engaged in science outreach to farmers and the overall public to explain the advantages of biotechnology, and has organized a number of presentations involving several scientists for the public. To cover the travel expenses of himself and the other presenters, and to pay for sandwiches for lunches, Folta sought support from several biotechnology companies, including Monsanto, who donated $25,000 to this outreach. Again, it neither paid Folta’s salary nor funded his research.
Finally, when attackers published Folta’s home address on Facebook along with obscene comments, he begin to fear for the safety of his family, and talked to the University about returning the money. The university found there was no easy way to return it to Monsanto, so they donated it to the campus food bank. This entire saga is also summarized in Nature.
In one sense, Folta won by defusing these personal attacks, but in another sense all of science lost, when a scientist who is a superior educator is silenced by hostile crazies. This is what I meant by “terrorism,” and if it worked once, they might try It again. Ruskin and the people following him are despicable.
Sheldon Krimsky, Professor of Humanities & Social Sciences at Tufts University has published another in a series of articles and books attacking the safety of genetically modified plants (GMOs). Professor Krimsky’s appointment is in the Department of Urban & Environmental Policy & Planning, but he holds and adjunct appointment in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine. Krimsky holds a masters in physics, but his PhD is in philosophy. Thus, many of his arguments have already been rejected by biologists.
Last year Krimsky published The GMO Deception at Skyhorse publishing (who also published RFK jr’s anti-vax book). While the book’s anti-science point of view is obvious from the title, it received a devastating review at Biofortified , who pointed that the book is nothing but a repackaging of old, discredited articles from GeneWatch archives. That site is hosted by the Council of Responsible Genetics, where Krimsky is the chairman.
The thesis of Krimsky’s article is that there is not a scientific consensus on the safety of GMOs, because he has uncovered about 26 articles attacking them. Krimsky’s paper is published in the journal Science, Technology and Human Values, where Krimsky is on the editorial board.
In discussing articles on biotechnology, it is useful to remember The Seralini Rule, published in the Skeptico blog, which states that
That Skeptico article summarizes all the problems with that discredited and withdrawn paper, noting that if you cite this paper as serious science you haven’t taken the trouble to consider all of its scientific weaknesses.
Unfortunately, Professor Krimsky’s paper fails this test, citing 5 papers by this discredited scientist.
Krimsky’s article is divided into three parts. In the first part, he summarizes eight recent review articles on GMOs finding some very critical and some much less critical. We read several of the more critical ones to see if we could understand his point.
He first cites “Genetically Modified Foods and Social Concerns,” by Maghari and Ardekani, published in the Iranian journal Avicenna Journal of Medical Biotechnology. This paper is basically a summary of potential concerns, none of which are supported by actual science. Suggesting that transgenic DNA might break up and reintegrate into the genome (which has never been observed), he cites two non-peer-reviewed reports by Mae Wan Ho, who has been criticized for embracing pseudoscience. Even more risible is Maghari’s assertion that GMOs may be responsible for “food-borne diseases” such as the “epidemic of Morgellon’s disease in the U.S.” In fact, Morgellon’s disease is a delusion that one’s skin is crawling when no cause can be found, and is considered a psychiatric ailment, not one caused by diet.
The second paper we read from his list was a literature review by Domingo and Bordonaba, which also violates the Seralini rule, and asserts without proof that studies showing the safety of GMOs have been performed by biotechnology companies. This is in fact contrary to the findings of Biofortified’s GENERA database of papers, which found that more than half of the studies were performed by independent researchers.
The third paper he cites, by Dona and Arvanitouannis also violates the Seralini rule, and completely misstates the doctrine of “substantial equivalence.” The correct statement of this principle is that if a GM and a conventional crop have similar origins, then their “substantial equivalence” can be the starting point for testing of the GM version to see if it has different properties that might make it dangerous to the consumer. It does not mean that no further testing is required. It also erroneously suggests that the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus, which is found on all cauliflower, is dangerous if used in biotechnology. This is, of course, rubbish, since we eat it every day on most brassicae.
In checking these papers, we quickly wander down a “rabbit hole” of papers referring to other papers and to each other, but all seeming to cite the same erroneous information. After citing some inconclusive studies, Krimsky quotes the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, which is listed on QuackWatch, and is not recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties. It has been criticized by Science Based Medicine, and is considered a dubious certifying board.
Arpad Pusztai and Giles-Eric Seralini
In the second part of his paper Krimsky focuses on the poorly regarded work of Pusztai and of Seralini, carefully omitting some of the more damning details about their work.
Pusztai was asked to evaluate some experimental genetically modified potatoes, and reported that they damaged the stomach lining of rats. After an investigation by his employer, the Rowett Institute, found that his data did not support his conclusions, he was fired. However, Krimsky does not note what Chassy and Tribe have pointed out: the potatoes Pusztai used were an experimental and unapproved variety, and that the rats were fed uncooked potatoes, which are always harmful to rats. Moreover, two expert panels concluded that no scientific conclusions could be drawn from his work. Pusztai has become an anti-GMO activist, travelling the world giving scary talks, but has not carried out any further science.
Professor Giles-Eric Seralini has published a number of papers critical of GMOs, and their confusing style and lack of rigor have been criticized long before his rat tumor paper. However, when Seralini published his 2012 paper, scientists immediately began criticizing its small sample size, lack of double blinding, animal mistreatment, and unsupported conclusions: Sprague-Dawley rats develop tumors anyway, which is why they are suitable for 90 day experiments but not 2-year experiments.
Krimsky notes that Seralini revealed his association with CRIIGEN, a French anti-GMO organization he headed, but did not mention that Seralini’s work was sponsored by Carrefour grocery chain and the Auchan retail group who wanted to promote their new line of organic (non-GMO) products.
When many, many scientists protested to Food and Chemical Toxicology that this paper did not represent good science, the journal editor, A. Wallace Hayes, convened a new group of referees to review the paper. After nearly a year, the review panel concluded that the paper should be withdrawn because of its scientific flaws, and it was. Krimsky fails to mention the panel, but suggests the editor did this unilaterally.
Krimsky also cites an article which suggests that a “new assistant editor” joined the board of Food and Chemical Toxicology who had previously worked for Monsanto. This old conspiracy theory is easily laid to rest: biologist Richard Goodman worked for Monsanto from 1997-2004 and then joined the faculty of the University of Nebraska, long before Seralini’s paper came to light. He was an assistant editor during the Seralini controversy, but Hayes specifically excluded him from the review panel at Seralini’s request.
Author’s Conclusions
Professor Krimsky’s conclusions rely on the fact that he claims to have found 26 animal studies that found “adverse effects or uncertainties of GMOs fed to animals.” We didn’t read all of them, but we have already read some which are discredited and/or published in very low-level journals.
Professor Krimsky has recycled old, discredited papers and arguments as if they were new to try to imply that there is a serious doubt about the safety of GM crops. He brushes aside the thousands of papers that make up the scientific consensus over the few weak ones he has dredged up to make his point. And Professor van Eenennaam’s billion animal study simply closes the door on this discussion.
According to the WHO, some 171 million people suffer from diabetes mellitus, and as Walsh has spelled out in his review, insulin therapy is absolutely essential for the survival of those with type I diabetes. It is also used to help control the more common type 2 diabetes as well.
Queen Victoria’s physician first noted in the 1800s that there were crystals in the pancreatic tissue of deceased diabetics. And research shows that dogs developed diabetes within 2 days of having their pancreas removed. In 1921, Banting and Best discovered that extracts from a region of the pancreas called the islets of Langerhans could revive diabetic dogs, and in 1922 after testing this extract on each other, they administered this crude insulin preparation to a diabetic patient, beginning the era of insulin therapy. You can read a summary of this work in a paper by Bliss.
Early production of insulin by Eli Lilly and Nordisk International relied on the extracts of slaughterhouse animals, and work continued for some years on methods to purify this relatively crude insulin extract. The problem was that extracts from pigs and cattle could be allergenic, and thus not all diabetics could use them.
Human insulin was sequenced in 1960 by Nicol and Smith, and it was found to differ from bovine insulin by 3 amino acids, not including beta alanine, and from porcine insulin by 1 amino acid. Work immediately begin on removing that amino acid in the 1970s and early 1980s. However, the pancreas of a single pig can only provide enough insulin for 3 days for a single diabetic.
Biosynthetic insulin was first developed by Chance and Frank in collaboration with Genentech in 1978. Initially different strains of E. coli were used to produce the A and B chains of insulin, and they were then combined chemically thereafter. Later, a single bacterial strain was used to produce the complete chain. A more modern method using genetically engineered yeast strains (Saccharamyces cerevisiae). Such insulins were approved for human use by the FDA in 1982.
It is now possible to create fast-acting and long-acting insulins to be administered under different circumstances, leading to prandial insulin therapy.
Today, all human insulin products are produced using genetically engineered yeasts and other bacteria, and it is perfectly possible to create exact copies of human insulin much less available using animal extracts.
Meanwhile, singer Neil Young is going about the U.S. promoting his album, The Monsanto Years, which has been heavily criticized for its inaccuracies. More to the point, Neil Young suffers from diabetes and takes genetically engineered insulin daily, even while railing against the techniques of genetic engineering that are keeping him alive. Sometimes looking into the science is really worthwhile.
Then volunteers were recruited on line to order the corn kits and see how wild animals like them. We are one of about 400 such experimenters who donated money to cover shipping and are now part of the experiment. Each kit comes with 4 ears of corn, two marked Experiment 1 and two marked Experiment 2. Each ear of corn comes with a numbered bar code label to distinguish it. However, you do not know which are GM and which are not, other than one of the two ears in each experiment is GM and the other not.
