107 Nobel laureates sign letter blasting Greenpeace over GMOs | Hacker News Reader

107 Nobel laureates sign letter blasting Greenpeace over GMOs

washingtonpost.com

111 pointslarion1116 comments

I have to admit that the science side of this is very compelling: zero documented negative health outcomes is pretty compelling evidence for its safety. And it's a much easier solution than trying to scale up global food production naturally with our exponentially growing population.

But I am also sympathetic to the concerns over GMOs. These things spread in the wild, and we are basically playing god with the building blocks of (plant) life itself, which we definitely do not fully understand. If we fail to acknowledge some detail after meddling with something that could not have happened in nature, we might not find out until it's reaped devastating effects on global agriculture or even long-term human health. Even if GMOs can do a lot of good in the short-term, it would be terrifying to find out in the long-term that we've caused horrific damage due to our arrogance.

We're rightfully weary about human genetic engineering, but plant life is just as important to our survival.

I'm perfectly fine with there being opposing sides double-checking each other's work here.

See, that's fine, it's a totally valid point you're raising. The issue here, the thing that bugs me the most is that they're appealing to fear of unknown with this hurr-durr GMO bad to eat not natural mantra. That is a lie. Most attacks on GMO don't come from some ecological concern, they come from the "How do we know they're safe to eat" angle. And that is totally idiotic and I can not sustain a conversation along that line. So of course, that gets shut down because it does not promote valid conversation.

I guess i understand _why_ people go and promote this line of thinking - because it appeals to the self-interested natureof humans. We are interested about threats to our existance now, because we are afraid for us that what we eat is poisonous. We would care less about some future potential threat for the ecosystem, something that would affect _other_ people (or so our brain thinks)

> they're appealing to fear of unknown with this hurr-durr GMO bad to eat not natural mantra. That is a lie.

Some GMO product can be safe and beneficial, but it is hard to say all of them are properly tested as rigorously as a medicine, that you also take into your body.

Some of us still remember when DDT and asbestos were considered safe.

Fear of the unknown is perfectly rational when what is at stake is something as critical as the food chain. What is needed is more edifying public debate than "You're evil" vs "You're stupid". Ideally I'd like to see these technological advances take place in a non-commercial setting, or at least a more rigorous form of commericalisation than the one used for iPhones, McDonalds and Olestra.

>they're appealing to fear of unknown

Is it ever rational to have concerns about the unknown? The human organism is very complex, and we know that there is much we don't know about it. For instance, there are certain conditions that are on the rise, and we do not know why.

Obviously, you cannot just conclude that it must be GMOs. However, is it possible that we should have some concern around wholesale modifying various food sources to the extent that we are now introducing new proteins and new organisms into the human organism em masse?

Given all that we know we don't understand, I just don't get the conclusion that it must be safe because we haven't yet been able to prove otherwise.

And, we've seen how this line of thinking has worked out in the past so many times.

We have been modifying foods for centuries with selective breeding. Why do you think targeted genetic modification will be any different from the random genetic modification that occurs in nature? They aren't adding new proteins "en mass" as you describe it, its usually specific and minimal.

I don't think random genetic modification in nature is the same as using a gene gun to splice genetic material from organisms in a manner as would never occur in nature? Do you?

And, of course, some of these "unnatural" GMOs explicitly have toxins added to them to kill pests. Obviously we would not be otherwise consuming these.

I'm also sure you're not contending that everything found in nature is safe for human consumption, are you?

Altogether you seem to be suggesting that anything which can occur (whether in nature, or otherwise) must be safe. There really is nothing else to your "argument".

>They aren't adding new proteins "en mass" as you describe

I wasn't suggesting that they are adding them en masse; only that we are consuming them en masse (especially given their pervasiveness in staples such as corn, soy, canola, etc.)

You've hit upon my concerns. For me the consistent messaging from Monsanto and other GMO backing corporations about "There's no evidence it's unsafe to eat." is a red herring. I know some people are concerned about eating GMOs, but personally I'm a lot more concerned with the long term environmental impacts.

Even setting aside the possibility of GMO strains of life (whether plant or animal) reproducing and escaping containment; what about side effects on other species? We know insecticides have had many unforeseen side effects, it's not unreasonable to expect that GMO plants might also have impacts on insects, birds and other animals.

Then there's the business aspects where these mega corporations will use their GMO crops to force onerous contracts/purchasing agreements on farmers.

The way they always try to turn the issue on "There's no evidence its unsafe to eat." is telling to me; they have picked one issue to focus on to try to keep the public from noticing all the other issues with GMOs.

I don't think GMOs need to be made illegal, but I do think the public has a right to know if the food they are consuming comes from GMOs not because I'm worried necessarily about safety of eating, but so that we can choose to support or not support them with our purchasing power.

>they have picked one issue to focus on to try to keep the public from noticing all the other issues with GMOs

They're not the ones that picked that focus, people that rally against GMOs did, they're just refuting the most common "mainstream" complaint about GMO.

>it's not unreasonable to expect that GMO plants might also have impacts on insects, birds and other animals.

Well it's just as reasonable as expecting plants modified through selective breeding to have those same effects.

> They're not the ones that picked that focus, people that rally against GMOs did, they're just refuting the most common "mainstream" complaint about GMO.

I disagree. I think the pro-GMO people like to pretend it's the main objection, but it isn't. Most people I know with concerns about GMOs are concerned not about eating them as much as what kind of impacts they could have on the environment.

> Well it's just as reasonable as expecting plants modified through selective breeding to have those same effects.

Oh god not this ridiculous canard again. Pretending that bananas which have been bred to be softer are the same as bananas that have been engineered to secrete Miracle Gro is just ridiculous.

Bananas are the worst example to use, as we've modified them so much that they can't even reproduce, and that's using only selective breeding.

There are no Bananas that secrete miracle gro. GMO plants are generally just resistant to a specific pesticide. You could probably achieve the same effect selectively breeding the most hardy plants sprayed with low amounts of the pesticide, but that would take MUCH longer.

As far as eating GMO not being the main objection, it's literally the only one I've heard in person, and hear it semi frequently. I have only heard environmental concerns brought up if the discussion was about environmental impacts themselves, not specifically anti/pro gmo.

> These things spread in the wild, and we are basically playing god with the building blocks of (plant) life itself, which we definitely do not fully understand. If we fail to acknowledge some detail after meddling with something that could not have happened in nature, we might not find out until it's reaped devastating effects on global agriculture or even long-term human health. Even if GMOs can do a lot of good in the short-term, it would be terrifying to find out in the long-term that we've caused horrific damage due to our arrogance.

But as a species, we've been "playing god with the building blocks of plant life itself" for several thousand years - in far more dramatic and riskier fashion than any current modern biotechnologies would be capable of. Selective and cross breeding of plants has brought about all modern vegetables and fruits we eat today, and has dramatically altered their genetics, biochemistry, and phenotypes in ways that at the time we never understood and certainly could never control. Yet, nothing inherently disastrous happened - some scary mega plant of our design never took over the world out of our control. With modern biotechnology, scientists are not only able to be a LOT more sure of what the heck they're doing when they're editing a plant by specifically targeting understood and characterized genes, they are also far better able to characterize and test the nutritional and safety profile and ecological impact of a genetic modification.

We've been playing God with plants for thousands of years, and there has been no disastrous implications, and it seems like now that we have technologies that make that safer than ever, people are suddenly crying alarm.

Also, out of curiosity - what sort of "devastating effects" could you realistically imagine? As a biologist, it's hard to imagine anything "devastating" that sounds realistic. I could imagine critical biological impacts - such as perhaps the impact of bt-corn on Monarch butterflies - but nothing that we wouldn't be able to recognize and swiftly respond to. Of course, if there's some malevolent people who seek to hide or discredit such findings, or disrupt such a response (as we see today with fossil fuel funded climate change denial), then that's a whole different, but entirely political, apple.

I really think that messing with the underlying DNA of plants is more severe than trying to cross breed and selectively breed certain desirable traits.

> Also, out of curiosity - what sort of "devastating effects" could you realistically imagine?

Hard to say. We have a pretty lousy track record of thinking certain foods/drugs are safe, and then finding out years later that actually, they're quite bad for us.

Anything is possible. What if our change results in the plant becoming susceptible to a new bacteria that devastates entire crops? What if it undergoes a change in the wild, thanks to our editing, that starts producing huge amounts of amygdalin? What if we find out that a side-change that doesn't affect humans was actually contributing to something like bee colony collapse? What if something like this happens, and the plant spreads out of control in the wild?

But like I said, I'm not arguing for a ban on GMOs, either. I just think it's a situation where both solutions have their risks and rewards. I'm not prepared to give science a total pass, nor pass off people with GMO concerns in the same light as anti-vaxxers or climate change deniers.

In a way, when we cross breed, we mess with the DNA on a genome wide scale hoping to end up with a particular combination of genes from the two original parents.

GMO can of course be applied in many different contexts. One for me seemingly benign application of GMO is when a gene in a particular crop variety is desired in another variety - instead of doing a messy and expensive breeding process to get an offspring with the desired gene, transfer the desired gene directly between the crops using gene technology.

As in all research, there are rightful concerns and less rightful concerns. What concerns me is when unscientific concerns dictates how science should be done.

"I really think that messing with the underlying DNA of plants is more severe than trying to cross breed and selectively breed certain desirable traits."

Its the same thing. One is relying on nature to do it randomly until the desired effect is achieved, the other is being more specific.

My main issue is that this is mostly raised in relation to 'GMO' crops, which seems arbitrary. We do it by cross-breeding, sure, but we've also been doing crazy stuff like mutation breeding for decades (blast tons of seeds with radiation and chemicals and see what shakes out). That's considered 'non-GMO' by, for example, the EU. The whole thing feels like a false dichotomy.

You could make a similar argument about any technology: we don't fully understand nature, so messing with it is dangerous. Luckily we've come up with techniques of science and engineering that help us mitigate the danger. We can run experiments, do focused testing, build and validate models, and so on. Is there something unique about GMOs that would make these techniques not work? How do you feel about pharmaceuticals that often "play god" at a more fundamental biochemical level with even more poorly-understood mechanisms?

I agree but also think that a self-replicating experiment is a different class of danger than a one-off experiment. If we get to self-replicating nanobots, I hope the level of caution there goes well beyond that of the Manhattan project.

> If we get to self-replicating nanobots, I hope the level of caution there goes well beyond that of the Manhattan project.

We already have those and they are called viruses and bacteria for which we have pretty good defenses against them.

From-scratch nanobots won't be facing pretty good defenses. That said tinkering with viruses is scary too.

Any mistakes made by biotechnology would be short-term rather than long-term. Absent artificial selection pressures, something like golden rice would quickly revert to regular rice. What usually gets brushed aside is the fact that resources are not unlimited, and it takes extra energy for rice to produce that extra vitamin A, meaning it probably grows slower compared to unmodified rice. If we just left it unattended, not selecting the golden rice kernels for replanting, all the rice would eventually shed themselves of this useless gene that's slowing them down.

Same with the bt crops. The fear about the genes getting out in the wild is greatly exaggerated. Individuals with those extra energy-sucking genes are really at a disadvantage once the selection pressure is turned off.

If the internet was invented before antibiotics or animal husbandry, you could post the exact anti-GMO argument for those technologies as well.

>Even if GMOs can do a lot of good in the short-term, it would be terrifying to find out in the long-term that we've caused horrific damage due to our arrogance.

Same thing can be said for selectively breeding plants.

If you paint with broad strokes, yes. But selective breeding doesn't have the power genetic modification does and thus more caution ought to be exercised. And frankly it isn't an argument. Selection ought to be taken seriously. The misuse of antibiotics has contributed to antibiotic resistant strains that are a serious threat. Furthermore, the social dimension is important. Corporations like Monsanto are been involved in corrupt practices that aim to expand their control over agriculture. It's not necessarily the GM per se but the kind of GM they're doing (producing sterile crop that would force farmers to purchase more, or patents and the ridiculous royalties around them). Third world countries stand to loose in these cases because the crop is being pushed on them for nutritional reasons without considering the strings attached to them. Furthermore, Europeans tend to take a precautionary approach whereas Americans tend to release something to market and watch for effects. It's frankly a general practice that is a bit worrying and boorishly pragmatic. So there's that. The GMO bit is kind of a red herring here.

I'm not anti-GMO per se, but the behavior of Monsanto and its ilk cloud the issue.

Also, CRISPR and related biotech advances are a completely different level of impact. Should we wipe out mosquitos? See eg https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601213/the-extinction-inv... Selective plant breeding, this aint.

>I have to admit that the science side of this is very compelling: zero documented negative health outcomes is pretty compelling evidence for its safety.

Until there is, of course. And if it turns out that this evidence comes out decades later or in next generation, it will of course, a little bit too late for them.

I'm not a fan of the term "real food" that Greenpeace uses. Your body can get nutrition from anything in a compatible form. It doesn't matter if it's been engineered, crawls on tree back, created in a science kit - if it's compatible, your body will absorb it.

> “The only guaranteed solution to fix malnutrition is a diverse healthy diet. Providing people with real food based on ecological agriculture not only addresses malnutrition, but is also a scaleable solution to adapt to climate change.

"real food", "natural", etc - these are language signs that pseudo-knowledge is creeping into the issue.

I am waiting for entirely synthetic food options that will compete with photosynthesis from an energy perspective. That could be huge for space for instance.

Perhaps algal oil? Soylent is taking that approach

Do algae not rely on photosynthesis?

This isn't necessarily true.

Vitamins often need to be consumed with the foods they're found in to be absorbed properly.

Fructose as an additive, fructose in squeezed juice and fructose in whole fruit are processed differently in the body.

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/08/reduce-type-2-...

It's not about nutrition. It's the risk that hidden risks that GMOs engender. E.g. Unknown effects upon the ecosystem.

Another example: GMO Wheat contains an unnaturally high gluten content. Gluten is an irritant for everyone--some more than others. We have many people who are not really "gluten intolerant", but think they are. They are just sensitive to the unnaturally high gluten content in GMO foods.

There is no commercially grown GMO wheat. I have no idea where you heard this nonsense. And within different non-modified wheat varieties, gluten content varies greatly. Ex. Hard, red winter wheat has more gluten and is often used as bread flour. There is no incentive to breed wheat for higher gluten content anyway.

You're wrong on both accounts.

1) A GMO wheat currently is used. It's called Renan. 2) Higher gluten flour is desirable for bread products such as pizza. I make my own pizza. The best pizza bread is made from high-gluten flour.

Correction: Artificial selection and contemporary milling processes have increased the gluten content. Not from GMO.

I assume you mean certain varieties of GMO wheat have high gluten content? There's nothing about GMO itself that would cause that, it's a matter of what they decide to change.

The criticism is about the emergent incentives due to the interplay of capitalism and technology.

The question is whether the industry can be trusted to self-regulate or if there are externalities and endogenous variables which may spur a generalized irresponsible utility.

In the same way that environmentalists criticize coal for its abuses in the context of capital markets, there's a concern that not every for-profit biotech firm will value multi-generational probabilistic long-term effects on an ecosystem as much as the company's business interests.

Thank you for the cogent framing of the issues. It's so easy to bash GMO skeptics for being "anti science" or stubborn vegan hippies. There are legitimate concerns to discuss.

Sure, but that doesn't necessarily have to do with GMOs. Say we pass a mandatory GMO labeling law and, in response, Monsanto figures out a way to make pesticide-resistant seeds through normal cross-breeding. Now we're back in the same place we started, except with labels that confuse people into thinking GMOs are bad.

Sorry but I'm not anti-GMO.

I'm for intellectual honesty and believe thoughtful claims should be presented sincerely and carefully as a matter of course whether I support them or not.

> Monsanto figures out a way to make pesticide-resistant seeds through normal cross-breeding.

BASF has made, and patented, herbicide resistant wheat, rice, sunflower, lentils, canola and corn. Google 'clearfield production systems'. They are produced by non-GMO technologies.

Surely this argument can be used to criticize any field, though - "the question is whether the technology industry can be trusted to self-regulate" - "the question is whether the pharmaceutical industry can be trusted to self-regulate"- and so on. If you what you have is a concern about capitalist abuse and are calling for checks on and regulation of corporate power, all the power to you (I strongly support these concerns and calls in all industries). However, to be "anti-GMO" because of what some corporations who make them may do in the future is like being "anti-Internet" or "anti-medicine" for the same reasons.

Environmentalists are those with concerns about environmental consequences and advocate for scrutiny of things which may lead to them.

The organizations chartered with environmental concern decidedly focus on such things.

There are certainly people who are anti-internet or anti-medicine, but they are called different things. Additionally there are purely anti-capitalist people.

However, one can be pro-capitalist and pro-free market while simultaneously claiming that the tobacco companies violated this trust of the market.

People are complex creatures and take on a variety of labels with varying degrees of precision, passion, and commitment.

I firmly believe that all genetic engineering applications, except for human health-related medical interventions, should be delayed for at least several hundred years. Research, yes, but applications are out of the question for centuries.

Anything less stringent is open-ended experimentation on the only biosphere in the known Universe. It is hubris of the rankest sort.

Further I believe that this is a scientific view.

We know our ignorance is far too vast.

The only reasons to use GMOs are hubris and greed. That is it.

Either you are a scientific ego-tripper who can't or won't understand that real people have serious reservations about participating in your open-ended genetic experiment, or you just want to make a buck and don't care.

If it could be shown that, for some given application of GE, there is absolutely no other alternative to save lives, then that's something. However, I believe we can feed ourselves without GMOs by means of "applied ecology" ("Permaculture" etc.) so there is no call to use GMOs. These doubtless well-meaning scientists are using the reduction of "Vitamin-A deficiencies causing blindness and death in children in the developing world" to insist on a highly controversial technology. It's kind of just as ugly and self-serving as they paint Greenpeace to be.

The report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine is quoted in the article as saying, "such crops are relatively new and that it is premature to make broad generalizations, positive or negative, about their safety."

We know we don't know enough. I don't want to eat your faith.

> I believe that this is a scientific view.

> hubris

Don't you think there is maybe a little hubris in you thinking you know the scientific view better than 107 Nobel Price winners?

No. Argument from Authority. There isn't one "the" scientific view.

And, in this case, "107 Nobel Price winners" (sic) have said merely, "Greenpeace are superstitious baby-killers." not a scientific repudiation of the points I've raised.

Several hundred years? Research yes, but no applications? Why would anyone put in the effort to do the research, if they know in the best case scenario the applications would come in several hundred years?

Now, I understand doubts in our current state of knowledge, and the desire for more knowledge, but consider this: 352 years ago people didn't know about cells, let alone chromosomes, DNA, or the possibility of genetic editing. The concept of GMO probably didn't exist 50 years ago. I don't think any of us has a change to imagine how the world will be in a few hundred years. Did you really mean several hundred years, or several tens of years?

> Why would anyone put in the effort to do the research, if they know in the best case scenario the applications would come in several hundred years?

Because they are Scientists.

Really the point I'm making is that we should be proceeding with GE applications "as an old man crossing a river in Winter" with utmost caution and humility.

We should introduce GMOs with the greatest of reluctance, after every other avenue to achieve our goal has been ruled out, not rushing pell-mell like drunken teenagers.

I really do mean several centuries.

We have only just discovered that the oceans teem with bacteriopages, that biofilms can think, that we have an "organ" called the "microbiome" made up of cells that are genetically not us, that the physical structure of chromosomes influences the decoding of DNA, it goes on and on. New things are discovered daily.

I think we should wait until we understand before we manipulate.

Scientists' prior experiments with irradiated plants would probably have caused far worse damage by now if GMOs are a significant threat (apart from some hypothetical deliberately malignant possibilities).

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening

There is one extremely simple [1], unequivocally positive GMO success story: Rainbow papaya in Hawaii [2,3].

In the 90s, papaya ringspot virus was about to wipe out papaya cultivation from Hawaii. Scientist (the leading scientist was Hawaiian born even) transferred a gene from the virus to a cultivar of papaya, making the cultivar resistant to the virus. Hawaiians have been happily producing papaya ever since.

But still the general anti-science, anti-GMO sentiment is strong. Banning GMOs seems to be the fashionable thing to do. So in 2013 the main island in Hawaii banned the cultivation of any GMO crop [4]. Except the papaya. They have been safely growing and eating GMO papayas for 20 years, and growing papaya is economically important to them. But with some cognitive dissonance they can still jump on the "GMOs are dangerous" bandwagon, and ban all other GMO crops. Talk about hypocrisy.

[1] There are other successes, but their stories are more complicated. For example herbicide tolerant cultivars are usually 'good', considering that they facilitate switching from more toxic herbicides to less toxic, but the story is more complicated, and can be quite easily attacked by a populist demagogue.

[2] http://hawaiitribune-herald.com/sections/news/local-news/pap...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_engineering_in_Hawaii#...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_engineering_in_Hawaii#...

I do not like GMO* and try to avoid buying the stuff. I understand that the overwhelming scientific consensus is that it has no ill-effects compared to non-GMO foods. For me there are two main arguments for avoiding it, one selfish, one less-so.

1. The less selfish one: GMO is strongly associated with massive monoculture. The lack of genetic diversity presents serious systemic risks.

2. The selfish one: The majority of GMO encountered in a US supermarket is modified for resistance to herbicide (canola, roundup) [citation needed], rather than for nutrition, flavor, or texture. Though not a strong signal, being non-GMO correlates with higher quality. (Yes, I prefer buying uncommon cultivars where e.g., the tomato hasn't been bred for mass transport)

While I don't think there's anything a priori wrong/harmful/etc. with genetically modifying organisms, I think the current applications on the market are not ideal. I would love to see the cost of GMing food come down to the point where we don't have oligopolies controlling seed production and see some more beneficial uses of the technology.

* If you consider cross/selective-breeding GMOing, then just s/GMO/roundup ready crops, BT-corn, flavr savr, etc./.

This brings to mind "Project Steve" (https://ncse.com/project-steve) which lists scientists named Steve/Stephen/Stefan/Stephanie/etc. who agree with a statement endorsing evolution.

On the other hand, maybe a list of 110 Nobel Laureates (100 of whom are Nobel prize-winning scientists) isn't enough, and we need a "Project John": There are six Nobel prize-winning scientists named John (or Johann, or Jean-Marie) who endorse GMO foods.

While the common GMO crops on the market have been shown to be completely safe for human consumption time after time again, I think it's important to get across that being "anti-GMO" is inherently an unscientific position, regardless of the safety profile of any specific food products. Why?

From a biologist's perspective, the phrase "anti-GMO" is meaningless - what are you really against if you're anti-GMO? It means you're completely against the use of a wide range of specific biotechnologies, protocols, and experiments that modify the genome of an organism. To dismiss the safety profile of all of these biotechnologies by themselves is irrational, not only because there is no proven mechanism for how they can cause harm, or because they've been shown to create perfectly safe crops, but because they use very different mechanisms (from Agrobacterium to gene guns to RNA-i to the new CRISPR/Cas) from each other.

To be skeptical of the safety profile of the concept of gene editing in principle is also irrational, unless one is willing to also be skeptical of the safety profile of induced mutagenesis methods that humans have used for a century, and cross-breeding methods that humans have used for thousands of years. Why? Because both of these conventional methods "edit genes", but there is an inherent risk that is significantly higher: randomness. When scientists apply modern biotechnological methods to edit genomes, they utilize and target known and characterized genes and pathways, which can have any associated risks or consequences profiled and understood. Broad mutagenesis and cross-breeding create organisms (especially in polyploidy plants) with rearranged and mutated genes at random, which creates a scenario which makes it even currently impossible to truly understand and predict the safety or nutritional profile of the resulting organism. Of course, even these "oh-so-risky" methods are responsible for creating the entire repertoire of fruits and vegetables we eat today.

Therefore, the anti-GMO movement truly does seem anti-scientific - by definition it isn't making specific claims about specific crops, or even specific technologies, but rather the broad generalization that an entire range of very different technologies are unsafe. It is also applying that generalization unfairly to modern technologies (which sound scarier and riskier) as opposed to the ones that have successfully created all modern crops (which have a similarly very low but distinctly higher risk involved). With a bit of context, it seems impossible to interpret the movement as anything besides having a problem with the existence of the field of biotechnology itself.

Very well said. I think the cogent part of the complaint is the economics of it. I can understand being opposed to the capitalist enterprise of inventing, patenting, and licensing the seeds. I personally am happy there's a way to fund this kind of R&D in the general market, but it does create interesting power dynamics between farmers and the patent holders.

It's ironic that the same people who insult conservatives for denying the scientific consensus behind global warming, would themselves deny the scientific consensus behind GMO safety and efficacy. Makes you wonder if anyone actually believes in science, or if everyone simply sees it as a pawn to use and discard when convenient.

I dunno. You paint it as a hypocrisy to take the scientific consensus view on one topic but not the other. They would paint it as a hypocrisy to take the "let's minimize human toying with the environment in ways we can't fully understand" side for one but not both topics.

The power of the climate change consensus is much stronger than that of GMOs in the following sense. If someone doesn't believe climate change is happening (or doesn't believe it's bad), then they had better have a damn good reason for thinking that pumping huge quantities of CO2 into the air is OK. Their argument can't be "the environment is complex, so the climate modelers might be wrong" since that only argues for even greater caution in disturbing the chaotic system of the environment. Therefore their argument must be "there is scientific evidence that it doesn't matter". So you counter that with "but then why don't any scientists think that?" even if you think we don't truly understand the environmental impact.

Contrast to the GMO argument where the views of "the scientific community understands the ramifications of our actions" and "the system is too complex to analyze" come to opposite conclusions.

The scientific consensus on GMO safety is actually slightly stronger than on global warming: https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/01/29/pewaaas-st...

My comment was tangential to that matter, it was that the consensus and the can't-trust-the-consensus views lead to different conclusions in GMOs but not in climate change, which can explain the hypocrisy observed.

That's a good point. If someone is opposed to both climate change and GMO food on the basis of "this is too complex to understand, so let's not touch it", that would be an intellectually consistent position.

But more often than not, that's not the argument I hear from climate-change-alarmists. Most of the time, the argument they are making falls more into the camp of "we understand the science well enough to know that climate change is definitely happening and will have negative repercussions on humanity. The scientific consensus on this is solid, and we should trust in that scientific consensus."

The second argument sounds a lot stronger than the first, which is why most environmentalists go with that argument. But it's intellectually inconsistent with their opposition to GMO.

It is normal and expected that people present arguments because they come to the desired conclusion. However the reason those people believe those arguments has nothing to do with that conclusion. The result is that the arguments both don't convince, and the same arguments fail to convince you in a different situation where the facts line up differently.

That said, people who do try to come to evidence based conclusions will pay attention to science in both cases.

there is a difference between "the temperature is going up" and "this very complex system has no side-effects". one requires a rough model; the other requires a full understanding. one we have, the other we do not. it's not a fair comparison at all.

I like this example [1], about fish tomato. Now, you can't call THAT natural.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_tomato

A fish gene in a tomato!

I guess you are unaware that human and banana genomes are 50% the same. http://www.askabiologist.org.uk/answers/viewtopic.php?id=128...

I was looking into those who signed (currently at 110 by the way) and I was a bit interested in the age range. Even though the years that individuals were granted the prize ranged to as far back as 1962 (James Watson was around 32 at the time), I didn't find anyone who's currently under 60 who signed. My search was far from exhaustive, so I'd be interested if anyone found a young laureate on this list.

I have no problem with people wanting to have GMO labels. Consumers should have a choice as to what they put in their body.

But the argument that GMOs are dangerous has had little--if any--scientific proof. That so many Nobel laureates are getting behind this fact is reassuring, especially in a world where malnutrition is still existent.

But if you label it, why wouldn't you start labeling all other sorts of things?

GMO vs not-GMO is irrelevant information for the consumer outside of marketing and ignorance-based paranoia.

But if you label it, why wouldn't you start labeling all other sorts of things?

Good question. More labels for everyone! I want to know the soil composition where my vegetables were grown, for example, and the average and peak levels of various airborne pollutants during the growing season.

Is there any legitmacy left to the argument that we need technology to solve malnutrition?

According to some sources, the world has recently crossed a threshold where there are more overweight people in the world than there are malnourished people. [1]

If one excludes considerations around national security, labour markets, land use, etc., is there a good case to be made that increased food production is even necessary?

[1] http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/31/obese-humans-now-outnumber-th...

Absolutely.

There being overweight people does not mean there aren't still malnourished.

Technology can help not only to increase overall food production, but also to enable greater production in the localized areas where there is still insufficient supply.

I wasn't very clear in that I was referring to developing new technologies.

Undeveloped parts of the world don't have access to even the most basic agricultural technology, like mechanization and efficient irrigation.

Of course it would be good to spread technologies both old and new. Inventing new things, including GMOs, is fantastic for those who adopt them, but won't help if undeveloped areas that have difficulty adopting any new techniques.

It turns out to be a lot easier to convince farmers to use better seeds than to change everything else about how they work. We have a lot of experience with successfully getting poor farmers to try better varieties.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug for the man who made it work.

I always thought distribution of food was the impediment. And if we could reliably ensure that the people who needed the food got it and not some local dictator (or whatever) then there would be no problem.

Then it would be worth building infrastructure in the countries that needed it and just ship food over.

Turns out that ignoring all political, legal, and economic frictions makes solving all the world's problems very easy! Why don't we all just produce enough food and then give it to the people that are hungry? Duh...!

That's my point: if it's not lack of food production that is causing malnutrition, then arguing for increased food production to solve malnutrition is not very convincing.

Is there any legitmacy left to the argument that we need technology to solve malnutrition?

Absolutely. Over a half-million children die each and every year due to lack of vitamin A. If they were eating the same amount of rice they currently do, but it was golden rice, they would be alive.

Going farther afield, if it were not for technology, people would have started starving by the hundreds of millions back in the 1970s. Even today we are one good pathogen away from billions starving - something like the Irish Potato Famine but on a much larger scale. There is a constant back and forth where we are constantly identifying threats and breeding responses. GMOs are an important tool to protect our agriculture.

Forcible redistribution of food from the haves to the have nots has its own problems. It would admittedly solve the vitamin A problem, but would create others. And it would emphatically NOT solve the problem of a potential crop failure.

That's a strong argument, and much better than any of the other replies.

It's not entirely convincing to me, since vitamin A deficiency is spread very widely, including in many countries that don't eat much rice.

That said, the general idea of addressing specific deficiencies with enhanced food sounds very promising.

The demonization of GMOs has been one of the most frustrating things for me to witness. GMOs are not inherently bad (as everyone here is basically agreeing with), but it is unfortunate that their primary use case right now is for a shitty company to squeeze more profit out of its customers, so you can kind of see why it's easy to be against GMOs. I still don't agree with it though.

I hope public opinion changes on this, but I don't have much hope until some very positive things actually start to happen with GMOs.

The market for glyphosate-resistant crops is competitive, it isn't just Monsanto selling them.

(glyphosate itself went out of patent in 2000, the various resistance mechanisms may be under patent)

Their business practices surrounding it though, are terrible, to say the least. If they wanted to give GMOs a bad name, they couldn't have done a better job.

I'm under the impression that farmers consider it a valuable risk management tool. That is, they plant Roundup Ready crops because they like how it works. There's other seed available, so the ones that plant them are choosing.

There are so many urban legends about "Monsanto is evil". Do you have an example of some actual evildoings?

Like so many other things in our world today, the truth is distorted by spin on all sides. Everyone has an agenda and it's quite difficult to know if what you're reading is actually factual. You can google it yourself and read both sides of the story for hours and still come away like you aren't sure what the actual deal is.

But, it does seem safe to say that Monsanto as a company is only in it for the money, much like the vast majority of other companies. Do they care about farmers? Do they care about food? Do they care about people? Or do they only care about making money? I think it's clear what the answers are, but I can't really blame them for that, I blame our system at large. But still, they could choose to be less greedy, less capitalist, and a little more human. It's very easy to hate them as it is now.

Anyways, it doesn't really matter what the actual truth is. The public hates Monsanto and to them, GMO and Monsanto seeds are one and the same. Until we see more usages of GMO that are not tainted by questionable business practices, this won't change. We need a GMO farming company that puts the farmer and the food first, not profits.

Secondly, and this is a whole different issue, I do not think our modern industrial farming practices are sustainable in the least. Industrial farming companies exist only to sell fertilizers and pesticides and other profitable things. They are not interested in fixing any of the problems with modern industrial farming because that would not be profitable. Again, capitalism is the problem, not really Monsanto.

Interestingly enough, Monsanto started out as a chemical company. So it's no wonder they push chemical based solutions to farming problems.

For an alternative to modern industrial farming, google forest gardening, aquaponics, or food forests. This applies "the 5 whys" to modern industrial farming: Why do we need fertilizers and pesticides? What problems do they solve? Why are those problems? Finally, you come to the conclusion that trying to grow hundreds of acres of the same crop is just not what nature is built for. Nature wants diversity, nature wants things that look like forests. Industrial farming is what you get when Man tries to force Nature to do something that is not natural.

Would you mind telling me why cause I don't care if other people waste their money buying non GMO food?

I reject the notion that self-replicating organisms ought to be treated as intellectual property, and I have concerns about particular commercially-available herbicides that rely upon gene sequencing to make them safe for plants. I have no substantive concerns about eating the available GMO product.

Yet the pro-GMO movement wishes to frame the anti-GMO movement as a cause which is focused upon the harms of consumption. It's dishonest at best, and has me questioning for motives.

Reading the VAD section of the wikipedia article on golden rice [0] always makes me angry. I would go so far as to call Greenpeace's continued political activity evil, since averaged out over time it has contributed to the preventable deaths of millions of children.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice#Vitamin_A_deficien...

These debates on the merits/possible side effects of GMOs often disregard an important point. Why are companies modifying the genomes of plants? For the big four GMO crops - corn, soybeans, cotton and canola, many of the modifications are focused on breeding in pesticide resistant traits so that more pesticides may be sprayed (which has environmental implications and ultimately will fail as the organisms targeted by the pesticides become resistant). For other crops, many of the modifications are cosmetic - e.g. apples that don't brown after being cut. It's much rarer for crops to be genetically modified for nutrition (as in the case of the golden rice). I often wonder: what if all of the effort used to produce these GM crops was focused on increasing the acreage and availability of crops that were nutritious and finding better ways to implement non-chemical control of pests? Of course it would me much more difficult to sell those solutions....

Just to clarify, I'm not anti- or pro-GMO, but think the other factors and motivations deserve consideration.

If you'd like to spin up on GMO debate / tech this series is the best source I've found: https://grist.org/series/panic-free-gmos/

The Nobel laureate thing is a gimmick. "Nobel laureate" has a cachet that seems to sedate the brain. How many of these Nobel laureates have any real authority on the subject at hand that would make their signatures particularly meaningful?

GMO themselves might not be bad, yet I see 3 issues: patents ; mono-culture (so 1 disease could wipe out a lot); allergy-cross-contamination, as in: lets introduce this peanut gene into this rice (for whatever reason).

There is no fundamental difference between genetic modification done in a lab then done with selective breeding. Each relies on modification of the underlying DNA. Selective breeding just takes longer to get the desired results as it requires trial and error. Any result that produced by produced with genetic modification can be produced with selective breeding if given sufficient time. I don't understand the argument against GMO if you support selective breeding.

Actually I might argue there is a difference. Going through selective breeding means the plants/animals live long enough to reproduce and likely reproduce sexually. Cloning + GMOs means you can make things that don't need to go through this process but still exist and serve some purpose.

That would seem to argue that severely deleterious effects will only persist as long as people keep creating more of that modification and thus preventing unwanted spread of such things.

If anything, my only real concern with GMOs relates to the IP rights and how it could give Monsanto & co. too much control over our food supply, but that's a legal issue, not a safety issue and it's not a good reason to oppose them outright.

"That would seem to argue that severely deleterious effects will only persist as long as people keep creating more of that modification and thus preventing unwanted spread of such things."

Eh, sorta. I didn't say it precludes living a long time or reproduction, more that its not a necessity.

I don't have huge concerns with GMOs but do worry more on the ecological side - specifically biodiversity and whether superspecies will have larger unintended impacts than we predict today. The flip side to this is that using less resources to produce our food is a tremendously under-discussed ecological benefit of GMOs.

> my only real concern with GMOs relates to the IP rights

Also non-GMO varieties can be patented and have been patented. I see no reason why your IP concerns should be limited to GMO varieties only.

They are not. My concerns range for the patenting of any lifeform.

> Going through selective breeding means the plants/animals live long enough to reproduce and likely reproduce sexually.

Apples aren't allowed to reproduce—a sexually-produced apple tastes like crap. We preserve a specific genotype through grafting.

Bananas is another example but they can't reproduce because they don't have seeds. To get the cultivar was like hitting the mega million lotto in the selective breeding process.

I guess I wasn't sure if thats breeding (aka a semantic and probably less important point but still not sure if grafting is breeding). Could see arguments both ways

> There is no fundamental difference between genetic modification done in a lab then done with selective breeding.

That's just not true at all. You cannot selectively breed corn to start secreting Miracle Gro. You cannot selectively breed salmon to have eel DNA.

This is a canard that the GMO companies try to push; that it's "exactly the same", but it's an absurd statement.

Yes you can say if you had literally millions or billions of years you could breed mice to glow in the dark, but that's like saying if I had millions or billions of years my random text generator would eventually write the works of Shakespeare (because you are relying on random mutation to give you that glowing gene eventually in the case of breeding for it.)

And again, this statement is made only in some ridiculous attempt to draw a line between something people are comfortable and familiar with and genetic engineering. It's silly. There's a huge difference between selectively breeding my dogs and taking an embryo from one and inserting octopus DNA to try to make them have ink sacs.

> Any result that produced by produced with genetic modification can be produced with selective breeding if given sufficient time.

This is actually what plant breeding companies are currently doing. First they plan which gene they need to modify. Then they produce large numbers of randomly mutated individuals (using radiation or chemicals to introduce random mutations), and then modern genetic screening methods help them to filter out the individuals with the desired mutation. Then they do several generations of crossings to isolate and transfer the modified gene to the cultivar.

This takes about a decade of work, but it can be cheaper and faster than the legal work to get a GMO variety approved for production, which also takes at least a decade. Or after a decade of legal work the result might still be a rejection, especially in Europe.

Mutation breeding is a scary process as its more likely introduce unwanted mutations. For example, a new breed of potato could have elevated Solanine(toxin found in the nightshade family) levels which has happened in the past.

Greenpeace on what GMOs are:

>"Genetic engineering enables scientists to create plants, animals and micro-organisms by manipulating genes in a way that does not occur naturally."

The article:

> "Virtually all crops and livestock have been genetically engineered in the broadest sense; there are no wild cows, and the cornfields of the United States reflect many centuries of plant modification through traditional breeding."

Conclusion: 'GMO' should stand for "Generally Modified Organism"

Without taking a stance either way...that argument isn't very convincing. By that argument a car is just a really fast horse.

Read the Greenpeace response in the update shown at the end of the article. They might be right.

If it's GMO put a label in it. What's the big deal? The way companies try to skirt that law is pretty mind blowing. Companies number 1 priority is shareholder value, consumer safety is a distant 2nd place.

Take it slow, what's the rush? 40% of food now goes to wast. People seem to forget that farmers that don't use GMO crops are probably far more conscience about other aspects of the food chain than Monsanto, that's just common sense.

It goes against the idea that labels should be helpful and contain useful information. For example, compare with a similar idea: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

Let's put warnings on vaccines then? There's just as much (or lack there of) "evidence" that vaccines cause autism as GMO's being harmful.

They do. It's a big read too.

This reminds me of talks with my dentist. Me: What about mercury fillings, could they really harm you, or is that just a bunch of BS. Dentist: That's crazy. There is nothing wrong with mercury fillings. Nothing. Me: Would you use them for your children? Dentist: What! Never, composites only. The science is really not out yet on that.

An interesting talk for sure. :-)

He's talking about labels, not warnings.

But if you label it, why wouldn't you start labeling all other sorts of ridiculous things?

GMO vs not-GMO is irrelevant information for the consumer outside of marketing and ignorance-based paranoia.

I suppose if your goal is to keep as many human beings alive as possible, then the noble laureates are right.

However if your goal is to keep the earth alive for as long as possible then it seems Greenpeace is right.

Why would GMOs intrinsically hurt the environment?

You could in fact engineer crops which require substantially less resources and are better for the environment than traditional crops.

Nothing we as humans will ever do will destroy life on Earth.

We might level a devastating blow to the diversity that exists today (and thus also to ourselves), but life will persist here until the Sun eats the planet.

Could you please explain your statement "keep the earth alive"? I don't understand what this means.

I'm merely commenting on the Greenpeace fears. They write that the GMO crops are untested and have the potential cross-pollinate with non-GMO crops in an irreversible way, thereby permanently changing the local non-GMO ecosystem.

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