051 GMO Park
Why are you so convincing, OMINOUS LOOKING FRUIT?
The science is pretty clear that GMO’s are as safe as all the other artificially modified fruit out there, like bananas.
Things got heated at our recent Skeptics In The Pub at which we addressed the controversy over GMOs. One woman called me “reckless” and “wildly irresponsible” for suggesting that organic crops used pesticides. We followed this with a calm conversation about the difference between commercial organic farming and gardening. Science distinctly shows that GMO crops are the same in nutrition and safety as traditional and organic crops.
Lastly, I hate when they call it Franken-Food. What they really mean to call it is Frankens-Monster-Food.
↓ Transcript
CRAIG
What are you worked up about?
ROB
I was looking at anti-GMO sites, and they have no evidence.
CRAIG
None?
ROB
Every reference links to other blogs, and they link to more blogs.
CRAIG
Are those quotes from jurassic park?
ROB
-And lots of infographics with ominous looking fruit.
CRAIG
Robert Muldoon could never be ambushed by crops!
ROB
His famous last words were "...clever beans."
What are you worked up about?
ROB
I was looking at anti-GMO sites, and they have no evidence.
CRAIG
None?
ROB
Every reference links to other blogs, and they link to more blogs.
CRAIG
Are those quotes from jurassic park?
ROB
-And lots of infographics with ominous looking fruit.
CRAIG
Robert Muldoon could never be ambushed by crops!
ROB
His famous last words were "...clever beans."
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My genetics professor spoke to us about GMO foods. It turns out that a huge majority of genetic modifications is simply adding a gene (many times over) from cauliflower that counteracts the effects of the roundup that is used to kill weeds. Roundup works by binding to a site in the cell and blocking production of glucose. Adding this gene creates more binding sites. If there are too many binding sites, roundup can’t connect to them all and glucose is still produced.
I got that wrong, I checked with my professor and asked him to go into more detail. Glyphosate, the active compound in Roundup, blocks the binding site of EPSP synthase, an enzyme that synthesizes the amino acids tryptophan, phenylalanine, and tyrosine. To counteract that the DNA of the genetically modified plants has the promoting factor for the cauliflower mosaic virus inserted into the allele that is responsible for the encoding of RNA to create the EPSP synthase enzyme. This causes the plant cell to make the enzyme nonstop. That way, even if roundup is sprayed on the plant it can still make the amino acids.
Your remark about “Frankenfoods” makes me think of chocohol… You know, the nonexistent substance that chocoholics are “addicted” to.
It is hard being a geek, and some battles with seemingly global stupidity you just have recognize are not worth fighting… Though I don’t blame you for inveighing against it all the same.
Thanks! Yeah, as a science nerd I can’t help but draw the line at bullshit of all sizes. Homeopathy is a gateway placebo.
Couldn’t “chocohol” be alcohol made by fermenting cacao beans?
I almost wish I had a distiller’s license so that I could actually make “chocohol” now. That way, I could actually confront so-called “chocoholics” with it.
In all seriousness, though, when it comes to nonsense terms, the “-gate” suffix infuriates me more.
GMO foods are safe to eat.
They are awful to grow. Aside from Monsanto’s fairly, well, evil patent protection policies, they spread the Roundup-resistant gene to all the weeds and have thus actually increased the amount of pesticides being sprayed on plants (see this study — pretty sure it’s one of several). Given that a) this is accelerating the rate of pesticide resistance at an alarming rate, b) it actually increases costs for farmers, and c) there is some question about the actual safety of Roundup (Entropy 2013, there is basically no upside to the bloody things except that they make a lot of money for Monsanto, who sells you both the seed and the pesticide.
But it’s really hard to explain this to anyone without a background in science and/or agriculture — preferably both. I have a sort of unhappy flinch reflex whenever I see people arguing about GMOs because yeah. Right idea, all the wrong reasons. 🙁
Thanks for taking the time to post an argument with a scientific reference. Although, I almost didn’t allow it due to your Argument Ad Monsantium, a specifically popular Ad Hominem logical fallacy. Whether Monsanto is evil or not is irrelevant and doesn’t make any technology guilty by association.
But then I took a look at your link, and saw HUGE red flags right away. It is written by one author without academic credentials who is listed as an ‘independent researcher’ and another who is in an unrelated field and has published a number of highly questionable studies. The second red flag is that there is no university or academic sponsorship of the study. And third, it is published in an open-access journal which have been under fire lately for pay-to-publish corruption. MDPI, the journal who published the study, has been criticized for this, most notably by Jeffrey Beall (Nature background story). Dubious credentials aside, the study draws flimsy conclusions from vague logic and seems to have invented the gibberish term “Biosemiotic Entropy”.
Your fundamental argument is common among the anti-GMO movement, except that it isn’t supported by any of the 1783 studies in the last ten years that were concerned with GMO ‘spread’ and environmental impact. Big picture, GMO’s allow for no-till farming and the preservation of soil which is a massive environmental and economic benefit. In the same studies cited by your link, glyphosate was tested with human trials and deemed safe at the highest levels possible through human consumption.
“Monsanto’s fairly, well, evil patent protection policies”? What’s wrong with a company protecting it’s Intellectual Property. Is Apple “evil” for suing Samsun for patent infringement?
Or does Monsanto torture corporate spies and I just haven’t heard about it..?
It’s the fact that if your non-gmo field cross-pollinates with somebody’s Monsanto field, Monsanto will sue you for stealing their patented dna. As if you have any control over it.
Here we go. Now that I’ve had a chance to search for a non-paywall reference, the case law analysis of Monsanto v Schmeiser.
http://ielrc.org/Content/a0503.pdf
In brief, Schmeiser discovered that their non-Monsanto canola seed farm had, over the course of a few years since their neighbors had planted GMO crops, become 96% Monsanto GMO Canola. Monsanto promptly told them that it was, in fact, their corn now, and the court decided that, despite the fact that Schmeiser had not intended to steal the gene, did not want the gene, and that in fact the gene had made their product unsellable, Schmeiser was guilty of patent infringement.
Did you read the judgement carefully? “95-98% of his 1000 acres of canola crop was made up of Roundup Ready plants.”
This is not a case of hybridization, in which case some of his original crop would have seeded as well. This is a case where the farmer obtained and planted Roundup Ready seed without paying for it ($15/acre).
In this case the farmer was stealing, hands down. However this idea of Monsanto suing farmers is a very common argument against GMOs, despite little factual basis for it. In any case, it’s important to keep the discussion of safety separate from the discussion of patent enforcement or business practices.
Everything?
Patent law exists primarily to stifle the integration of technological advancement for the sake of making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
And even on the scale of invention innovation, taking some genes from one organism and splicing them into another is a pathetically shoddy excuse for claiming the genome as intellectual property.
Hey, was reminded of this a bit ago when my brother told me to “Do the research” on GMO foods.
Welp, 10 minutes of googling and I produced the UN’s opinion that the GMO’s could benifit developing countries enormously, a WHO database on different GMO crops, about 6 other scholarly articles published by peer-reviewed international journals. This was added to your cited articles, as well as a link to this comic, then sent to him.
It really sinks my faith in human kind when something so studied is met with so much resistance. Exercising caution is important with new technologies, but this demonizing is excessive.
also, great comics guys, looking forward to more.
Wow, excellent! Thanks for the comment, and feel free to pass along all those links. I collect them.
Why are General Motors messing around with food now? Have they given up pretending that the Chevy Volt does 150mpg on the basis that electricity is generated by magic?
Honestly, the only GMO I’m particularly concerned with is “roundup ready crops” and I’m concerned with them because roundup is toxic as hell, not because of any fears of the GMO thing.
Also, don’t like the taste of milk from Bovine Growth hormone cows. I know humans aren’t supposed to be able to tell, but dammit industrial farmed milk is fucking nasty, and Bovine Growth Hormone is an easy thing to blame. Much easier to blame than looking into the real cause.
Like ThePhule, above, I was more concerned about pesticide residues than GMO crops as such, up until last week. Then I came across the article linked below, about what looks like a well-desi paged experiment showing adverse health effects of a GMO potato compared to a closely related non-GMO variety. Now I am concerned, and will be doing a lot more research on the issue in the weeks to come.
http://www.alternet.org/food/biotech-companies-are-peddling-dangerous-propaganda-about-risks-gm-potatoes?akid=12620.225903.pFo5rC&rd=1&src=newsletter1029351&t=23&paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark
See, this is the nice thing about a junk food diet, You don’t have to worry about whether the stuff in your food is harmful if you know going in that it very much is. 🙂
Potato chips