213 Genetic Harm
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Did you know that Michael Crichton was anti-science in his personal politics? I didn’t, until recently, then a lot of his books made more sense to me. Jurassic Park wrote the book on genetic engineering fears, Prey was about nanotechnology taking over, and in State Of Fear he compared global warming to eugenics and claimed a worldwide conspiracy to suppress climate data.
Here is the study Rob mentions, an analysis of 1783 safety studies regarding human health and environmental impact. In reality, GMO critics cannot point to a single case of actual harm attributed to genetic technology (save your comments on glyphosate for the next round!).
To plan your ensuing comments accordingly, upcoming comic strip topics are; the use of pesticides, business practices of Big Agro, and environmental impact. Please keep it respectful and cite your sources! Personal attacks, anecdotes, arguments by assertion (without evidence), and being mean in general will get your comment moderated. I do moderate each comment individually, so don’t be surprised if it takes a few hours to appear.
What do you mean, are you against genetic engineering?
KATE
Why not label them at least until we know they're safe.
ROB
1873 studies just in the last ten year aren't enough? I bet you can't name on person harmed by GMO's.
KATE
Ray Arnold, Dennis Nedry, and Robert Muldoon.
ROB
Real people!
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My biggest issue with GMO’s is that we have short circuited the process. While selective hybridization and breeding have been going on for generations and produced many plants and animals that wouldn’t appear in nature, it took several generations to introduce one desired trait. Lots of room for failure. Now, we can introduce 2 or 3 new genetic traits in a single generation. Less room for error if something goes wrong. Reference the International Journal of Biological Sciences study of organ failure linked to GMO corn. In 2000, Kraft foods had to recall millions of tortilla shells after it was revealed GMO corn not approved for human consumption was accidentally used.
Technically, by replacing only a single gene rather than randomly combining tens of throusands of genes – there is less room for failure. Do you have a link to that study?
http://www.ijbs.com/v05p0706.htm
The data looks very noisy to me. As the authors acknowledge, the study was substantially underpowered, limiting its explanatory value. The lack of a consistent effect for most “significant” effects across either dose or gender substantially weakens the claim that these effects are real and not noise, although the authors seem to miss this point and claim Monsanto was biased to say so. Although their methodology descriptions appear coherent, their choice of methods do not seem appropriate. For instance, they use a principal components analysis to examine gender effects when a cluster analysis would be more appropriate. A substantial portion of the data they present fails to demonstrate what they claim it does (e.g. the trend line in Figure 5b is clearly inappropriate as no trend whatsoever is evident, many of the other graphs superimpose trends that are barely evidence, making them highly susceptible to outliers and random variation). Furthermore, it is not clear how the variables they evaluate are supposed to demonstrate toxicity. For example, a -17% decrease in absolute lymphocyte count may indicate a lower rate of infection in that group, rather than a toxic effect, even if it were a real effect, rather than noise as I suspect. At best, the study suggests hypotheses for testing in future research. It lacks the statistical power to demonstrate anything on its own.
P.S. It is also very strange and unprofessional that the authors grand-stand against Monsanto in the methods section. Such commentary has no place in a methodology section, even if one chooses to include it. (Commentary belongs in either the introduction or discussion.)
He’s referring to another of Seralini’s horrible studies. You can find it here:
http://www.ijbs.com/v05p0706.htm
“not approved for human consumption” means exactly that, at least as far as I can imagine. Do you have a link to the exact reasoning for the Kraft recall you mention? I suspect that it was nothing more than “this hasn’t been approved” as opposed to “this has been explicitly banned”. The FDA is pretty strict on approving things for consumption, or at least ostensibly it is.
You’re referring to Starlink corn, right? That only happened because a production plant didn’t think to segregate corn meant only for animal consumption and corn meant for human consumption. Nevertheless, I think there’s a key detail missing, there: the genes used to produce Bt corn have since been cleared for human consumption by the FDA.
Also, it’s not entirely true that you can introduce 2 or 3 new genetic traits in a single generation. The way recombinant DNA works is by taking a gene that’s either from the target organism or from another organism, modifying it (which can be tricky if the code isn’t from the target organism, in which case you’d need to rewrite certain amino acid sequences so it’ll match the target organism–think of it as replacing every instance of “insert pin X into slot Y” with “attach part A to part B” in an instruction manual), and testing the outcome. The testing part is a grossly time-consuming process, largely because you have to wait for cells to mature to determine if the desired effect actually occurred, then analyze the gene sequences to determine where things went right or wrong.
Either way, you’re still talking about several generations (even hundreds) before the target organism adopts the accepted genetic traits; it’s just that those generations mostly occur on the cellular level and therefore only take a few hours or days to test and analyze, plus the fact that those generations are grown on a petri dish, not in what most people would think of as an actual organism.
Not that I entirely disagree that we should be cautious about the use of genetic engineering, of course, but as the child of two biochemists, I feel that the assertion that the process all occurs in one generation is not only wrong, but belittles the efforts of those involved.
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As far as references…I’ve got several shelves of biochemistry textbooks and issues of the Journal of Biological Chemistry extending from 1990-2014 (and I’d have this year’s issues if my parents weren’t still reading them), so I can’t point to a specific reference that’d back what I’ve said, but–and it galls me to use wikipedia as a reference–I find that their articles for the Starlink recall and rDNA (linked below) to be sufficient overview. Mind, also, I’m an engineer, not a biochemist; I’m fortunate to have two professionals in the field at my disposal to explain things like this that are beyond by range of expertise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarLink_corn_recall
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recombinant_DNA
Y’know, even in Jurassic park the genetic engineering aspect wasn’t really the problem. Sabotage, failure to do preliminary testing, and really bad park organisation were. If they had just kept a few raptors in reinforced terrariums and shipped them to zoos with a lot of resources kids all over the world would have thought it was awesome. Heck, if they had cloned dodos instead they might have found great success in food sales.
When people complain about GMOs I like to point out that the prior method of altering seeds genetically was to bathe them in radiation until they found a mutant plant that they liked better than the original. People seem to think that toying with our food is new. Who knows how many of our heirloom crops actually are radiation mutations.
I think you mean, “Most new varieties of crops were created through selecting for desirable traits over several generations.” not strictly from irradiating. The real danger from GMO crops is loss of genetic diversity that is later used to breed blight resistant crops. When one or two varieties dominate the market, we have no fall back when those varieties succumb to a new variant of disease. Science is currently facing a new “super” wheat blight. Google Norman Borlaug or Ug99. The majority of store bananas are clones of the cavandish variety, the Panama Blight will take them out in the next decade or so and plant breeders are working on new varieties to keep ahead of the blight. Genetic diversity is needed so we have something to draw resistant genes FROM, and if you spend a few minuets doing even shallow research you will discover that we have lost hundreds of strains in a wide range of foodcrops because seed manufacturers like Monsanto have purchased seed distribution companies and discontinued them from the market. In fact, Monsanto is now the largest holder of home seed companies (Gurney’s, Cook’s Garden, Jungs, Garden’s Alive, Tomato Growers Supply, Totally Tomato, Vermont Bean Seed Co., Wayside Gardens, Willhite Seed Co., Ferry-Morse, Etc.) Make of that what you will.
Biodiversity is not a problem of genetic engineering, it’s a problem of modern agriculture dating back to before the Great Potato Famine. Genetic engineering could be a tool to prevent blight when it arises, such as the GM papaya resistant to the ringspot virus.
Yeah, he was pretty anti-science on a lot of topics. It’s rather depressing since his books are so good. And now Jurassic World isn’t helping with their “genetically modified hybrid” nonsense. It’s all just so cheesy and implies that the technical know how of a genome needed to create such a thing somehow also means the creators have no idea of the results of it? Complete BS.
As for labeling, I always default to the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s wonderful statement on the subject:
http://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/migrate/uploads/AAAS_GM_statement.pdf
And this article in Nature Biotechnology is also pretty great:
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v32/n12/full/nbt.3094.html
All in all, a lot of the labeling nonsense in my eyes boils down to that anti-GMO people can’t even come up with a proper definition of what they are claiming GMOs are. All of their definitions invariably include all other kinds of crops. That largely happens because the anti-GMO people almost always have no idea how GM crops are actually made. Agrobacterium means nothing to them and their understanding of horizontal gene transfer is paltry at best.
I am curious about the effect of insect “resistant” (I use quotation marks simply because I cannot think of a term for a plant which produces its own pesticides) crops on pollinators, especially bees. I have no issue with GMOs, but if they are a contributing factor in the decline of pollinators, especially bees, always the bees, I think their use should be curtailed until they can be made bee friendly. Bees are important. Without them humanity is kind of screwed in terms of any crop that doesn’t self pollinate.
Plants naturally produce dozens, if not hundreds of pesticides on their own. And they develop new ones all the time. More than 99.99% of all the pesticides you ingest in your food are natural ones made by the plants themselves. And, no, just because they’re natural doesn’t mean they’re safe. A large number of them are carcinogenic or worse, but the point is that we eat them in such low doses that they aren’t a real concern.
Read this study:
http://www.pnas.org/content/87/19/7777.abstract
I’ve enjoyed his writings. The issue is not the science. The issue is giving guns to monkeys. My favorite part from the books (which got cut from the films) was when Malcolm pointed out that the when we earn power (eg. black belt) we mature so as to not abuse it. But when people are simply given power (eg. guns) abuse of that power will happen (sooner or later).
Scientists earn the knowledge they discover. Those of us who bother to seek a thorough understanding of a technology also earn that knowledge. People who simply receive the snippets that the media gives them without bothering with further research do not. They do not earn it, they do not fully understand it, they don’t realize how to use it properly. And some of them allow misunderstanding to turn into fear.
Personally, I think that’s the worst part. We should explore the unknown, not flee from it. To me, that’s what it means to be a scientist.
^^this … 100% this
Slightly different take on things: in my stance, we label ingredients that are different than the original ingredient. The question then becomes whether GMO plants are different than the original plant. As I recall (but I don’t have time to look up), the Supreme Court ruled in a patent law case which said that GMOs are allowed to be patented (not just as a process, but as a substance, implying that they would be distinct from the original life form, as you cannot patent the original life form). This would mean that, under U.S. law, they should legally be labeled (for reasons independent of whether or not they are safe or not; I used to be skeptical, now I am less so, having seen the writing on the wall on this matter.)
They are a distinct breed that can be patented, just like all new plant breeds have been allowed to be patented since the 1930 Plant Patent Act, not to mention the 1970 Plant Variety Patent Act. The patent is based on them having a new trait.
You do know most new conventional crop species, including organic crops, are patented when they are made, right? Why does one kind of trait need to be labeled, a la GMOs, and not all the others? What is the point of labeling such traits in the first place?
I did not know that, actually; most of my actual knowledge was based on hearsay (I had a project that was occupying me too much to look up further information at the time, but the raw information was from a biased-but-reasonably-reputable source). I am curious (although not curious enough to go searching through many pages of case and patent law) where the distinction is drawn there, however.
IMO, though, ideally, they would all be labeled to some degree. Perhaps not in the usual fashion, but by a code of some sort that could be looked up by those curious (so as to not have ingredient lists a mile long)? I’m concerned that consumers don’t have enough information in the case where we later find there was one crop which was, in fact, less safe than it was first thought to be. I don’t expect that to be the norm (the GMO debate to date has convinced me of that), but proper public-access documentation is rarely a downside. Companies, at least, should have complete knowledge of their own product; such a system, although certainly taxing, would both allow for big-data advances in identifying plausible issues (e.g., search for ingredients correlated with cancer, do follow-up) and allow for rapid identification and removal of any unhealthy substances discovered post-approval.
Is this (theoretical) idea more expensive and harder than not drawing distinctions? Yes, but I also think it will enable a system which is more safe with fewer entry barriers.
That said, this argument now is only tangentially related to my previous argument and is starting to diverge from the point of labeling GMOs as a class, particularly from the perspective of “general GMO safety” vs. “safety of more details being publicly available in general,” so I suppose I am now essentially pro-GMO from that perspective.
Although I agree that the panic of the ignorant herd is no reason to hold back science, I also stand firm in my agreement with one of the same Jurassic Park characters you caricatured there, when he said “you were so busy seeing if you could, you didn’t stop to think if you SHOULD”.
I love science and what it brings us. But I also wonder if we really think it through sometimes. The extreme argument is the classic “what would happen if you gave a nuke to a caveman” – yeah, he’d likely beat it with a club and since nuclear weapons don’t detonate the same way TNT does it probably isn’t an issue. But the premise is a good one: even educated people can be untrustworthy with knowledge that we as a people aren’t ready for yet.
I’ll pose one example: let’s say we found a single gene sequence that, if adjusted, would open up our life expectency by a factor of 4. This would be a great thing, right? Or not? We already have a burgeoning global population, thinning food and water supplies, and still have a brutal overall mentality. Until we learned, as a people, to live in peace while better managing our supplies and most of all back off on the reproductive throttle a significant amount – we aren’t ready for an advance like that. But what if we could? Should we?
An extreme and fantastical example, I know. But that’s the other thing, it sometimes takes an extreme example just to get us to sit down and ponder the concept. Every day we close our eyes and ignore it when it’s just one step, not paying attention to what’s at the end of the path that step leads us down.
Tomato Rex doesn’t want to be fertilized, Tomato Rex wants to root!
Jeyara, I have to say it has been hilarious watching you comment your way through the entire archive in two days – and this comment took the cake. You rock!
*blushes* To be honest, I haven’t kept up with the current-day strips, because it’s already in my “rereading the archives” list. You, sir, as the author of this comic, rock. (I’m glad you’re amused and not annoyed by my archive-commenting!)