Why was there such controversy? Because Mr. Rahman’s pest-resistant eggplant was produced using genetic modification. A gene transferred from a soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (more commonly known by the abbreviation “Bt”), produces a protein that kills the Fruit and Shoot Borer, a species of moth whose larvae feed on the eggplant, without the need for pesticide sprays. (The protein is entirely nontoxic to other insects and indeed humans.)Of course, attachment to political tribes being what they are, perhaps his piece will backfire. One of the initial responses I saw to it was a conservative saying, "He believes in climate change, so he's probably wrong about GMOs being safe too!" Which reminds me that one of these days I should write a piece on the good versus the bad types of skepticism on global warming alarmism.
Conventional eggplant farmers in Bangladesh are forced to spray their crops as many as 140 times during the growing season, and pesticide poisoning is a chronic health problem in rural areas. But because Bt brinjal is a hated G.M.O., or genetically modified organism, it is Public Enemy No.1 to environmental groups everywhere.
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I, too, was once in that activist camp. A lifelong environmentalist, I opposed genetically modified foods in the past. Fifteen years ago, I even participated in vandalizing field trials in Britain. Then I changed my mind.
After writing two books on the science of climate change, I decided I could no longer continue taking a pro-science position on global warming and an anti-science position on G.M.O.s.
There is an equivalent level of scientific consensus on both issues, I realized, that climate change is real and genetically modified foods are safe. I could not defend the expert consensus on one issue while opposing it on the other.
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The environmental movement’s war against genetic engineering has led to a deepening rift with the scientific community. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center and the American Association for the Advancement of Science showed a greater gap between scientists and the public on G.M.O.s than on any other scientific controversy: While 88 percent of association scientists agreed it was safe to eat genetically modified foods, only 37 percent of the public did — a gap in perceptions of 51 points. (The gap on climate change was 37 points; on childhood vaccinations, 18 points.)
On genetic engineering, environmentalists have been markedly more successful than climate change deniers or anti-vaccination campaigners in undermining public understanding of science. The scientific community is losing this battle. If you need visual confirmation of that, try a Google Images search for the term “G.M.O.” Scary pictures proliferate, from an archetypal evil scientist injecting tomatoes with a syringe — an utterly inaccurate representation of the real process of genetic engineering — to tumor-riddled rats and ghoulish chimeras like fish-apples.
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As someone who participated in the early anti-G.M.O. movement, I feel I owe a debt to Mr. Rahman and other farmers in developing countries who could benefit from this technology. At Cornell, I am working to amplify the voices of farmers and scientists in a more informed conversation about what biotechnology can bring to food security and environmental protection.
No one claims that biotech is a silver bullet. The technology of genetic modification can’t make the rains come on time or ensure that farmers in Africa have stronger land rights. But improved seed genetics can make a contribution in all sorts of ways: It can increase disease resistance and drought tolerance, which are especially important as climate change continues to bite; and it can help tackle hidden malnutritional problems like vitamin A deficiency.
We need this technology. We must not let the green movement stand in its way.
In the meantime, have an eggplant.
8 comments:
I wish someone would ask him why, in his opinion, a field full of eggplants- genetically modified or otherwise- isn't climate change? A variety of plants grown together, not to mention a variety of insects, animals, etc...- some of which predate upon the bugs causing this particular problem, is nature's answer. We can grow food in a similar way.
The big GMO problem is that most of them are developed so that the farmer can drench his field with more chemicals. While they could technically come up with better food, what we will end up with is more herbicide, pesticide, etc...- in our bodies.
Agreed that the major problem with most GMO is that it allows farmers to indiscriminately dump Round-up and pesticides. More spraying not less, usually, although there may be exceptions.
Oddly enough, eggplant has been one of our failure plants. We just can't seem to get them to go without being consumed by bugs or other crop failings.
Being a scientist; there is indeed a certain resonance between these two issues - GMOs and climate. In both, extremely complex systems are perturbed and predictions are being made about numerous, often unnamed, parameters. I have no confidence that anybody can predict the impact of any given GMOs on ecology and human health in the 50-100 year timespan. I have equally low confidence that they can predict the climate on such a timescale. This isn't the sort of skepticism that says 'it is this.' It is the kind that says 'nobody currently knows.'
What is the prudent thing to do? We also don't understand the impact of large scale pesticide/herbicide applications, or other food processing choices. I'm not in any position to recommend one or the other of those options, relatively.
What I do - good science - I can supplement with a generalized call to humility in the face of complexity.
August,
I wish someone would ask him why, in his opinion, a field full of eggplants- genetically modified or otherwise- isn't climate change?
A monoculture field is ecological change, but I'm not really clear how it's climate change, which generally refers to changes in temperature, precipitation, etc.
The big GMO problem is that most of them are developed so that the farmer can drench his field with more chemicals. While they could technically come up with better food, what we will end up with is more herbicide, pesticide, etc...- in our bodies.
Certainly, some GMOs are developed in order to be compatible with specific herbicides or pesticides -- various "Roundup ready" crops are the famous example -- but a lot of other GMOs are developed to make a crop that grows better in a different climate (hotter, drier, wetter, etc.) than existing varieties, or a crop which contains a different range of nutrient than standard varieties.
Even when it comes to GMOs such are Roundup-ready corn, one of the major hurdles for approval is that the result is not food which puts dangerous chemicals into people. Which is the sense in which anti-GMO advocates often have a habit of ignoring or selectively using studies in order to insist on dangers that mostly do not appear to be there.
Oddly enough, eggplant has been one of our failure plants. We just can't seem to get them to go without being consumed by bugs or other crop failings.
I've had similar issues -- it seems like every year either they barely produce any eggplants or else bugs get into them and ruin them.
In both, extremely complex systems are perturbed and predictions are being made about numerous, often unnamed, parameters. I have no confidence that anybody can predict the impact of any given GMOs on ecology and human health in the 50-100 year timespan.
I suppose a lot depends on the type of skepticism one's going for here.
For instance, I could certainly see how if people get careless and allow themselves to rely primarily on a few GMO super-varieties of several major crops, some sort of unexpected situation could come up where a new disease or pest crops up which is particularly deadly to those varieties and we find ourselves scrambling to get back lost varieties or characteristics. There are least there's a potential and understandable mechanism we're talking about.
With a more general skepticism of the "maybe eating GMO soy will give us all cancer" variety that crops up in my social media feeds pretty often, it strikes me that there's a lot less of a plausible mechanism and we're talking more about speculation, not that different from the "maybe holding cell phones to our heads so much will cause brain cancer" worries that were big 10-15 years ago but seem to have died down more recently (or just moved out of my social circle.)
Obviously, one can never say that we've proved that such things won't crop up, but it's not necessarily something I spend a lot of time worrying about.
Sorry, failed to be consistent in a comment written slowly in short bits of free time: Only the first two quotes are from August. The third quote is from Jenny and the forth from BenK.
In the political sphere, climate change equals global warming- at least this is what the right charges the left, and for leftist politicians, it is pretty much true.
But for people actually interested in ecology- leftist or not- climate change is also desertification, dead zones in the ocean due to fertilizer run off, the heat island effect from cities, etc... I think I figured this out while reading Restoration Agriculture by Mark Sheppard. Mark is actually farming and designing farms, and as such, he isn't running around asking the government to do something- rather he is trying to do stuff himself. Consequently, he makes a lot more sense than the people who go crying to government do. Government is mostly likely going to do the wrong thing and try to make us all vegan.
The problem with GMOs is that we don't know. Yes, the anti-GMO people are usually heading in the direction of hysteria, but the corporations are heading in their own direction too. People ignore the very real need for farmers to be more robust and be able to do their own seeding, for example.
The patents pervert incentives as they always do.
I found a link which will be a good substitute for me going on about patents in an attempt to explain my last remark:
https://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2012/2012-035.pdf
Thanks for this! As someone whose degree was in biochemistry, the paranoia and hysteria about GMO crops is very distressing to me. Here is a technology with so much potential to help feed the hungry, and poor scientific understanding is leading to its widespread rejection.
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