Is ‘Science’ Just Corporate Lies?
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In the February 10th issue of The New Yorker, Rachel Aviv has written a piece of investigative journalism about a tenured, full professor at the University of California, Berkeley, whose epidemiological work revealed that atrazine, an herbicide manufactured by Syngenta Corporation that’s the second most popular herbicide in the world after Monsanto’s Roundup, causes sexual organ deformities and serious gender abnormalities in amphibians. His work contributes to current research that finds elevated levels of sexual deformities in human babies of mothers who live in areas where atrazine contaminates the drinking water.
Despite Dr. Hayes’s careful science, and the work of other respected scientists, the Environmental Protection Agency keeps approving the chemical’s use, basing its approval on studies paid for by—who else?—Syngenta. Reminds one of the EPA’s continual approval of Monsanto’s Roundup glyphosate herbicide, doesn’t it? Well, Syngenta’s co-opting of the EPA is the carrot in the company’s carrot-and-stick approach to dealing with Dr. Hayes, according to The New Yorker article.
The stick is Syngenta’s campaign to discredit Dr. Hayes, his work, his wife, his background, and to destroy his reputation as a scientist. The article points out that there are whole companies of so-called scientists devoted to discrediting scientific work that threatens the corporate profits of agricultural chemical companies, among other facets of Big Food. I encourage you to read the article, entitled, “A Valuable Reputation.”
Now for some examples. In its February 2, 2014, edition, The New York Times published the following op-ed piece, entitled, “We Need GMO Wheat.” It was written by Jason Lusk, a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Oklahoma State, and the author of “Why You Shouldn’t Buy Organic,” that ran in the Huffington Post on April 18, 2013; the op-ed piece in the Times was co-authored by Henry I. Miller, a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank, and the author of a book entitled, “The Frankenfood Myth.” Here’s part of what they had to say:
Three crops — corn, soybeans and wheat — account for a vast majority of the value of America’s agricultural crop output. But wheat is different in one important respect. While more than 90 percent of the nation’s corn and soybean acres are now planted with seeds genetically engineered to resist insects, herbicides or both, there is not a single acre of genetically engineered wheat being grown commercially in the United States.
Wheat farmers have suffered as a result, as have consumers of bread and pasta, who have been paying higher prices than they might have because fewer and fewer acres are planted in wheat. Without the benefits of the newer molecular techniques of genetic engineering, the nation’s wheat industry will continue to struggle against other commodities that have adopted biotechnology, and against the drought conditions out West. All of this is happening as the planet’s population increases and global wheat demand expands in response.
Why has wheat lagged behind? One reason is that, back in the mid-1990s, corn and soybean farmers avidly embraced the nascent biotechnology revolution, snatching up new, genetically engineered seed varieties. But wheat farmers balked at the potentially higher prices of these new seeds and feared that anti-genetic engineering views held by some of our trading partners would hurt exports.
Today, it’s easy to see why corn and soybean farmers made the switch. Crop yields have increased and farmers have been able to reduce their use of chemical insecticides and shift to less toxic herbicides to control weeds. They’ve also made more money. Over the same period, the amount of land planted in wheat has dropped by about 20 percent, and although yields have increased, productivity growth has been lower than for the crops genetically engineered with molecular techniques.
Monsanto recently said that it had made significant progress in the development of herbicide-tolerant wheat. It will enable farmers to use more environmentally benign herbicides and could be ready for commercial use in the next few years. But the federal government must first approve it, a process that has become mired in excessive, expensive and unscientific regulation that discriminates against this kind of genetic engineering.
The scientific consensus is that existing genetically engineered crops are as safe as the non-genetically engineered hybrid plants that are a mainstay of our diet. The government should be encouraging and promoting these technologies.
There are so many outright lies in this opinion piece that it’s hard to know where to begin. Suffice it to say that GMO crops do not increase yields—just the opposite. Farmers haven’t been able to reduce their use of chemical insecticides and shift to less toxic herbicides—just the opposite. And government approval is not “excessive, expensive, and unscientific” if approval is based on real science and not “science” paid for by the very corporations government is supposed to be regulating. It’s how a sane society keeps itself safe. Finally, there is no “scientific consensus” that GMO crops are as safe as non-GMO crops.
But rather than going over the duplicitous op-ed piece point by point, let me note the following piece published by CNN from Professor David Schubert of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. He addresses the real facts about GMOs and the need for labeling them.
“Most people like to know what they are eating,” Professor Schubert writes. “However, labeling for genetically modified organisms is not required in any state. This is largely because of the money expended by GM seed producers toward blocking food-labeling laws.
“A common claim made by this group is that GM foods have been proved safe to eat and that there is a global scientific consensus to support this statement; therefore, no labeling is needed. However, an examination of the scientific data, along with discussions on this topic in other countries, show that both claims are blatantly false. What is the evidence that some GM foods are hazardous to human health and that consumers should be able to make a choice based upon this information?
“When GMOs were introduced nearly 20 years ago, there was the promise of crops with increased yields and resistance to flooding and salt. Since then, traditional breeding methods have created commercial varieties with these traits, while genetic engineering has created none. For example, recently published data show that conventional breeding of corn and soy increases yields to a greater extent than GM technologies.
“With the promise of reducing the use of agricultural chemicals, most of the current GM crops are supposedly either insect or herbicide resistant. In reality, GM crops have fostered an epidemic of herbicide resistant weeds and insects that are no longer killed by the built-in toxins.
“The result is a massive increase in herbicide use — an additional 527 million pounds over the past 16 years. The major herbicide, glyphosate, is found inside the GM plants we eat, leading to its detection in people. Future GM crops will likely trigger a greater use of more toxic herbicides such as 2,4-D, a component of the Agent Orange defoliant deployed in Vietnam. In addition to these problems, there is increasing evidence that GM crops and the chemicals required for their production are harmful to humans.
“An Associated Press story in October documented the large increase in cancer and birth defects in commercial farming areas of Argentina since the introduction of GM crops. These data confirm recent animal studies showing that GM corn and the herbicides sprayed on it caused a dramatic increase in cancer in the same strain of rats used in FDA drug safety tests. Another large study showed an increase in severe stomach inflammation in pigs caused by GM feed containing insecticidal toxins, a condition that would likely lead to cancer in humans.
“As a result of these new revelations about GM technology, the industry is making a major public relations effort to promote itself, often falsely claiming that there is a ‘consensus’ among scientists that the technology is safe.
“In reality, there is no evidence that GM food is safe for human consumption, nor is there any consensus on this topic within the scientific community. It is critical for the public to educate itself about the realities of GMOs and not be fooled by the rhetoric from companies that sell it.
“Most of the world has studied this issue and concluded that GMOs are not worth the risk. Passing GM labeling initiatives in states will be the initial demonstration that the public understands what is at stake. At the very least, labeling may help reverse the unsustainable trend in this country towards ever increasing industrial GMO farming.”
The take-away from the New Yorker article about Dr. Hayes, the Times’ op-ed piece flacking for the biotech industry, and Professor Schubert’s piece calling out Messrs. Lusk and Miller is that what we always thought of as science—the unbiased empirical search for the truth—is really two realms today. One realm is science as it should be, done by reputable scientists uncorrupted by money, whose findings are repeatable by unbiased researchers. The other is phony “science,” created in corporate boardrooms as illusion for the public, as scientific Potemkin villages designed to influence public opinion, as PR smoke and mirrors—“truthiness,” as Stephen Colbert called it.
In addition to phony science, the big corporations tend to have a “profit before people” mentality that leads them to discredit real science and destroy the reputations of real scientists who expose problems with their products.
Isn’t this the way the mob operates?
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TOXIC CHEMICALS FOUND IN CHILDREN’S CLOTHING
A recent report by Greenpeace detected toxic chemicals in a wide range of children’s’ clothing, The Organic Center reports.
Investigators looked at 82 items of children’s apparel from 25 different countries. Analyses were conducted to detect the presence of nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs), phthalates, organotins, per/poly-fluorinated chemicals (PFCs), and antimony. Researchers found traces of all of these chemicals in many of the children’s products examined, which means that clothing may be a significant source of exposure to pollutants for children.
To avoid many toxic chemicals, make sure to look for the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) symbol when you are shopping for children’s clothing. Any chemical inputs in GOTS certified fabrics such as dyes, auxiliaries and process chemicals must be evaluated and meet basic requirements on toxicity and biodegradability. Additionally, printing methods using phthalates and PVC are prohibited under GOTS certification, so it’s the best way to ensure that your clothing is free of toxic chemicals.
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ORGANIC SOYBEANS SHOW SUPERIOR NUTRITIVE VALUE
Organic soybeans have a healthier nutritional profile than conventionally grown soybeans, according to a recent article in the journal Food Chemistry. The study compared organic soybean batches from Iowa with genetically modified (GM) soybeans and conventional non-GM soybeans grown in the same state. Researchers found that “organic soybeans showed the healthiest nutritional profile with more sugars, such as glucose, fructose, sucrose and maltose. Organic soybeans also had more total protein and zinc, and contained less total saturated fat and total omega-6 fatty acids than both conventional and GM-soy. Another interesting find of the study was that GM soybeans contained high residues of pesticides, showing 3.3mg/kg of glyphosate and 5.7 mg/kg of AMPA. These contaminants were not found in non-GM soybeans, and support previous research suggesting that the use of GM crops enables higher use rates of some pesticides.
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