Dubious facts and wild claims mar GMO debate

Editor,

My students and I recently attended the public talks about genetically modified organisms, GMOs, organized by UNM Fair Trade Initiative and Save New Mexico Seeds Coalition. The speakers were Dr. Ignacio Chapela via phone from Berkeley and New Mexico plant breeder Richard Bernard. I was deeply dismayed by the unsubstantiated facts and conspiracy theories presented.

My students also noticed that both speakers used unsupported generalizations and said something along the lines of “trust me.” The presentations would have made a greater impression had they included reactions to findings in the scientific literature about GMOs.

There have been extensive results concluding that GMOs do not have adverse effects on human health, on animal health or on the environment. Studies have found that the financial well-being of farmers who grow GMO crops is often improved by yield increase, as is the physical health of those using less pesticide. This has been especially positive for the developing world. None of this was mentioned.

The speakers would carry much more intellectual weight if they’d argue with data.

Why not debate the studies showing that organic crop yields are not as high as GMO crops, and that organic may not be a solution for feeding a planetary population growing by 80 million people a year? Why not debate the merits or demerits of intellectual property rights for innovation? Why not discuss why 14 million farmers in 25 nations buy GMO seeds, instead of telling the audience that Monsanto has duped them all? Why not debate why Chapela’s work was the only article ever retracted by the journal Nature?

A University’s mission is to teach critical thinking. In my human rights course, we study the activist position in the movies “The Future of Food” and “Food, Inc,” and pieces by Vandana Shiva.

We also read opposing evidence in books such as “Whole Earth Discipline: Why Dense Cites, Nuclear Power, Transgenic Crops, Restored Wildlands, and Geoengineering are Necessary,” “Mendel in the Kitchen: A Scientist’s View of Genetically Modified Food” and “Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly.” We read that in a summary of 81 separate scientific studies conducted over a 15-year period, all financed by the EU rather than private industry, research on GM plants and derived products so far developed and marketed has not shown any new risks to human health or the environment.  

A Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities report states that “food from insect resistant GMO maize was probably healthier than from non-GMO maize due to lower average levels of the fungal toxins that insect damage can cause.”  On a “fact sheet” handed out at the event, however, GM foods were implicated in “a whole host of cancers and other diseases” without data supporting the claim.

Another statement is negative about hybrid seeds without acknowledging that organic farmers use them. Public debate about these issues is essential. There are problems with biotechnology. However, when these issues get confused with conspiracy theories, constructive inquiry is thwarted. Ignoring evidence cannot advance the truth nearly as well as debating it can.

Sarita Cargas
UNM faculty