by Jeremy Bloom
I’ve been asked why we’re writing so much about Monsanto and genetically modified food. “It’s been tested,” they say. “It’s safe,” they say. “There’s nothing to fear. Why are you spreading disinformation?”
I’m not a geneticist. So if I say “We don’t know enough about this,” I’m just one guy. So I’ll let a geneticist answer those questions.
David Suzuki is a geneticist. He’s one of the top scientists in Canada, his textbook is one of the most widely-used in the world, he’s published more than 30 books. As head of the David Suzuki Foundation, he’s both a promoter of science and a popularizer.
So when David Suzuki speaks, I listen (see the end of this article for a list of sources). And David Suzuki says,
“Because we aren’t certain about the effects of GMOs, we must consider one of the guiding principles in science, the precautionary principle. Under this principle, if a policy or action could harm human health or the environment, we must not proceed until we know for sure what the impact will be. And it is up to those proposing the action or policy to prove that it is not harmful.”
It’s complicated
One plus one equals two. That’s simple. But one gene inserted into a complex chromosome may not work in a simple, linear fashion.
Transgenic crops are not simple products like widgets, ipods or even automobiles. They are living organisms that can interact with other creatures in the environment in myriad ways. Nature is complicated. When you modify an organism at a genetic level, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the results are also complicated, and often unexpected.
…Science does not proceed in a linear fashion the way we write up our grant applications, you know—experiment A leads to experiment B to C to a cure for cancer. So all of the supposed benefits of our manipulations are purely speculative. We don’t know how it will all turn out. And then when we create new organisms, new products, and release them in the wild, in our food, in our drugs, we simply don’t know enough to anticipate what the consequences will be.
We don’t know…
The bottom line with GMO is very simple: We simply don’t have the science lined up to make any sort of blanket reassurances that GMO is really safe. Here’s Suzuki:
I’m a geneticist. What bothers me is we have governments that are supposed to be looking out for our health, for the safety of our environment, and they’re acting like cheerleaders for this technology, which… is in its infancy and we have no idea what the technology is going to do.
…At the cutting edge of scientific research, most of our ideas are far from the mark – wrong, in need of revision, or irrelevant. That’s not a derogation of science; it’s the way science advances. We take a set of observations or data, set up a hypothesis that makes sense of them, and then we test the hypothesis. The new insights and techniques we gain from this process are interpreted tentatively and liable to change, so any rush to apply them strikes me as downright dangerous.