GM(Woes) | Ghostbusters, GMOs, and the Feigned Expertise of Nobel Laureates
Moderator’s Note: Last week a controversy erupted just as
the Roberts-Stabinow Digital Divide GMO labeling law was being discussed in the
Senate. It involves a letter signed by 100+ Nobel laureates attacking
Greenpeace for being “anti-scientific” in its stance against the proliferation
and continued use of genetically engineered organisms.
The letter is
a defense of “Golden Rice”, a GMO said to address vitamin deficiencies
associated with blindness in the Global South and perhaps one of the worst of
the frequent scientific frauds perpetrated by biotechnology interests. The
Nobel Prize recipients fell for a zombie rice story that refuses to die and persists
as a central legitimizing narrative in the pseudo-humanitarian rhetoric that
regularly spews from the pro-GMO propaganda machine. I have written about this in
the past to show how Monsanto and the other Gene Giants are spending hundreds
of millions on a deceptive campaign to misinform the public about the fake
scientific consensus they spin based on inadequately designed industry-led
studies of risk, toxicology, and food safety (see the post of May 2, 2014).
It should be
further noted that scientists and activists in the food and seed sovereignty
movements, including Vandana Shiva, have shown two things about this so-called
miracle rice crop: (1) Advances in eliminating blindness among children in the
Global South, where they have been possible, worked by addressing access to
healthy and culturally appropriate foods and diets; getting rid of hunger and poverty
greatly reduces the prevalence of nutritionally triggered blindness, and many
other maladies for that matter. (2) The scientific claims about Golden Rice are
fabricated exaggerations. Researchers with Vandana Shiva’s Seed Freedom project
explain the gist of the problem:
Since the daily average requirement of vitamin A is 750
micrograms of vitamin A and 1 serving contains 30g of rice according to dry
weight basis, ‘Vitamin A rice’ would only provide 9.9 micrograms which is 1.32%
of the required allowance. Even taking
the 100g figure of daily consumption of rice used in the technology transfer
paper would only provide 4.4% of the RDA. In order to meet the full needs of
750 micrograms of vitamin A from rice, an adult would have to consume 2 kg (272g)
of rice per day. This implies that one
family member would consume the entire family ration of 10kg. (See the research
on this question at Seed Freedom, here).
Moreover, it
has been noted by numerous scientific experts and other observers that none of
the signers of the letter have any substantive research experience in the
fields of environmental risk science, toxicology, or food safety. The group of
Nobel Laureates includes: 1 peace prize, 8 economists, 24 physicists, 33
chemists, 41 doctors. One critic of the letter, Claire Robinson of GM Watch, adds
the observation, quoting Phillip Stark, Associate Dean, Division of Mathematical snd Physical Sciences and Professor of Statistics at University of California-Berkeley, that science is “about evidence not authority. What do they
know of agriculture? Have they done relevant research? Science is supposed to
be ‘show me’ not ‘trust me’…Nobel Prize or not.”
This leads me
to make another observation about the unethical nature of this letter which is an
example of the deception of scientific authority masquerading as expertise. The
only expert in agriculture on the list of signers is the ghostly Norman
Borlaug, who is of course the “Father of the Green Revolution”. And herein lies
the basic problem: Borlaug was no friend of Indigenous farmers, seed savers,
and plant breeders. He was guilty of imposing high-input hybrid seeds developed
by technicians in lab-white who never consulted or developed relations of
solidarity with farmers. This was arrogant top-down agricultural managerialism
and did a lot to damage the prospects for food sovereignty. As one recent study
of the failure of Golden Rice notes:
The Green Revolution spread generic, disembedded high-input
seeds to replace locally adapted landraces as well as peasant attitudes and
practices associated with them. The disembeddedness of Golden Rice that boosts
its value as a public relations vehicle has also been the main impediment in it
reaching farmers’ fields, as it has proved difficult to breed into varieties
that grow well specifically in the Philippines.[1]
The
disembeddedness of GMO crops is the heart of this problem and the Nobel
laureates have failed to understand how culture intersects with agriculture in
ways most physicists and neoliberal economists cannot fully comprehend unless
they open their minds to other ways of knowing and being in the world. Anyone
with the intelligence to become a Nobel laureate surely has a moral obligation
to understand this cultural context before participating in an act of epistemic
violence designed to justify continued corporate domination of our food systems
and dismiss our scientific counter-claims and evidence as ideological puffery.
We may also
need to recruit the Ghostbusters since at least two of the signers are dead. Alfred
G Gilman died on Dec 23 2015 and Norman Borlaug died on Sept 12, 2009.
I am reposting
the insightful critique of the letter prepared by Claire Robinson of GM Watch.
The original post can be found here at: GM Watch.
Source note:
[1] Glenn
Davis Stone and Dominic Glover 2016. Disembedding grain: Golden Rice, the Green
Revolution, and heirloom seeds in the Philippines. Agriculture and Human Values. April 16, 2016. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10460-016-9696-1.
doi:10.1007/s10460-016-9696-1.
Pro-GMO campaign
exploits Nobel laureates to attack Greenpeace and fool the people
THE
MISUSE OF AUTHORITY
MASQUERADING AS EXPERTISE
Greenpeace
is being criticized for blocking GMO golden rice – even though the crop is
years away from being ready, reports Claire Robinson
A new
pro-GMO propaganda campaign has been launched in which, in the words of a
Washington Post article,
“more then 100 Nobel laureates have signed a letter
urging Greenpeace to end its opposition to genetically modified organisms
(GMOs). The letter asks Greenpeace to cease its efforts to block introduction
of a genetically engineered strain of rice that supporters say could reduce
Vitamin-A deficiencies causing blindness and death in children in the
developing world.”
In highly
emotive language, the letter,
published by a shadowy website called supportprecisionagriculture.org, claims,
“Greenpeace has spearheaded opposition to Golden Rice, which has the potential
to reduce or eliminate much of the death and disease caused by a vitamin A
deficiency (VAD), which has the greatest impact on the poorest people in Africa
and Southeast Asia.”
The letter
calls upon Greenpeace “to cease and desist in its campaign against Golden Rice
specifically, and crops and foods improved through biotechnology in general,
and upon governments “to reject Greenpeace's campaign against Golden Rice
specifically, and crops and foods improved through biotechnology in general;
and to do everything in their power to oppose Greenpeace's actions and
accelerate the access of farmers to all the tools of modern biology, especially
seeds improved through biotechnology. Opposition based on emotion and dogma
contradicted by data must be stopped.”
The letter
ends with an impassioned rhetorical question: “How many poor people in the
world must die before we consider this a ‘crime against humanity’?”
The problem
with this picture is that the “emotion and dogma” in this case do not belong to
Greenpeace but to those who claim or imply that GM golden rice is ready to
deploy and that only anti-GMO activists are holding it back.
That’s
because in reality, as Prof Glenn Davis Stone pointed out
in a peer-reviewed study
co-authored with development expert Dominic Glover, GM golden rice still isn’t
ready and there’s no evidence that activists are to blame for the delay.
In 2014 the
body responsible for the rollout of golden rice, the International Rice
Research Institute (IRRI), announced
that the rice had given disappointing yields in field trials and needed further
R&D to produce a crop that farmers would be willing to grow. Stone commented,
“The rice simply has not been successful in test plots of the rice breeding
institutes in the Philippines, where the leading research is being done.”
Stone’s study showed
that the rice is still years away from being ready.
And far from
the rice being held up by over-stringent regulations fostered by over-zealous
anti-GMO activists, as some pro-GMO campaigners have claimed, Stone pointed out
that GM golden rice “has not even been submitted for approval to the regulatory
agency, the Philippine Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI).”
Indeed, how
could it have been submitted to regulators, given that IRRI says it’s not ready
for release and that it hasn’t been tested for toxicity, let alone efficacy in
combating vitamin A deficiency in the target malnourished populations?
As
Greenpeace stated in its response
to the campaign:
“Accusations
that anyone is blocking genetically engineered ‘golden’ rice are false.
‘Golden’ rice has failed as a solution and isn’t currently available for sale,
even after more than 20 years of research. As admitted by the International
Rice Research Institute, it has not been proven to actually address Vitamin A
Deficiency. So to be clear, we are talking about something that doesn’t even
exist.”
Authority over expertise
The laureates’
letter relies for its impact entirely on the supposed authority of the
signatories. Unfortunately, however, none appear to have relevant expertise, as
some commentators were quick to point out. Philip Stark, associate dean,
division of mathematical and physical sciences and professor of statistics at
the University of California, Berkeley, revealed on Twitter his own analysis of
the expertise of the signatories: “1 peace prize, 8 economists, 24 physicists,
33 chemists, 41 doctors”. He added that science is “about evidence not
authority. What do they know of agriculture? Done relevant research? Science is
supposed to be ‘show me’, not ‘trust me’… Nobel prize or not.”
Devon G.
Peña, PhD, an anthropologist at the University of Washington Seattle and an
expert in indigenous agriculture, posted a comment to the new campaign’s
website in which he called the laureates’ letter “shameful”. He noted that the
signatories were “mostly white men of privilege with little background in risk
science, few with a background in toxicology studies, and certainly none with
knowledge of the indigenous agroecological alternatives. All of you should be
stripped of your Nobels.”
The lack of
expertise among the letter signatories contrasts markedly with that of the man
whose work the new propaganda campaign seems to be attempting to discredit.
Glenn Davis Stone – who has never opposed GM golden rice – is an expert on crop
use and technology change among poor farmers, including rice farmers in the
Philippines, the country targeted for the golden rice rollout – if it ever
happens. He has been following the evidence on the progress of golden rice for
years and has published extensively on the topic.
In other
words, unlike the laureates, he knows what he’s talking about.
Who is behind the letter?
The new
propaganda campaign is said
to have been organized by Sir Richard J. Roberts. Roberts is a Nobel Laureate
in physiology or medicine for the discovery of genetic sequences known as
introns, and chief scientific officer for New England Biolabs. According to
their website, New England
Biolabs are “a collective of scientists committed to developing innovative
products for the life sciences industry… a recognized world leader in the
discovery, development and commercialization of recombinant and native enzymes
for genomic research.”
Given these
facts, it is surprising that Roberts claims
that he has “no financial interest in GMO research”.
According to
the writer and researcher Colin Todhunter, Roberts has been propagandizing
for GM food and crops in India. Todhunter says Roberts' speech included
emotional blackmail in the form of a claim that millions of people in the third
world would die of starvation unless GM crops were introduced, as well as
highly questionable assertions about the safety of the technology.
Conflicts of
interest and bias aside, if you think it’s unlikely that Roberts alone would be
able to mobilize over a hundred Nobel laureates to launch a campaign that gives
patently false information about a GM crop that may never see the light of day
in real farmers’ fields, you are not alone.
Some odd
goings-on at the press conference announcing the letter may give a clue. Tim
Schwab of the NGO, Food & Water Watch and a Greenpeace representative tried
to attend the press event, held at the National Press Club. However, Schwab
reported, “We were barred at the door from entry – by none other than Jay
Byrne, whose long relationship with Monsanto needs no elaboration.”
Byrne is a former Monsanto PR man who
now heads the PR firm to the biotech industry, v-Fluence.
Schwab
commented that it was “a bizarre choice for this campaign to have Byrne play
bouncer.” He added, “Byrne said only credentialed press were allowed to attend.
Seconds later I saw a representative from CSPI (an NGO) entering the room.
Byrne said some NGOs were invited to attend. Really? Why not Greenpeace – the
subject of this campaign?”
Schwab tweeted,
“Nobel laureate #gmo #goldenrice press event would be a lot more credible if
industry guy wasn't blacklisting NGOs.”
Why now?
The timing
of this press event may be significant. Could it be timed to coincide with the
run-up to the GMO labelling vote in the US Senate, with the added ‘bonus’ of
burying Stone’s inconvenient golden rice critique?
Whatever the
answer to that question, the 'supportprecisionagriculture.org' campaign is
shamelessly exploiting a group of Nobel laureates in a propaganda exercise that
is actively misleading the public, the media, and governments.
Update 30 June, 20:00 hrs: GMWatch has been alerted to the fact
that the website for the laureates’ letter is supportprecisionagriculture.org,
but the .com version, supportprecisionagriculture.com, reroutes to the Genetic
Literacy Project, which US Right to Know calls
an “agrichemical industry front group… with unknown funding that regularly
attacks activists, journalists and scientists who raise concerns about the
health and environmental risks of genetically engineered foods and pesticides.”
Its executive director is Jon Entine.
Update 1 July 2016: A GMWatch reader has pointed out to us
that the second organizer
of the laureates’ letter alongside Richard J. Roberts is Phillip A. Sharp, who
works at the David H. Koch Institute at MIT.
An article
for the website Science Alert about the “107 laureates” publicity stunt
describes Sharp only as “the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology”.
What the
article fails to mention is that Sharp is a biotech entrepreneur with interests
in GMO research. In 1978 he co-founded
the biotechnology and pharmaceutical company Biogen and in 2002 he co-founded
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, which uses RNAi gene silencing
genetic engineering technologies to manufacture therapeutics.
To be clear,
GMWatch does not oppose the use of genetic technologies in contained use
situations, such as medicine, as long as there is informed consent by the
patient to the therapy and no risk to non-target populations and the
environment. However, Sharp’s interests in biotech companies should be
disclosed in any GMO advocacy exercises he engages in, just as they would be if
he were to publish a paper on GMO technologies in any reputable scientific
journal.
Does Sharp’s
interests in medical biotech constitute a conflict of interest when it comes to
his advocacy for GM in food and agriculture?
It is true
that medical uses of GM are separate from food and ag uses and are regulated by
different laws. It is a perfectly cogent position to oppose genetic engineering
in food and ag while supporting medical use or remaining neutral to it.
However, from
a crude industry perspective, the less public concerns there are around GM
technologies, the better. That’s presumably why industry lobby groups like BIO represent food and ag alongside other
sectors of the biotech industry, including medicine. And why we should treat
lobbying for GM crops by medical biotech entrepreneurs with the same skepticism
as if they were involved in the GM crops industry.
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