Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives

by Michael Specter

  Does organic food carry a lower environmental footprint than food grown with the use of synthetic pesticides? The answer to that is complicated but it certainly isn’t yes. Locally grown food has environmental benefits that are easy to understand. Agricultural researchers at Iowa State University have reported that the food miles—the distance a product travels from farm to plate—attached to items that one buys in a grocery store are twenty-seven times higher than those for goods bought from local sources. American produce, every cauliflower or radish, travels an average of nearly fifteen hundred miles before it ends up at our dinner table. That doesn’t make for fresh, tasty food and it certainly doesn’t ease carbon emissions.

  People assume that food grown locally is organic (and that organic food is grown locally). Either may be true, but often neither is the case. It’s terrific news that Michelle Obama has decided to grow vegetables at the White House; her family will eat better, not because the food is organic, but because it will be fresh. Go to a nearby farmers’ market and buy a tomato or apple that was grown by conventional means. It will taste good if it was recently picked. Then buy an apple from the organic section of your local supermarket. It will have been grown according to standards established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture: no synthetic pesticides, no genetic manipulation.

  That doesn’t mean it was picked when it was ripe. If those organic apples aren’t local, they ripened while they were stored— usually after having been sprayed with ethylene gas to turn them red from green (ethylene is one of the many chemicals permitted under the USDA’s contradictory and mystifying organic guidelines). The British Soil Association rules permit the use of ethylene too, as a trigger for what it refers to as “degreening” bananas. The association says that it’s acceptable to use ethylene in the ripening process for organic bananas being imported into Europe, in part because “without a controlled release of ethylene bananas could potentially ripen in storage.” In other words, they would begin to undergo the organic process known as rotting.

  Food grown organically is assumed to be better for human health than food grown in conventional ways. Recent studies don’t support that supposition, though. In 2008, for example, researchers funded by the Danish government’s International Center for Research in Organic Food Systems set out to look at the effect of three different approaches to cultivating nutrients in carrots, kale, peas, potatoes, and apples; they also investigated whether there were differences in the retention of nutrients from organically grown produce. The crops were grown in similar soil, on adjacent fields, and at the same time so that they experienced the same weather conditions. The organic food was grown on organic soil, but it was all harvested and treated in the same manner. The produce was fed to rats over a two-year period. Researchers, led by Susanne Bügel, an associate professor in the department of human nutrition at the University of Copenhagen, reported in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture that the research “does not support the belief that organically grown foodstuffs generally contain more major and trace elements.” Indeed, she and her team found no differences in the nutrients present in the crops after harvest, and no evidence that the rats retained different levels of nutrients depending on how the food was grown.

  If organic food isn’t clearly better for the environment or our health, if it doesn’t necessarily carry lower carbon costs or cost less money, will people stop buying it? Probably not. Look at what’s happening with milk. Pasteurization has made dairy food safe enough to serve as one of the foundations of the American diet. Raw milk is legal in nearly half the states, however, and it is easy to buy in the others. There are raw milk clubs, furtive Web sites, and clandestine milk-drinking clubs all over America today. I spoke to a “dealer” at the Union Square farmers’ market in New York one morning. He didn’t actually have the “stuff ” with him, but he was willing to arrange a meet.

  This would be funny if it wasn’t deadly. As the University of Iowa epidemiologist Tara Smith has reported on her blog, Aetiology, several deaths and more than a thousand illnesses have been linked to raw milk consumption between 1998 and 2005 in the United States—a tenfold increase from the previous decade. And the business is booming. “Raw milk is like a magic food for children,” said Sally Fallon, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, a group that supports the consumption of whole, natural foods. Its advocates claim that raw milk relieves allergies, asthma, autism, and digestive disorders. No data exists to support any of those assertions.

  There is plenty of data associated with the consumption of raw milk, however. In 1938, for example, milk caused 25 percent of all outbreaks of food- and water-related sickness in the United States. Universal pasteurization brought that figure to 1 percent by 1993, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nutrition advocacy group in Washington. “It’s stunning,” Marion Nestle said to me, “to think that so many people have decided to reject one of the most successful public health achievements we have had in the past century. It really makes you wonder what people want and who they trust.”

  CANOLA—AN ACRONYM for Canadian oil, low acid—has been around for less than fifty years. A derivative of the ancient rapeseed plant, canola has some attractive properties, including a lower level of saturated fat than most oils, and a rich supply of omega-3 fatty acids. In 2009, the German chemical company BASF introduced a strain that is resistant to a particular class of herbicides called imidazolinones. Douse the crop and almost magically the weeds die while the canola remains unharmed. Engineering crops to do that has been the biggest priority for biotechnology firms.

  When freed to use a single effective spray that kills weeds without harming their crops, farmers need less herbicide. That saves money and helps the environment. (In China, during 1997, the first year cotton resistant to the bollworm was introduced, nearly half a billion dollars was saved on pesticides. More importantly, cotton farmers there were able to eliminate 150 million pounds of insecticide in a single year. As Pamela Ronald has pointed out, that is nearly the same amount of insecticide as is used in California every year.)

  Monsanto introduced the herbicide Roundup in 1996. Roundup Ready seeds, which were engineered to resist that herbicide, have dominated every market in which they are sold. Yet their very ability to tolerate chemicals has provoked controversy. When used excessively (and improperly), Roundup can linger in fields long after it has done its job. The same is true for organic herbicides, but there is at least one difference: genetically engineered crops are scrutinized in a way that no other food has ever been. That won’t happen to the new canola from BASF, though, because scientists bred the mutation it needs to resist herbicides without relying on the techniques of biotechnology. In other words, they did “naturally” what genetic engineering does in a lab. And to opponents of genetically engineered food that makes all the difference.

  Nature hasn’t noticed. Despite its pedigree, the BASF canola seems to pose more of a threat to the environment than any crop from a test tube. “Some crops cannot be planted in the year after” the herbicides are sprayed on the new canola strain, according to University of Melbourne plant geneticist Richard Roush. In test sites, he found residues lingering in the soil at levels far greater than any caused by Roundup or similar herbicides. “From an agronomic standpoint,” he told the New Scientist, “it has all the issues of genetically modified canola seed, but it is arguably worse.”

  A plant bred in a laboratory is no more or less “real” than a baby born through in vitro fertilization. The traits matter, not the process. A crop doesn’t know if it emerged after a week of molecular research or three thousand years of evolution. The new strain of canola is not yet available commercially; when it is, European farmers will be able to plant it anywhere they like. If it were the product of biotechnology, however, European regulations would prevent farmers from using it at all. Nobody should assume that a food is safe because it has been genetically engineered. But should we honestly accept assertions that organic fo
od is more socially progressive than food made with chemical herbicides? Or that raw milk possesses healing powers?

  Change is hard to accept, and change for no apparent reason is especially upsetting. Purple tomatoes and fluorescent fish seem freakishly unnatural. (Snapdragon genes placed in tomatoes cause their skin to turn dark purple. Glofish that have fluorescent genes come in “three stunningly beautiful colors,” according to the company that makes them: “Starfire Red®, Electric Green®, and Sun-burst Orange®.”) There is a difference between psychedelic fish and essential foods, however. After years of opposition, the French government declared in 2009 that a single strain of corn modified to resist the European corn borer, which has been harvested on millions of acres around the world without causing harm, was safe enough to plant and eat. Not everyone in the French government concurred, however. The environment minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, announced that he had no intention of lifting the ban because it would pose too great a threat.

  Fear of genetically engineered foods has warped some of the very principles that environmentalists hold most sacred: that resources should be conserved, and the earth farmed wisely. Bt, for example, is an insecticide derived from the spores and toxic crystals of the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis and even organic farmers spray it on their plants. Place the gene inside the plant, however, and it becomes unacceptable (taking us, as Prince Charles would have it, into “God’s realm”). One recent study in northern China, though, demonstrated that genetically engineered cotton, altered to express the insecticide Bt, not only reduced pest populations among those crops, but also among others nearby that had not been modified with Bt. It can’t destroy every pest, but no herbicide comes closer.

  For many people the scariest thing about genetically modified crops has nothing to do with science. It’s about their seeds. In enormous swaths of the world, seeds are heritage. People are often paid with them, and they conserve them more carefully than almost any other asset. Often there are no other assets. When a company like Monsanto comes along selling one type of corn seed, which can only be controlled with one particular insecticide that Monsanto also happens to make—well, who can compete with that? When they sell seeds that cannot reproduce, people become even more alarmed, fearing that they might be forced every year to buy their crop again (at prices over which they have no control).

  “This is an argument I have never understood,” Robert Shapiro said. Shapiro, who is retired as Monsanto’s chairman, became the Johnny Appleseed of genetically modified foods. He was also the embodiment of his company’s failed efforts to market those products to Europe (and beyond). To environmentalists, Shapiro has long been seen as Satan, which is ironic, because until they started threatening his life Shapiro was a card-carrying member of Greenpeace. “We weren’t eliminating any choice that was already available,” he said, explaining his approach to transgenic crops. “If people didn’t want to buy the stuff, they could keep doing exactly what they’re doing, no one was taking anything away from anybody. It was just, if you want to use the new technology, then you have to use it on a set of conditions. And if you don’t think that’s a good deal, keep on doing what you’re doing. It didn’t make you any worse off.” Shapiro saw seeds in much the same way that Bill Gates thought about software: as a form of intellectual property.

  Food isn’t software, however, and farmers throughout the developing world became genuinely terrified of losing their livelihoods, particularly when so much of the world’s engineered seed is controlled by a few giant corporations. Nevertheless: what happened with software has increasingly become true in agriculture as well. If you don’t want to use Windows or Word or Excel (or can’t afford them), there are excellent alternatives. Some are cheaper and many are free. That’s the power of the open-source approach to intellectual goods. Even if Monsanto had wanted to control the world’s grain, the company could never have succeeded: farmers save and share seeds, and in countries like Bangladesh and India national seed-breeding programs have been instituted to make sure people can get seed they can afford. There are open-source grains and cheap public seed banks in many developing countries. Over half the rice planted in China now is hybrid, and farmers buy it every year—usually from local seed companies.

  Genetic engineering is what many environmentalists refer to as a “corporate technology” because it has mostly been used by industrial agricultural conglomerates to provide benefits to farmers and residents of rich countries. That has been true. People in the Loire Valley or Cambridge, Massachusetts, don’t need a tomato that resists frost or ripens only after a week. Products like that are not going to save the world, maybe not even help the world. As the British economist Michael Lipton put it to me years ago, “I always say that electricity is a fantastic invention, but if the first two products had been the electric chair and the cattle prod, I doubt that most consumers would have seen the point.”

  It has taken years—even decades—to develop genetically engineered organisms that serve the poor. A store full of beneficial foods, such as cancer-fighting carrots and rot-resistant fruits, does not exist. Neither does an AIDS vaccine; should we give up on that? It is not an idle comparison, because the people who have the most to gain from medical and agricultural biotechnology are Africans. Neither Monsanto nor Syngenta has invested heavily in improving the yields of cassava, yams, rice, or bananas. But honestly, why should they? What incentive could they possibly have? In 1986, pharmaceutical companies abdicated much of the American vaccine market, because lawsuits made it impossible for them to profit. They don’t spend much money trying to cure visceral leishmaniasis either. It’s a parasite we don’t get in Manhattan, and the millions in the Third World who do suffer from it can’t pay for the treatment.

  The market doesn’t solve every problem. That is one reason why the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent billions of dollars to vaccinate children who could never otherwise see a doctor. As it happens, the foundation (and others) has now embarked on a similar program that focuses solely on cassava, which is the primary source of calories for nearly a billion people—250 million of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa. The crop has many deficiencies: it is almost entirely made of carbohydrates so it cannot provide balanced nutrition to people who subsist on it; once harvested the plant must be processed quickly or it will generate poisonous cyanide within days. The roots deteriorate rapidly, which limits the food’s shelf life; and Gemini virus, a common plant disease, destroys up to half of every harvest.

  An international team led by Richard Sayre, a professor of plant cellular and molecular biology at the Ohio State University, has been working feverishly to overcome every one of those problems. Sayre calls it the most ambitious plant genetic engineering project ever attempted. The team has already succeeded with individual traits, though in separate plants. The researchers introduced genes that can facilitate mineral transport and help the roots draw more iron and zinc from the soil. They have also reported a thirtyfold increase in the levels of vitamin A, which is critical for vision. Soon they will attempt to create a single plant that expresses all the traits. Sayre said he hopes to have the fortified cassava tested in Africa by 2010.

  That’s one example. There are many others. Scientists are working on plants that resist drought and salt and others that can shrug off the most common but deadly viruses. After years of scientific struggles and bureaucratic interference, golden rice, which carries genes that make it possible to produce beta-carotene, which is then broken down into vitamin A, is about to enter the food chain. The World Bank estimates that in India alone, golden rice could save as much as the equivalent of 1.5 million years of life every year. Critics of the product have tried to block it for years (so far with great success), arguing that the rice isn’t needed and won’t work. According to a report released in 2008 by the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements, an adult would have to eat nine kilograms of cooked golden rice a day to absorb the minimum daily requirement of vitamin A. That was true
a decade ago, but science has moved forward. The new generation of golden rice is more efficient and nine kilograms have been reduced to 150 grams, which is not too much to digest and well within the economic reach of even the poorest people.

  The earth isn’t utopia and never will be—but insisting that we can feed nine billion people with organic food is nothing more than utopian extremism, and the most distressing and pernicious kind of denialism. An organic universe sounds delightful, but it would consign millions of people in Africa and throughout much of Asia to malnutrition and death. That is a risk everyone should be able to understand.

  “Even if the worst thing anyone imagines about genetically modified organisms were true, they would be worth it,” said William C. Clark, a professor of international science, public policy, and human development at Harvard University. Clark has spent much of his career trying to figure out the most environmentally benign way to feed the world. “If you look at what people are dying of in Africa and what these plants could do to produce food, we would have to be absolutely out of our mind not to use them. You could triple the risks. Make them the worst risks imaginable. Even then, it wouldn’t be a contest.”