by Jamie Metzl
In 1973, Stanford Medical School graduate student Stanley Cohen and his professor Herbert Boyer transferred a gene that provided antibiotic resistance from one strain of bacteria to another that lacked this resistance. When the second bacteria became antibiotic-resistant, the new era of genetically modified organisms, GMOs, was born.* GMOs are plants, animals, and other organisms whose genetic material has been changed by humans to a form that does not generally occur on its own in nature, particularly by transferring genes between species.
Soon after, a microbiologist working for General Electric filed a patent for a genetically engineered bacteria designed to break down crude oil, potentially very useful in addressing oil spills. GE’s patent application was rejected because the U.S. Patent Office rules clearly indicated that living things could not be patented. But after GE appealed, the U.S. Supreme Court shocked the world in its 1980 ruling that “a live, human-made micro-organism is patentable subject matter.”6 If life could be patented, the race was on to build the portfolio.
But as new companies like Genentech and Amgen rapidly built their businesses, others began worrying about the potential dangers of what scientists began calling “recombinant DNA,” the process of combining genetic materials from multiple organisms to create genetic sequences not otherwise found in nature. A prominent group of scientists called on the director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health to establish a special committee to evaluate the potential biological and ecological hazards of this new technology and ways of preventing the unintended spread of recombinant DNA molecules across the human, animal, and crop populations.7 In 1975, some of America’s leading scientists got together with ethicists, lawyers, and government officials at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, California, to hash out proposed standards for how the new tools of recombinant DNA should and should not be used.8 Setting these types of standards was critical as the applications of GMO technologies increased.
In 1982, the FDA approved the sale of insulin made from genetically modified bacteria to diabetic consumers. Two years later, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved the sale of Calgene’s Flavr Savr tomatoes, genetically modified to ripen more slowly and last longer on the shelves. In the ensuing years, the U.S. market for genetically modified seeds grew exponentially, driven by powerful multinational corporations like Bayer, Dow, DuPont, Monsanto, and Syngenta. By 2000, most of the corn, soybeans, and cotton grown in the United States was genetically modified.
Genetically modified crop adoption levels kept growing because farmers believed that planting GM seeds increased yields and profits and reduced the need for pesticides. The U.S. public also largely came along. A series of Pew polls between 1999 and 2003 found that the majority of Americans knew little about the genetic modification of crops, about a third were concerned by it, and about a fifth thought it was safe.9 By 2016, most Americans remained largely uninformed about GM crops, the same third of Americans polled were concerned about GMOs, and 58 percent believed that GM crops were either equivalent to or better for people’s health than non-GM crops.10 A 2016 business report found that over two-thirds of all U.S. grocery shoppers were not willing to pay any extra for nongenetically modified foods and projected that “with the continuous increase in the pricing of non-GM food products, consumers will switch to GM food products.”11
China, too, has steadily adopted genetically modified crops. With only 9 percent of the world’s arable land but 20 percent of its population, the country has always been food-insecure. For the Chinese government, genetic modification has long-seemed an appealing way to increase the crop yields of smaller and more marginal farms, grow the cotton needed for the country’s massive textile operations, and feed China’s people and massive herds of livestock. Today, around 60 percent of global soybean exports go to China, nearly all of it genetically engineered.
Recognizing the critical importance of GMO and other agricultural technologies to their future, the Chinese government classified “enhanced agriculture” as a strategic emerging industry in the government’s most recent Five-Year Plan.12 China “must boldly research and innovate, dominate the high points of GMO techniques,” Chinese president Xi Jinping said in 2013, and “cannot let foreign companies dominate the GMO market.”13 This government push was the animating force behind the $43 billion 2017 acquisition of the Swiss multinational corporation Syngenta, one of the world’s leading agricultural biotechnology behemoths, by the Chinese State-Owned Enterprise ChemChina.14
Even though Chinese public concern about GM has increased in conjunction with the country’s repeated food-safety scandals,15 polls show that a significant majority of Chinese consumers, like their American counterparts but unlike the Europeans, generally accept genetically modified foods.16
ADOPTION OF GENETICALLY ENGINEERED CROPS IN THE UNITED STATES, 1996–2017
Source: “Recent Trends in GE Adoption,” USDA Economic Research Service, last updated July 12, 2017, https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/adoption-of-genetically-engineered-crops-in-the-us/recent-trends-in-ge-adoption.aspx.
The growing GM adoption rate in the United States and China isn’t just based on consumer ignorance. It is also based on science. As the prevalence of GM crops has grown, researchers have acquired an ever-expanding data set they have used to evaluate safety risks. Study after study over decades has repeatedly shown that genetically modified crops are as safe as conventional ones. The 2012 statement of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Board of Directors found that “crop improvement by the modern molecular techniques of biotechnology is safe.”17 The 2013 literature review in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found “overwhelming evidence…[that GM crops are] less disruptive of crop composition compared with traditional breeding, which itself has a tremendous history of safety.”18 The European Union Europe 2020 report19 as well as studies by the World Health Organization,20 the American Medical Association,21 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences,22 the British Royal Society,23 and other of the most respected organizations in the world have all reached the same conclusion.
If that’s not enough evidence that GM crops are safe, the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine in 2016 published their comprehensive review of the science of GMOs. This massive meta-analysis reviewed all credible GMO studies to date from around the world, consulted hundreds of the top experts, and received comments from more than seven hundred concerned individuals and organizations. Based on all of these inputs from around the world in the most systematic review of GM crops ever, the National Academies report found “no conclusive evidence of cause-and-effect relationships between GE [a.k.a. GM] crops and environmental problems” and “no evidence of…[any] increase or decrease in specific health problems after the introduction of GE foods.” Although the report did recognize the danger of herbicide-resistant weeds and some other challenges, the overall message was clear: genetically modified crops are as safe for human consumption as non-GM crops.24
An Italian study released in February 2018 went a step further. Reviewing more than twenty years of data from multiple studies around the world, the authors concluded that genetic modification actually increased yields and reduced carcinogenic toxins in corn.25 Genetically modified corn wasn’t just safe for human consumption, it was according to this study even healthier for us than non-GMO corn.
That GM crops are safe to eat, however, does not mean there are not legitimate issues of concern. If we over-rely on certain crops or allow corporations to gain monopoly powers over our food supply or inadvertently create super-resistant pests, we could have real problems. GM is a tool with a huge upside and a potential downside that requires thoughtful regulation.
Despite all of these studies showing GMOs are safe, however, the scientific story of GMOs has been increasingly overcome by overblown fears in many parts of the Western world. In 1990, American environmental activists published a report titled Biotechnology’s Bitter Harvest condemning the growing s
pread of genetically engineered plants and calling on the U.S. government to cut off its support for this technology.26 Since then, anti-GMO activists, many inspired by some combination of a distrust of new technologies, U.S. global corporations, and market capitalism more generally, as well as by the romanticizing of small farmers and fears their food supplies will be contaminated, have increasingly raised the alarm over what they started calling Frankenfoods.
Anti-GMO organizations have launched massive disinformation campaigns designed to counter and muffle the voices of the scientific community. Many people are susceptible to this type of disinformation because most of us instinctively resort to a “naturalistic fallacy” that nature is natural, even though our ancestors have been massively modifying much of it for thousands of years. That large and vilified multinational corporations like Monsanto stand to make significant profits from this burgeoning industry also didn’t help.27
This activism struck a particular chord in Europe. By 2016, 84 percent of Europeans polled had heard of genetically modified foods and a full 70 percent concluded that GM foods were “fundamentally unnatural.” Sixty-one percent believed that the development of GM crops should be discouraged and 59 percent that GM foods were unsafe.28
As these voices of public dissent became louder, European regulators listened. Even though Belgian scientists were pioneers of modern plant genetic engineering in the 1980s, a decade later European regulators became the first to require that GM foods be labeled. Labeling may superficially seem a good idea but is inherently dishonest because so many of the enzymes in foods we eat and the crops that feed our livestock are genetically modified; accepting full labeling of GMOs would require labeling much of what we eat.
In spite of the many potential benefits of GM crops, anti-GMO organizations like Greenpeace, Earth Liberation Front, and others have repeatedly and forcibly disrupted GMO research and destroyed GM crop trials in research institutes around the world.29 In 2011, Greenpeace admitted its members had broken into an Australian research facility to destroy experimental, genetically modified wheat crops. In 2013, activists partnering with Greenpeace uprooted research paddies of the vitamin-enhanced Golden Rice at the renowned International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines.30
Source: Becker1999/flickr, public domain via Creative Common 2.0.
As pressure on the European Union grew, European leaders recognized that the clash of public opinion on the one hand and science and economic competitiveness on the other was creating an untenable situation. In an effort to escape the public-opinion straightjacket, EU environment ministers in 2013 agreed that individual EU countries could each decide for themselves whether to restrict GM crops for any reason. Responding more to public opinion than science, seventeen European countries banned the cultivation of GM crops by 2015.
As former anti-GMO campaigner turned GMO-advocate Mark Lynas wrote at the time:
In effect, the Continent is shutting up shop for an entire field of human scientific and technological endeavor. This is analogous to America’s declaring an automobile boycott in 1910, or Europe’s prohibiting the printing press in the 15th century.31
A European Academies’ Science Advisory Council declared that the EU was “falling behind international competitors in agricultural innovation,” which had “implications for EU goals for science and innovation, and for the environment as well as for agriculture.”32 By then, it was too late; the European anti-GM train had already left the station.
In Berlin in 2015, I met with a number of the German regulators involved with enforcing the country’s restrictions on GM crops. Every one of them told me they thought the restrictions were unscientific, counterproductive, and asinine. All of them said they were required to restrict GMOs against their better judgement, because public opinion had forced the hand of Germany and Europe’s political leaders.33 A few described how Greenpeace, the leading anti-GMO campaigner, had allegedly lobbied against the labeling of genetically modified enzymes used in most cheeses, breads, wines, and beers as GMOs out of an apparent fear that if people understood how reliant we are on GMOs, the anti-GMO campaign would collapse.34 And even though new gene-editing techniques like CRISPR are making it possible to turn on or off already existing genes within crops to alter traits, and are therefore not technically GMOs, Greenpeace and the anti-GMO forces are beginning to rally in opposition.35
In 2016, 109 Nobel laureates issued an open letter calling on Greenpeace to end its anti-GMO campaign. “We urge Greenpeace and its supporters,” the letter said, to:
re-examine the experience of farmers and consumers worldwide with crops and foods improved through biotechnology, recognize the findings of authoritative scientific bodies and regulatory agencies, and abandon their campaign against “GMOs” in general and Golden Rice in particular. Scientific and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and consistently found crops and foods improved through biotechnology to be as safe as, if not safer than those derived from any other method of production. There has never been a single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals from their consumption. Their environmental impacts have been shown repeatedly to be less damaging to the environment, and a boon to global biodiversity.36
Despite the impassioned pleas of the expert community, the impact of the anti-GMO campaign remains high, particularly in Europe. These efforts scored a major victory in July 2018, when Europe’s highest court, the Court of Justice of the European Union, ruled that gene-edited crops altered with new gene-editing techniques like CRISPR would be subject to the same strict regulation as GM crops, even though no outside genetic material was being introduced.37 “This will have a chilling effect on research, in the same way that GMO legislation has had a chilling effect for 15 years now,” Umeå University plant physiologist Stefan Jansson told Nature.38
Europe’s GMO bans hurt the continent’s economic competitiveness but don’t risk the lives of any European citizens. The same could not be said for the impact of these policies on the developing world. European restrictions on certain agricultural imports from countries with GM crops forced many African and Asian governments depending on those export markets for their economic well-being to themselves restrict planting genetically modified crops. This denied poor countries the opportunity to use biotechnology to generate bigger yields of virus-resistant crops, reduce use of fertilizer and dangerous pesticides, add life-saving nutrients to their diets, and help minimize the impact of droughts that can cause thousands of deaths, hardly a benign outcome.39
The Nobel laureates reserved their harshest criticism of Greenpeace for its opposition to Golden Rice. “Greenpeace has spearheaded opposition to Golden Rice,” they wrote:
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 World Health Organization estimates that 250 million people suffer from VAD, including 40 percent of the children under five in the developing world. Based on UNICEF statistics, a total of one to two million preventable deaths occur annually as a result of VAD, because it compromises the immune system, putting babies and children at great risk. VAD itself is the leading cause of childhood blindness globally affecting 250,000–500,000 children each year. Half die within 12 months of losing their eyesight. WE CALL UPON GREENPEACE to cease and desist in its campaign against Golden Rice specifically, and crops and foods improved through biotechnology in general… How many poor people in the world must die before we consider this a “crime against humanity”?40
Although Africa’s restrictions on GM crops have recently begun to loosen, there is little doubt that European and activist NGO scare-mongering has delayed the adoption of GM crops in Africa and elsewhere.41 The application of genetic modification and gene editing to crops has the potential to significantly improve the resilience and sustainability of our food supply and make living on our warming planet with its growing human populat
ion more feasible and survivable.42 While the arguments of the anti-GMO campaigners are not entirely without merit and should be considered, there is little doubt that the scare-mongering anti-GMO campaign is doing far more harm than good.
The GM crops experience shows how heated the debates over altering what different people perceive differently as “nature” can become.
The GMO debate also gives us a good indication of what might be heading our way when the organisms being genetically modified are not soybeans and corn but us. And we’ve already seen how sensitive and volatile ideological divisions can become when human reproduction is at stake.
Humans have been performing abortions for most of our recorded history. Early records of abortions go back to 1550 BC in Egypt. Abortion was commonplace and widely accepted in ancient Greece and Rome. Plato and Aristotle both explicitly endorse in their writings the right of women to receive abortions. Chinese archives from as early as 500 BC describe mercury being used to end pregnancies.
In 1803, the British parliament made abortion after five months of pregnancy—when it was then believed the soul entered the fetus—punishable by execution. The penalty was later reduced to life imprisonment for whoever performed the abortion. Although abortion was common in Colonial America, restrictions in the United States started in the 1850s, forcing American women who sought to terminate their pregnancies to have even less sanitary and more dangerous abortions than the already low medical standards of the day and leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths. Although the UK Abortion Act of 1967 and the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Roe v. Wade established a women’s right to an abortion in both countries, the abortion issue was far from settled.