Last updated on May 24, 2015
I wanted to write a post about GMOs, but I really don’t have anything to say about the topic that I haven’t said before. So instead of beating a dead horse, I thought I would just link to stuff that has come out on the topic in the last few months:
- From the MIT Technology Review: Why We Will Need GM Foods.
- From the always excellent Amy Harmon in the New York Times: A Lonely Quest for Facts on GM Crops.
- From NPR: GMOs and the Dilemma of Bias.
- The places that need GM crops the most for their subsistence are being “starved for science,” as Rob Paarlberg said: Tension over GM Crops Grows in Tanzania.
- My über-productive Oklahoma State ag econ colleague Jayson Lusk and his coauthor Henry Miller in the New York Times: We Need GMO Wheat. If you haven’t already done so, do yourself a favor, and get a copy of Jayson’s book The Food Police.
- “But wait,” you say, “what about the science against GMOs?” Funny you should ask: Kevin Folta has a post titled “Séralini’s Connections to Quack Science and Strange Philosophies.”
The saddest irony in this debate is perhaps the fact that those who are so quick to fault the anti-science mote in the other side’s eye when it comes to things like the theory evolution or the (lack of) relationship between vaccines and autism fail to see the anti-scientific beam in their own eye when it comes to food policy, and that those who are so eager to proclaim on social media that they “f**king love science” often actually only really do so when science confirms their prior beliefs.
Moreover, those same people who so oppose GMOs when it comes to food typically have no qualms with the genetic modification that went into developing the drugs they will be using at some point to prolong their own lives. The world’s population is going to keep increasing for the foreseeable future whether you like it or not. To feed the future, so to speak, the world will need GM technology. For the undernourished, nutritious food is as important as drugs for the deathly ill. Are the lives of the starving in far-flung developing countries worth any less than the lives of the sick in wealthy countries?
As for me, while I certainly have my own biases and priors, I try as hard as I can to be aware of and supersede them. On this and many other topics of interest to food policy, I strive to “recognize only the light and not the bearer,” and I always welcome contrarian evidence.