Below is a screen grab of a thread on facebook on which I found myself tagged by my sister. I don’t know the OP or any of the commenters except the other person named Shepherd. I kind of feel bad that I invaded it and got a wee bit dogmatic but I really try to find teachable moments and this was one of those.
As people marvel at the advancements in cancer cures that involve genetic engineering, why aren’t they reacting similarly to the advancements in crop breeding technology that involve genetic engineering?
Though I haven’t posted in awhile, I am still passionate about spreading the real truth about GMOs and letting my story be known.
My blog tells the story – post by post – about how a person can go from believing that GMOs are dangerous and should be banned to realizing that there is much value and potential in transgenic technology and genetic engineering in general and that it can and will change the world – not just in the realm of food, but medicine and more.
I recently discovered a cooking teacher and food writer who has written an impressive amount on the topic of GMOs – in a short time. Julie Kelly is a bright, refreshing, relatively new voice for science – profoundly aware, never having planned to speak favorably about GMOs and yet couldn’t keep silent about the topic. Best of all, I believe she understands to perfection the potential of genetic engineering.
Having just entered the world of GMOs a year ago, she has been prolific in reporting about it. I am most impressed.
~Julee K/Sleuth4Health
Below is a list of some of her other articles on the topic: I have not read all of these and they may not represent how I feel about a certain topic within the realm of the broader GMO topic, but I’m sure I agree with most of what she says. I do admit that I am a frequent customer of Chipotle – for the sole reason that I love the taste of their food and I feel that it is a healthier fast food alternative than, say, a Big Mac.
Do you equate anti-GMO activism with supporting local, family farms?
If you do, then please read the post I link to below. It concerns the Hawaiian papaya industry, local family farms, and just how much misinformation circulates regarding the history of the Hawaiian papaya, farmers, and genetic modification (which saved the industry, by the way).
For some background, here is a really good article about the history of the genetically modified, or transgenic papaya: Papaya: A GMO Success Story, an article out of the Hawaii Tribune Herald.
In The Food Babe Hates The Small Farmers Of Hawaii, blogger Hawaii Farmers Daughter calls out Vani Hari, the ‘food babe’, for vilifying Hawaiian papaya and advising consumers to seek out papaya from other countries instead. The post is written with heartfelt emotion and really characterizes how out-of-control this completely unfounded fear of GMOs is and how it is hurting not only our family farms, but also our country and the innovation that helped build it.
Please, if you don’t trust GMOs, get properly educated. Don’t blindly believe any blog post you run across by any so-called expert. The internet is FULL OF MISINFORMATION and it is all dressed up, ready to tug at your emotions, make you scared, or angry, make you think you must demand labeling because you have a ‘right to know’ what’s in your food. Newsflash: GMOs aren’t ingredients. GMOs are a breeding technology.
Do some vetting. Really dig until you find who the experts really are. Anyone can start a blog, or an institute, or a movement and call themselves an expert. It doesn’t mean they are.
My blog is a place to start. I used to be fearful of GMOs and started this blog to inform the public how evil they are but instead I learned the opposite and did a complete one-eighty.
GMO Answers is a legitimate source of information featuring real experts. I personally know and/or am acquainted with several of the scientists and experts who post answers there. A good many of them work for the public rather than privat enterprise and moreover, they are good, decent, hardworking, honest, knowledgeable people. No one is paying them to lie to you, in spite of what you have read or heard on activist websites. Scientists stake their reputations on sharing what they actually know, not what they are told to say.
Today I am reviewing a brief video that packs a punch – titled GMOs and Health Safety, presented May 9 of this year at the UCLA Women’s Health Conference. The speaker is Alan McHughen. an Oxford-educated molecular geneticist with a focus on crop improvement and sustainability.
There are four things I especially appreciate about this video.
1. It is relatively short and accessible to any non-sciency lay person (which would be humanities-major me.)
2. Dr. McHughen emphasizes that all the hullabaloo over GMOs in foods is really a moot point because by the time the much maligned ‘just-label-it’ foods hit store shelves, there isn’t anything close to an organism in them let alone a genetically modified one. So yes, all this hysteria that has large sections of the public in a snit is really much ado about nothing. He says (emphasis mine):
Genetically engineered corn, soybean, cotton, canola, alfalfa, sugar beets – they’re the ones that you’re likely to encounter (in the marketplace). But the food products that you get from those are things like corn oil, soybean oil, vegetable oil, cottonseed oil, canola oil or sugar from sugar beets – those aren’t genetically modified organisms. In fact we don’t have GMOs in any of our foods because there are no organisms in any of our food – except maybe pro-biotic yogurts and things but the organisms stay behind. In fact, even the genetically engineered plants stay behind when you process a corn plant for oil. You’re removing the DNA and the proteins. What you get at the end is corn oil which is identicle whether its squeezed out of a genetically engineered corn kernel or a non genetically engineered corn kernel. When they say 80% of our food contains GMOs, number one: NONE of our food contains GMOs or even organisms, except probiotics which are not genetically engineered as far as I know. There are no remnants of the GE process in what is called genetically engineered corn oil. It is identicle to traditional corn oil.
Folks, this is one of the big reasons the farm and food industry object to labeling, and who can blame them? The term “GMOs” is misleading as it infers some kind of ingredient, where there is none. Genetic engineering is a technology, just as is the extremely common mutation breeding, which is way worse in my opinion, but no one seems to care. I’ll eat a genetically modified product any day.
3. McHughen reminds us how many farmers worldwide willingly choose to grow the most common varieties of soy, corn and cotton crops using the Roundup Ready and Bt seeds. Farmers are NOT unwitting victims of Monsanto, as is commonly believed across the web. They are wise business people who want to make a good living like anyone else – while offering an excellent product to consumers. They make decisions based on productivity. And no one, absolutely no one is as concerned about their land as they are. They’re not going to just blindly poison it.
4. Somehow, and in a very short time, McHughen touches on many of the lesser known but wide spread benefits derived by GE technology while simultaneously dispelling myth after myth. He mentions the genetic engineering process used to create insulin, chymosin (used in the making of cheese) and the cystic fibrosis drug dornase alfa.
In closing I’ll admit that McHughen doesn’t paint an entirely rosy picture when it comes to genetic engineering. He does briefly introduce areas where actual danger could be lurking but more importantly, he underscores the absolutely crucial fact that the fear of our current food supply being somehow tainted or toxic because of GMOs is ERRONEOUS.
No disrespect is intended toward people who are fearful of GMOs, I just ask you to consult respected sources for your information. Start with GMO Answers, a website where McHughen is a contributor.
Because I speak favorably about GMOs and how promising I believe transgenic technology is, I get a lot of push back from vehement anti-GMO types – here at the blog and on my sleuth4health facebook and twitter pages.
I frequently make the point that the technology is not only acceptable or tolerable to me, it excites me – not just for crops and food but in the field of medicine and across all of the life sciences. There are yet countless undiscovered ways to improve living organisms by changing DNA, with the precision of a surgeon. I know this frightens some but I’m thinking – how cool is that?
I am also often criticized because I once joined the ranks of the anti-GMO front, believing I was doing the right thing. I learned fairly quickly that I wasn’t. I was flat out wrong. Some say I caved or was won-over by greedy, corporate evildoers and what-have-you.
No, that’s not it. I just got better information.
But every now and again I get a supportive, zinger of a letter in my inbox and it reminds me that this volunteer blog that I do, this time-eater that nets me no cash and often a lot of flack, is really a good thing.
I’d like to post such a letter that I recently received and it meant a lot to me because obviously by its length, some time and thought was put into it. It’s from Stephen E. Cerier and he gave his consent for me to both post his letter and use his name.
He doesn’t mince words, and with the tone of a preacher calls out those who would ignore science. He manages to encapsulate a big chunk of the whole anti-science movement, and many of its subheadings, into this one letter. (I think the only groups he didn’t mention are the climate and evolution deniers and the chem-trail people – but then that is a bit far afield from GMOs.)
Thank you Mr. Cerier!
~Julee K/Sleuth4Health
June 21, 2015
Dear Julee K:
I recently listened to the first podcast of Talking Biotech with Kevin Folta in which you were the guest. The podcast led me to your blog “Sleuth4Health.” I am very glad that you had the intellectual flexibility to admit you were wrong about GMOs and to recognize their potential to revolutionize the way we grow food.
I first learned about GMO technology in the late nineties and at the time I thought it was just another example of man’s ingenuity and ability to apply science and technology to increase food production and reduce the use of pesticides. I must admit though that I have been completely shocked and disturbed by the animosity that this technology has provoked. To a certain extent the bio-tech and seed companies and the scientists involved in developing GMOs and bringing them to market are to blame because they did not adequately explain the science behind genetically engineering. They should have been aware that anything involving modifying genes with regard to food would raise concerns and suspicions among the public. As a result, science has had to play catch up with the fear-mongers.
In your podcast, you indicated that the anti-GMO advocates rely upon scare tactics to spread their message. This is a classic strategy whenever the facts are not are on your side. It is much easier in this regard to frighten people then to reassure them and to claim the risks are much higher than they actually are. Who after all wants to take a risk with their health and put their loved ones in possible danger? But the reality is that the anti-GMO forces are misperceiving risk on a grand scale. We are about twenty years into the age of GMOs and there has not been one reported case of death or an allergic reaction caused by genetically modified food. Yet there are many people who want to ban it. The reality is that many of the opponents of GMOs engage in activities everyday that are much more dangerous than eating genetically modified food like performing yoga exercises, playing tennis and taking herbs, such as kava and comfrey that potentially have negative health effects. In 2013, 32,719 people died in motor vehicle accidents, yet no one would seriously argue that cars should be banned. The CDC has estimated that more than 16 million Americans are living with a disease caused by smoking, yet the opponents of GMOs seem to believe it is more dangerous than cigarettes.
The adversaries of GMOs deliberately choose for ideological reasons to ignore the strong scientific consensus behind GMOs. The most prestigious scientific institutions and academies in the world have endorsed the safety of GMOs. Among them are the Continental International Society of African Scientists, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Indian Academy of Sciences, the French National Academy of Sciences, the German Academy of Sciences, the Italian National Academy of Sciences, The Royal Society of London, the British Medical Association, the European Academies Science Advisory Council, the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of Canada, the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Cell Biology, the Australian Academy of Sciences, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization. In other words the collective wisdom of the scientific community has endorsed GMOs. That alone would be enough for me to believe in their safety.
For the opponents of GMOs the endorsement of the world’s most prestige scientific organizations however is proof of a grand conspiracy that involves governments, the scientific community, the medical profession and agri-business. It is a conspiracy that is so vast as to defy belief and of course it is all controlled by the master puppeteer Monsanto whose revenue is actually slightly smaller than Whole Foods. Of course this does not make sense but then again it does not have to make sense because facts do not matter to the opponents of GMOs. Instead all that matters is maintaining their ideological purity and that ideological purity pertains not just to GMOs but to an agenda that is fervently anti-science. It is not surprising in this regard that many of the people and the organizations that strongly oppose GMOs also are against vaccinations, are proponents of so-called alternative medicine, promote all sorts of fad diets, including demonizing gluten, which have no basis in science, believe that organic food is healthier than conventionally grown food, for which there is also no scientific evidence and endorse bizarre detoxification regimes such as chelation. The Organic Consumer Organization for instance, which is notoriously anti-GMO, has posted articles on their website that are anti-vaccine, promote homeopathy and indicate there is a natural cure for Ebola.
One of the reasons that I am optimistic about GM technology is that there has never been an advance in science that has been stymied and bottled up. At times such advances have been slowed and delayed but they have never been stopped in their tracks. Imagine if the same objections that are being raised about GMOs had been raised about the polio or measles vaccine. Mankind would have been worse off if such luddites had won. When GM technology proves of great value in saving the orange crop in Florida and the cassava and banana crops in Africa from the ravages of disease, as was the case with the papaya crop in Hawaii, and providing Vitamin A rice and bananas in the Philippines and Uganda, the opponents of GMO technology will look awfully foolish and irresponsible.
American anti-GMO activists often use the notion that ‘Europeans have banned GMO production so it must be bad’ as a rallying cry as to why we should follow suit in the US. The truth is that scientists are just as supportive of GM technology there as they are here but are even more bound by activism.
The fear of crop genetic modification is simply not originating from those who know the most about it in Europe or anywhere else.
Here is but one very recent example of what I”m talking about, a BBC Panorama episode, air date 6/8/15, that features scientists and other biotech luminaries in brief interviews and also introduces a few recent applications of the technology that are not so well known but extremely promising – the bt brinjal (eggplant, aubergine) in Bangladesh and a new and improved engineered potato.
The episode also touches on a lot of ideas, not the least of which is the fact that large populations all over the world don’t have the luxury of going to bed with a belly full of organic specialty items from a swanky neighborhood market. Is it fair or even ethical for well-fed activists to pass on their non-scientific ideologies to these populations who just want to eat anything – at all – when the evidence tells us time and again that when it comes to these new genetic crop technologies, no real risk exists?
Greg was my big brother, and he left this world four years ago. He died from a malignant brain tumor that looked like an octopus just inside his left ear, a tumor that declared war on his body. Specifically, his tumor was a glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) which is a very late stage, nasty glioma, also known as astrocytoma grade IV. He died scarcely 18 months after diagnosis. He was 56 and otherwise healthy, in the prime of his life really. During those precious final 18 months, he endured two craniotomies, multiple radiation blasts and a round or two of chemotherapy.
Last week I watched a segment on 60 Minutes that blew me away – so much so that I felt happy, excited and sad all at the same time. It would appear that a few people were recently completely cured of their glioblastomas.
What?
How?
Oh my, it was their own immune system, but with a lot of help from recombinant DNA technology, or transgenesis (wiki), or genetic engineering – call it what you will. It was those little buggers called GMOs.
Is natural always a good thing?
Everyone has heard of chemotherapy and radiation as common cancer treatments. But there is a big, bad new kid on the block: immunotherapy. A heretofore lesser utilized branch of cancer treatment, immunotherapy is now gaining momentum, fast, and biotechnology is stepping onto the stage as a major player in the therapy. And not only is it cutting edge transgenesis at work here, but a much maligned virus – polio – turns out to be an ideal medium for the process.
Simply put, polio attaches to cancer cells thereby making them targets of the immune system. The virus is safe to use because, via transgenic technology, the original polio is re-engineered using the common cold virus to replace the unwanted traits of polio. This ensures that the patient receiving the treatment does not contract actual polio.
This is so cutting edge it makes my head perform pirouettes. It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? It is so simple it has only taken over a hundred years of research to get here. In other words, this is no overnight sensation. This is the result of painstaking, tireless research of generations of experts. This is the result of endless hypotheses and stabs in the dark.
With all the public hysteria flying around the use of genetic modification in crop production – the calls for labeling, cries that the technology is ‘against God’s way’, causing the proliferation of ‘frankenfoods’, ruining the planet, causing all manner of disease, not natural, and so on, with all of that I have to ask, would anyone deny a loved one the cure for cancer because it is not natural? My guess is certainly not.
There is nothing natural about mixing one virus with another inside a lab then infecting cancer cells with it so that the immune system is triggered and thereby does what it does best – kill the bad stuff. That process is simply not going to happen naturally, on its own. The bio-engineer, the scientist, the expert must intervene to initiate this miracle of man. As nature would have it, our immune system does not attack malignant tumors in our body.
A few years ago, I was of the belief that everything needed to be natural to be good and right and in line with the proper way of things. A scientist had the audacity to tell me that if left unchecked, nature’s intent was to kill me, that it is science that saves me time and again. I was so offended at the time I wanted to punch the wall, but now, I understand what was meant by that statement.
I will wind down this post by adding that there are many other immunotherapy methods and drugs out there being utilized and researched that don’t involve GMOs, and by no means is polio the only agent being looked at in those that do.
As I see it, any and all of of this is exciting! Immunotherapy is the emerging new darling in cancer research and is ushering in a new era of treatment. But before we all fill our champagne glasses, we need to remember to remain cautious. A recent article in Forbes puts the breaks on the fervor over this ‘miracle’ because of course there is a downside, but even so, I have no doubt that immunotherapy is the future of cancer treatment.
Countless, precious individuals like my brother will benefit as we get past the early stages and trials and these treatments become routine. There are even those trying to speed things up, as it were. See Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure.
If only Greg could have waited a decade or so. If only…
(This article has been updated since its original posting.)
