The Basic Problem With GMO's

(and How to Avoid Them)

You’ve heard the benedictions from every mass media outlet.

After all, corporate journalists are your friends and eager to share the happy news about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the food supply:

GMOs are safe
They are no different from traditionally hybridized foods
Opponents are anti-progress.

However -- shocker! -- none of these is true. At least 10 studies have shown significant harm to ecosystems, crop yields, or people and animals that eat GMO crops.

So how do these myths of harmlessness persist?

The answer is that human beings are hard-wired to impose simplicity on complex, dynamic phenomena. We do this because for most of human history, the habit was profoundly pro-survival.

When a dire wolf lunged at a pair of our Paleolithic ancestors, they had dozens of potential responses -- run left, run right, climb a tree, shout, swing a club, throw a rock, etc. The caveman who slowly, carefully mulled them all got eaten. His simplifying companion -- whose only thought was Climb tree! -- lived to pass on his genes to us.

But as with so many mental habits we’ve inherited, this one does not work so well in the complex, modern world, especially since both the government and agribusiness eagerly and expertly exploit it.

In the case of GMOs, we are persistently presented with the simple, seductive notion that it’s useful to transfer the “gene for” a certain characteristic from one organism to another. For example, we’re told it’s a great boon to transplant the “gene for” creating antifreeze proteins from flounders -- which use the proteins to avoid freezing solid in frigid winter seas -- to strawberries, allowing them to grow in colder climates over a longer season.

The problem? This simple story is pure myth.

There is no such thing as a “gene for.”

Genes are not factories, predictably churning out a single type of protein for a single purpose. The science of epigenetics has made it abundantly clear that the genome behaves more like an ecosystem, in which every gene interacts in complex, dynamic, unpredictable ways with every other gene.

Genes “express” -- that is, turn on and turn off their ability to create proteins -- in response to an almost infinite range of stimuli from within and without the genome. (In human beings, even thinking certain thoughts can change gene expression.) In some cases, genetic tendencies can lie dormant for decades until a unique stress, or series of stresses, triggers a new pattern of gene expression with a range of undesirable side effects, such as death.

Evolution, via millions of trials, has arrived at genome configurations that are relatively stable. One way to define the word “species” is: organisms that can breed and predictably produce viable offspring for thousands of generations.

In other words, nature, in its endless wisdom, has decided that life works best when genes are swapped only by plants and animals that closely resemble each other in form and function. That’s why trans-species transfer happens only via great, unnatural violence in the laboratory. (One method employs “gene guns” that blast gold nanoparticles coated with DNA into target cells. Early versions of gene guns were actually modified air pistols that blasted craters in leaves, transferring genes to cells around the crater’s edges.)

So to return to our flounderized strawberries, while they may resist freezing better than the fish-free version, what unintended effects might result from this gene transfer?:

Could complex, stable arctic ecosystems start to die as cold-tolerant GMO strawberries pass their genes to local wild berries, which then crowd out seasonal plants that are essential to that system’s survival?
If your daughter is allergic to fish, will she go into anaphylactic shock after you unwittingly serve her fishberries?
Will the strawberry’s internal genetic ecosystem simply become nonfunctional after a certain number of generations as the antifreeze protein gene wreaks havoc in unpredictable ways?

Worse, most GMOs are engineered to either create their own internal pesticides, or stay alive while drenched with massive amounts of external bug-killing chemicals such as glyphosate. Either way, consumers end up consuming more poison, with unknown long-term effects on health.

How to Avoid Consuming GMOs

Buy organic foods or grow your own. USDA and other organic-certification organizations won’t approve products with GMO ingredients. In your own garden, use only certified organic and/or heirloom-variety seeds.
Look for the “Non-GMO Project Verified” seal. The Institute for Responsible Technology is a leading organization in the effort to inform governments, industry, and the public about the dangers of GMO foods. The group’s seal means the organization has determined that the product is free of GMOs.
Don’t buy corn, soy, canola, or cottonseed, or the oils and other products derived from them, as these are the foods most likely to be GMOs. Deep-fried foods offer a double-whammy to your health -- highly oxidized seed oil from the fryer is a cardiovascular risk on its own; the fact that the oil is almost certainly from GM soy just compounds the risk.
Steer clear of packaged and processed foods. By one estimate, GMO ingredients are in about 80% of packaged foods in the U.S. and Canada.

Bottom line: The reason to distrust GMOs is not that we’re absolutely sure they are destructive, although the evidence -- despite what you’ve been told -- strongly suggests they are.

The reason is that the genomes of plants and animals are, quite simply, the most complex phenomena of which we are currently aware. We don’t have anything close to sufficient knowledge to monkey with them safely.

We were foolish enough to declare relatively simple chemical products -- PCBs, asbestos, DDT, and tobacco -- safe for 50 years, only to ultimately declare them hazardous. How can we know that modifying genomes, an enterprise several orders of magnitude more complex, is ultimately safe?

We can’t. Avoid GMOs.

Sincerely,

Brad Lemley
Health writer for the Laissez Faire Letter