Response to Professor Folta.

Here is my response to Professor Folta's response (at http://kfolta.blogspot.com/2015/01/vani-haris-kooky-response-to-critical.html)

Dr. Horta’s words are in standard script, mine in italic.

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Over at The GMO Smoking Gun, Professor Emeritus Derek Bickerton has prepared a response to my criticism of Vani Hari's letter to grad students.

My blog is smokinggmogun.blogspot.com, not GMO smoking gun. Failure to get this right has misled at least one of Dr. Folta’s readers already.

I would be disappointed too if I believed the nonsense.

My piece was not intended as an endorsement of everything Vani Hari has written, and indeed I have never read anything by her except her letter. I am as aware as Professor Folta that a lot of anti-GMO propaganda is as short on facts as it is long on indignation.  But then so is a lot of pro-GMO propaganda.  My disappointment stemmed solely from the fact that, in a piece with “a zillion hits”, I had expected something better than Professor Folta's critique.  Now he has graciously admitted its shortcomings, we can put this issue to bed.

EXHIBIT A

TACTIC: FALSE ATTRIBUTION OF INTENTION+FALSE ACCUSATION

Of course the first resort of those that don't have science-- try to discredit a scientist by immediately linking them to a company that has a negative image to many.

I use terms like Monsantoite indiscriminately with things like “pro-GMOer” or “GMO supporter” simply as a descriptor for anyone who supports the policies of Monsanto and similar firms.  In common usage, the suffix “-ite” refers to someone who supports particular actions or policies—like “Reaganite” means someone who supports the policies of Ronald Reagan.  Do you deny that you support Monsanto’s policies?  If I’m wrong about that, I’d be delighted to admit it. 

He's wrong in that "the current system in the United States" ... "considers most chemicals innocent until proven guilty."  That is the biggest lie I've heard all day.

Whether the statement is true or false is irrelevant, since I neither wrote nor endorsed it.

EXHIBIT B

TACTIC: EVADING THE REAL ISSUE

Anyone that knows anything about clinical trials can think of many instances where trials ended because of evidence of toxicity.  This is why they are tested for tolerance and side effects.  We understand how molecules work, can make predictions, and then carefully test them.  Chemical compounds that are acceptable for use on food must be re-tested and re-registered if they are used for other applications in agriculture!  There is incredibly stringent oversight. 

This is where virtually all pro-GMO writing misses the point.  Clinical trials may be as stringent as you wish--I don’t for one moment suggest the contrary.  But of their very nature they are and can only be concerned with immediate harm—rashes, digestive upsets or whatever symptoms occur within a short time-period of direct exposure.  There’s no way any test of this nature can say anything about any long-term cumulative effects acting over a period of years or even decades (like those of tobacco for instance—I was diagnosed with emphysema forty years after I gave up smoking).  The only way to reveal such effects is through epidemiology (just like the tobacco-lung cancer connection was first revealed), and even then epidemiology, alone, can’t prove those effects. 

As for your blanket dismissal of 1800 papers, I wonder how many of these you have actually read.

I will say nothing here about the Swanson et al. paper because it would take days.  If you’re prepared to answer my counterarguments, just keep reading smokinggmogun.  Explaining the significance of that paper was, after all, one of the main purposes for which the blog was created.

EXHIBIT C

TACTIC: PRETENDING SOMETHING CONTRADICTS SOMETHING WHEN IT DOESN’T.

The authors of this work note in the Abstract and Introduction that all food additives must be tested and shown to be safe by the FDA and/or manufacturer.  It says it right in the first sentence:

“In the United States, chemical additives cannot be used in food without an affirmative determination that their use is safe by FDA or additive manufacturer.”

I will ignore for now the obvious conflict of interest when that determination is made by the additive manufactures.  As I pointed out above, the main point is that ALL such tests can do no more than detect IMMEDIATE harm, and as the harm that anti-GMOers are complaining about is not immediate but long-term, this sentence is irrelevant.  Before citing the abstract, Dr. Folta would have been wise to take notice of the take-home message in its last sentence: “A program is needed to fill these significant knowledge gaps by using in vitro and in silico methods complemented with targeted in vivo studies to ensure public health is protected.” (My emphasis)

In other words, the FDA itself admits that its database lacks “significant knowledge”. What stops Dr. Folta from admitting as much?

EXHIBIT D

TACTIC: FALSE ACCUSATION

I interpreted Hari's comment as an explanation from on-high, which is probably correct, as she refers to Ph.D. graduate students as "Future Science Students in Training".  It is a reminder of her arrogance. 

As the students’ original letter shows, Ms Hari’s form of address was NOT “a reminder of her arrogance”.  Here’s how they opened it.

“Greetings Ms. Hari,

We are writing to you as a group of students, scientists-in-training if you will.”

Okay, so all she really did was to clumsily or carelessly mangle their self-description.  Big deal.  

EXHIBIT E

TACTIC: IRRELEVANCE

There is no evidence that the EPSPS enzyme, the gene that encodes it, or the Bt protein have consequences outside their targets at levels encountered.  Zero.

I never stated anything about these two examples.

EXHIBIT F

Next. This is really boring.

For the first time I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Folta.  So I’ll skip ahead to his two most egregious errors and then close.

ERROR 1: SELF-CONTRADICTION.

Between 1992 (where there were no GM crops) and 2011 (where 90% of soy, corn, cotton, sugar beets and canola are resistant to herbicide) there OF COURSE will be an increase in glyphosate use!  

But A FEW LINES EARLIER THERE WAS THE FOLLOWING EXCHANGE:

“Ms.Hari: An even bigger problem with GMO crops is they are being used primarily to increase the pesticide…
 Dr.Folta: Actually decreased pesticide use, Vani.”

In other words, pesticide use decreases when that suits his argument but increases when it doesn’t.

ERROR 2: CLAIMING I SAID THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT I SAID

The reason Hari and Bickerton combine insecticides and herbicides as "pesticides" is so they don't have to admit that insecticide use is decreasing. That's kinda deceptive, but common.

Either Dr. Folta didn’t read what I wrote or he deliberately misrepresented it.  I didn’t admit insecticide use is decreasing?!  I wrote

 “So it is logically possible for insecticide use to decrease while herbicide use is increasing (or vice versa of course).  And that is exactly what is happening, and what inevitably must happen with GMOs.  The logic is simple.  Insects attack plants directly, weeds indirectly (by simply competing for water and nutrients).  Therefore, you can put insecticidal genes into plants (those of Bacillus thuringiensi, for example) and thus decrease the need for spraying.”

In other words, I not only admitted that insecticide spraying can be decreased with GMO crops, I even explained WHY it can decrease, as well as (subsequently) why it MUST increase with herbicides.  And far from “combining insecticides and herbicides as pesticides”, I carefully and explicitly distinguished the three terms.  It’s the Monsantoites in general (not just Dr. Folta) who confuse the terms so that they can wriggle out of admitting that HERBICIDE use is increasing.

Can misinterpretation go further than this?
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I had hoped for a serious debate on GMOs and their possible shortcomings.  I could still be convinced if anyone came up with arguments that were both cogent and civil.   

Alas, Dr. Folta’s response is neither.  One cannot conduct a civil debate with someone who uses expressions like “That is the biggest lie I've heard all day”, “do I need to really waste my time on this?”, “Okay, I have to do something else tonight”, “Duh!”, “What a stupid, stupid, comment”, or “a cheap facsimile of the real thing”.  One cannot conduct a cogent debate with someone who carefully avoids dealing with points made, while doubling down on previous blanket assertions and dismissing without serious discussion any work that disagrees with his position.

GMO defenders in general (not just Dr. Folta, it would be unfair to single him out) should take note that if they preach only to the choir, they will soon find that their congregation, those as yet uncommitted or uncertain what to believe, have all left.  In other words, they are seriously damaging their own cause.   You cannot influence people by treating them like idiots—you just alienate them and ratchet up the polarization another notch.

I therefore see little point in continuing this particular debate.  However, in subsequent posts on my website, which I re-emphasize is not the GMO anything but smokinggmogun.blogspot.com, I will defend Swanson et al. in a lot more detail, and will welcome any pertinent comments Dr. Folta cares to make.

The Kevin Folta Takedown: Vani Hari Vindicated!

Not what I'd planned for this post, but once again something came up that I just couldn't resist.

A while back, some students wrote to Vani Hari, aka "the Food Babe", and a prominent opponent of GMOs.  The students were critical of her writings and her position.  In response she wrote them a letter defending her work that was picked up by Kevin Folta, Professor and Chairman of the Horticultural Sciences Department at the University of Florida, Gainesville.  Prof. Horta then (January 28) wrote for the Genetic Literacy Project " a piece that, GLC claims, "deconstructs Food Babe's response to students in  scathing fashion".  This "scathing" piece  was immediately spread through Monsantoite areas of the blogosphere with considerable enthusiasm.

If this is the Monsantoites' best shot, I thought, I'd better check it out.  And frankly I  deconstruction.  For the convenience of readers I have distinguished the three persons involved, Vani, Kevin and I, by printing Vani’s letter in normal script, Kevin’s comments in italic, and my comments in bold:

Dear Future Science Students in Training,

Thank you for your letter which I greatly appreciated receiving.

Here are a few guidelines for my work that I hope you will consider

First, synthetic ingredients in our food should be proven safe…

How can you prove something safe? Has anything from organic food production been “proven safe”?

Of course you can’t prove ANYTHING is safe.  But this is a two-edged sword, as we’ll see.  As for the second sentence, Vani Hari was talking about “synthetic” ingredients, so it’s not relevant.

…before they are put into our bodies.  The current system in the United States, unlike Europe, considers most chemicals innocent until proven guilty.  Absolute proof of harm is not a moral standard for protecting public health—that is for the realm of theoretical science only.  When there is significant evidence…

Where is the evidence?

http://www.gmofreeusa.org/research/gmo-science-research/ lists “over 1800 studies, surveys, and analyses that suggest various adverse impacts and potential adverse impacts of genetically engineered (GE/GMO) crops, foods and related pesticides.”  http://www.gmfreecymru.org/pivotal.htm has a shorter list of “pertinent papers”.  One of the most recent (and perhaps the most threatening) paper iGenetically engineered crops, glyphosate and the deterioration of health
in the United States of America”, by Nancy L. Swanson, Andre Leu, Jon Abrahamson and Bradley Wallet, Journal of Organic Systems, 9(2), 2014 (http://www.organicsystems.org/journal/92/JOS_Volume- 9_Number-2_Nov_2014-Swanson-et-al.pdf)


…we should protect the public from unnecessary risk.  As you know, most of the chemicals in our food supply have never been independently tested.

That’s a rather bold statement, seeing as food additives require FDA approval, and that requires testing.

Really?  “In practice, almost 80% of chemical additives directly—intentionally—added to food lack the relevant information needed to estimate the amount that consumers can safely eat in FDA's own database and 93% lack reproductive or developmental toxicity data, although FDA requires feeding toxicology data for these chemicals.” Source: “Data gaps in toxicity testing of chemicals allowed in food in the United States”, Thomas G. Neltnera, Heather M. Algera, Jack E. Leonard, & Maricel V. Maffinia, Reproductive Toxicology, Vol. 42, December 2013, Pages 85–94.  So Vani is absolutely right.  Btw, the impact factor of this journal is 3.024.

…for safety by a 3^rd party or the FDA.  Can we join forces to insist they should be?

Meanwhile, I do take issue with your statement that there is no evidence that organic products are better for health.   Avoiding neurotoxic, endocrine disrupting, carcinogenic and teratogenic (birth defect) chemicals…

Good that a science expert might clear up those big words for the food science students.

As a professional linguist I can assure you that “teratogenic” is by far the rarest word in the sentence and is unlikely to be known to most students of food science or anything else but gynecology.  Explaining it is a courtesy to readers, not an excuse for an irrelevant putdown.

…is of course more protective of people’s health, not to mention the health of other species including the microorganisms both human and soil health depend on.  And studies have shown higher vitamin and mineral…

Notsomuch (sic).

So what?  Higher is higher.  Where’s the mistake?

…levels in organic products, due most likely to healthier soil with more beneficial bacteria and fungi.

Likewise I respectfully disagree with your statement that “GMO crops are proven to be substantially equivalent to native crops.  What GMO crops are proven to do is produce novel proteins that have never before existed…

Except in nature where they came from.

Specious reasoning.  Of course EVERYTHING, regardless of whether it is “natural” or “artifactual”, ORIGINATED in nature.  But some things have been additionally processed by humans, those are what Vani was talking about, and they include proteins.  Read Chapter 2, “GMO and Protein Engineering”, by Xiaoli Liu in Whitehurst, R. J., & Van Oort, M. (Eds.). (2010). Enzymes in food technology (Vol. 388). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.  Liu, btw, could not by any stretch of the imagination be dismissed as an opponent of GMOs, though he is far from unaware of the risks they involve.

…with which we did not evolve…

We didn’t evolve with 99.9% of the stuff we eat today!

Sure, if you live on processed foods.  Not all of us do.  And we evolved, almost until living memory, on foods produced by pre-chemical agriculture alone.

…and which are not required to be tested for safety…

Which would be true if there was no extensive safety testing done.

You can't have it both ways.  You asked in your first comment “How can you prove anything safe?” If the answer to your rhetorical question is the expected “No”, then it’s a waste of time to do safety testing and stupid to believe anyone who says “X has been tested for safety”.

…before being put into the food supply.  And how could the crossing of plant and animal genes into new species…

There are no animal genes in commercial crops.

Well, maybe Vani jumped the gun on that one.  Maybe that’s still in the pipeline, but they’re coming soon-- cabbages with scorpion genes (Kuo, G., & Jennings, L. (2014). What If? Genetically Modified Organisms and Synthetic Life Future Ethical Questions. World Future Review, 6(2), 130-142) for example.

…be “equivalent to native crops” or the same as plant breeding techniques?  This is a biotech PR line, truly.

It’s this thing called “science”.  Truly.

No it’s not.  It’s technology.  Science is about understanding how nature works, technology is about putting that knowledge to practical use.  True, technology is largely dependent on science, but the relationship is such that technology inevitably lags behind and, since science (like John Brown’s soul) goes marching on, technology sometimes gets stuck in an outdated scientific paradigm.  Which is what has happened over the GMO issue.  That’s far too vast and complex a topic to go into here, but I hope to blog about it many times in days to come.

An even bigger problem with GMO crops is they are being used primarily to increase the pesticide…

Actually decreased pesticide use, Vani.

Unwittingly Vani played right into this by failing to distinguish three things that are confused by almost everyone on both sides—a confusion that the smarter GMO supporters are quick to exploit.  The three are:

1.  Herbicides, which kill weeds.

2.  Insecticides, which kill insects.

3.  Pesticides, a general term including both herbicides and pesticides for anything that kills anything deemed a pest.

So it is logically possible for insecticide use to decrease while herbicide use is increasing (or vice versa of course).  And that is exactly what is happening, and what inevitably must happen with GMOs.  The logic is simple.  Insects attack plants directly, weeds indirectly (by simply competing for water and nutrients).  Therefore, you can put insecticidal genes into plants (those of Bacillus thuringiensi, for example) and thus decrease the need for spraying.  But because commercial plants don’t get directly attacked, you can’t put herbicidal genes into plants, you can only make them resistant to herbicides.  You must go on spraying, and because continued spraying inevitably produces resistant strains of weeds, you have to increase it.  Thus since the introduction of GMO corn and soybeans, in the mere 20 years between 1992 and 2011, glyphosate usage in the U.S. increased from less than 20 million pounds a year to 250 million pounds a year (source: USGS National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program, Pesticide National Synthesis Project).  “Actually decreased pesticide use?”  No, for the most common herbicide, a more than tenfold increase due to GMOs.

…and herbicide load in the environment.  And these chemicals are leaching into food.

Like which ones?  Citation?

Here’s a couple:

Thongprakaisang, S., Thiantanawat, A., Rangkadilok, N., Suriyo, T., & Satayavivad, J. (2013). Glyphosate induces human breast cancer cells growth via estrogen receptors. Food and Chemical Toxicology, 59, 129-136.

Chłopecka, M., Mendel, M., Dziekan, N., & Karlik, W. (2014). Glyphosate affects the spontaneous motoric activity of intestine at very low doses–In vitro study. Pesticide biochemistry and physiology, 113, 25-30.

There is significant evidence…

Significant?  Citation?

How about

Gasnier, C., Dumont, C., Benachour, N., Clair, E., Chagnon, M. C., & Séralini, G. E. (2009). Glyphosate-based herbicides are toxic and endocrine disruptors in human cell lines. Toxicology, 262(3), 184-191.

Note: Toxicology impact factor is 3.884

For a broader view of pesticide effects on endocrine functions, see: Mnif, W., Hassine, A. I. H., Bouaziz, A., Bartegi, A., Thomas, O., & Roig, B. (2011). Effect of endocrine disruptor pesticides: a review. International journal of environmental research and public health, 8(6), 2265-2303 and over 100 references therein.

…that one of them, Round-Up, is an endocrine-mimicking chemical.  In the theoretical scientific world one can wait for proof of causation—that is not a moral standard when it comes to protecting the public.  At the very least, the public has a right to know…

The non-scientific public can choose non-GMO product or organic.

Yes, once there is mandatory labeling, which GMO corporations have spent countless millions on trying to prevent.  I wonder why?

…when foods are engineered, which the food companies oppose.

In Europe they use the precautionary principle.

Not everyone can afford to, or wants to, live by your privileged threshold.

What is meant by a “privileged threshold”, and why is it supposed to be privileged?  Why are there people who”can’t afford to” live by it?   Sounds like there are also people who want to ingest toxic substances!

If there is significant evidence of harm, absolute proof is not required to act.  Sadly in our country, the burden is on the public to prove safety…

There is no evidence of harm.

Right, if you exclude all the sources I have cited plus hundreds more.  I might add this, from the EPA’s Technical Factsheet on Glyphosate (read it at: http://www.epa.gov/ogwdw/pdfs/factsheets/soc/tech/glyphosa.pdf

“Health Effects Summary:

Acute: EPA has found glyphosate to potentially cause the following health effects from acute exposures at levels above the MCL: congestion of the lungs; increased breathing rate.

Chronic: Glyphosate has the potential to cause the following health effects from long-term exposures at levels above the MCL: kidney damage, reproductive effects.

Cancer: There is inadequate evidence to state whether or not glyphosate has the potential to cause cancer from a lifetime exposure in drinking water.”

(EPA definition: “Maximum Contaminant Level Goal (MCLG ) = The level of a contaminant in drinking water below which there is no known or expected risk to health. MCLGs allow for a margin of safety and are non-enforceable public health goals” [my italics, DB].  And even this only involves drinking water.  To the best of my knowledge there are not even ways to satisfactorily measure contaminant levels from other vectors--atmospheric, epigenetic, nutritional, etc.--let alone legal enforcement of MCLs).  Their "cancer" note has it right: damage is cumulative over the lifespan of individuals, and if there are multiple vectors the only way you can assess it is through epidemiology.  And that's where Swanson et al. comes in.

…instead of the food companies.  My readers and I are out to change that, and I hope you will join us to make a healthier and truly sustainable food system to truly feed the world.

Yours sincerely.

Vani Hari

Need I say more? Both parties were equally short on citations, but I think any unbiased observer will agree that Vani was closer to the truth.