“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary
evidence.”
No shit, Sherlock?
This saying of Marcelo Truzzi has become a mantra for GMO advocates, to
be used reflexively whenever anyone produces a substantive piece of empirical
anti-GMO evidence. And at first blush it
sounds like a no-brainer. OF COURSE
extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence! And so far as I know, no-one has tried to
deconstruct the adage.
Specifically, nobody seems to have pointed out the
presupposition in the minor premise—that any claim of actual or potential
damage from GMOs is of its very nature an extraordinary claim. It is a presupposition devoid of any rational
support. Indeed ignoring this fact
invokes another well-known adage: “Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it.”
The rationale for believing that claims of harm from
GMOs are “extraordinary” lies in repeated statements by both government bodies
and scientific organizations that GMOs are “safe”. People apparently cannot remember that DDT,
cigarette smoking, thalidomide, diethylstilbestrol and Agent Orange were all declared
to be safe, often by the same organizations that have declared GMOs and the
spraying of herbicide resistant plants to be safe--e.g. the FDA, which has consistently
approved these, also approved thalidomide (1941) and diethylstilbestrol (1947). The company that made Agent Orange,
Monsanto, is the company that pioneered the use of glyphosate and that
originally manufactured Agent Orange, whose supposedly less lethal component,
2, 4D, is now allowed to be used on pesticide-resistant crops produced by Dow
AgroSciences. And bear in mind that only
two of the five cases noted (DDT, Agent Orange) involved substances that, like GMO
pesticides, were actually intended to destroy living organisms.
I’ve had personal experiences with three of these
cases, so I remember. I smoked until I
was forty, as a direct result of which I have severe emphysema, and several
members of my wife’s family died from smoking-related conditions; they were all
lifelong, heavy smokers. I remember
having a violent argument with an old friend, a well-known and highly respected
geneticist, who swore by all that was holy that Agent Orange did no harm to
humans; she, with all her credentials, was wrong, and I was right. My beloved mother-in-law was killed in less
than two years by doctors who, believing in the FDA’s assurance that
diethylstilbestrol was appropriate for the treatment of menopausal symptoms,
prescribed it and gave her cervical cancer.
If we look beyond the bland reassurances of
industrial and government organizations, we see that the scientific work supposed
to guarantee the safety of GMOs and pesticides is hopelessly out-of-date and unreliable. The mantra on which
such studies are based is, of course, “The dose makes the poison”, a doctrine
originated by a sixteenth-century alchemist and astrologer. How people who consider themselves scientists
and regard their opponents as unscientific or actively anti-science can embrace
a six-hundred-year old doctrine by a practitioner of two pseudo-sciences is a
total mystery to me. Do they also
believe in Ptolemaic epicycles, the four humors, spontaneous generation? That would be logical, since these equally formed
part of cutting-edge sixteenth-century science.
The only reason for continuing to believe that “the
dose makes the poison” is that this piece of pseudo-science supports the pro-GMO
case and the real science doesn’t. For
what real scientists think, here’s the Endocrine Society’s take on it:
“Over
the last two decades there has been burgeoning scientific evidence based on
field
research in wildlife species, epidemiological data on humans, and laboratory
research
with cell cultures and animal models that provides insights into
how
EDCs cause biological changes, and how that may lead to disease. However,
endocrinologists
now believe that a shift away from traditional toxicity
testing
is needed. The prevailing dogma applied to chemical risk assessment is
that
“the dose makes the poison.” These testing protocols are based on the idea
that
there is always a simple, linear relationship between dose and toxicity, with
higher
doses being more toxic, and lower doses less toxic. This strategy is used
to
establish a dose below which a chemical is considered “safe,” and experiments
are
conducted to determine that threshold for safety. Traditional testing involves
chemicals
being tested one at a time on adult animals, and they are presumed
safe
if they did not result in cancer or death.
“A
paradigm shift away from this dogma is required in order to assess fully the
impact
of EDCs and to protect human health. Like natural hormones, EDCs
exist
in the body in combination due to prolonged or continual environmental
exposures.
Also like natural hormones, EDCs have effects at extremely low doses
(typically
in the part-per-trillion to part-per-billion range) to regulate bodily
functions.
This concept is particularly important in considering that exposures
start
in the womb and continue throughout the life cycle. A new type of testing is
needed
in order to reflect that EDCs impact human health even at the low levels
encountered
in everyday life."
And who or what is the Endocrine Society? Some soft-on-science, anti-vaccine activist group, doubtless? Well, as a matter of fact, no.
And who or what is the Endocrine Society? Some soft-on-science, anti-vaccine activist group, doubtless? Well, as a matter of fact, no.
“The Endocrine Society is a professional, international
medical organization in the field of endocrinology
and metabolism founded in 1916 as The Association for the Study of Internal Secretions. The
official name of the organization was changed to The Endocrine Society on
January 1, 1952. It is a leading organization in the field and publishes four
leading journals. It has more than 17,000 members from over 100 countries in medicine,
molecular and cellular
biology, biochemistry, physiology,
genetics,
immunology,
education,
industry and allied health. The Society's mission is: ‘to
advance excellence in endocrinology and promote its essential and integrative
role in scientific discovery, medical practice, and human health’. It is said to be ‘the world's oldest, largest
and most active organization devoted to research on hormones and the clinical
practice of endocrinology.’”
So,
to sum up: the GMO/pesticide nexus is just one of a series of cases within the
last century where not only scientists but government agencies tasked with consumer
protection have assured us certain products were safe until mounting
death-tolls proved to everyone that they were wrong. Now one of the world’s largest organizations
in the relevant scientific fields has demonstrated that the grounds on which
the “safety” of GMOs and their associated pesticide use are invalid. Endocrine-disruptor doses “in the
part-per-trillion to part-per-billion range” are unavoidable when “an estimated 85 percent of all food consumed in the United States now contains genetically
modified organisms”. For many pesticides
used routinely on GMO crops, including what is by far the commonest,
glyphosate, are endocrine disruptors.
Now
can you please explain to me exactly how and why the claim that GMOs and
pesticides may be damaging to our health is an extraordinary claim?
Because of
course it is NOT an extraordinary claim.
In light of both the regulatory history of recent decades and the latest
scientific findings in the most relevant field, it is, to the contrary, an
extraordinarily ordinary claim. And
ordinary claims require only ordinary evidence—nothing more. Like the kind of epidemiological evidence
that blew the whistle on the smoking-lung cancer link. Like the epidemiological evidence in Swanson et al., against
which I am still waiting to hear a single substantive negative argument.
