In an interview with HuffPost last month, the Science Guy
revealed how Monsanto changed his mind about GMOs. In so doing, he showed within a few minutes
of conversation the shallowness in his scientific understanding of the issues
involved.
LIE #1
“We are able to feed 7.2 billion people, which a century and
a half ago you could barely feed 1 and a half billion people and [it's] largely
because of the success of modern farming."
There are so many things wrong with this. In the first place, what’s Bill’s data base
for assuming that a century and a half ago, the world could hardly feed
itself? Zero, to the best of my
knowledge. To the contrary, folk over
most of the world fed themselves as well as or probably better than now until
European colonialism screwed up their economies.
In the second place, who exactly is meant by the "we" and the "you" here? Am I alone in seeing gross arrogance in
this remark? Not "The world is able to feed itself" or "The world as a whole is able to feed 7.2 billion", but “WE” are able to feed the
world, the way “we” want to feed it.
Naturally, the last thing we want is for the world to feed itself,
because people in the rest of the world are so stupid and ignorant they wouldn’t
have a clue how to feed themselves unless we "advanced nations" kindly either showed them how or
did it for them. Bill probably doesn’t
realize that’s what he’s saying. But it
is.
In the third place, pretty well everyone who’s seriously
studied the world economy is agreed that shortage of food is not and seldom if
ever has been the problem. Shortage of
money, shortage of infrastructure, exploitative governments, these are the
kinds of factor that make for shortage of food.
Not to mention the use of vast areas of land for cattle, the use of vast
quantities of food fed to cattle, the use of agricultural products to produce
ethanol, and on and on. If you don’t do
something about these kinds of thing, you can improve agriculture as much as you
want and you will still get hunger and wider malnutrition in a large part of
the world. It’s inexcusable for a
supposedly primo science communicator not to know all of this.
LIE #2
“GMO crops put the herbicides and pesticide inside the
plant, rather than spraying it on them and having it run down into streams.”
Come on, Bill! This
is a real “Duh!” moment. How COULD you
get a functional herbicide inside a plant?
How would it work, would the plant go out and fight other plants? Surely even Monsanto didn’t try to pass off
this whopper? Of course, what really
happens is probably the worst aspect of genetic engineering. The whole point of making Roundup-resistant
plants is so that you CAN “spray it on them”, just as much as it takes—the weeds
wilt and wither, but your crop still stands tall. Because the herbicide not only still “runs
down into streams”--with the aid of the adjuvants (themselves untested, btw)
that are added to all pesticides, it
spreads all over and is thoroughly absorbed by every part of the plant, so eventually by you and your nearest and
dearest.
And what effect might this have? Don’t go there, Bill, it’s more than your
career’s worth. If any serious science communicator
starts to even look at the accumulating scientific evidence that chemicals in
general and herbicides in particular may be responsible for the otherwise inexplicable
rise in chronic degenerative diseases that has pushed America down to
forty-somethingth place in world longevity rankings, those nice people at
Monsanto who were so generous with their time and trouble will demonize that
communicator, will hound and harass him (or her) and try to discredit her (or
him) in any way they can.
Your choice, Science Guys in general. You can save your jobs while you go on betraying
the public you are supposed, like the police, to serve and protect. Or you can do the right thing, which is to
alert that same public to the risks that are being imposed on them in the name
of corporate greed. Of course, if enough
of you did this, there would be too many of you to demonize.
It’s the old problem of the mice belling the cat. Who’s on first? Who will dare?