Neil DeGrasse Tyson and the GMO Debate

After seeing the alarmist yet withering documentary GMO OMG a few weeks ago and astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s remarks on GMO’s last week, I am compelled to write on a topic I admit I have not done enough research into until now. Initially I did not feel as though I did not need to do much research for my particular concerns about GMO’s since my beef with BigAg is focused more on the consequences of consuming GMO’s while many of those opposed to GMO’s oppose them on other grounds, such as the patenting of life forms and the business practices of BigAg. 

I want to address Tyson’s defense of GMO’s and how miserably it fails. In Tyson’s own words in which he lambastes the anti-GMO brigade, he says, “If your objection to GMOs is the morality of selling nonprerennial [sic] seed stocks, then focus on that. If your objection to GMOs is the monopolistic conduct of agribusiness, then focus on that. But to paint the entire

I beg your forgiveness!

concept of GMO with these particular issues is to blind yourself to the underlying truth of what humans have been doing—and will continue to do—to nature so that it best serves our survival. That's what all organisms do when they can, or would do, if they could. Those that didn't, have gone extinct extinct [sic].” Tyson’s defense of GMO’s seems ignore key issues and rests on the premise that we have a long history of manipulating plant and animal DNA in our favor. He’s correct until the point in history that we started splicing in segment of DNA from one plant or animal into another plant or animal; essentially crossbreeding organisms that we couldn’t possibly crossbreed before the advent of gene manipulation. In other words, there was a point in which agricultural science went beyond what were already possibilities in the natural world.

I have to grant that this alone does not make GMO’s dangerous to eat (they may be dangerous to eat, but not necessarily on this particular account). The problem comes in when it becomes obvious that the long term effects of gene manipulation on the eco-system go unstudied before the technology is implemented. (Granted, this happens all the time, with mixed results at best.) There are no studies – at least not that I can find – that go beyond three months in length that focus solely on the consumption of the GMO product itself (very important to note that) that indicates the GMO product is harmful to humans. Although, many of the three month studies I could find were conducted by the business creating the GMO product. Shades of Big Tobacco, no? However, when studies – even ones as short as three months in duration – focus on the chemicals used to fertilize GMO crops and control pests (insects and weeds), the results are clear; the GMO product is contaminated with these chemicals and they show up in the bloodstream of people who consume GMO crops. As alluded to a few moments ago, we now all know how the effects of the chemicals used in Big Tobacco products ultimately turned out. The presence of the toxins associated with growing GMO’s is my main reason for trying to avoid such crops. Not only are the chemicals toxic to humans, runoff of the chemicals into the eco-system at large appears to have dire consequences, such as the number of ‘dead-zones’ appearing in our oceans. [As reported on the major news outlets this morning, the dead-zone in the Gulf of Mexico,”…is formed by nutrients that wash into the Gulf's waters; largely agriculture fertilizer and wastewater coming down the Mississippi River. These boost algae blooms that suck up the oxygen in deep water, according to NOAA and the U.S. Geological Survey. Marine life struggles to find enough oxygen to survive within the zone. Fish and shrimp can migrate to areas with oxygen-rich water, but some life forms in the deep water and ocean floor, including those that serve as food for the fish and shrimp, can't get out of the zone and eventually die.” The article doesn’t point out what’s in the fertilizer and wastewater, but we can make an educated guess. My guess is that the chemicals entering the oceans are probably not good for our long term health. But, that’s just a hypothesis at this point.] 

My second reason for trying to avoid GMO’s goes back to the point I got away from at the start of my previous paragraph, namely, that we don’t know the long-term effects of GMO’s on our health or the eco-system and I’m rather stunned that a prominent scientist such as Tyson completely ignores this point. After all, I just pointed out one of the short-term problems on human health and the eco-system, but what happens if we ignore these short-term problems well into the future? Again, the implementation of science will always be advanced before being morally analyzed (think nuclear energy, surveillance technology, etc.), though I suppose that those of us with lesser influence should expect nothing less from those who operate according to a different morality altogether. But I digress; what are the long-term consequences of, say, engineering salmon to grow faster and larger? (Well, of course they’re under tight security, except when one escapes into the wild.) Or, what are the consequences of weeds quickly adapting and becoming resistant to Monsanto’s Round-Up herbicide? Or, what happens when a GMO doesn’t operate according to plan? No one knows. Few seem to care though in my world a scientist would. #NeilDeGrasseTysonFail

When we focus on the scientific issues surrounding GMO’s and ignore momentarily the social and political issues, we should be inclined to worry – at least a little bit – about GMO crops. Scientifically, we should be concerned that the toxic chemicals used to assist the growth of GMO’s are winding up inside of our bodies. Scientifically, we should be concerned about the long-term effects of GMO’s (Heck, and I haven’t even spoken about how vulnerable mono-cropping makes us. The great Irish potato famine anyone? Beuller?) We should also be a little concerned that scientific experimentation by the University of Wisconsin and Washington State University, among others, have shown GMO crop yields to be no better than organic farming. So, why are GMO’s so deeply entrenched in our food culture? Ah, but now we’re getting political… 

Neil DeGrasse Tyson gets credit for being clever most of the time, but hey, no one is perfect. Still, his defense of GMO's rested on a spurious argument. I expect more from America's Scientist Laureate. Better luck next time, Neil.