LifeItself

So, we had the WSJ raving about applying good science to evaluate the undeniable benefits of GMOs, and we also had little shreds of evidence to the contrary. In India, for example, they found a couple of tiny, irrelevant problems with a GMO eggplant designed so marvelously  by Monsanto. Nonsense, I say!  But here is what those pesky Indians say. Oops! And Monsanto's Roundup, what a God send it has been for our hard working farmers and consumers! Or is it ?  Is it, really ?! I say, I am getting confused.  But my liver, and heart, and kidneys, and lungs, and hormones seem to know something.  And they all refuse to accept the GMO blessings.  They are wrong, I say! The science I don't like is junk science. And WSJ confirms.  What a relief...

The December 27, 2010, WSJ Opinion piece, "Ag Department Uproots Science," is full of fantastically uninformed thinking so characteristic of medieval alchemists. The piece takes to task the Ag Secretary and the Obama administration for being insufficiently warm towards the genetically modified (GM) plants and insufficiently lax in regulating them. The nonsensical argument that a genetically modified plant is "substantially equivalent" to an unmodified one, because a few different genes weight almost nothing, flies in the face of the very science the opinionator invokes so often. These modified genes express themselves differently in different circumstances, and may cause significant changes in chemical reaction pathways at cellular level. In other words, the modified plant may, and often does, produce chemicals that disrupt the human endocrinal system or are downright poisonous. A good example are GM potatoes. What irks me more than anything is that this roa...