The following is an edited excerpt.
Near the beginning of an interview about GE wheat, Colbert asks (humorously) how the wheat survived, wondering if it had been “doing a Rambo out there, living on mud puddles and grubs?”
Laurie Garrett immediately goes completely off-topic and responds:
Garrett: “The one thing we know, is that there are 24 strains of so-called superweeds. These are giant weeds that are very hard to kill, because they’ve absorbed these strange genes that make them resistant…”
Colbert: ”In some wheat, there’s a gene in there that keeps Roundup from killing it, and that can jump to the weeds its trying to kill?”
Garrett: ”Exactly.”
Exactly?? I don’t know what Laurie Garrett’s area of expertise is. But she obviously knows very little about genetics, crop science, or weed management.
Read the full post here: Laurie Garrett gets things surprisingly wrong on the Colbert Report
