Harvard scientist reports on Canada’s anti-science, anti-GE left

The following is an edited excerpt.

While recent political trends in North America have bred legislation that reflects the irrational arguments of the right, there is an emerging and alarming trend of legally indulging the irrational left.

Take for example the Green Party of Canada, whose mailing list I recently subscribed to. For a while, the incoming e-mail bulletins were mostly innocuous. That all changed a few weeks ago when the bulletins began urgently warning me of the dangers of genetically-modified foods, and not simply the dangers that GMOs could pose to the environment. Instead, these warnings urged me to take action against the “potentially serious threat” that GMOs pose to our personal health.

Just to be clear, there has never been a single reputable, peer-reviewed study that has found any link between the consumption of genetically modified foods and adverse health effects. Perhaps as importantly, there is no proposed mechanism that can explain why any such link could exist. The claim that GMOs are unsafe for human consumption is entirely unsupported and is a prime example of thinking informed by unscientific and purely emotional arguments. For a political party to blindly propagate these ideas is irresponsible at best and, at worst, ideologically-motivated alarmism.

Let me emphasize that the Green Party claims to inform its policies with the best possible science. This is the party that claims to have science on its side. This is a party that a disproportionate number of scientists likely voted for. This is the party that I voted for.

Read the full post here: Not so quiet on the left-ern front

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