What is ‘carbon farming’ and could it provide a path to a more sustainable agricultural future?

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As the effects of climate change intensify and paths for limiting global warming narrow, politicians, media and environmental advocates have rallied behind “carbon farming” as a mutually beneficial strategy for society, the environment and farmers.

Agriculture covers more than half of Earth’s terrestrial surface and contributes roughly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Paying farmers to restore carbon-depleted soils offers a tantalizing opportunity for a natural climate solution that could help nations to meet their commitments under the international Paris climate agreement to stabilize global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.

An international initiative called “4 per 1000,” launched at the 2015 Paris climate conference, showed that increasing soil carbon worldwide by just 0.4% yearly could offset that year’s new growth in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel emissions.

A free-range pig at the Stone Brns Center for Food and Agriculture in New York. Raising livestock and crops together can boost soil carbon through the animals’ grazing patterns and natural manure distribution. Credit: Francesca Cotrufo

Research shows that farmers and ranchers can also make their operations more resilient to increasingly variable weather by adopting practices that promote soil carbon sequestration. This prospect led us to establish a center at Colorado State University that develops and implements soil-based solutions to climate change.

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While many policy options exist to reduce emissions from agricuture, carbon farming has sparked bipartisan U.S. legislation and attracted investors’ attention. Critics question its true potential, however. Some environment and justice advocacy groups argue that paying farmers won’t do much to increase soil carbon, and could allow polluting industries such as manufacturing to avoid necessary emission reductions by buying soil carbon credits from farmers instead.

Given the momentum behind carbon farming as a climate change mitigation strategy, we believe now is the time to establish clear standards that ensure that only real net changes in carbon receive financial rewards.

Increasing carbon storage in soil can help stabilize the climate and support food production.

Carbon farming basics

As plants grow, they pull carbon from the atmosphere, and soil soaks it up and stores it. The amount of carbon stored varies significantly across soil type and climate.

Traditional farming methods that sequester carbon have existed for millennia. For example, minimizing soil disturbance through no-till farming reduces carbon loss to the atmosphere. Diversifying crops and planting legumesperennials and cover crops returns more carbon to the soil, and sustains soil microbes that play key roles in carbon storage.

Another climate-friendly strategy is raising livestock and crops together. Rotating cows among pastures allows grasses to recover from grazing, and the animals’ manure and the impacts of their grazing regenerate carbon in soils.

Some farmers use these practices, which often are called “regenerative agriculture,” particularly in Black and Indigenous communities that have been excluded from access to capital and government subsidies.

The deep roots of Kernza, a perennial grain, reduce erosion, help the plant tolerate drought and add soil carbon deeper in the ground than shorter-rooted annual grains. Kernza, the first commercially viable perennial grain in the U.S., was developed by The Land Institute, based in Salina, Kansas. Credit: Francesca Cotrufo

Soil: A low-cost solution

Increasing soil carbon through techniques like no-till is relatively inexpensive. Studies estimate that carbon farming costs US$10-$100 per ton of CO2 removed, compared with $100-$1,000 per ton for technologies that mechanically remove carbon from the air.

Carbon farming is also a potential revenue stream for farmers and ranchers, who can sell the credits they earn in carbon markets. Large-scale greenhouse gas emitters, such as manufacturers, purchase these credits to offset their own emissions.

Companies such as IndigoAg and Nori are already facilitating payments to farmers for carbon credits. And on June 24, 2021, the U.S. Senate passed the Growing Climate Solutions Act of 2021 by a vote of 92-8. The bill would authorize the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help farmers, ranchers and private forest landowners participate in carbon markets.

So far, however, there are no universal standards for measuring, reporting or verifying agricultural carbon credits. Here are the questions we see as top priorities.

Assessing carbon storage

One major challenge is that soils absorb varying amounts of carbon depending on depth, texture and mineral content. While certain practices increase carbon storage, quantifying how much is stored and for how long is critical for assigning dollar values to them. The markets and practices that work in different locations also vary widely.

Some scientific models offer estimates of carbon sequestration for various climates and soil types based on averages over large areas. We believe that regulators need rigorous models verified by measurements to avoid crediting carbon that never ends up in soil or doesn’t remain there for long.

But verification isn’t easy. Scientists are still searching for quick, accurate, cost-effective ways to sample and analyze soils.

Possible approaches include infrared spectroscopy – which identifies materials in soil by analyzing how they absorb or reflect infrared light – or machine learning, which can find patterns in large data sets quickly. Studies conducted in the U.S. Great Plainsthe United Kingdom and the European Union suggest these are promising, low-cost methods.

Integrating carbon into markets poses scientific, economic and technical challenges. Credit: CSU Soil Carbon Solutions Center

Another priority is developing national minimum standards to predict and properly value soil carbon capture. Carbon may reside in soil anywhere from days to millennia, so time scale is an important consideration for markets. In our view, credits should reflect the duration carbon resides in soil, with full offsets generated only for longer-lasting storage.

We also believe that these programs must consider an operation’s net greenhouse gas emissions. For example, practices may store more carbon in soil but also increase emissions of nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas.

Backed by effective technologies and policies, carbon farming can improve ecosystems and help to slow climate change. Credit: CSU Soil Carbon Solutions Center

Benefits and challenges

Rebuilding carbon-rich soil supports farmers’ bottom lines by improving soil health and increasing crop yields. But federal incentives could preferentially provide resources to big operations that have greater ability to sequester carbon on their vast acreage.

That’s been the case with U.S. farm subsidies: Over the past 25 years, 10% of the largest farms received 78% of subsidies.

Since these practices benefit farmers, some may use them even without policy incentives. As we see it, to avoid paying for soil carbon increases that would have occurred anyway, carbon banks should avoid crediting farms for adopting practices known to be profitable in their regions.

Ultimately, the goals of climate policy include curbing greenhouse gas emissions and actively removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Before farmers receive soil carbon credits they can sell to offset other sources of emissions, we believe their value must be accurately assessed to ensure that society gets what it pays for.

Laura van der Pol is a PhD student in Ecology at Colorado State University. Find Laura on X @SumSciNerd

Dale Manning is an Associate Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at Colorado State University. 

Francesca Cotrufo is a Professor of Soil and Crop Sciences at Colorado State University.

Megan Machmuller is a research scientist at Colorado State University.

A version of this article was originally posted at the Conversation and is reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit both the original article and the GLP. The Conversation can be found on X @ConversationUS

Power of placebo: Here is how the ‘belief effect’ influences our views on nutrition, pain and mental health

There is a fascinating interplay between the power of belief and its profound impact on our corporeal health and nutrition. From the intriguing ability of belief to shape our perception of food to its remarkable sway over our hormonal responses, the connections between what we think, what we eat, and how it affects our bodies are powerful.

What is becoming more and more clear is that expectations and predictions have a very strong influence on basic experiences, on how we feel and what we perceive. Doing anything that you believe will help you feel better will probably help you feel better.

– Dr. Leonie Koban, Ph.D., Neuroscience and Affective Sciences, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center

What is the Belief Effect?

The Belief Effect occurs when patients’ expectations and beliefs play a substantial role in determining their health outcomes. It mimics the brain’s capacity to produce real physiological responses in the absence of any active treatment or intervention.

Faith and attitudes can influence the release of neurotransmitters, hormones, and immune system responses, all of which can affect the body’s functioning.

Scientific evidence

Numerous studies have detailed the intricate relationship between belief, nutrition, and health, shedding light on how our cognitive processes can significantly impact our well-being. How else does the Belief Effect play a pivotal role in shaping our nutritional choices and health outcomes?

How your beliefs shape nutritional health

The Ghrelin Response

In a study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, researchers examined the influence of expectation on ghrelin, the hunger hormone.

Participants were given identical milkshakes, but they were told that one was a “decadent indulgence” and the other a “sensible, low-calorie choice.”

Remarkably, those who believed they were consuming the indulgent shake showed a more significant increase in ghrelin levels or an increase in the feeling of hunger or being unsatisfied with the meal, even though both shakes had the same nutritional content, those who had the “sensishake” felt less hungry, or had a lower ghrelin level.

The flavor perception

A study published in Appetite investigated the relationship between beliefs about food healthiness and taste perception. Participants were presented with identical food items but were led to believe that one was healthier than the other.

The results showed that individuals who believed the food was healthier rated it as more flavorful, demonstrating the influence of belief on taste perception. The person’s belief or how she/he interprets (inter-presents or internally represents) directly governs the biological response or behavior.

Another remarkable study involved a woman who suffered from split personalities. At her baseline personality, her blood glucose levels were normal. However, the moment she believed she was diabetic, her entire physiology changed to become that of a diabetic, including elevated blood glucose levels.

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Diet & nutrition

Belief in the effectiveness of a specific diet can have a profound impact on dietary adherence and outcomes. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) explored the influence of belief on weight loss.

Participants who had strong beliefs in the efficacy of a particular diet were more likely to adhere to it and achieve better weight loss results compared to those with less conviction. (This is one I personally need to subscribe to—I typically last about a week on a new dietary regimen before getting off track.)

The belief effect extends to nutrient absorption, as well. Studies have shown that believing you are consuming a nutrient-rich meal can enhance your body’s ability to absorb those nutrients. Your faith in the nutritional value of a meal can impact how efficiently your body extracts vitamins and minerals.

Metabolic response

Our metabolic response to various foods can be influenced by our beliefs in their healthiness. A study published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine investigated the effect of belief on post-meal metabolic markers. Participants who believed they were consuming a healthy meal exhibited more favorable metabolic responses, including improved insulin sensitivity, compared to those who believed the meal was unhealthy. Incredible what the mind can do!

There’s also a dedicated podcast on the connections between neuroscience and human behavior: The Huberman Lab podcast, hosted by neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman, explores topics related to the impact of beliefs on health.

In a recent episode, Dr. Huberman emphasized the vital importance of understanding how belief affects our overall well-being. In this episode on mindset and health, Dr. Huberman explores the impact of diet, is actually a combined product of what you are doing, what you are thinking about, your stress, your anxiety—the interconnectedness of your mental and physical self.

Belief Effect extends far beyond nutrition

Let’s briefly examine just some of the ways the Belief Effect impacts overall health.

Pain management: Studies have shown that individuals who believe they are taking a potent pain reliever but are actually ingesting a placebo often experience reduced pain perception. This demonstrates the brain’s ability to release endorphins and modulate pain signals based on belief alone.

Mental health: Faith in the effectiveness of psychotherapy or medication can significantly improve mental health outcomes. Positive expectations can lead to reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Immune function: Belief can influence immune responses, affecting the body’s ability to fight off infections and diseases. Optimistic beliefs and positive attitudes have been linked to improved immune function.

Cardiovascular health: Belief in the benefits of lifestyle changes, such as exercise and dietary improvements, can lead to better cardiovascular outcomes, including lowered blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

These studies provide robust evidence supporting the notion that belief can significantly influence nutrition and health outcomes. Recognizing the power of belief in shaping our dietary choices and metabolic responses underscores the importance of a holistic approach to health that includes both physical and psychological factors.

The bottom line

Science backs up the assertion that your beliefs and perceptions about food can shape not only your dietary choices but also how your body responds to the nutrients you consume. Harnessing the positive aspects of the Belief Effect, such as having faith in the nutritional value of your meals and making informed dietary choices, can contribute to improved health outcomes.

Hayley Phillip is from the Central Valley of California and a graduate of the University of California Santa Barbara with degrees in Sociology and Marketing. She moved to New York shortly after graduation, and has expertise in navigating the jungle of misinformation, misleading labels and “fake” diet and health claims.

A version of this article was originally posted at Dirt to Dinner and has been reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit the original author and provide links to both the GLP and the original article. Find Dirt to Dinner on X @Dirt_To_Dinner

Uruguay joins gene-editing nations, revamps CRISPR crop approval process

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The ministries of Environment and Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries will work together in the analysis of the New Genetic Improvement Techniques applicable to products or organisms, linked to agricultural, aquaculture or forestry production and their derived products. The new Decree that establishes the joint work procedure and the formation of a Technical Group in charge was presented, on Monday, March 18, at a press conference, by ministers Robert Bouvier (MA) and Fernando Mattos (MGAP).

The new regulations are the result of a joint effort between both ministries. There, the formation of a Technical Working Group (GTT) is established in charge of determining, in a scientific and objective manner, whether a product or organism obtained through these techniques should be considered within the regulations applicable to Genetically Modified Organisms.

Each authorization linked to the use of these new techniques will go through an analysis process, which will have equal participation of both ministries in decision-making.

Within the framework of the announcement made at the headquarters of the Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries (MGAP), the Minister of the Environment, Robert Bouvier, maintained that with this definition, the government “reflects the shared commitment to the promotion of innovation and sustainable development, together with our firm responsibility towards the protection and conservation of our biodiversity.

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”The Ministry of the Environment (MA) will address the issue from a perspective focused on the product rather than the process. “Our approach is aimed at preventing potential adverse effects, with a special emphasis on the protection of our biodiversity,” said Bouvier, who added, “we will evaluate in detail the characteristics of each new product derived from the New Genetic Improvement Techniques, taking appropriate measures necessary to avoid any repercussions that these may generate.”

At the same time, technical and cooperation capacities have been reinforced with scientific institutions such as the National Institute of Agricultural Research (INIA), the National Seed Institute (INASE), the University of the Republic (UdelaR), the Pasteur Montevideo Institute, and the Technological Laboratory of Uruguay. (LATU) and the Clemente Estable Biological Research Institute (IIBCE).

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The Technical Working Group (GTT) will be made up of experts in molecular characterization who may come from the MGAP, the MA, as well as other organizations or institutions with expertise: National Institute of Agricultural Research (INIA), National Seed Institute (INASE), University of the Republic (UdelaR), Pasteur Montevideo Institute (IP-Montevideo), Technological Laboratory of Uruguay (LATU) and Clemente Estable Biological Research Institute (IIBCE).

For his part, the Minister of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries, Fernando Mattos, referred to the new regulations as “a milestone for this administration in what genetic improvement means in agricultural production.” He added, “with this step an enormous range of possibilities opens up for the country. We have the challenge of maintaining food security (…). The requirement for nutritional quality foods with current production parameters is very difficult to meet. We must guarantee quality and quantity of food that is aligned with caring for the environment and sustainability.

”The directors, Gerardo Evia, from the National Directorate of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Dinabise) of the MA; and Virginia Guardia, from the General Directorate of Biosafety and Food Safety (Digebia) of the MGAP; as the main leading executing units of the Technical Working Group, they participated in the conference and the announcement of the new regulations and the administrative and technical procedure involved in the analysis.

[Editor’s note: This article has been translated from Spanish and edited for clarity.]

Read the original post here

Did you hear the story about the GMO that nearly destroyed the world?

Once upon a time, way back in 1990, a German company modified the genetics of a bacterium so it could efficiently ferment plant waste, turning the material into ethanol. There was, the story goes, just one problem: the bacteria, Klebsiella planticola, “almost killed the world with booze,” according to an article on Cracked.

Earth Island Journal took a less sarcastic tack, quoting retired genetics professor and now environmental activist David Suzuki:

Geneticist David Suzuki understands that what took place was truly ominous. “The genetically engineered Klebsiella,” he says, “could have ended all plant life on this continent. The implications of this single case are nothing short of terrifying.”

Read the GLP’s profile of David Suzuki here.

This story has become an occasionally arising myth, with articles that appear every few years bolstering anti-GMO activists’ views that anything transgenic or otherwise modified is at least bad for your health, bad for the environment, or perhaps fatal.

Now, in the wake of a new federal law mandating labeling food containing GMOs, the myth has returned.

According to an Op-Ed in Truth-Out.com, which expressed disappointment in the new law as well as shock at the discovery of unapproved GM wheat in a Washington field, these two events illustrated the hazards of genetic modification. According to the Truth-Out writers, these events:

Should set off some alarm bells, because we’ve dodged a similar bullet before with Klebsiella planticola, a soil bacteria that aggressively grows on plants’ roots.

In the early 1990s, a European genetic engineering company was preparing to field test its genetically modified version of Klebsiella planticola, which it had tested in the lab and presumed to be safe. But if it weren’t for the work of a team of independent scientists led by Dr. Elaine Ingham, that company could have literally killed every terrestrial plant on the planet.

A turn of events

So, what did happen? Scientists and engineers have been spending decades looking at new ways to handle plant waste, which can become rich material for soil amendments, or can be fermented into other chemicals, including ethanol, and turned into biofuels. In fact, the Klebsiella planticola bacterium (which is now called Raoultella planticola after scientists re-examined the members of Klebsiella), has been studied for its ability to create ethanol from decaying plant material.

As the story goes, a German company received U.S. Environmental Protection Agency permission to conduct field trials on the amended bacterium, called SDF20, which had a plasmid (a short loop of DNA) inserted into its genome. This plasmid contained a gene for an enzyme, pyruvate decarboxylase that allowed SDF20 to ferment plant waste to ethanol.

This trial caught the attention of Elaine Ingham, a Green Party member who was then a scientist on the faculty of Oregon State University. In testimony to the New Zealand Royal Commission on Genetic Engineering, Ingham said her graduate student, Michael Holmes, “discovered that the engineered bacterium, Klebsiella planticola, with an additional alcohol gene, killed all the wheat plants in microcosms into which the engineered organisms were added.”

The engineered bacterium produces far beyond the required amount of alcohol per gram soil than required to kill any terrestrial plant. This could have been the single most devastating impact on human beings since we should likely have lost corn, wheat, barley, vegetable crops, trees, bushes, etc., conceivably all terrestrial plants.

To back this up, she cited a paper co-written with Holmes, published in 1999 in Applied Soil Ecology. The news of this was picked up the Green Party members of the European Parliament, and a number of other activists who touted how the discovery underscored the grave planetary danger of GMOs.

The Greens rescue world from GMOs?

According to a very recent article in Organics.org, the Green Party activists and scientists saved us all in the nick of time:

This new miracle GMO had all the necessary approvals to be commercialized and it was going to be. However, a team of independent scientists led by Dr. Elaine Ingham remained skeptical and luckily so. They discovered after some testing what the bacteria is actually capable of doing and after exposing the results the gene-altered bacteria was never commercialized. If not for their efforts, there is no doubt that this would have ended the world.

Scientists call shenanigans on GMO doomsday plant

But problems with her and Holmes’ story began. In a rebuttal to Ingham’s testimony, Christian Walter, with Forest Research Institute in Rotorua, New Zealand, Michael Berridge, of the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research in Wellington, and David Tribe, of the University of Melbourne, Australia, wrote that:

  • The paper she and Holmes wrote with their results actually doesn’t exist (the volume and page numbers were false, and no other citation can be found).
  • Another paper, also by Holmes, Ingham and other colleagues, was cited later (after the rebuttal was published), but this paper reviewed the growth of spring wheat in poor, sandy soil that had been inoculated with the SDF20 strain of K. planticola. Not anything resembling grounds for worldwide plant Armageddon.
  • There was no evidence from the EPA or the US Department of Agriculture that any field trials for SDF20 were ever approved.
  • The SDF20 produced about 20 micrograms per milliliter of alcohol in the soil. “This concentration is several hundred times lower than that required to affect plant growth (10 milligrams per milliliter),” they wrote.

The scientists concluded then, that:

Dr Ingham’s assertions have been published widely on the Internet and elsewhere. However, we have been unable to find any evidence that Dr Ingham has submitted her assertions about threats to terrestrial plant life to scientific publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

Our own literature search and resulting evidence further demonstrates that natural alcohol producing varieties of Klebsiella planticola already exist, and are routinely found in nature; however, no adverse consequences of this alcohol production on any organisms including plants have been observed.

In fact, the studies on K. planticola (R. planticola today), showed that the new strain could not survive in poor soil, which probably wrote a death sentence not for the world, but for the commercial viability of a modified form of R. planticola.

As for Dr. Ingham, who went from Oregon State to the Rodale Institute and now runs a soil management consulting company called SoilFoodWeb, she and the Green Party apologized to the New Zealand Royal Commission:

The Green Party incorrectly cited a paper that is has since discovered…does not exist.

There are no records indicating that field testing approval was ever given.

The Green Party would like to request that the commission disregard the final sentence in paragraph 30, recognize that this statement goes beyond the published literature. (This was Ingham’s assertion that SDF20 would kill all plant life on earth).

In her apology, Ingham said:

I was incorrect in stating that the specifically genetically engineered Klebsiella planticola I was talking about had been approved for field trials and was going to be released.

I would like to make clear that the possibility of destruction of terrestrial plants that I referred to as an outcome of releasing this organism is an extrapolation from the laboratory evidence. It is one possible scenario. There are other possible scenarios which could occur; we need more data to be able to make a clear judgement on the most likely outcome.

Any data would have been nice. And today, we still have plants. And GMOs. And alcohol.

Andrew Porterfield is a writer and editor, and has worked with numerous academic institutions, companies and non-profits in the life sciences. BIO. Follow him on Twitter @AMPorterfield

This article originally ran on the GLP August 11, 2017.

Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen Deception: No, your fruit and vegetables are not ‘soaked’ with pesticides

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In supermarket conversations (and yes, I do have them) people are scared to death about their fruits and vegetables. I eat fruits and vegetables, all of them, and a lot of them. My kick-ass garden, farmers’ markets, grocery stores, roadside stands — I love fresh fruits and vegetables. I buy conventional and sometimes organic if it is from a friend’s farm. I buy to support my state’s farmers, and choices are also influenced by meal ideas for the week.

I live on a highly productive small farm. I use a spectrum of natural and synthetic pesticides, compost and synthetic fertilizers, safely, and without hesitation. I’m a scientist at a major university that works with ag. I see what farmers spray and how they do it. I understand the chemistry. I’m keenly aware of realistic risk, so I’m not afraid of my food.

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Today the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) “Dirty Dozen” list slinked out of its fear cave again, the annual extrapolation of government statistics that is published to scare consumers and influence buying choices. For those unaware of this annual fear campaign, the EWG publishes a list of “dirty” produce, claiming that they are woefully contaminated with pesticide residues that will kill us all. The goal is to erode trust in conventional agriculture and promote a transition to pricey organic alternatives. If you choose to support organic farms, that’s great. But EWG’s manufactured risk affects many that cannot afford the lofty price tag.

Here’s why we need to reject the Dirty Dozen:

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1. It creates a false sense of food risk where next to none exists

They are not a testing organization. They acquire numbers from USDA tests, tests that are done to monitor the safety of chemistry use on the farm. The results overwhelmingly show that food is safe, and that the levels of chemicals detected are extremely small. EWG makes up their own safety thresholds that fail to comport with even the most stringent international standards. Typically they are at parts per billion (seconds in 32 years) and way more than thousands of times below safe daily consumption levels. EWG implies that many chemistries are found on one piece of fruit, when farmers typically never use the combinations reported. They are lumping statistics together to scare consumers.

2. It perpetuates fear of chemistry that is used safely

The point of the USDA survey is to verify that chemistry is being used safely, and it is. EWG simply bends and reports the numbers in an effort to scare consumers. Your food is not “dirty” and that’s what the USDA shows with these tests. They say that strawberries are #1 dirty. Strawberry scientists and farmers let their kids eat them too, right out of the field. I do it all the time.

They use stats of residues on fresh fruits and vegetables, not consumer exposure, which is even lower than the amounts detected. We have technology that is very good at detecting next to nothing.

3. It harms farmers

Farmers use crop protection products with great responsibility. After all, it is on their farm, they are applying it, and it typically is being applied near where their families and pets reside. Ag chemicals cost a lot of money. Application takes time, labor and fuel. They are applied as little as possible. The familiar trope of farmers dousing a field in 35 chemicals is a massive exaggeration, and one clearly perpetuated by EWG’s Dirty Dozen.

Worse, when consumers turn against fresh fruits and vegetables, it impacts the farmers’ bottom line. Nowadays the thin margins can’t tolerate well funded scare campaigns.

4. It discourages consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables

Probably the greatest harm done by the Dirty Dozen is how it discourages consumers from eating fruits and vegetables. The perception is that they are “dirty” and covered in toxic chemistry, thanks to campaigns like the Dirty Dozen. At a time when we know that consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables is absolutely tied to better health and less long-term degenerative disease, we should be encouraging their consumption at every turn — not scaring people away.

5. It takes healthy food from the poor

Many living in poverty in the cities or in rural areas do not have access to fresh fruits and vegetables to begin with. A local mini-mart or convenience store may be the best source, and they may certainly not have access to boutique organic products. When conventional fruits and vegetables are described as risky and dangerous by activists, buying decisions are affected, leading consumers to buy less healthy alternatives, like frozen or processed food.

6. It promotes food waste

When consumers fail to purchase in-store produce because they believe it is covered in toxic chemicals, they do not purchase it, leading to a greater chance that it will be discarded. We should be promoting the consumption of fruits and vegetables that are available in our stores, minimizing waste and contributing to sustainable production.

There you have it, a half dozen reasons to reject the Dirty Dozen. The Environmental Working Group seeks to tarnish conventional farming, along with vaccines, cell phones and other modern miracles. These people are experts in marketing that use fear to influence consumer decisions. We can effectively term the Dirty Dozen as disinformation, as the EWG has Ph.D. level toxicologists on staff that know better- but use their education and expetise to deceive.

Celebrate the safest, most diverse, most inexpensive food supply in human history, and eat fresh fruits and vegetables!

Kevin M. Folta is a professor, keynote speaker and podcast host. Follow Professor Folta on X @kevinfolta

A version of this article was originally posted at Kevin Folta’s Blog and is reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit both the GLP and original article.

GLP podcast: Why some deaf people oppose curing deafness; The dark side of embryo screening; Should states ban lab-grown meat?

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Groundbreaking gene therapies for deafness are coming online, but they’re opposed by a surprising group of people—a subset of the deaf community. Embryo screening could spare future generations debilitating diseases, but this revolutionary technology may also have some serious downsides if we’re not careful. Several US states are trying to outlaw lab-grown meat. Is this move justified, or just another example of one industry using the law against another?

Podcast:

Join hosts Dr. Liza Dunn and GLP contributor Cameron English on episode 258 of Science Facts and Fallacies as they break down these latest news stories:

Advances in gene therapy are now enabling physicians to treat, and maybe even cure, lifelong disabilities like deafness. But as these novel therapies enter the market, they’re making enemies in the very communities they’re designed to help. For example, some deaf people oppose a gene-editing procedure that could restore hearing in young children who would otherwise go through life in complete silence. Deafness isn’t a medical condition in need of treatment, they argue, but an identity that should be preserved and respected. How do we walk the fine ethical line between treating patients we can help and protecting the autonomy of people who say they don’t need medicine?

As our knowledge of genetics improves, scientists are beginning to screen embryos before they’re implanted in hopes of identifying the ones who may be susceptible to serious diseases later in life. The upside is unmistakable: parents could significantly increase their child’s odds of leading a healthy life before they’re even born. But embryo screening may carry serious ethical risks we’re not yet prepared to address. For instance, what do we do when parents want to use embryo screening to increase the chances that they will have a deaf child? Who’s to say such a desire is wrong? These questions illustrate the complex issues we have to tackle before this technology is fully deployed.

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A handful of states are considering legislation that would effectively outlaw lab-grown meat products. Such restrictions are sometimes justified on the grounds that growing meat in a lab, as opposed to harvesting it from slaughtered animals, could pose a public health risk. Critics of the proposed bans say they are little more than a handout to the agriculture industry, a disingenuous way to protect it from competition. Who has the upper hand in this debate?

Dr. Liza Dunn is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the director of bio-sciences at the American Council on Science and Health. Visit his website and follow him on X @camjenglish

Viewpoint: Seed patent controversy — ‘Does intellectual property in agriculture drive up costs for farmers and restrict access?’ Here are the numbers

Among the many misconceptions about modern agriculture, perhaps one of the most pervasive surrounds the role of intellectual property (IP) in plant breeding.

One of the arguments of those calling for a ‘food system transformation’, is that intellectual property rights give big companies monopoly power over our food supply, drive up costs for farmers, work against the interests of smallholder producers in developing countries, and restrict the use of genetic resources by promoting monoculture and eroding biodiversity.

Instead, there are calls for the unfettered exchange and home-saving of seeds, arguing that no one should claim ownership or rights over Mother Nature’s bounty.

The reality is that intellectual property rights are responsible for generating a diversity of new, high performing varieties for farmers, enabling them to be more successful in meeting the needs of consumers.  For any farmers that prefer not to use new plant varieties that are protected by intellectual property rights, there are thousands upon thousands of crop varieties available which are no longer protected by time-limited IP rights and many so-called ‘heritage’ varieties whose seeds can be used free of royalty payment, and without any restrictions on exchanging between producers, or on home-saving as seed for replanting.

Most of these varieties are no longer chosen by farmers on any significant scale because they have become outclassed, and have been replaced by better varieties which are higher-yielding, more resistant to pests and diseases, easier to grow and harvest, or which offer improved end-use quality.     

It is a fundamental principle of plant breeders’ rights (PBR), the form of IP protection most widely used by plant breeders today, that a new variety can only be granted time-limited rights, and therefore confer the ability to charge a royalty for using seed of that variety, if it is clearly distinguishable from all existing varieties.

Royalties are the plant breeder’s primary source of return on many years’ upfront investment in research and development. Nor is grant of PBR any guarantee of revenue. Only varieties which succeed in the market-place – i.e. which meet farmer and consumer demands – are rewarded.  Farmers decide whether or not to use a particular variety.

The PBR system used in the UK is part of an international system overseen by a Geneva-based intergovernmental organisation known as UPOV (International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants).

Having recently retired as Vice-Secretary General of UPOV, after a career almost exclusively focused on plant breeding and the role of intellectual property in delivering benefits for all, I feel it’s important to counter the damaging claims and misinformation often perpetuated around the issue of IP.         

Because by fostering investment and supporting improvements in the performance, quality and sustainability of modern crop varieties, IP protection in agriculture is unquestionably a force for societal good in both developed and developing economies.    

In addressing the misleading claims about the role of IP in agriculture, it’s worth considering the ‘food system transformation’ that is often talked about.

The implication is that our food system is broken, and not fit-for-purpose.   

But most people are unaware of the remarkable transformation that has taken place in food productivity over the past 60 years, in which scientific plant breeding has been the key driver, allowing farmers to produce much more food from the same amount of land, so sparing huge swathes of the natural environment.

For example, UK wheat yields were stable at around 2 tonnes per hectare throughout the 1800s and first half of the 20th century. Wheat yields then increased dramatically to 8 tonnes per hectare by the end of the 20th century. It has been calculated that at least half of the yield increase was due to the advent of science-based plant breeding and the introduction of new varieties of wheat. The remaining contribution came from other input factors, such as increased mechanisation and use of pesticides and fertilisers.         

Faced with the need to produce more food for a rapidly expanding population while increasing sustainability by reducing inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides, the unique contribution of modern plant breeding is set to become even more significant. Indeed, a recent economic impact study by HFFA Research GmbH showed that improved crop varieties accounted for not half, but two-thirds of the productivity improvements enjoyed by UK arable farmers over the 20-year period 2000-2020.

The UK was one of the countries that first identified the need to introduce plant breeders’ rights (PBR), becoming one of the founder members of UPOV in 1968. It is no coincidence that the remarkable progress in agricultural yields in the UK corresponded with the introduction of the UPOV system of plant variety protection and the UK Plant Varieties and Seeds Act in 1964. This legislation triggered a rapid expansion of plant breeding as a commercial enterprise in its own right.

But just in case there are any doubts about the transformative nature of IP rights in plant breeding, or their enduring relevance to modern food system challenges, consider the following more recent case studies of PBR introduction.   

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For example, an independent study conducted in Viet Nam demonstrated that in the 10 years before UPOV membership (1995-2005), yields in Viet Nam’s major agricultural crops (rice, maize) increased but the increase was achieved by increasing inputs such as pesticides and fertilisers, not through plant breeding.  In the 10 years after UPOV membership, annual crop productivity increased as a result of plant breeding (rice 1.7%, maize 2.1%) and Viet Nam’s farmers maintained the same rate of agricultural productivity growth even while inputs were reduced.  The income of Vietnamese farmers increased by 24% during the 10-year period, and the study calculated that the value added to the Vietnamese economy as a result of plant breeding after UPOV membership was around $5 billion annually (more than 2.5% of the country’s GDP).   

The dramatic success in Viet Nam contrasts sharply with the experience in neighbouring countries (Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand) that are not UPOV members and do not have such an effective system of plant variety protection – and where the number of new plant varieties is considerably lower (and has not increased – or has even declined).

The success in Viet Nam is based not only on the development of a domestic plant breeding sector but also on increased availability of the best varieties from around the world.  No country can be entirely self-sufficient in giving farmers access to the best varieties.  A powerful example of this can be seen in Kenya.

In the 1990s, Kenya started to produce cut flowers, particularly roses, primarily to develop an export market.  However, at that time Kenya did not have access to the high-quality varieties needed to meet the needs of export markets such as the European Union – because the breeders of those varieties would not release their varieties without protection.  In 1997, Kenya introduced a plant variety protection system and became a UPOV member in 1999.  This encouraged plant breeders to release their high-quality varieties in Kenya, after which exports grew dramatically and enabled Kenya to develop a $1 billon cut flower industry that now employs around 500,000 people in the rural sector.  

These examples from Viet Nam and Kenya certainly refute the claims of some that IP protection in agriculture works against the interests of smallholder farmers in developing countries.

The Viet Nam case study also challenges the claim that IP systems restrict genetic resources and promote reliance on fewer varieties. In fact, farmers in Viet Nam now have many more new varieties to choose from than their neighbours in Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, which do not operate such effective systems of plant variety protection.

It is a frequent misconception that the success of modern plant breeding has led to an erosion of biodiversity. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Maintaining genetic diversity is central to the process of crop improvement. It is in every breeder’s interest to ensure that the gene pool from which new traits are selected remains as extensive as possible. Around the world, plant breeders are actively engaged in a range of national and international programmes to identify, classify and conserve the valuable genetic biodiversity within cultivated crop varieties, landraces and wild plant species.

IP protection systems also provide the basis to build partnerships between the custodians of plant genetic resources and plant breeders. An example of this can be seen in Argentina where plant breeders share royalties from new plant varieties with custodians of native plant flora that were used in the breeding programme. The income from seed royalties supports the conservation work, and the availability of commercial plant varieties also reduces erosion of natural habitat through plants being collected from the wild. 

And perhaps most importantly, let’s not forget that scientific plant breeding allows farmers to produce much more food from the same amount of land, so avoiding the need to convert vast tracts of natural habitats for agricultural production.  This increased productivity has resulted not from vast monocultures, as claimed by some, but from thousands of new varieties with a range of farm to fork characteristics including enhanced pest and disease resistance, higher yield, improved harvestability, better storability and increased consumer acceptance.  

Two further claims to rebut.

First, that IP rights give big companies monopoly power over our food supply. Let’s set that in context. The total seed royalty income of the UK plant breeding industry is in the order of £40 million per year. In a £120 billion UK food supply chain, that equates to 0.03%, hardly control over our food supply!  But more fundamentally, the UPOV (and UK) PBR system was specifically designed to prevent monopolies by incorporating the ‘breeder’s exemption’, which allows open access to use any protected variety in a breeding programme without needing the permission of the owner of the variety.  Ironically, many of the most vociferous opponents of the UPOV system refer to the UPOV system when arguing that the patent system should not be allowed for plants in Europe because there is no breeder’s exemption.  

Second, that IP drives up costs to farmers. Turning again to the HFFA Research GmbH study cited earlier, this shows that without the past 20 years of plant breeding innovation, the current annual income of a UK arable farmer would be £17,000 lower – approximately half the current average income. In terms of the agricultural value added, around £800 million would be missing today from the UK agricultural economy without access to improved varieties.

I am extraordinarily proud of the contribution that UPOV and its unique system of IP protection has made in transforming the agricultural economies of both industrialised and developing countries. In the words of Jack A. Bobo, Director of the Food Systems Institute, University of Nottingham: “Things are not bad and getting worse, they are good and getting better”.

Far from demonising IP in agriculture, we should be celebrating and championing the role of plant variety protection in supporting prospects for a more productive, resilient and sustainable global food system.   

Peter Button recently retired as Vice Secretary-General at the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), based in Geneva, an intergovernmental organisation whose mission is to provide and promote an effective system of plant variety protection, with the aim of encouraging the development of new varieties of plants for the benefit of society. Follow Peter on X @PeterJohnButton

A version of this article was originally posted at Science for Sustainable Agriculture and has been reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit the original author and provide links to both the GLP and the original article. Find Science for Sustainable Agriculture on X @SciSustAg

Parents’ Bill of Rights: Vaccine wars heat up in states allowing exemptions for schoolchildren

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Gayle Borne has fostered more than 300 children in Springfield, Tennessee. She’s cared for kids who have rarely seen a doctor — kids so neglected that they cannot speak. Such children are now even more vulnerable because of a law Tennessee passed last year that requires the direct consent of birth parents or legal guardians for every routine childhood vaccination. Foster parents, social workers, and other caregivers cannot provide permission.

In January, Borne took a foster baby, born extremely premature at just over 2 pounds, to her first doctor’s appointment. The health providers said that without the consent of the child’s mother, they couldn’t vaccinate her against diseases like pneumonia, hepatitis B, and polio. The mother hasn’t been located, so a social worker is now seeking a court order to permit immunizations. “We are just waiting,” Borne said. “Our hands are tied.”

Tennessee’s law has also stymied grandmothers and other caregivers who accompany children to routine appointments when parents are at work, in drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinics, or otherwise unavailable. The law claims to “give parents back the right to make medical decisions for their children.”

Framed in the rhetoric of choice and consent, it is one of more than a dozen recent and pending pieces of legislation nationwide that pit parental freedom against community and children’s health. In actuality, they create obstacles to vaccination, the foundation of pediatric care.

Such policies have another effect. They seed doubt about vaccine safety in a climate rife with medical misinformation. The trend has exploded as politicians and social media influencers make false claims about risks, despite studies showing otherwise.

Doctors traditionally give caregivers vaccine information and get their permission before delivering more than a dozen childhood immunizations that defend against measles, polio, and other debilitating diseases.

But now, Tennessee’s law demands that birth parents attend routine appointments and sign consent forms for every vaccine given over two or more years. “The forms could have a chilling effect,” said Jason Yaun, a Memphis pediatrician and past president of the Tennessee chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“People who promote parental rights on vaccines tend to downplay the rights of children,” said Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy researcher at the University of California Law-San Francisco.

Drop in routine vaccination rates

Misinformation coupled with a parental rights movement that shifts decision-making away from public health expertise has contributed to the lowest childhood vaccine rates in a decade.

This year, legislators in Arizona, Iowa, and West Virginia have introduced related consent bills. A “Parents’ Bill of Rights” amendment in Oklahoma seeks to ensure that parents know they can exempt their children from school vaccine mandates along with lessons on sex education and AIDS. In Florida, the medical skeptic leading the state’s health department recently defied guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by telling parents they could send unvaccinated children to a school during a measles outbreak.

Last year, Mississippi began allowing exemptions from school vaccine requirements for religious reasons because of a lawsuit funded by the Informed Consent Action Network, which is listed as a leading source of anti-vaccine disinformation by the Center for Countering Digital Hate. A post on ICAN’s website said it “could not be more proud” in Mississippi to “restore the right of every parent in this country to have his or her convictions respected and not trampled by the government.”

Even if some bills fail, Reiss fears, the revived parental rights movement may eventually abolish policies that require routine immunizations to attend school. At a recent campaign rally, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said, “I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate.”

The movement dates to the wake of the 1918 influenza pandemic, when some parents pushed back against progressive reforms that required school attendance and prohibited child labor. Since then, tensions between state measures and parental freedom have occasionally flared over a variety of issues. Vaccines became a prominent one in 2021, as the movement found common ground with people skeptical of covid-19 vaccines.

“The parental rights movement didn’t start with vaccines,” Reiss said, “but the anti-vaccine movement has allied themselves with it and has expanded their reach by riding on its coattails.”

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When lawmakers silence health experts

In Tennessee, anti-vaccine activists and libertarian-leaning organizations railed against the state’s health department in 2021 when it recommended covid vaccines to minors, following CDC guidance. Gary Humble, executive director of the conservative group Tennessee Stands, asked legislators to blast the health department for advising masks and vaccination, suggesting the department “could be dissolved and reconstituted at your pleasure.”

Backlash also followed a notice sent to doctors from Michelle Fiscus, then the state’s immunization director. She reminded them that they didn’t need parental permission to vaccinate consenting adolescents 14 or older, according to a decades-old state rule called the Mature Minor Doctrine.

In the weeks that followed, state legislators threatened to defund the health department and pressured it into scaling back covid vaccine promotion, as revealed by The Tennessean. Fiscus was abruptly fired. “Today I became the 25th of 64 state and territorial immunization program directors to leave their position during this pandemic,” she wrote in a statement. “That’s nearly 40% of us.” Tennessee’s covid death rate climbed to one of the nation’s highest by mid-2022.

By the time two state legislators introduced a bill to reverse the Mature Minor Doctrine, the health department was silent on the proposal. Despite obstacles for foster children who would require a court order for routine immunizations, Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services was silent, too.

Notably, the legislator who introduced the bill, Republican Rep. John Ragan, was among those simultaneously overseeing a review of the agency that would determine its leadership and budget for the coming years. “Children belong to their families, not the state,” said Ragan as he presented the bill at a state hearing in April 2023.

Democratic Rep. Justin Pearson spoke out against the bill. It “doesn’t take into account people and children who are neglected,” he told Ragan. “We are legislating from a point of privilege and not recognizing the people who are not privileged in this way.”

Rather than address such concerns, Ragan referenced a Supreme Court ruling in favor of parental rights in 2000. Specifically, judges determined that a mother had legal authority to decide who could visit her daughters. Yet the Supreme Court has also done the opposite. For instance, it sided against a legal guardian who removed her child from school to proselytize for the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Still, Ragan swiftly won the majority vote. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, signed the bill in May, making it effective immediately. Deborah Lowen, then the deputy commissioner of child health at the Department of Children’s Services, was flooded with calls from doctors who now face jailtime and fines for vaccinating minors without adequate consent. “I was and remain very disheartened,” she said.

A right to health

Yaun, the Memphis pediatrician, said he was shaken as he declined to administer a first series of vaccines to an infant accompanied by a social worker. “That child is going into a situation where they are around other children and adults,” he said, “where they could be exposed to something we failed to protect them from.”

“We have had numerous angry grandparents in our waiting room who take kids to appointments because the parents are at work or down on their luck,” said Hunter Butler, a pediatrician in Springfield, Tennessee. “I once called a rehabilitation facility to find a mom and get her on the phone to get verbal consent to vaccinate her baby,” he said. “And it’s unclear if that was OK.”

Childhood immunization rates have dropped for three consecutive years in Tennessee. Nationwide, downward trends in measles vaccination led the CDC to estimate that a quarter million kindergartners are at risk of the highly contagious disease.

Communities with low vaccination rates are vulnerable as measles surges internationally. Confirmed measles cases in 2023 were almost double those in 2022 — a year in which the World Health Organization estimates that more than 136,000 people died from the disease globally. When travelers infected abroad land in communities with low childhood vaccination rates, the highly contagious virus can spread swiftly among unvaccinated people, as well as babies too young to be vaccinated and people with weakened immune systems.

“There’s a freedom piece on the other side of this argument,” said Caitlin Gilmet, communications director at the vaccine advocacy group SAFE Communities Coalition and Action Fund. “You should have the right to protect your family from preventable diseases.”

In late January, Gilmet and other child health advocates gathered in a room at the Tennessee Statehouse in Nashville, offering a free breakfast of fried chicken biscuits. They handed out flyers as legislators and their aides drifted in to eat. One pamphlet described the toll of a 2018-19 measles outbreak in Washington state that sickened 72 people, most of whom were unvaccinated, costing $76,000 in medical care, $2.3 million for the public health response, and an estimated $1 million in economic losses due to illness, quarantine, and caregiving.

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Barb Dentz (right), an advocate with Tennessee Families for Vaccines, met with her state representative, Sam Whitson, to discuss the state’s declining childhood immunization rates in January. Credit: Amy Maxmen/KFF News

Barb Dentz, an advocate with the grassroots group Tennessee Families for Vaccines, repeated that most of the state’s constituents support strong policies in favor of immunizations. Indeed, seven in 10 U.S. adults maintained that public schools should require vaccination against measles, mumps, and rubella, in a Pew Research Center poll last year. But numbers have been dropping.

“Protecting kids should be such a no-brainer,” Dentz told Republican Rep. Sam Whitson, later that morning in his office. Whitson agreed and reflected on an explosion of anti-vaccine misinformation. “Dr. Google and Facebook have been such a challenge,” he said. “Fighting ignorance has become a full-time job.”

Whitson was among a minority of Republicans who voted against Tennessee’s vaccine amendment last year. “The parental rights thing has really taken hold,” he said, “and it can be used for and against us.”

Amy Maxmen is a science journalist in New York City who covers the entanglements of health, climate, policy and the people behind research. Find Amy on X @amymaxmen

A version of this article was originally posted at Kaiser Family Foundation Health News and is reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit both the GLP and original article. Find Kaiser Health News on X @KFFHealthNews

Viewpoint: The Environmental Working Group’s “Dirty Dozen” list is a danger to public health put out by an organic industry funded activist group

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The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is an anti-science activist organization.

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Dr. Andrea Love

EWG is a 501(c)(3), which means for taxation purposes, the organization is run as a charitable organization. This does not inherently mean that the information it provides is accurate. 501(c)(3) status relates to funding sources and intent of the organization. EWG does not disclose all of its donors, but several include large organic farm organizations such as Earthbound, Stony Field, Organic Valley, and Applegate Farms who also voice opposition to biotechnology. EWG brings in $13 million dollars a year that funds their disinformation campaigns.

The EWG action fund is the arm of EWG that is a lobbyist group. Lobbyists are professional advocates that work to influence political decisions on behalf of individuals and organizations. The EWG Action Fund lobbyists work to push their petitions through to public officials. Through this, their disinformation impacts health policy and our laws.

EWG routinely makes statements in opposition to the body of evidence and scientific consensus by experts.

The EWG has even made statements that promoted misinformation about vaccines causing autism.

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EWG is notorious for spreading fear about chemicals and exploiting chemophobia, the appeal to nature fallacy, and low chemistry literacy. EWG routinely exaggerates risks to consumers, promotes products backed by their donors, and uses flawed methodology to make claims not backed by legitimate data. EWG issues product safety warnings that have no evidence to support them. They are in opposition to modern agriculture, biotechnology, and have even spread unfounded claims about vaccine safety.The accuracy of EWG reports and statements has been criticized by scientific experts. Its warnings have been labeled “alarmist,” “scaremongering,” and “misleading”.

While the EWG claims to help human health through research and by advocating for industry changes, in reality, they do the opposite.

EWG should never be utilized as an ‘expert source’ of information, even though they are routinely quoted by media outlets on topics related to chemicals and food.

Toxicologists and other scientific experts have detailed their flawed science and faulty research methodologies which they base their claims on.

  • They routinely make claims that are in direct opposition to credible scientific and medical agencies, their methods are not supported by any legitimate scientific organization, and frequently cite studies that are not peer-reviewed.
  • They exaggerate toxicological risks of chemicals, overstate potential impacts to human health, and take findings wildly out of context.
  • Their methods routinely implement chemophobic messaging and appeal to nature fallacies and utilizes fear-based marketing to scare consumers away from products that are demonstrably safe.
  • They frequently cherry-pick data that are favorable to their donor corporations, particularly claims related to unsubstantiated benefits of organic products and harms of gene technology, while simultaneously omitting more robust and relevant data.

The “science” EWG uses lacks credibility, but preys on emotions of consumers, leverages fear-based marketing, and coerces people into buying specific products.

Their annual “Dirty Dozen” list is false claims intended to scare you from perfectly safe and nutritious produce.

The EWG creates lists of consumer products to ‘avoid’ that are routinely criticized by toxicological and scientific experts. These lists influence their readers on what they should and should not buy, based on unsubstantiated claims.

The most egregious? The Dirty Dozen.

According to the EWG, it is a list of 12 conventionally grown fruits and vegetables that “contain the highest levels of pesticide residues”, and as a result, you should buy organic versions of them instead. The EWG creates this list based on detected pesticide residues, using data on conventionally grown produce samples from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports.

Organic produce does not offer nutritional, safety, or ecological benefits compared to conventional produce.

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The problems with the Dirty Dozen?

Most people do not understand what a residue is.

Pesticide use in conventional farming is highly regulated, and safe tolerance levels are established for all of them. Pesticide residues on 99.5% of conventional produce are well below limits set by the EPA. More than that, half of samples on the “Dirty Dozen” list do not have ANY detectable residues.

The Dirty Dozen list is an inaccurate representation of the risk to our health from eating conventionally grown fruits and vegetables.

Detection does not equal clinical relevance.

This is a common strategy used by people who spread fear about certain chemicals (ironically, not other chemicals). Everything is chemicals. You’re a sack of chemicals. The dose makes the poison with everything. EWG employees seem to have forgotten all of this. The EWG’s foundation of fear-mongering is based on wild exaggeration of ‘detectable’ chemicals.

We have some of the most sensitive analytical chemistry tools on the planet. That means, we can “detect” levels of substances that are miniscule. Parts per billion. Parts per trillion. For context: a part per billion (ppb) is one part per 1,000,000,000 parts. A part per trillion (ppt) is one part per 1,000,000,000,000 parts.

The EWG “method” for scoring produce items as “dirty” is completely flawed and created to scare people.

Their methodology in reporting ‘dirty produce’ is based on the number of different conventional pesticide residues, not the cumulative levels of residues. So, by the EWG flawed methodology, if 10 pesticides are found each at 1,000 times lower the tolerance limit set by EPA, that fruit gets ranked as “dirty” while another produce item that has only one pesticide residue at a slightly higher 100 times lower the tolerance limit gets ranked as clean. Now, it bears mentioning that both of those produce items are safe to consume and are well below the pesticide thresholds set by EPA, but it underscores how inappropriate the EWG methods are.

  1. If 10 pesticide residues are found at 1000 times lower than the tolerance set by EPA, that produce item is considered as “dirty”.
  2. If another produce item has only 1 pesticide residue at slightly higher levels but still 100 times lower than the tolerance limit, it is considered “clean”.
  3. The EWG ranks fruits and vegetables based on the number of pesticide residues present rather than the actual levels of pesticide residues.
  4. Then, they claim these foods are unsafe, when the potential levels of residues are orders of magnitudes lower than could ever potentially be harmful.
In reality, none of the conventionally grown items on the EWG’s “Dirty Dozen” list exceed pesticide thresholds that are set, tested for, and rigorously monitored. The claims they make are extremely misleading.

Organic pesticides are not included in this list, because they are not regulated for safety or efficacy by the USDA like conventional (synthetic) pesticides.

The EWG does not disclose that organic produce can contain organic pesticide residues as well as synthetic pesticide residues. Conveniently, EWG excludes organic produce from their list to scare people from purchasing conventionally grown produce and sway them to purchase organic produce.

The EWG fails to mention that organic produce also uses pesticides. Instead of synthetic pesticides, these are organic pesticides. However, while the EPA oversees testing of synthetic pesticides and toxicity prior to approval, none of that is required for organic pesticides – no toxicity testing, only guidance. Of course, because the USDA surveillance is monitoring only synthetic pesticides, none of those are included in that list. But even more than that, several studies have demonstrated that organic products *also* have synthetic pesticide residues, on top of the organic pesticides that are not monitored for safety or efficacy. The EWG fails to mention this in their report.

One of the biggest misconceptions about organic products are that they are pesticide-free. This is false.

Organic farming uses plenty of pesticides and fungicides. In fact, there are over 20 chemicals commonly used in the growing and processing of organic crops that are approved by the US Organic Standards. But – the volume of chemicals used aren’t recorded or monitored, which is surprising: pesticides deemed “organic” are less effective typically, so larger volumes are usually required.

According to the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy, the top two organic fungicides, copper and sulfur, were used at a rate of 4 and 34 pounds per acre in 1971. In contrast, the synthetic fungicides only required a rate of 1.6 lbs per acre, from 2.5X to 20X less than the amount of the organic alternatives. More than that, many of these organic pesticides are more toxic (when looking at LD50 values), especially when used at the higher levels required for adequate control.

LD50 values are a way we can measure toxicity – it refers to the dose of something at which 50% of the test group dies – the 50% lethal dose. Lower LD50 values means something has greater toxicity. Remember: you can’t simply say something is toxic – the dose makes the poison. Toxicity includes dosage, which is often normalized to the size of a given organism too.

Natural pesticides refer to products that are derived strictly from sources in nature with little to no chemical alteration. Synthetic pesticides are products that are produced from chemical alteration. All pesticides are toxic (-cide means to kill) – and the dose makes the poison. In fact, some naturally procured pesticides are deadlier or carry a higher risk than synthetic options. “Just because something is labeled organic or natural does not mean it is safer to the homeowner or unable to cause harm to the environment. Botanically derived pesticides are not always safer; in fact, some can be more dangerous.”

Lots of things in nature are toxic, so let’s cease and desist with the appeal to nature fallacy. There’s a reason there is abundance of natural pesticides: plants and animals produce chemicals to deter insects and herbivores from eating them. Everything is chemicals and the source of a chemical does not dictate its safety. More than that, many have the potential to be more harmful to key pollinator species that we rely on, humans, and other animals.

Examples of organic pesticides include: Nicotine sulfate, Methyl bromide, Copper sulfate, Sodium hypochlorite, Gibberellic acid, Chlorine dioxide, Peracetic acid, Sodium carbonate peroxyhydrate, Lime sulfur, Azadirachtin, Spinosad, Calcium hypochlorite, Veratran D, Lignin sulfonate, Ferric phosphate, Copper oxychloride, Hypochlorous acid, Potassium hypochlorite, Rotenone, and Pyrethrins.

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Because organic pesticides are not permitted to be altered to improve specificity or biodegradability, many organic pesticides are less effective, can bioaccumulate more, and have worse ecological impact by killing non-target species, many of which can be natural predators of the target pest in question.

For example, organic pesticides used for aphids can kill multicolored Asian lady beetles and insidious flower bugs, both of which are natural predators of aphids. Many require much higher concentrations to be applied to have similar impacts as conventional pesticides.

Nicotine sulfate: Nicotine is natural, and thus approved for organic farming to control aphids, thrips, mites and other insects. It is amusing to have seen so many pro-organic campaigners arguing against the use of neonicotinoids by saying that these synthetic pesticides were using nicotine. Yes BUT so were organic farmers. But how toxic is this natural, organic-approved neurotoxin? Very (LD50: 50-60 mg/kg). In the US, nicotine sulphate carries a Danger warning. It is an organic neurotoxin that interferes with the transmitter substance between nerves and muscles. Tests have shown that nicotine sulphate has caused abnormalities in the offspring of laboratory animals and a New Jersey State study revealed that nicotine sulphate poisoning of organic gardeners can lead to increased blood pressure levels, irregular heart-rate, and, in certain cases, death.

Rotenone: occurs naturally in the seeds and stems of several plants, such as the jicama vine plant, and has been used copiously for decades. Touted as being ‘natural’, is extremely toxic at relatively low doses. Was temporarily discontinued as pesticide from 2005 to 2010 in US, but was re-approved in 2010. It is also routinely used as a piscicide in fishery waters.

Pyrethrins are derived from from chrysanthemum flowers. They act as neurotoxins in all organisms, but are particularly neurotoxic to bees and other insects, many of which are key pollinator species. They can also be neurotoxic to mammals (including humans).

Copper sulfate: used as “organic” fungicide. Copper sulfate has significantly higher toxicity than synthetic alternatives. The LD50 (50% lethal dose) of copper sulfate is 300 mg/kg versus the synthetic alternative Mancozeb (4500-11,200 mg/kg) — which means that copper sulfate is at LEAST 15X more toxic, and needs to be used in LARGER quantities compared to synthetic alternatives. Not only is copper sulfate toxic to fish, humans, and other species, but it also persists in groundwater and the environment long-term.

study in Environmental Research claimed that people who switched to organic foods primarily had a decrease in urine output of pesticides – but they ONLY looked at pesticides in conventional farming, not organic pesticides. Of course it stands to reason you’re not going to detect things you’re not testing for!

The risk of not eating fruits and vegetables is much more of a concern to our health than the likelihood of consuming trace amounts of pesticide residue. This is concerning since most of us already don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables. Ultimately, the EWG report negatively affects our shopping decisions with baseless information that preys on our fears, when it is not based on any valid scientific information.

The false dichotomy between conventional and organic isn’t just misleading, it’s dangerous. Our constant attention to natural versus synthetic only causes fear and distrust, when in actuality, our food has never been safer. Eating less fruits and vegetables due to fear of pesticides or the high price of organics does far more harm to our health than any of the pesticide residues on our food. Conventional produce has the same nutritional content and is as safe to consume as ‘organic’ produce.

Why do we even use pesticides?

Pesticides and herbicides added to crops reduce exposure to and damage by unwanted insects, bacteria, fungi, and weeds. If we did not utilize pesticides for agriculture, yields of farm crops would be impacted, cost of food goods would skyrocket, and we would not be able to feed the 8.1 billion people on the planet. Organic farming uses 84% more land for the same yield, but yields are 55% lower by area than conventional.

All chemicals can pose health risks when they are in larger concentrations. Yet, toxicology experts have investigated the pesticide levels in the Dirty Dozen and have concluded:

The methodology used by the EWG to rank the fruits and vegetables with respect to pesticide risks lacks scientific credibility.

Substituting organic forms of the ‘dirty dozen’ foods for conventional forms does not reduce consumer risks.

Exposure to the most commonly detected pesticides on the ‘dirty dozen’ fruits and vegetables poses negligible risks to consumers.

The EWG cherry-picks and misrepresents information, and ultimately negatively impacts consumers by scaring them about conventionally grown foods. Conventional produce has the same nutritional content and is as safe to consume as ‘organic’.

There are no credible data to suggest avoiding conventional produce items on the “Dirty Dozen” list offers any health benefit.

Save your money and your sanity, and avoid being scared by the EWG and their false list of ‘dirty’ produce. And while you’re at it, don’t trust anything the EWG says – it is all based on unsubstantiated claims intended to scare you, all exploiting the risk perception gap, which I discussed here.

Dr. Andrea Love, a microbiologist and immunologist, is a public health consultant and science communicator. Follow her at ImmunoLogic and read her articles on Substack. Find Andrea on X @dr_andrealove

A version of this article was originally posted at Dr. Andrea Love’s blog ImmunoLogic and is reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit both the GLP and the original article. 

Viewpoint: ‘Heavy’ pesticide exposure linked to cardiovascular disease? Flawed study raises ‘troubling’ questions about public health research

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Google News was awash in suggestive headlines following the publication of a September 2019 paper purporting to show a link between occupational pesticide exposure and increased cardiovascular disease risk. The American Heart Association (AHA), which published the study, told its Newsroom readers that “Pesticide exposure may increase heart disease and stroke risk.” Echoing the AHA, US News & World Report announced, “Heavy Exposure to Pesticides May Boost Stroke Risk”:

Working around high levels of pesticides may translate into a high risk for heart trouble later, a new study suggests …. Compared to men who had not worked around pesticides, those who had the greatest exposure had a 45% higher risk for heart disease or stroke, researchers found.

The study in question, conducted by researchers in Hawaii, made use of a long-standing cohort of 7,557 middle-aged Japanese-American men to examine the association between pesticide exposure and cardiovascular disease. The cohort had been enrolled as part of the Honolulu Heart Program in 1965-1968 and was followed for up to 34 years to 1999.

The authors conducted two analyses of the association between pesticide exposure and risk of cardiovascular disease, after 10 years and 34 years of follow-up. In the abstract to the paper, they reported that there was a positive association between a high level of pesticide exposure and risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the first 10 years of follow-up. They concluded:

These findings suggest that occupational exposure to pesticides may play a role in the development of cardiovascular diseases. The results are novel, as the association between occupational exposure to pesticides and cardiovascular disease incidence has not been examined previously in this unique cohort.

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Like all reports of epidemiological findings, this paper needs to be examined carefully to see what information the researchers had, how exposure was defined, how the data were analyzed, and how convincing the results are. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the US, and any new environmental risk factor for the disease, if prevalent in the general population, would be of great importance for public health.

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But, as soon as I got into the actual details of the study, I realized that the reported association between pesticide exposure and CVD can only be sustained by failing to subject the data to critical analysis. In fact, there are many glaring deficiencies in the data, in the analysis, and in the conclusions.

Inadequate sample size

The cohort consisted of 7,557 men and was followed for up to 34 years. However, only seven percent of the cohort was exposed to pesticides (561/7557). Thus, 93 percent of participants had no occupational exposure to pesticides. Over the course of the study, 2,549 new cases of CVD were diagnosed in the cohort. The researchers attempted to measure the association between different levels of exposure to pesticides with CVD. However, when participants are partitioned by level of pesticide exposure and disease status, the data become very sparse and the risk estimates unstable.

Overly broad disease outcome

The authors originally wanted to examine the association between pesticide exposure and two different outcomes – coronary heart disease and stroke/cerebrovascular disease. However, due to the sample size problem, they were only able to analyze these two diseases in combination. While the two diseases have a number of common risk factors, other risk factors differ and the natural histories of the diseases differ, and analyzing the two together muddies the specificity of the disease being investigated.

Scanty exposure information

In a study like this, the quality and specificity of the exposure information is crucial. However, the authors failed to give the reader a clear description of the available information on pesticide exposure. They said that at entry into the study, in the mid-1960s, participants were asked about their occupation. I had to consult a 2006 paper to find the following: “Occupational exposure information collected during exam I (1965) was used in these analyses. Participants were asked questions about their present and usual occupation and the age that they started and finished working in these occupations.”

From the present study, we learn that the authors used a “scale” to assign a level of intensity of pesticide exposure for each usual occupation of each participant. But we learn from the 2006 paper that the scale, taken from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), estimated “potential for exposure,” not actual exposure. In addition to pesticides, exposure to “metals” and “solvents” was also calculated for each occupation. Exposure for each substance was classified into three categories: no exposure, low-moderate exposure, and high exposure.

It is important to stress that in the Honolulu Heart Study, information on pesticide exposure was self-reported and derived solely from the “usual occupation.” Participants were not asked any questions about whether they worked with pesticides on the job, and if so, what family of pesticides or what specific pesticides. This is not surprising since the Honolulu Heart Study was not designed to examine exposure to pesticides.

However, given that the authors used occupation as an indicator of potential pesticide exposure, it is surprising that they did not even present a breakdown by occupation, as one would expect. Furthermore, after assigning a level of exposure to pesticides, metals, and solvents, they did not present data showing how many participants were exposed solely to pesticides, or to different combinations of the three substances. The authors acknowledged that many participants had multiple exposures.

Finally, the authors made a choice to divide those with exposure into “low-moderate exposure” and “high exposure.” What is strange is that there are only 110 participants in the “low-moderate” exposure group, whereas there are four times as many (451 participants) in the “high” exposure group. The authors could have created exposure groups that would have been more balanced in terms of the number of participants. We will see that this becomes an issue when they present their results.

What do the results really show?

The main results are given in Tables 3 and 4 and in Figures 1 and 2 of the paper. The positive association between pesticide exposure and cardiovascular disease was observed only in men with “high” exposure and only in the analysis using 10-year follow-up – not in the analysis using 34-years of follow-up. As seen in Table 4, the estimate of risk in the high exposure group, compared to the no exposure group, was 1.42 (95% confidence interval 1.05-1.92).

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This means that “high pesticide exposure” is associated with a 42% increased risk of CVD relative to no exposure. This is a modest increase in this type of study. But also notice that the estimate is barely above the cutoff for statistical significance. If the lower bound of the confidence interval were 1.00 instead of 1.05, the risk would no longer be statistically significant. Testing for statistical significance permits the researcher to state whether a result is unlikely to have occurred merely by chance. By convention, a five percent level (one out of twenty tries) or less is accepted as indicating that the result is unlikely to have occurred by chance.

A striking feature of Table 4 is that the low-moderate exposure group has a reduced risk of CVD and the reduction is roughly 50%. This reduced risk is not statistically significant, but there are only 110 participants in this exposure category (representing only 1.4% of the cohort!) and only 5 cases of CVD. Going back to a point made above, if the authors had created more balanced exposure groups, the reduced association in the low-moderate group might have achieved statistical significance.

If the pesticide exposure variable is truly associated with CVD, we would expect to see some evidence of a dose-response relationship between exposure and disease. In other words, we might expect to see a slight indication of increased risk among moderately exposed individuals and a greater risk among heavily exposed individuals. The inverse association seen in the low-moderate group poses a problem, and, as seen in Figure 2, after 10 years of follow-up, the reduction in risk in the low-moderate group is greater than the increase in risk in the “high” exposure group.

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Image: Figure 2 from the study.

If the low-moderate and high exposure groups had been more balanced in terms of the number of subjects, it is very likely that the risk estimate for the high exposure group would no longer be statistically significant. This raises the question of whether the researchers created the categories in order to achieve statistical significance in the high exposure group. In any event, they nowhere discuss why they created such numerically imbalanced exposure groups.

If the researchers had presented results of the contrast between “any occupational pesticide exposure” versus “no exposure” – a common way to examine data of this kind – the risk would have been smaller and, likely, not statistically significant.

A confounding problem

Both coronary heart disease and cerebrovascular disease/stroke are classic multifactorial diseases, with numerous risk factors, including smoking, body mass index, cholesterol, blood pressure, and physical activity. Any analysis that examines environmental exposures has to do a careful job of controlling for these personal risk factors in order to provide credible evidence for a novel risk factor. But given the sample size problem in this study, and the very poor quality of the exposure information, adequate adjustment for the many potential confounding factors represents a formidable challenge.

Another point should be mentioned. Because the authors only used the baseline information, they did not take into account changes in risk factors, such as smoking or blood pressure that occurred during follow-up. Thus, if a smoker quit smoking 5 years after enrollment (thereby reducing his risk of CVD), that person would continue to be classified as a smoker throughout the study.

In order to fully appreciate the deficiencies of the Honolulu Heart Study to address the question of the association between pesticide use and cardiovascular disease, it is helpful to compare that paper with a study that was designed to investigate the health effects of pesticide exposure.

In the mid-1990s, the National Cancer Institute launched the Agricultural Health Study (AHS) a prospective cohort study of roughly 54,000 pesticide applicators in Iowa and North Carolina. At enrollment, participants were asked about their lifetime use of 50 pesticides, including the number of years and days per week each pesticide was used. From this information and from additional information collected at follow-up, the researchers were able to compute three measures of cumulative lifetime exposure to specific pesticides.

The cohort has been followed for over 20 years. The large size of the cohort and the detailed information on pesticide use have made possible informative studies of exposure to specific pesticides and various health outcomes, but mainly cancers.

The example of the Agricultural Health Study helps us to understand why the results from the Honolulu Health Study are so inconsistent and uninformative. How do the authors deal with the serious limitations of their data and their analysis that I’ve pointed out above? They only briefly addressed these limitations of the study. For example, they acknowledged the lack of information on pesticides and the small number of subjects in the “moderate” exposure group.

But they then proceeded to put the best possible gloss on their woefully limited exposure data and their inconsistent results, implying that the latter provide evidence that pesticide exposure increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. They skirt past the issues surrounding the quality of the data and the analysis to make a causal interpretation, knowing that the words “pesticides” and “cardiovascular disease” will attract the interest of some journal eager to increase its circulation.

This paper, while not important in itself, is a symptom of a troubling situation in epidemiology and public health research. The paper underwent peer review and was published in what looks like a reputable journal.* But it is clear that the peer reviewers either did not know how to evaluate an epidemiologic study or could not be bothered to do a serious job.

Epidemiologists, statisticians, and other health researchers need to publish in order to advance in their careers. But, the public and journalists – the consumers of information about health – need to be aware of something that researchers know well – there is no paper that is so dreadful that it cannot be published somewhere.

*The Journal of the American Heart Association has a “respectable” impact factor (5.1); however, this is far below the two leading journals: Circulation (23.1) and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (16.8).

Geoffrey Kabat is an epidemiologist, the author of over 150 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and, most recently, of the book Getting Risk Right: Understanding the Science of Elusive Health Risks. Follow him on Twitter @GeoKabat

This article originally appeared on the GLP on October 1, 2019.

Tales from the front lines in the ‘vaccine wars’: Review of Peter Hotez’s Book, ‘The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science’

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If I don’t write this or stand up for vaccines, then who will?

That is what motivates the activism of prominent academic vaccine researcher Peter Hotez, M.D., Ph.D., and drove him to write, “The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science,” published by Johns Hopkins University Press. 

A pediatrician and developer of vaccines for neglected infectious diseases in low- and middle-income countries, Dr. Hotez, in his iconic glasses, beard, bowtie, and wearing a perpetual smile, has become a media darling or devil — a steadfast defender and hero of science for mainstream news outlets, but a target of attack by the right.  

Hotez has a storied history of fighting anti-science rhetoric. He has long been under attack due to his efforts to challenge a common trope of the anti-vaccine movement — the repeatedly and persuasively debunked claim that there is a causal link between vaccines and autism. His own daughter is autistic, which was the impetus for his 2020 book, “Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism.” As Hotez put it in his current book, “By circumstance, I became an anti-science expert.”  

The yearslong defense of one of the greatest achievements of modern medicine — vaccines to prevent infectious diseases — induced Hotez to report and reflect on the underworld of vaccine disinformation and its politicization. The anti-scientific — and hugely lucrative — assaults on the COVID vaccines further spurred his efforts.

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Battles with anti-vaxxers

The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science begins with a regurgitation — a term we use advisedly — of the vitriolic attacks via email or social media that have been leveled at the author over the years. This statement on page 2 resonates with many scientists, including the two authors of this review: 

when I decided back when I was an adolescent that one day I would become a scientist, I never imagined a segment of society turning against me or my scientific colleagues.

Being derided as a “Pharma-shill” despite working to develop not-for-profit vaccines for the world’s poor, is at the mild end of what Hotez calls “anti-science aggression.” The death threats fall into a more extreme category. 

Hotez walks us through his experiences clashing with the anti-vaccine movement, which was reinvigorated by the COVID-19 pandemic. He cites insults from the “Disinformation Dozen,” which includes several rogue physicians who have embraced pseudoscience, a bodybuilder, a wellness blogger, a religious zealot, and Robert F Kennedy Jr., who heads an anti-vaccine organization. He has also endured personal insults from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Representative Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga), and former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson. Hotez also discusses the spread of disinformation across borders — for example, to the anti-vaccine Freedom Convoy of Canadian Truckers in January 2022, to other similar movements in the EU, and eventually into low- and middle-income countries.

Chapters 2 through 6 are particularly valuable for readers with little knowledge of American history or politics. 

In Chapter 2, Hotez outlines the origins of the Health Freedom movement and its contribution to science misinformation in America. 

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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense recruits anti-vaxxers

Chapter 3, aptly entitled “Red COVID” (as in red, or Republican-controlled, states), details how the U.S. became ground zero for COVID deaths and outlines the failure of the American healthcare system to protect its citizens through vaccination. Hotez estimates that 200,000 Americans needlessly lost their lives despite widely available safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines. 

“One of the sadder aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic occurred among those who were hospitalized after they refused to get vaccinated, including those who expressed utter disbelief that they might die from their illness,” he laments.  

The poisonous web of anti-vaxxers

Chapter 4 covers the anti-science political ecosystem that has sprung up and is sustained by social media, red-state courts, and ultraconservative news outlets. Some additional examples of that phenomenon — in Dr. Hotez’s home state, no less — are further discussed here in an article by one of us (Dr. Miller).

Chapter 5 illustrates that personal attacks by people like former Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives Jonathan Stickland (who described Hotez as resembling Hitler and Stalin), and similar denunciations of then-NIAID Director Tony Fauci by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and U.S. Senators Ted Cruz (R-Tex) and Rand Paul (R-Ky) do, indeed, make it “A Tough Time to be a Scientist.” 

Chapter 6, ‘The Authoritarian Playbook,’ follows the history of science disinformation in Stalinist Russia. Hotez describes Stalin’s “Doctor’s Plot” conspiracy of 1953; and the replacement of Nikolai Vavilov (a prominent Russian geneticist who was starved to death in prison) with Trofim Lysenko, a delusional Lamarckian nitwit who had favor with the regime and whose unscientific agricultural policies led the nation into massive crop losses and devastating famines. 

Hotez also touches upon countries leaning toward authoritarian policies today, such as Hungary and Brazil, as well as the great Russian anti-vaccine disinformation machine, composed largely of computer-generated bots and trolls, which strives to destabilize the world’s democracies and injure their populations.

The final two chapters contain a warning and a list of actions that scientists and like-minded individuals can take to curb the science rejectionist movement before it does even more damage. 

Prescription for the future

For a start, Hotez advocates that more science communication training be taught at universities. There are institutional allies, including Vaccinate Your FamilyThis Is Our Shot, and Voices for Vaccines. Other vaccine advocacy groups are based at universities and hospitals: the International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the Stanford Internet Observatory, and MisinfoRx, a toolkit for healthcare providers in place by the Harvard Global Health Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School, and the University of Michigan School of Information, among others. Many of them are supported by the U.S. government. 

It was also uplifting to be reminded of the successful March for Science, held in Washington DC in 2017. Still, Hotez fears that the U.S. government regards opposition to anti-science aggression both within our borders and internationally as a low priority.

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Hotez’s book concludes with a sense of urgency. Lives remain in the balance, as cases of measles and even polio reappear in U.S. cities. Meanwhile, threats against scientists themselves or attempts to “cancel” their scientific careers are increasingly menacing. 

He calls for a fundamental shift in our academic culture toward one that incentivizes scientists to engage with the public, and for a change in evaluation metrics to encourage science outreach. Hotez considers the Southern Poverty Law Center a model for those under attack from anti-science aggression, and discloses that he has obtained support from scientific and professional societies such as the Committee of Concerned Scientists and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. Why not, he asks rhetorically, create a defense fund for vaccine scientists that could be used to collect information on activists’ attacks and trolling?

The anti-vaccine movement is a manifestation of our highly politicized and polarized world, combined with easy access by armchair experts (read: know-nothings) to popular social media platforms. That movement is not new (except for the ubiquity of social media) but boasts a long history in this country. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it grew to nearly insurmountable proportions. 

Hotez capsulizes the current state of affairs thusly: “A survey conducted by Science magazine found that almost 40% of COVID-19 scientists reported attacks via email, social media, or phone, or even physical confrontations.” (We are among them.)

Historically, the members of the scientific academy have striven to explore the natural world, and, in myriad ways, to improve it and the lives of its inhabitants. Scientists have not been trained to engage with the public, to defend themselves and their research against aggression, and to combat disinformation. Scientists also have a history of, for the most part, steering clear of politics. All of this is no longer possible in today’s world. 

We need an infrastructure to assist scientists in their desperately needed ancillary role as science communicators. Peter Hotez, with his trademark professorial appearance and willingness to take on the troglodytes, offers direction to achieving these new goals. We hope that scientific institutions will take heed and follow.   

Kathleen L. Hefferon is an instructor in microbiology at Cornell University. Find her on X @KHefferon

Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Glenn Swogger Distinguished Fellow at the American Council on Science and Health. He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Find Henry on X @HenryIMiller

 

Bangladesh greenlights gene editing to ‘meet the needs of farmers and consumers’

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The Agriculture & Food Systems Institute (AFSI), under the auspices of the South Asia Biosafety Program (SABP) and in collaboration with the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC), Bangladesh Academy of Sciences (BAS), and Biotech Consortium India Limited (BCIL), organized two events in February 2024 to raise awareness about the publication of “Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for Research and Release of Genome Edited Plants of Categories SDN-1 and SDN-2, 2023” by the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA). The culmination of a multi-year drafting process involving a broad range of stakeholders, the SOP details the procedure whereby applicants can demonstrate the absence of any exogenously introduced DNA and request confirmation through the appropriate channels to register or release the plant following the same procedure as those used for conventionally bred counterparts.

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Raising awareness

At the request of BAS and BARC, AFSI started collaborating with stakeholders in Bangladesh on outreach activities to raise awareness about genome editing, beginning with the webinar “Genome Editing in Agriculture: Potential Opportunities and Way Forward in Bangladesh” on October 4, 2021. Follow-up activities included a variety of webinars and training events, as well as the in-person “Conference on Genome Editing in Plants: Harnessing the Benefits for Bangladesh” a year later.

Watch the Webinar»

a d f e c ab c eProviding expertise

On July 19, 2022, the BAS Council constituted the Expert Committee on Gene Edited Plants in Bangladesh and invited SABP Country Coordinator Prof. Dr. Rakha Hari Sarker, SABP Senior Advisor Dr. Vibha Ahuja, and AFSI Fellow Prof. Dr. Aparna Islam to serve as members. Upon invitation by the Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, the committee proposed a mechanism to allow genome edited plants to move through research and development and have a path toward commercialization. Following stakeholder consultations and discussions throughout 2022 and 2023, the committee drafted an SOP for this purpose.

fb bde f f ef bc ebConducting outreach

The Ministry of Agriculture officially published the SOP in December 2023. The “Conference on Genome Editing for Agriculture in Bangladesh” on February 11, 2024 was organized to inform a wider audience about this new resource, as well as how genome editing technology can support agriculture in Bangladesh. Aimed at a more technical group, the “Workshop on Standard Operating Procedures for Research and Release of Genome Edited Plants in Bangladesh” on February 13, 2024 focused on the SOP and techniques used to demonstrate the absence of the transgene(s).

About the Conference»

[Editor’s note: Download the PDF here]

Read the original post here

Costa Rica revises its biotechnology regulations, dropping restrictions on gene editing and other New Breeding Techniques

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Industry experts say a November 11, 2023, update to the Costa Rican biotechnology regulatory framework facilitates utilization of innovative biotechnologies and reduce barriers to common applications of modern biotechnology. FAS/San José expects a genome-edited banana variety resistant to yield-reducing fungal diseases sigatoka and fusarium wilt could be the first genome-edited product commercialized in Costa Rica later in 2024.

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Costa Rica was the world’s 5th largest exporter of bananas in 2023, shipping more than $430 million to the United States… Under the new regulation, Costa Rica would treat a range of products created with innovative biotechnologies as equivalent to conventional products.

[Editor’s note: Read the full report here]

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here

Treating tinnitus: FDA approves first device to reduce ear ringing

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Tinnitus is a perceived sound that only you can hear. It might be a ringing, buzz, or tone. It arises not in your ear but in your brain. And because only you can hear it, it is subjective, a symptom, not a sign, so diagnosis can be challenging. It is not life-threatening, but in many instances, it is life-altering and not in the direction of being better. It occurs in more people as we age, and estimates put the population with tinnitus at around 15% – 50 million in the US alone.

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Understanding the cause — The inner ear whispers, a neural rhythm’s dance

The exact basis remains poorly understood but involves the ear, brain, and the pathways connecting them and the brain’s projection of those signals as sounds. While tinnitus is a symptom, it is most frequently associated with age-related hearing loss. There are several hypotheses to explain the symptoms. I am offering what I believe is a reasonable narrative.

Damage to the inner ear, our peripheral auditory system, reduces the input of auditory information to our brain. This results in a disruption of baseline, rhythmic neural activity that we perceive as silence. The brain seeks to re-establish or reorganize that baseline, compensating by amplifying other neural pathways that contribute to the persistent perception of sound, even in the absence of external stimuli – a process of neuroplasticity described as central gain. You can find a bit fuller explanation here.

Neuromodulation – Bimodal magic

Neuromodulation simply refers to ways in which we may alter the activity of our nerves. All of the serotonin uptake inhibitors, SSRIs, used in treating depression are neuromodulators. Another large group of neuromodulators apply electrical stimulation to the nerves. Before your thoughts turn to Galvani and the frog’s leg, the use of electrical stimulation in chronic pain management has been around for a half-century or so. Transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation (TENS) appears to help roughly 30% of patients with chronic pain, and there is evidence that it may promote nerve healing.

With little to offer patients with tinnitus, researchers considered a form of neuromodulation, initially involving sound.

Animal research and pilot human studies have shown that bimodal neuromodulation combining sound and electrical somatosensory stimulation, including tongue stimulation, can drive extensive plasticity in the auditory system and improve tinnitus symptoms.

In this study, 330 individuals with tinnitus were randomized to three clinical arms, each utilizing a neuromodulation device that played varying tone sequences to the individual and, at the same time, provided mild electrical stimulation to the tongue. Why both? Because, for whatever reason, the two stimuli had an additive effect.

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The participants were very compliant with the treatment involving listening to those tones daily for 12 weeks. While the researchers considered multiple auditory outcomes, the ones of interest to us are the Tinnitus Handicap Index, THI, and the Tinnitus Functional Index, TFI.

THI and TFI, the metrics of the study

There are no biomarkers for tinnitus, and the THI and TFI are the most widely used surveys. THI measures tinnitus severity along functional, emotional, and catastrophic scales. TFI is a more focused consideration of tinnitusfunction and quality of life. [1] Both are considered reasonable measures of tinnitus and are reported on a scale from 1 to 100 (the most severe). The participants in the study had baseline scores in the mid-40s, putting them in the “moderate” range. The final results, at one year, nearly nine months after completing therapy, showed a significant improvement in both THI and TFI, now placing most of these participants in the mild group.

This study was repeated with a slightly larger group, and the tone patterns were altered. Additionally, the researchers found that changing the individual tone patterns at the mid-point in therapy, six weeks, further improved the benefit. Once again, this dual neuromodulation reduced THI scores in 91% of the patients completing treatment by an average of 20 points, moving them from moderate to mild symptoms. These studies reported in Nature Scientific Reports are the basis for the FDA approval of the first device specifically for treating tinnitus.

For those afflicted with tinnitus, this study’s dual approach involving sound and tongue-stimulating electric shocks is hitting the right notes, reducing symptoms for most participants. So, the next time you hear that internal concert, consider neuromodulation. A little electric shock and tone therapy can reduce the tinnitus volume and restore your life to a more harmonious melody.

Notes:

[1] There are “eight subscales (factors): intrusiveness, sense of control, cognition, sleep, auditory, relaxation, quality of life, and emotional distress.”

Sources:

Bimodal neuromodulation combining sound and tongue stimulation reduces tinnitus symptoms in a large randomized clinical study Science Translational Medicine DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.abb2830

Different bimodal neuromodulation settings reduce tinnitus symptoms in a large randomized trial Nature Scientific Reports DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-13875-x

Dr. Charles Dinerstein, M.D., MBA, FACS is the Medical Director at the American Council on Science and Health. He has over 25 years of experience as a vascular surgeon. He completed his MBA with distinction in the George Washington University Healthcare MBA program and has served as a consultant to hospitals. Follow Charles on X @CRDtoday

A version of this article was originally posted at American Council on Science and Health and has been reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit the original author and provide links to both the GLP and the original article. Find ACSH on X @ACSHorg

Viewpoint: Do you believe in magic? Many nutritional supplements are impure, ineffective, unsafe — and unregulated. That needs to change

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Herbal dietary supplements (also known as nutritional supplements, but correctly called botanicals), once dismissed as hippie fare, are now widely advertised for their supposed potential to cure a variety of ailments, including pain, memory loss, fatigue, impotence, and insomnia.  But recent disclosures related to certain supplements have prompted greater scrutiny of the industry, and there is an emerging consensus that the current regulatory regime is too lax.

One incident that received significant attention was the death in 2022 of Lori McClintock, the wife of California Republican congressman Tom McClintock, which was caused by “adverse effects of white mulberry leaf ingestion,” according to the coroner’s report.

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Dietary supplements are big business. Three out of four Americans take one or more on a regular basis, and for older Americans the fraction is four out of five. One in three children also take supplements. The estimated number of supplement products increased from 4,000 in 1994 to 50,000-80,000 today. Out-of-pocket expenditures for herbal and complementary nutritional products are over $54 billion.

Many herbal products are complex, highly variable, and impure. Not unlike the nineteenth-century snake-oil preparations that were dangerous but had little (if any) efficacy, many are toxic, carcinogenic, or otherwise unsafe. Known side effects include blood-clotting abnormalities, hypertension, deadly allergic reactions, irregular heart rhythms, kidney and liver failure, exacerbation of autoimmune diseases, and interference with conventional prescription drugs.

Credit: Pxfuel

Potentially harmful interactions with “real” drugs become exponentially more difficult to predict as the number of medications (and pseudo-medications) increases. The American Society of Anesthesiologists has warned patients to stop taking herbal supplements at least two weeks before surgery to avoid dangerous interactions with anesthesia.

With myriad dietary supplements available over the counter in supermarkets, pharmacies, and big-box stores, many people assume that these pseudo-medications carry some government seal of approval, but nothing could be farther from the truth.

Congress mostly exempted them from oversight under a 1994 law, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), that bars federal authorities from requiring that herbal remedies be safe or effective, or even that the dosage information on the label is correct. Although the law prohibits supplements from being marketed for the treatment or prevention of disease – which would make them subject to regulation as drugs – this restriction is widely ignored, as any viewer of TV ads can attest. The FDA is left with identifying products and removing them from shelves after they have been in the market and caused harm.

The marketers of supplements evade the prohibition on making medical claims simply by playing word games: Instead of claiming that a product treats, controls, prevents, or cures a condition (which would subject it to onerous regulation as a “drug”), they simply claim that their product “supports the immune system” or “supports heart (or brain or prostate) health.” If they add a pro forma disclaimer – such as: “This statement has not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease” – it seems they can get away with anything.

Congress should take long-overdue actions to protect consumers from dangerous or ineffective supplements. Optimally, they should repeal the earlier law, but at a minimum, they should:

  • Require all dietary supplement makers to register with the FDA, so that regulators will have reliable information about how many supplement makers exist, where they are located, and the range of products they are selling.
  • Empower the FDA to issue “a mandatory recall order” if there is a reasonable likelihood that a supplement is spiked with a harmful substance or could otherwise cause serious health problems;
  • Empower the FDA to publish an inclusive list of supplement ingredients from which manufacturers could not deviate except to allow a reasonable margin for harmless impurities.
  • Require manufacturers to have their supplements analyzed by an independent, nongovernmental entity to ensure that the label on the bottle accurately reflects both the ingredients and the number of dosages. A model is the Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratories — the prototype of which is UL Solutions that tests and certifies more than 20,000 categories of products ranging from lighting fixtures and surge protectors to bulletproof glass.

These measures would still leave unaddressed the lack of assurance of efficacy, but they would at least offer consumers a modicum of protection against deficient manufacturing practices, product adulteration, and outright fraud while letting them choose among a wide spectrum of competing products. Without these basic safeguards, patients will continue to be exposed to unacceptable risks but without much likelihood of benefit. And the body count will rise.

Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Glenn Swogger Distinguished Fellow at the American Council on Science and Health. He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Find Henry on X @HenryIMiller

This article first appeared on the GLP Apr 7, 2023.

Genetic embryo screening for health issues and IQ inch closer to reality. Here’s a primer on what you can expect

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The world of IVF has introduced a host of ethical quandaries. For now, Alabamians will be spared grappling the latest, genetic design of their future children, as their high court has effectively foreclosed the procedure. The laboratories offering these genetic selection tests are based in NJ and California, and we can expect a host of genetic tourism to ensue.

Once upon a time, if you wanted a tall, handsome, healthy child, you married a tall, goodlooking, healthy spouse. That approach isn’t always reliable, since by virtue of genetic laws two tall people still have a respectable chance of having a short, gawky kid, and numerous extrinsic factors, including the environment, impact both height and health. Don’t despair. There’s a technique, called ‘preimplantation testing for Polygenic Disorders’ (PGT-P), marketed to give prospective parents a “choice over chance.” Does it work?  Is it safe? Is it ethical?

Human prenatal genetic testing has been used (or misused) for decades, culminating in the genetic editing of twin girls in 2018 by Chinese embryologist, He Jiankui. Perhaps more benign, but still controversial, is using pre-natal genetic screening to select particular embryos for birthing based on the genetic traits desired.  Commercially available in the US, but beyond comprehensive government oversight, use of these technologies is circumscribed only by the few voluntary guidelines produced by medical organizations. Recently, the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) sounded in.

Post-natal genetic screening was first used and legally mandated, in 1963 to identify babies born with PKU, a devastating metabolic disorder that can be prevented by diet. Adult use of wide-spectrum genetic screening, utilizing Genome-Wide Associations Studies (GWAS), is now commonly available to identify disease risks that can be relieved or possibly prevented by lifestyle or environmental changes. For example, assessing for the presence of assessing BRCA 1 and BRACA mutations may lead to earlier detection and more effective treatment. Gene therapy utilizing bespoke drugs or use of modified genes can remedy certain conditions, even in utero. Valid uses for post-conception genetic screening abound.

Using genetic screening in the pre-implantation stage is more fraught. In conjunction with IVF (in vitro fertilization), prenatal genetic testing (PGT) is conventionally employed to deselect embryos with Mendelian abnormalities. i.e., those with certain and serious adverse post-birth outcomes, or those which would have difficulty implanting. Using PGT to facilitate genetic editing of the embryo, however, is verboten. Another use of PGT is identifying embryos to generate compatible tissue for transplantation to an already born, but ill, child, called savior siblings. The technique was first  effectuated almost a quarter of a century ago, and the practice is controversial, accounting for only 1% of PGT done today.

The issue before us pertains to yet another use:applying the screening techniques chosen by adults for the yet unborn.

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Prophecy v. prediction

Once unabashedly advertised, at least two American laboratories reportedly claimed to identify the healthiest embryo of the IVF litter for selection. (Their current adverts are distinctively toned down from earlier versions). In actuality, the technique does not identify a particular disease to which the embryo will succumb, but rather predicts risks of disease. The service provides a cumulative health ranking, called the polygenic risk score (PGS), grading the genetic predisposition for numerous conditions.

Unlike any other service in the world, LifeView patients also have access to Embryo Health Scores, which have been proven to reduce the risk of common diseases like: diabetes, cancer, and heart disease in your future child…

Because we are looking at overall health, and because the disorders targeted are polygenic, with their expression governed by the synchronized effects of multiple genes and further mediated by environmental stressors, the PGS is far from definitive in its predictive capability. Nevertheless, it might provide some indicia of possibilities, giving parents the advertised  “choice over chance.”

The prospective parent, in basing their embryo selection on genetic risk indicators, theoretically has the option of configuring a kid with the most brains or brawn or beauty. Although these techniques are not currently on the table, , the possibility has incited ethical outrage.

Accurate IQ predictors will be possible, if not the next five years, the next 10 years certainly

— Stephen Hsu of Genomic Prediction, a commercial marketer of the PGT technology

You are not going to stop the modeling in genetics, and you are not going to stop people from accessing it. It’s going to get better and better.

— Matthew Rabinowitz, CEO of the prenatal-testing company Natera

The ACMG, advises that the scores may be both inaccurate predictors and require unnecessary and dangerous procedures.Their rationale is medical, which, while informative, doesn’t provide the ethical guidance needed should the medical/scientific obstacles be surmounted.  Nevertheless, let’s take a peek at the effectiveness of the technique before diving deeper.

Inaccuracies are derived from various systemic deficits:

  • Probabilistic statistics are based on population data and not predictors of individual likelihoods of disease.
  • The data derive from research populations (e.g., white European) which are not transferrable to the racial diversity of the American market.
  • Adult experiences on which predictive algorithms are modelled may not translate to embryos.
  • Expression of risk are not entirely genetic and are highly influenced by external factors, which cannot be predicted.
  • Low PGS are not indicative of no risk, creating a false aura of assurance of safety.
  • The testing samples in IVF embryonic biopsies may be too small to provide accurate results.

Risk communication of probabilistic results is fraught with difficulty. Embryo selection based on uncertain statistical information couples uncertainty with uncertainty. How does one address results that, for example, reveal an embryo with a low risk of cancer but a high risk of diabetes?

A Risk-Benefit Analysis:

[Other] perinatal risks include preeclampsia, abnormal placentation, cesarian section, prematurity, low birth weight and miscarriage. Studies of fetal risks of IVG have identified increased risks of birth defects, as well as imprinting disorders.

 – ACMG

Inextricably wedded to the speculative nature of these predictive tools are the dangers involved in IVF, a necessary precursor to using PGT-P technology. For those needing IVF to address infertility, these risks may be an acceptable tradeoff. For prospective parents wishing to influence trait selection, the required IVF, which involves heavy maternal exposure to hormonal stimulation, is not.

The ethicists sound in

The ACMG invites review and investigation by the ethical and legal communities, acknowledging that their review did not assess these concerns and will be needed.  So, what do the ethicists have to say? In terms of specifics, not much.

Companies promote their services directly to consumers and promise ‘advanced embryo screening’ for …diverse conditions. There are significant concerns, which render such claims suspect and the introduction of this technology for embryo selection, ethically questionable.

— Alex Polyakov Clinical Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Melbourne et. al.

Many bioethicists uniformly oppose the practice. Of note is Julien Savelescu, the author of the doctrine of parental beneficence, who onced claimed that parents are obligated to choose the “best” children. Savelescu has backtracked from this earlier position. Now he limits his advocacy of the technique to parents using IVF for infertility purposes.

The limitations of the current ethical considerations can be seen by rationale offered by the ethicists which, track the same objections the medical community offers: analytic validity, clinical validity, and clinical utility – all of which will wane once the techniques become more precise and a greater body of data is generated. Appended to this list, in Brutus-like obeisance, without specific anchor, are the traditional bioethical precepts: autonomy,, beneficence and non-maleficence (a fancy way of saying harms and benefits), and social justice concerns.

A specific structural basis to decide what is ethical in this context, however, is missing, a fact lamented and recognized by Ronald J. Wapner, MD, vice chair of research in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and director of Reproductive Genetics at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

Perhaps it’s time to see what the law has to say.

Source:

Polygenic risk score for embryo selection—not ready for prime time Human Reproduction DOI: 10.1093/humrep/deac159

Dr. Barbara Pfeffer Billauer, JD MA (Occ. Health) Ph.D. is Professor of Law and Bioethics in the International Program in Bioethics of the University of Porto and Research Professor of Scientific Statecraft at the Institute of World Politics in Washington DC. 

A version of this article was originally posted at The American Council on Science and Health and has been reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit the original author and provide links to both the GLP and the original article. Find ACSH on X @ACSHorg

GLP podcast: AAP refuses to print rebuttal to anti-GMO study; Billion-dollar anti-pesticide ‘money grab’; Ultra-processed food won’t make you obese?

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The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published a spurious attack on GM crops and pesticides, then reneged on its commitment to print a rebuttal. What happened? The Environmental Working group (EWG) is collaborating with tort lawyers to attack yet another pesticide.  A prominent nutrition researcher has grown skeptical of some of his earlier conclusions about “ultra-processed” food. Let’s examine the evidence that led him to change his mind.

Podcast:

Join host  GLP contributor Cameron English and guest host Dr. Kevin Folta on episode 256 of Science Facts and Fallacies as they break down these latest news stories:

The AAP’s flagship journal Pediatrics came under fire early this year for publishing a guidance document questioning the safety of biotech crops and pesticides. After several scientists contacted the journal to offer constructive criticism, AAP agreed to print a rebuttal to the original article. Inexplicably, AAP abruptly changed course, refusing to publish a response or even interact with the experts who criticized its analysis of GM crops.

Just two business days after EWG published a study attacking the herbicide chlormequat, tort lawyers in New York used the paper to justify filing a class-action lawsuit in California. They’re suing Quaker Oats, which is owned by Pepsi, alleging that trace amounts of chlormequat in the breakfast cereal could cause fertility issues and harm developing babies. The study itself provides no evidence to support these allegations, so what are the lawyers thinking? It appears we have a pending billion-dollar junk lawsuit on our hands.

It has become fashionable in recent years to blame America’s growing obesity problem on “ultra-processed” food: highly palatable snacks and other packaged options that contain sugar, salt and fat. But this hypothesis might lose some of its prominence now that a prominent researcher in the field has backed away from his 2019 study linking processed food to weight gain. Dr. Kevin Hall, a scientist at the National Institutes of Health, now says there is little evidence that processing explains our rapid weight gain; the real problem may be that these foods are so flavorful that many people choose to eat more of them than they should, which promotes weight gain. Hall has plans to conduct a new clinical study to test this hypothesis.

Kevin M. Folta is a professor, keynote speaker and podcast host. Follow Professor Folta on X @kevinfolta

Cameron J. English is the director of bio-sciences at the American Council on Science and Health. Visit his website and follow him on X @camjenglish

False dawn or new dawn for genetically engineered crops in the European Union?

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It’s going to be a long and difficult journey before the fate of the European crop biotechnology reform bill passed on February 7 by the EU Parliament is known. Proponents and rejectionists are already positioning themselves for what is shaping up as an acrimonious debate that will spill over well into next year.

The fate of the measure revolves around two issues, either of which could derail or denude the final measure: whether to allow the patenting of gene-edited crops; and whether plants engineered using what the bill calls New Genomic Techniques (NGTs), also referred to in other countries as New Breeding Techniques (NBTs), will be traced and labeled. 

Both proponents and rejectionists are sharpening their knives, each contending that the measure as now written fails the public.

Claiming there is “misery ahead” for European farmers if the bill passes in its current form, Greenpeace issued its boilerplate objections, saying it would accelerate the ‘corporate takeover’ of global agriculture — the view echoed by other environmental groups that aligned with the organic industry in lobbying to water down the final bill. 

“Members of the European Parliament have failed in their duty to protect people’s health, the environment, and the future of European farming,” said a Greenpeace spokesperson.

Scientists, farmers and seed companies welcomed the passage of the bill. They claim these reforms are needed for the EU to participate in the agricultural genetic revolution that is creating disease, insect, salt, drought- and browning-resistant crops and crops better able to protect against droughts, floods and pest infestations as climate instability accelerates. Meanwhile, fruits, vegetables and grains are being tweaked to be more nutritious, tastier, colorful, and have longer shelf lives.

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Drought rocked European farmers in 2022

But reform proponents are far from enthusiastic. Yes, it’s an improvement over current statutes that all but ban the growing of transgenic GMO crops — only one, a corn varietal — is approved across the EU. But they claim it is filled with restrictions that would ensure Europe would remain a global crop biotechnology backwater if preserved in the final measure.

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What’s in the legislation?

The bill is a compromise designed to thread the needle between the need to deregulate NBTs at a time when many other countries are taking such steps. Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, the US, Israel, Japan Canada, Brazil, Argentina and Australia have all recently removed the shackles from new breeding technologies (NBTs), and other countries are contemplating reforms.

There are many problems with the proposals which suggest it will not be the panacea that many in the scientific, farming and biotechnology sector had hoped for. It is therefore likely to be quite a while before any GE food is fully commercialized given all the restrictions, roadblocks and regulations that will remain in place.

Challenges to passing the bill 

All major EU decisions require unanimous consent of the 27 member countries, which means both sides will not get what they want. The cumbersome nature of such a process was highlighted recently when Hungary was the lone holdout for the approval of an urgently needed $54 billion economic package for Ukraine. Viktor Orban, the long-time serving prime minister, strongly opposed the package. It took a great deal of arm-twisting to secure his approval.  

Hungary, Austria, Poland and Germany are likely to be among the most recalcitrant countries. Anti-GE groups have forged broad coalitions. The USDA Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service has issued in-depth reports analyzing the depths of the opposition in each country.

Hungary

Although the country has no formal policy on cisgenic gene-editing, the most recent USDA report for Hungary indicated that it is “one of the strongest opponents of transgenic engineering, and noting that maintaining its “GE free status” is a government priority:

Hungary does not produce genetically engineered (GE) crops, animals, or cloned livestock. The Government of Hungary opposes the use of GE products in agriculture. Political parties in Hungary have historically held a firm anti-GE position… Maintaining the country’s GE-free status is among the government’s highest priorities. [Hungary] does not support any initiative that would allow “NGT” products to be placed on the market without risk assessments. Additionally, it requires a mandatory labeling system.

Austria

Austria is also a long-time genetic engineering opponent, claiming it poses “incalculable risks”, although opposition appears to be softening in certain sectors. The country has the highest percentage of agricultural land in the EU under organic management, According to the USDA, “Anti-biotech NGOs, farmer organizations, the food-processing sector, and the retail sector all campaign against genetically engineered agricultural food products.”

Although the government formally opposes the current NGT measure, and the public is hostile, “within informed stakeholder groups like scientists, seed breeders, seed traders, and farmer representatives, the acceptance of innovative biotechnologies … is much higher than for traditional GE crops.”

Poland

Poland formally opposes crop biotechnology. Paradoxically, it imports millions of tons of GMO corn to feed its livestock even though a ban is in place, and there is no parliamentary plan to enforce that ban. Opposition to biotechnology is slowly softening in some sectors, the USDA reports, noting that “most Polish scientists and some commercial farmers support advanced agricultural techniques.” Still, “70 percent of Poles oppose agricultural biotechnology [and] environmental organizations, and consumer groups regularly protest its use in agriculture.”

Germany

The future of gene editing in Europe may rest with Germany, which has the largest economy and is the most populous country in the EU. Without its acceptance, any major liberalization is doomed to fail. The issue is “highly politicized”, the USDA writes, and the government is “conflicted”. While Germany is “generally open to new technology” and is home to numerous global agri-businesses, 

Biotech test plots, which are used both as a research tool and are a required part of the EU regulatory approval process, were destroyed by vandals so often that test plots are no longer attempted in Germany today. Public rejection of GE crops has been widespread for decades and still prevails. [A]round 58 percent of the German population are still in favor of strict regulation of agricultural biotechnology and oppose the European Commission’s proposal to deregulate the genetic engineering law. … In the current environment, there is still little prospect of developing a German market for GE crops or foods.

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GMOs still unfairly vilified 

Under the proposed legislation, regardless to what degree gene-editing is greenlighted, crops produced via GMOs (transgenesis) would remain severely restricted — the position recently also taken in Israel, Japan and England. That makes no scientific sense.  There is no scientific evidence suggesting that GMOs are more hazardous to human and animal health and the environment than crops grown utilizing conventional breeding techniques or via NBTs, such as CRISPR.

GMOs are an important tool that should not be shunned for ideological reasons.  Although it is used in commodity crops — a target of activists — it’s used in other ways as well. Bangladesh has grown insect-resistant eggplant for years, greatly reducing pesticide spraying and increasing yields. The Hawaiian papaya was saved from the ravages of the ringspot virus using genetic modification. Ghana has just approved the commercialization of a GMO disease-resistant cowpea for cultivation. GM sweet potato, cassava, and Irish potato have been approved or are in development across Africa. Golden rice, which is nutritionally enhanced, was created via a GMO process. 

A paper entitled, Environmental impacts of genetically modified (GM) crop use 1996–2018: impacts on pesticide use and carbon emissions”, outlined some of the environmental benefits of GMOs:

The adoption of GM insect-resistant and herbicide-tolerant technology has reduced pesticide spraying…decreased the environmental impact associated with herbicide and insecticide use…The technology has also facilitated important cuts in fuel use and tillage changes, resulting in a significant reduction in the release of greenhouse gas emissions from the GM cropping area.”

Every year the EU imports billions of dollars of GMO soybeans, corn and canola as animal feed. There has never been an instance of such feed harming any animal nor human who consumed the meat from GMO-fed animals. 

Labeling is required 

To make the deregulation of GE crops more palatable to opponents of the technology, labeling will be required. Pushing back, a growing coalition of scientists, farmers and agri-businesses, as well as many consumer advocates, say labeling is unnecessary and even deceptive, and it would inhibit acceptance. 

It would be a political label and not a scientific one. Gene-edited crops mimic what happens in nature, which is the justification used by governments around the world in deregulating cisgenesis. But even regulations on GMO crops make no scientific sense. Genetic engineering is a process and not an ingredient.  

Why would any government single out labeling GMO and gene-edited foods but no other breeding process? Foods derived from seeds that have undergone mutagenesis — 3,200 crops including organic varieties of sweet grapefruit —are not labeled even though the seeds were created using chemicals, gamma rays or X-rays, to get the desired trait. Mutagenesis has been part of crop breeding for 90 years.

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Examples of mutagenized plants

Foods that are the products of hybridization such as tangelos, pineberries, limequats and tayberries are not labeled, nor are foods produced via grafting. Seedless fruits such as oranges, grapes and watermelons do not require labels to explain to the public the method by which they became seedless. Labeling is arbitrary, yet it will likely be part of gene editing “reform” in the EU. It will then be used by anti-GE forces to demonize and vilify foods produced via NBTs.

Other requirements designed to placate the anti-GE advocates include mandatory traceability and a so-called safeguard clause requiring the withdrawal of authorization in the event an issue is discovered. This is a Trojan-horse clause because there is currently no way to trace gene edits, as the tweaks mimic natural processes. As a technology blog at North Carolina State University notes, “there are many challenges that will make it more difficult to detect products of new genomic techniques, such as CRISPR/Cas9. Some of the products of these new genomic techniques may exist in nature, making their detection more difficult.”

Even if tracing of GE products becomes technically feasible, the clause requiring the withdrawal of authorization in the event of an issue is vague and could be used by opponents to sabotage the roll-out of GE technology. 

Ban on patents could be a ‘make or break’ issue 

The proposed legislation includes a full ban on patents for all plants and plant material developed via new breeding techniques. Why? A Parliament press release claimed it would “avoid legal uncertainties, increased costs and new dependencies for farmers and breeders,” but that’s not so.  Although patent protections can be exploited, there is scant evidence, based on evidence from around the world, that this would be the case. 

Most seeds, including most vegetable seed products, are not patent-protected. Uniquely-created plants have been in the US since the passage of the Plant Patent Act of 1930. Other countries followed suit.

Patents have been a key innovation tool in agriculture. Developers cannot ‘patent nature’, but they can, and do, patent intentionally-bred plant varieties. When not abused, they incentivize the development of new varieties. For example, the popular Honeycrisp apple variety was developed under patent, although it’s long since been off-patent. Even organic seed developers patent their inventions.

It takes upwards of 10 years and $130 million to develop a single patented trait in the US. As a patent is only in effect for 20 years from the filing of an application, that would leave as little as 7-10 years after approval for innovators to recover those staggering costs. Without a patent, why would individuals, universities or companies expend tens of millions of dollars only to see their products sold elsewhere for a pittance? 

This provision is the most contentious in the measure, and some gene-editing proponents see it as a possible poison pill. Although the Greens opposed the overall legislation, they strongly supported this amendment, as it could undercut the entire liberalization process. They hailed its inclusion as a “big win”. Seed and crop industry group EuropaBio called it a ‘red flag’, with one lobbyist saying the industry would fight the patent ban “with all its powers.” 

GE forbidden in organic farming, but at a cost

Down the road, if passed, gene editing and other NBTs could provide a bridge to bring conventional and organic agriculture together. Allowing genetic engineering in organic farming makes intellectual sense; after all, organic farming was focused entirely on modes of production and not seed development for more than a century. Opposition to genetic engineering only emerged in the 1990s, even though there were factions in the organic movement that believed that GE seeds could be grown organically. It was, reportedly, floated briefly by then US Secretary of Agriculture Daniel Glickman when he was guiding the development of the National Organic Program in the late 1990s.

The budding organic industry in the US vehemently opposed the idea, considering genetic engineering a “red line”.  As such, it remains forbidden, and most of the organic farming movement remains adamantly opposed to any form of GE.  

By forgoing the use of GE, organic farmers will not be able to avail themselves of many biotechnology crop innovations thus putting them at a severe competitive disadvantage. For example, disease-resistant grapes are in development that could reduce crop losses and the cost of spraying natural, organic copper sulfate fungicides, which are dangerous to beneficial insects, deplete the soil, and are known carcinogens. As a result, organic grape farmers will continue to suffer crop losses.  

Some in the organic movement believe gene editing should be seriously considered. Urs Niggli, former head of the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FIBL), admitted that GMO-free is a selling point for organic, and that organic associations have deliberately stoked the fear of molecular biological breeding methods to distinguish themselves on the market. 

Niggli called that view outdated, as CRISPR-Cas9 enables targeted mutations at individual sites of the genome, as happens all the time in nature or conventional breeding. He warned that in rejecting GE, “the organic sector could lose its pioneering edge in sustainable agriculture, consigned to producing 20-50% lower yields than conventional farming. It could “miss out on potential solutions to current production challenges such as reliance on copper-based fungicides for disease control.”

What happens next?

The European Council will next take up the legislation. Belgium holds the six-month rotating presidency of the EC until the end of June. Its attitude towards possible GE crop cultivation is split, illustrated by the divided opinion in two regions: Wallonia (French-speaking) and Flanders (Dutch-speaking). Wallonia is opposed while support is growing in the Flemish region. It contains an agricultural biotech hub, where significant biotechnology research and experimental field trials are conducted. 

With EU Parliamentary elections scheduled for early June, no debate is likely over the next few months. On July 1, Hungary assumes the six-month rotating presidency of the EC.  It is adamantly opposed to GE.  As a result, the measure is unlikely to come up this year. In January 2025, Poland will assume the six-month rotating presidency. It too is a country that is not enthusiastic about the use of GE for crop cultivation. It therefore might take two years (or more) for the measures to undergo serious debate and bridge-building necessary to get unanimous support.

Time is of the essence 

The EU is now well behind other countries in liberalizing regulations and commercializing GE food products. The restrictive environment has prompted some plant geneticists to decamp to countries with a more favorable attitude. Venture capital to finance agricultural innovation has slowed to a trickle. Few trials are being conducted. Unlike in the US, where there is a plethora of companies researching and developing products, there are few such companies in the EU. It needs to build a GE infrastructure, but it is failing. 

The EU agriculture sector is in turmoil. Farmers are demonstrating against restrictive regulations, staging mass demonstrations in France, Germany and Belgium. They have challenged what they claim is an unworkable Europe Farm to Fork Strategy touted as a key tool to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To placate farmers, the EU has granted them temporary exemptions from rules to set aside land for nature conservation, scrapped a proposal in its 2040 climate plan to halve pesticide use, and weakened the recommendations concerning agriculture emissions. 

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NBTs could go a long way in helping Europe achieve it sustainability goals. Its products could reduce pesticide and fungicide use by creating insect and disease-resistant crops. It could reduce fertilizer use by developing plants that create their own nitrogen. It could reduce waste and spoilage of crops by producing crops with longer shelf lives, non-browning and hardier when transported. It can create plants that are drought-resistant and can grow using less water.  

The EU Parliament’s decision to adopt legislation loosening the rules for the cultivation of NBTs is a significant step forward considering the EU’s stringent, historical opposition to the introduction of biotechnology to crop cultivation. But the regulatory regime being proposed is not likely to set the stage for a full-scale food revolution in the EU.  Without a commitment to complete deregulation, the EU will remain a genetic engineering backwater for decades to come.

Steven E. Cerier is a retired international economist and a frequent contributor to the Genetic Literacy Project   

How gene editing could rescue virus-devastated global papaya crop

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Plant viruses are formidable adversaries when it comes to producing high yielding crops, causing significant harm to global agriculture, and posing substantial threats to food security. Among these viruses, those for papaya have emerged as a particularly worrisome group, responsible for substantial crop losses and reductions in crop quality across the world.

Papaya production faces various viruses, with over ten different strains reported worldwide. However, a few, such as the Papaya ringspot virus (PRSV), the Papaya leaf distortion mosaic virus (PLDMV), the Papaya lethal yellowing virus (PLYV), the Papaya mosaic virus (PapMV), and the Papaya Meleira Virus (PMeV), stand out due to their devastating impact on crop production. For instance, during the economic cycle of the crop in orchards where rogueing is performed, the PMeV infection may affect 20% of the plants. If the phytosanitary protocols are not implemented, it can affect up to 100% of the plants, causing a total yield loss.

Papaya production and importance

Papaya, scientifically known as Carica papaya, is the third most cultivated tropical crop worldwide for its fruit, papain, pectin, and antibacterial substances. Among common fruits, papaya is ranked first on nutritional scores for the percentage of vitamin A, vitamin C, potassium, folate, niacin, thiamine, riboflavin, iron and calcium, and fiber. Commercial production of papain is directed for protein digestion, mainly as a red meat tenderizer, for the brewing of beer, and the skin treatment of warts and scars.

The production of this tropical fruit tree originated in Mesoamerica region (Figure 1) and is vital to the economies of especially Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries such as Brazil and Mexico. In 2021, Brazil produced a staggering 1.25 million tons of papaya, contributing approximately 9% of the world’s supply. Mexico, on the other hand, serves as a major exporter to the USA, cultivating 19,500 hectares of papaya in 2021. Together, those two countries are responsible for 17% of the world’s production of papaya which not only holds economic significance but also sustains countless smallholder farmers in both countries.

Figure 1. Carica papaya: World map showing the origin, distribution, and the chief production countries. (Source)

Papaya sticky disease

Papaya Sticky Disease (PSD) or “meleira” is a viral infection caused by the presence of two viruses known as Papaya Meleira Virus (PMeV) and Papaya Meleira Virus 2 (PMev2). The disease was first reported in Brazil in the 1980s, followed by Mexico in 2008Australia also reported PSD in 2014 and in 2021, papaya trees exhibiting PSD-like symptoms were observed in Ecuador. This disease renders papaya fruits commercially unacceptable due to its adverse effects on texture and flavor, effectively prohibiting their exportation to international markets.

Plants affected by PSD are characterized by the spontaneous exudation of fluid and latex from the fruit and leaves (Figure 2). Upon exposure to the atmosphere, the latex oxidizes, resulting in small necrotic lesions on young leaves and a sticky appearance of the fruit, hence the disease’s name.

Figure 2. Carica papaya infected with PMeV.
a) Latex exudation on infected papaya; b) C. papaya plantation infected with PMeV in Linhares, ES – Brazil
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The challenge of diagnosis and management

Detecting the initial symptoms of Papaya Sticky Disease is challenging, as they typically appear in plants that are 6 to 9 months old depending on the papaya variety. The source of inoculum, whether from seeds, alternative hosts, or vectors, plays a crucial role in the health of papaya seedlings and the onset of disease incidence. Moreover, the transmission mode of the viruses remains unclear.

Despite extensive efforts in Brazil and Mexico, identifying a papaya genotype resistant to PSD remains elusive. Symptoms only manifest after flowering, allowing infected but asymptomatic plants to go undetected for months, acting as hidden sources of inoculum until their eventual discovery and removal. Consequently, rogueing, or the systematic removal of infected plants, remains the primary strategy for controlling this viral disease.

Gene-editing technology

Gene editing technology, such as CRISPR-Cas9, holds immense promise in mitigating the challenges posed by PSD in papaya cultivation. Scientists have already made significant strides by genetically editing C. papaya to confer resistance to Papaya Ringspot Virus.

The Laboratory of Biotechnology Applied to Agribusiness (LBAA) at the Federal University of Espírito Santo (Brazil) is the leading group on PMeV and PMeV2 research. In collaboration with Incaper (Capixaba Institute for Research, Technical Assistance and Rural Extension, from Portuguese Instituto Capixaba de Pesquisa, Assistência Técnica e Extensão Rural), LBAA is already working on the development of a C. papaya resistant to PMeV using the gene editing technology of CRISPR-Cas9.

The timeline for the release of a papaya resistant to PSD to the market remains uncertain, but CRISPR-Cas9 technology offers a swifter and more cost-effective approach than traditional methods. While traditional breeding could span decades, CRISPR-Cas9 can achieve results in months. Furthermore, this gene editing technique often produces crops not classified as GMOs in many countries, bypassing time-consuming regulations.

This breakthrough offers a beacon of hope for the papaya industry in Brazil, Mexico and beyond. By making specific genetic editing that enhance the plant’s natural defenses against PMeV, researchers are providing a sustainable and environmentally friendly solution to combat this devastating disease. As we navigate the battle against plant viruses, gene editing emerges as a powerful ally in our quest to safeguard global food security.

Dr. Luiza Favarato Santos is a microbiologist with a Ph.D. in Biotechnology from the Federal University of Espírito Santo. Follow Dr. Favarato on LinkedIn

A version of this article was originally posted at International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) and is reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit both the GLP and original article. Find ISAAA on X @isaaa_org

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