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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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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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 filledwith restrictions that would ensure Europe would remain a global crop biotechnology backwater if preserved in the final measure.
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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 amongthe 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 indicatedthat 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.”
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.
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.
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.
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 supportedthis 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.
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
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)
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.
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
If you want advice on which coffee maker or space heater to buy, Consumer Reports (CR) is where you go. Their experts can help you select a Keurig and save a few bucks along the way like nobody else.
Every so often, though, CR ventures far outside its area of expertise and publishes alarmist claims about vitally important chemicals that make modern life possible and pose essentially no risk to public health.
Instead of relying on independent scientists for these assessments, CR conducts its own testing of a consumer product, detects trace amounts of the chemical in question then rushes a press release out the door, which the media dutifully promotes—no actual journalism required.
Case in point: In early January, CR published a glorified blog post claiming that phthalates and bisphenols, chemicals used to make plastic food containers durable and flexible, pose “potential health threats” to consumers.
It’s a dubious conclusion that ignores a wealth of contrary evidence and downplays the important benefits plastic containers provide. Let’s take a look at the critical errors, oversights and sleights of hand that plague CR’s analysis.
Ignoring inconvenient science
Every consumer good the public has access to is thoroughly tested to ensure it can be safely used. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) can recall any item it deems a hazard to public health—be it a cosmetic, plastic container, food or other product the agency regulates. Fortunately, recalls are exceedingly rare, because no industry wants to harm its customers and there are severe financial and legal penalties for marketing dangerous products.
No products that contain the chemicals CR attacked have been recalled, and there’s a very good reason for that: years of independent research and review by FDA scientists have shown that they pose no meaningful risk to human health.
For example, Consumer Reports claimed it found phthalates “in almost every food we tested,” then pointed to a handful of speculative studies to justify its “potential health threat” claim. Yet the FDA has extensively evaluated the phthalates used in food-contact materials twice in recent years, finding no support for CR’s claims in either instance. Responding last July to an activist petition demanding FDA ban these chemicals, the agency was clear:
…[W]e do not have a basis to conclude that dietary exposure levels from approved ortho -phthalates exceed a safe level.
That should’ve settled the matter. But anti-chemical agitators are a tenacious bunch. They again petitioned FDA for a phthalate ban, but the agency was still having none of it:
In sum, we concluded that the … information contained in and relied upon by your Original Petition …did not set forth a sufficient showing that the scientific evidence supports amending our regulations to prohibit the use of these substances…
CR’s response to the FDA findings was nothing short of dishonest. While acknowledging that FDA published a review of phthalates in 2022, the activist group only said the agency “rejected an appeal from several groups calling for a ban on multiple phthalates.” FDA’s reasoning for rejecting the petition–there was no scientific justification behind the demand–was left out of CR’s report.
The bisphenol story has a similar arc. The FDA acknowledges that “People are exposed to low levels of BPA because … very small amounts of BPA may migrate from the food packaging into foods or beverages.” Nevertheless, the agency’s answers to the question, “Is BPA safe?” leaves little room for CR’s brand of manufactured doubt:
Yes … Studies pursued by FDA’s National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR) have shown no effects of BPA from low-dose exposure.
This includes a 223-page study published in 2018, though the agency adds that its ongoing review of the relevant research “continues to support the safety of BPA for the currently approved uses in food containers and packaging.”
The scope of this work is expansive. Studies of cashiers who frequently handle BPA-containing receipt paper have found no evidence of harm; experiments designed to detect neurological and reproductive damage in animals have likewise come up empty; there is also research showing that the human body rapidly metabolizes and eliminates BPA. We could go on and on and on, but there’s no need to belabor the obvious: this chemical doesn’t carry even a fraction of the risk Consumer Reports implies.
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CR’s other critical mistake was to ignore why food makers rely on plastic packaging in the first place, although the answers are easy to find.
First up, food safety. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), foodborne pathogens cause more than nine million illnesses, 55,000 hospitalizations, and 1,300 deaths each year in the US. Globally, microbial food contamination kills about 420,000 people annually, the World Health Organization estimates.
Research has shown time and again that plastics are one of the primary reasons so few of those deaths occur in the US. Two food supply chain experts put it simply in 2019:
Plastic packaging is used in the food supply chain because it supports the safe distribution of food over long distances…
The second, and equally important, issue is food waste—which reached a staggering 931 million tons in 2019. Not only do the greenhouse emissions of food waste dwarf those of plastic production, there are some 830 million people around the world who don’t have enough to eat. Plastic packaging, enhanced by phthalates and bisphenols, has been shown to extend shelf life and thus expand access to nutritious food.
First-world problems
Like so many of the activists who champion environmentalism, the do-gooders at Consumer Reports are wealthy, well-fed progressives with too much time and money on their hands. Their ideological zeal has blinded them to the fact that their anti-plastic crusade undermines both their standard of living and other causes they profess to care deeply about.
Hopefully they work through the blatant contradictions in their ideology. Until they do, the rest of us should disregard their loud but shallow complaints about plastic.
David Zaruk is the Firebreak editor, and also writes under the pen-name The Risk Monger. David is a retired professor, environmental-health risk analyst, science communicator, promoter of evidence-based policy and philosophical theorist on activists and the media. Find David on X @Zaruk
A version of this article was originally posted at the Firebreak and is reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit both the GLP and original article. Find the Firebreak on X @the_firebreak
The four most compelling words in the English language may be: “Once upon a time.”
When we hear them, we know we’re in for a story—and stories are the most powerful form of communication available to us.
Farmers don’t always appreciate this fact, especially when we’re discussing our own business of agriculture. We’re inclined to mention inputs and outputs, moisture levels, yields, commodity prices, and more. You know: farmer talk.
The challenge increases when the conversation turns to technology, and especially when it involves new technologies, including GMO crops, CRISPR gene editing and so on. At this point, our rhetoric can sound like boring passages from science textbooks. They’re about as interesting as the homework that none of us misses from our school days.
Yet every one of us has a story to tell—and if we tell our stories well we’ll both educate the public about what we do and advance our own interests at a time when farmers face growing threats from government regulators, political activists and skeptical consumers.
I live on a third-generation farm in rural Maryland, where we grow corn, soybeans, canning tomatoes, grapes and fresh-market green beans on about 2,000 acres. I’m also a registered dietitian. Very few RDs have strong agricultural knowledge or experience, which means that I can speak from an uncommon perspective: I know a lot about both food production and food consumption. I look at my role as having a niche with dietitians because they’re my peer group. I can be an effective voice for agriculture within that realm.
Over the years, I’ve learned plenty of lessons, and one of the most important may be that generally, consumers give very little consideration to where their food comes from. They don’t know what farmers do, how we do it; nor are they overly curious or concerned about how the food got to their grocery stores. They take for granted that the food will be there.
Over the years, I’ve learned plenty of lessons, and one of the most important may be that generally, consumers give very little consideration to where their food comes from.
In one respect, this is a good thing. Over the years, as we’ve gotten better at food production, the agriculture industry has needed to rely on fewer people. Not so long ago—perhaps when our grandparents or great grandparents were born—food production dominated employment. Today, less than 2 percent of Americans are directly involved in agriculture. This means that more of us can work as teachers, welders and software engineers (and also dietitians).
It also means that at no point in history do more people know less about farming from first-hand experience than they do right now. Many Americans recognize their own ignorance: Two years ago, in a poll by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, 63 percent of Americans rated their understanding of GMOs as “poor” or “fair.” Only 4 percent called it “excellent.”
I saw this firsthand when the Maryland Agricultural Education Foundation hired me to disseminate a curriculum in agricultural literacy: training teachers how to use agriculture in their classrooms. That experience really highlighted for me how deficient consumer knowledge is about food and farming.
When you talk to consumers and observe them as they make grocery decisions for their family, what most people want is confidence that their food is safe. Their lack of knowledge about agriculture, however, makes them vulnerable to some pretty big misunderstandings. That’s doubly true when the misunderstandings are fueled by propaganda.
This is where stories can play a decisive role—and allow farmers to become effective communicators about the realities of farming and the safety of our food supply. The key is to look for opportunities to tell what we know about what we do.
The most effective approach, I’ve discovered, is to tell my farm’s story. Something as simple as describing “a day in the life” can convey an enormous amount of information. It also builds a personal connection and level of credibility. Statistics and research outcomes are good and even necessary, but for most people, they mean almost nothing if they don’t also include a personal component.
Here’s an example. In 2017, around the time the New England Patriots won their fifth Super Bowl, star quarterback Tom Brady released a book of workout, lifestyle and recipe suggestions. “The TB12 Method” took its name from Brady’s initials and his roster number, and it quickly became a best seller on the promise that readers would learn fitness secrets.
Statistics and research outcomes are good and even necessary, but for most people, they mean almost nothing if they don’t also include a personal component.
It also included a witless attack on modern agriculture. “Then of course there’s genetic engineering,” wrote Brady. “Does that sound like something you’d want to eat? It sounds like a chemistry experiment to me.”
When I learned about this, I knew I had to respond. Not only am I farmer who knows the truth about GMOs, but I’m also a lifelong fan of the New England Patriots. I may live in Maryland, but I was born in Massachusetts—and I had just cheered for Brady to win the big game.
So I told the story of our farm in a website column, “Invitation to Tom Brady: Visit My Farm and Learn Food Facts”. I pointed out that one of the reasons we grow GMO soybeans, for example, is because they’re high in oleic oil, which allows our customers to extract an oil from them that is free of trans fat.
Brady, I thought, ought to cheer for us: “Basically, trans fats are the worst kind of fat out there,” wrote Brady in his book. He urged his readers to avoid them.
So I pointed out all of this, from the incoherence of Brady’s quip about “a chemistry experiment” (because GMOs are a feature of biology) to the fact that modern technology allows us to grow crops that carry extra nutritional value.
Then I invited Brady to visit my farm and learn more about what we do. He has not taken me up on this offer, but the invitation stands.
It also helped that I published a photo of myself wearing my Brady jersey and standing in a field next to one of our tractors. [see lead picture] Pictures, of course, can be as much a part of storytelling as words.
I won’t say the column went viral in the way of a YouTube video sensation—but it was popular, if the website hits and social-media mentions are any indication.
It worked for a simple reason: It told a story about a farm.
You can find lots of other examples. Watch the documentary “Food Evolution,” which includes stories about GMO adoptions around the world. My favorite segment focuses on Motlatsi Musi,
a South African farmer who grew up within a racist system of apartheid but became a landowner who now relies on GMOs. Or check out Pam Ronald’s TED talk or her book “Tomorrow’s Table.” Or go to any number of websites, such as GMOAnswers.com and SafeFruitsandVeggies.com.
Or perhaps best of all: Keep up with the weekly columns by members of the Global Farmer Network, where real-world farmers tell their personal stories. This was how I first told my story about GMOs and Tom Brady.
Every farmer has a story to tell, whether it’s about the challenges of sustainability or the promise of technology. Sharing real life experiences about the tools we use and what we do to reduce our environmental footprint while sustaining the farm for the next generation is invaluable. The more stories we tell, the better off we’ll find ourselves.
Jennie Schmidt is a third-generation farmer growing grains, vegetables and wine grapes on a family farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. As a farmer, mom and registered dietitian, Jennie is passionate about connecting people with food and farming. Jennie volunteers as a member of the Global Farmer Network. Twitter: @FarmGirlJen
Global Farmer Network (GFN) is a non-profit advocacy group led by farmers from around the world who support free trade and farmers’ freedom to choose the tools, technologies and strategies they need to maximize productivity and profitability in a sustainable manner. Established in 2000, the Global Farmer Network is committed to inserting the worlds farmers voice in the global dialogue regarding food and nutritional security. The Global Farmer Network identifies, engages and supports strong farmer leaders from around the world who can work with others to innovate, encourage and lead as full stakeholders in the work that is being done to fill the world’s food and nutrition security gap in a sustainable manner.
The Genetic Literacy Project is a 501(c)(3) non profit dedicated to helping the public, journalists, policy makers and scientists better communicate the advances and the technological, ethical and religious challenges ushered in by the biotechnology and genetics revolution, including CRISPR gene editing, in biomedicine and agriculture.
The number of messages I received from people, mostly parents, who said they had been terrified to feed their children Cheerios and oatmeal after I wrote about the chlormequat fear-mongering by the EWG was saddening, truly.
It underscores the harm that these disinformation campaigns play in people’s overall life and their health: avoidance of perfectly safe foods, increased health anxiety, impacts to health outcomes, and more.
Are we worrying too much about things that pose a low risk and not worried enough about things that pose the greater risk?
It is a psychological phenomenon where fear or concern about specific risks strays from evidence, scientific consensus, and probability of that risk actually occurring.
The gap is particularly pronounced in the fields of health, science, and public health, where complex information and uncertainty can mean people don’t necessarily trust the interpretations of data by certain experts, and instead lead to alternative interpretations of data by other members of the public, social media influencers, and misinformation organizations.
There are substantial harms to this gap, not limited to the illustration above, where people have been legitimately afraid to feed their children safe and nutritious foods. The harms of this gap are multifaceted and impact both individual decision-making and broader public policy (California AB418 and banning safe food ingredients, anyone?) based on misunderstandings of what endangers us versus what does not.
The work of the Environmental Working Group on the whole is a long-standing example of this. Their fear-laden claims of chemicals, whether it is food ingredients, pesticides herbicides, etc., are exaggerated far beyond what these trace levels of substances would ever pose to us. Simultaneously, they create fear about conventional food products and drive people to organic products, which are, on average, 50% more expensive than their conventional counterparts, and offer zero health, nutritional, ecological, environmental, or farm worker benefits. And, contrary to widely held beliefs, organic products are not grown without pesticides:
For more on organic products and organic farming, tune into the two-part podcast:
People are not good at assessing risk. When we encounter statements that evoke emotions, especially negative emotions like anxiety our fear, our ‘logical brain’ is overridden by the primitive emotional brain. This is exacerbated by clickbait media coverage, social media echo chambers, and low science literacy.
As a result, people often have excessive worry about things that pose almost zero risk to us, like:
Individual food ingredients
Trace levels of pesticides, herbicides, plant growth retardant chemicals in foods:
Food additives
Vaccine side effects or adverse events
Vaccine ingredients
Organic food versus conventional food
But at the same time, aren’t worrying enough about things that have a far greater impact or risk to us, like:
Social determinants of health
An overall diverse diet
Preventive healthcare
Staying up-to-date on vaccines
A sedentary lifestyle
Good sleep habits
Alcohol and tobacco consumption
Climate change
As a result, a single study in animal models can be blown wildly out of proportion, while every day, maybe less ‘sexy’ but larger threats receive less attention than they should because they are not ‘newsworthy’. The risk perception gap is especially harmful when it comes to science and health topics.
Vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccine rhetoric
One of the most prominent examples of the risk perception gap is with vaccine hesitancy, where the perceived risk of vaccine side effects or the impact of vaccine ingredients is often much higher among the public than what is supported by scientific evidence.
In contrast, the benefits of vaccination and their ability to prevent deadly diseases (remember, measles is back) are underestimated. That is true with nearly all vaccines nowadays, with many people diminishing the substantial positive impact that vaccines have on individual and collective health (I discussed the harm of prominent figures, like Andrew Huberman, doing this here). As a result of this gap, vaccination rates for preventable illnesses are declining, and increased outbreaks of diseases that were previously eliminated or well-controlled are rising.
Food safety
Conversely, risks associated with trace levels of chemicals used to grow crops are vastly exaggerated. This creates fear around more affordable conventional food items based on misinformation and misunderstanding of chemistry and toxicology when there is no credible scientific evidence to support these claims.
Remember, chemical isn’t a bad word, everything is chemicals. You’re a sack of chemicals. The dose makes the poison with literally everything.
This leads to reduced consumption of demonstrably safe and nutritious foods like fresh produce, especially among lower-income families. This actually poses the greater risk, as we know most Americans don’t consume enough fiber, which is critical for health in a variety of ways: gastrointestinal health, cardiovascular health, immune system function, reduced risk of certain cancers, even reduced risk of all-cause mortality.
Overestimation of rare risks and underestimation of common risks
People often overestimate the risk of rare but dramatic newsworthy medical issues (like Ebola, “mad Cow disease”, or shark attacks) while underestimating the risks of more common, yet less sensational, health issues (heart disease, diabetes, type 2 diabetes).
This perception gap can lead to misallocation of resources, both personally and in public health policies. For example, individuals may fixate or focus on unlikely health issues and spend their money on ineffective or potentially dangerous interventions instead of evidence-based measures like well visits, routine vaccinations, a gym membership, etc. In policy, we see this with regard to disproportionate funding towards less common diseases or even cutting funding from important public health initiatives (yes, our legislators are a key player in this, and they are most definitely not immune to personal biases and risk perception gaps).
It also leads to a lack of awareness on the ‘big picture’ of health, including overall lifestyle patterns and equitable access to healthcare, preventive health screenings, routine vaccinations, and affordable medications, while focusing on things that don’t actually benefit health like unneccessary and unregulated supplements and ‘health hacks’ that cater to privileged and wealthy populations.
Misunderstanding of scientific processes and results
Low science literacy leads to the public often misunderstanding the nature of scientific uncertainty and the process of scientific discovery. For example, in vitro or animal studies are frequently used as ‘evidence’ to refute most robust human clinical and epidemiological evidence, which is not appropriate.
We saw this during the COVID-19 pandemic when changing public health guidance as we learned more about an entirely novel virus led to confusion and mistrust among the public. Instead of an understanding that scientific data can alter our interpretation, it was perceived as “flip-flopping”, and as a result, many people stopped listening to expert recommendations that could have saved lives.
This gap hinders effective communication of scientific findings, but more than that, it is exploited to foster rejection of science and disbelief about scientific consensus.
Bothsidesism (false balance)
Bothsidesism is when opposing views are represented as being more equivalent than what credible scientific evidence demonstrates, ultimately because of misrepresentation of the scientific consensus. The presentation of two opposing views as equally valid distorts public understanding and exacerbates the risk perception gap.
Vaccines
The overwhelming majority of scientific research supports the safety and efficacy of vaccines. However, the public’s perception of vaccine safety varies significantly, often influenced by misinformation and sensationalized media coverage of anti-vaccine arguments. Media outlets often present anti-vaccine viewpoints alongside scientific consensus, giving undue weight to a fringe perspective. This false balance can lead the public to believe that there is significant scientific disagreement about vaccine safety when there is none. The risk perception gap in vaccines can lead to lower vaccination rates, resulting in outbreaks of preventable diseases, public health crises, and loss of herd immunity. For example, while only 52 physicians were behind anti-COVID-19 vaccine rhetoric, public perception was that it was much more of a a ‘split’ take.
Climate change
There is a broad consensus among scientists about the reality and urgency of climate change, largely driven by human activities. However, public opinion on the issue is more divided, often influenced by political and ideological beliefs. The media’s portrayal of climate change often includes voices that deny or downplay its severity, presenting these views as equally valid to the scientific consensus. This false equivalence can create a perception that the scientific community is divided on the issue, which is not the case. Misrepresenting the scientific consensus on climate change can delay critical policy actions and public support for measures needed to mitigate and adapt to climate impacts, exacerbating environmental and economic risks.
General implications of Both Sides-ism
Continuous exposure to conflicting views, especially when one side is not supported by evidence, erodes public trust in scientific expertise and institutions. The perceived lack of consensus can lead to policy inaction or ineffective policy responses, especially in areas where swift action is crucial. Issues like vaccines and climate change become entrenched in political and ideological identities, making rational discourse and consensus-building more challenging.
Bothsidesism significantly harms public understanding of science, leads to poor health and environmental outcomes, and undermines effective policymaking. It’s crucial for media and public communication strategies to accurately represent the weight of scientific evidence to bridge this gap.
Risk perception gap has many potential harms
The distorted perception of real versus believed risks posed obvious harm.
Misguided Personal Choices: Individuals may make poor health choices based on inaccurate risk perceptions, such as neglecting preventive measures or engaging in risky behaviors.
Policy and Resource Misallocation: Governments and health organizations may allocate resources inefficiently, focusing on less impactful but more sensational risks.
Erosion of Trust in Science and Public Health Institutions: When public perceptions do not align with scientific evidence, it can erode trust in experts and institutions, leading to resistance against public health measures. This makes it much more difficult to get buy-in for a variety of interventions that have data to support them, from routine vaccinations to overall lifestyle habits, to voting for specific policies during elections.
Increased Health Disparities: Groups with limited access to accurate information may be particularly affected by the risk perception gap, exacerbating health disparities. For example, in the context of food misinformation and risk perception gap, individuals with lower socioeconomic status are more likely to buy and eat fewer fruits and vegetables when they encounter false messaging about the harms of pesticides, which poses are FAR greater risk than the essentially non-existent risk of trace pesticide residues.
Delayed Response to Emerging Threats: Underestimating certain risks leads to delayed responses to emerging health threats, worsening public health outcomes. This is especially the case with issues such as climate change, when decisions and policies made now will only be measurable years down the line.
Addressing the risk perception gap requires a multi-pronged approach. We need improved communication strategies that make scientific and health information more accessible and understandable to the public, along with efforts to build trust and engage communities in dialogue about risk and health decisions. Much of this requires an educational foundation so that people better understand how scientific research is conducted, how risk is calculated, and what that means for your everyday choices. Our media and social media organizations have a responsibility as well: to not give equal weight to unsupported claims, and to not deliberately feed emotion-based messaging.
Science literacy is critical, so that people can understand the difference between anecdotes and robust evidence, and more appropriately evaluate the information they encounter. All of us can take steps to enable this so that our society on the whole is better equipped to navigate the deluge of fear-based messaging that only serves to hinder scientific progress and cause harm.
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.
When I wrote to editor-in-chief Dr. Lewis. First, he indicated that I was invited to submit a response to the article that would be posted below the article on its website. I submitted my response, and it was not published on the site. My guess is that it illuminated the bankruptcies of the article in a manner that ran counter to the authors’, editor’s and journal’s narrative.
So I’ll publish my comment here.
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The article by Abrams et al. represents a stunning example of how misinformation spreads- even through a credible conduit. Pediatrics is a respected journal, so when a paper implies a technology is dangerous, physicians and the general public take note. That’s good. But if the message runs counter to the scientific consensus built from tens of thousands of studies, regulatory approvals, and 50 years of use, it confuses the issue and breaks trust for those of us that communicate science. Worse, it breaks the credibility of Pediatrics, a journal that needs to lead scientific discourse.
As an editor, reviewer and scientific author, I was shocked by the disconnect between this work and the broad scientific consensus. The article lacks scholarly rigor, suffers from omission, and seeks to create a narrative rather than correctly communicate evidence. While there are many problems with this work, some of the most glaring problems are:
Failed Central Premise. There is no direct evidence that glyphosate causes cancer at dietary or occupational exposures. The IARC, other agencies within the World Health Organization, and dozens of international regulators stand by this conclusion. This is not stated in the review.
Citation Bias. Cited evidence comes from a meta-analysis by Zhang et al., 2019, which showed a relatively slight increase in risk of a family of rare blood cancers. Critics indicate that this work compared disparate datasets to find an association at only the highest exposure and time point (Kabat et al., 2021). Abrams et al. also cite a single paper by perennially incorrect authors that genetically engineered crops (“GMOs”) are not safe (Hillbeck et al.,2016). The largest study of 54,000 applicators over decades shows no association with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, but the authors curiously fail to cite that (Andriotti et al., 2018).
Omission of Limitations. While the cited research articles are clear about critical limitations of the studies, these authors cite the same work as conclusive evidence of the dangers of glyphosate.
Confusing Hazard and Risk. The authors continually conflate detection with risk. The dose makes the poison and analytical chemistry techniques can detect concentrations orders of magnitude below physiological relevance.
Logical Fallacy. The authors continually make the argument from ignorance, stating that “more study is needed” when the crops and herbicide have been massively studied, and risks and benefits are well described.
These are just several of the problems with this work. Many independent scientists and physicians have criticized the work online, so multiple dissections are available. While it is impossible to know intent, the language used and messaging seems highly motivated, like almost a commercial for organic crop production.
We remain open to the idea that genetic engineering and associated chemistries could carry undue risk. But that conclusion comes from evidence leading to consensus, not cherry-picked and assembled morsels that manufacture risk in a biased narrative
The authors are invited to join me in discussion on the Talking Biotech Podcast anytime to discuss the work.
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 Illumination 2.0 and is reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit both the GLP and original article.
Bad research in peer-reviewed journals is undermining the public’s trust in science. What can experts do to stop the flow of flawed science into academic publications? It’s the time of year when activist groups, with the media’s help, scare the public about pesticides on food. Is the produce in your grocery store safe? Absolutely. Let’s take a close look at the evidence.
Join host GLP contributor Cameron English and guest host Dr. Kevin Folta on episode 255 of Science Facts and Fallacies as they break down these latest news stories:
Scientists have identified a troubling trend in peer-reviewed journals that publish original research: a growing number of the studies found in these publications are nonsense. Sometimes this is the result of outright fraud—cases where researchers fabricate or distort data. In other instances, it’s an honest mistake that undermines the reliability of a study. Whatever the cause in a particular instance, unreliable research is a critical problem for two reasons. It pollutes the body of evidence we use to make public policy and solve practical problems, like treating disease. Bad studies also sow public distrust in scientific institutions. We need to resolve crisis as soon as possible. But how do we do it?
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Pesticides approved for use in the US are carefully tested for safety before they enter the market, and then carefully monitored by regulators at multiple federal agencies. Moreover, independent research consistently shows that trace amounts of pesticides in our food don’t pose a risk to human health. Each year, though, a handful of NGOs led by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) warn Americans that their food supply is tainted by potentially dangerous chemicals. Their disingenuous claims don’t stand up to scrutiny.
Kevin M. Folta is a professor, keynote speaker and podcast host. Follow Professor Folta on X @kevinfolta
Reader question: We now know from evolutionary science that humanity has existed in some form or another for around 2 million years. Homo sapiens are comparatively new on the block. There were also many other human species, some which we interbred with. The question is then inevitable — when can we claim personhood in the long story of evolution? Are Chimpanzees people? Did Australopithecine have an afterlife? What are the implications for how we think about rights and religion?
– Anthony A. MacIsaac, 26, Paris, France.
In our mythologies, there’s often a singular moment when we became “human”. Eve plucked the fruit of the tree of knowledge and gained awareness of good and evil. Prometheus created men from clay and gave them fire. But in the modern origin story, evolution, there’s no defining moment of creation. Instead, humans emerged gradually, generation by generation, from earlier species.
The creation of Adam by Michelangelo. Credit: Wikipedia
As with any other complex adaptation – a bird’s wing, a whale’s fluke, our own fingers – our humanity evolved step by step, over millions of years. Mutations appeared in our DNA, spread through the population, and our ancestors slowly became something more like us and, finally, we appeared.
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People are animals, but we’re unlike other animals. We have complex languages that let us articulate and communicate ideas. We’re creative: we make art, music, tools. Our imaginations let us think up worlds that once existed, dream up worlds that might yet exist, and reorder the external world according to those thoughts. Our social lives are complex networks of families, friends and tribes, linked by a sense of responsibility towards each other. We also have awareness of ourselves and our universe: sentience, sapience, consciousness, whatever you call it.
And yet the distinction between ourselves and other animals is, arguably, artificial. Animals are more like humans than we might think – or like to think. Almost all behaviour we once considered unique to ourselves are seen in animals, even if they’re less well developed.
Gorillas use tools too. Credit: Dean Bertoncelj/Shutterstock
That’s especially true of the great apes. Chimps, for example, have simple gestural and verbal communication. They make crude tools, even weapons, and different groups have different suites of tools – distinct cultures. Chimps also have complex social lives and cooperate with each other.
As Darwin noted in Descent of Man, almost everything odd about Homo sapiens – emotion, cognition, language, tools, society – exists, in some primitive form, in other animals. We’re different, but less different than we think.
And in the past, some species were far more like us than other apes – Ardipithecus, Australopithecus, Homo erectus and Neanderthals. Homo sapiens is the only survivor of a once diverse group of humans and human-like apes, the hominins, which includes around 20 known species and probably dozens of unknown species.
The extinction of those other hominins wiped out all the species that were intermediate between ourselves and other apes, creating the impression that some vast, unbridgeable gulf separates us from the rest of life on Earth. But the division would be far less clear if those species still existed. What looks like a bright, sharp dividing line is really an artefact of extinction.
The discovery of these extinct species now blurs that line again and shows how the distance between us and other animals was crossed – gradually, over millennia.
The evolution of humanity
Our lineage probably split from the chimpanzees around 6 million years ago. These first hominins, members of the human line, would barely have seemed human, however. For the first few million years, hominin evolution was slow.
The first big change was walking upright, which let hominins move away from forests into more open grassland and bush. But if they walked like us, nothing else suggests the first hominins were any more human than chimps or gorillas. Ardipithecus, the earliest well-known hominin, had a brain that was slightly smaller than a chimp’s, and there’s no evidence they used tools.
In the next million years, Australopithecus appeared. Australopithecus had a slightly larger brain – larger than a chimp’s, still smaller than a gorilla’s. It made slightly more sophisticated tools than chimps, using sharp stones to butcher animals.
Core from which sharp flakes have been struck off, likely by H. habilis. Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Credit: Nick Longrich
Then came Homo habilis. For the first time, hominin brain size exceeded that of other apes. Tools – stone flakes, hammer stones, “choppers” – became much more complex. After that, around 2 million years ago, human evolution accelerated, for reasons we’re yet to understand.
Big brains
At this point, Homo erectus appeared. Erectus was taller, more like us in stature, and had large brains – several times bigger than a chimp’s brain, and up to two-thirds the size of ours. They made sophisticated tools, such as stone handaxes. This was a major technological advance. Handaxes needed skill and planning to create, and you probably had to be taught how to make one. It may have been a meta-tool – used to fashion other tools, such as spears and digging sticks.
Handaxes made by Homo erectus, from Lake Natron, Tanzania. Credit: Nick Longrich
Like us, Homo erectus had small teeth. That suggests a shift from plant-based diets to eating more meat, probably from hunting.
It’s here that our evolution seems to accelerate. The big-brained Erectus soon gave rise to even larger-brained species. These highly intelligent hominins spread through Africa and Eurasia, evolving into Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo rhodesiensis and archaic Homo sapiens. Technology became far more advanced – stone-tipped spears and firemaking appeared. Objects with no clear functionality, such as jewellery and art, also showed up over the past half-million years.
Some of these species were startlingly like us in their skeletons, and their DNA.
Homo neanderthalensis, the Neanderthals, had brains approaching ours in size, and evolved even larger brains over time until the last Neanderthals had cranial capacities comparable to a modern human’s. They might have thought of themselves, even spoke of themselves, as human.
There’s so much about Neanderthals we don’t know, and never will. But if they were so like us in their skeletons and their behaviour, it’s reasonable to guess they may have been like us in other ways that don’t leave a record – that they sang and danced, that they feared spirits and worshipped gods, that they wondered at the stars, told stories, laughed with friends, and loved their children. To the extent Neanderthals were like us, they must have been capable of acts of great kindness and empathy, but also cruelty, violence and deceit.
Far less is known about other species, like Denisovans, Homo rhodesiensis, and extinct sapiens, but it’s reasonable to guess from their large brains and human-looking skulls that they were also very much like us.
Love and war
I admit this sounds speculative, but for one detail. The DNA of Neanderthals, Denisovans and other hominins is found in us. We met them, and we had children together. That says a lot about how human they were.
It’s not impossible that Homo sapiens took Neanderthal women captive, or vice versa. But for Neanderthal genes to enter our populations, we had to not only mate but successfully raise children, who grew up to raise children of their own. That’s more likely to happen if these pairings resulted from voluntary intermarriage. Mixing of genes also required their hybrid descendants to become accepted into their groups – to be treated as fully human.
These arguments hold not only for the Neanderthals, I’d argue, but for other species we interbred with, including Denisovans, and unknown hominins in Africa. Which isn’t to say that encounters between our species were without prejudice, or entirely peaceful. We were probably responsible for the extinction of these species. But there must have been times we looked past our differences to find a shared humanity.
Finally, it’s telling that while we did replace these other hominins, this took time. Extinction of Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other species took hundreds of thousands of years. If Neanderthals and Denisovans were really just stupid, grunting brutes, lacking language or complex thought, it’s impossible they could have held modern humans off as long as they did.
The human edge
Why, if they were so like us, did we replace them? It’s unclear, which suggests the difference was something that doesn’t leave clear marks in fossils or stone tools. Perhaps a spark of creativity – a way with words, a knack for tools, social skills – gave us an edge. Whatever the difference was, it was subtle, or it wouldn’t have taken us so long to win out.
While we don’t know exactly what these differences were, our distinctive skull shape may offer a clue. Neanderthals had elongated crania, with massive brow ridges. Humans have a bulbous skull, shaped like a soccer ball, and lack brow ridges. Curiously, the peculiar smooth, round head of adult Homo sapiens is seen in young Neanderthals – and even baby apes. Similarly, juvenilised skulls of wild animals are found in domesticated ones, like domestic dogs: an adult dog skull resembles the skull of a wolf pup. These similarities aren’t just superficial. Dogs are behaviourally like young wolves – less aggressive and more playful.
Homo heidelbergensis compared with Homo Sapiens. Credit: Procy/Shuttertock
My suspicion, mostly a hunch, is that Homo sapiens’ edge might not necessarily be raw intelligence, but differences in attitude. Like dogs, we may retain juvenile behaviours, things like playfulness, openness to meeting new people, lower aggression, more creativity and curiosity. This in turn might have helped us make our societies larger, more complex, collaborative, open and innovative – which then outcompeted theirs.
But what is it?
Until now, I’ve dodged an important question, arguably the most important one. It’s all well and good to discuss how our humanity evolved – but what even is humanity? How can we study and recognise it, without defining it?
People tend to assume that there’s something that makes us fundamentally different from other animals. Most people, for example, would tend to think that it’s okay to sell, cook or eat a cow, but not to do the same to the butcher. This would be, well, inhuman. As a society, we tolerate displaying chimps and gorillas in cages but would be uncomfortable doing this to each other. Similarly, we can go to a shop and buy a puppy or a kitten, but not a baby.
The rules are different for us and them. Even die-hard animal-rights activists advocate animal rights for animals, not human rights. No one is proposing giving apes the right to vote or stand for office. We inherently see ourselves as occupying a different moral and spiritual plane. We might bury our dead pet, but we wouldn’t expect the dog’s ghost to haunt us, or to find the cat waiting in heaven.
And yet, it’s hard to find evidence for this kind of fundamental difference.
The word humanity implies taking care of and having compassion for each other, but that’s arguably a mammalian quality, not a human one. A mother cat cares for her kittens, and a dog loves his master, perhaps more than any human does. Killer whales and elephants form lifelong family bonds. Orcas grieve for their dead calves, and elephants have been seen visiting the remains of their dead companions. Emotional lives and relationships aren’t unique to us.
Perhaps it’s awareness that sets us apart. But dogs and cats certainly seem aware of us – they recognise us as individuals, as we recognise them. They understand us well enough to know how to get us to give them food, or let them out the door – or even when we’ve had a bad day, and need company. If that’s not awareness, what is?
We might point to our large brains as setting us apart, but does that make us human? Bottlenose dolphins have somewhat larger brains than we do. Elephant brains are three times the size of ours; orcas, four times; and sperm whales, five times. Brain size also varies in humans. Albert Einstein had a relatively small brain – smaller than the average Neanderthal, Denisovan, or Homo rhodesiensis – was he less human? Something other than brain size must make us human – or maybe there’s more going on in the minds of other animals, including extinct hominins, than we think.
Are cats aware? Credit: Vilvarin/Shutterstock, CC BY-SA
We could define humanity in terms of higher cognitive abilities – art, maths, music, language. This creates a curious problem because humans vary in how well we do all these things. I’m less mathematically inclined than Steven Hawking, less literary than Jane Austen, less inventive than Steve Jobs, less musical than Taylor Swift, less articulate than Martin Luther King. In these respects, am I less human than they are?
If we can’t even define it, how can we really say where it starts, and where it ends – or that we’re unique? Why do we insist on treating other species as inherently inferior, if we’re not exactly sure what makes us, us?
Neither are we necessarily the logical endpoint of human evolution. We were one of many hominin species, and yes, we won out. But it’s possible to imagine another evolutionary course, a different sequence of mutations and historical events leading to Neanderthal archaeologists studying our strange, bubble-like skulls, wondering just how human we were.
The nature of evolution means that living things don’t fit into neat categories. Species gradually change from one into another, and every individual in a species is slightly different – that makes evolutionary change possible. But that makes defining humanity hard.
We’re both unlike other animals due to natural selection, but like them because of shared ancestry; the same, yet different. And we humans are both like and unlike each other – united by common ancestry with other Homo sapiens, different due to evolution and the unique combination of genes we inherit from our families or even other species, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans.
It’s hard to classify living things in strict categories, because evolution constantly changes things, creating diverse species, and diversity within species.
And what diversity it is.
True, in some ways, our species isn’t that diverse. Homo sapiens shows less genetic diversity than your average bacterial strain; our bodies show less variation in shape than sponges, or roses, or oak trees. But in our behaviour, humanity is wildly diverse. We are hunters, farmers, mathematicians, soldiers, explorers, carpenters, criminals, artists. There are so many different ways of being human, so many different aspects to the human condition, and each of us has to define and discover what it means to be human. It is, ironically, this inability to define humanity that is one of our most human characteristics.
Nick Longrich is an evolutionary biologist and paleontologist from Kodiak, Alaska. He is interested in how the world evolved to be the way it is. Nick studies mass extinction, adaptive radiation, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and mosasaurs, among other things. Find Nick on X @NickLongrich
A version of this article was originally posted at the Conversation and is reposted here with permission. The Conversation can be found on X @ConversationUS
On February 15th, the litigation outfit known as Environmental Working Group, most famous for using public USDA data (although excluding pesticides from the organic food companies which fund them) to compile a ‘Dirty Dozen list’ of foods which contain pesticide residues (100 percent of them) but that is nonetheless reliably rewritten by allied journalists in progressive newspapers, paid to publish a paper in the little knownJournal of Exposure Science&Environmental Epidemiology claiming that chlormequat chloride can “can reduce fertility and harm the developing fetus” even at homeopathic levels.
Claims using statistical correlation and artisanal studies specifically created to create lawsuits “at the drop of a rat” are predictable modern epidemiology, yet EWG published the paper and there were trial lawyers filing in court so fast it is impossible that it was not created well in advance. Even more impossible than chlormequat harming babies at any level that doesn’t involve unethical labs injecting tubes of it directly into males and into the uterus of pregnant animals.
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Somehow, in a miracle of due diligence, just five days after the paper came out – three of which were a weekend and a federal holiday – Burson&Fisher, P.A. of Manhattan filed a class-action suit for a California person claiming, of all things, Quaker Old Fashioned Oats is harming humans. In two days they established they had a solid legal case and created even evidence to file.
How is that even possible? Unless you are naïve, it isn’t. (1) It takes months to prepare such a case and the Burson website lauds its meticulous research and thorough fact-checking before filing a case.
Draw your own conclusions on how it happened so quickly.
We’re going to just outline the problems here, and save the real data for the amicus brief.
1. EWG predetermined the outcome of the study they commissioned, by picking a target far below known safe levels and declaring their arbitrary level harmful despite any evidence.(2)
Do you believe you will be as rich as me if I win $10,000,000 and give you $3 of it? If so, you are the ideal juror in California or New York courts where EWG will ask you to help make their yacht payments. Do it for the children.
They claim 80 percent of people are at risk. And suggest Big Capitalist Science won’t let Evil EPA do anything about it – but a jury can hit them where it hurts in true populism style.
2. EWG had to pay to publish the paper. They paid to be in a publication that, despite being part of one of the largest media corporations in the world, can’t even crack the top 1,000 journals. They’re instead down with the European Journal of Personality and the Korean Journal of Radiology. Yes, there are more Korean radiologists reading their own journal than there are “environmental epidemiologists” reading the one place where EWG can convince someone in a business unit to accept their credit card.
3. A two-business-day turnaround from published paper to lawsuit suggests that the authors of the paper, employees of EWG, did not disclose their conflicts of interest.
4. No legitimate outlet was willing to risk their credibility covering this. It was in a press release, they paid to have that published by the phys.org press release service, but other than the same Twitter bots who used to promote Russia Today and Sputnik claims about American science, and the New York Post, it went nowhere. The New York Post is the city’s best sports outlet but they don’t have any expertise in science, they just rewrite provocative press releases, and Quaker Oats ‘linked to’ birth defects is pure clickbait.
Despite the “analysis” being done by a British lab, the entire UK, the country behind the modern anti-vaccine and anti-GMO movements, only had 17 people put it on social media. Everyone else thought it was as crazy as diet soda causing cancer or EWG’s previous claim that Crayola crayons might give kids mesothelioma due to “toxoc asbestos levels” – in crayons.
If you believe crayons have asbestos, you may believe Quaker Oats is giving children birth defects but since those have not gone up during the existence of chlormequat it is going to be a difficult case. Scientifically, at least.
Which means this may instead be another EWG “sue and settle” money grab.
Some 400 years ago peasants with barely any education knew that ‘the dose makes the poison’ but modern trial lawyers count on less scientifically literate juries, preferably in courts on the US coasts, who believe any dose is poison. Then they plea for action and get some supernatural award, since jury trials require no science.(3)
Notes:
(1) Yes, that has to be done in advance, which means EWG did not disclose their conflict of interest and the paper should be retracted. If the lawyers behind it don’t like that allegation, I encourage them to sue me so our scientific bloodhounds get access to their emails in discovery. We’ll even find them in the fake accounts you set up on Yahoo and only leave in Draft mode to write each other back and forth. Bet on it.
(2) We all understand how pointless economic homeopathy is, but California and New York juries will readily believe homeopathy is real when it comes to ‘save the children’ pleas by shakedown artists.
(3) Appeals courts do use science, which is why so many ridiculous jury awards, like ones which demanded a fortune because they wanted to believe a weedkiller can cause human harm, get reduced to peanuts on appeal.
Hank Campbell is founder of Science 2.0 and author of Science Left Behind. Follow Hank on X @HankCampbell
A version of this article was originally posted at Science 2.0 and is reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit both the GLP and original article. Find Science 2.0 on X @science2_0
We’re fat and getting fatter (have fatness?). Three out of every four adults are overweight or obese. Today, we are caught somewhere between fat acceptance and drug cures. The drugs are likely to be helpful but, if they become nationalized medical treatment, it will inordinately expensive.
There are many hypothesized causes of being obese but there are also some pretty stark facts as well.
We are eating more, that is, too much and too much of the wrong things. In 1961, the average American consumed 2,880 calories daily. By 2017, that number had increased to 3,600 calories, an increase of 24%. In 1960, the average weight for men was 166 pounds, for women 140 pounds. Today, for men the average is 200 pounds, for women it is 171 pounds. That’s a 20% increase for men and an 18% gain for women. In addition, in 1960, we consumed an average of 75 pounds of sugar per year; today it is about 100 pounds.
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We also work more in sedentary jobs now, decreasing energy expenditures by more than 100 calories a day. One particularly nasty effect of these trends has been that. between 2001 and 2017, childhood diabetes increased 45%, which will eventually result in increases in hypertension, stroke, and cancers.
In 2001, the Surgeon General set an objective “to promote the recognition of overweight and obesity as a major public health problem” in the United States. Nevertheless, one Harvard Medical School researcher says that “Doctors do not understand obesity.”
Perhaps many don’t understand obesity, but they are going to be the ones to prescribe the new drugs called GLP-1 (semaglutide). These include Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound. They are meant to be taken forever as, once people stop taking the drug, most regain much of their original weight quickly. Ozempic and Wegovy costs around $12,000 per year with Zepbound and Mounjaro near $13,000.
The push has already started to have the federal government (taxpayers) cover the drugs because:
The personal-responsibility framework reflected in (the old) approach places blame on individual patients without considering important biopsychosocial aspects of obesity. These factors can include challenges related to the food environment and the effects of other social determinants of health and a lack of access to the full spectrum of effective obesity treatments”… and…”Obesity is a complex medical condition.
If you “have” obesity, and it is a complex disease, then it must need a pill to cure it. But a pill is unlikely to be sufficient. As Sima Sistani of WeightWatchers noted in The Washington Post, taking the drugs must be accompanied by behavioral change, like diet and exercise.
I think that there are many people that will find a way to use these drugs sparingly to lose weight and get healthier but, as noted above, because we are eating more and exercising less, diet and exercise still has to be part of the equation. Both will help people feel better, which is an excellent incentive to continue and will help to reduce weight and the incidence of chronic diseases. Here are two potential starting places:
Don’t go to all-you-can-eat places or eat all-you-are-served. For one week, eat half of what you are served, wherever it is, and throw your napkin on your food and toss it. Enough about the starving kids in Asia. After a week if starving, you should want less, order less, and eat less.
The average two way commute time is 56 minutes. If you are working from home more, use that time to exercise.
But what happens if we just rely on the medication?
With 3/4ths of the adult population being overweight or obese, approximately 194 million people would be eligible for one of the new drugs. At an average cost of $12,500 per person per year, that would total an annual expenditure of $2.4 trillion. The federal government collects approximately $5 trillion per year in revenue but spent $6.13 trillion in 2023. Giving everyone that is overweight or obese access to one of these drugs would increase deficit spending from 26% to 48%. When we already have a bloated debt that includes all of our unfunded promises at $165 trillion, we are not in a position to deficit feed our bloated government.
Richard Williams is a 27-year veteran of the Food and Drug Administration who specializes in economic and risk analyses in food safety and nutrition. He believes in one thing: Public health without politics. Follow him at his website.
A version of this article was originally posted at Public Health Without Politics Substack 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.
We are making progress, but too slowly. Two new high-tech approaches to providing organs for transplantation might ultimately both eliminate the need for organ donors and reduce the risk of tissue rejection. And there is also a low-tech approach that would require only a tweak in healthcare policy.
Organs produced by 3D bioprinting
The first of the high-tech approaches is three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting, which uses “bio-ink,” a printable material made from a patient’s own cells, to print layer upon layer, creating tissue that the recipient will not reject. But in progressing from tissue to a complex organ, one critical challenge has been creating blood flow to keep the cells alive; researchers have devised a number of approaches to this. They include threading tiny channels through the organ, where blood vessels develop when implanted in animals, or seeding channels with the endothelial cells lining the inside blood vessels.
An exciting advance was reported by a Swedish research group attempting to create human lungs by 3D printing. According to the lead author of the study,
We started small by fabricating small tubes, because this is a feature found in both airways and in the vasculature of the lung. By using our new bioink with stem cells isolated from patient airways, we were able to bioprint small airways which had multiple layers of cells and remained open over time.
The fabrication of other organs presents additional, more imposing obstacles. The liver and kidneys produce hormone-like substances that modulate physiological processes such as blood coagulation, blood pressure, and removing toxins from the bloodstream. It is difficult to see how these closely regulated functions could be incorporated into 3D-printed organs.
Credit: Centromere121 via CC-BY-SA-3.0
In addition to the daunting technical challenges, healthcare executive Daniel Troy has described the regulatory lassitude at the FDA that has discouraged commercial interest in the field. He observed that while the FDA is accustomed to evaluating the safety and efficacy of mass-produced therapies and medical devices, “bioprinted organs are one-of-a-kind creations, tailor-made for each patient,” and the agency’s long-promised regulatory guidance for such products has not materialized.
Organs from genetically modified pigs
A second approach to providing a sufficient supply of organs for transplantation is genetically engineering animals — most often, pigs (because they are an appropriate size) — so that their transplanted organs will not be rejected. In effect, it uses genetic engineering to grow “humanized” tissues and organs in animals. There was a breakthrough with this approach in 2018 when scientists used gene editing to create hybrid embryos containing both human and sheep cells.
Another milestone occurred in December 2020 when the FDA “approved a first-of-its-kind intentional genomic alteration (IGA) in a line of domestic pigs” called GalSafe, which may be used for food or human therapeutics. The IGA in the animals eliminates the gene that makes α-Gal, a sugar molecule found naturally on the surface of porcine cells. It is the source of allergy in some people when they consume certain meats, and it also is involved in tissue or organ rejection after transplantation into humans. That was the first IGA in an animal approved by the FDA for both human food consumption and as a potential source for therapeutic uses.
There is considerable research underway to create lines of pigs for transplantation, but there is also controversy about the extent of genetic modification necessary to both avoid rejection and ensure the absence of harmful pathogens. Two separate, very small clinical trials have already been performed – a pig heart transplanted into a patient with terminal heart disease and a pig kidney implanted in a brain-dead patient. The heart transplant patient died two months post-transplant and the kidneys worked well until the experiment was terminated after three days. These are considered encouraging early results.
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Although friends and relatives and even the occasional “good Samaritan” donor can donate kidneys, they must be given without compensation. Under section 301(a) of the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 (NOTA), it is a federal crime for “any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human organ for valuable consideration for use in human transplantation if the transfer affects interstate commerce.” Therefore, we propose a federal tax credit for living donors willing to save the life of a stranger. The value of the reward should be between $50,000 and $100,000, which physicians and others who endorse donor compensation believe would be sufficient to address the organ shortage. An economic analysis published [in 2022] estimated that a reward of $77,000 could encourage sufficient donations to save 47,000 patients annually.
The credit would be universally available – refundable in cash for people who do not owe income tax, not phased out at high-income levels, and available under the alternative minimum tax. There would be no change in NOTA’s restriction on payments by organ recipients and other private individuals and organizations – it would still be illegal for recipients to buy organs.
Credit: Rmarlin via CC-BY-SA-4.0
A qualified organ donation would be subject to stringent safeguards. Prospective compensated donors would be carefully screened for physical and emotional health, as all donors are now. A minimum six-month waiting period before the donation would filter out impulsive donors and donations by financially desperate individuals seeking instant cash.
In addition to saving lives, the credit would save the government money, perhaps $10 billion per year, or even as much as $14 billion per year, by reducing expenditures on dialysis. Thus, donors would receive financial compensation from the government for contributing to the public good and bearing the risk of a surgical operation to remove the organ. This would be a compassionate and pragmatic policy. Moreover, it could be implemented immediately, rapidly clearing much of the backlog of Americans waiting for organs in advance of the longer-term high-tech approaches.
The organ shortage kills thousands of Americans every year. We must do all we can to alleviate it now.
Henry 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. Follow Henry on Twitter @henryimiller
Sally Satel is a psychiatrist and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is a kidney recipient. She and economist Alan Viard developed the tax proposal in depth. Follow Sally on Twitter @slsatel
A version of this article was posted at American Council on Science and Health and is used here with permission. Check out American Council on Science and Health on Twitter @ACSHorg
This article previously appeared on the GLP June 6, 2023.
Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) are powerful tools. They gauge how likely you are to have a given trait based only on genetics, without taking environmental factors into account. With a simple genetic test you can find out to what degree your genes predispose you to diseases like cancer, diabetes, or depression. This information can help you try to prevent or treat these diseases with medication and lifestyle changes.
Polygenic scores can also be used by parents who are doing in vitro fertilization to predict the traits that different embryos are likely to develop. They can use these scores to guide their choice of which embryo to implant – not only to try to minimize diseases, but also to increase their children’s intelligence or select in favor aesthetic traits like eye color and height.
But there is a problem: for many traits, polygenic scores only work well for the population on which they are “trained.” Because racial and ethnic groups differ genetically, and because polygenic traits are often influenced by thousands of small genetic variants – some of which differ between ethnic groups – the same models cannot be used to forecast the traits of Africans and Asians equally well.
Genetic information from one group, such as white British in the UK Biobank, can be used to predict the traits of people from genetically similar groups — such as Swedes or Poles — without much loss in accuracy. But as a rule of thumb, the power of polygenic scores weakens in proportion to how genetically distant one group is from another group.
For example, polygenic scores derived from people in Korea can predict the traits of people in China and Japan quite well. But they can’t predict the traits of Africans very well, because of genetic differences that have arisen since the populations diverged tens of thousands of years ago.
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Why does this matter? Because polygenic scores will soon allow parents to select embryos for traits that will give their children genetic advantages, including higher intelligence and better health.
Steve Hsu, a co-founder of Genomic Prediction, has said that initially intelligence screening will only be used to detect a mental disability, but he has little doubt it will eventually be used to identify the potential IQ among embryos. “I think people are going to demand that. If we don’t do it, some other company will,” said Hsu.
Many social justice advocates say they want to help poorly performing racial groups. But the taboos they’ve helped create in modern genetics research may end up depriving some ethnic groups of the opportunities that others will have.
Currently, there is no African or South Asian equivalent of the large biobanks that exist in places like the UK and Japan (“biobanks” are large repositories of genetic data).
Part of the problem is that some governments lack the money, infrastructure, and expertise to build biobanks. But another part of the problem flows from taboos surrounding research into genetic differences in socially significant traits, including intelligence.
While scientists have demonstrated the high heritability of intelligence and other psychological traits, their research is often spurned in Western countries by political activists who do not want to believe that genes – rather than environmental or social factors such as poverty or oppression – can help explain observable inequalities in wealth, education, and other social outcomes.
The progressive commitment to rejecting genetic influences on traits — what’s often called a “blank slate” view of human nature — emerged in the wake of World War 2, largely as a backlash to the fact that Germans and Japanese appealed to racial superiority to justify conquest. Indeed, it was precisely in response to these claims of superiority that the United Nations adopted a social constructivist stance on race that rejected any role for genetics.
Ashley Montagu, a prominent social anthropologist of the era and author of Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, argued that “race” should be eliminated altogether from science.
Their views had wide influence in a world recovering from a catastrophic war that decimated Europe. The founding documents of the United Nations rejected racism for obvious reasons. But this moral motivation influenced its scientific assertions. In its 1950 “Statement on Race and Racial Prejudice” the UN decreed that race is nothing more than an illusion (‘the differences between the achievements of the different peoples are entirely attributable to geographical, historical, political, economic, social and cultural factors”), and thus biologically-based racial differences cannot exist.
The assertion that “race is a social construct” with no biological reality hardened into dogma in American and European academic institutions in the years that followed. But from the time it was drafted, influential scientists sharply criticized the UN statement.
Prominent evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky dismissed the UN position on race as a noble lie. Sure, the edges of what might be called races are fuzzy. But, Dobzhansky thought, the concept of human group differences helps explain many phenomena, including obvious anatomical differences, and less obvious but arguably more important population differences in disease proclivities and behavior.
British geneticist and polymath Sir Ronald Fisher agreed, concluding that “the practical international problem is that of learning to share the resources of this planet amicably with persons of materially different nature, [but] this problem is being obscured by entirely well-intentioned efforts to minimize the real differences that exist.”
An ugly consequence of a ‘noble lie’
The American government, or a consortium of geneticists, could easily collect genetic data on a variety of ethnic groups. This data could then be used to develop polygenic scores for all groups, including for traits like intelligence, which many prospective parents have expressed an interest in selecting for.
The problem is that the scientific establishment in Western liberal democracies has thoroughly absorbed the central dogma holding that race is an illusion, and that racial differences cannot exist. Many universities and centers for scientific research are reluctant to subsidize or even allow scholars to study the connection between population genetics and cognitive traits, let alone possible group differences in these traits.
James Lee, a world-renowned behavior geneticist, recently wrote about his experience of being blocked by the National Institute of Health (NIH) when applying to use a government database to learn more about the genetic foundations of intelligence. According to Lee, the NIH feared that such research might lead to groups being “stigmatized” or “marginalized,” since they apparently recognize that group differences are likely to be found as a byproduct of this research.
Major scientific journals, such as Nature and Science, have adopted similar standards, saying they will not publish articles that might indirectly “harm” some groups. Instead, they say they want to promote controversial moral goals like “equity” by refusing to publish research that implicates genes in explaining group differences in socially significant traits.
Ultimately these taboos will end up hurting the people they are supposed to help.
Polygenic scores will become increasingly powerful in the next few years. The real question is which groups will be able to use these scores to improve the prospects of their children. Unless data is collected on all groups — including data on traits like intelligence — many people will be unable to use polygenic scores to guide their reproductive decisions.
Although efforts to collect more diverse genomic data are underway, it is likely that bureaucratic gatekeeping will continue to prevent scientific research into the genetics of important traits like intelligence in the name of promoting a myopic conception of ‘social justice’.
Social justice advocates who want to help the least well-off groups should stop stigmatizing scientific research and start advocating for the collection of genetic data from which all groups can benefit.
A version of this article was published at the blog Parrhesia and is reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit both the GLP and original article.
In late September [2023], an international team of researchers fanned out across a remote New Mexico mountain range, in search of an elusive plant. The group trekked through the rugged landscape looking for signs of delicate vines hugging a tree, or lingering low on a dried creek bank.
After seven days in the desert scrubland, the scientists left with a sample of nature’s bounty: wild tepary bean plants.
The scientists wanted to collect the legume, which is native to arid regions of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, for its hardy constitution: “They have evolved in this very hot, dry climate, so they have exceptional drought and heat tolerance, and potential tolerance to some extreme soil conditions as well,” said Sarah Dohle, a bean curator with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who was part of the New Mexico collection effort.
Those qualities could prove beneficial on a warming planet, as scientists figure out how to breed beans, peppers, potatoes, and various other grains, fruits, and vegetables that can withstand the harsh conditions of a changing climate.
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Such effects are already wreaking havoc on agriculture around the globe. In the western U.S., a severe drought crushed California’s tomato and rice production. In Guatemala, the combined effects of both drought and rain devastated corn and black bean harvests, both major food staples. In Sub-Saharan Africa, searing conditions have reduced yields of wheat and corn by more than a third since the early 1960s.
Climate and agricultural models predict a worsening scenario. The production of corn, a leading crop that feeds billions around the world, could decline by 24 percent as early as 2030, according to a 2021 study conducted by NASA. While other staple foods, such as wheat, may actually see an increase in production, researchers say it’s important to diversify agriculture in order to foster resilient and sustainable food systems. In 2014, only nine crops accounted for two-thirds of global production, out of more than 6,000 cultivated plant species and more than 50,000 edible plants found on the planet.
Underutilized and hardy crops like the tepary bean could help diversify food production, said Richard Pratt, a plant scientist and professor at New Mexico State University. And their genetic material may help make other crops more drought- and heat-tolerant. Pratt took part in the September expedition, along with colleagues from the USDA and the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture, or CIAT. They’re among a growing number of researchers, plant breeders, and other scientists working to both preserve overlooked wild crops — keeping them safe for future generations — as well as breeding more resilient plants in the race to adapt to climate change.
Sarah Dolhe, a USDA bean curator, searches for wild tepary bean plants in the mountains of New Mexico during the September expedition. Credit: Richard Pratt
To wit: The University of California, Davis, is leading a multi-state $15 million project involving 20 institutions to speed up the breeding cycles of wheat and to research ways to help the crop thrive in a toughened environment. At Auburn University in Alabama, scientists are working to breed a peanut variety that can better tolerate drought conditions. In parts of Asia and Africa, some farmers already grow a high-stress tolerant “green super rice” developed by the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. And scientists from various institutions have taken part in a sprawling effort, funded by the Norwegian government, to identify, collect, and evaluate wild crops for future development.
Still, there are numerous challenges at play: Crop breeding is a time-intensive process, so it can be difficult for researchers to keep pace with rapidly changing weather. Advances in genetic sequencing and gene editing can help speed up the process, but come with their own trials. Some researchers have cautioned that the gene editing technology Crispr, for example, may result in unintended changes to DNA and genetic contamination of crop wild relatives. Meanwhile, consumers still want foods that are flavorful. And farmers want crops that are easy to grow.
As hostile weather intensifies, plant breeding focused on climate-adapted crops has taken on a sense of urgency. “If global climate change keeps being hard on us,” Pratt said, “we’ve got to have crops that are resilient.”
Humans have a long history of domesticating and crossing wild plants to produce new generations with better flavor and higher yields. “Whether it is apples or pears or grapes or bananas that you eat from the supermarket, those plants have been domesticated by humans at one point somewhere in the world,” said ecologist Jesús García, a research associate with the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, Arizona.
For example, about 9,000 years ago, early Indigenous farmers in current-day Mexico transformed wild teosinte, a type of grass, into the single-stalked, plump corn produced around the world today.
As the science of genetics evolved, plant scientists could better select for a plant’s more desirable traits, like taste, color, and size, and develop improved varieties for cultivation. But capturing such limited traits can result in less genetic diversity, which may make plants more susceptible to diseases, pests, and environmental impact. For example, the Irish Potato Famine was in part due to farmers propagating their plants so that each potato was a clone of itself. When a fungus started infecting the root vegetable in the 1840s, much of the crop fell to rot, and about 1 million people died from starvation.
To avoid a similar agricultural catastrophe, scientists such as Pratt are turning to wild varieties, since they could offer valuable genetic traits that may have been overlooked in decades past.“There’s still probably a lot of genetic diversity in the wild tepary populations that are not present in the cultivated teparies,” Pratt said. By crossing the wild specimen with a black bean or a pinto bean, for example, scientists may be able to breed a new variety that can better endure similar harsh environmental conditions that its relative thrived in.
The first step, though, is finding crops that can offer those hardier genetic traits in the wild.
Similar to how Pratt and his New Mexico team have searched for the wild tepary bean, other plant scientists are working to collect and preserve close wild cousins of crops that can help develop climate-adapted varieties and ensure food security for a burgeoning global population.
“Crop wild relatives just have a tolerance to more extreme conditions,” said Perin McNelis, native plant program manager for the Borderlands Restoration Network, a conservation nonprofit in Southern Arizona. “They don’t have nutrient-rich soils and daily watering, so they’re just hardier.”
A couple of years ago, McNelis’ team set out with USDA staffers to collect the wild chiltepin that grows profusely under the protective shade of mesquite and ironwood trees in a vast protected area within the mountainous canyons of the borderlands. Scientists from near and far come to study the tiny, round red chiltepin, considered the mother of all peppers. The hot pepper also grows wild in parts of Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico.
The collection of wild chiltepin specimens, which were sent to USDA labs, McNelis said, will aid in future research and safeguarding of genetic material that may be used to breed improved crops.
A more massive collection of wild varieties of crops involved more than 100 scientists in 25 countries working with the Crop Trust, an international nonprofit based in Germany. The initiative, called the Crop Wild Relatives Project, was funded by the Norwegian government, and is co-managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
In 2018, scientists wrapped up six years of scouring far-reaching corners of the world for the wild plants. In its published report the following year, the organization said it had secured more than 4,600 seed samples of 371 wild relatives of domesticated crops, for distribution to global gene banks, which collect and store seeds, with the idea that scientists and breeders can then use those seeds for further research and development. Some of the varieties they found were not represented in the gene banks at all.
A Mexican farmer collects chiltepin peppers, a wild variety of chili pepper considered the mother of all peppers, during the 2022 harvest on a farm in Baviácora, Sonora, Mexico. Visual: Jan Sochor/Getty Images
In some cases, collectors learned that some wild crops relatives had disappeared from their historical habitats. Others returned with specimens never collected before, including a tiny wild relative of the common bean growing near a Costa Rican beach. Scientists have already found useful traits in seed samples, including varying combinations of tolerance to drought, heat, and salinity in crops such as carrots, sorghum, and alfalfa.
“Crop wild relatives have been either ignored, forgotten, or seen as a threat to agriculture,” said Luis Salazar, a communications manager for the Crop Trust. “But they’ve been so resilient, they’ve been able to find a way to survive on their own.”
Those resilient traits, Salazar said, “are what we need now and what we’ll be needing more and more moving forward.”
Wild crop relatives may be tough, but they’re usually not suited for cultivation because they lack traits — such as good taste and rapid growth — that farmers want. The question, then, is how to develop new species that preserve the desirable traits of cultivated breeds, but are able to survive trying conditions.
Cultivating new plant species can take many approaches, but Pratt prefers conventional breeding methods: In New Mexico, he has grown different varieties of the viney, pod-bearing tepary plant on a campus field plot and other sites to see how well they adapt to the semi-arid soil. He selects plants with the characteristics he’s looking for, like drought resistance and high yield, which can then be used to create offspring with the desired characteristics.
As part of his research, Pratt has studied cultivated tepary varieties’ potential to produce high yields at different elevations and in mild to moderate drought stress. He’s found that “tepary beans don’t need as much water as common beans to produce a comparable yield,” he said.
With the hunt for wild teparies, Pratt and his colleagues hope to boost representation of the resilient bean in the collections of seeds, plants, and tissue cultures that gene banks preserve worldwide and share with farmers to feed the world. But, Pratt said, there’s still a lot of discussion about how best to integrate that beneficial genetic material into common beans that succumb to the heat or can potentially improve the hardiness of cultivated tepary beans.
Cultivated tepary beans grown by plant scientist Richard Pratt for a drought stress trial near New Mexico State University’s campus in 2016. Most plants survived a July drought and produced modest yields of bean pods. The best three were selected for advancement with conventional breeding methods. Visual: Courtesy of Richard Pratt
Conventional breeding is not without limitations. It can often take many years to produce desired results, and selecting specific genetic characteristics without pulling in unwanted traits can be difficult.
Advances in genetic technologies have made it possible to speed up plant breeding. A plant’s genes are like a blueprint, outlining how it will look and what traits it will have. Plant geneticists can identify specific genes of interest in those blueprints more quickly than they have in the past, due largely to increasingly powerful DNA sequencing, which essentially read through the plants’ genetic material to identify genes and the traits that they control.
Scientists at McGill University in Montreal, for example, have sequenced the DNA of nearly 300 types of potatoes, including wild varieties, to create a “super pangenome” — a species’ entire set of genes. To do this, the researchers used gene banks, such as the ones that the Wild Crop Relatives Project helped populate. Sequencing the DNA is something like a roadmap that makes it easier to select traits that make potatoes more resistant to disease and environmental burdens, said Shelley Jansky, a longtime research geneticist with the USDA.
“That pangenome really gives us a very powerful tool for manipulating the genetics of the potato and creating potato plants that are better than what we have,” said Jansky, who recently retired and was not involved in the research, but specializes in potato genetics.
By reading and identifying the genetic information contained in the cells of plants, the years it takes to develop a new crop variety can be reduced from up to two decades to just a few years. Plant breeders can still use conventional methods, such as those used by Pratt with his tepary beans, to cultivate crops but, by using DNA sequencing, they significantly cut down on the grow time. For example, if a breeder wants to be sure the apple tree he’s growing will produce red apples, he can scan a seed’s DNA for that trait to determine what color apples the tree will produce, rather than wait for a tree to grow and mature to find out.
Some scientists involved in the Crop Wild Relatives Project have also used DNA sequencing to isolate select traits in the wild crops — such as salt tolerance — and incorporate them into a new gene line in a process called “pre-breeding.” As of mid-2021, its project partners have incorporated genetic material from wild varieties in order to develop more than 14,000 new lines of 19 crops. Most of that material is stored in various gene banks around the world, and many have not been cultivated, but some have been shared with farmers to see how they react in local conditions.
“We involve them in evaluations to understand what they want, and that plays into the picture,” Salazar said. “Farmers are not interested in wild relatives as just wild relatives. What they want is a plant that’s going to deliver better than what’s out there right now.”
A number of different varieties of potatoes at the International Potato Center in Peru showcases the enormous diversity in just one plant. Scientists at McGill University in Montreal have sequenced the DNA of nearly 300 types of potatoes, including wild varieties, to create a “super pangenome” — a species’ entire set of genes. Visual: Michael Major/Crop Trust
Such crops aren’t considered to be genetically engineered, but gene editing — in particular Crispr — also makes it possible to introduce new genetic traits into a plant far faster than before. Crispr more or less allows scientists to modify a plants’ genetic blueprint to cut, copy, or paste specific genes in and out.
“Breeding technologies evolve, and this what we see right now in soybean breeding with the first applications of gene editing through CRISPR,” Daniel Debouck, one of the scientists from CIAT who joined the New Mexico expedition, wrote in an email to Undark. It seems reasonable, he said, that other beans, such as the tepary, may be the focus of the technology in the coming years.
Genetically engineered crops still carry a stigma, though, and are regulated more heavily than their conventionally grown counterparts. But, between 2019 and 2020, the number of gene-edited crops approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture jumped from 7 to 70. Meanwhile, there is no consensus on gene edited crops around the world. While some countries and regions deem the technology safe and acceptable in food production, others are more cautious.
Back in Southwestern New Mexico’s Sky Islands mountainous region, which rises from mesquite-speckled desert to oak-studded terrain across four states and two countries, Pratt and his colleagues carefully inspected the landscape for signs of the tepary bean.
The scientists found the wild ancestor of the cultivated tepary where it’s known to grow best: between 4,500 and 6,000 feet high. They also gathered three other related species that have not been cultivated. And despite rescuing a relatively low number of seeds, the scientists brought back some plants, soil samples, and valuable field observations.
The collectors had figured that early October would be an optimum time for tepary seed maturity. But the late arrival of this year’s meager monsoon rains in the region delayed the plant’s growth, he said. “They’re still immature and the plants that grew last year were completely dry and had already shed the seed,” Pratt said.
Dohle, with the USDA, will plant the seeds to grow tepary beans in a Pullman, Washington greenhouse and multiply the number of seeds to distribute freely to researchers and plant breeders. “That’s going to take months,” she said.
The fall expedition reinforced Pratt’s belief in the importance of collecting crop wild relatives that may be in danger of disappearing in scorching temperatures and urban encroachment. He has gone back to the wild a few times in recent months to save seeds from still-maturing plants.
A crucial step, he said, is to secure the variation in the genetic resources of plants so that breeders and others can access them to address different needs as they work to improve crops for a drier, hotter planet.
“It may just be that for a couple of decades we’re growing what we can grow and not necessarily what we want to grow,” Pratt said. “And we’ve got to be prepared for that.”
Lourdes Medrano is a journalist based in Southern Arizona, and a senior contributor at Undark. Her reporting often focuses on matters relevant to both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, including environmental issues. Find Lourdes on X @_LourdesMedrano
A version of this article was originally posted at Undark and is reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit both the GLP and original article. Find Undark on X @undarkmag
In October 2022, in what could turn into a landmark case, a Missouri woman sued cosmetics company L’Oréal, claiming that her uterine cancer was caused by prolonged exposure to phthalates — chemicals that were ingredients in her hair straightening product. The filing of the suit coincided with the publication of a journal article finding an “association” between the use of hair products containing the chemicals and uterine cancer.
Suits making similar claims are becoming increasing common as a debate rages about the alleged dangers of phthalates. June 2022, the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest sued the US Food and Drug Administration to force them to rule on the safety of phthalates, a chemical used in food packaging and processing that it calls “ubiquitous and harmful”.
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For many years, advocacy groups and some scientists have been claiming that a common compound present in children’s toys, food packaging and some medicines can cause cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and a host of other chronic diseases.
Phthalates are widely used chemicals in plastic production. They were introduced in the 1920s, replacing earlier additives that make plastics more flexible. They are found in an array of products, from cosmetics to industrial paints, medical tubing to drug capsules. More than 3 million tons are used globally each year. The news media is filled with articles citing “expert groups” or scientists claiming the chemical causes serious harm.
It’s become a cause célèbre among scientists who have made the controversial field of “endocrine disruption” their central focus, notably Shanna Swan, an epidemiologist who has been making this case for decades. Back in 2012, she teamed with the Center for Health, Environment and Justice to argue for the banning of vinyl back packs, book covers and lunch boxes, arguing that they were imperilling children.
The National Toxicology Program (NTP), looking specifically at the phthalate DEHP, found that Swan did not show any statistical association between DEHP metabolites and genital development.
Swan went silent for years, then resurfaced in a co-authored controversial study (2017) and controversial book (2021) making a speculative claim that the clock is ticking on the “future of the human race … imperilled” by fertility-damaging phthalates.
Toxicologist and former director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, Linda Birnbaum, who is a well-known crusader focusing on what she calls “endocrine disrupting chemicals,” called studies into phthalates “a wake-up call to understand that early life exposure to this class of chemicals is affecting our children”.
So how can something ‘proven’ to be so dangerous be found in so many products we use daily? The answer, as the NTP found when first examining the data years ago, is that it can’t.
Studies have demonstrated detectable levels of phthalate metabolites in human urine and these are often viewed as concerning because phthalates can be toxic but likely at a much higher dose than observed in humans.
Others, including widely-used DEP, were evaluated and shown to be safe as used, and studies since then have not changed the mainstream consensus. Australia’s risk agency evaluated oft-used DINP, concluding “current risk estimates do not indicate a health concern from exposure of children to DINP in toys and childcare articles even at the highest (reasonable worst-case) exposure scenario considered’. The Europe’s risk agency concluded “there is no conclusive scientific evidence that DEHP exposure via medical treatments has harmful effects in humans.”
These findings do not mean we should not be vigilant in regulating this substance, and be open to new findings. In fact, some phthalates were banned in 2009 and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) does appropriately limit the amount of the chemical as a precautionary measure in certain children’s products as a precautionary measure, although the evidence supporting the restrictions are scanty. And some states, such as Vermont and California, have instituted limited bans and restrictions.
The key point is that any chemical can pose a health hazard. It’s critical in our highly complex world to evaluate the risks and rewards of using any substance, and rely on established risk-benefit analysis. DEHP, for example, is a critical component in medical devices. As the European Commission noted in its review, “Each alternative to DEHP, however, must also be evaluated with regard to their functionality in respect to medical devices. The risk and benefits of using alternative plasticizers should be evaluated case by case.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers a comprehensive list of links to actual scientific studies on the chemical—none of which echo the alarmist conclusion that all plasticizers should be banned. “Phthalates are metabolized and excreted quickly and do not accumulate in the body,” the CDC has concluded,” adding the caveat that “More research is needed to assess the human health effects of exposure to phthalates.”
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Yes, we encounter phthalates and dozens of other common chemicals everyday, and yes, they show up in urine samples. It’s estimated that more than 160 chemicals can be detected in human urine, many of which are potentially dangerous if consumed at high enough doses over a long enough period of time.
That sounds scary, but as scientist’s note, the difference between chemical exposure at a dangerous level and something safe as used is the dose and duration of exposure. The simple fact is that while studies have shown a “correlation” of certain chemicals with adverse health consequences, the standard is to find a causal link. This is likely a big contributing factor behind why President Biden’s FDA denied a petition to ban all phthalates in food packaging early 2022 — the data are not convincing, and the adverse impact of the ban would vastly outweigh its benefits.
For example, a 2021 paper in Environmental Pollution was labelled big news in crusading circles, but why? Although the authors claimed, “This study adds to the growing database on the impact of plastics on the human body and bolsters public health and business cases for reducing or eliminating the use of plastics,” they only showed a very weak correlation between high phthalate levels and increased risk of death. For context, the hazard ratio for smoking in lung cancer is 5. A value of less than 2, which is what they found, does not confer much risk.
Another study showed increase child sarcoma risk where parents were found to ingest higher levels of phthalate containing medicine. But, again, the data are to be taken very lightly. We are talking about correlation not causation and so many other factors can be in play here. It’s not clear whether the parents on higher doses of medicine, for example. There are numerous other variables that make it clear that the association/correlation does not remotely equate with causation. Science is very unlikely to be this simple. This is the issue with epidemiological studies. They identify trends but not pathways to explain them which often leaves a lot of room for a more ‘colorful’ interpretation of the data that can be easily moulded to suit your own bias.
Correlation can easily be confused with correlation, corrupting science analysis … and feeding poor journalism and advocacy campaigns, while swelling the coffers of extremist environmental groups. It could even promote a fake health crisis. In the late 1940s, when the origin of polio remained unknown, some public health experts recommended cutting back on ice cream, which causation charts showed were “linked” to the disease.
You might be thinking so what? There is no danger in siding with the more alarmist conclusions and trying to avoid phthalates (although good luck with that!) Everyone is free to make their own choices, but it must be appreciated that there is a huge difference between something being “linked” to an increased risk of a disease and something that is demonstrated to be causally involved.
Take cancer for example. Over the last decade so many common foods or other items have been sold to us as the cause for cancers. The sweetener in your favorite soda, some forms of candy, cheese… the list goes on! The same issue persists throughout these studies; no causation is ever shown. All we ever see is a correlation.
An informative example of this is a decade-long study that concluded in 2022 that claimed to show the artificial sweeteners present in many sodas MIGHT be associated with increased cancer risk. It sounds scary but many experts in the field have urged severe caution after looking at the data. Michael Jones of the Institute of Cancer Research comments:
“The link between artificial sweeteners and cancer reported in this study does not imply causation — it is not proof that artificial sweeteners cause cancer.” Instead, a large variety of lifestyle differences between high and low risk participants that were left out of the study “may partly or fully explain the association”.
It’s clear that being healthy in as many ways as possible can reduce risk of serious illness but it is unwise to try and boil everything down to single chemical factors, especially when the chemicals are used in products that offer enormous value. Especially when you consider that the biggest driver in whether or not someone develops cancer appears to be one that is entirely out of our control; genetics.
Cancers arise due to an accumulation of genetic mutations that result in changes in how cells grow and multiply. While some external factors can influence the risk of developing such mutations, only a very small handful are regarded as definitely causally linked such as smoking and lung cancer or UV radiation and skin cancer. Many mutations appear to be entirely random.
When studies that suggest cancer can be boiled down to eating too many Skittles start to gain traction on social media, we risk harboring a misunderstanding of how complex cancer is and how it needs to be treated.
Alarmist consequences of making decisions based on hyped studies
This alarmist rhetoric around everyday food items have also fomented an advent of so called ‘alternative therapies’. Articles tout potentially dangerous alternative treatments as an alkaline diet because reducing the amount of acidity in the body is somehow attributed to impairing cancer growth. There is no scientific basis for the claim and, according to Julie Lanford who has over 15 years of working in the field of nutrition in oncology, an alkaline diet “does not kill cancer. Thankfully, our kidneys and lungs keep our pH tightly regulated, right where they should be”.
Nonsense like this becomes very harmful when patients reacting to media stories prompted by association and correlations studies seek alternative treatments over clinically validated options like chemotherapy. We often think of scientific misinformation as just some tin foil hat stuff your uncle talks about when he is drunk, but it can have severe consequences when it gathers traction.
Patients have been known to delay surgery, radiation treatment and chemotherapy to try alternative means, all the while the cancer continues to grow, spread and become more life threatening. It isn’t just cancer too. Some patients suffering many serious conditions forgo effective remedies in favor of the latest line of snake oil.
Skyler Johnson, former Yale School of Medicine chief resident in cancer treatment highlights the real risk of following this misinformation:
The bottom line is that alternative and complementary medicines marketed and used as treatment for cancer are associated with an increased risk of death, if they lead patients to not use accepted medical cancer therapies.
Scare rhetoric is even more dangerous when it comes from seemingly reliable sources. There are plenty of examples of people online with a ‘doctor’ title telling you that they know the real cause behind serious illness. A perfect example is Stephanie Seneff, a Ph.D. computer scientist who, for many years, has tried to convince us that genetically modified foods are evil and that glyphosate (Roundup) is responsible for many of our ailments. She claims that glyphosate causes autism and tries to back this up with data showing the incidence of autism parallels an increase in the sales of glyphosate.
It is a classic example of manipulating a correlation and claiming you have shown causation. Guess what: autism has also increased with the increased consumption of organic foods:
Correlation is not causation but, if marketed the right way, it can be manipulated to look like it is. Social media has become the perfect breeding ground and it creates dangerous scenarios, according to cardiologist Professor Joseph Hill:
There is a flood of bad information on the internet and social media that is hurting human beings. It’s not just an annoyance, this actually puts people in harm’s way.
The take home message is simple: let the appropriate health agencies do their work, evaluating the risks in real-world scenarios of the tens of thousands of chemicals we are exposed to daily. If a useful chemical is shown to be harmful, let’s restrict or ban it. But let’s not over-react based on associations and correlations, especially when a chemical is so critical to the proper functioning of a product that offers societal benefits. So let the research on phthalates continue.
What’s the lesson here? Alarmism spreads and sells like never before. Think twice before you buy into it, especially when evaluating alleged dangers to your health. The human body is uniquely adapted to withstand exposure to a variety of environmental and chemical ‘threats’; over-reacting to them can often be more dangerous than running scared. It can have a much bigger impact than you can imagine. If a study makes a claim but shows no biological causation, there are likely other factors in play — including, often, the ideological and economic interests of those spreading the alarm.
Sam Moxon has a PhD in tissue engineering and is currently a research fellow in the field of regenerative medicine. He is a freelance writer with an interest in the development of new technologies to enhance medical therapies. Follow him on X @DrSamMoxon
This article previously appeared on the GLP Nov 29, 2022.
Reality is perceived by the definitions we give; the black and white lines we draw upon a grey canvas. So in communications, the message is controlled by the wordsmither – the one framing the language that guides our social discourse.
Who is controlling the definitions to the concepts we are using in agriculture and food research?
This might seem obvious but many food/agriculture issues in Brussels are problematic because of poor lexicons. Definitions matter in that they frame our policy discussions, regulations and emotional responses. Regulators start their work with definitions and tend to use this to limit problems or to reach solutions to sticky problems. Sometimes a definition is concocted with interests and intent: official terms like Belgian chocolate or German beer have proved beneficial for more than mere national industries.
Opportunists come in and define words or concepts to their advantage, tack on adjectives and create dichotomies to manage perceptions. A noun like “chemical” carries a negative connotation which environmental lobbyists can deteriorate with adjectives like “toxic”, “industrial” or “synthetic”. An organic food is then defined with adjectives such as “natural”, “traditional” and “environmental” and we can see how the perception of reality can easily be abused by such opportunists. Welcome to Brussels!
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This seems like an obvious question in a room like this but some recent debates may put your definition into question. The Wageningen late blight resistant cisgenic potato trials showed how novel seed breeding techniques could protect a crop without pesticides. The organic food industry lobby, however, excluded this innovation from its definition of a potato (even though the cisgenic potato was bred with a South American heirloom potato – it was not transgenic).
Peruvian hierloom potatoes. Credit: International Potato Centre
A GMO potato is defined apart from conventionally bred potatoes, and in doing so, is effectively legislated out of the European Union. At what point in the modification would it stop being defined as a potato and more like a fish? What about biofortified potatoes? Like the case of Golden Rice, definitions matter.
Does a potato need to be grown in soil to be a potato? Bioponics has challenged the organic food industry who insisted that for produce to be identified as organic, it needs to be grown in soil. Can a tuber grown in a fertiliser slurry be a potato?
This morning I put potato milk in my coffee. Although it was quite nice, I am not sure dairy farmers would appreciate such an extension of the word “milk”.
Define sustainability?
“Sustainable” has become a value-laden concept – a virtue. More than three decades ago, sustainable development meant that we should not take resources from future generations for today’s processes or production (and people started to measure progress by their ecological footprints). Today it is identified with the fight to stop climate change and restore biodiversity. Neither of these issues can be precisely measured which then allows interested parties to define “sustainability” creatively. So fossil fuels are not sustainable nor are plastics or complex global value chains. Banks, airlines, data centres … the list is unlimited.
It is rather interesting how the term “sustainable” has become defined in a political / social justice manner. Capitalism became the enemy of sustainable development with pundits like Naomi Klein saying you can either have capitalism or fight climate change, but not both. Groups like Extinction Rebellion morphed from a climate action group into a social justice organisation. Even the World Economic Forum was toying with the idea of the Great Capitalism Reset (until their billionaires lost 25% of their net worth earlier this year and then… not a peep at Davos last week). Now it seems the lawyers and activists behind the agroecology movement suddenly have become agricultural consultants promoting smallholder/peasant models to farming.
Define sustainable farming?
Activists define sustainable farming as the antithesis to conventional (industrial) farming. But is organic farming more sustainable if its production yields average 40% less? Agritechnologies (led most often by industry) have allowed food production increases to keep up with a growing population. The next wave of technologies (precision farming, accelerated seed breeding, conservation/regenerative agriculture methods…) are setting the scene for a wave of sustainable intensification where not only will yields keep up with global population and affluence growth, but also be able to re-wild less productive land. Agroecologists can only dream that their social justice definition of sustainable farming could achieve these numbers. Sorry, but seriously, how could you effectively farm no-till with multi-species cover crops without herbicides? Their ideology promises a better world but their reality gives them Sri Lanka.
One of the challenges to accepting the role of agritechnology in sustainable farming is the definition and value of the term “natural”. Is farming part of nature? Nature is an emotional concept, often juxtaposed to what conventional farmers are doing. It doesn’t help that nature is defined differently according to the region. In Canada, nature is perceived as: me, a canoe and a bear. In such a situation, we are far away from any farmland. In Belgium, nature is promoted and celebrated in urban areas and farmland is borrowing from nature. The relationship of farming and nature is wide open for interpretation.
What is a pesticide?
In Uganda, pesticides are called medicines for plants. This makes sense. In the West, pesticides carry an essence of evil baggage with it; it is taboo. So the industry attempted to use the kinder, gentler term: crop protection. When some blogger referred to a Dirty Dozen of toxic pesticides approved for organic farming, the organic food lobby had to resort to making the claim: “We don’t use any synthetic pesticides!”. These activists cleverly avoid associating organic farming with pesticides; some still want us to believe their produce is “pesticide-free”.
But now there is a new term making the rounds: “biologicals” creating an impression that this is nature fighting nature in a very benign, sustainable manner. The pesticide industry is beginning to focus on research in biologicals. But that raises another question…
Do some not trust agricultural innovation and technology because of the science or because it is industry-based? Can industry be allowed to do sustainable research in biologicals or have our definitions limited the public’s capacity to perceive reality? I regret to say that a good part of the attack on conventional agricultural tools are an attack on the crop protection industry.
How to insult farmers
Definitions are community-based – tribal. Scientists define terms like “toxic” or “sustainable” in different terms from the general public. Too often, activists spread fear-driven vocabulary to manipulate perceptions, the media pick that up and regulators react. So wordsmithed phrases like “industrial food drenched in toxic chemicals” will force a skittish regulator to act regardless what the scientists are doing.
The EU has re-defined agricultural policy within their Green Deal and climate debate via its Farm2Fork strategy. It defines conventional agriculture as a main environmental problem (claiming food systems account for 30% of greenhouse gas emissions) and proposes to limit agricultural technologies: 50% decrease in pesticide use; 20% reduction in fertilisers and a 25% increase in organic production. (One potential good news: the European Commission looks likely to be reconsidering its definition of new plant breeding techniques – no longer classifying it under the stifling 2001 GMO Directive).
These definitions need to be countered; their solutions need to be questioned.
As a final insult to agriculture, the European Commission has been applying a very strict definition of the precautionary principle to guide its agriculture policy decisions known as the “reversal of the burden of proof”. This interpretation states that a substance, product or process can only remain on the market if it can be proven with certainty to be safe. How do you define “certain” or “safe” within a risk management context? Reality: you cannot. A scientist is continually trying to develop safer solutions and challenging the presuppositions – the opposite of what the Commission’s definition of the precautionary principle aims to do.
Take back the definitions
This definition of precaution needs to be questioned – I have been calling for a White Paper on Risk Management to properly define and delineate the guidelines for using the precautionary principle within the context of a larger risk management process (rather than in place of RM).
So what all actors in the potato value chain need to do is take back the definitions: define the benefits of potatoes, its sustainability, the safe use of crop protection and seed breeding practises.
One last point in closing: We are defined by events and the present food and energy crises are dramatically influencing how policy decisions are being made (less idealism and more Realpolitik). Half of the world has rice as their main food staple and with Asian smallholders unable to afford fertiliser costs, fewer crops at lower yields will spell disaster for large vulnerable populations. The potato sector is well-positioned to be a short-term solution to the coming global food security crisis. That message needs to be better defined.
David Zaruk is a professor at Odisee University College where he lectures on Communications, Marketing, EU Lobbying and PR. He also provides training courses and is a regular keynote speaker. In the past, he has been employed by Solvay, Cefic and Burson-Marsteller, retiring from “active work” in 2006. You can follow David on X @Zaruk
A version of this article was originally posted at The Risk-Monger and is reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit both the GLP and original article.
Synthetic pesticides are under constant regulatory pressure, but not organic pesticides. “Green” renewables and EVs have very little regulatory scrutiny. Food additives need to meet tight authorisation controls, but not more toxic natural foods. Tobacco cessation products (like e-cigarettes) are being restricted on the basis of poor evidence. Certain seed breeding innovations are banned even when changes are imperceptible. Billions are funnelled into the war on climate, dwarfing aid for education, health and infrastructure.
These are some results from poor righteous risk management.
A righteous risk is a threat of harm to societal well-being that arises when decisions are based solely on widely-shared moral perceptions, social virtues and ethical ideals. This value-based policy approach does not consider facts or data in a consistent manner with certain actors, reinforced by social media tribes, imposing their ideals upon others. Righteous zealots (particularly environmental activists, naturopaths and food puritans) are more intensively forcing their moral dogma upon the policy process. Such value-based regulations are righteous risks that have become a growing threat to entrepreneurs and researchers whose innovations may challenge their traditional ethical norms. In attacking agricultural practices, food choices, energy use, nicotine alternatives and transportation choices, when the righteous feel they have virtue on their side, their reasoning and decision-making become hazardous to others.
This is the introduction to a series on how to manage righteous risks.
Investors struggle today to safely measure financial and economic risks, reduce exposures and identify opportunities. Governments must invest to limit exposures to infrastructure risks. Corporate leaders have to manage trade, market and production risks, often environmental-health risks and, perhaps most importantly, potential regulatory risks. But is anyone managing the threat from righteous risks?
Righteous risks
A righteous risk arises when a decision is taken on the grounds that it is perceived as the right thing, the virtuous answer, what a good leader would do… But the righteous action is not necessarily the best thing to do. Making decisions solely on some ethical dogma, an unwavering virtuous self-appreciation or a fear of some stakeholder moral condemnation can tie policymakers into irrational regulations that do little but harm. The values that guide decision-makers, or the widely expressed social values that decision-makers feel they need to reflect, do not take into account the complexities of policymaking or the compromises that must be made. Politics is a pragmatic profession, but today we seem to have lost the art of Realpolitik, replaced by a “governance by moral aspiration” approach.
Certain cases of “moral reactivism” have had decision-makers assume the virtue position. Be it forest fires, floods and heatwaves, a tragic publicly-viewed murder or a disaster flowing from industrial negligence, leaders who react to public moral outrage with righteous responses may survive a political backlash but risk making bad decisions if they put some moral idealism before pragmatic problem solving. And if issues are too complex or problematic, policymakers can seek the solace of the precautionary principle, claiming to be a caring, concerned leader.
When moral convictions are cleverly used to justify policy actions, who would possibly be concerned about any contradictions or hypocrisy arising from the policies. Leaders who cloak themselves in virtue, from Ottawa to Wellington to Brussels, pretend to be immune to criticism, put economic or social consequences into a larger, moral crusader context and play the progressive card. Those who highlight their failures are moral delinquents, attacking Bambi.
But Bambi is getting pretty smug and their failures are starting to hurt.
The virtue of environmentalism
I had lunch recently with a Brussels insider and we were evaluating the achievements of the von der Leyen Commission. Her tenure was seen as basically a failure (even if we factored out the Timmermans effect). The main weakness was that her policies and postures were more virtue-driven than rational, more ethically-postured aspirations at a time when Europe, faced with pandemics, wars, energy and food inflation and economic crises, needed a more pragmatic Realpolitik approach.
The signature policy of the von der Leyen Commission has been the Green Deal. It was touted as the most important moral and political responsibility of our time to do whatever it takes to combat climate change. There was a war on climate, and thanks to the pontifical architect of this policy, Frans Timmermans, it was also framed as a war against evil: against capitalism and industry.
The word “transition” started to be repeated in any official EU Green Deal speech. When we make a transition, we turn away from the bad and toward the good. The need for an energy transition, mobility transition or a food system transition became synonymous with fighting climate change. But this “transition towards…” strategy, as a righteous crusade, became curious as the Green Deal strategies were presented as virtuous solutions. Renewables, organic food, EVs, non-synthetic chemicals … were promoted within a moral framework, under the virtue of sustainability. Whoever would suggest advancing innovations in carbon capture and storage of fossil fuel emissions instead of more subsidies for renewables had crossed over to the dark side and would soon be ostracised by the community of influencers. When you speak in terms of good v evil in the moral imperative to stop climate change (to right the evils of past generations of unenlightened polluters), the Green Deal becomes a mission of the noble and the virtuous.
The EU Farm2Fork strategy, for example, is built on the perception that organic farming practices are morally superior (not industrial, not chemical-based, more environmentally sustainable). Organic advocates perceive themselves as virtuous (conscious) consumers and, right or wrong, the food companies market into this perception, reinforcing this belief. So who would dare question a major EU policy shift toward organic farming, even if it radically disrupted European food supplies or aggravated global food security? Evil chemical companies lobby for destructive, conventional agricultural practices, pesticides and GMOs while the good small farmers who nourish the land organically are concerned for our well-being. And we are not even talking about vegan sanctimony.
This perception though is myopic and as long as the EU’s food and agriculture strategy favours this righteous approach, the consequences will be more dire for farmers, the environment and consumers. After almost three years of consultation, the European Commission has refused to budge on its pro-organic moral crusade, despite the warnings from its own scientists in the JRC. This perception of a war against evil is a righteous risk that will be very hard to manage if the architects continue to remain doggedly dogmatic. Then again, the vote last week in the European Parliament rejecting the Sustainable Use of Plant Protection Products Regulation (SUR) is a sign that idealistic moral convictions alone might not get the votes in next year’s European elections.
Righteous individuals (zealots) are unable to listen to opposing ideas or to compromise. I once was so disgusted by the self-righteousness of activist campaigns that I came out and admitted that, as a human, I pollute. If we don’t start from that admission, if we assume that the problem is with how others pollute, then we will never be able to achieve any reasonable goal (not of zero pollution but of polluting less). Like most other cults, environmentalism is rife with moral sanctimony.
It is not just the moral rectitude these activists are demanding that is questionable, but also the type of values they are putting forward. Zealots will do whatever it takes to win a campaign (so lying, scaring or misleading the public is acceptable for them). The activists’ commitment to social justice creates a bias against industry, globalisation and capitalism so any potential innovative achievements or system improvements are rejected outright. The values these moral crusaders put forward are framed by their anti-establishment dogma, such as diversity, equity and sustainability. We don’t hear much about honesty, accountability, fair-play or respect for evidence in their campaigns (perhaps these are not Machiavellian values). And if we ever dare suggest they be more transparent on who is funding them, then … well … I paid a price for that heresy.
A redefinition of leadership
This injection of ethical rectitude into policy strategies is redefining Western leadership. Policies are cloaked in values and expressed with hyperbole and categorically. Moral conviction defines today’s bold leaders, standing up for the ideals and beliefs that ought to define our futures and relentlessly fighting against those infidels who dare to oppose “our common values”.
The use of the prefix “zero” is an indicator of a virtue-driven leader prone to moral hyperbole and putting aspiration over achievement. Zero waste, zero emissions, zero plastics, net zero… all of these aspirations are unachievable nonsense that wastes political energy. We should be directing policy toward improving operations and aiming for the best that can be achieved. But the media expects leaders to be about superlatives, absolutes and great moral confrontations on the evils that have been tolerated for too long. Better is not good enough – we must right the wrongs and eradicate the evil to zero.
Leaders used to be able to stand up and make hard decisions, solve problems and inspire populations. This often involved compromises and an embrace of Realpolitik. Leaders would identify themselves via past achievements (battle-hardened generals, business titans, great negotiators…). Today’s virtue leaders aren’t cut from the same cloth, are often clever consensus-builders and need to identify themselves according to public expectations of propriety. They make decisions based on prescribed values rather than insight or intelligence.
Virtue-driven decisions can have serious consequences in the real world. The world is not divided into clear paths between good and evil. Different interest groups have legitimate claims and often hard choices means that the world of rainbows and butterflies may have to wait. But leaders who grasp onto their defining moral character, vision and high self-esteem will likely make bad decisions while claiming, stubbornly, to stand on principle.
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Policymaking has always been about optics. In the last two decades (since the EU White Paper on Governance), European policy has been about engagement, stakeholder dialogue and participation. In recent years it has become a cynical process of “steam control” (to borrow on Tom Wolfe) where moral outrage is controlled via little compromises. But social media has brought high-volume ethical disgust into the policy optics game with very little tolerance for compromise. Social media is an insult arena where angry activists can morally emasculate public leaders who don’t do exactly what they tell them to. Leaders need to harden up. Just because some former Reuters journalist in Kansas calls a regulator names for standing by the scientific evidence on, say, glyphosate, does not mean he or she should abandon basic facts and science to be better judged by this little storm in a teacup.
The zealot influencer is the most dangerous lobbyist in the field, excelling at generating outrage optics within a small tribe of loud activists. They use a sociopathic preacher zeal to push policymakers into a moral quagmire. Support this legislation and you are supporting industry, wilfully spreading cancer on innocent children and destroying the environment. The argument is not about evidence or scientific advice, but on whether you, as a leader, are a good person. Outrage optics campaigns work on the idea that people will forget a policy choice in weeks but will never forget an irresponsible leader in the pocket of evil industry. When this emotional quagmire is too difficult and the moral outrage too insufferable, the precautionary principle is introduced as a mea culpa.
Precaution is a righteous risk. When a policymaker is being stabbed with hot moral pokers, they can reverse the tables and play the caring, concerned card. By declaring precaution, cowardly leaders can not only avoid the outrage optics, they can come across as benevolent regulators with a conscience, wanting nothing more than public safety. This little game buys them time since innovators will have to go back to prove with certainty that something is 100% safe (a near impossible task). By then these civil servants should have been promoted to some other position.
Some people are sickened by the smug pontifications of moral zealots and the costs of precautionary restrictions on their lives. There seems to have been a recent increase in extremist party electoral wins, the rise of inexperienced populists and the rejection of traditional, mainstream political parties. Foul language, racist declarations, lawbreaking and radical solutions are becoming more attractive to voters fed up with their virtue-driven leaders. There are many factors, of course, to explain this rise but I can understand the appeal of someone who tears up the political virtue manual and says things his or her electorate wants to hear (however outrageous) rather than the moralisms some out-of-touch leader feels the public ought to hear.
Developing a righteous risk management strategy
This series will look at case studies where righteous risks were (or were not) managed, the consequences and the lessons learnt. I will break righteous risks down and apply the normal risk management process and consider whether there are idiosyncratic exposures that defy typical responses or a policy trend that needs addressing. One article will look at the policy arena to determine the relationship of righteous risks within a larger regulatory risk management context. Of course we need to follow the money and the rise of new types of philanthropic foundations, led by virtue-seekers, has had an important influence on the rise of value-driven policies. The series will also consider how companies should react? After Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainable Development, will the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) value hoops be enough to meet the moral approval of the sanctimonious?
Is it wrong to be critical of stronger moral values guiding public officials? Not at all. But when all policies are driven merely by ethical values and unbending zealots; when activists frame every policy debate in simplistic, good v evil poles; when policymakers are inconsistent in their regulatory implementations according to perceived normative interests; and when the public is persuaded to consider capitalism, innovation and entrepreneurship as moral deficiencies; then righteous risks become a threat to rational policies, democracies and the public. I’m afraid that’s where we are today but it is where we go tomorrow that interests me.
David Zaruk is the Firebreak editor, and also writes under the pen-name The Risk Monger. David is a retired professor, environmental-health risk analyst, science communicator, promoter of evidence-based policy and philosophical theorist on activists and the media. Find David on X @Zaruk
A version of this article was originally posted at Risk-Monger 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.
Microplastics are a kernel of biological concern that gets magnified by hype, like endocrine “disrupting” chemicals or weedkillers detectable in breast milk. In modern times, we can detect anything in anything, so the ‘zero’ levels of the 1960s no longer exist, because testing is 1,000,000 times more sensitive than it was in the past.
The presence of something does not mean real risk. There are sharks in the ocean but people in Montana are smart enough to know that hazard does not translate into their risk. That’s why concern about microplastics in sex toys are overblown. It posits that phthalates are endocrine disruptors, though science says that is not true, and because they are harmful – though only using correlation – their presence means disease.
Everything is an endocrine disruptor. I often drink coffee while writing and the changes in my hormones are detectable. As is the case with every other food. But placed in the hands of an activist, like happened when environmental lawyers wanted to go after BPA despite it being used for 70 years without any harm, and ‘the presence of any pathogen becomes pathology’ logic gets published despite it being biologically impossible at even an order of magnitude above real-world levels.
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The trolling for attention is clear, since they state that on surveys a majority of Americans have reported using a sex toy. Once? Monthly? Daily? They don’t know and it doesn’t matter, the reason Americans no longer trust epidemiology is because when they are sorting through surveys they will happily include 10,000 doses of something in analyses with one. And declare a hazard despite such sloppy methodology.
The authors declared that microplastics were more likely from one of the four sex toy types, an that sounds bad, but if I tell you that orange juice shortens your lifespan, which someone else notes it only shortens it by one second per lifetime – you’ll be angry at me, you won’t insist the other person is a shill for Big Orange.
Yet that is common in modern culture. Activists scare people and any academic crazy enough to note that biology, toxicology, and chemistry don’t work that, they get insinuations they are being paid off.
Knowing how slippery the correlation is, the authors still feel the need to tout “the potential risks of sex toys” so consumers can “make informed decisions.”
I know nothing about sex toys but if I knew so little about chemistry I thought there was real risk, I’d find a new career.
Hank Campbell is founder of Science 2.0 and author of Science Left Behind. Follow Hank on X @HankCampbell
A version of this article was originally posted at Science 2.0 and is reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit both the GLP and original article. Find Science 2.0 on X @science2_0
Swan went silent for years, then resurfaced in a co-authored controversial study (
