Spain’s northern coast has been fighting a months-long assault from a ‘white tide’ of plastic pellets dumped by a Dutch-registered shipping-vessel.
“The pellets themselves are a mixture of chemicals – they [come from] fossil fuels,” a spokesman for an international campaigning group, Environmental Investigation Agency, told UK’s The Guardian.
“Chemicals leaching from plastics can change the mix of microbial life in seawater and harm the microscopic life forms that are critical to oxygen production in our oceans,” Ian Williams, a professor of applied environmental science at the U.K.’s University of Southampton, said to Newsweek. The chemicals that leach into seawater from plastic waste can disrupt microbes that form an essential part of the marine food web,” he explained.
Plastic pellets found washed up on a beach in Galicia, Spain on Dec. 26, 2023. Credit: EcoWatch
‘Nurdles’, if you are not familiar with the term, is the colloquial name for tiny plastic beads used to make plastics. Composed of polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride and other plastics, nurdles are shipped around the world as raw materials, with hundreds of thousands of tons ending up in our oceans with other plastic debris. The plastic can be ingested by fish and birds.
To date, the volume of nurdles in the oceans is infinitesimally small, leading some skeptics to suggest the sudden surge in reporting on the ‘nurdle crisis’ is overblown, hyped by environmental activists who are leveraging periodic nurdle spills, such as the recent Gallic coast incident, to intensify their anti-plastics campaign. But some scientists disagree, viewing nurdles as the tip of a plastic iceberg threatening marine bio-life.
Hardly any plastic – just 9% – ever enters a recycling plant. Plastic debris has now been detected even in remote, largely uninhabited aqua regions of our planet. It’s estimated that more than 171 trillion pieces of plastic are floating in our oceans, many in entangled clumps. At current rates, this number could triple by 2040. The most notorious of these floating dumps is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.a growing plastic patch roughly the size of Great Britain in the North Pacific Ocean between the west coast of North America and the east coast of Japan.Twice the size of Texas, the patch consists of discarded pollution from every continent.
Until recently, there have been no potential solutions on the table. That is changing, thanks to advances in genetic engineering—but will it be derailed by a labyrinthal government regulatory structure and a lingering hostility toward biotechnology among the very same activist groups that are drawing attention to the marine plastic crisis?
The scope of the global plastic waste challenge
Floating on and just below the sea surface, plastic garbage dumps now litter the global oceans.
Plastics disintegrate over time into smaller and smaller pieces that can entangle marine animals, such as seals, whales and turtles, and wreak havoc on sea birds like the short-tailed albatross, which mistakes pellets for the fish eggs that they harvest and feed to their young. The birdlings eventually die of starvation or damaged organs. Eventually, over time, these small pieces of plastic break down even further into particles called microplastics, which are less than five millimeters in length (or about the size of a sesame seed) and to still smaller particles called nano-plastics. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) considers these particles among the world’s top environmental challenges.
Credit: Naja Bertolt Jensen / Unsplash
Because the plastic is in such small pieces and pellets, and often meters below the ocean surface, collecting it seems a near-impossible challenge. The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program has estimated that it would take 67 ships one year to clean up less than one percent of the mess.
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How might genetic engineering help? We could turn bacteria into a plastic removal army. According to The Guardian:
In 2001, a group of Japanese scientists made a startling discovery at a rubbish dump. In trenches packed with dirt and waste, they found a slimy film of bacteria that had been happily chewing through plastic bottles, toys and other bric-a-brac. As they broke down the trash, the bacteria harvested the carbon in the plastic for energy, which they used to grow, move and divide into even more plastic-hungry bacteria.
Their findings were eventually published in the journal Science in 2016, precipitating a frenzy of innovative research. Most recently, a team of scientists from the University of Edinburgh have proposed engineering a strain of the bacterium E. coli that would digest the ubiquitous polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastics and make it possible to “upcycle” them into a high-value industrial compound.
These beads contain engineered E. coli that efficiently transform PET waste into a high-value compound.
The researchers worked with two species of bacteria. The first, Vibrio natriegens, thrives in saltwater and reproduces very quickly. The second, Ideonella sakaiensis, produces enzymes that enable it to break down and metabolize PET.
The upcycling would be accomplished via a second step–using the second E. coli strain engineered with CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology to create products such as adipic acid, a material found in many useful products, including nylon, drugs and even fragrances. The process could be further enhanced by a process that would result in the conversion of 79% of plastic into a feedstock for beneficial products.
Artist recreation of genetically-engineered plastic-eating bacteria
How would this process work in the real world? One promising approach would be via the production of adipic acid, one of the most important monomers in the polymer industry. It is found in beet juice, but the article of commerce — about 2.5 million tons per year — is manufactured. Until now, adipic acid has been produced in huge volumes from fossil fuels. Approximately 60% of the 2.5 billion kg of adipic acid produced each year is used for nylon; a second application would be to make polyurethane and other plastics such as PVC.
Besides the use of fossil fuels in this process, adipic acid production is associated with nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, one of the most potent greenhouse gases, with a warming potential 300 times greater than that of CO2. It remains stable in the atmosphere for over 100 years and can play a role in depleting the ozone layer. Clearly, the status quo of discarding plastic bottles while making products such as nylon and polyurethane from petroleum products is environmentally unsustainable.
The conversion process can work in a real-world setting under ambient temperatures and in a matter of hours, making the plastic-degrading bacteria amenable to large-scale production, and thus a promising approach to reducing global plastic pollution. The French company Carbios is planning to have a commercial-scale facility up and running by 2025. It is expected to convert plastic bottle waste into other products with a capacity equivalent to 100,000 bottles per cycle.
The ecological science of ‘plastic eating’
The development of novel bacterial strains or identifying bacteria in nature that can degrade plastic has been a long time coming. The last few decades have seen small, incremental successes but nothing as significant as recent advances. For example, a few years ago scientists working at the University of Edinburgh engineered an E. coli strain that could convert the terephthalic acid in plastic bottles into vanillin, a highly valuable compound responsible for the flavor of vanilla.
The ability to produce at scale a compound as versatile as adipic acid from one of our most ubiquitous waste products would be a game-changer. The reduction in fossil fuel consumption means that using plastic products would be considered carbon neutral, or perhaps even carbon negative, because it involves the upcycling of plastic bottles waste as a reagent.
Currently, almost 500 billion plastic bottles are produced each year.The United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health has reported that over 1 million water bottles are sold every minute around the world, only a small percentage of which are recycled. The reduction of plastic bottle waste and fossil fuel usage, and, therefore, of greenhouse gas production, as the result of upcycling would be hugely significant advances.
Genetically engineered plastic-degrading bacteria can also perform their magic in saltwater environments. This means that they could potentially work on ocean plastic waste.
Addressing plastic waste in our oceans and other water systems has become one of the lesser known but greatest challenges of our time. We need to find a way to reduce plastic marine pollution, or at the very least, to find a way to repurpose it for some product that is more environmentally sustainable.
Will US policymakers and environmental groups block the only viable solution to threats from metastasizing plastic waste?
Since the creation of the first organisms modified with the molecular techniques of genetic engineering in the 1970s, the U.S. Environmental Agency (EPA) has stymied innovation with its unscientific, overly-precautionary, political, and obstructionist evaluation process. If it persists, it could sideline the fast-evolving solutions designed to address the ‘plastic crisis’.
Microorganisms are regulated only if they are manufactured, imported, or processed for commercial purposes. Plastic-degrading microorganisms are currently regulated under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) if they fall under the agency’s definition of “new” -— those that are intergeneric, meaning that they are not genetically related and there has been a deliberate combination of genetic material among organisms classified in different taxonomic genera. So, for example, a completely benign microorganism with a newly inserted marker gene from another genus, would be considered “new” and, therefore, subject to onerous regulation.
The definition of regulated articles also includes any microorganism constructed with synthetic genes that are not identical to DNA that could be derived from the same genus as the recipient microorganism. Naturally occurring microorganisms are excluded (because they are implicitly listed on the TSCA Inventory) as are genetically engineered microorganisms that are not intergeneric.
As has been pointed out innumerable times over several decades by scientists and scientific organizations, the EPA’s approach conflicts with the federal government’s 1986 Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology, which was supposed to provide a blueprint for government regulation of the “new biotechnology,” or genetic engineering. It calls for regulation only of “unreasonable risks,” but U.S. regulatory agencies seized the opportunity for empire-building, at the expense of sound science.
It is unclear how research trials or commercial uses of plastic-degrading microorganisms would be regulated in international waters.
Not everyone is pessimistic about overcoming the regulatory obstacles to the application of genetic engineering to plastic recycling. An attorney who has worked extensively in the US policy establishment, and who was one of the principal authors of the Coordinated Framework, predicts that “any innovation with such enormous potential to both reduce plastic pollution and reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be the Holy Grail of governments, environmentalists, and industry,” and that “demand will drive acceptance of this technology” (personal communication). We hope he’s right.
Discarded plastic products are a scourge of water pollution in many regions of the globe and constitute a growing hazard to wildlife and ecosystems, and possibly to public health. The application of genetically engineered bacteria to degrade the massive accumulations of plastic while producing useful byproducts is promising, but scaling up and overcoming regulatory barriers could be problematic,
Kathleen L. Hefferon is an instructor in microbiology at Cornell University. Find Kathleen on X @KHefferon
Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Glenn Swogger Distinguished Fellow at the American Council on Science and Health. He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Find Henry on X @henryimiller
As the European Parliament prepares for a key vote on gene editing regulations [January 24], an open letter signed by 35 Nobel laureates and more than 1,000 European scientists has been sent to parliamentarians asking them to ‘reject the darkness of anti-science fearmongering’.
On 24 January the European Parliament’s environment committee is due to vote on whether or not the EU should relax restrictive regulation which is holding back the use of so-called ‘new genomic techniques’ (NGTs) in Europe. The European Commission has proposed a new system to allow scientists to continue progress on crop breeding using Crispr and other NGTs without falling foul of existing higly restrictive GMO regulations.
In October last year the Breakthrough Institute and the Alliance for Science released a report warning that a de-facto ban on precision gene editing in Europe could have economic costs totalling over 3 trillion euros over the next decade. The new open letter argues that the use of Crispr in plant breeding has the potential to dramatically reduce pesticide and fertiliser use in agriculture while increasing food security through the creation of climate-resilient plant varieties.
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The letter is signed by the co-inventors of the Crispr technology, biochemist Emmanuelle Charpentier and microbiologist Jennifer Doudna, who shared the 2020 Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine for their pioneering work. Alongside other signatories including world-renowned authors Steven Pinker and Peter Singer they write: “NGTs hold immense promise for sustainable agriculture, enhanced food security and innovative medical solutions. We therefore encourage you to engage with the overwhelming majority of farmers and genuine experts, not with reactive anti-science lobbyists in the Brussels bubble. We implore you to vote in favour of NGTs.”
The signatories point out that “conventional breeding for climate resilient crops (with cross-breeding of certain traits, subsequent selection and then backcrossing to remove undesirable traits) is too time-consuming. It takes years, decades even. We do not have this time in an era of climate emergency. This is why fast, targeted and favorable breeding methods need to be added to the plant breeder’s toolbox. The responsible use of NGTs that the legislation could unlock may contribute significantly to our collective pursuit of a more resilient, environmentally conscious, and food-secure future.”
The open letter was organised by WePlanet, an environmental non-profit network that campaigns to defend science around the world to help combat climate change and end poverty. Dr Hidde Boersma, the Dutch microbiologist who coordinated the letter with WePlanet, says: “The NGTs vote is a huge moment for the European Parliament. Will they embrace rationality and optimism, or cave into the anti-science fearmongering of an ill-informed minority? Now, more than ever, it’s time to embrace the optimism that Europe’s young scientists and farmers represent.”
All eyes are now on the ENVI committee vote scheduled for 24 January. If the committee passes the proposal, this is expected to be followed on 5 February by a plenary vote in the Strasbourg Parliament. Tens of activists from the international WePlanet network – including young scientists and farmers – are expected to demonstrate outside the parliament building that day in favour of NGTs.
The open letter is open to further signatures from scientists, researchers and other relevant stakeholders. More than 1,000 have already signed, and the link to add your signature is here.
Open letter: 35 Nobel Laureates and over 1,000 Scientists call on MEPs to support New Genomic Techniques
Dear Members of the European Parliament,
In these times of climate crisis, biodiversity loss and renewed food insecurity, a scientific and evidence-based approach is essential in every respect. Now more than ever, we must rise above ideology and dogmatism. That is why we the undersigned turn to you and urge you to carefully consider the benefits of embracing New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) in your upcoming parliamentary decisions.
As concerned citizens who believe in the power of science to improve our lives and our relationship with the planet, we implore you to vote in favour of NGTs, aligning your decisions with the advancements in scientific understanding. Conventional breeding for climate resilient crops (with cross-breeding of certain traits, subsequent selection and then backcrossing to remove undesirable traits) is too time-consuming. It takes years, decades even. We do not have this time in an era of climate emergency.
There are also many plants which, due to their specific genetic characteristics, are very difficult to breed by conventional means, such as fruit trees, grape vines or potatoes. And these crops just happen to require most of the harmful pesticides used in the European Union to protect against pests and diseases. But just as with climate resilience, NGTs can dramatically improve this situation. NGTs help to make crop plants resilient to disease by precise and targeted edits to their genetic code thus making our ambitious and vital goals of pesticide reduction possible while still protecting farmers’ yields. It is, as a result, no surprise that many of Europe’s hard working farmers – including a growing number of organic producers – are enthusiastic supporters of NGTs.
This is why fast, targeted and favorable breeding methods need to be added to the plant breeder’s toolbox. The draft law on the regulation of NGT plants is therefore an important step that we support in view of our mission of enhancing environmental sustainability in food, farming and energy. The responsible use of NGTs that the legislation could unlock may contribute significantly to our collective pursuit of a more resilient, environmentally conscious, and food-secure future.
NGTs hold immense promise for sustainable agriculture, enhanced food security, and innovative medical solutions. But the opportunities could also be seen in new jobs and greater economic prosperity. A recent report showed that failure to allow NGTs could cost the European economy 300 billion euros annually in ‘benefits foregone’ across multiple sectors. This is the cost of saying ‘no’ to scientific progress.
We the undersigned therefore encourage you to engage with the overwhelming majority of farmers and genuine experts, not with reactive anti-science lobbyists in the Brussels bubble. We ask you to consider the unequivocable body of scientific evidence supporting NGTs, and make decisions that align with the European Union’s and its citizens’ best interests. Your support for NGTs will not only foster innovation but also position the EU as a leader in responsible and evidence-based policymaking around the world. Leaders in Africa for example are watching closely what you decide, as are African scientists who have NGT climate resilient cassava, banana, maize and other staple crops ready to go.
We appreciate your attention to this matter and trust that, with your support, the EU Parliament can reject the darkness of anti-science fear mongering and look instead towards the light of prosperity and progress.
…..
Mark Lynas is a climate change author and campaigner. He is an advisor to the former President of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed. He is the research and climate lead with the Alliance for Science, where he has co-authore peer-reviewed papers on vaccines, climate, and GMOs focusing on scientific consensus and misinformation. Find Mark on X @mark_lynas
A version of this article was originally posted at the Alliance for Science and is reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit both the GLP and original article. The Alliance for Science can be found on X @ScienceAlly
Why do many celebrities reject science? Watch the video below to find out which Hollywood stars are anti-vaccine.
1. Jenna Elfman
Jenna Elfman is best known for her leading role in the ABC sitcom Dharma. In 2015, she spoke up on Facebook about a California bill removing personal belief exemptions from school vaccination requirements. In her post, she states “There is no health crisis (unless they care to create one — wait for it…) and frankly, I’m astounded that we have to fight so hard for our parental rights as Americans, IN AMERICA.” Elfman is also a member of the Church of Scientology, a religion well known for its anti-drug position.
2. Jenny McCarthy
Credit: Rob Kim/Getty Images
Jenny McCarthy’s son Evan was born in 2002 and diagnosed with autism 3 years later. McCarthy believes that the vaccinations her son received caused the disorder. Though she denies she is anti-vaccine, she was described by the Daily Beast as the nation’s most prominent purveyor of anti-vaxxer ideology. Although her son was later diagnosed with a disease often mistaken for autism, McCarthy has not rescinded any of her comments. In 2008, she won the James Randi Educational Foundation Spig Asus award for her contribution to pseudoscience, as a “performer who has fooled the greatest number of people with the least amount of effort.”
3. Jim Carrey
Credit: Camilla Morandi/REX/Shutterstock
Jim Carrey is well known from movies such as Ace Ventura and The Mask. Likely influenced by his ex-girlfriend Jenny McCarthy, Carrey wrote on Twitter that “They say mercury in fish is dangerous but forcing all of our children to be injected with mercury in thimerosal is no risk. Make sense?” He then posted “I repeat! I AM PRO-VACCINE/ANTI-NEUROTOXIN, as is Robert Kennedy Jr,” a notorious anti-vaccine activist.
4. Robert De Niro
Credit: Broadimage/Shutterstock
Robert De Niro, an actor best known for his roles on Taxi Driver and the Godfather Part 2, was thoroughly convinced by the movie Vaxxed: From Cover-up to Catastrophe, a “documentary” that describes all the supposed problems caused by childhood vaccinations. De Niro has said “I, as a parent of a child who has autism, I’m concerned. I want to know the truth.”
5. Cindy Crawford
Credit: Getty Images
Cindy Crawford is a world-famous supermodel. She has also promoted another anti-vaccine movie, Trace Amounts, on her Twitter. The film shows the alleged connection between mercury in vaccines and autism.
6. Alicia Silverstone
Credit: Gotham/GC Images
Actor Alicia Silverstone rose to fame in the late 90s after the movie Clueless became a huge hit. While she does not outright oppose government vaccine regulations, it’s clear that vaccines do not fit into her vegan well-being philosophy. She has said that “While there has not been a conclusive study of the negative effects of such a rigorous one-size-fits-all, shoot-’em-up schedule, there is increasing anecdotal evidence from doctors who have gotten distressed phone calls claiming their child was ‘never the same’ after receiving a vaccine.”
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Charlie Sheen, infamous for his role on Two and a Half Men, has two daughters with his former wife Denise Richards. The couple had such a big argument about vaccinating their kids that they took it to court. Richards, who supports vaccination, won the battle.
8. Donald Trump
Credit: Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images
Before Donald Trump became president, he joined the anti-vaxxer camp back in 2014. He has claimed that vaccines are unsafe, and has said on Twitter that “If I were President I would push for proper vaccinations but would not allow one time massive shots that a small child cannot take — AUTISM.”
9. Danny Masterson
Credit: Eric Charbonneau/Invision/AP
Danny Masterson, from That 70s Show fame, has rallied support for an anti-vaccine petition. On Twitter, he posted “Hi friends. Help me fight California fascism and sign this petition. No one tells us how to live am I right?!!!” Danny is also part of the Church of Scientology.
10. Mayim Bialik
Credit: Amanda Edwards/Getty Images
Mayim Bialik, who plays Amy Farrah Fowler on the Big Bang Theory, has a PhD in neuroscience. However, she has said that “We are a non-vaccinating family, but I make no claims about people’s individual decisions. We based ours on research and discussions with our pediatrician, and we’ve been happy with that decision, but obviously there’s a lot of controversy about it.” However, years later, she apparently changed her mind, saying “I would like to dispel the rumors about my stance on vaccines. I am not anti-vaccine. My children are vaccinated. There has been so much hysteria and anger about this issue and I hope this clears things up as far as my part.”
Are eating foods grown using genetically modified seeds hazardous to our health? Scientists, nutritionists and the global medical establishment say ‘no’.
No equivocation. No qualification.
30+ years of evidence backs up the consensus. Consumers in the United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil and dozens of other countries have been consuming food crops grown from genetically modified seeds since the 1990s. That amounts to hundreds of trillions of meals. There is not one (as in zero) documented case of anyone getting ill in the long or short term from consuming a so-called GMO food.
“When we look at the data, we don’t see any signs [of health danger],” says Fred Gould, an entomologist and plant pathologist. “We’ve undergone a multi-decade “natural experiment,” he told Time earlier this month. There have been zero reports of any evidence that consuming these foods causes genetic mutations, organ damage or fertility problems. “We don’t see any signs” of kidney disease, gastrointestinal issues, autism or food allergies.
No, Gould is not a front apologist for the ‘global industrial food complex,’ as anti-biotechnology activists like to characterize the 90+% of scientists who dismiss unsupported claims that GM crops pose unique dangers. He’s a distinguished professor at North Carolina State University who oversaw the research and writing of a 2016 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report that undermined heated claims by some ‘environmental groups’ that foods grown from GM seeds pose unique harm.
Nearly 300 expert institutions across the globe have reviewed more than 5500 studies on GMO food. Not one (that’s zero, as in ‘0’) serious science organization has found any unique health or safety threats from consuming the dozen fruits, vegetables and grains that have been genetically modified via transgenesis (familiarly, GMOs) or gene editing (such as CRISPR mustard greens and high oleic soybean oil.
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Last month, the global consensus came under challenge. Not from a new study. And not by a globally-respected science research organization that had undertaken a careful re-analysis of existing data. None of that. In a startling, consensus-challenging change in position, the American Academy of Pediatrics, claimed in a December article that scientists have it all wrong.
Writing in the American Academy of Pediatrics lead journal “Pediatrics”, three physicians with no expertise in crop biotechnology link GMO crops to a host of disorders, from cancer to increased risk of preterm birth and in utero endocrine disruption in children, and they hint at dozens of other adverse health consequences.
The academic opinion piece was supplemented by what its authors characterized as an educational article directed to parents and placed in an AAP associated journal titled, “Are GMO Foods Safe for My Child? AAP Policy.
We are four independent scientists, physicians and science communicators who have come together to write a response to the American Academy of Pediatrics repudiation of the science consensus on GMO crops. Under the guise of protecting the vulnerable, the AAP is allowing rogue physicians to resurrect anti-GMO zombie propaganda. It is reckless, and poses serious threats to the health and safety of literally billions of people worldwide, and attempts to unravel a decade of scientific education around biotechnology. Yes, it’s that significant an issue. And we are concerned about how this “Clinical Report” is already being weaponized to promote an ideological agenda that endangers the global effort to increase sustainable food production.
The three AAP physicians pose a question in their articles: “Is it safe to serve my children food containing GMO ingredients?”
Disappointingly, they never directly answer that key question. Rather, than answering their disingenuously posed hypothetical about GMO food safety, the co-authors do a Texas sidestep. They attack all GM foods by proxy, misrepresenting the controversy over the herbicide glyphosate, which is paired with about 60% by volume of all GM crops grown worldwide.
“The presence of glyphosate and other toxic herbicides in food products is the main hazard to children’s health associated with the consumption of GMO-based foods,” they claim.
When glyphosate was first approved, it was thought to pose no threat to human health. But research from around the world now shows that these chemicals can build up in our bodies. This can increase the risks for some blood cancers, including specific kinds of leukemia and lymphoma. Some studies show that farmers who use glyphosate on their crops face a greater risk of developing these blood cancers than people with lower exposure to herbicides.
That’s an explosive claim. If true, Americans are slowly killing themselves, one GMO bite at a time. One problem with their thesis, stated boldly with no qualifications: There is no science-based evidence to justify their conclusion.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has been considered the most recognized and influential organization in childhood medicine. But this Clinical Review should not be mistaken as scholarly analysis. Twenty independent regulatory agencies around the world have conducted 24 total studies assessing glyphosate’s alleged dangers. Not one (that’s zero, as in ‘’0’), have found persuasive evidence that traces of the chemical in our food supply endanger children, pregnant women or anyone for that matter.
As Health Canada wrote in its most recent review of the alleged child killing weedkiller,
No pesticide regulatory authority in the world currently considers glyphosate to be a cancer risk to humans at the levels at which humans are currently exposed.
To justify their contrarian position, the authors misleadingly represent one of these 24 reviews. Twenty-three of these studies are called “risk” reports, meaning they assess the real-world likelihood of a chemical causing cancer. One agency — the International Association for Research on Cancer (IARC) — assesses what’s known as “hazard” — whether a substance or a situation could cause cancer independent of exposure.
IARC has evaluated more than 115 agents, finding all but one can cause cancer. In 2015, after doing no original research (unlike many of the risk assessing agencies noted above), IARC concluded that glyphosate was a “probably carcinogenic to humans”. That sounds scary, but let’s bring some perspective. Also, in the same category as ‘dangerous glyphosate’: eating red meat, drinking hot coffee, consuming wine or beer, using oral contraceptives, frying foods, going to a barber on hairdresser and working the night shift. Even more dangerous:
Processed foods and consuming Chinese-style salted. Yes, IARC considers eating a salami sandwich more dangerous than glyphosate exposure.
But the case against glyphosate is even thinner. To the degree that it poses any danger, it’s only to applicators. IARC found “limited evidence” of carcinogenicity in agricultural workers exposed to glyphosate.
But what about claims in Pediatrics that children and vulnerable populations are endangered by micro-traces of glyphosate.in our food? They didn’t get that anxiety-inspiring nugget from the IARC report, although they deceptively imply that they do. IARC’s summary statement indicates that there is no known link between trace dietary glyphosate exposure and cancer.
What else do the Pediatrics authors willfully ignore? A compilation of errors and omissions
1. Biologically Irrelevant Trace Levels, Misinterpretation of Data
The APA authors manufacture fear around glyphosate, the main herbicide used in tandem with genetically engineered crops to safely control weeds. They equate detection of glyphosate with risk from glyphosate. As physicians, the authors certainly understand that medications are chemicals with a therapeutic threshold where they are effective, and well-defined excesses that are toxic. The dose makes the poison.
Yet, this fundamental concept of chemistry is abandoned to conflate “detection” or “presence” with risk to children. The authors describe “measurable quantities” neglecting to mention that glyphosate is routinely “measurable” at 200 parts per trillion (analogous to about 1 second in ~26,000 years). They do mention (shortly after “heavy use” and “large quantities”) that “residues… remain present… in foods commonly consumed by children” and that “42.3% of… food samples tested contained detectable levels.” Yes, they are detectable but are levels far, far below any threshold scientists believe are reason for concern — in the parts per trillion.
Finding micro-trace levels of any chemical in urine is meaningless in and of itself. More than 3,000 chemicals can be detected in human urine; almost none poses any harm. Trace chemicals are the residue of the kidneys doing its filtering job. The authors here either do not understand basic chemistry, or they are deliberately exploiting the widespread misunderstanding the micro-traces of a chemical pose health dangers.
Abrams et al. cites levels detected are 160 ppt to 7.6 ppb in one study, and then cite another study reporting that “glyphosate levels were significantly higher among… individuals reporting pesticide exposure (0.63 µg/L) than … persons consuming organic diets (0.42 µg/L).” This is cherry picking and misrepresenting risk at its finest. The data from exposure and non-exposure groups are both amazingly low, far below any hint of risk. Worse, Pediatrics present these numbers as levels detected, when these are not levels detected. The numbers represent a range of levels detected, and the range is greater in the pesticide exposure group, as would be expected.
More importantly, the authors fail to mention that the same cited paper (Schutze et al, 2022) reports that the median glyphosate levels (390) in organic food consumers (400) and individuals with known exposure are essentially identical (390 vs 400 parts per trillion, respectively). Again, all levels reside far below all established safety thresholds. But those findings do not fit their narrative.
Bottom line: modern analytical chemistry can detect trace amounts of just about any chemical. Just because it is detected, does not mean it is dangerous. The Abrams et al. report recklessly scares parents and misinforms physicians by implying risk where none is demonstrated at these exposures. If anything, these studies are a testament to the lack of risk from the micro-minimal diet exposure of a relatively non-toxic chemical.
2. Fundamentally Misleading Information
Arguments from ignorance. Abrams et al correctly acknowledge that the National Academies of Science have reviewed the literature and recognize the expertconsensus that there is no evidence of adverse human health effects from these ingredients. But then Abrams et al does not just move a goalpost, they build goalposts—stating that the harm in consuming a GE crop ingredient is actually the ingestion of associated herbicides and the built-in insecticides (the same one applied topically on organic crops) which have not been sufficiently examined for health hazards. Later they state that the use of the herbicide merits “further study” when both insect and herbicide tolerance have been studied extensively for decades with no reproducible evidence of harm at levels encountered by occupational or dietary exposure.
Choice of poor quality, biased evidence. Abrams et al. build their fear-based “possible health impact” campaign referencing “an international group of scientists drew attention to a lack of worldwide consensus about GMO safety.” In the greatest cherry pick in the orchard of the scientific literature, Abrams et al. cite a single 2015 proclamation, “No Scientific Consensus on GMO Safety,” penned by a cadre of anti-biotech authors known for their opposition to crop genetic engineering. The article has aged like cheese. Scientists do not proclaim a consensus. A consensus emerges from alignment of evidence, and the safety of GE crops is well established. Out of all of the hundreds of high-quality reviews that align with a scientific consensus, why would Abrams et al. choose this single, dated, flawed reference?
Failure to yield trope. The authors continue that the technology has not resulted in increased yields. But crops have not been engineered to increase yields. They have been engineered to resist insects, outcompete weeds, and tolerate viruses. Yield increases do sometimes occur at times of significant insect pressure when compared to non-traited crops. The traits are designed to help farmers avoid crop loss from pests – farmers can then raise the same yield with fewer costs in fuel and labor and with less environmental impact as the use of glyphosate-tolerant crops reduces tilling and soil loss.
Choice of denominators to make use appear extreme. The authors cite that the use of glyphosate has increased 250-fold since 1974. This is the year it was introduced. It is like saying the sales of iPhone power cables has increased 250-fold since 2008, the year they were introduced. Numbers can appear massive when compared against a minimal denominator, again, evidence of author intent. The authors go on to describe glyphosate use as “heavy”, where only 750 grams (about two soda cans) of active ingredient are applied per acre, replacing chemicals with markedly higher toxicity and environmental impact.
The appeal to nature fallacy and chemophobia. A common tactic utilized by organizations and individuals that demonize conventional agriculture (and conventional pesticides) is the convenient omission of the fact that organic agriculture also uses pesticides. Abrams et al make the blatantly false statement “A major benefit of organic food is that it substantially reduces dietary exposure to pesticides.” Aside from the obvious that this is a factually incorrect statement, it misleads parents and clinicians. Organic crop production utilizes an array of pesticides – naturally occurring toxins that often have higher acute or chronic toxicity than synthetic pesticides, bioaccumulate in the environment more readily, and have worse ecological impact by affecting non-target species. There are no credible data to suggest that organic pesticides are better or safer than conventional pesticides, and the source of a chemical – whether natural or synthetic – does not dictate the safety of it. These false claims that are being legitimized by AAP and Pediatrics further erode scientific literacy and fuel chemophobia.
“No evidence for a benefit”. Abrams et al. note, “we currently have no evidence for a benefit to GMO usage internationally”. The technologies are used on every continent except Antarctica, with massive acreage in Brazil, Argentina, India, Australia, and Canada. There are historical plantings in Spain and trials in England. Emerging acreage is growing in China and Kenya. As mentioned above, the Bt Brinjal has had great benefit for small farmers in Bangladesh. The impact of GE crop should have been much greater, but anti-biotech sentiment has arrested the deployment of real solutions, like Golden Rice. While Abrams et al. see no evidence of benefit, the farmers tending over 200 million hectares in at least 26 countries might disagree.
3.Conflating Hazard and Risk
Genetically engineered crops in the US are monitored and regulated by the FDA, the EPA and the USDA. GE crops are rigorously monitored for safety, nutrition, and environmental impact, while their ‘non-GMO’ counterparts are not. Moreover, several additional global expert authorities on chemical and food safety have reviewed decades of scientific evidence as it pertains to GE crops and foods containing ingredients from them. These include the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). These organizations have similarly concluded that GE crops and associated pesticides that may be utilized during cultivation do not pose health or environmental risks.
However, Abrams et al. omit the conclusions of these expert agencies and instead state that “glyphosate and other toxic herbicides” pose carcinogenic risks to people. They cite the classification of glyphosate as a class 2A substance by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). According to naming conventions, IARC Group 2A substances are termed “probably carcinogenic to humans”. This classification means that there is limited evidence of substance likely causing cancer in humans (such as positive statistical association, but not evidence of causal relationship), and either strong mechanistic evidence (why it could cause cancer) or sufficient evidence of substance causing cancer in animal models.
Aside from the authors misinterpreting this to make inflammatory statements, they fail to mention that IARC uses a hazard-based approach to assessing risk, compared to a more clinically appropriate risk-based approach. Hazard-based approaches examine the theoretical potential of something to cause harm, irrespective of the potential exposure or likelihood of said exposure. Risk-based approaches also factor in the likelihood to cause harm, and include in assessment potential exposures, route of exposure, and many other factors, such as how the body processes an exposure. Those expert agencies that assess food additives and food safety, such as JECFA, EFSA, and FDA utilize a risk-based assessment. In addition to reasserting that glyphosate does not pose a human health risk, EFSA even responded to the IARC classification of glyphosate: “EFSA concluded that glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans and the evidence does not support classification with regard to its carcinogenic potential.” These conclusions match those of dozens of international regulatory bodies.
The authors of the Pediatrics piece conveniently emphasize the hazard-based approach from IARC (which does not specialize in food safety), while omitting the more clinically relevant risk-based assessments from dozens of other international scientific expert agencies. They also neglect to mention the World Health Organization’s conclusion, ‘unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet’.
4. Omission of Literature that Does Not Support the Narrative
The authors paint a narrative by conveniently ignoring literature that does not support their conclusion. When addressing the highly controversial, loose link between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, their star support is a 2019 meta-analysis by Zhang (which showed a modest increase in highest exposure levels in an apples-to-oranges mismatched analysis) but do not discuss the criticisms leveled against it by Kabat and colleagues in 2021. More importantly, the authors neglected to include the conclusion from the Agricultural Health Study, the largest, longest duration epidemiological assessment of high exposure subjects (Andriotti et al., 2018). This analysis of 54,000 applicators did not reveal associations between glyphosate exposure and any lymphoma.
The authors also suggest that the 2015 IARC classification “merits further study.” In the eight years since the IARC decision there have been over 77,000 entries in Google Scholar containing the term “glyphosate”. Further study merits attention.
5. Failure to Note Study Limitations
Abrams et al. reference numerous studies with grim outcomes as conclusive, where the authors that performed the original analyses properly note significant limitations to interpretations. One is the study of pregnant women in Puerto Rico and their gestation period as a function of glyphosate exposure, as determined by analysis of urine. While differences were relatively small between ‘exposure’ and ‘non-exposure’ groups, there was a statistically significant association between exposure and pre-term birth. In this study and others to follow, this difference was minor. Another study shows a slight association between glyphosate and pre-term birth, but no effect on head circumference or birth weight, two other associated metrics of fetal development. The authors of the pre-term birth studies note that these are small studies with many limitations and confounding factors, such as the young age and previous pre-term birth histories of the women in the “exposure” group. Yet Abrams et al. do not discuss limitations or confounding variables, making findings appear conclusive and supportive of the “glyphosate danger” narrative.
6. Inappropriate Alarmist Language
There are several instances where unnecessary terminology is used that does not enhance the understanding of the science and, instead, conflates crop technology with negatively perceived terms.
Agent Orange. The authors bring up “Agent Orange” in a discussion of the emergence of glyphosate-tolerant weeds, a part of the literature they discussed correctly, along with an increasing dependence on other herbicides like dicamba and 2,4-D. But why Agent Orange? Agent Orange was a concoction of herbicides weaponized by the US government in 1960s-70s jungle warfare, and its application was directly responsible for widespread suffering and illness in soldiers and civilians. Why is this relevant? Agent Orange contained 2,4-D, and this paragraph is a perfect place to invoke the perception of contemporary danger with this dreaded military exercise from five decades ago. However, the herbicide 2,4-D was not the component that caused the associated illnesses. The problem was 2,4,5-T which co-purified with a highly toxic dioxin during manufacture. The mention of Agent Orange in the context of modern agriculture is perhaps another indicator of author intent.
Contamination. In a paragraph that notes that 99.4% of crop samples in Canada present glyphosate levels are that below an extremely conservative standard, Abrams et al. describe that residues are detected in silage and animal feeds (they do not discuss levels), suggesting “increasing the risk of contamination of meat or dairy products.” “Contamination” is a loaded term, again implying risk. The authors cite a review by Bohn and Millstone, not primary research, and the review derives its conclusions from feeding studies where animals are subjected to amounts of herbicide that are orders of magnitude higher than residual levels (and do not mention silage). Abrams et al. does not site the comprehensive by Van Eenennaam and Young that shows glyphosate has never been detected in meat or dairy products and notes zero effect on livestock health from historical records.
7. Misleading Generalizations
In table 1 the authors present a horribly non-specific list of “Potentially GMO-Containing Food Crops Permitted in the United States”. The list says “apples” and “potatoes” when there is one variety of apple and maybe a few potato varieties that are almost impossible to find at retail. “Papayas” are listed, but only the Hawaiian papaya is genetically engineered to resist viruses, and that saved a traditional industry. A consumer is misled to think that all papayas, apples and potatoes are dreaded “GMOs” when it close to impossible to find any fresh food product in the produce aisle that has been genetically engineered.
8. Red Herrings
The authors state, “Although there has been some concern about the possibility of glyphosate being present in human breast milk…” they fail to note that these concerns originate from science-denying groups like Moms Across America based on zero data. The authors then note that a non-peer reviewed report shows no evidence of detection. Then they note legitimate examination of breast milk by experts shows no evidence of even trace amounts in breast milk and fail to cite the authors (McGuire et al, 2016). They conclude with the study by German regulators that fails to detect glyphosate in breast milk. The real story here is one sentence. Glyphosate has never been detected in breast milk.
9. Fingerprints of Intent, Fallout, and Conclusion
The errors and oversteps above are just a sample of the many major errors within Abrams et al. that render it worthy of criticism, correction, and perhaps retraction. While it is not possible to know intent, the Abrams et al have failed to respond to multiple invitations to publicly discuss the content of the article, and the Pediatrics Editor-In-Chief Lewis First refused an offer to produce a correction for publication in Pediatrics. The typical response to experts offering a legitimate scientific correction should not be ignore and deflect. The sound of crickets may suggest a motivation.
10. Exploiting Authoritative Sources to Perpetuate Misinformation
The false information stands on the credible shoulders of Pediatrics, which means every day parents will now be misinformed from misinformed physicians. These recommendations will hit food-insecure families and those in choice-limited communities particularly hard.
Tarnishing a Solid Reputation. Pediatrics is an important journal because of its credibility. In the days where rumor and disinformation grab headlines, we need Pediatrics as the hard tether to legitimate evidence and medical guidance.
Harm to Science Communication and Public Trust in Science. Pediatrics has now placed a tremendous burden on scientific communicators that attempt to teach the real risks and benefits of genetic engineering and associated products. In less than a month, this Clinical Report has been shared and discussed as an authoritative document in popular press news outlets that have far more reach and impact than any correction will receive.
Manipulating the reader
The authors presents themselves as if they are on a noble mission, stating that “pediatricians play a vital role in their efforts to minimize fear-based messaging and support families through shared decision making”. They were posturing. They took science out of context to generate fear and uncertainty, promoting food shaming.
Their polemic, now spreading like a poisonous weed through social media and pro-organic websites, will undoubtedly drive parents (especially those of lower scientific literacy and/or socioeconomic status) away from safe, nutritious and affordable food toward organic alternatives (but only if they can afford them). Indeed, data demonstrate that unfounded fears about conventional pesticide residues on fresh produce items lead people, particularly lower income families.to buy and consume fewer fruits and vegetables.
Their idealization of food using organic farming techniques is ideology and not science. The AAP can do better. When it comes to contentious issues like agricultural biotechnology they need to work with certified dietitians, cancer epidemiology, experts in risk assessment and agricultural scientists, to ensure that their guidance matches the best evidence.
To restore their credibility, the AAP must retract the deeply flawed and misleading published work and issue a clear statement based on prevailing evidence. At the very least the article should be labeled as “opinion” and provide readers with a Statement of Concern detailing the issues noted above.
The Pediatrics author write:
Many families express concerns about the safety of GMO containing foods.
They are correct. This concern originates in a rich misinformation ecosystem that this Pediatrics article now augments. Action is immediately required to end fear-based messaging to support families in decisions around food.
Jessica Steier DrPH. is a public health scientist, CEO of Vital Statistics Consulting, science communicator, and Co-host of The Unbiased Science Podcast. Find Jessica on X @unbiasedscipod
Andrea Love Ph.D. is a microbiologist, immunologist, and science communicator with decades of scientific expertise and education in academic, biotechnology, and translational research. Co-host of the Unbiased Science Podcast. Find Andrea on X @unbiasedscipod
Nicole Keller, DO is a General Pediatrician, Chair, Department of Pediatrics
Kevin Folta Ph.D. is a Professor, Keynote Speaker and Host of the Talking Biotech Podcast. Find Kevin on X @kevinfolta
The Heartland Health Research Alliance (HHRA) [an ideologically-focused research groups funded by ‘dark money’ support from the organic industry and tort lawyers cashing on on suits against agro-chemical companies] has pushed aggressively to [influence] the media and the scientific community for the stakeholders funding them. As they deliver their promised conclusions on the effects on pregnant women from trace levels of herbicides and the assumed epigenetic effects on their children into adolescence, all the intersecting Heartland interest groups should expect to benefit from their association. Part 1 of the Heartland exposé looked at how they were relying on funding from the organic food industry lobby, tort law firms and via (dark) donor-advised funds. The second part looked at how the Heartland Study methodology pushed the boundaries of research integrity and ignored basic scientific norms.
This [third article in my series reviews] the groups the HHRA are allegedly partnering with and the credibility of their relationships. For some aligning with HHRA, particularly medical institutions, their relationship may well undermine their appearance of independence and commitment to responsible research.
The Heartland Health Research Alliance (HHRA) has pushed aggressively to make an impact with the media and the scientific community for the stakeholders funding them. As they deliver their promised conclusions on the effects on pregnant women from trace levels of herbicides and the assumed epigenetic effects on their children into adolescence, all the intersecting Heartland interest groups should expect to benefit from their association. Part 1 of the Heartland exposé looked at how they were relying on funding from the organic food industry lobby, tort law firms and via (dark) donor-advised funds. The second part looked at how the Heartland Study methodology pushed the boundaries of research integrity and ignored basic scientific norms.
This final section will look at the groups the HHRA are allegedly partnering with, and the credibility of their relationships. For some aligning with HHRA, particularly medical institutions, their relationship may well undermine their appearance of independence and commitment to responsible research.
The Heartland strategy and organization was established by Charles Benbrook, an activist economist with a rather checkered past. His reach often extended beyond his paygrade. With a PhD in agricultural economics, Benbrook has authored many controversial toxicological and nutrition papers. He has been successful with financing studies and openly promising funders their desired results. He, however, lost his adjunct position at Washington State University due to having misrepresented his funding (100% from the organic food industry lobby) and failing to declare conflicts of interest in papers he published where he tied himself to the university, over-extending their relationship. After having to leave his post, he still used the university affiliations in articles and campaigns.
Charles Benbrook
Partnerships or a few friends in high places?
It seems that Benbrook’s over-extension strategy followed him into the Heartland project. HHRA has claimed an impressive number of high-level academic institutions and government agencies as partners, including:
Boston College
George Mason University
George Washington University
Gunderson Health Systems
Indiana University College of Medicine
Kings College London
Simon Fraser University
University of Iowa Health Care
Centre de Toxicologie du Québec, Minister of Health and Social Services
U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
As the Heartland Study is performing medical research on human subjects, any academic institution partnering with the HHRA would need to go through an extensive review process via an institutional review board (IRB), a research ethics panel approval and an official publication. At the very least, we could expect a Terms of Reference or Memorandum of Understanding drawn up between the parties and published online.
From an early fundraising campaign where HHRA claimed the CDC as a partner (since removed)
Despite HHRA claiming to have been recognized for having the “highest level of transparency,” none of these partnership documents or approvals are accessible on Heartland or any presumed Heartland-partner websites. The editor of The Firebreak had contacted the new managing director of the Heartland Health Research Alliance, Russell King, to ask about the existence of such partnership approvals, Terms of Reference or Memorandums of Understanding… His circular response (he failed to answer the question) belies credibility given HHRA’s founding director, board members, and advisors’ direct roles designing and authoring Heartland Study research publications.
The HHRA director, Russell King, stated:
The HHRA is a nonprofit foundation that funds various programs. The Heartland Study is medical research. The HHRA funds but does not conduct, control, or oversee the study.
— Russell King email, 20 December 2023
We can leave his use of the word “foundation” for another article.
King’s statement ignores the fact that HHRA’s founder and executive director Benbrook was promoted by the group as its “research coordinator” as well as being a co-author of several of the Heartland Study funded project papers. Hardly the hands-off claim being promoted by Mr. King.
We suspect that, in keeping with Benbrook’s history of exaggeration and failure to disclose conflicts of interest, that the Heartland group is claiming a partnership whenever some professor or researcher from one of these institutions is funded or cooperates on a Heartland project. The simple involvement of an academic justifies the Heartland PR machine going into promotional gear to claim a partnership, but we wonder whether these institutions’ academic standards committees would be pleased with their reputations being associated with the integrity issues and low-quality research methodology used in the Heartland Study or their undisclosed donors and their special interests.
Someone should ask them.
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What’s even more disturbing is that the Heartland Health Research Alliance, while it claims that the Heartland Study is its “flagship project”, technically is not involved in the research (outside of funding it). Russell King’s email claims the HHRA “does not conduct, control, or oversee the study”. So who is coordinating the research, guaranteeing the methodology is respected, monitoring its research ethics and ensuring the quality of the publications?
According to King, we should all believe that the Heartland Study research is being done, without coordination, by a group of scientists tied to the partner organizations (who apparently don’t have any formal partnership with the HHRA). King disingenuously implies the researchers only contact with the mother ship is their funding and they are free to acquire their own data, samples and evidence and publish what they want whenever they want.
The HHRA sees its role only in funding the researchers on, what we can only assume, is an ad hoc basis (as they claim they don’t control the research). We have to then assume they will provide funding to whomever within Phil Landrigan’s and Melissa Perry’s circle of associates approaches them (without any layer of oversight). Recall from Part 1 of this exposé, that three years before the HHRA had even been established, Landrigan and Perry had decided themselves to give the Ramazzini Institute nearly a million dollars of Heartland Study funding. Recall Landrigan and Perry are both high-level Ramazzini fellows.
Incredulously the HHRA sees their main role then as to provide an extra layer of smoke to conceal the funding sources for the Heartland Study research (and nothing more). We know from its inception that most of the research funding came from tort law firms and organic food companies, but now funding is hidden away via anonymous (dark), donor-advised funds like the Franciscan Health Foundation. Researchers in this study scheme will be providing evidence for the benefit of tort lawyers and organic food lobbyists while being able to claim ignorance of any conflicts of interest. Wash, Rinse, Repeat.
Mob Science: Money is channeled into the HHRA from tort law firms and the organic food industry via a dark, donor-advised fund (Franciscan Health Foundation), then sent to the Heartland scientists’ institutions. These scientists, when publishing, don’t claim the tort/organic funding in their declarations of interests. It is likely the HHRA partners have no idea what is going on or from where the funds originate.
The HHRA has made it known they want to increase their government funding. What agency would possibly want to provide a grant or public funds to an organization that would admit to them that they do not do the research nor have any control or oversight on the research they would want funded? And by the way, they cannot tell the government agency who has been funding them until now. I suspect only a severely corrupt agency would consider such a request.
Even more questionable are the dubious fringe food and health conspiracy promoters the HHRA are associating with.
Odd fellows
The Heartland Study has promoted their association with John Fagan at the Maharishi International University (see fundraising brochure above). The Maharishi cult is best known for their practice of yogic flying (or rather, levitation by concentration). The Heartland Study has relied on Fagan, the Maharishi Raja for Food Purity and Health Invincibility, to conduct laboratory tests. Fagan’s HRI labs are known for selling $99 home urine test kits for various alternative health marketing interests to find traces of pesticides for which they then offer to sell users natural health “cleansing” solutions. With the millions HHRA receive every year in dark donations, couldn’t they find a more legitimate lab?
In the previous two chapters, this exposé showed how the Heartland Health Research Alliance has closely intertwined its operations with the Collegium Ramazzini (including secretly underwriting their Global Glyphosate Study). Two of the main Heartland scientists, Phil Landrigan and Melissa Perry are also Ramazzini heavyweights while Ramazzini director, Fiorella Belpoggi, is on the Heartland Science Advisory Board.
From the HHRA 2021 IRS filing: Landrigan is at Boston College (mysteriously also called “Ramazzini Institute”), Perry was at GWU in 2021 and Winchester is at Indiana. These scientists seem to be running their own shows with these funds.
Looking at the 2021 IRS declaration for grants to domestic organizations, HHRA paid $145,000 to Boston College, but this money was then allegedly transferred to the Ramazzini Institute in Italy. There is no evidence that Boston College is a sponsor of the Ramazzini Global Glyphosate Study but Phil Landrigan, from Boston College, was the President of Collegium Ramazzini. Why didn’t HHRA just transfer the funds directly to the Ramazzini Institute? Why did Landrigan only publicly acknowledge the redirecting of almost one million dollars of Heartland Study funds to the Ramazzini Institute in 2023 and only after their Global Glyphosate Study was published (with no mention of Boston College as the funding partner)? More transparency is required on the use of these Boston College funds if they were indeed a legitimate HHRA partner.
Is the Ramazzini Institute a good partner for Boston College? Ramazzini and Belpoggi played a leadership role in a prior “study” on GMOs and glyphosate which was later exposed as “fake science” and part of a Russian disinformation ruse to undermine trust in Western government regulatory systems. Given the poor reputation of Ramazzini studies, repeatedly rejected by the mainstream research community and often associated with politicized objectives, should the Heartland seriously consider throwing their lot in with this group?
But the oddest group that the Heartland is associated with are the tort lawyers … who are paying their rent.
Tort interests
Benbrook formulated the Heartland strategy while working as a litigation consultant. He secured funding from many private-equity financed tort lawyers, got one of the key lawyers involved in the glyphosate lawsuits against Bayer-Monsanto, Robin Greenwald, to serve as the board’s vice chair, and has created a structure enabling the Heartland Study to produce evidence that could be used to sue pesticide manufacturers.
The tort law firms’ and their investors objectives for financing this project are clear. If the Heartland Study can produce evidence showing enough correlations of herbicides with infant diseases, they can overwhelm the pesticide companies with thousands of lawsuits and effect (extort) multi-billion-dollar settlements (not for the plaintiffs but for the law firms and their unregulated private equity investors as industry will likely settle before any cases go to trial). And while gardeners could obtain billions from the Roundup litigation settlement, just imagine how much outraged jurors will demand for claims of infants suffering from possible herbicide health effects.
Into the wolves
There is a concern about ethically-challenged researchers getting deeply involved with the opulence, greed and avarice of the US tort law industry. Law firms pay handsome consulting fees for scientists to testify or advise lawyers (minimum $500 per hour), but even more lucrative are the finders fees paid to ethically-questionable litigation marketing firms. It costs a lot to find, screen and coach high-quality plaintiffs. Although kept discrete, it is rumored that the mass tort industry players will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in referral fees to researchers, doctors or other hospital staff who can identify high-quality victims. This practice is illegal, certainly unethical, but it seems, does occur with some frequency. See the case of Sheldon Silver who was paid millions to provide names of plaintiffs for asbestos lawsuits.
While illegal and against all standards of research integrity, participating HHRA partner institutions should be concerned, given the close relationship between Heartland researchers and tort lawyers, that any resulting subject participation in future lawsuits will be perceived as the equivalent of a paid referral by the Heartland litigator insiders and funders. As Heartland-declared partners, these medical institutions would be under a significant legal risk. As HHRA is merely funding these researchers, there seems to be no control mechanism in place.
If a subject in the Heartland research develops complications with her pregnancy, and if the tort lawyers funding the Heartland Study would have access to the researchers as paid expert witnesses in lawsuits, it is not inconceivable that they would tempt the researchers to refer the subject as a plaintiff in a mass tort litigation against a pesticide manufacturer. Given the past ethical transgressions in the management of the Heartland Health Research Alliance, it would come as no surprise if their researchers – many of whom conveniently are already paid consultants and expert witnesses for these class action tort lawsuits – would continue this lucrative practice.
This, more than any other point, would be reason enough for the Heartland Study to be directly managed by the HHRA rather than by a rogue group of self-interested and potentially ethically-conflicted researchers with access to an enormous revenue from cooperating with their tort lawyer funders.
To conclude this three-part exposé, we see that the Heartland Health Research Alliance, while claiming awards for transparency, has been funded by interest groups in the organic food industry lobby and tort law firms suing pesticide companies (although these sources have now been hidden away). Their research methodologies have lacked scientific integrity and have been designed to produce the required conclusions needed for the benefit of the organization’s funders (without control groups or any more evidence than mere correlation). The HHRA has claimed to be associated with a group of academic partners without providing any documentation and identifies its role merely as third-party funders to a group of scientists, without any coordination, control or oversight.
Given the nature of the research, given the interests of the funders and given the lack of proper methodology or oversight, the scientific community should roundly reject the work of these activist scientists writing under the name of the Heartland Study.
Kathleen L. Hefferon is an instructor in microbiology at Cornell University. Find her on X @KHefferon
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
In 1941, at the height of World War 2, troops stationed on Hoy in the remote Scottish Orkney Islands made a ghoulish discovery. Buried in peat on a lonely, windswept hill was the perfectly preserved body of a young woman, “her long dark hair curling about her shoulders”.
Although the corpse was swiftly reburied, news of the macabre find inevitably spread. Soon groups of young soldiers, eager for distraction from the boredom of a distant posting, began making “repeated excursions to the gravesite to exhume and view the remains” of the beautiful and mysterious ‘Lady of Hoy’. This morbid entertainment only ended when senior officers were told about the discovery and ordered the by-now decomposing body permanently interned under a concrete slab.
Who was the Lady of Hoy? In life she’d been an 18th century Orkney villager, Betty Corrigall, whose tragic story is all too sadly familiar. A brief romance with a visiting sailor ended with Betty both pregnant and abandoned. Scorned by her deeply religious community, the distraught girl eventually hanged herself. Her body, that of a sinful suicide, was buried and forgotten in unconsecrated ground far from the scene of her shame. And so it remained for over a century and a half.
Living debates about the dead
Betty Corrigall — the way she was treated both in life and in death — help illuminate an ethical dilemma that has long dogged anthropology and archaeology: how best to deal with human remains and beliefs about the dead, most especially those from times and cultures very different from our own.
This issue has become increasingly acute given the recent rapid advances in ancient DNA analysis of human remains. For those eager to embrace this emerging field, these new technologies offer hope of greater insights into human prehistory and migration, and for valuable knowledge of past human health and disease.
Yet, for others, mindful of the disrespect and desecration of Indigenous burial sites in the past, exploring the genetics of the dead is a “vampire science” with the potential to bring with it “harmful social and political consequences”. Such purported harms include undermining Indigenous land claims, dismissing or disparaging traditional beliefs and oral histories, and potentially “reveal[ing] stigmatizing information like genetic susceptibility to disease”.
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The ’wars of ideology’ extend to archaeology and anthropology
The spread of the wider political Culture Wars into this debate is evident in a recent controversy over the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Passed in 1990, NAGPRA sets out guidelines for the physical return of cultural items to Indian Tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations. It also provides a process for the handling of new discoveries of Native American human remains and ancient sacred objects.
Some archaeologists, anthropologists and think tanks have expressed concerns about ‘legislation creep’, saying that the original act is being misread and inappropriately expanded, causing conflicts. They say the original legislation was not intended to limit universities to curate and study human remains or objects that are not linearly or culturally linked to a specific indigenous population.
Two prominent anthropologists, Elizabeth Weiss and James Springer, are caught in the crosshairs of this debate. Together they authored a book in 2020, “Repatriation and Erasing the Past”, which has put them in the crosshairs of identity activists. Their ‘sin’ according to critics is trying to ‘recenter’ the original legislation, which has expanded over time in its application to cut off access to all remains that are “culturally unidentifiable” to nearby tribes even if there is no clear connection. That’s beyond the original scope of NAGPRA and is dramatically limiting the ability of many scientists to do their science, they say.
As a consequence of their outspoken defense of their views, Weiss and Springer have been attacked as racist colonialists with even a few accusations of white-supremacy. Anthropologists and researchers from Australasia and North America claimed that the “violent language” of Weiss and Springer’s “colonial scholarship” revealed an “explicitly racist ideology”, one “that is deeply disrespectful to Indigenous people”. They (and others) have called for the retraction of the Weiss and Springer text and the censoring of their views.
Their attempt to outline their perspective at an already-scheduled talk at the 2021 Society for American Archaeology was summarily cancelled after some colleagues of being “anti-indigenous”.
The SAA’s Queer Archaeology Interest Group (QAIG) claimed they were deliberately seeking to “foment tremendous anger and pain among SAA members”; The Black Trowel Collective argued that the fact that the talk had even been scheduled by SAA was “just one act in a long history, and ongoing present, of racist, misogynistic, and colonial discourse and action.”
In response, Weiss and Springer, whose views have a large following in the science community, claim that if NAGPRA is not returned to its original intent, archaeology would be guilty of “erasing the past” much like Creationists distort the history of evolution. They contend that the “animistic creation myths” of Indigenous peoples are being given priority over the “comparative, objective, and rigorous framework” of traditional anthropology. They’ve written academicand popular articles in response to what they and others see as ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ over-reach, and bad science.
The two ‘heretics’ have their supporters. Evolutionary biologists Jerry Coyne and Luana Maroja cite this anthropological brouhaha as an example of the “ideological subversion of biology”. In their recent article in Skeptical Inquirer, Coyne and Maroja analyze what they see as the increasing politicization of science, and the resultant “ideologically driven distortions of biology” to favor fashionable “progressive” causes.
Weiss in particular is (or has been) a globally respected physical anthropologist at San Jose State University, who studies 500-3,000 year old bones from California. What happened when she challenged what she felt is a bizarrely broad ban on studying remains?
For simply studying those remains, Weiss was demoted by her university and banned from studying her department’s collection of bones. But it’s even worse: she’s not allowed to study X-rays of the remains or even show a photograph ofthe boxes in which they are kept. Many other universities, such as Berkeley, are also sending back or reburying artifacts and old bones. The result: valuable human history and anthropology remain off limits because remains and artifacts are considered sacred.
With respect to Indigenous beliefs and human remains, Coyne and Maroja point out the downside of the progressive movement’s “desire to valorize oppressed groups” — that it prioritizes religious feelings over empirical facts. “Like biblical creationism,” they argue, “much indigenous knowledge … comes not from evidence but from authority or revelation.” The unfortunate result of some broad ‘protections’ of indigenous artifacts and the like, they suggest, is that “valuable human history and anthropology remain off limits because remains and artifacts are considered sacred.” The currently fashionable policy “simply prevents us from learning about our past”.
The fact is, no anthropological endeavor is ‘bias free’. Charles Darwin, for example, held and expressed views that are clearly racist, sexist and classist — attitudes that influenced later social application of his ideas, such as its transformation into Social Darwinism, eugenics and the like. On the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s Descent of Man in 2021, the prestigious journal Science published an opinion piece by Princeton University social anthropologist Agustín Fuentes that retroactively pilloried the classic book. Darwin’s views, Fuentes argued, “portrayed Indigenous peoples … as less than Europeans in capacity and behavior … offering justification of empire and colonialism, and genocide.” Employing century and a half year old hindsight, he further claimed Darwin “validated” the odious views of modern “Racists, sexists, and white supremacists”.
The resultant outcry in Darwin’s defense was immediate and widespread, with Coyne one of numerous prominent biologists who strongly condemned the Science article’s “distorting treatment” of Darwin’s “revolutionary” ideas. And so the merry-go-round of acrimonious criticism and counter-criticism continues.
Attitudes about the dead — moral and cultural
To move beyond the stifling polarization of identity-based disputes, we could seek common ground between all parties by underscoring the obvious but crucial point that all human cultures possess traditions and customs relating to death and dying. These should be respected and honored. While the specific details may vary widely, the underlying “beliefs about death” and “death rituals” represent human universals— inherent features of human psychology that exemplify the “psychic unity of humankind”. Many human cultural practices and beliefs — about cooperation, say, or sex or conflict, and death — are shaped by psychological tendencies that channel our thinking or behavior in broadly predictable ways. (The bitter tribalism of the Culture Wars, for example, clearly illuminates humans’ evolved tendency to form in-groups and out-groups, with inflammatory rhetoric a way to ‘virtue signal’ allegiance to one side against the other.)
Or consider ‘dualist thinking,’ the belief that humans have both a material body and an immaterial ‘soul’ capable of persisting after bodily death. This innate “folk psychology of souls” helps explain why concepts of spirits and ghosts are near-universal across cultures, and the ease with which children understand and accept these ideas.
In essence, normal human beings cannot help but feel that ‘something’ lingers after death — and even avowed materialists (those who, like me, believe that the human mind is simply a product of the physical body) may still feel that the mistreatment of human remains is somehow irreverent or sacrilegious. Inherent dualist thinking is a psychological default that takes effort to overcome (as too does our inherent tendency towards group tribalism). (Importantly, the objectivity demanded by science does not come naturally to the evolved human mind, with this too requiring effort and experience to master; and while science is ultimately self-correcting, the well-documented intrusion of social biases and prejudice in scientific research demonstrates how readily we revert to inherent ways of thinking.)
How do these cultural contretemps (or wars in some cases) play out in the case of Betty Corrigall’s interned body? She was dead (yet preserved), with her body thus both culturally and psychologically ‘taboo’. That helps explain both the soldiers’ morbid fascination with her corpse and the officers’ disapproval of their behavior. (There may also have been a sexual element to the young male troops’ interest, also rooted in universal cultural and psychological tendencies.)
What was actually wrong with the soldiers digging up and gawking at Betty Corrigall’s body? After all, what made her alive was long gone, not so different from the once-flourishing plants that formed the peat that preserved her. There is a belief that soldiers were callously stirring a vaporous human ‘essence’ still lingering around poor Betty’s body, but what harm, and to whom, did the soldiers’ voyeuristic curiosity cause?. It’s this intangible but common belief in the scaredness of death that remains part of her and will forever in time
In essence, our evolved psychological tendencies bestow heightened significance on human remains. It may be a myth, especially to agnostic science, but it’s a dominant belief nonetheless, and its shadow floats over all graves, which certainly includes displaced and disenfranchised Indigenous people. Given this, it is understandable why the odious history of grave robbing in the name of science is deeply distressing for many, and not just a form of ideological faddism
Anthropologists and geneticists should be more sensitive to this shameful aspect of scientific history and to the psychological distress that ‘disrespect’ for the dead may cause. Nevertheless, while evolved psychological predispositions may influence cultural beliefs and behaviors concerning the dead, customs and traditions are not necessarily fixed as a result. Those who purport to speak on behalf of these communities have a responsibility of their own to recognize that beliefs about the dead can also evolve over time, even within seemingly ‘traditional’ cultures, and should always be balanced against other practices, including scientific endeavors that can widely benefit others.
Times they are a-changing
Let’s return to the Lady of Hoy. From a modern liberal perspective, Betty’s story draws attention to the cruelty of the social attitudes that led to her death. While it is possible that she herself accepted the community beliefs that led to her condemnation and her subsequent suicide, such bigoted views are no longer acceptable in the liberal West. Moral attitudes have changed. The same is true of numerous now out-dated historical customs and behaviors. In her time; for example, the barbaric trans-Atlantic slave trade was still in full flow, as was the heinous practice of burning female (though not male) criminals at the stake. Yet no reasonable modern Westerner would call for these ‘traditional’ institutions to be reinstituted.
Just as Western societies have changed (rapidly and recently), so too have Indigenous cultures. For example, slavery and human sacrifice were practiced in many historical Indigenous cultures, and ritual cannibalism in others. Today, though, no Indigenous person would defend these practices as appropriate to their modern lives. ‘Authentic’ traditional culture is, as postmodernists themselves might agree, an elusive concept. Modern Indigenous peoples do not see the world through the eyes of their ancestors, just as modern Westerners no longer share the worldview of their forebears.
Yet the irony is obvious: many self-proclaimed ‘protectors’ of Indigenous culture who rail against the ‘colonization’ of the sacred past are themselves imposing idealized and somewhat condescending European notions of the “noble savage” on Indigenous societies, protecting their remains with no exceptions. Does not intent matter? What if the archaeological excavation offers scientific benefit that serves the greater good or a tribe’s yearning to better understand its history? Should excavating DNA be treated the same as extracting skulls or other skeletal remains from burial sites?
Yes, historically, many (but by no means all) Indigenous cultures venerated their dead and gave obeisance to the spirits of the deceased. But how that was expressed, historically and today, varies dramatically from culture to culture, There is no universal view of how to handle ancient remains. There are no ethical qualms about digging up ancient hominin ancestors such as Neanderthals or excavating skeletons from the sunken Titanic.
Titanic remains at the shipwreck site
Numerous archaeologists have consulted and collaborated with tribes, some of which have allowed the excavation of DNA from their forebears’ graves, as the Colville Tribe did in the case of Kennewick Man. Some tribes are honored by knowing more about their ancestors. Blanket prohibitions, formal or implied, and enforced by public shaming of scientists, not only hurts science but steals agency from Indigenous cultures, who have a right to negotiate their own practices.
While past custom can be a guide, any particular response to questions of identity and human remains is only one of several possible modern interpretations of historical tradition; by their very nature, novel problems require novel solutions. An aversion to genetic research into ancient remains is therefore only one of several possible modern interpretations of how to protect traditional cultural customs and beliefs that emerged long before such technologies were even possible.
It is similarly belittling to presume that all members of Indigenous communities share uniform perspectives, or that belonging to a particular group implies unanimous opinions and attitudes. Activists, often representing an academic or urban elite, who claim to speak for a specific community may articulate political opinions that do not necessarily mirror the broader range of views within that community As is often the case, the most vocal voices, especially those willing to stifle opposing viewpoints elsewhere, may drown out the potential diversity of beliefs within a community. In the case of the NAGPRA dispute, for example, the outspoken opinions of certain Indigenous individuals may conceal others’ curiosity about what modern genetic science can reveal about their ancestral history.
A (genetic) window into the past
There are other reasons why blocking DNA analysis of ancient remains, while purportedly protecting Indigenous people, can potentially be harmful: it closes off valuable practical, intellectual and cultural knowledge that can help all communities, including vulnerable Indigenous ones.
Greater understanding of health and disease is one of the most obvious practical benefits of inquiry into the genetic ancestry of different populations. In Europe, for example, an ever increasing accumulation of genetic data has shed new light on the history, spread and causes of diseases, including insights into susceptibility and immunity to ancient plagues, and even Neanderthal genetic links to the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Yet given how human genetics research is already massively slewed towards those of European ancestry, this can only get worse for Indigenous peoples if access to ancestral remains is denied. This holds particularly true for Indigenous communities, where specific susceptibilities to certain diseases exist due to the genetic isolation of ancestral populations (as is the case with European Jews, the Amish, Basque Spaniards and numerous other groups isolated by geography or tradition).
Research has already identified numerous disorders found primarily in Native American populations. STAC3 disorder (formerly known as Native American myopathy) is a condition that weakens the muscles that the body uses for movement. Human HOXA1 syndromes are rare disorders with complex neurological and systemic symptoms. The disorder, found among a few American Indian tribes such as the Navajo and Apache’s can result in deafness and heart malformations. Restricting access to Indigenous genetic information could hinder our ability to address their unique health challenges effectively.
(And note here that some critics opposed to DNA extraction have raised concerns about potential revelations of “stigmatizing information” related to disease susceptibility if genetic analysis of ancestral remains is allowed. It is as if possible, though not inevitable, stigma is worse than actual disease itself.)
Reviewing the Indigenous rights conflict through the eyes of Orkney
What about the potential intellectual and cultural benefits of increased understanding of Indigenous genetic ancestry? Let’s return to Hoy in the Orkney Islands to illustrate this point. In a heather-covered valley, a few miles from Betty Corrigall’s lonely grave, lies the Dwarfie Stane, an ancient rock-cut tomb steeped in local legends of trolls and giants. These folktales aside, archaeological evidence suggests that the burial chambers of this isolated monument were carved out approximately 5,000 years ago by people “using nothing but stone or antler tools, muscle power and patience”.
This was a period of great cultural change throughout Europe as the Neolithic ‘Stone Age’ gave way to the Bronze Age. So much has long been clear from the archaeological record. But was the dramatic cultural shift (indicated by material remains such as changes in pottery style) driven by the diffusion of new technologies and ideas or by the influx of new people?
DNA research has resolved the ‘pots or people’ debate in archaeology. We now know that the movement of people from the steppes north of the Black Sea reshaped cultural practices c. 3000 BCE and that these people — and the diseases they brought with them — supplanted the established communities of Neolithic farmers and hunter-gatherers. Recent genetic analysis of burial remains in Orkney paint the same picture: the islands “experienced a wave of immigrants during the Bronze Age so large that it replaced most of the local population”.
Nevertheless, Orkney stands apart. Unlike in much of western and central Europe, where mass population replacement was predominantly led by males, “the Bronze Age newcomers to the [Orkney] islands were mostly women”. Furthermore, in another unique finding not seen outside Orkney, the indigenous Neolithic male genetic lineage “persisted at least 1000 years into the Bronze Age, despite replacement of 95 per cent of the rest of the genome by immigrating women”. For reasons that are still unclear, however, traces of this lineage disappeared (as occurred much more abruptly elsewhere) and is no longer found in the modern Orkney population.
Tales of the past
There’s more to these “absolutely fascinating” discoveries (to quote one of the Orkney genetic researchers). Unrelated research by linguists and cultural anthropologists has traced traditional folktales deep into the prehistoric past, dating back in some cases to the Bronze Age. Using phylogenetic comparative methods borrowed from evolutionary biology to analyze stories common to different cultures and languages, researchers have reconstructed a ‘tree’ of Indo-European languages that track the descent of shared fables across time.
According to the findings, the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk, for example, “was rooted in a group of stories classified as The Boy Who Stole Ogre’s Treasure, and could trace to when Eastern and Western Indo-European languages split more than 5,000 years ago”. Beauty And The Beast and Rumpelstiltskin, meanwhile, dated to 4,000 years ago while a story about a blacksmith selling his soul to the devil “was estimated to go back 6,000 years”.
How does this apply to early Bronze Age Orkney? The newly arrived settlers not only brought new tools and technologies but likely also folktales that persist until the present day. It takes little imagination to see Bronze Age storytellers employing the remarkable acoustics of the chambers of the prehistoric Dwarfie Stane to weave captivating stories of giants and trolls, and of the boy who steals their treasure. Betty Corrigall and her fellow villagers would also have known versions of these same stories, passed down through countless generations — local variants of the fables most famously collected by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm (‘Brothers Grimm’) only decades after Betty’s untimely death. (The adaptation and variation of such stories — and indeed languages — across time and place mirror the processes of Darwinian evolution, with these cultural ‘memes’ serving as analogues to biological genes.)
Resolving claims over human remains
Now we can return to the ongoing dispute over the scientific analysis of Indigenous remains. Compare the expanding understanding of Europe’s human history — from population dispersals to particular diseases, and from food to fairy tales — with the similar potential insights lost if scientific inquiry into Indigenous history is closed off. Then consider the alternative: pairing scientific consilience with Indigenous ‘ways of knowing,’ not as a replacement (as some fear) but as a complement, circumscribed by the input and cooperation of Native cultures. Such an approach could establish connections to broader facets of ancestral culture, while unveiling unrecognized patterns in early Indigenous settlement and population movements.
Restricting research into ancient history does a disservice to modern Indigenous communities (as well as exacerbating existing inequalities in genetic research along perceived ‘racial’ lines). This stance is both unfair and patronizing, as Indigenous people share the same curiosity about the past as any other community. Scientific knowledge doesn’t necessarily abrogate personal beliefs about ancestral history nor destroy our appreciation of folktales, legends and deeply held ancestral religious beliefs; rather, it can offer, if executed cooperatively, a more enriched understanding of Indigenous ancestry.
Visiting Betty Corrigal’s lonely gravesite is a moving experience. Even the setting is evocative, high above Scapa Flow, the natural harbour at the heart of the Orkney archipelago. Despite the distance of centuries, one cannot but empathize with the poor girl, hounded and abandoned. As a species-typical human trait, empathy comes naturally — as, too, do the moralistic judgements of Betty’s fellow villagers who drove her to suicide.
Science is key to rising above inherent human frailties. True, biology must acknowledge its shameful history of prejudice and intolerance. There is room for greater engagement and for mutually beneficial cooperation between scientists and Indigenous people in ways that not only benefit the native cultures but all of humanity.
Patrick Whittle has a PhD in philosophy and is a freelance writer with a particular interest in the social and political implications of modern biological science. Follow him at patrickmichaelwhittle.com. Find Patrick on X @WhittlePM
Two friends independently emailed me a recent article from CNN’s website with this headline, which prompted both to ask whether they should forgo the new COVID vaccine.
Whoever composed the headline, which unnecessarily stoked fear among the most vulnerable, clearly did not read the article.
Back in January, the CDC and FDA issued a public communication which explained that one of the CDC’s vaccine safety monitoring databases had detected a small risk of stroke for older adults who received a dose of Pfizer’s bivalent COVID-19 vaccine and a high-dose flu shot on the same day.
The FDA then looked more closely in the medical records of seniors on Medicare at the possibility of strokes or transient ischemic attacks after vaccination. About 600,000 Medicare-age patients suffer a stroke each year.
The CNN article clarified that “the risk identified in the FDA’s study appears to be very small — roughly 3 strokes or transient ischemic attacks for every 100,000 doses given. The study also found it may be primarily driven by the high-dose or adjuvanted flu vaccines, which are specially designed to rev up the immune system so it mounts a stronger response to the shot.” The high-dose vaccines provide greater protection against flu for people 65 and over.
It is noteworthy that, as the CNN article said, the three events per 100,000 doses administered includes not only actual strokes but also transient ischemic attacks, which, by definition, are transient and do not leave sequelae. That further minimizes the significance of the association (assuming it is real).
The article also quoted Dr. Steve Nissen, a cardiologist and researcher at the Cleveland clinic, who added more perspective on the stroke risk: “The absolute risk is miniscule,” and is trivial compared to the risk of the elderly dying from COVID. (He might have added that the risk of stroke or transient ischemic attacks from vaccination is also miniscule compared to the risk of often-debilitating long COVID, the persistence of signs and/or symptoms following an acute COVID infection.)
The article further clarified that at least five other recent studies, many intended specifically to evaluate whether there is a link between the vaccines and strokes— “have not found any additional risk of stroke after vaccination for COVID-19, influenza or both.” (Emphasis added)
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Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, director of the Immunization Safety Office at the CDC, underscored that conclusion: “Available data do not provide clear and consistent evidence of a safety problem for ischemic stroke with bivalent mRNA COVID-19 vaccines when given alone or given simultaneously with influenza vaccines.”
The article also emphasized that researchers currently recommend that “everyone should still get vaccinated since an increase in risk of a stroke after vaccination is dwarfed by the increased risk of stroke or other serious outcomes following either a flu or COVID-19 infection.”
It concludes with a quote from Dr. William Schaffner, an eminent infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, making the same point:
The risk of serious disease associated with both influenza and COVID for the population at highest risk, which is of course, older persons, is so much greater than the potential increased risk associated with a vaccine.
None of this nuance was captured by the ill-written title. Headline writers should at least read the article before composing the headline.
Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Glenn Swogger Distinguished Fellow at the American Council on Science and Health. He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Find him on X @henryimiller
Speculation persists about the causes of autism thanks to an explosion in the number of cases that have been diagnosed in recent years. Why are so many more children diagnosed today than in previous decades? Veterans battling crippling PTSD may benefit from treatment with psychedelic drugs, but lingering scientific and legal obstacles could prevent us from finding out for certain. Is alcoholism inherited? Some studies support that conclusion, though it could just be a classic case of confusing correlation for causation.
Join hosts Dr. Liza Dunn and GLP contributor Cameron English on episode 246 of Science Facts and Fallacies as they break down these latest news stories:
There’s no doubt that the number of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) cases has skyrocketed in recent decades, going from one child in 2,000 being diagnosed in the 1970s to roughly one in 250 eight years olds today. The increase has given rise to rampant speculation about the environmental factors that may contribute to the spectrum of conditions. Everything from pesticides and vaccines to assisted reproductive technologies and maternal alcohol consumption have been identified as possible causes, although none of these correlations have withstood scientific scrutiny. Have we learned more about the causes of ASD, or are we still grasping at straws?
Military veterans suffering from PTSD and related psychiatric disorders may benefit from the use of psychedelic drugs like MDMA. Preliminary research and anecdotal evidence have been promising, suggesting that psychedelics may cure these debilitating conditions in some cases, though additional research is needed to understand the long-term impacts of these treatments, including their side effects. There’s a bipartisan effort underway in Congress to roll back regulations that restrict how these substances are studied and utilized in clinical settings, but it remains to be seen if psychedelics can live up to their hype.
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Children of alcoholics are four times more likely than other children to become alcoholics. That observation has fueled investigations to uncover a genetic basis for alcohol use disorder (AUD). While there is no definitive answer yet, studies have linked mutations in genes related to alcohol metabolism to an individual’s risk for AUD. The challenge is that alcohol abuse often correlates with other medical issues, such as obesity and depression. Could it be that one of these conditions encourages some people to abuse alcohol? Or maybe all these challenges are caused by a (or several) different environmental factors? Let’s take a look at the latest science and see if we can separate correlation from causation.
Dr. Liza Dunn is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD
In 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring drew attention to pesticides and their possible dangers to humans, birds, mammals and the environment. Some of her conclusions and warnings have not held up over time, but Silent Spring launched a movement that changed how the U.S. thought about chemicals and biotechnology. Today, pesticides are still high on the list of concerns for consumers when they are deciding what food products to buy.
Pesticides, even at minute levels, are widely viewed as dangerous and bad for the environment. That belief is not based on current scientific evidence, but instead is shaped by general beliefs and values, often along the lines of ‘natural is better’. There is also a widespread belief that conventional farming is damaging consequences to the environment because it uses chemicals while organic farmers do not; that’s not accurate. Consumers also widely believe that pesticide residues on their produce are dangerous to their health. That’s not true, either. Study after study and statistics released by the Environmental Protection Agency and other independent agencies have found that 99+% of the fruits and vegetables produced in the US is safe to eat after washing.
Let’s examine these controversies in more detail
Still, dangerous myths persist. Scare tactics from advocacy groups, many funded by the organic industry, have convinced a majority of consumers that organic produce is grown with no chemicals and therefore is safer and healthier than conventionally grown foods. When the Soil Association, a major organic accreditation body in the UK, asked consumers why they buy organic food, 95% of them said their top reason was to avoid pesticides. That organization, like many people, believe that organic farming involves little to no pesticide use. That’s inaccurate. Nonetheless, this ‘conventional wisdom” is widely disseminated by the media, on fringe but widely read Internet sites as well as many mainstream publications.
Organic farmers use a wide array of chemicals, both natural and on limited circumstances, synthetic. Claims that organic produce is safer and healthier because it uses no or less chemicals are not supported by independent studies. Many consumers believe organic foods are not grown using pesticides or are safer because the chemicals they do use are mostly naturally-derived. No again. More produce is grown in California than in any other state. According to state and USDA statistics, over half of all the pesticides used in California by all categories of farmers are active ingredients that are approved for organic.
The misconception that organic food is safer because its ‘grown without chemicals ‘spurs many consumers to buy organic produce instead of more affordable conventional produce. Crop chemophobia has also spurred movements to ban synthetic pesticides (even though some synthetic chemicals are used and approved by organic farmers). However, most organic foods are also grown using pesticides. The main difference is that the most of the pesticides used to grow organic food are derived from natural sources rather than produced synthetically. Some organic pesticides are actually more toxic than their synthetic counterparts, as synthetic pesticide development is not limited to the requirements of sticking to solely natural sources. Nevertheless, the bulk of organic-approved pesticides are used by conventional farmers, mostly sulfur compounds used to control fungus.
What are the facts about pesticides used in agriculture and pesticide residues in food today? Can pesticides play a role in the future of sustainable, environmentally-friendly agriculture?
Pesticides are ubiquitous in agriculture, used by all farmers to control weeds, insect infestation and diseases. As the US Department of Agriculture writes, “pesticides, together with fertilizers and improved seed varieties, have contributed to substantial increases in crop yields over the last 80 years.” Scientists have worked to drastically improve pesticides over this time by increasing their effectiveness while designing them to be more targeted, thus decreasing the overall toxicity of crop chemicals used on crops. They are far less toxic to non-target flora and fauna than earlier generation pesticides. Their safety, biodegradability and effectiveness have improved so much that they are sometimes better for the environment (and less expensive) than chemicals used by organic farmers.
Yes, organic produce still contains pesticides and pesticide residues. [They do not use organic fairy dust). Yet, many activist organizations try to promote misleading information about the use of farm chemicals by both organic and conventional farmers. That helps perpetuate the ‘accepted wisdom’ organic crops are either grown without chemicals or the natural chemicals they use are far safer than those used by conventional farmers. That’s inaccurate. Where did these myths originate and who continues to propagate them?
In the US today, many ‘natural’-promoting websites and dozens of environmental advocacy groups, some funded by the organic industry, perpetuate this dangerous myth. The Environmental Working Group is generally (dis) credited with having the most influence in spreading misinformation about the presence of chemicals in our food. Since 1995, the EWG has produced an annual list called the Dirty Dozen to call out specific produce that they claim should be avoided because they have more pesticide residue than other produce. Released each spring, the list has become somewhat of a media event.
Why do almost no independent scientists nor health officials nor serious journalist takes its ratings seriously. For one, it rejects the Environmental Protection Agency’s tolerance levels (explained here), instead relying on ita murky proprietary evaluation process which it refuses to disclose. EWG misleads consumers into believing that the very presence of chemical residues pose a danger to humans. That’s not true. Even the highest levels of pesticide residue found on produce on its hit list are well below a level that would be dangerous to humans. As the Environmental Protection Agency explains: “The presence of a detectible pesticide residue does not mean the residue is at an unsafe level.”
How does the US government oversight process work? Steve Savage, a scientist and GLP contributing writer, notes that “Each year the USDA and its 10 state-level partner agencies go out and collect more than ten thousand food samples from commercial channels within the US food system” as part of its Pesticide Data Program.
The samples are taken to the USDA’s national lab or to one of 7 state laboratories throughout the US. There they are prepared the way they would normally be at the household level (washing, peeling etc), and then analyzed using very sensitive technologies that can accurately measure the amounts of more than 300 different pesticides and pesticide metabolites. For 2021 (the 31st year of the PDP) there were 10,127 samples and a total of 27,541 residue detections. For their Dirty Dozen List, the EWG essentially treats all of those detections as equally problematic. To do that truly represents “data abuse.”
The following graph shows the total number of tests done by the USDA for pesticide residues on specific vegetables in 2017, the number of detections found, and the number of detections over the EPA tolerance for the specific pesticide detected. The data is from the USDA pesticide data program. Clearly, both conventional and organic produce is very safe, and very low levels of pesticides are detected in general.
The truth is that many organic pesticides are more toxic than those developed in the lab…. [A] pesticide is a product labeled to kill a pest. Therefore, organic products that kill pests are chemicals, just like their non-organic counterparts. The main difference is how they were created. …
Why did I indicate that organic produce may be treated with more pesticides than conventional produce? The simple answer is that organic products breakdown more rapidly, providing a shorter period of protection before another application must be applied for control. This shorter interval is what can account for a greater number of applications and more product being applied to a specific crop.
The debate then comes into how these pesticides breakdown, how easy they are to wash off before consumption, and a personal judgement of the information. The bottom line is both conventional and organically grown food has pesticide residues on them when they come home from the grocery store or farmers market.
Should consumers be wary of the presence of trace chemicals on our produce? Again, the answer is ‘no’. According to Patton, “We should [always] use smart food handling and safety practices when preparing our food, whether it’s conventionally or organically grown.”Just like anything that goes into your body, it’s the dose (the amount) that matters, and data show the residue amounts are far too minuscule to impact human health. It should also be noted that fruits and vegetables naturally contain “toxic” chemicals like aluminum, nicotine and capsaicin. But the amounts are so low that it’s not something we need to worry about.
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It’s distressingly clear to the science community that many ‘facts’ reported in the media or posted online are oversimplified compared to the real challenge of producing food in the most healthy and efficient way possible. It is easy to call organic ‘good’ and conventional ‘bad’, but that is not accurate and not the best way to improve farming practices going forward. Many changes and improvements in pesticides and farming practices have been made over the last few decades, but to continue improving, we need to evaluate each pesticide, technology and farming practice individually and constantly compare them with alternatives. This is the only way to accurately and scientifically meet the challenges we face in the future, including the growing threat of increasing population and climate change.
Kayleen Schreiber is the GLP’s infographics and data visualization specialist. She researched and authored this series as well as creating the figures, graphs, and illustrations. Follow her at her website, on Twitter @ksphd or on Instagram @ksphd
Marc Brazeau is the GLP’s senior contributing writer focusing on agricultural biotechnology. He also is the editor ofFood and Farm Discussion Lab. Marc served as project editor and assistant researcher on this series. Follow him on Twitter @eatcookwrite
GLP Executive Director Jon Entine edited the story and added information for context.
Brexit has been a disaster for the UK. It has not spurred the great economic revival that many of the Brexiters claimed it would. And many studies have indicated it will make the UK poorer over the long-term and deter investment.
One of the very few benefits derived from Brexit is that it has allowed England to break free from the stifling European Union regulation of crop biotechnology.
For years, the UK, in lockstep with its then partner EU countries, became a backwater in agro-biotechnology innovation. The EU embraced the ‘precautionary principle’ in its regulatory approach. Genetic engineering of crops—first transgenic (‘foreign’ genes are moved from one crop to another) GMOs beginning in the 1990s and more recently cisgenic genetic engineering, such as CRISPR.
There is a key difference between the EU’s regulatory structure (which is also now being re-evaluated) and the one embraced by countries that have recently deregulated gene editing of crops such as the US, Canada, Japan, Brazil, Israel, Argentina and now England. Regulations in these nations are based on the attributes of the final ‘product while the EU focuses on the ‘process,’ suggesting (falsely) that genetic modification cannot occur naturally in nature.
As the Royal Society has written, applauding the break from Europe regulations, England has discarded “the false assumption that risk is determined by breeding technology rather than the outcomes that the breeding technology is used to deliver.”
Following the end of the Brexit process, the administration of then Prime Minister Boris Johnson moved quickly to deregulate GE for crops and encourage their development. After almost a year-long parliamentary debate, the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill was approved in March 2023.
The new law only covers England; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland continue to outlaw the growing of any genetically engineered crops. The legislation has four major provisions.
First, it removes plants and animals that are produced through a process of precision breeding technologies from the regulatory requirements that have stifled the approval of GMOs.
Second, it introduces a two-track notification system for precision breed organisms to be published in the public register. One will be for research purposes and the other for marketing purposes.
Third, it establishes a regulatory system for precision-bred animals to ensure that animal welfare is safeguarded.
Fourth, it sets up a new science-based authorization process for food and feed products developed using precision-bred plants and animals.
Foods created via genetic modification; transgenesis, the transfer of genes between species, will remain banned. The legislation allowing genetic editing of livestock will be implemented later than the sections dealing with plants. The act does not contain any mandatory labeling of foods grown from genetically-edited seeds and consumed domestically. All GE food that is exported to the EU will have to be labelled.
“The passing of the bill is a positive step forward for research and innovation, and will align England’s regulatory path with other countries, said Dr. Penny Hundleby, senior scientist in the Crop Transformation group at the John Innes Centre.
We have used precision breeding techniques for the last 10 years as a research tool to further our understanding of plants, determining which genes underpin which characteristics. This new Act means that we will start to see the outcomes of our research being used to develop crops which are more resilient, and foods that are more nutritious.
The passage of the legislation opens the door to a more sustainable farming system. “[We] now have the opportunity to revolutionize plant breeding and tap into the vast biodiversity of plants in a more precise manner,” said Nick Talbot, executive director of The Sainsbury Laboratory. “This is a crucial innovation that can help break our dependence on agrochemicals and ensure a more sustainable future for all.”
In addition to increasing yields and nutrition, gene-edited crops are more resilient to droughts, flooding and other increasingly unstable weather conditions. “The UK, along with countries around the world, are in a race to climate-proof food systems, and conventional breeding alone cannot keep up with the rapidly changing challenges of new growing conditions, “notedGiles Oldroyd, director of the Crop Science Centre at the University of Cambridge.
Despite the enthusiasm about the change in regulatory direction, many scientists expressed frustration that the legislation did not go far enough, particularly as it did not remove the ban on transgenic modification (GMOs). Said the Royal Society:
This approach is no longer justified given the evidence from 30 years of commercial use that crops developed with GM methods are no more likely to pose unpredictable risks than crops resulting from other breeding technologies. Instead, regulation should focus on assessing scientifically plausible risks given what is known about the GM trait and the species it was introduced into.
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England poised to become major innovator of GE crops
Although biotechnology institutions in England have conducted controlled field trials, no genetic engineered crops have ever been commercialized in the UK.
The Crop Science Centre has conducted trials of both GMO and gene-edited barley to evaluate whether natural-occurring soil fungi would reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers.
“I would say that [gene editing is] definitely a technology that we simply cannot afford to miss at this point where we are, in terms of climate change, said the center’s Lars Ostergaard.” We will not be able to fulfill the requirement in plant-based food production without using this technology.”
Global partnerships
The John Innes Centre is also developing gene-edited vitamin-D rich tomatoes. Norfolk Plant Sciences, a spinout company from the John Innes Centre and the Sainsbury Laboratory, has developed a genetically engineered purple tomato that is rich in anti-oxidants. It will be introduced to market in the US next year.
Rothamsted has partnered with Massachusetts- based Yield10 Bioscience to develop gene-edited technologies to boost yield in crops. It has also launched trials of an omega-3 camelina oilseed variety to produce the first plant-based oil, which is known to improve cardiovascular health. Plant-based fish-like oils will also help reduce overfishing which is decimating many fish stocks.
Under previous regulations, trial sites had to be approved by the government, an application procedure that would take many months. With the new law in place, approval for Rothamsted’s Camelina sativa took just weeks. “The new regulations make it significantly easier to carry out research trials and we are very pleased to be able to take immediate advantage of this,” said Johnathan Napier, who leads Rothamsted’s research into the false flax.
Rothamsted is also conducting field trials of a gene-edited wheat that reduces the levels of a naturally occurring amino acid, asparagine, which converts into a carcinogenic processing contaminant, acrylamide, when bread is baked or toasted. The objective of the trials was to produce low asparagine wheat.
“This would benefit consumers by reducing their exposure to acrylamide from their diet, and food businesses by enabling them to comply with regulations on the presence of acrylamide in their products,“ said Nigel Halford of Rothamsted.
North Carolina-based Pairwise, which has introduced to market a gene-edited, vitamin-enhanced and milder tasting greens, has struck a technology-sharing agreement with Norwich-based Tropic Biosciences to develop CRISPR disease resistant bananas, low caffeine coffee and disease resistant rice.”
When the government introduced the bill to liberalize the regulations concerning genetically engineered crops in May 2022, George Eustice, who was then the UK Minister for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, wrote to the Scottish and Welsh governments to urge them to reconsider their opposition to the technology, but he was rebuffed. No approach was made to Northern Ireland as its food policies have operated under a separate agreement that was negotiated with the EU.
Under UK law, the devolved governments of each country composing the UK allows Scotland and Wales to go their own way on some legislation, and they have both chosen to restrict the sale of genetically edited foods. They insist they want to continue to align their regulations with that of the European Union which currently discourages all forms of genetic engineering to cultivate crops, although that appears to be in the process of changing.
Still, gene-editing research continues in Scotland. The Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh has produced pigs resistant to Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS), which is one of the most expensive animal diseases in the world, and it has plans to commercialize any products developed in the US. It also has a collaboration with Imperial College of London and the Pirbright Institute in Surrey to use CRISPR technology to make chickens partially resistant to avian flu.
Although a change in Scottish policy opposing gene-editing is unlikely in the absence of a change in policy in the EU, Anne Glover, Scotland’s former chief scientific adviser, continues to lobby the government to reverse course.
I understood the Scottish Government wants to see that agriculture is sustainable, and that we reduce as much as possible the impact on the environment of the use of chemicals and fossil fuel-based fertilizers. The more you can do that the better, and gene-editing offers the possibility to do that.
In July, the European Commission issued a favorable policy paper on gene-editing, urging a more flexible course, but it is uncertain if or when the EU legislature will act upon those recommendations, and whether significant reforms will result.
Steven E. Cerier is a retired international economist and a frequent contributor to the Genetic Literacy Project.
Most of us will never see a live llama except at a zoo unless we have an opportunity to travel to the South American Andes where they are used as pack animals or they have been adopted as farm animals. They are quite a sight and have become favorites at zoos around the world. With their docile demeanor, sturdy bodies covered in curly wool, banana-shaped ears, long eyelashes, and upturned mouths, they look like creatures that could have walked off the pages of a Dr. Seuss story, delighting children and their parents everywhere.
But soon, they might carry another purpose: as the source for a new class of biological, sustainable crop protection products, which would be designed based on llama antibodies.
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Like all mammals including humans, llamas have a complex immune system involving two kinds of white blood cells and a collection of specialized proteins called “antibodies” which bind to the “antigens” of disease-causing agents like bacteria, viruses, and fungi. The immune system “learns” to recognize these antigens after the animal is infected and then uses them to ward off future infections. Humans and animals can get that same benefit through vaccinations in which they are exposed just to antigens of an infectious disease or pathogen.
Normal antibodies are large, complicated proteins, and llamas make those. But they and related animals such as camels and alpacas also make a smaller category of antibodies. The antigen binding domain of such simpler antibodies, sometimes called “nanobodies”, are about a tenth of the size of regular antibodies.
Credit: Baylor College of Medicine
Synthetic versions of these proteins are already being developed as targeted human medicines and as treatments to alleviate some of the symptoms of human diseases with no known cures like cystic fibrosis. It is now also possible to produce anti-viral therapiesthrough the advanced fermentation systems that have been developed over the past few decades. Those methods are now used to make everything from human medicines to the soy heme protein in an Impossible Burger. Soon, products inspired by llama antibodies and grown in a sophisticated modern fermentation system could be used to protect fruits and vegetables from fungi.
Biotalys, a Belgium-based company with a US presence in the Research Triangle in Raleigh, is doing just that —developing protein-based biocontrol products that target plant pests and diseases.
Here’s where the llama comes into play
Biotalys taps into the llama’s special antibody-generating system. For example, they did a detailed analysis of the biology of a dreaded fungus called Botrytis cinerea which creates a fuzzy, gray mold that can rot fruit and vegetables. For growers, this disease can lead to major yield losses and for consumers often causes food waste.
Grapes infected with the fungus Botrytis cinerea
Biotalys has identified a critical element that the fungus needs in order to infect the plant, but which is unique to that pest. A llama was then injected with some of that material so that it would generate one of its unique, antibodies that can bind to the target antigen of the mold to inactivate it and thus act as a biological fungicide to stop the infection process. The llama fulfilled its role by “suggesting” a sequence of amino acids with that binding capability which Biotalys then used as a starting point for the design for an even smaller protein that still does the specific binding, but which can be produced through fermentation.
This new category of crop protection agents, “AGROBODYTM biocontrols” could have multiple advantages.
First, they can be extremely specific, only binding to a unique enzyme or other feature of the pest and not having any “off target” effects.
Second, they can provide new “modes of action” for pest control; that’s important because fungi and other pests are very good at evolving resistance and so it is important to utilize in “integrated pest management” (IPM) programs. IPM techniques involve mixing and matching agents with different modes of action, including chemical fungicides, biological control agents and now these antibody-based fungicides.
Third, proteins like this break down quickly into the amino acids of which they are made and those are just “food” for soil organisms.
Biotalys has developed formulation methods to get as much as seven days of plant protection activity from these proteins, but then they biodegrade and are gone.
Protein-based pest controls are a novel approach, so the Environmental Protection Agency is still working out exactly how to regulate it. But it seems likely that the first of these products could be available to farmers as soon as the second half of next year. Then all of us who love delicious fruits and vegetables will be able to thank a llama.
Steve Savage earned a B.S. in biology at Stanford and pursued an M.S. and Ph.D in Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis, working on grape diseases. Follow Steve on X @grapedoc
In 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring drew attention to pesticides and their possible dangers to humans, birds, mammals and the environment. Some of her conclusions and warnings have not held up over time, but Silent Spring produced a movement that changed how the U.S. thought about chemicals and biotechnology.
Today, pesticides are still high on the list of concerns for consumers when they are deciding what food or products to buy. Pesticides, even at minute levels, are still viewed as dangerous and bad for the environment. Many of these views are not based on current scientific evidence, but instead on general beliefs and values, often along the lines of ‘natural is better’ and the fear that human interference produces negative and damaging consequences to the environment. Many of these views can be traced back to the movement inspired by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.
Many consumers believe organic foods are not grown using pesticides, thus healthier for humans and for the environment. This leads many to buy organic produce instead more affordable conventional produce. There are movements to ban synthetic pesticides. However, some organic foods are also grown using pesticides. The main difference is that the pesticides used to grow organic food are derived from natural sources rather than produced synthetically. Some organic pesticides are actually more toxic than their synthetic counterparts, as synthetic pesticide development is not limited to the requirements of sticking to solely natural sources. Nevertheless, the bulk of organic-approved pesticides are used by conventional farmers, mostly sulfur compounds used to control fungus.
So, what is the truth about pesticides used in agriculture and pesticide residues in food today? Can pesticides play a role in the future of sustainable, environmentally-friendly agriculture?
Scientists have worked to drastically improve pesticides over the last 40 years. Today’s pesticides are better targeted to intended pests, making them far less toxic to non-target flora and fauna. Pesticide safety, biodegradability and effectiveness have improved so much that they are sometimes better for the environment (and less expensive) than chemicals used by organic farmers. In this series, we will explore six aspects of the current state of pesticides.
Has pesticide use decreased over the last 40 years?
Many advocacy groups claim that pesticide use in the U.S. has not changed much over time, arguing that pesticides are still a major health and environmental issue that needs to be addressed. For example, the Pesticide Action Network summarized pesticide use data from the EPA in this way:
“Pesticide use in agriculture is down slightly, from 948 million pounds in 2000 to 877 million pounds in 2007. But that’s only about 1% per year, and still close to a billion pounds of toxic chemicals intentionally introduced into the environment and our food supply each year.”
This type of argument presents pesticides, and chemicals in general, as toxic, unnatural compounds that should be avoided at all costs. This argument misses the important balance that always has to be weighed in regards to agriculture, crop production, and human health and safety. How do we realistically produce enough crops for our needs while simultaneously minimize risk to humans and the environment?
Pesticide use data, like all information about pesticides, needs to be understood within a broader context of other factors. For example, when arguing that pesticide use has hardly changed over the last few decades, authors typically show graphs like the following (from a report published in 2014 by the USDA Economic Research Service that analyzed 21 selected U.S. crops). This data covers 1960 through 2008. A similar analysis for more recent years has not yet been completed.
These types of graphs show pesticide use per acre has only decreased a little since the 80’s. More recent data from the EPA reporting pesticide usage from 2008 to 2012 (analyzing pesticide usage on all U.S. crops) show that during this time herbicide and fungicide usage increased while insecticide usage slightly decreased.
But, there are things these types of graphs don’t take into account. Specifically:
The population of the US has increased, and the amount of food each acre produces has also increased.
This means pesticide use has decreased dramatically both per unit produced and per capita (graph created using data from the USDA and the U.S. Census Bureau). Looking at the decrease through a per capita lens isn’t even taking the increase in exports over the last four decades into account. Total pesticide use in the U.S. has decreased from almost three pounds per person per year in 1980 to less than two pounds per person per year in 2008:
Pesticide use in conventional agriculture has decreased substantially per unit produced and per capita as farmers have been getting bigger and bigger yields per acre over the last few decades. Farmers are always looking to increase yield while decreasing pesticide use when possible.
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Pesticide use has changed significantly over the past decades. However, many people have become even more concerned about the toxicity and environmental impact of pesticides. Part 2 of this series looks at how pesticide toxicity and environmental impact have changed over the last decades and where improvements still need to be made.
Kayleen Schreiber is the GLP’s infographics and data visualization specialist. She researched and authored this series as well as creating the figures, graphs, and illustrations. Follow her at her website, on Twitter @ksphd or on Instagram @ksphd
Marc Brazeau is the GLP’s senior contributing writer focusing on agricultural biotechnology. He also is the editor ofFood and Farm Discussion Lab. Marc served as project editor and assistant researcher on this series. Follow him on Twitter @eatcookwrite
A version of this article first ran on GLP on January 22, 2019.
Today, there is simply too much known in far too many diverse fields for any person to hold it all in their brain. This means that, no matter how smart one might be, there are times when we have to push the “I believe” button and simply accept the statements of others. The problem is that these others are too often wrong, the topic is too often very important, and the statements made are too wildly disparate. We feel we must choose, yet we don’t know how.
Is the science behind vaccines valid? Some feel it is fatally flawed – vaccination places us all at greater risk than the diseases they were developed to prevent. On the other hand, a multitude of scientists, epidemiologists, public health officials, and medical practitioners point to vaccination’s eradication of smallpox, the near-eradication of polio, and the tremendous reduction in mortality from tetanus, influenza, measles, and other infectious diseases – the science behind vaccines, say those who understand it best, is solid, not “junk.”
It’s not just the science behind vaccines that’s called into question; we see it in the courtroom, in nutritional supplement ads, in the form of preposterous purported treatments for any number of health problems, and in any number of conspiracy “theories” [1] that claim to be based in science, but that are purely fantastical when examined. Things get really interesting when scientists fall prey to fantastical or wishful thinking – the classic recent example of this was the cold fusion debacle of the late 1980s; before that, we had N-rays, polywater, and others.
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Nobel laureate Irving Langmuir coined the term “pathological science” in a 1953 lecture to describe any of a number of seemingly incredible scientific discoveries that failed to stand up to scrutiny.
These are cases where there is no dishonesty involved but where people are tricked into false results by a lack of understanding about what human beings can do to themselves in the way of being led astray by subjective effects, wishful thinking or threshold interactions.
Dr Irving Langmuir and G Marconi. Credit: Picryl (Public Domain)
Langmuir noted that pathological science displays several characteristics:
The maximum of the effect observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability; many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
It claims great accuracy.
The underlying “fantastic theories” are contrary to experience.
Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses, thought up on the spur of the moment.
The ratio of supporters to critics rises to somewhere near 50% and then falls gradually to oblivion.
Langmuir also cited several examples of pathological science, most of which have passed into oblivion. But there are some modern-day equivalents – the cold fusion controversy of 1989 comes to mind fairly quickly, as does the speculation that vaccines can cause autism, now thoroughly debunked when the scientific papers supporting this supposition turned out to have been fraudulent.
Quantum mechanics
There is one obvious difficulty here – many of today’s accepted scientific theories would have been considered pathological science a few centuries ago. Consider quantum mechanics – what would Newton have made of a theory that claimed the universe operated largely by chance? To Newton, quantum mechanics would certainly have been considered a:
“fantastic theory contrary to experience,”
making “claims of great accuracy,”
whose effects would have been “close to the limits of detectability.”
It is quite possible that in Newton’s day, some of our most successful scientific theories may well have been considered pathological if only because they run so contrary to what we can sense ourselves and because there were then no instruments capable of making measurements capable of confirming, or rejecting, the theories’ predictions.
How can we know whether today’s “junk science” will remain “junk” or someday be vindicated? The fact is that we don’t – but there are a few of Langmuir’s criteria that might still be relevant.
For example, for all its inscrutability, quantum mechanics has steadily gained adherents as more experiments are performed – contrary to Langmuir’s final criterion. Additionally, when objections were raised in the early days of the theory, the responses were far from ad hoc – they were well-considered and helped advance the theory. Finally, quantum mechanics made predictions that were observed in laboratory experiments and nature.
Over the last century or so, many scientific theories have made predictions that could not be verified for years or decades. Yet, they were still considered sound science (as opposed to pathological science). Einstein’s work alone produced at least a half dozen predictions that were contrary to what we could observe at the time and which took several decades before being confirmed by experiment, e.g., gravitational lenses, the Bose-Einstein condensate, relativistic time dilation. Could some aspects of junk or pathological science fall under Supreme Court Justice Stewart’s comment about pornography – even if it can’t be precisely defined, we know it when we see it.
Politics and commerce seem to be the source of much of today’s junk science claims – with each side bolstering its arguments with scientific “theory” while attacking the others’ science as junk. The climate change controversy falls into this category, as does our latest concern over vaccines, the best management of COVID-19, and even the continuing refusal by some to accept that evolution takes place in all animals, including humans. These claims are all contrary to what has been observed in medicine and science.
The American experiment was the product of children of the Enlightenment – Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Madison, Washington, and the other Founding Fathers were unapologetic intellectuals, and their debates over the nature and form of our government were educated, thoughtful, erudite – they were eager to learn. They discussed and applied their knowledge for the benefit of others. What is surprising is that their era was bookended by Puritan Minister John Cotton’s 1642 anti-intellectual screed, The Powring Out of the Seven Vials, which commented that being “learned and witty” made one “more fit to act for Satan,” and the Know-Nothing (political) Party of the 1850s.
Our government and those who devised it were the fruits of the intellect, bracketed by those who were proud of their ignorance. Even more surprising is that anti-intellectualism remains a powerful force today. I suspect that most of the Founding Fathers would be amazed at the vast sweep of scientific discovery made in the last two centuries and the technological progress made possible by this discovery and that they would weep at the level of voluntary ignorance that has been embraced so enthusiastically by so many, and at such cost.
Notes:
[1] The reason for putting scare quotes around the word theory is that, in science, “theory” does not mean “my best guess” or “something that seems reasonable to me.” In science, “theory” means “a well-substantiated explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can incorporate laws, hypotheses and facts.” Quantum mechanics is a theory because it explains phenomena observed in nature and the laboratory, making predictions as to what new experiments should show and that have been confirmed with high precision.
Over the course of four decades, Dr. Y has amassed an array of experiences – especially in radiation and radiation safety, where he is board-certified. His current position restricts publications bearing his name; they need to be reviewed. Much like the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones, reviews are warehoused and gather dust. He writes for ACSH as Dr. Y.
A version of this article was originally posted at the American Council on Science and Health and is reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit both the GLP and original article. Find the ACSH on X @ACSHorg
Has Twitter (X) devolved into a misinformation cesspool? Once scientist says yes. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) claims schools near farms could put students at risk of pesticide exposure. It’s another evidence-free scare story. Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says drug companies are neglecting chronic diseases to protect their profits. Is this a scandal in need of a solution, or just campaign-trail rhetoric?
Join hosts Dr. Liza Dunn and GLP contributor Cameron English on episode 243 of Science Facts and Fallacies as they break down these latest news stories:
After Elon Musk purchased Twitter in 2022, the popular social media platform, now dubbed “X,” reverted to a digital wild west. Once-banned users were allowed back on the site, and X liberalized its moderation policies. Evidence also emerged that Twitter had collaborated with both Republican and Democratic presidents to suppress ideas their administrations found objectionable. Free speech advocates have generally celebrated the changes under Musk’s leadership, though some critics allege X is now home to the wildest conspiracies, scientific misinformation and other forms of misleading and even harmful content. Have we lost a forum for rational discussion, or is X better as a freer platform?
EWG has launched a campaign warning parents that their children’s schools may be adjacent to farms that utilize pesticides. This bit of geography trivia has no bearing on public health—pesticide use is tightly regulated to protect us from harm—but it’s a typical example of how activist groups abuse factual information to bolster their ideological goals. Let’s take a closer look at EWG’s claims about pesticides and schools.
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As he tries to lure voters away from his rivals in the 2024 presidential race, RFK, Jr. has returned to a time-tested strategy: accusing the pharmaceutical industry of putting profits ahead of public health. If elected, Kennedy says he will shift the federal government’s focus (and research funding) away from infectious diseases and toward chronic health conditions. Pharma companies don’t want to develop cures for these diseases, Kennedy claims, because it would cost them money. Healthy people don’t buy expensive drugs, his argument goes. Is there any truth to this claim, or is Kennedy just trying to tap into popular frustration with the medical establishment after COVID?
Dr. Liza Dunn is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD
Florida has many things to recommend, but the state’s top public health official isn’t one of them. Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo has failed at every turn in managing the COVID crisis.
He has long questioned the safety of COVID vaccines, and early in the pandemic joined a petition opposing the FDA’s rapid Emergency Use Authorizations of the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines. He justifies his position by claiming his views are “part of God’s plan.” This is inappropriate as the basis for Florida’s public health policy.
Ladapo demonstrates a profound lack of understanding about vaccines in general and the COVID vaccines in particular. On September 13, during a roundtable convened by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, he said repeatedly, and misleadingly, that there is “not a drop of clinical trial data” to support the new round of COVID vaccines, and he warned healthy adults under the age of 65 against taking them.
On October 3, during an interview on Fox News, he condemned the public health establishment, saying that in the absence of evidence, “they’re pushing [the new round of mRNA vaccines] on human beings. That is an anti-human approach … an anti-human policy.” He said he would not recommend the vaccines “to any living being on this planet.”
Apparently God told him to say that, but it directly contradicts the CDC and FDA and their respective advisory committees, which recommended the new round of vaccines, now widely available around the U.S., for everyone over the age of six months. Such recommendations were completely consistent with how the new versions of existing vaccines are developed. Let me explain.
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The original COVID vaccines were tested at the height of the pandemic in clinical trials of more than 30,000 subjects each. There were huge numbers of infections occurring throughout the country, so it was not difficult to demonstrate a statistically significant difference in infection rate, hospitalizations and deaths between the vaccinated and placebo-controlled groups. I read the lengthy summaries of the clinical trials FDA prepared for the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee’s consideration, and there was overwhelming evidence of safety and efficacy.
The latest vaccines differ only by the substitution of a new spike protein in order to elicit an immune response to new, circulating variants. But now, with the number of cases lower and some urgency about making available the new round of vaccines, there isn’t time to mount huge trials to demonstrate prevention of infection and/or serious disease.
So, instead, the vaccines are tested in animal models – vaccinated and unvaccinated animals challenged with virus — and on a small number of human subjects (without a virus challenge) to show that they develop antibodies and other signs of an immune response, and that there are no obvious safety signals. This is not a process concocted just for COVID vaccines. In fact, it is how seasonal flu vaccines – which are small tweaks of previously validated platforms — are routinely formulatedeach year.
Ladapo’s delusions about COVID vaccines are consistent with his previous pronouncements. In February, he sent a letter to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf and then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky that was filled with baseless claims about supposed dangers of the mRNA vaccines.
Some of the data in the letter appeared to be completely fabricated – that is, inconsistent with safety data found elsewhere. It was also clear that Ladapo fails to understand the purpose and mode of reporting of vaccine side effects, or “adverse events,” to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). He cited numbers of adverse effects from the vaccines reported to VAERS, but as spelled out clearly on the CDC website:
VAERS is the nation’s early warning system that monitors the safety of vaccines after they are authorized or licensed for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). VAERS is part of the larger vaccine safety system in the United States that helps make sure vaccines are safe. The system is co-managed by CDC and FDA.
VAERS accepts and analyzes reports of possible health problems — also called “adverse events” — after vaccination. As an early warning system, VAERS cannot prove that a vaccine caused a problem. Specifically, a report to VAERS does not mean that a vaccine caused an adverse event (emphasis in original).
And yet, Ladapo’s condemnation of the mRNA vaccines was based almost entirely on reports to VAERS.
The FDA’s Califf and CDC’s Walensky did not allow Ladapo’s misrepresentations to go unchallenged. They sent him a scathing four-page letter, condemning his assertion that COVID-19 vaccines are “harmful.” Leaving no doubt as to their irritation, these are some excerpts, all of which are verbatim and retain the emphasis in the original:
The claim that the increase of VAERS reports of life-threatening conditions reported from Florida and elsewhere represents an increase of risk caused by the COVID-19 vaccines is incorrect, misleading and could be harmful to the American public.
Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination do not mean that a vaccine caused the event.
Adverse events must be compared to background rates in the population.
In addition to VAERS, FDA and CDC utilize complementary active surveillance systems to monitor the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.
Based on available information for the COVID-19 vaccines that are authorized or approved in the United States, the known and potential benefits of these vaccines clearly outweigh their known and potential risks.
The most recent estimate is that those who are up to date on their vaccination status have a 9.8-fold lower risk of dying from COVID-19 than those who are unvaccinated and 2.4-fold lower risk of dying from Covid-19 than those who were vaccinated but had not received the updated, bivalent vaccine.
The nation’s top public health officials should not have to explain the vaccine facts of life to a state’s surgeon general.
Finally, Califf and Walensky admonished Ladapo directly:
As the leading public health official in [the] state, you are likely aware that seniors in Florida are under-vaccinated, with just 29% of seniors having received an updated bivalent vaccine, compared to the national average of 41% coverage in seniors. It is the job of public health officials around the country to protect the lives of the populations they serve, particularly the vulnerable. Fueling vaccine hesitancy undermines this effort.(Emphasis in original.)
Unfortunately, the misinformation about COVID-19 vaccine safety has caused some Americans to avoid getting the vaccines they need to be up to date. (Emphasis in original.)
Their letter concluded:
Misleading people by overstating the risks, or emphasizing the risks without acknowledging the overwhelming benefits, unnecessarily causes vaccine hesitation and puts people at risk of death or serious illness that could have been prevented by timely vaccination.
Even if Ladapo doesn’t trust federal officials, there are other reliable sources he could find reliable information. Numerous studies from academia, some of which were summarized by Yale Medicine, confirm the efficacy of the original vaccines and the subsequent boosters, and an analysis by The Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit that conducts independent health care research, estimated that COVID-19 vaccination in the U.S. prevented more than 3 million additional deaths, 18.5 million additional hospitalizations, and 120 million more cases from December 2020 through November 2022.
But there’s more. Ladapo’s announcement in October 2022 that young men should not get the COVID-19 vaccine, which was based on a state analysis that purportedly showed that the risk of cardiac-related deaths increased significantly for some age groups after receiving a vaccine, runs counter to medical advice issued by the CDC.
There is also evidence that Ladapo himself improperly manipulated the Florida data that he cited: Early drafts of the analysis showed that a COVID infection could increase the risk of a cardiac-related death more than vaccination, but that information was omitted from the final version published by the Florida Department of Health.
Ladapo’s recommendation and the state’s analysis have been excoriated by experts, including professors and epidemiologists at the University of Florida, where he is a professor. Dr. Matt Hitchings, an infectious disease epidemiologist and professor of biostatistics university, said it seems that sections of the analysis were omitted simply because they did not fit the narrative the surgeon generalwas pushing. He added, “This is a grave violation of research integrity.”
Others in the scientific community agree. H. Holden Thorp, the editor-in-chief of the prestigious journal Science, condemned Ladapo for his blatant misrepresentations that likely cost the lives of thousands of patients.
Florida, the third most populous state in the U.S., is woefully under-vaccinated – unquestionably, in large part because of Ladapo’s anti-vaccine advocacy. That makes him responsible for many of the roughly 90,000 COVID deaths in Florida during the pandemic thus far.
As FDA Commissioner Califf and then-CDC Director Walensky said in their letter, “It is the job of public health officials around the country to protect the lives of the populations they serve.”
Ladapo is doing exactly the opposite. He is scientifically illiterate and clueless about the danger of infectious respiratory diseases such as COVID-19, how they’re spread, and how they can be prevented. As if that wasn’t enough, he’s dishonest.
Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Glenn Swogger Distinguished Fellow at the American Council on Science and Health He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Find Henry on X @HenryIMiller
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to go on safari in southern Africa. One of the greatest thrills was going out at night looking for predators on the prowl: lions, leopards, hyenas.
As we drove through the darkness, though, our spotlight occasionally lit up a smaller hunter – a slender, tawny feline, faintly spotted or striped. The glare would catch the small cat for a moment before it darted back into the shadows.
An African wildcat doesn’t look so different from a domestic cat. Credit: pum_eva/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Based on its size and appearance, I initially presumed it was someone’s pet inexplicably out in the bush. But further scrutiny revealed distinctive features: legs slightly longer than those of most domestic cats, and a striking black-tipped tail. Still, if you saw one from your kitchen window, your first thought would be “Look at that beautiful cat in the backyard,” not “How’d that African wildcat get to New Jersey?”
Yet, I’ve always loved and been fascinated by felines, ever since we adopted a shelter cat when I was 5 years old. And the more I’ve thought about those African wildcats, the more I’ve marveled at their evolutionary success. The species’ claim to fame is simple: The African wildcat is the ancestor of our beloved household pets. And despite changing very little, their descendants have become among the world’s two most popular companion animals. (Numbers are fuzzy, but the global population of cats and dogs approaches a billion for each.)
Clearly, the few evolutionary changes the domestic cat has made have been the right ones to wangle their way into people’s hearts and homes. How did they do it? I explored this question in my book “The Cat’s Meow: How Cats Evolved from the Savanna to Your Sofa.”
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Big cats – like lions, tigers and pumas – are the attention-grabbing celebrities of the feline world. But of the 41 species of wild felines, the vast majority are about the size of a housecat. Few people have heard of the black-footed cat or the Borneo bay cat, much less the kodkod, oncilla or marbled cat. Clearly, the little-cat side of the feline family needs a better PR agent.
In theory, any of these species could have been the progenitor of the domestic cat, but recent DNA studies demonstrate unequivocally that today’s housecats arose from the African wildcat – specifically, the North African subspecies, Felis silvestris lybica.
Given the profusion of little pusses, why was the North African wildcat the one to give rise to our household companions?
In short, it was the right species in the right place at the right time. Civilization began in the Fertile Crescent about 10,000 years ago, when people first settled into villages and started growing food.
This area – spanning parts of modern-day Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Iran and more – is home to numerous small cats, including the caracal, serval, jungle cat and sand cat. But of these, the African wildcat is the one that to this day enters villages and can be found around humans.
Egyptian mummified cat. Credit: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Given these tendencies, it’s easy to envision what likely happened. People settled down and started raising crops, storing the excess for lean times. These granaries led to rodent population explosions. Some African wildcats – those with the least fear of humans – took advantage of this bounty and started hanging around. People saw the benefit of their presence and treated the cats kindly, perhaps giving them shelter or food. The boldest cats entered huts and perhaps allowed themselves to be petted – kittens are adorable! – and, voilà, the domestic cat was born.
Where exactly domestication occurred – if it was a single place and not simultaneously throughout the entire region – is unclear. But tomb paintings and sculptures show that by 3,500 years ago, domestic cats lived in Egypt. Genetic analysis – including DNA from Egyptian cat mummies – and archaeological data chart the feline diaspora. They moved northward through Europe (and ultimately to North America), south deeper into Africa and eastward to Asia. Ancient DNA even demonstrates that Vikings played a role in spreading felines far and wide.
There are only two ways to indisputably identify a wildcat. You can measure the size of its brain – housecats, like other domestic animals, have evolved reductions in the parts of the brain associated with aggression, fear and overall reactivity. Or you can measure the length of its intestines – longer in domestic cats to digest vegetable-based food provided by or scavenged from humans.
The most significant evolutionary changes during cat domestication involve their behavior. The common view that domestic cats are aloof loners couldn’t be further from the truth. When lots of domestic cats live together – in places where humans provide copious amounts of food – they form social groups very similar to lion prides. Composed of related females, these cats are very friendly – grooming, playing with and lying on top of each other, nursing each other’s kittens, even serving as midwives during birth.
To signal friendly intentions, an approaching cat raises its tail straight up, a trait shared with lions and no other feline species. As anyone who has lived with a cat knows, they use this “I want to be friends” message toward people as well, indicating that they include us in their social circle.
Cats use plenty of tools and tricks to get you to hand over what they want. Credit: Nail Galiev/iStock via Getty Images Plus
The sound of these meows has evolved during domestication to more effectively communicate with us. Listeners rate the wildcat’s call as more urgent and demanding (“Mee‑O‑O‑O‑O‑O‑W!”) compared with the domestic cat’s more pleasing (“MEE‑ow”). Scientists suggest that these shorter, higher-pitched sounds are more pleasing to our auditory system, perhaps because young humans have high-pitched voices, and domestic cats have evolved accordingly to curry human favor.
Cats similarly manipulate people with their purrs. When they want something – picture a cat rubbing against your legs in the kitchen while you open a can of wet food – they purr extra loudly. And this purr is not the agreeable thrumming of a content cat, but an insistent chainsaw br-rr-oom demanding attention.
Scientists digitally compared the spectral qualities of the two types of purrs and discovered that the major difference is that the insistent purr includes a component very similar to the sound of a human baby crying. People, of course, are innately attuned to this sound, and cats have evolved to take advantage of this sensitivity to get our attention.
Of course, that won’t surprise anyone who’s lived with a cat. Although cats are very trainable – they’re very food motivated – cats usually train us more than we train them. As the old saw goes, “Dogs have owners, cats have staff.”
Jonathan Losos is the William H. Danforth Distinguished University Professor of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Find Jonathon on X @jlosos
A version of this article was originally posted on the Conversation and is reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit the GLP and original article. Find the Conversation on X @ConversationUS
If you have been in science media for any period of time, you have seen a predictable pattern; epidemiologists look through columns and rows of foods people claim they eat and diseases or lack thereof and if they get enough to declare “statistical significance” they write a paper noting down at the bottom that they can’t show a causal relationship but then send press releases to New York Times journalists who believe in acupuncture absolutely suggesting causation.
If it becomes a popular article, a bunch of other epidemiologists will rush to “replicate” it. Low sodium diets, low fat diets, quinoa, resveratrol, trans fats, they were all crazes based on nothing but linking one thing to another and suggesting that scientists are stupid and don’t see the effect, yet epidemiologists figured it out.
It has done a lot to undermine public trust in science. Ask most laypeople on the coasts and they believe organic food grown using fantastic amounts of old pesticides is somehow healthier than food grown using smaller amounts of newer pesticides. Ask people in the heartland about some new epidemiology and they will likely snort and note that a few years from now a new group of epidemiologists will declare the old ones wrong.
It’s why not only should you not accept a claim that a diet soda in the hands of a pregnant woman causes autism, you should shout it down, and then demand suspect organizations like Harvard School of Public Health, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and others who rush to embrace this rubbish stop promoting nonsense and start cleaning up their field.
Worst among them is the International Agency for Research on Cancer. A few months ago, IARC released a monograph about aspartame, long a target for lawyers who pay participants on IARC Working Groups without any need to declare a conflict of interest. Though even the Biden FDA refused to accept these newest IARC claims, they were that shoddy, and the UN which quasi-oversees the group in France disavowed their methodology, people who aren’t in the bag for Orwellian bans on everything knew it was only a matter of months before a raft of new aspartame harms came out. The goal, as always, is to get California to put a Prop 65 warning label on products, which they are required to do by law if IARC suggests it may causes cancer. Then go to court in California and force a settlement.
How is that possible? Because in epidemiology, if you have an agenda, it’s as easy as finding two curves going the same way. Statistical significance that is somehow weirdly compelling to journal editors in soft fields like epidemiology and psychology are so easily manipulated we joined a group of scholars in asking journals to stop using that as a determining factor in how credible a claim is.
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The authors concede down in the bottom of their press release that they have no evidence the association is valid outside their statistical tinkering, but write “Our findings contribute to the growing literature raising concerns about potential offspring harm from maternal diet beverage and aspartame consumption during pregnancy.”
A ‘growing body’ they are creating. The time-honored approach by activists and trial lawyers is to get one claim out there, in this case an IARC monograph, and then a whole bunch of minor papers citing it. That is how “emergence evidence” is manufactured. That is what is happening here.
Look for claims that chewing sugar-free gum causes autism soon. It will happen. That is the problem with the lack of oversight or ethics in epidemiology.
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 has been reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit the original author and provide links to both the GLP and the original article. Find Science 2.0 on X @science2_0
In 2006, honeybees by the millions mysteriously began abandoning their colonies, leaving behind the queen bee, attended by too few, immature worker bees to sustain the colony. There was no clear explanation for this ecological disaster, especially because the hives were found to have viable brood and stored food. This phenomenon was later dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
Although honeybee colony numbers began to recover in 2009, according to USDA data, and subsequently stabilized, and honeybee hive numbers are now at record numbers globally, prominent environmental groups blamed the crisis on GMO crops engineered to tolerate the herbicide glyphosate (Roundup, manufactured by Monsanto, now owned by Bayer). But there was little evidence to support this claim. Activists then targeted neonicotinoid insecticides as the culprit for honeybee declines, a controversial hypothesis GLP has covered extensively.
But with the ‘glyphosate trials’ continuing, activists continue to hammer the glyphosate-harms-bees narrative. They have also amped up their attacks on neonicotinoids, which while not directly linked to genetically modified crops, are used extensively by conventional farmers. They base their claims on several studies suggesting that the herbicide inhibits honeybees’ ability to collect the necessary resources to maintain healthy hives and boosts their risk of infection by deadly pathogens.
Alternative medicine proponent and anti-vaccine doctor Joe Mercola, who once called Bayer’s purchase of Monsanto “A Match Made In Hell,” wrote in September 2018 that glyphosate, besides possibly causing cancer, nutritional deficiencies and systemic toxicity in humans may also “…. kill bees by altering the bacterial composition in the bees’ guts, making them more prone to fatal infections.”
And Michael Balter, who was fired by Science Magazine in 2016, and is now allied with USRTK, an organic-industry funded anti-biotechnology group, likewise recently cited controversial studies claiming glyphosate may harm bees by “…. impeding the growth of bee larvae, diminishing bees’ navigational skills …. or even disrupting their gut microorganisms….” Balter also tweeted there is a “legitimate public and scientific debate” about whether or not glyphosate is carcinogenic. He dismissed researchers and science organizations who disagree with him as industry shills, although 19 regulatory agencies around the world have issued reports concluding glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer, and no risk-based agency concludes otherwise.
Are activists like Mercola and journalists skeptical of biotechnology such as Balter correct to link glyphosate or neonicotinoids to bee health issues? The GLP has examined that controversy in its GMO FAQ special series report: “Are GMOs and pesticides threatening bees?” We elaborate on it here so readers can evaluate the pros and cons of the ongoing indictment of glyphosate and neonicotinoids:
Are GMOs and pesticides threatening bees?
“The honeybee is in no way endangered. If there’s a top ten list of what’s killing honey bee colonies, I’d put pesticides at number 11.”
“Scientists know that bees are dying from a variety of factors—pesticides, drought, habitat destruction, nutrition deficit, air pollution, global warming and more. Many of these causes are interrelated. The bottom line is that we know humans are largely responsible for the two most prominent causes: pesticides and habitat loss.”
In 2006, honeybees by the millions mysteriously began abandoning their colonies, leaving behind the queen bee, attended by too few, immature worker bees to sustain the colony. There was no clear explanation for what would have been an ecological disaster if it continued and spread around the world, especially because the colonies were found to have viable brood and stored food. This phenomenon was later dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
Prominent environmental groups first blamed the crisis on genetically engineered (GMO) crops and the herbicide Roundup (manufactured by Monsanto, but also sold in generic form as glyphosate), but there was no evidence to support this claim. After not getting traction for this assertion, they targeted a relatively new class of insecticides introduced in the mid 1990s known for their low toxicity and sustainability advantages: Neonicotinoids (aka neonics).
The CCD crisis, centered mainly in California, faded over the next few years, without scientists ever determining its definitive cause. But environmental advocacy organizations built on this temporary ‘crisis’ to call attention to higher-than average overwinter bee death rates that temporarily ensured after the CCD crisis. A slew of laboratory studies suggested that neonics could be a factor. Banning “bee-killing” neonic pesticides, it was said, was essential to sustain world food production and prevent an irreversible situation that some in the media dubbed a coming “beepocalypse.”
Most entomologists, rather, believed bee health problems reflect a slew of issues, primarily the impact of the Varroa destructor mite, recognized as the greatest single scourge of honeybees, the increased use of miticides and the fact that beekeepers in the US transport honeybee colonies across the continent, annually and seasonally, which weakens bees and exacerbates ongoing health issues.
In 2013, in response to escalating advocacy campaigns and media stories, and fueled by findings in lab studies, the European Union placed a moratorium on three neonicotinoids. France banned two additional neonics. Canada has announced plans to phase out another. Despite these moves to restrict neonics, the hive numbers of honeybees have improved considerably in places where a ban was not in place, including the US and Canada, where they are at record levels, and are flourishing in Australia, where neonics are widely used. Global hive numbers are at record levels. Even the Sierra Club now says that honeybees are not in crisis.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Agriculture and studies from agencies in Canada and Australia, where neonicotinoids are also widely used, have reached the consensus conclusion that while bees do face serious health challenges, particularly from mite infestations and a gut fungus called nosema ceranae, they are not in crisis and are not facing extinction due to the use of “toxic” pesticides. Scientists familiar with extensive field studies, which contradict many less state-of-the-art lab research, say pesticides are a limited threat to managed honeybees, bumble bees and native populations. There is no impending ‘bee-Armageddon’.
Science and Politics
First introduced in 1995, neonicotinoids are a class of insecticides popular in the US, Australia, Europe and elsewhere to control insect infestations of corn, soy, cotton and canola (aka oilseed rape). They also are widely used to combat pest devastation of vegetable crops, rice, cotton, melons, grapes and berries, and orchard crops, and are considered critical in combating the lethal ‘citrus greening’ disease spreading from already-devastated Florida to Texas and California. Seed coatings for row crops account for the largest volume of neonic usage by far.
Applied to the soil, sprayed on the crop or, most commonly, used as a seed treatment, neonics reach the insect pests that feed by chewing or sucking crop plants. Seed coatings for row crops account for the largest volume of neonic usage by far. Seed treatments also lower the amount of the pre-neonic, older, more toxic, spray-applied pesticides that previously were sprayed 10 to 20 fold, decreasing the need for open spraying of the plant, a major sustainability benefit. Scientists, farmers and many environmentalists, at least initially, applauded their development as neonics proved effective against common plant pests but were seen as relatively harmless to many beneficial insects because of their systemic action: the insecticide is taken up into plant tissue where it consequently controls only the pests that actually feed on the crop.
The mode of action of neonics is different from the sprays they replaced: Organophosphate pesticides, which are known to kill bees and wildlife (and have been linked to health problems in agricultural workers); and a class of natural insecticides known as pyrethrins, and their synthetic analogs, pyrethroids, which are deadly to bees and many beneficial insects, and known to kill mammals, including dogs and cats. By contrast, neonicotinoids are benign to mammalian physiology; they are a key ingredient in several long-lasting flea and tick remedies for dogs and cats that owners apply monthly directly to their pets’ skin without any harmful effect. But because of their because of their systemic uptake in plants, worries persisted.
Neonicotinoid usage surged in the early 2000s with no appreciable effect on either wild bees or honeybees. Yet the unrelated CCD crisis in 2006 fueled public concern about neonics and attracted the attention of anti-biotechnology and environmental activists. The public fervor escalated, as symbolized by the 2013 Time Magazine cover, “A World Without Bees,” and persists today, embracing concerns about other types of bees, beneficial insects and even birds. The situation was dire, they environmental advocacy groups alleged, because bees are an important pollinator, responsible for “one in every three bites of food we eat (a claim disputed at the time by most scientists as exaggerated).
Although the problems facing honeybees moderated, overwinter losses remained above historical norms for the next several years. Activists and some scientists blamed neonics for these declines, although there were no clear links. The assertions were mostly buttressed by a slew of worrisome laboratory studies, some funded by environmental groups. The studies were covered intensively by the media, often framed in apocalyptic terms, stirring public and political debates. In 2013, in response to escalating advocacy campaigns and media stories, and fueled by findings in lab studies, the EU placed a moratorium on three most widely-used neonicotinoids, forbidding their use on bee-attractive flowering crops.
What evidence supports claims that pollinators are threatened? Neonicotinoids were suspected to pose an a degree of risk to bees, partly because of their systemic uptake in plants. Numerous “caged bee” studies indeed have shown that that “sublethal” exposure to neonics weakens the bees’ immune systems and interferes with their foraging behavior, boosting their vulnerability to deadly infections and sabotaging their ability to feed themselves. In one widely reported 2015 real world study that heightened concerns, showed that one neonic, clothianidin, when used in combination with pyrethroid in a flowering crop could have serious consequences for wild bees. In a contradictory and unexplained finding, the study found no effect on honeybees, raising concerns among critics that it was a one-off.
After surveying some 1500 studies, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concluded in a 2018 report that some honeybees and managed bumblebees faced “high risk” from three neonicotinoid insecticides, although the EFSA’s interpretations of the studies were challenged by numerous scientists skeptical of the conclusion. That finding led that EU its ban to make its ban permanent in 2018. France and Canada enacted restrictions on certain uses of these insecticides in 2018 and 2019.
Many scientists, particularly entomologists, remained skeptical of the conclusions and critical of the bans on neonicotinoids, which many farmers testified was critical for their economic survival. Neonics are widely used on corn, oilseed rape and sunflower crops. US economists estimated in 2017 that that a nationwide ban on neonics would cost North American consumers in excess of $4.5 billion annually in higher food prices. An industry-funded study in Europe estimated that a ban on just neonicotinoid, oilseed rape, would cost the industry more than $1.2 billion. The study also claimed an ‘unintended consequences’ effect: shifting oilseed rape production outside the EU triggered a conversion of more than 1.2 million acres of grass land and natural habitats to arable land equaling the loss of of more than 750,000 acres a of biodiversity-rich rainforest. Despite these warnings and the scanty and sometimes contradictory research, the bans in Europe have been fully implemented and states in the US are mulling restrictions.
How reliable are lab studies on bees?
The lab studies of the impact of neonicotinoids share a problem: Exposing bees to neonics in a closed environment does not replicate what happens in real life; it doesn’t tell us much about how seed treatments affect bee colonies in their natural environment. The vast majority of the laboratory research are so-called “caged bee” studies: experiments in which individual bees are exposed to some level of neonic pesticides and then examined for an adverse effect. Some such studies, for instance, have shown that “sublethal” exposure to neonics can weaken honeybees’ immune systems and/or interfere with their foraging behavior, boosting their vulnerability to deadly infections and sabotaging their ability to feed themselves.
The problem with most laboratory ‘caged bee’ studies is that they invariably over-dose the bees — even when low, purportedly ‘field realistic’ doses are applied. Lab studies also don’t evaluate bees in the context of their community. The beehive constitutes what amounts to a super-organism. Through the collective action of its tens of thousands of specialized members, it is capable of achieving things like significant detoxification of the hive and, hence, protection of its members that no individual bee could ever do alone, whether in a laboratory or in nature.
In contrast, the clearest, most accurate and most reliable picture of neonics’ effects on honeybees is obtained from large-scale field studies under conditions approximating as closely as possible the real-world conditions under which colonies live, forage, reproduce, store food and over-winter. They are, consequently, very costly — tens or hundreds of times more expensive than laboratory ‘caged bee’ studies — and so there there far fewer of them. Thirteen such studies published in the last decade have examined how honeybees or bumble bees foraging in neonics-treated crops fared. All concluded that there was little to no observable adverse effect on bees at the colony level from field-realistic exposure to neonicotinoids-treated crops. In other words, because of the detoxifying and new brood producing capabilities in bee hives that overpower potential negative impacts on individual insects, low-level neonic exposure of individual bees is unlikely to have a serious deleterious effect on overall colony health.
Impact of glyphosate on bees
Some environmentalists have also argued that the herbicide glyphosate (Monsanto’s Roundup now made by Bayer) kills bees or threatens their ability to collect the necessary resources to maintain healthy hives. A 2013 study which showed that caged bees fed glyphosate experienced reduced sensitivity to nectar reward and impaired associative learning, the anti-crop biotehnology website Natural News claimed: “[A] groundbreaking study shows that Roundup causes honeybees to starve.” That was an overstatement, however. The study authors qualified their findings, noting that “….no effect on foraging-related behavior was found.”
There are numerous issues with these claimed findings. Critics of the study have pointed out that bees don’t consume large doses of glyphosate on agricultural fields, a fact that severely limits the significance of the research.
Glyphosate is also sometimes paired with a pre-emergent(before seeds germinate and before insects are present in the fields. I a 2014 study, scientists exposed honeybees to glyphosate “at realistic worst-case exposure rates” and found:
….[T]here were no significant effects from glyphosate observed in brood survival, development, and mean pupal weight. Additionally, there were no biologically significant levels of adult mortality observed in any glyphosate treatment group.
USDA researchers conducted a field study in 2015 to see how honeybees reacted to 40 pesticides commonly used in agriculture. Of the chemicals tested, glyphosate was the least toxic, with the researchers concluding that it is “…relatively safe to foraging bees because [it] may kill less [than] 1% [of] bees at the field use rate.”
The glyphosate-bee death hypothesis got a boost in September 2018, when a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences asserted that glyphosate exposure harmed the gut health of honeybees and increased their “susceptibility to infection by opportunistic pathogens.” Environmental websites promoted the findings with headlines such as: “Glyphosate could be factor in bee decline, study warns.”
Experts noted this study suffered from some serious limitations. The researchers found that the health of bees was worse when they were exposed to lower doses of the herbicide. Such a result violates the bedrock principle of toxicology that a chemical can be harmless or even beneficial at low concentrations but poisonous at higher ones; the dose makes the poison. Other flaws in the study were serious enough for researchers to doubt its validity, pending further research.
The overwhelming preponderance of honeybees are not ‘wild’ but are raised by beekeepers, rather like ‘livestock’. Consequently, their population numbers aren’t purely at the mercy of environmental factors like parasites, diseases, temperature, rainfall, weather, pesticides or other contaminants that bees may encounter. Colony numbers, although affected by these factors, are essentially determined by how many colonies beekeepers, in the aggregate, determine is profitable to cultivate and maintain.
Increase in bee populations
The data clearly show bees are in no danger of facing a catastrophic die-off — the common meme over the past decade. October 2018 statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) show that honeybee populations are stable and may even be growing. The 1988 ‘highpoint’ of this graph follows closely the 1987 arrival of the Varroa destructor parasite in the United States from the Far East — an event that promptly produced precipitous decline in US honeybee colonies until beekeepers developed management techniques to stabilize the situation over the ensuing decade. After the CCD outbreak in 2006, between 2007 and 2013, winter colony loss rates averaged 30 percent, which is approximately double the loss rate previously thought to be normal. Elevated winter colony losses, however, have not resulted in enduring declines in colony numbers. Instead, the number of honey bee colonies is either stable or growing depending on the dataset being considered. This chart shows trends through 2015; the number of colonies has steadily increased since then.
The USDA data confirmed research that showed that honeybee populations in the US, Canada and Europe have remained stable or increased since neonics were introduced in in the mid-1990s. In western Canada, colonies are thriving while foraging on 21-million-acres, almost 100% neonic-treated, pollen- and nectar-rich canola crop. Populations in Australia, where neonics are heavily used and there are no Varroa mites, haven’t experienced declines over the same time period. As the Washington Post reported in 2015 in “Call Off the Bee-pocalypse: U.S. Honeybee Colonies Hit a 20-Year High” and “Believe It or Not, the Bees Are Doing Just Fine“, global honeybee hive numbers have risen to record levels.
It is normal for beekeepers to lose a percentage of their hives every year, especially in the winter, due to weather, disease or the exhaustion of stored food supplies. It is also normal for the number of hives to fluctuate annually for market reasons. However, misrepresentations of overwinter bee losses, or the adding together of winter and summer loss numbers, makes it seem as if the mid-2000s CCD event is ongoing, when it is not.
None of this is to suggest that bee health problems are not real. Honeybees and perhaps bumble bees, mostly wild native bees, face health threats that are cause for worry, and they need to be addressed. There are increasing health pressures as livestock honeybees are trucked around North America, stressing bee colonies. The greatest threat to bee health, according to the USDA, is the Varroa destructor mite, which the agency calls:
… [T]he single most detrimental pest of honey bees. Since the 1980s, honey bees and beekeepers have had to deal with a host of new pathogens from deformed wing virus to nosema fungi, new parasites such as Varroa mites, pests like small hive beetles, nutrition problems from lack of diversity or availability in pollen and nectar sources, and possible sublethal effects of pesticides. These problems, many of which honey bees might be able to survive if each were the only one, are often hitting in a wide variety of combinations, and weakening and killing honey bee colonies. CCD may even be a result of a combination of two or more of these factors and not necessarily the same factors in the same order in every instance.
The parasite poses unique challenges to beekeepers and scientists. It sucks the bees’ hemolymph’ (blood-equivalent), compromises the immune system, vectors viruses into bee colonies and attacks the honeybee’s fat body, a structure that plays a vital role in its ability to metabolize food, causing the bee to be chronically undernourished until it dies. Worse, Varroa mites rapidly develop resistance to different treatments, making control difficult.
The Takeaway
There is no honey ‘beepocalypse’, and there never was. The phenomenon of CCD — Colony Collapse Disorder — that was causing such a scare as recently as 2013 is similar to historical phenomena over many centuries and appears wholly unrelated to pesticides. It has come and gone as mysteriously this time as it has on every previous occasion in history.
Bees are facing health challenges. Some claim that bees are not threatened, noting that hive numbers are up, implying that all bee problems are behind us. That’s not accurate. Relying solely on hive numbers, instead of percent losses, or actual bee numbers, can be misleading. Splitting a hive in two and inserting a new queen is not an indication of an improvement in bee health or numbers.
The honeybee industry is coping with the situation although some exacerbating health threats such as the transportation of bees across North America will remain, challenging bee health. A small number of wild bumblebee species also may be in decline, but there is so far no clear indication of a crisis. The status of so many species is unknown and little tracking data exist.
The causes of the health challenges are varied, although there is general agreement that the Varroa mite has for decades posed the greatest challenge. The research available shows that pesticides are not a major driver of those problems. While pesticides can be harmful to bees exposed to large doses, studies reproducing real-world conditions do not show that pesticides and the GMO crops they’re often paired with are driving bees toward extinction, as some environmentalists claim.
Numerous laboratory studies have shown that neonics can cause bee disorientation. But that is true about all insecticides. The results of laboratory ‘caged bee’ studies — though abundant (because they are relatively cheap and easy to do) — are an unreliable indicator of neonics’ effects on honeybees and their colonies precisely because they do not factor in the dynamic ability of bee colonies to detoxify themselves and of bees to rapidly metabolize pesticides and to reproduce.
Large-scale field studies in which honeybees and bumble bees encounter field-realistic doses of neonics on a sustained basis are by far the most reliable indicators of neonics’ effects on bees. Such studies consistently show no observable adverse effects at the colony level from field-realistic exposures of honey bees to neonicotinids.
Chemicals are necessary in farming to control pests. Scientists say it’s important to weigh the benefits of each chemical against its potential threats, and consider what the impact would be of replacement chemicals. The EPA has explained that while thirty-six replacement pesticides for neonics are presently registered for use in the US, “All can potentially cause acute and subacute toxicity” in bees.
Europe’s neonics ban has had serious economic and environmental repercussions for farmers and proved harmful to bees because of the swapping in of more toxic chemicals. Sugar beet growers have said there are “no sustainable alternatives” to neonicotinoids. The UK government has acknowledged that farmers have switched back to insecticide sprays, such as organophosphates, that are more toxic to bees and humans, boosting their overall chemical use in the process. Substitute pesticides also don’t work as well. For example, in May, 2019, the UK had to issue an emergency use exemption for banned neonicotinoid insecticide to prevent virus spread in sugar beets. Following the ban, yields dropped dramatically in all crops in Europe previously treated with neonics. A 2017 study on one crop, oilseed rape (canola), indicated the ban has cut quality yield by more than 6 percent and cost farmers more than $1 billion.
That said, neonicotinoids alone cannot prevent all insect infestations. Beekeepers have warned that common plant pests, no longer controlled by neonics, are destroying an increasing volume of acres of flowering crops that bees forage in, thus posing a bigger threat to these valuable pollinators than insecticides ever did. Alternative pesticides need to be developed.
Although bee health problems are a genuine concern, the scientific consensus is that blaming GMO crops, glyphosate or one class of insecticides, neonicotinoids, oversimplifies a complex problem for which there is no easy solution, as substitutes are either as effective or as safe. Experts also note that bans could spur a return to pest controls that are demonstrably more harmful to beneficial insects and mammals — a situation already unfolding in Europe.
“I am not convinced that neonics are a major driver of colony loss,” said University of Maryland’s Dennis vanEnglesdorp, the entomologist who coined the term “Colony Collapse Disorder.”
[Recently], the headline “New Study Finds PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Drinking Water from 45% of Faucets Across US” led many news reports. That’s after 32 individual PFAS were tested and found in both private and public water supplies, presenting potential hazards to our nation’s health. What did the study really say?
First, a little background on polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). PFAS are a large group of chemicals characterized by linked chains of carbon and fluorine. PFOA and PFOS are the best-known PFAS and are the only two with suggestive health effects data. Both compounds have been found in groundwater and drinking water supplies, primarily from their use in fire-fighting foams found at military bases and airports where fire-fighting training occurs.
The EPA proposed an enforceable drinking water regulation for PFOA and PFOS in March 2023, choosing an allowable level set so low, 4 parts per trillion, that it is below the level many laboratories can detect.
The US Geological Services (USGS) study
The study tested for the presence of 32 PFAS in tap water from 716 locations (269 private wells and 447 public water supplies) from 2016-2021. They found 17 in one or more samples. The following shows where the PFAS were detected across the US:
According to the study
The number of individual PFAS observed ranged from 1 to 9 (median of 2)
The corresponding cumulative concentrations, the sum of detected PFAS, ranged from 0.348 to 0.346 parts per trillion – a reminder, the new proposed standard is 4 parts per trillion
The study concluded that
“Modeled results indicate that on average at least one PFAS is detected in about 45% of US drinking water samples. Benchmark screening approaches indicated potential human exposure risk was dominated by PFOA and PFOS.”
But the USGS study has some important caveats and shortcomings. Let’s break them down.
A national study
The USGS press release, and the article itself, give the impression that this is a groundbreaking new study with significant findings. However, this is neither new nor comprehensive. The USGS cobbled together results from an EPA study of 26 samples from 2016, three Colorado School of Mines studies of 82 samples from 2017 and 2018, and six USGS studies of 608 samples from 2019-2021.
The number of samples in this study is well below the number needed to do a national study of the occurrence in drinking water. The Safe Drinking Water Act requires the EPA to conduct a national survey of unregulated contaminants in drinking water every five years. Their last completed study, the Fourth Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule, carried out between 2018 and 2020, involved over 37,000 samples. The EPA’s Fifth Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule is currently underway and is collecting samples on 30 chemical contaminants, including 29 PFAS. When this study is complete in 2025, we will have a much better understanding of the actual occurrence of PFAS in drinking water.
Since the USGS study was quite small (less than 2% of the 37,000 samples done by EPA), they could not reach conclusions on PFAS’ national occurrence. Instead, they used models to estimate the national occurrence. These modeled results, not actual data, were the basis for the headlines that PFAS was found in 45% of the nation’s drinking water. The majority of samples did not contain PFAS, with PFOA not detected in 86.2% of the samples and PFOS not detected in 94.0% of the samples. Quite a difference from the USGS’s opening statement, that “at least 45% of the nation’s tap water is estimated to have one or more type of the chemicals known as PFAS.” The USGS buries the fact that these were modeled results based on limited data.
Concentrations of PFAS
The study focused on the number of PFAS detected at each site, not their concentrations. Buried deep within the supplemental tables was data showing that PFOA concentrations ranged from a minimum of 1.13 parts per trillion to 33.2 parts per trillion with a mean of 5.6 parts per trillion.
Health conclusions
The study used two methods as the basis for their health conclusions:
The sum of Exposure Activity Ratio (∑EAR): Ratio of the detected concentration of a chemical to the activity concentration detected in studies in cells. According to the article, none of the samples exceeded a value of 1, indicating a health concern; however, 65 samples exceeded a value of 0.001, a precautionary screening level signifying potential concern.
The EPA developed the ∑EAR method to highlight their ToxCast database, which contains information on the effects of approximately 9000 chemicals in cells. The ∑EAR method is not a generally accepted method of measuring toxicity, and the screening level “representing a level of potential concern” is purely arbitrary and not based on science.
The sum of Toxicity Quotients (∑TQ): Ratio of the detected concentration of a chemical to its corresponding health benchmark (safe level). Unlike the ∑EAR method, the ∑TQ is a more accepted method of measuring toxicity. However, the results of this method are dependent on the health benchmarks chosen for each chemical.
The article used EPA’s interim health advisories as its PFOA and PFOS health benchmark for PFOA and PFOS, concluding there was a “high probability of aggregated risk when considering exposures to all observed PFAS with an available benchmark.” But there are few benchmarks available for PFAS other than PFOA or PFOS, the EPA’s health advisories for PFOA and PFOS, levels that are more than 100,000 lower than the health benchmarks from other countries.
It is difficult to find credibility in the USGS conclusions. Historically, the USGS is known for complete and well-documented research. This study has some significant shortcomings, and the USGS has done a grave disservice by publishing it without stating its significant limitations. Part of why this is so disappointing is that the USGS could have waited for the results from EPA’s current national study, the Fifth Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule, to reach conclusions on the national occurrence of PFAS.
It may be that the USGS was trying to join the government bandwagon in support of EPA’s controversial PFAS regulation; however, offering limited and flawed data is not the answer. We have a right to expect better.
Susan Goldhaber, M.P.H., is an environmental toxicologist with over 40 years’ experience working at Federal and State agencies and in the private sector, emphasizing issues concerning chemicals in drinking water, air, and hazardous waste. Her current focus is on translating scientific data into usable information for the public.
A version of this article was originally posted at American Council on Science and Health and has been reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit the original author and provide links to both the GLP and the original article. Find American Council on Science and Health on X @ACSHorg
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