Worried About Eating GMOs? That’s Not the Real Problem
Farmers harvest rice in a field.
The 21st century food system is awash in ethical issues. To name just a handful: There's the environmental impacts of farming, the human health effects of diets based on animal products and processed foods, the growing clamor around food waste, and the longstanding concerns about agricultural labor. The last decade has seen the emergence of "ethical consumption," as people have been encouraged to avoid products that are associated with animal cruelty or unfair to farmers.
Misguided concerns about GMOs are missing the point altogether and distracting from a far more substantive ethical problem.
But consumers have never been so ignorant about where food comes from, and they are vulnerable to oversimplifications and faulty messaging. Many would include the first generation of crops from agricultural applications of recombinant DNA methods for genetic improvement—so called GMOs—among the foods they should avoid for ethical reasons. Unfortunately, these misguided concerns are missing the point altogether and distracting from a far more substantive ethical problem.
As we stand on the precipice of a new era in food and biotechnology – crops and animals with genomes altered through gene editing – it is more important than ever to let go of unnecessary fears and to pay attention to the real hazards of agricultural innovation.
But first, as a bioethicist with almost 40 years of experience working on issues in the food system, let me stress the overall context and rationale for trying to make changes in plant and animal genetics. Doing so, whether through conventional breeding or biotechnology, allows producers to meet the challenges of seasonal climate differences and increase yields.
And just because a food was created through ordinary plant breeding vs. genetic modification does not automatically make it safe. Things can and do go wrong in ordinary plant breeding, such as with potatoes and tomatoes. These both produce toxins in the green parts of the plant, and breeders exercise caution to ensure that toxins aren't transferred to edible parts.
Despite real risks, there is no regulatory oversight that protects us from these known hazards. We rely on the professional ethics of agricultural scientists. And GMOs are, in comparison, much more carefully tested and regulated. The claim that they are "unregulated" is just false.
We should not ignore the role that all gene technologies have played in displacing small farmers, depleting rural communities, and shifting economic control.
I do want to shift the public's attention away from the anti-GMO debate to more substantive questions about contemporary agriculture that really have little to do with where the genes in their food came from, or how they got there.
No matter how important genetic improvements might be in terms of total global food production, we should not ignore the role that all gene technologies—including breeding—have played in displacing small farmers, depleting rural communities and shifting economic control of agriculture into a small circle of powerful actors. Globally, these changes have had disproportionately harmful effects on women and people of color.
Combined with mechanization and chemicals, gene technologies have freed planters from their dependence on impoverished and poorly educated field hands, but they did nothing to help the fieldworkers transition to a new line of work. These are the real problems that deserve the public's and the science community's attention, not the overly narrow worries about eating GMOs.
But these problems are viewed as "not ours" by agricultural insiders, and they continue to be ignored by scientists whose focus is solely on biology. Many of the concerns that are today viewed as "urban problems" or "social issues" have origins in agriculture. For example, in California tomatoes, the development of mechanical harvesting led to a rapid concentration of ownership and the displacement of thousands of field hands. In the South, similar technologies displaced black farmers working land owned by whites, causing migration to urban centers and unskilled jobs. I must fault the science community for a lack of willingness to even take the thrust of these more socially oriented critiques seriously.
The new suite of tools for genetic modification that go under the name "gene editing" promise greater precision. They should allow scientists to target the locus for new genes in a plant or animal genome, and minimize the chance for causing unwanted impacts on gene functioning. This added precision is reducing some of the uncertainties in the mind of technology developers, and they have been expressing hope that their own confidence will be shared by regulators and by the public at large. In fact, the U.S. government recently issued a statement that gene-edited crops do not require additional regulation because they're just as safe as crops produced through conventional breeding.
It is indeed possible that the public doubts about genetically modified food will be assuaged by this argument. We can only wait and see. Whether or not gene editing will lead to more reflection about agriculture's complicity in problems of economic inequality or structural racism depends much more on the culture of the science community than it does on the technology itself.
Here's how one doctor overcame extraordinary odds to help create the birth control pill
Dr. Percy Julian had so many personal and professional obstacles throughout his life, it’s amazing he was able to accomplish anything at all. But this hidden figure not only overcame these incredible obstacles, he also laid the foundation for the creation of the birth control pill.
Julian’s first obstacle was growing up in the Jim Crow-era south in the early part of the twentieth century, where racial segregation kept many African-Americans out of schools, libraries, parks, restaurants, and more. Despite limited opportunities and education, Julian was accepted to DePauw University in Indiana, where he majored in chemistry. But in college, Julian encountered another obstacle: he wasn’t allowed to stay in DePauw’s student housing because of segregation. Julian found lodging in an off-campus boarding house that refused to serve him meals. To pay for his room, board, and food, Julian waited tables and fired furnaces while he studied chemistry full-time. Incredibly, he graduated in 1920 as valedictorian of his class.
After graduation, Julian landed a fellowship at Harvard University to study chemistry—but here, Julian ran into yet another obstacle. Harvard thought that white students would resent being taught by Julian, an African-American man, so they withdrew his teaching assistantship. Julian instead decided to complete his PhD at the University of Vienna in Austria. When he did, he became one of the first African Americans to ever receive a PhD in chemistry.
Julian received offers for professorships, fellowships, and jobs throughout the 1930s, due to his impressive qualifications—but these offers were almost always revoked when schools or potential employers found out Julian was black. In one instance, Julian was offered a job at the Institute of Paper Chemistory in Appleton, Wisconsin—but Appleton, like many cities in the United States at the time, was known as a “sundown town,” which meant that black people weren’t allowed to be there after dark. As a result, Julian lost the job.
During this time, Julian became an expert at synthesis, which is the process of turning one substance into another through a series of planned chemical reactions. Julian synthesized a plant compound called physostigmine, which would later become a treatment for an eye disease called glaucoma.
In 1936, Julian was finally able to land—and keep—a job at Glidden, and there he found a way to extract soybean protein. This was used to produce a fire-retardant foam used in fire extinguishers to smother oil and gasoline fires aboard ships and aircraft carriers, and it ended up saving the lives of thousands of soldiers during World War II.
At Glidden, Julian found a way to synthesize human sex hormones such as progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone, from plants. This was a hugely profitable discovery for his company—but it also meant that clinicians now had huge quantities of these hormones, making hormone therapy cheaper and easier to come by. His work also laid the foundation for the creation of hormonal birth control: Without the ability to synthesize these hormones, hormonal birth control would not exist.
Julian left Glidden in the 1950s and formed his own company, called Julian Laboratories, outside of Chicago, where he manufactured steroids and conducted his own research. The company turned profitable within a year, but even so Julian’s obstacles weren’t over. In 1950 and 1951, Julian’s home was firebombed and attacked with dynamite, with his family inside. Julian often had to sit out on the front porch of his home with a shotgun to protect his family from violence.
But despite years of racism and violence, Julian’s story has a happy ending. Julian’s family was eventually welcomed into the neighborhood and protected from future attacks (Julian’s daughter lives there to this day). Julian then became one of the country’s first black millionaires when he sold his company in the 1960s.
When Julian passed away at the age of 76, he had more than 130 chemical patents to his name and left behind a body of work that benefits people to this day.
Therapies for Healthy Aging with Dr. Alexandra Bause
My guest today is Dr. Alexandra Bause, a biologist who has dedicated her career to advancing health, medicine and healthier human lifespans. Dr. Bause co-founded a company called Apollo Health Ventures in 2017. Currently a venture partner at Apollo, she's immersed in the discoveries underway in Apollo’s Venture Lab while the company focuses on assembling a team of investors to support progress. Dr. Bause and Apollo Health Ventures say that biotech is at “an inflection point” and is set to become a driver of important change and economic value.
Previously, Dr. Bause worked at the Boston Consulting Group in its healthcare practice specializing in biopharma strategy, among other priorities
She did her PhD studies at Harvard Medical School focusing on molecular mechanisms that contribute to cellular aging, and she’s also a trained pharmacist
In the episode, we talk about the present and future of therapeutics that could increase people’s spans of health, the benefits of certain lifestyle practice, the best use of electronic wearables for these purposes, and much more.
Dr. Bause is at the forefront of developing interventions that target the aging process with the aim of ensuring that all of us can have healthier, more productive lifespans.
