More than 100 Nobel laureates have a message for Greenpeace: Quit the
G.M.O.-bashing.
Genetically
modified organisms and foods are a safe way to meet the demands of a
ballooning global population, the 109 laureates wrote in a
letter posted online and officially unveiled at a news conference on Thursday in Washington, D.C.
Opponents, they say, are standing in the way of getting nutritious food to those who need it.
“Greenpeace
has spearheaded opposition to Golden Rice, which has the potential to
reduce or eliminate much of the death and disease caused by a vitamin A
deficiency (VAD), which has the greatest impact on the poorest people in
Africa and Southeast Asia,” the laureates wrote in the letter.
Proponents of
genetically modified foods such as Golden Rice, which
contains genes from corn and a bacterium,
argue that they are efficient vehicles for needed nutrients. Opponents
fear that foods whose genes are manipulated in ways that do not
naturally occur might contaminate existing crops. And, they say, the
debate distracts from the only guaranteed solution to
malnutrition: promoting diverse, healthy diets.
“Corporations
are overhyping ‘Golden’ rice to pave the way for global approval of
other more profitable genetically engineered crops,” Wilhelmina
Pelegrina, a campaigner with Greenpeace Southeast Asia,
said in a statement.
“This costly experiment has failed to produce results for the last 20
years and diverted attention from methods that already work.”
Richard J. Roberts, one of two winners of the 1993
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, spearheaded the letter-writing effort to set the record straight.
“There’s
been a tremendous amount of misinformation being put out by
Greenpeace,” he said. Some plant scientists have been “attacked so
fiercely” over their views that they’ve gone silent, Dr. Roberts said.
In
the letter, the laureates — all but 10 of whom earned their prizes in
the fields of physics, chemistry or medicine — contend that G.M.O.s have
consistently been found to be safe.
The Washington Post covered the group’s efforts on Wednesday.
“Scientific
and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and
consistently found crops and foods improved through biotechnology to be
as safe as, if not safer than those derived from any other method of
production,” the group of laureates wrote. “There has never been a
single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals
from their consumption. Their environmental impacts have been shown
repeatedly to be less damaging to the environment, and a boon to global
biodiversity.”
In a report released in May, the influential National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine
found that
genetically engineered crops appear to be generally safe to eat and
safe for the environment. It resisted broad proclamations, however,
calling such sweeping statements “problematic” because of a variety of
factors that affect such an analysis.
Consumers Union, a policy division of the nonprofit Consumer Reports, has approached the issue
with caution, calling for labeling and federal scrutiny to better understand foods that contain genetically modified components.
In 2014, the Pew Research Center
found an enormous gap
between the public and scientists on the issue. Just 37 percent of
adults in the United States said genetically modified foods were safe to
eat, while 88 percent of scientists connected to the American
Association for the Advancement of Science said the same.
