When science gets politicized ...

I hate the tobacco industry, which does all it can do to tempt people to consume a product that is a slow killer.  I simply cannot understand how people volunteer to go work there.  Mercenaries!

But, there are plenty who do all kinds of jobs--and defend their businesses--for money.  It is not the market--it is the people.  After all, it is we the people who make up the market.

So, yes, any do I will do what I can do, to rant against big tobacco. Against the military-industrial complex. Against the prison-industrial-complex. Against unethical profiteers like the manufacturer of EpiPen.  It is a long list, typical of a person who is almost always on the left side of the political center.

But, there is one that plenty of people on the left side of the political spectrum rant against very loudly that has never made sense to me.  The virulent opposition to GMO.

I have blogged in plenty about this.  Even as recently when there was a nationwide march in support of science, I noted the lack of honest conversations about science.  While we are quick to laugh at the idiots who deny climate change ... there are plenty in the "save the earth" group who are adamantly anti-GMO.  I wrote in that post that I wished I could carry a sign like this:

Imagine the plight of the dedicated GMO research scientist.  Every scientific authority has ruled that GMO is safe, and yet the researchers cannot make headway!

One of those researchers has written a personal essay.  The guy, Devang Mehta, is from India and recently completed his PhD in Switzerland, "creating genetically modified organisms."  But, he is already exhausted:

Nevertheless, my time in GMO research creating virus-resistant plants has meant dealing with the overwhelming negative responses the topic evokes in so many people. These range from daily conversations halting into awkward silence when the subject of my work crops up, to hateful Twitter trolls, and even the occasional fear that public protesters might destroy our research. Little wonder then, that having finished my Ph.D., I’m part excited and part relieved to move to a new lab and work on more fundamental questions in plant biology: how plants are able to control the levels at which their genes are active.  

Like I said, it is virulent opposition :(

Mehta continues:

Beyond the issue of public acceptance and, frankly, a caving-in of many in the scientific community to pseudoscientific beliefs, I’m also glad to be moving away from transgenic research because anti-GMO activism over the last couple of decades has made a career in GMO research a risky proposition.

Research that never gets applied to helping people because of the opposition.  Like "golden rice" that is "still not available to the children who need it most" even two decades since it was successfully created.

My research has given me the opportunity to visit smallholder farms in two African countries, to teach a student from the “global south” the kind of modern biological techniques that remain a dream for many in her country, and to make discoveries that might help with an important problem in food security in the tropics. As a result, yes, I do feel a measure of guilt at leaving this field of research and quitting my lab’s quest to engineer better varieties of cassava for African and South Asian farmers halfway through the project.

What a loss!

Will we have an honest March for Science?

If my political emotions do not dissipate, and I do not think they will, I am sure I will participate in a march for the first time ever in my life.  At the March for Science.  And perhaps even carry a printout of this:

Of course, I expect very few Republicans to participate in the march.  After all, they are orgasmic with their fuhrer!  Which means that an overwhelming majority--almost all locally--will be left of the political center, and many of them way left of the political center.  I am, hoping that the participants will not ask me serious questions about my stand on various scientific issues.  Because, I will then want to engage them in honest conversations that they won't like!

Many left-of-center folks have made politics out of science as much as the damned Republicans have.  It is just that liberals do not think of their stands as being political, while Republicans are shameless in openly being anti-science.  Remember all my posts on GMOs, for instance? (Like here, here, or here.)  As I wrote in this post from more than a year ago:

I have blogged enough about the anti-GMO people who are invariably climate change activists.  About how some of the liberals are also passionate anti-vaccination folks.  Even though the scientific  community's confidence in GMO is no different from its confidence in the climate change issues which is no different from the scientific confidence in the power of vaccination.

Michael Specter writes about the need for the honest discussions related to the politicization of science:

If we truly want to endorse the idea of science, let’s break up into groups and fan out across America: let us talk quietly to people from Alabama to Maine and Alaska about evolution and climate change. Others can spread out among the Tesla crowd in Northern California and explain the power of agriculture, the growing need to feed the Earth, why all food is genetically modified, and why we need to stop protesting something that causes no danger.
Some of us could go to the richer precincts of Southern California, or stop by Vashon Island, just outside of Seattle, and describe to parents, in realistic but understated terms, the ways in which vaccines matter. Others might go to Hawaii to explain why a powerful telescope cannot only help us see the stars but understand ourselves.

Yeah, try telling the Tesla and Prius and Leaf owners about the importance of GMOs; they will run their cars right over you ;)

Imagine if I carried in the march a poster like this:

It is all politics, my friend.
Dirty
Rotten
Politics.

Greenpeace's crime against humanity

Consider the issue of climate change.  Whether we are scientists or not--no, I am not referring to the old GOP saw--we have our take on that issue.  We rational people, even when we do not understand how scientists measure the complicated aspects that they talk about, feel strengthened by the fact that 97 percent of the scientists agree on climate change and the human activities that are speeding things up.

We understand there is something important about science and scientists.  Which is also why are interested in who the Nobel Prize winners are, even though we have enormous difficulty even understanding one bit of the science they talk about.

What if a hundred Nobel laureates--ok, make that 108 laureates--put their signatures to a petition endorsing a scientific/technological advancement.  Such a statement from the high priests will be a powerful proxy for those of us who don't know how to do science, right?  Those who passionately argue by citing the scientific consensus in climate change will use the 108 laureates as fantastic evidence, right?

Of course I am setting you up! ;)

The 108 laureates signing off on a petition is for real.  What is their petition about?

The United Nations Food & Agriculture Program has noted that global production of food, feed and fiber will need approximately to double by 2050 to meet the demands of a growing global population. Organizations opposed to modern plant breeding, with Greenpeace at their lead, have repeatedly denied these facts and opposed biotechnological innovations in agriculture. They have misrepresented their risks, benefits, and impacts, and supported the criminal destruction of approved field trials and research projects.We urge Greenpeace and its supporters to re-examine the experience of farmers and consumers worldwide with crops and foods improved through biotechnology, recognize the findings of authoritative scientific bodies and regulatory agencies, and abandon their campaign against "GMOs" in general and Golden Rice in particular.

Now, that's a clear statement.

Unfortunately, facts do not matter to most who have built their reputation championing an ideology.  But, even Greenpeace activists have done a 180.  Like this former Greenpeace activist and GMO hater.  Heck, even the Greenpeace co-founder did a 180!

The laureates state in their petition:

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.

To borrow from Kanye West, Greenpeace doesn't care about poor brown people.

After calling on Greenpeace to "cease and desist in its campaign against Golden Rice specifically" the 108 Nobel laureates add this:

  How many poor people in the world must die before we consider this a "crime against humanity"?

Ouch!  That's one stinging blow.

To which Ronald Bailey, whose post is how I came to know about this petition, adds his comment:

Actually, Greenpeace and other anti-biotech activists such as Naomi Klein and Vandana Shiva have long surpassed that threshold.

Ouch!

It is a strange world in which climate change-deniers refute the science behind climate change, while the GMO-deniers refute the science behind GMO, and the vaccine-deniers refute the science behind vaccines and autism.  Which can mean only one thing: we pick and choose from whatever appeals to us the most.  An approach that is exactly the opposite of the scientific method in which, to paraphrase John Maynard Keynes, we need to change our opinions when the facts change.  It is dirty rotten politics!

It is not war. It is dirty, rotten politics!

I have blogged enough about the anti-GMO people who are invariably climate change activists.  About how some of the liberals are also passionate anti-vaccination folks.  Even though the scientific  community's confidence in GMO is no different from its confidence in the climate change issues which is no different from the scientific confidence in the power of vaccination.

Which means, the opposition is not really against the science.

We quickly jump to thinking that they are anti-science, and that it is a war on science.  Right?

When anti-vaxxers mount massive protests against immunization laws, as they did recently in California, it’s an easy out to characterize their motives as a lack of intelligence or a generalized hostility toward science. 

But, it is not that way, says Mark Largent, a professor at Michigan State University and the author of Vaccine: The Debate in Modern America.

On average, immunization opponents are relatively well-educated, upper middle class, Protestant, and married. Protests and public opposition tend to be led by mothers, rather than fathers. And they’re often relatively older parents—those over 40 tend to be particularly concerned about the possible effects of vaccines, according to Largent.

It comes down to a simple question of 'who you gonna trust?'

research, along with rhetoric from recent political fights, suggests some parents may feel uncertain about vaccines partly because they’re skeptical of pharmaceutical companies, whose profit motives mix with their vaccine-promotion campaigns. And while state governments can mandate immunization, this may end up pushing parents away from the public-school system if they feel that regulations are forcing them to make certain decisions about their children’s health.

So, if that's the case with the anti-vax crowd, why should the dynamics be any different with the anti-GMO crowd, for instance?  The anti-vax people think that the pharma companies are up to something, and the GMO folks believe that Monsanto is up to something.

The disagreement can come in the interpretation of the significance of specific findings, events or risk statements. In other cases, people opposed to a scientifically sound position might feel unheard, and inviting them to air their grievances can defuse a pitched battle. “You can’t just throw more data and information at people,” Millstein said. “It doesn’t work. You’re not addressing people where they are. There’s a disconnect.”

Millstein as in "science historian and philosopher Roberta Millstein of the University of California, Davis."

Which means, it is useless to throw scientific logic and evidence at the opposition.  It has to be treated as a political fight--not a scientific argument.  Politics is not always about logic and evidence--Al Gore knows that really, really well.  Any suggestions here, Professor Largent?

Scientists and policy-makers in general should seek workable compromises, he advised. “Stop with the hubris and stop with the bold confidence that everything you say and do is right,” he said. That just acts to polarize disagreement. Drawing perhaps on the words of Martin Luther King, Largent added, “politics is the work of the possible.”

But, politicking to win the hearts and minds of people does not come naturally to scientists.  I doubt whether even Neil deGrasse Tyson can take up this political responsibility!

Oh boy, the world is going bananas!

Decades ago, my rather cantankerous great-uncle decided that he had a great plan to earn quite some money from the fertile lands that had been passed down the generations--he would plant bananas in place of rice.

The family lore is that it looked like like he would really strike it rich.  The plantation was coming along great.  But, disaster struck in the form of sustained high winds and rains.  The field of dreams was wiped out only days before harvest time.  Those were the bad old times before crop insurance, and the man who bet his farm on bananas lost it all.

Trouble lies ahead for banana farmers.  It is of a different kind.  Literally a different kind--a fungus.

Crop pathologists call Fusarium oxysporum, a tiny, asexual soil fungus, the “silent assassin.” It enters plants through their roots and travels through their vascular tissue; by the time it is ready to sporulate, the plant is doomed. The fungus has adapted to human agriculture by differentiating: F. oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici causes tomato wilt; F. oxysporum f. sp. asparagi causes asparagus wilt; and F. oxysporum f. sp. cubense is slowly but surely wiping out the world’s banana supply.

No, "wiping out the world's banana supply" is not an exaggeration.

Specifically, the researchers warn that the strain, which first began wreaking havoc in Southeast Asia some 50 years ago and has more recently spread to other parts of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Australia, will eventually make its way to Latin America, where the vast majority of the world's banana exports are still grown. At this point, they say, it's not a question of whether Tropical Race 4 will infiltrate the mothership of global banana production; it's a matter of when.

Apparently this pathogen is an awful killing machine:

Tropical Race 4 is capable of killing at least 80%—though possibly as much as 85%—of the 145 million tonnes (160 million tons) of bananas and plantains produced each year

As with everything else, with this TR4 too the impacts on the poor will be worse:

The developed world prizes bananas as a food of convenience—it’s cheap, portable and reasonably healthy. In poor countries, however, bananas are often a basic source of nourishment for at least 400 million people. The average person in Uganda, Gabon, Ghana and Rwanda relies on bananas and plantains for more than 300 calories each day—around 16% of the UN’s nourishment threshold (and bear in mind that around 20% of the 74 million people living in those four countries are undernourished). Roughly 70% of all bananas consumed locally are vulnerable to Tropical Race 4.

The damn thing has even spread down under, by which I mean Australia:

The discovery of TR4 on the Cassowary Coast – that bountiful stretch of lush green valleys and rainforested ranges south of Cairns – cast a pall over a place that produces eight in every 10 bananas eaten in Australia.

 So, what can possibly be the way to save the Cavendish banana?  Scientists are working on two ideas:

(1) inserting a TR4-resistant gene from a different wild banana species from Malaysia and Indonesia, musa acuminata malaccensis, into the Cavendish to create a fungus-resistant version of the popular variety and (2) turning off a gene in the Cavendish that follows directions from the fungus to kill its own cells. 

Ahem, GMO banana?  That'll go well, won't it? ;)

Dale's introduction of a different GM experiment in 2014, a vitamin-A-fortified banana meant to help deliver nutrients to impoverished Africans, was met with harsh criticism from the likes of Indian environmental activist Vandana Shiva, Friends of the Earth Africa, and Food and Water Watch. "There is no consensus that GM crops are safe for human consumption," they wrote in a letter to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Or, we could switch to the gazillion other varieties of bananas, instead of this one:

We could stop relying on Cavendish bananas. If you've ever tasted one of the dozens of small, sweet bananas that grow in regions like Central America and Southeast Asia, you probably aren't terribly impressed with the United States' doughy supermarket varieties. Belgium's Bioversity International estimates that there are at least 500, but possibly twice as many, banana cultivars in the world, and about 75 wild species.

Yes, like one of my favorites--the "malai vazha pazham", which translates to "hill bananas" because that variety is grown in the hilly terrains near Pazhani and Kodaikanal in the old country.  Ah, for some tasty old country bananas!

This day ... two years ago (1)

(Re-posting from 2013)
The liberals have always been suspicious about me, and they have good reasons to--they know well that I will depart from many of their views more often than not.  That I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU doesn't convince them that I am a liberal.  A committed liberal is no different from a committed conservative, and they are often no different from a religious fundamentalist either--because I don't worship their gods, I have to be kept at a distance.

Works well for me.  Except that the decisions they make affect my life and the lives of millions of others too.  So, I blog!

First, food and Monsanto.  To the left, Monsanto is like Voldemort.  Perhaps even worse.  A few weeks ago, I blogged about the graffiti on the bike path:

Of course, that is not the only post where I have wondered about such dogmatic opposition to GM food and Monsanto (like here, here, andhere.)  Now, I have one more in this post, thanks to this piece on argumentum ad monsantum in the Scientific American blog:

It’s fashionable to think that the conservative parties in America are the science deniers. You certainly wouldn’t have trouble supporting that claim. But liberals are not exempt. Though the denial of evolution, climate change, and stem cell research tends to find a home on the right of the aisle, the denial of vaccine, nuclear power, and genetic modification safety have found a home on the left (though the extent to which each side denies the science is debatable). It makes one wonder: Why do liberals like Maher—psychologically considered open to new ideas—deny the science of GM food while accepting the science in other fields?

You can imagine what happens when you point out to the left how dogmatically ideological they are on some issues, and you point out to the right how dogmatically ideological they are on some issues.  Soon, there is nobody to talk with.   So, I blog! ;)

So, what is the deal with the "Monsanto is evil" religion?

We tend to accept information that confirms our prior beliefs and ignore or discredit information that does not. This confirmation bias settles over our eyes like distorting spectacles for everything we look at. Could this be at the root of the argumentum ad monsantum? It isn’t inconsistent with the trend Maher has shown repeatedly on his show. A liberal opposition to corporate power, to capitalistic considerations of human welfare, could be incorrectly coloring the GM discussion. Perhaps GMOs are the latest casualty in a cognitive battle between confirmation bias and reality.

We continue with the confirmation bias with food deserts. 

No, a food desert is not about lack of food in Darfur or one of those places. 

Food deserts can be described as geographic areas where residents’ access to affordable, healthy food options (especially fresh fruits and vegetables) is restricted or nonexistent due to the absence of grocery stores within convenient travelling distance. 

An informed person somewhere in India or Tanzania or anywhere on the planet will have a tough time imagining Americans not having access to food.  Not only because it is the land of plenty, but also because there are plenty of social institutions--public and private--to address food insecurity issues.  Keep in mind that food deserts are not the same as food insecurity--there will be an overlap between the two, yes, but the food desert concept is above and beyond the real and serious food insecurity issues. 

A simple logic tells me that choices increase with affluence and that the poor have fewer choices.  As in life so is the case with food.  Will it, therefore, surprise us to find that the less affluent have limited access to healthy food options?  Should we worry that Bubba doesn't have access to arugula, and that he eats way too much at the neighboring McDonald's instead, and bypasses the salads there?

Imagine, if you will, how easy politics will be if the liberals and the conservatives alike ditched their dogmatic and ideological passions and, instead, merely looked at how to solve problems.  Oh, wait, I see Ted Cruz coming to attack me with a hardbound edition of the Dr. Seuss collections for merely suggesting this ;)

Are humans also genetically modified organisms?

Not many days go by without GMO appearing in my Facebook feed.  Almost always, those are to oppose GMO (like here.)  Ironically, those comments are from friends who are otherwise trained in the sciences and in technology, and champion other scientific ideas that typically generate controversies--the GMO-opposing friends often post worrying about global climate change, and make snide remarks on the strange American fixation on denying evolution.

I have struggled to understand why people oppose GMOs even when an overwhelming majority of scientists around the world support GMO. I have blogged about this issue in the past, but it continues to be incomprehensible. So, here I am again on why people oppose GMO even though science says it is safe;)

negative representations of GMOs are widespread and compelling because they are intuitively appealing. By tapping into intuitions and emotions that mostly work under the radar of conscious awareness, but are constituent of any normally functioning human mind, such representations become easy to think. They capture our attention, they are easily processed and remembered and thus stand a greater chance of being transmitted and becoming popular, even if they are untrue. Thus, many people oppose GMOs, in part, because it just makes sense that they would pose a threat.

"intuitively appealing" is the key idea here.  Before we continue on with the GMO, think about that "intuitively appealing" again.  A narrative of a creator who created life is "intuitively appealing" and, therefore, people have a tough time letting go of it.  To think that the sun goes around the earth is "intuitively appealing" because, after all, we see that happening day in and day out.  To think that women are dirty because they bleed every month is "intuitively appealing."  To think that people who don't look like us are inferior is "intuitively appealing."  It is an endless list of "intuitively appealing" aspects of life, right?

Rational thinking and science are all about eliminating that "intuitively appealing" explanations.  Of course, we continue to refer to the sun rising and setting, but we also know that it is merely a part of the idiom.  Yes, there are societies that continue to shun women, especially during their "periods" but most of the world operates otherwise.  As I often remind students, education itself is all about questioning the "gut instinct."  If we lived by our gut instincts, you think we would have developed a protocol to eliminate smallpox, which required us to knowingly inject a mild version of that disease into our systems?

Yet, in the case of GMO, quite a few people--even the scientifically trained ones--vehemently oppose it.

Intuitions about purposes and intentions also have an impact on people’s thinking about GMOs. They render us vulnerable to the idea that purely natural phenomena exist or happen for a purpose that is intended by some agent. These assumptions are part and parcel of religious beliefs, but in secular environments they lead people to regard nature as a beneficial process or entity that secures our wellbeing and that humans shouldn’t meddle with. In the context of opposition to GMOs, genetic modification is deemed “unnatural” and biotechnologists are accused of “playing God”.

I suppose we should remind the GMO opponents that wiping out smallpox is "unnatural" and "playing God."  Ebola?  Hey, it is just nature that doesn't want us to live.  We humans are not like birds and, therefore, for us to fly is so "unnatural."  Space exploration is to intrude on the gods up in the heaven.  Speaking into the air and my father responding to me in real time from the other side of the planet is so "unnatural" and almost like we are gods with such abilities.

Oh well ... for now, my gut instinct directs me to go eat and I don't care whether it has any GMO in it ;)

Source

Will we ever get to healthily talking about GMO food?

The news feed reported that "Chipotle to Stop Serving Genetically Altered Food."  It doesn't matter to me; I have never been to a Chipotle nor do I have plans to go there anyway.

But, that corporate talk won't be easy to walk:

Ridding the supply chain of genetically altered components is difficult. They lurk in baking powder, cornstarch and a variety of ingredients used as preservatives, coloring agents and added vitamins, as well as in commodities like canola and soy oils, corn meal and sugar.

Oh well, what Chipotle does is its business.

But, the madness over the GMO issue is my business too.

It's a conversation that needs to change. A recent Pew survey found that the largest disagreement between scientists and the public on a scientific issue is over the question of GMO safety. While 88 percent of surveyed scientists agreed that GMOs were safe to eat, only 37 percent of the public agreed. This is substantially lower than the 50 percent of people who accept that humans are contributing to climate change—GMOs are more controversial than global warming.

As with climate change, it is not the science itself that is the hassle.  It is the PR angle.  GMO needs Apple's PR people for an image makeover; after all, almost always the GMO-haters are religiously devoted to Apple and its products!

A former Greenpeace activist and a GMO hater, Mark Lynas, writes about his conversion:

A lifelong environmentalist, I opposed genetically modified foods in the past. Fifteen years ago, I even participated in vandalizing field trials in Britain. Then I changed my mind.
After writing two books on the science of climate change, I decided I could no longer continue taking a pro-science position on global warming and an anti-science position on G.M.O.s.
There is an equivalent level of scientific consensus on both issues, I realized, that climate change is real and genetically modified foods are safe. I could not defend the expert consensus on one issue while opposing it on the other.

I have blogged once before about Lynas's (the Comma Queen says this usage is ok!) conversion.  Lynas was no ordinary petition-signing GMO hater:

He was a law breaker. He'd pile into vans with gangs of up to 30 people and spend nights slashing GM crops with machetes. 

Now on the other side, which is the correct side on the GMO issue, Lynas writes:

No one claims that biotech is a silver bullet. The technology of genetic modification can’t make the rains come on time or ensure that farmers in Africa have stronger land rights. But improved seed genetics can make a contribution in all sorts of ways: It can increase disease resistance and drought tolerance, which are especially important as climate change continues to bite; and it can help tackle hidden malnutritional problems like vitamin A deficiency.
We need this technology. We must not let the green movement stand in its way.

I wonder how difficult or easy it was for him to write "We must not let the green movement stand in its way" when he was one of the very people who created the madness in the first place!  To undo all that will not be easy.  Meanwhile, pity the poor and struggling farmers in India, Kenya, Bangladesh, ...

You think I care about what Chipotle does?

Source

The radical left. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em!

So, there I was on the bike path, when I noticed graffiti on the path that was actually readable.  Graffiti, normally, is like some awful hieroglyphics, which leave me wondering what the point is if the intended audience cannot get the message.  But then maybe the graffiti artists are not talking to me, eh!

Anyway, this one was readable because it was in simple, no nonsense, English.  In big bold letters, which would have made any eager four year old try to read that out, with the accompanying parent having a tough time helping the kid read!

Thinking of the hapless parents dealing with their kids asking them "what does fuck mean?" reminds me of the "Mr. Robinson" parody skits that Eddie Murphy did in SNL.  Hey little boys and girls, can you use this word in a sentence?

Where was I?

Yes, that graffiti is so Eugene!

People in other places might have other things on their minds, but here in Eugene, we certainly have more than anybody else's share of the radical and the environmental left.  Old timers say that this is nothing, that it ain't the hippie town it once used to be.  Every old timer seems to have at least one favorite hippie story to tell, and as exaggerated as they might seem, well, they are not!

The folks on the left think I am one of 'em Republicans, while from the right they view me as a damn liberal.  I can't live with either, and can't live without either.  But, any day, I would rather live in a hippie town than at Stepford ;)

And there was another:

More vocabulary lessons for little boys and girls.  This one is a mix of politeness--"I am discouraged"--and the big verb there--"rapes."  You think it was a result of some serious thinking by the graffiti protester?  I don't think so ;)

Monsanto has made quite some enemies.  At this rate, pretty soon, perhaps the thesaurus will include Monsanto as a synonym for evil! As I have blogged before, in plenty, such extreme positions, however, prevent us from engaging in constructive discussions on genetic modification and the undeniable future demand for agricultural products. (Two, within the last two months alone: here and here)

I suppose it takes all kinds of people to make up this world.  If everybody were like me, it will be one hell of a boring planet of non-drinking, non-socializing, hermit bloggers!  But then that will be a neat way to keep the aliens from ever visiting us!

Can GM food feed the planet? Yes, it can. Will it? Depends!

In response to a question at a recent guest-lecture, I commented that rising affluence is the cause of what we often refer to as "problems."  With affluence, we humans tend to increase consumption of different types, including food.  Affluence means that we are no longer limited to surviving on cassava and bananas.  We begin to want more nutrition and variety. Vegetarians want to increase protein and fat and sugar intake. Carnivores with money are tempted to eat more animal food..

Of course, the world is not full of affluent population--we cannot afford to be misled by the exceptional affluence here in the US that has made food so inexpensive:

Image source

Against such a background, we are also certain that the global population will increase by at least another two billion people, if not even more.  The higher numbers, along with the projected increase in affluence, means one undeniable aspect of life--we will need to produce more food.

Producing more food begins with increasing agricultural yields.  Not merely because of the growth of the vegetarian population--that will be a much slower growth compared to the demand for animal protein. All those animals have to be fed.

Hence my worries over the sustained opposition to GM food.  The Scientific American has a "food issue" in which there is this lengthy piece on GM crops:

[Despite] overwhelming evidence that GM crops are safe to eat, the debate over their use continues to rage, and in some parts of the world, it is growing ever louder. Skeptics would argue that this contentiousness is a good thing—that we cannot be too cautious when tinkering with the genetic basis of the world's food supply. To researchers such as Goldberg, however, the persistence of fears about GM foods is nothing short of exasperating. “In spite of hundreds of millions of genetic experiments involving every type of organism on earth,” he says, “and people eating billions of meals without a problem, we've gone back to being ignorant.”
So who is right: advocates of GM or critics? When we look carefully at the evidence for both sides and weigh the risks and benefits, we find a surprisingly clear path out of this dilemma.

This is a battle that has been going on for decades now.  We might even find a peaceful solution to the Israel-Palestine issue before we sort out the GM crop disagreements.  So, where do we go from here?

There is a middle ground in this debate. Many moderate voices call for continuing the distribution of GM foods while maintaining or even stepping up safety testing on new GM crops. They advocate keeping a close eye on the health and environmental impact of existing ones. But they do not single out GM crops for special scrutiny, the Center for Science in the Public Interest's Jaffe notes: all crops could use more testing. “We should be doing a better job with food oversight altogether,” he says.

I doubt we will reach any middle ground on this, given the deep trenches that have been dug.

Meanwhile, the race is on to label foods, which this Scientific American editorial notes is "a bad idea":

We have been tinkering with our food's DNA since the dawn of agriculture. By selectively breeding plants and animals with the most desirable traits, our predecessors transformed organisms' genomes, turning a scraggly grass into plump-kerneled corn, for example. For the past 20 years Americans have been eating plants in which scientists have used modern tools to insert a gene here or tweak a gene there, helping the crops tolerate drought and resist herbicides. Around 70 percent of processed foods in the U.S. contain genetically modified ingredients.
Instead of providing people with useful information, mandatory GMO labels would only intensify the misconception that so-called Frankenfoods endanger people's health [see “The Truth about Genetically Modified Food”].

But, isn't sticking a label on the food better for consumer choice?  Consumers can then buy whatever they want to buy?  Not really:

 Many people argue for GMO labels in the name of increased consumer choice. On the contrary, such labels have limited people's options. In 1997, a time of growing opposition to GMOs in Europe, the E.U. began to require them. By 1999, to avoid labels that might drive customers away, most major European retailers had removed genetically modified ingredients from products bearing their brand. Major food producers such as Nestlé followed suit. Today it is virtually impossible to find GMOs in European supermarkets.
Americans who oppose genetically modified foods would celebrate a similar exclusion. Everyone else would pay a price. Because conventional crops often require more water and pesticides than GMOs do, the former are usually more expensive. Consequently, we would all have to pay a premium on non-GMO foods—and for a questionable return.

So, to recap: where will all the additional food crop production come from to feed the growing population that will also be more affluent?

A brave new world where beef is not beef, and oranges are not oranges

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

Unless you are way too young a reader, in which case I worry about you, that quote might have made you smile and wince at the same time.  It was the one of the most bizarre moments of political presidential theatre in recent years.  In saying that, Slick Willie, the sharp intellectual and debater that he is, underscored the importance of definitions.  

Public policy issues are increasingly about definitions.  It depends on what we mean by marriage.  It depends on what we mean as drugs.  It depends on what we mean by unborn child.  Not only will such questions not go away, but advancement in scientific understanding and technological sophistication will continue to complicate our lives by challenging a lot more of the definitions.

Even a few years ago, it would have been bizarre for anybody to state that whether eating beef in India will be ok will depend on the definition of beef.  After all, beef comes from cows that have to be slaughtered and killing cows is not usually ok in that country.  Life was simple.  But, if beef is produced without ever killing a cow, then is that really beef and, therefore, will consuming that be acceptable?

Google's Sergey Brin funded the project to grow beef in a petridish:

Sometimes a new technology comes along and it has the capability to transform how we view the world

The "sacred cow" population and animal welfare groups will be pleased with his rationale:

Brin said that he was moved to invest in the technology for animal welfare reasons. People had an erroneous image of modern meat production, he said, imagining "pristine farms" with just a few animals in them. "When you see how these cows are treated, it's certainly something I'm not comfortable with."

I am one of those people never comfortable with the thought that the animals are not only slaughtered, but are also ill-treated, in order to get the meat to the consumer.  More than any taste preference, it is this discomfort that pushes me away from meat most of the time.  Which is also why I have been fascinated with "fake meat" and even include a reading on it in the introductory course that I teach.  In this case, the "fake beef," which could be a commercially viable product in little more than a decade, is not any concoction from soybeans, but:

The cultured beef, composed of muscle cells, was grown in the lab by harvesting a sample of muscle tissue from a cow. The tissue was then cut into small pieces and separated into fat and muscle cells. The individual muscle-specific stem cells were then grown in the shape of a ring and cut so they formed strands. These strands were layered to formed sheets of tissue to get the consistency of beef.

So, no cow was killed here.  It is only a matter of time before we perfect such techniques and produce beef or other animal foods without the animals.  All the old definitions on what foods can or cannot be consumed will have to be redefined.  

If you thought that the plant world was safe from such definition issues, think again.  

A couple of months ago, I read this piece in the New Yorker on how Florida's oranges are at risk because of a bacterial disease.  It was one of the most difficult essays that I ever had to slog through in my years of reading that magazine.  The fruit trees do not immediately show signs of the disease, but slowly, over the years, begins to turn yellow and produce mis-shapen and bitter fruits.  It is a disease that threatens to wipe out Florida's oranges.  

Caption at the source:
An orange from a tree infected with citrus greening, right, is stunted compared with a normal orange

There is no known cure for it.  No way, yet, to treat it.    The possible cure for it might come via genetic engineering:

An emerging scientific consensus held that genetic engineering would be required to defeat citrus greening. “People are either going to drink transgenic orange juice or they’re going to drink apple juice,”

Yes, that GMO food issue all over again.  But, that might be the simpler of the definition issues to worry about.  Where will this DNA come from?  

of the dozen bacteria-fighting genes he had then tested on his greenhouse trees, the one that appeared effective came from a pig.

So, assuming that the pig DNA approach works, is approved, and becomes a success.  Lots of ifs, yes.  But, if so, then a new definition issue: will the pork-avoiding population of Hindus, Jews, and Muslims, consider this orange juice as "kosher"?

It is a fascinating world in which we live.  It will get even more exciting as we question more and more the various definitions on which we base our respective lives.

And Bill Clinton made it all the more exciting with his sexcapades!

Even PBS and a hippie say GMO food is ok. Get going then!

When I was young--I don't mean younger, but young--I once watched with immense excitement my father arguing against a cousin of his, who was two decades his junior.  It was about introducing automation and computerization in India's banking industry, which was (and is?) dominated by public and not private banks.  It was a classic argument of apprehensions against new technology.  Except for one deviation from any stereotype: the old guard was eagerly supporting it, while the Young Turk was vehemently opposed to computerization.  Argumentative Indians shaped my life, it seems!

Skepticism and caution when new ideas are introduced are nothing new.  Happens all the time.  In her own way, my mother has always resisted changes to the way she does things in the kitchen.  Now that I live by myself, I am merely one shotgun away from chasing people off if they dare to tell me how to lead my life.  We are humans.

But, we humans are also pretty darn good at adapting to the positive changes.  The Young Turk continued on with his banking service and moved on to the managerial ranks.  Now, he even does Facebook.  My mother watches cooking shows on television and customizes new ideas--into the seventh decade of her life!

Small adaptations and innovations from the personal level to huge organizations and countries are how we humans became so healthy, so rich, and so smart over the centuries.  Yet, we do resist some changes more than others.  The virulent opposition to GMO crops is one of those, as I blogged even recently.

Thus, the subheading at this Slate piece drew me to reading the entire essay:

I’m a vegetarian yoga instructor, and even I can tell the case against genetically modified food is overblown

I am already sold.  A hippie defending GMO.  Bring it on!

She explains important points that I wish the GMO opponents would read about:

Genetic manipulation is nothing new. Humans have been breeding plants and animals for thousands of years. Many of our staple crops (wheat, corn, soy), would not exist without human intervention. The same goes for domesticated farm species.
Whether we’re using genetic modification or selective breeding, we're playing God either way. But some people seem to think that selective breeding is "safer"—that it allows less opportunity for damaging mutations than genetic engineering does. This couldn't be more wrong.

Yep. Agree.  Let us get to her second point about splicing genes, especially from an animal:

Genes are basically bits of computer code that are interchangeable from species to species. When you isolate a tiny bit of gene, it doesn't retain the essence of whichever species it came from.

Yes.  This is no chimera project.

So, yes, we need a better understanding of the issues, and not a knee-jerk opposition to GMO:

I'll be the first to admit that we need more research into the long-term effects of GM products. But I'm going to bet that the answer turns out to be something like this: Some GMOs are safe, and others are not. Lumping all GMOs into the same category is like lumping all fertilizers or all pesticides into the same category. Genetic changes are only as dangerous as the proteins they encode for—just as in any plant. Consider how many "natural" plants have genes that produce poisons and toxins.

If that doesn't convince the limousine liberals who lead the charge against GMO, well, here is their favorite television channel, PBS, and their favorite science program, Nova, making the case for GMO: (ht)

By 2050, farmers must produce 40% more food to feed an estimated 9 billion people on the planet. Either current yields will have to increase or farmland will expand farther into forests and jungles. In some cases, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) would offer an alternative way to boost yields without sacrificing more land or using more pesticides

But, hey, we we would like to have real examples of how such an approach worked, right?  Here is one:

In the late 1990s, the agriculture corporation Monsanto began to sell corn engineered to include a protein from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis, better known as Bt. The bacteria wasn’t new to agriculture—organic farmers spray it on their crops to kill certain insects. Today more than 60% of the corn grown within the United States is Bt corn. Farmers have adopted it in droves because it saves them money that they would otherwise spend on insecticide and the fuel and labor needed to apply it. They also earn more money for an acre of Bt corn compared with a conventional variety because fewer kernels are damaged. Between 1996 and 2011, Bt corn reduced insecticide use in corn production by 45% worldwide

But, opposition has increased over the years.  Opposition when there is no scientific basis for opposing it!

dozens of long-term animal feeding studies concluded that various GM crops were as safe as traditional varieties. And statements from science policy bodies, such as those issued by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the World Health Organization, and the European Commission, uphold that conclusion. Secondly, techniques to tweak genomes have become remarkably precise. Specific genes can be switched off without lodging foreign material into a plant’s genome.

Of course, it is fashionable for the elites in poor countries too to mimic the limousine liberals of the West:

In parts of India, farmers spray more than 60 insecticides on their eggplant—known to locals as brinjal—during the growing season, mainly to protect the purple fruit from burrowing bugs, says Ponnuswami Balasubramanian, a plant molecular biologist at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore, India. To reduce the insecticide load without losing the harvest, Balasubramanian, together with public sector researchers and a private Indian seed company, developed Bt versions of four varieties of eggplant that are popular in southern states. Monsanto was not involved, but still public outcry from GMO opponents blocked the eggplants from federal approval.

We certainly do not want an all-powerful Monsanto.  Instead, we want to throw open the GMO business so that we can have something like the Silicon Valley revolution happening in the GMO world.  But, unfortunately, as the GMO opposition continues, small players find it increasingly difficult to work with the enormous national and international regulatory regimes that have emerged, which then means that only a powerful corporation like Monsanto has resources to navigate through the regulatory labyrinth.  What an irony that opposition to Monsanto has made Monsanto way more powerful than it would otherwise be!  Thank your GMO opposing limousine liberal for that!

Genetically modified bullshit! The Oregon wheat story

Professor Harry Frankfurt observed that one reason, among many, for the astounding growth in bullshit, which we mostly tolerate, comes from the fact that in a democracy we the people are pretty much expected to have opinions on everything.  Whether we know anything or not is immaterial.

This blog is, perhaps, a wonderful illustration of his point--every post is more bullshit, it seems like, because I opine on so many issues. Surely, I am bullshitting, right?

A few weeks ago, it was big news in my part of the world when researchers found that wheat from a certain farm tested positive for genetic modification.

On May 1, with GMO-positive test results in hand, Mallory-Smith contacted the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s  Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to tell them that unapproved seeds which had been engineered 14 years beforehand by one of the biggest agricultural companies in the world, Monsanto, had somehow found their way into a wheat field in Oregon. And on May 29, the USDA alerted the public about the genetically modified wheat’s presence in Oregon.

Ah, Monsanto. So much has been said and written about this company that I now have no idea how much of  anything is true anymore.

So, what the heck is this GM-wheat?

click to enlarge

If Monsanto destroyed, back in 2011, all the experimental seeds that were developed then how come this Oregon presence?

“It would be nice to know how the wheat got there,” Rowe says. “We don’t want to solve the wrong problem and waste a bunch of effort because of speculation.” 

We don't know!

So, GM crop is the issue?  GM crops are not grown?

Not!

Three years ago, I blogged about this chart from The Economist:

That was three years ago!

Oh, it is ok in other countries but not here in the US?

Not!

Here's the full list of food crops for which you can find GMO varieties: Corn, soybeans, cotton (for oil), canola (also a source of oil), squash, and papaya. You could also include sugar beets, which aren't eaten directly, but refined into sugar. There's also GMO alfalfa, but that goes to feed animals, not for sprouts that people eat. That leaves quite a lot of your garden untouched.
GMO versions of tomatoes, potatoes, and rice have been created and approved by government regulators, but they aren't commercially available.

So, a recap.  GM crops are grown in many countries. In the US, too.  But, we have a problem with GM wheat.  Really?  Is GM bad?

Not!

The GMO story has become mired in the eco-wrecking narrative of industrial agriculture, and that is too bad for those who understand the real risks of climate change and discern our desperate need for innovation. And while the blue-sky hype of a genetically secured food supply has not become a reality, there have been a few breakthroughs. Even as climate change has increased the prevalence of many plant diseases, the new science can take credit for genetic inoculations that saved Hawaii’s papaya business. It’s also led to flood-resistant rice, created by Pamela Ronald of the University of California–Davis.

Confused enough?  Welcome to my club!  Do you now see why I bullshit, a lot?

So, can we do anything constructive?

GMO agriculture relies on the relatively new science of bioinformatics (a mixture of bio- and information science), which means that DNA sequences look a lot more like software code than a vegetable garden. And if Monsanto is the Microsoft of food supply—raking in the rent on bites instead of bytes—perhaps the time has come for the agricultural equivalent of Linux, the open-source operating system that made computer programming a communal effort.

Imagine if we made this a ballot issue, and we voters have to cast a yes/no.  Aren't you convinced by now that most of our votes will not be based on any scientific understanding and, instead, an overwhelming majority of us will rely on good ol' bullshit?

It is a surprise that we have come this far with democratized bullshit. Let us see how much more we can extend it!

Science is hard. Will get harder. Learn to deal with it!

Throughout my early years in school, math and the sciences came naturally to me and I found the subjects to be absolutely wonderful as well.  Decades later, a classmate, "S," recalled how I had helped him with calculus, and much to my disappointment I had/have no memories of that.  But, I can easily imagine having helped him because those were topics that I could have dealt with even in my sleep!

My heart and emotions were not in the math and sciences, however, and slowly I drifted away from that part of the intellectual world.

After I returned to academe as a faculty--this was in California--I once organized a term-long series on introducing freshman students to various intellectual pursuits.  One week, it was an English professor who came over to talk with the students.  Very fashionably did she sit on the table, as opposed to on the chair, and in her remarks emphasized to students how much she didn't get math when she was in high school and college, and didn't get it even as an older adult, and that it really didn't matter because, well, she was a professor.  Her message to the students was, well, don't sweat the math!

I was shocked that she would so actively encourage impressionable freshmen to stop worrying about math and sciences if they didn't get them or weren't interested in them.

Turned out that she was not the only faculty to talk to students that way.  Over the years, I have come to feel that most faculty outside the sciences have actively made sure that students feel legitimized about not wanting to do science or math.

And then there is the whole GPA issue.  Students know really, really, well that they can easily boost their GPAs if they took as minimal as possible courses in the sciences and math.

The pursuit of the perfect GPA is a distraction that leads too many students away from the challenges they should be facing in their undergraduate years. At a time when public understanding of science is critical, fewer and fewer non-majors are taking demanding science courses, due at least in part to their fear of getting penalized for their efforts with a less than stellar grade.

Thus, we end up graduating students with high GPAs, making sure that all students being above-average is not merely the case in a fictional Lake Wobegon!  Commencement ceremonies now routinely have magna- and summa-cum-laudes by the dozens--of course, very, very few of them from math and science, and nobody seems to even acknowledge that!  Once, when I participated in the university's deliberations on choosing the outstanding graduates, I made a mistake of commenting that it would not be fair to compare GPAs of students who were in different majors; I was surprised that there was no discussion on that point. Keep ignoring and eventually people like me will go away, I suppose!  It worked--it has been years since I participated in those discussions.

It is not merely a CP Snow kind of worry I have about the decreasing emphasis on science.  That is certainly a worry.  Of even more concern is the message we convey to students--find easy ways out, and don't struggle with things that are hard.

Such a message is the worst education we can ever provide.  Students don't even realize how much we are shortchanging their lives this way.  That message is the worst return on their investment.

Through education, which is more than a paper diploma, we would hope that students understand that life is a long haul, with quite a few complexities that they will have to deal with individually and as members of society.  The struggles in the classroom are more than merely about the subject content, and are metaphors for life.  Life is no cakewalk and is bloody hard in so many different ways.

If they can fight their way to the truth, the truth will make them free, just as it did for me that day in high school physics.
What is true for science is also true for the other great human endeavors.
To engage with the world in search of any kind of Truth is an expression of the search for excellence. That, by its very nature, is desperately difficult. There will always be a price to be paid in time, sweat and tears. We should never sugarcoat that reality.

Beyond all these, think about the implications for public policies.  A citizenry that is not educated in the sciences is a nightmare that we are already living through.  A classic example is the paranoia over GM crops.    That is also the example that is the point of departure in this essay, where the author is concerned about irrationality holding back good science:

What lies at the root of this panic, and others like it? One factor that is often ignored by champions of reason is that science is hard, and getting harder. In the mid-19th century, the ideas of British naturalists such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace took hold in part because they were so simple and intuitive (and in part because Darwin was such a clear writer). In those days, it was just about possible for an educated layman to get a grip on the cutting edges of science, medicine and technology. The same feat would be laughably impossible today. 

The more science becomes difficult to understand, the easier it is to grab a hold of "alternative" explanations:

It is hard to become a molecular biologist, or a doctor, or an engineer. Yet it is relatively easy to grasp the ‘precautionary principle’ — the belief that, in the absence of scientific proof that something is harmless, we must assume that it is harmful.

Yes, because it is easier to play this game, we then have an increasing population of reactionaries.  Conservatives in an unscientific way.  Things have gone so bad that:

Scientists are distrusted in a way they were not 100 years ago. The whole scientific enterprise looks to many like some sort of sinister conspiracy, created by the industrial establishment to make money at the expense of our health and our planet. ‘Science’ (rather than greed, incompetence, laziness or simple expediency) gets blamed for the degradation of our environment, pollution and threats to species. 

As the essay points out, if the early humans had adopted such a reactionary approach, fire and the wheel would have been banned even before they were adopted!

Oh well ... I will keep ranting away, though nobody listens to me, ever ;)

At the (new) biology lab at my old school, during the class reunion after 30 years

When environmentalists ditch their mantra. Ah, fun to watch!

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks" wrote the incomparable Shakespeare in Hamlet.  Ever since I came across that phrase in my early youth, I have always been über-suspicious about people who insist, almost evangelically, about their beliefs, whether it is about anti-homosexuality or religion or war or the environment.  And, if by some fortunate accident should the person's doublethink be exposed, mayhem ensues.

Remember, for instance, Ted Haggard?  Christopher Hitchens went through such a phase himself, when he broke away from his leftist colleagues and friends.  For the most part, they never forgave him for that sin, especially not after the golden boy that he was when in that camp.

For people like me, who think there is no better drama than the one that unfolds in real life, those are some really awesome moments.

I suppose for the big protesters, their entire identity is built on a certain set of ideas and even when they know it is false, they simply have no option but to keep saying and practicing those very ideas because, if not, their identity and livelihood collapse.  They are prisoners of their own ideologies.  That is one problem that, fortunately, I do not have!

A few years ago, Patrick Moore, who was the co-founder of Greenpeace, shocked the environmental world with his volte–face:

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.

Moore now heads an energy coalition that champions nuclear energy, and freely admits to the mistake he helped propagate by lumping nuclear energy with nuclear weapons.

The latest in such "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" is Mark Lynas, who "spent years destroying genetically modified crops in the name of the environment."  Yes, he protested too much. Even with machetes:

Back in the mid-90s he'd belonged to a "radical cell" of the anarchist, anti-capitalist environmental movement. He was influential – a co-founder of the magazine Corporate Watch who'd written the first article about the evils of Genetically Modified Organisms [GMOs] and Monsanto, the multinational biotech company whose work with GMOs was to become notorious. He was a law breaker. He'd pile into vans with gangs of up to 30 people and spend nights slashing GM crops with machetes. He was angry. 

That was then.  "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" indeed!

And then a Damascene conversion!  Back in January, he spoke up:

My lords, ladies and gentlemen. I want to start with some apologies, which I believe are most appropriate to this audience. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I'm also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid-1990s and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment. As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.

Reacting to that speech, The Economist politely said, "I told you so!"

His new position will be familiar to readers of this blog. “We will have to feed 9.5 billion hopefully less poor people by 2050 on about the same land area as we use today, using limited fertiliser, water and pesticides and in the context of a rapidly changing climate.” It will be impossible to feed those extra mouths by digging up more land, because there isn’t much going and because land conversion is a large source of greenhouse gases. Taking more water from rivers will accelerate biodiversity loss. And we need to improve—and probably reduce—nitrogen use (ie in chemical fertilisers) which is creating a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico and eutrophication in fresh water. The only way of squaring this circle will be through the technology-driven intensification of farming—ie, GM.

It is not as if Lynas' conversion was a matter of one moment when the new year came around.  It was building up over the years, he says, starting with 1998:

He'd begun to notice a widespread denial in the people around him. The more he recognised it, the more it felt like hypocrisy. "Everyone thought of themselves as being tolerant and open-minded," he says. "But if you said something critical about them, you'd be in quite serious trouble."

Sounds familiar to me.

There is no way the believers will want their folks, especially an influential leader, to question their own beliefs.  Remember that wonderful scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian?

Lynas has been very critical of Greenpeace's policy towards a GM crop that's become totemic among campaigners. Golden rice is a crop that's been modified, by the insertion of the genes for the chemical beta-carotene, in an attempt to make it provide more vitamin A. "Vitamin-A deficiency is one of the leading causes of death in southeast Asia," says Lynas. "It's led to blindness and the death of about a quarter of a million people a year." Yet campaigners, including Greenpeace, lobbied against it.  Greenpeace insists golden rice is a "waste of money" and an "ineffective tool… [that] is also environmentally irresponsible, poses risks to human health and compromises food security". For Lynas, its stance is "just superstition. 

Finally, he can stop protesting too much.

My neighbor comments that I am a freaking tree-hugger, and it is true in so many ways.  I try to be ultra-careful when it comes to even using chemicals against bugs.  I mostly buy grains and vegetables, and occasionally chicken or beef, and cook my own meals.  I bring home the groceries in my washable bags.  I love the river that is close by, and love walking by its side.  The coffee I buy is certified that it was grown in environmentally safe conditions.  But, as much as my neighbor thinks that I am a tree-hugger, my arguments in favor of nuclear energy and GM pisses off people who believe they are out to save the planet.  I can only imagine their responses if they came to know that once for Earth Day I showed in a class the classic George Carlin routine on "Save the Planet."

The world will be much better off if only we can shed our ideological frames that distort our visions.  But then, that will mean going against what Shakespeare observed.  Maybe you are thinking Shakespeare was wrong.  Let me warn you--if anybody dares to argue that Shakespeare was wrong, then I shall protest too much! ;)

The Willamette River, in late September of 2012