Fake Science: Exposing the Left's Skewed Statistics, Fuzzy Facts, and Dodgy Data by Ruse Austin

Author:Ruse, Austin [Ruse, Austin]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781621576143
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2017-07-17T04:00:00+00:00

Breeding for Better Nutrition and Pest Control

Genetically modified foods are those that have been manipulated at the genetic level to produce new traits. Man has been manipulating the animal and plant gene pool since ten thousand years before Christ, ever since catching on to the benefits of breeding certain fine specimens together. For thousands of years, plants have been bred for better taste and nutritional value. For instance, the ubiquitous wheat we all know today—the one that virtually all our baked goods are made of—did not happen by accident. It was bred from wild grasses by human beings who repeatedly planted and harvested them over millennia. And now it is a staple food across the world. Seven hundred million tons were produced in 2013, the third largest crop on the face of the earth, after corn and rice—which were also deliberately improved by breeding.

What’s new is changing the genetic structure of food directly in the laboratory. It is this that for some reason has horrified the Left and even some on the Right.

Genetically engineered organisms are created in the laboratory by adding one or more genes to an organism’s genome. Genes can also be removed, or their expression altered or silenced. In 1985, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved four genetically modified organisms for field tests. That number has grown to roughly eight hundred a year today. More than seventeen thousand genetically engineered organisms had been approved as of the end of 2013.

The first genetically modified crop that came to market was a tomato called Flavr Savr. Maybe what freaks out the anti-food Left is that Flavr Savr also goes by the name CGN-89564-2. Scary! Also, that CGN-89564-2 was created using aminoglycoside 3’-phosphotransferase II. Hmmmm. Sounds tasty. Aminoglycoside 3’-phosphotransferase II delayed ripening and therefore gave the tomato a longer shelf-life. The tomato never took off, and the company with the original patent ceased production a few years later and was then acquired by Monsanto.

The genetically modified papaya was more successful. Papayas are an important crop in the developing world. In the 1990s the papaya industry in Hawaii faced disaster because of a deadly ringspot virus. To battle the virus, Hawaiian farmers tried crop rotation, selective breeding, and quarantine. Nothing worked. A scientist at Cornell University proposed transferring a gene from the virus to the DNA of the papaya itself as a kind of inoculation. It worked. No more ringspot virus. The Hawaiian crop was saved.

Three federal agencies, including the EPA, approved the process. The anti-food Left said the altered papaya DNA might create even more dangerous diseases. Radical environmentalists attacked experimental fields at the University of Hawaii. Greenpeace destroyed a genetically modified papaya orchard in Thailand.17

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group called for a national moratorium on such genetic testing. A Dutch study argued that a protein in the new papaya DNA now matched a protein in worms that creates allergies. The supposed “match” involved only six amino acids out of 280. By the same standard, Will Saletan points out, ordinary corn would have to be labeled allergenic.

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