Recently, I talked to Kate Scheibel, a second year Ph.D. student in plant biology at UC Berkeley, about GMOs and her personal experiences with genetic engineering.
You’ve said you do a lot of work with plant pathology. What does that mean?
Plants, like animals, have pathogens that will infect them. Each cell is responsible for recognizing when it’s being invaded by pathogens.
I mostly work at a cellular level: imagine a receptor with a circle shaped hole that sticks outside of the plant’s cell into the extra cellular space. A pathogen will either excrete molecules, or it’ll have things sticking out on its surface that are circle shaped, that are recognized by the plant. Then, once that recognition happens, the plant sends a signal into the cell and changes its biology to make it so the pathogen can’t survive. This causes what we call a molecular arms race: the pathogen obviously doesn’t want to be recognized, and the plant wants to continue to recognize the pathogen.
One of the things that is largely true about plant pathology is in the past, we’ve bred plants that have those receptors or analogous systems that are easily overcome. Then, because of the way that traditional breeding works, that single trait can be picked up from the wild or picked up from random variation, and bred into a crop plant. But if the pathogen can no longer infect the plants that have been bred to have that [resistance] trait, it’s under tremendous pressure, so evolution happens and [that pathogen] isn’t recognized anymore. What I personally work on is looking for more durable resistance, which is kind of asking the question “Why can’t all plants be infected by all pathogens?”
For instance, a cabbage is never infected by a certain potato pathogen. We don’t know how the plant prevents that, so that’s what I’m working to figure out.
So you’re searching for why things don’t get infected?
Yes. I work on a pathogen, blumeria, which normally infects barley. It’s very good at infecting barley. A related pathogen, golovinomyces, is able to infect this mustard weed called thale cress, which I also work on. Blumeria just can’t infect thale cress, but that related pathogen can.
We look at attempts of that nonadapted pathogen to infect thale cress to try and figure out what genes are responsible for that incompatible interaction. The idea is that if you took those genes out the plant, then you would be able to get infection from that barley pathogen. Obviously, the end goal of this is not to create susceptible plants, but to be able to put that resistance into a naturally susceptible plant.
So you’ll cut and paste that area of the DNA sequence into a different plant?
Right. If we can figure out what the associated genes are, which is not necessarily easy.
This is probably an obvious question, but does what you’re doing fall under the umbrella of genetic modification?
Yes, I use genetic engineering techniques in my work constantly because it’s so much faster than traditional breeding. It would take me a really long time to find a particular trait in the wild and then introduce it into my system. This way I’m able to find a gene, and either put it in or take it out of the system within one or two generations, which translates to three to six months instead of a full year.
Is it a specific plant you’re trying to “help”? Or are you trying to apply what you’re doing to as many plants as possible?
My research is more basic–we’re just trying to understand the general pathway. The idea is that that it can be applied to whatever system that it’s relevant for, and we don’t know how relevant it is. We work with thale cress because it’s a small organism. It grows really quickly, it has a really short generation time–going from planting the seed to getting the next generation of seeds proceeds very quickly.
Explain it to a five year old: what’s the definition of a GMO?
A genetically modified organism is an organism that has a gene or genes in it, the origin of which is not the species that they are. You can do genetic modification within the same species–there’s no reason why you can’t do it–but generally, what people are talking about when they’re talking about GMOS are genes from other species being put into some crop plant.
The genes can be from anywhere. It doesn’t matter if it comes from a bacteria or a plant or an animal. They all use the same genetic code, which is really awesome. You can put a gene from anywhere–any kingdom of life–into a plant if you want to. The origin doesn’t really matter.
So we shouldn’t be freaked out if our tomato has genes from all over the place?
Right. There’s nothing inherent to that gene that makes it a tomato gene, aside from the fact that it’s found in a tomato. You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if you looked at a sequence file from a tomato and from a human being. They’re really similar, it’s just ATGC in different permutations.
Do you have any qualms with transferring genes from one plant to another, extremely dissimilar plant?
In terms of just putting genes into things, I don’t have a problem with it. One funny thing that people say is “You’re transferring genes from one organism to another, that wouldn’t necessarily happen in nature,” but there’s a lot of gene transfer going on in nature. You’ve seen things that look like big tumors on trees? What’s happening is bacteria is infecting the plant, it’s injecting its own DNA into the plant and changing the plant’s DNA to produce the nutrients that the bacterium can use.
These cells are producing a ton of food for the bacteria, and it makes this great little house for the bacteria to live in. This plant is expressing bacterial genes. It happens in nature, and then we use that system in plant biology because it’s convenient. You can replace those tumor genes with whatever you want, put them into the bacteria, then the bacteria will put them into a plant for you.
It’ll do your work for you.
Yes. That’s one way to make GMOs. It doesn’t work in all systems, but that’s how I make my plants do things that they normally wouldn’t. Things get transferred between kingdoms that can’t breed with each other. Saying “Oh, this is bad because it’s unnatural,” is wrong both that agriculture itself is unnatural, and also, it happens anyway. We might as well make it happen in a way that’s useful for us.
There are some moral issues in terms of what you’re putting into the genetically modified organisms but I think it’s unfortunate that that’s being conflated with the technology. It’s like saying that steel manufacturing is inherently immoral because you can make guns out of it. Ok, but you can also make trains or other useful things. (Read more.)
What are some of those moral issues about what you’re putting into the plants?
One thing is hybrid corn. Seed companies will sell corn that’s a cross between two different parent varieties. It has half of one genome and half of another genome. Because of the way genetics work, that corn is really, really good. It grows tall and uniformly, but if you breed it to itself, and then grow it the next generation–if you save your seeds–the corn you get is pretty crappy.
That’s because of the way that genetics works, and the way that segregation works. But since people figured out this was the case, any company that sells that F-1 corn or that hybrid corn, knows that you are going to have to keep buying your seed from them every year. The commodification of life is not a new problem. But it’s been brought to the forefront by this kind of technology.
Then there’s potentially creating monopolies on things. This is not a new problem, [but Monsanto] sells this Roundup Ready corn that is resistant to an herbicide sold by the same company. Instead of using the technology to make a plant that’s resistant to a pathogen, or a plant that can grow better in certain conditions, they make a plant that can survive this herbicide that kills everything–except for the plant. And that’s one of the reasons that people say “Oh, GMOs are bad for the environment”
GM crops are not bad for the environment. But certain applications of the technology can be bad for the environment. But I really don’t believe that there’s anything inherent to genetically modified foods that is damaging to the environment or that’s unhealthy. It’s just a technology and it can be used in ways that aren’t great.
I understand where people will vilify some of these big agricultural companies–but you have to understand, it’s difficult to figure out what gene you should put into a crop to make it better. These biochemical pathways are pretty complicated, and we don’t really understand them. It’s really expensive and time consuming to figure this out. And these companies want to make a profit, as every company does.
What’s the process like when you’ve identified a problem, something like citrus greening, that you want to change. Do you just start throwing genes into a plant and see what works?
Generally, no. One of the big bottlenecks with making GMOs is that we doesn’t necessarily know the process by which things happen in cells. It’s rarely only one gene that’s important. You aren’t just throwing random bits of sequence into an organism and seeing what happens at the crop level. Generally, first you have some problem in agriculture, greening in your citrus. First you would figure out how resistance happens…
Which is what you’re working on right now.
Exactly. Let’s say I identify one gene. You figure out one gene that‘s responsible for resistance–say you found it in a lemon. Basically, without getting too technical, you cut [the gene] out of the lemon. You take it out of the lemon and you coat a little gold bead with pieces of that DNA and you shoot it into the plant. They do this with something called a gene gun and it literally shoots tiny gold particles covered with DNA into the plant.
And for some reason–as far as I know, people are not sure of exactly why–the plant will incorporate this DNA into its genome. Then you can regenerate plants from that tissue, grow them up and breed them a bunch of times with themselves to make sure you have all of the traits you want in the original–you want it to be juicy, and you want it to flower at a certain time. Then you grow up this orange variety that now has the citrus greening resistance in it. It’s exactly the same as it was before, plus this one trait.
How does this compare to traditional breeding?
We’ve had genetically modified foods forever. If genetic modification means changing the genetics of something to make it more like what we want, that’s what agriculture is. The precursor of corn is called teosinte and it has about six kernels. Though selective breeding, we’ve made it have these huge ears. We’ve bred it because we want to eat it, and we want it to be efficient and productive.
Neither of these [options] are natural. You are selecting for traits, nature is not selecting for traits. The thing that’s kind of funny about people’s perceptions of genetically modified foods is that this “natural” method of breeding, which has been used since agriculture began, is really not that natural. (Read more.)
What do you think of GMO labeling?
I think consumer choice is important. I have no problem with that, [but] I have a couple of issues. First of all, USDA certified organic products cannot contain genetically modified anything. It’s one of the stipulations of getting that certification, so if you really don’t want to have GMOs in your food, you can buy things that are organic.
The other thing is that mandating the labeling of a product, at least right now, is generally because things are unsafe. Things that require labels on them are cigarettes and alcohol, which have demonstrated negative health effects. Whereas there’s no demonstrated–legitimately demonstrated–health effects of consuming genetically modified foods. You probably would have a problem if you ate the first generation of a genetically modified crop, because that was probably exposed to a whole bunch of antibiotics to select for the genetic modification. But the argument that the resultant generation’s food is unsafe doesn’t make any sense. They haven’t been exposed to the same environment, they are no different from any other crop. They have a DNA sequence in them and they make a protein that whatever crop it is wouldn’t normally make, but that doesn’t make it inherently unsafe.
You could genetically engineer a toxin into a plant, and that would make it unsafe, but there’s nothing inherent to the technology that makes food unsafe. So I don’t think that mandating a label is a good thing, because it’s playing to this erroneous connection that people make between genetically modified foods and things that are unsafe.
You work at Berkeley’s Energy Biosciences Institute, which is partially funded by BP. Monsanto funds a lot of work at places like UC Davis—how does this not create a conflict of interest?
Being funded by someone doesn’t mean that you work for them. To be funded by someone, you give them a proposal and they say “I like what you’re doing and I’d like to fund it.” If they influenced the outcome of your results–like not reporting something because it might damage them in a financial way–that’s unethical. It’s really unethical to allow the sources of your funding, whether it’s from the government or from a private company, to influence the reported results of your work. I don’t know any scientist who is that unethical.
Everyone has to be funded. Research is really expensive. And where you’re getting your funding from is always going to influence what source of work you’re doing. The NSF (National Science Foundation) publishes goals, and seeks proposals for projects aimed at solving certain things. If you propose a project aimed at a certain thing that the NSF wants you to do, that’s changing your research aims to get funding. It’s not really any different where the money’s coming from. We still publish in peer reviewed journals, we still go to the academic conferences, all faculty members are faculty members of the university, and it’s just that the money happens to come from BP rather than the NSF or NIH.
You talked about how GMOs can help with the issue of nitrogen depletion…
Potentially. If you grow corn on the same field for a long time, eventually that soil will be kind of shitty because it doesn’t have any nitrogen left. If you can make corn fix nitrogen so it doesn’t take all of the nitrogen out of the soil, then that would solve a big problem.
But isn’t that a natural barrier to keep from monocultures from forming? With any of the problems you’re “fixing,” are they there for a reason? Or is that just my Luddite thinking from too many Michael Pollan books?
I don’t think monoculture is a good idea, from the perspective of diseases and from the perspective of the loss in variation of what we eat.
I think that variety is really important and I think we should preserve it because we don’t make these genes from scratch. We don’t just say “Oh, I would like a resistance protein to citrus greening.” We can’t just write that. We have to find it somewhere and move it. So I think natural variation is really, important and it should be preserved, but everything doesn’t have to be the same that it is now.
This [technology] might allow for lots of different kinds of apples to be grown without some of the problems. Say you have a really cool variety of apple but unfortunately it needs a lot of water. Potentially, you can genetically modify that apple so you can keep growing it without as much water and then you don’t lose that variety.
That’s one way you can use this technology. Everyone who’s advocating for cultural acceptance of genetically modified foods isn’t advocating for Big Ag monocultures. It’s an unfortunate dichotomy–partially it’s because only Big Ag who can afford to make these crops at this point. But as we’re getting a much better understanding of how plants work and of how genes and proteins on a very small level are working, I think that there’s going to be lot more things that we could do with GMOs. I just hope that they aren’t so vilified in the public opinion that no one’s willing to do them. (Read more.)
Where do you see GMOs going during the span of your career?
I don’t think that scientists are going to stop using these genetic engineering techniques to figure out answers for things. Most people don’t know how agriculture works, because we’re really far removed from our food source. Which may or may not be a problem—I think it allows us to specialize in other things and live in cities and that’s great—but if you don’t know how agriculture works and you don’t know what it means for them to be genetically modified, I think a lot of people are susceptible to this untrue idea that GMOs are unsafe or damaging to the environment and it’s a real shame.
People talk about, what if we make a food that has a vaccine in it? When you eat it, you get vaccinated. That eliminates the problem of dirty needles or distribution of medical supplies or trained people who can distribute this stuff. If you could give someone an apple and then they’re vaccinated against tuberculosis, that is potentially really awesome. It’s far away but there’s no reason that it’s not a potential thing we could do.
When you’re talking about GMOs, they seem so innocuous. Why do you think there’s so much vitriol around this topic?
It makes sense. You hear people talking about Frankenfoods, or those cartoons with the eyes on the corn–that’s terrifying.
One gene encodes one protein, right? And if you put in one gene, or ten genes, or 20 genes into a crop all you’re putting in is the ability for that crop to make those proteins. They’re just proteins, and they’re doing some function inside the plant that could potentially be great.
People are afraid of change. The planet is able to support us right now, and maybe if things change it won’t be able to support us anymore. That’s a real fear. But the example of a mosquito comes to mind. Mosquitos exist and I don’t like them, I wouldn’t mind if they didn’t exist anymore. Maybe they exist for a reason–they have a niche in the environment, things eat them and they exist in the ecosystem–but they also vector disease. I would rather have a change in the ecosystem, who knows exactly how far reaching it would be, and save the lives of thousands or millions of people who are dying from malaria or West Nile than to just keep things as they are because that’s how they are. Natural variation is important and it should be preserved, but everything doesn’t have to be the same as it is now.
Do you have a favorite GMO?
I think golden rice is a really good idea. The idea behind golden rice was to produce the precursor to Vitamin A in the rice grain, which they got from a daffodil because it produced a lot of it. There are people with pretty significant Vitamin A deficiencies, and if they eat this golden rice, then it could solve a big problem pretty easily.
Part of the problem with golden rice was that it wasn’t bioavailable. If you ate golden rice, it kind of moved through you too fast to get at the Vitamin A in it. I think people got a little excited about it before it was totally tested and then it was seen as a flop, but that’s a really great idea! That’s the ideal iteration of genetically modified crops, using it to solve targeted problems without disrupting an entire system. It’s such an elegant solution to a problem.
***
Kate Scheibel grew up in Fabius, NY and did her undergrad at Cornell. She moved out to Berkeley to attend grad school in the Plant and Microbial Biology department at UCB in 2012 and joined Shauna Somerville‘s lab.
Tags: controversy, gmos, interviews, Kate Scheibel, science, shelby pope
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Question: Is there a way to be, as a consumer, pro-GMO technology (or at least indifferent) but still anti-Monsanto? Because I feel like, functionally, there is no way to separate the two. If I buy a genetically modified ear of corn, it probably came from Monsanto. I don’t want to vilify GMOs, because, like you said, there is nothing inherently dangerous or bad about them, but I also don’t want to support a shitty company.
I’m 100% interested in the answer to this question, because I feel similarly.
Point of fact, you almost certainly wouldn’t buy a GMO ear of corn, as Monsanto’s corn work is mostly in feed/seed corn… completely different plant from the sweet corn at the grocery store.
You almost have to forget about the food or product outcomes. Focus on the horrible business practices.
Like, I really hate the way Wall Street and the entire finance sector works, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to boycott money.
True, but you can buy organic/non-GMO food in a way that you can’t…use organic money, I guess? And if it’s for feed, well, buying grass-fed beef is a start. I mean I honestly don’t know all that much, but the arguments either seem to be “GMOs are the devil” or “You’re an idiot who doesn’t believe in science if you’re wary of GMOs.” Does Monsanto deal in food humans eat?
It’s such a large company that (to my knowledge) it has presence in a lot of our food products. Think of high fructose corn syrup, too. There are apps you can get (I use Buycott) that help you know if a company you’re buying from has some sort of stake with Monsanto, but I’m not sure if it’s 100% accurate… because SO MANY COMPANIES come up as tied to Monsanto.
The vast majority of animals we eat will have consumed crops from and/or consumed crops that have been treated by Monsanto chemicals.
Because of massive subsidies, we’re talking EtOH at the gas pump; corn sugar instead of real sugar in white sugar, powdered sugar, brown sugar; HFCS in many sweetened processed foods; the vast majority of meat we eat will have consumed either crops grown from Monsanto and/or crops that have been treated by Monsanto chemicals.
People’s lawns use Monsanto products.
Avoiding them is not a lot easier than avoiding air.
I mean, the easiest way to do it is to grow your own food or be friends with a reputable local producer, but that’s not practical for the vast majority of people due to access and wealth issues.
I think I feel about this the way I feel about all big companies with ethically questionable (or openly reprehensible) practices, which is that I’m unable to live in society and simultaneously withhold all my support from all the ways those companies could profit from me. I try not to let myself fall into the trap of thinking that any one company is the worst: Monsanto is the latest, but I don’t think they’re particularly worse than all the other evil corporations we’ve hated over the decades (McDonald’s, Nike, Coca-Cola, Chevron, Walmart, Halliburton, etc.). So I go ahead and buy some clothes, I buy some gas for my car, I buy some food. I just try not to be wasteful or extravagant. I also try to be somewhat selective about the products I use and purchase, based on what I hear about being especially unethical, but I do it knowing that that is more about my own peace of mind than actually probably hitting the right targets–I think what we hear about is often distorted and imbalanced and probably not the most effective way to change what I’d hope to change.
I also once knowingly bought a Monsanto product. It said their name right on the label. It cost about $8, and was by far by far by far the best option available for what I needed. I am telling this to all of you to purge my soul.
That’s completely fine! If you have political, business, social issues with a company then boycott their products, tear them a new one online– that’s great. I just get bored of people unscientifically criticizing good technology.
It is like if a company was engaging in hideous labor practices by making children manually dig holes in hot weather and horrible conditions, and activists start bad-mouthing shovels, telling others that they cause cancer, autism, adhd, arthritis, obesity, parkinsons, etc etc etc.
Biotech is a tool. Companies use it. If you want to stick it to the companies LOWER restrictions, let small companies compete, let universities into the game… give them competion they can’t have under the current regulatory guidelines.
CORN WITH CARTOON EYES ON THEM
Also, this was really well-thought-out and interesting!
“I don’t know any scientist who is that unethical.”
mmm. I don’t know. I’ve got a bit of side-eye going on to this. I don’t think that GMO is the downfall of the world, but I think that there is some pretty unethical stuff going down with it. And once money starts flowing, you’d be surprised how unethical people (even scientists) can become. Also, it seems that “management” would be a big part of the question there too. I have enough friends in Academia/Science who have struggled to do their research in an unbiased way because of the politics and management of their environment that I think it’s probably a bit naive to believe that there isn’t a possibility of corruption in this business.
Also, I think a lot of the problem is that scientists’ training doesn’t equip them to answer questions along the lines of, “Just because we can, should we?” and “Is this technology so dangerous that we shouldn’t even explore it?” As we continue to develop the capacity for world-destroying technologies, I think it’s important not to leave these questions to scientists, but that’s effectively what’s happening now.
But who else would you leave these decisions to? I’d rather have scientists/academics than the other world powers you might name:
-Religious leaders
-Politicians
-The Rich
-“The Media”
I think right now the REAL problem is that scientists are not free to make moral decisions because they are under the thumb (financially vulnerable to) the groups above.
If the outcome I’m afraid of is the creation of Skynet or something like it? I guess a paralyzed political process where nothing happens would be okay!
ETA: I’ve got MaddAddam on hold for me at the library!
But scientists can be many of those things as well (religious, politically active, rich). I think you have a good point, but scientists aren’t immune from ideological beliefs, biases and agendas. My dissertation right now has agendas out the wazoo!
So you’re saying we shouldn’t be trying to increase crop yields in developing countries?
Maybe! If, for example, the same genetic engineering equipment that can be used to modify crops can also combine the most transmissible forms of the flu with the most virulent, then perhaps genetic engineering is something we should set aside, or perhaps strictly limit access to.
I’m not suggesting a specific answer, but I think the current approach of leaving the question to scientists, who will ignore the risk because they are trained simply to seek out the answer to every question they can think of, is unwise.
(I’m setting aside for the moment: (1) my real doubts that genetically-engineered crops make much of anything better; and (2) the point that increasing crop yields is only necessary if at all because of how many plant calories are lost in conversion to animal calories.)
I can address both 1 and 2 by pointing you towards the Green Revolution, which happened and saved millions (if not billions) of lives. It’s very easy to say that increasing yields doesn’t matter, but it grates when there’s no counter-proposal for how to actually increase food security. Organic farms are great, but they’re luxuries.
I think you missed the point on #2. If we didn’t feed all that corn to pigs, chickens, and cows, it would be available to feed people directly. I suppose we could talk numbers of calories.
I didn’t say anything about organic farms.
“…who will ignore the risk because they are trained simply to seek out the answer to every question they can think of, is unwise.”
But scientists are humans with working brains and the ability to understand basic ethics in their work! We aren’t really brainwashed this way.
A lot of this argument sounds like saying that we should not, for example, research better jet propellants that will help us perform cleaner, more efficient, more successful research into how our universe works, because those propellants could also be used in missiles. (Actually, for that example, often it’s been the other way around, with weapons research coming first and later benefiting scientific exploration. but for the sake of the example, you know.) Knowledge of how the universe works is morally neutral, and limiting our ability to find out about it because it could be used in a damaging way–i.e. deliberately limiting the exploration for better understanding and thereby choosing ignorance–is not the answer. The answer is limiting the uses of technology, not its discovery.
You’re discussing a more blanket approach than I am thinking about. I’d just like to see restrictions on who can learn about and have access to the equipment to create new plagues, super-intelligent computers, nanotechnology, and other similarly incredibly dangerous things. Right now, decisions about access are left to scientists, but a new plague wouldn’t just kill its creators.
Not my idea, of course. Richard Posner is often goofy, but when he made this point in his book ‘Catastrophe,’ I found it quite convincing.
I see, that’s a little clearer, thanks. Though I think the point others have made is a valid question in response to that idea: who is qualified to make that decision, if it requires both sufficient scientific expertise to truly understand the risks (which it typically does), and a good grounding in ethics? and regulation? Some scientists are explicitly trained in ethics or policy or regulation in addition to their disciplines, but not most–it’s just not really possible for everyone to be trained in everything. I think this question applies not only to managing each technology itself, but also to deciding which technologies are dangerous enough to warrant that level of oversight and restriction. It’s a pretty complicated question, I think.
Well, Posner would suggest that he could do it! Frankly, I’d take him over the present lack of limitations.
But otherwise you’re probably depressingly correct. The reactive nature of human beings is such that we’ll likely create something that will kill us all before we get around to developing systems to limit world-destroying technologies.
An aside–your mention of Posner reminded me that one of the reasons he does not want to be on the Supreme Court is that “The cat wants us at home.” I had to look up his book because I thought it was a play on words, you know, a CATastrophe.
I’m not sure if I’m misunderstanding the conversation, but if the concern is that governments around the world do not have a system for evaluating articles (materials, finished and unfinished products, production and test equipment, technology, etc.) and related services (instructing others on how to use, repair, create, or replicate these articles), assigning a risk profile (whether the article/service could be used to proliferate weapons of mass destruction, for crime control, in furtherance of terrorism, etc.), and limiting access to the article/service accordingly, I’m happy to say that this isn’t the case. Every country/region in the world with a developed export control regime has a system in place to accomplish these goals through their export control system, and countries often work together to harmonize their controls. If you’re specifically concerned with the current risk classification of the tools, materials, and technology used in developing GMO foods, you could contact the agency responsible for that in your country, but there most certainly is at least one agency tasked with this, if not more – GM articles/services are of
interest to those tasked with preserving border security, agricultural safety, human and animal food safety, commerce, and, if the articles/services could be used in, for example, biological warfare, homeland defense. I’m not saying that you’ll have an easy time convincing a government to reclassify these articles/services, but the regulatory system is in place.
(Apologies for typos, I’m composing on my phone but couldn’t resist replying, since I’m heavily involved in the world of export controls – hope my comment is comprehensible!)
thank you! that really grated on me as well. scientists are not soulless automatons, living outside the world poking at and destroying things just to see what makes them go.
I don’t think it’s that simple. Developing countries wouldn’t have quite so many mouths to feed if there was better access to contraception (this is not a complete fix, but is a contributor to the problem).
I think it was in Indonesia where the government encouraged men to undergo vasectomies free of charge, and in return they got the equivalent of about $5,000 – most of the men who took up the offer were already fathers to 2 or more children, and were thrilled to have this offered to them as an option. They were also excited about being able to buy themselves some freedom, either by applying the money to their mortgages, or buying motorbikes (the latter being the most commonly chosen application for their money, according to the stats provided). It had the intended negative effect on the population.
I’m not saying that developing countries don’t need quality food access, but destroying their farm land with pesticides that kill everything except the crop itself (in reference to the point made about monsanto in the article above) is not a sustainable solution to the problem you’re proposing.
GMO has a lot of potential for good, but it must be tightly controlled by government, otherwise all these increased yields will do is provide is better access for the middle class in these countries, and still little-to-no access for the poor, because of business exploitation.
It’s not necessarily true that scientists’ training doesn’t equip them to engage with ethical questions. For instance, there’s this really well-known synthetic biology competition for undergrads called iGEM (the International Genetically-Engineered Machine Competition), and teams are required to justify the safety of the genes they create and are awarded special prizes for advances in “human practices” (including bioethics). Being educated about and seriously engaging with ethical problems is, in many ways, deeply embedded in the culture of synthetic biology research (and intentionally so!).
I gotta agree with you. Researchers are not immune to unethical behavior. There are a bunch of rules about research ethics, specifically because researchers are so bad about being ethical in research. Also, at least in psychological research, it’s pretty well established that researcher bias exists, even if the researcher isn’t aware of it or doesn’t want to be biased. I find it hard to believe that funding does not impact the research process on the basis of scientist integrity alone. I really enjoyed the interview overall, I just got a little stuck on that piece.
Doesn’t even have to be subjectively unethical action! We all see what we prefer to see and when you’re looking for very tiny differences, that personal desire can shift results. I liked this.
Great article! Replication is so important.
The New Yorker article you linked to is very interesting! I was definitely aware of publication bias (as anyone who reads scientific journals for any length of time should be), but the idea of the decline effect is new to me. Thank you for sharing it!
Researcher bias definitely exists and private financing of research has pernicious effects. If we want to promote the public good we should have larger public research agencies. Ugh to Roundup Ready corn that practically blankets my home state of MN threatening to ruin our soil and groundwater.
This is more about contracting out, but this interview reminded me about an oped I read in insidehighered this morning http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/11/25/es…
Why does money magically not create bias if it comes from a public funding agency?
Well NSF’s peer-driven merit-review process is pretty damn rigorous and does not consider the question of how the considered research could make money for anyone. More here: http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/merit_review/
Of course it is possible that peer reviewers themselves can be biased, or (more often) not sufficiently grounded in a sub-sub-field to make a fair decision. That can be alleviated somewhat by using multiple external reviewers, NSF proposals are reviewed by at least three that are from different institutions. Their reviews are also generally anonymous (though if you get into a small enough subfield you can probably figure it out). The central question these reviewers ask themselves is “does this project advance science?” “Is this aligned with NSF priorities?” and “Does this fit the requirements of the RFP?” (RFPs being developed from priority areas)
Private funding is biased because it considers the views of one institution and often that institution’s profit motive.
Monsanto’s priority is to sell more of their product and to create products that will sell even better. To a lesser extent Monsanto also wants to be credible and perceived as cutting edge which contributes to their large donations to academia. Also tax benefits. I’m not just picking on Monsanto though, this goes for most big corps with research arms.
In contrast, here are NSF’s priority areas: http://www.nsf.gov/news/priority_areas/
NIH is the largest public funding agency and their review process is fairly similar to NSF. I am just more familiar with NSF from my time in external funding.
TL:DR profit motive vs advancing science
I will see your side-eye and raise you an eye-roll at the naïveté/wishful thinking going on here.
Of course, scientists – like anyone else – are capable of engaging in grossly unethical and biased behavior. But scientists, especially academic scientists, also have this explicitly stated professional goal of seeking the truth. I have always found that ethical behavior and ethical research are taken very seriously in academia, and the nice thing about the system is that there are checks on any one individual’s work. If someone finds they cannot repeat an experiment or their findings contradict other data that is out there, they usually say so. Loudly. Debate and repetition are both an integral part of the system.
There are always going to be a couple bad apples (get it?) and no one should ever base their entire worldview on a single piece of research. But it is also unfair to dismiss a whole body of evidence from multiple different researchers that all converge on the same point (that GMOs are safe, that climate change is real, whatever) by saying “oh, the scientists are biased, the scientists are being paid off by the industry” – because most scientists really are trying to figure out what is real and the system should keep bad practices in check. Which I think is the point that the interviewee was trying to make.
Yeah, as a scientist, my first reaction was “you don’t know many scientists, then, do you?” Most of us are good people doing our best, but there’s incredible pressure to come up with certain results and not everyone is willing take a hit to their careers to push back against that. I only spent a couple of years in academia but I still saw two times when researchers stole students’ work to publish as their own, and was advised by a senior scientist to doctor my own data (I didn’t do it). Now I work in private industry, and there’s a constant tug-of-war between pressure from industry and professional ethics. I’m lucky to work for a company that values ethical practice, but we see shady stuff all the time when we review other companies’ work.
Even if you don’t mean influence your results, it’s so so easy to go with a particular statistical test or to set your experiment up in a certain way to make it more likely to get the result you want. The key to being an ethical scientist is not to bury your head in the sand of “Science is objective!” but to acknowledge the potential for bias and to actively work against it.
Sure, there are unethical people in any field, especially when under pressure, and scientists in academia and industry are no exception. But I don’t think it’s as simple as “funding comes from Monsanto” –> “will get results that benefit Monsanto.” Much of the time the bias in study design and interpretation seems to be about supporting the great scenario/model/outcome the scientist developed and really hoped would be true, because it’s so elegant and exciting and they love it so much. Not necessarily about helping a private company make money. I think the latter is probably more likely if you hope to receive repeat/renewed grants from the same company, though. Otherwise the time frame for most grants (a few years) is too short for the stakes to be significant if you get an outcome that Monsanto doesn’t like. If there are no strings attached to how the scientists are able to publish their work (which is sometimes but not always the case), and if future funding isn’t at risk, I think there’s little threat of bias.
can we post picture comments because I drew a corn with googly eyes on it that I really want to share with you all
I would like to see this very much
I feel like this is relevant http://googoogooglyeyes.tumblr.com/
Wait, this is all well-informed and insightful and not angry. I was told there would be internet.
Can we talk about MaddAddam?
Oh man, great stuff. And because I flog it whenever I get a chance, let’s remember the insane life-saving success of the Green Revolution and lament that Norman Borlaug doesn’t have a street named after him in every city in the world.
^^^This! Also, why do we not teach every child in America about the Haber Process?
Chemical fertilizers are amazing. They are also utterly unsustainable at current production levels because of the huge amounts of coal and/or oil required to power the process.
This was extremely good! The argument I don’t know how to counter is the “unknown effects” one. You know, the argument for labeling that goes, “well, ok, studies so far haven’t shown any problems, but what about unknown effects that might show up years later?”
Sounds reasonable, but it also presumes guilt when there’s really no reason to presume anything based on the one gene = one protein fact. And we don’t make new varieties of apples that we bred the old fashioned way wear a shame label for 50 years until we’re sure they’re safe.
But it’s really hard not to sound like a smug pro-Big Food jerk while saying these things, so I don’t contradict anyone out loud.
I think the argument is that you could say that for literally anything around you, and it would be just as meaningless: iit’s saying we should have public safety warnings about all the things we do not know about that could maybe be harmful. That goal is fundamentally impossible, and unhealthily paranoid, not to mention (in this case) rooted in pseudoscientific thinking and naturalistic fallacies. Not that you should necessarily phrase it the way I just did.
I would point out that studies have shown a small but consistent link between peanut butter and liver cancer. I have yet to see any real outcry over that, and there are no warning labels. Instead, the FDA requires quality control testing to keep toxin levels below a threshold that is generally considered safe.
Theoretically, any new (or old) variety of a food crop can have dangerous side effects (certain leafy greens used to be a major cause of goiter, fava beans a lethal to people carrying certain genetic mutations). Given the fact that most food crops have very large, sophisticated genomes, there is almost certainly room in any species we consider edible to become dangerous or be an unseen cause of disease.
For the last two decades people have been scrupulously (and unscrupulously) looking for links between genetically modified foods and various diseases and the results just aren’t there. How much longer term does a study need to be?
I thought this was a nicely balanced interview, but one point the interviewee did not address was the Precautionary Principle, which I think underlies some of the hesitance regarding GMOs. I think wikipedia explains it better than I would – “if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking an action.”
People naturally fear what they don’t know, which will influence the likelihood of regulation (I think this is called the dread factor in risk perception). I think without a critical scientific consensus (and if there is a consensus, I didn’t know!) people will continue to be wary of GMOs. I don’t find this bad necessarily, because personally I think it may be better for the environment to be overly cautious, especially considering how we are seeing today the effects of our past actions in terms of global warming.
There is a consensus, tho. But every study presented (and the lack of any evidence that GMOs are bad for you in a direct way) goes ignored and unreported.
An aside–your mention of Posner reminded me that one of the reasons he does not want to be on the Supreme Court is that "The cat wants us at home." I had to look up his book because I thought it was a play on words, you know, a CATastrophe.
I’m curious about one detail in the citrus greening segment.
If we make oranges resistant to citrus greening by giving them a resistance gene from lemons, are we not pushing the bacteria that cause citrus greening to evolve a way around it? And if they successfully do so, then haven’t we just made that much larger of a problem, because now both oranges and lemons are susceptible?
Don’t misunderstand — I’m in favor of the technology, if not some of its applications. No objections to eating GMO food or anything like that. I’m just wondering if the potential might be getting a bit oversold. If pathogens can evolve resistance to pesticides, why wouldn’t we expect them to evolve resistance to genes?
This interview is super, super, super interesting and I am SO GLAD I can have this discussion with my Toasties.
I have a question for Kate: You mention that the way pathogens work is that they mutate to try to continue to fool the immune system into thinking that it’s something else. This is remedied by spicing a resistant gene and applying it to other plants with other genetic codes.
What is to stop the pathogen from mutating inside the newly-altered host? While the singular gene that is resistant will still provide that for a period of time, how will that work over say, the next 50 years? Might that single gene work together differently in concert with, say, a tomato gene that the melon gene it was spliced from? Will that affect the mutation of pathogens?
Basically, will gene splicing promote resistance like antibiotics do, in the future? If so, how do we combat that?
That’s a good question. Overcoming disease resistance has been a big issue in plant pathology for as long as it has been a field of research. In the past, because breeding is difficult and traits can be hard to identify, single gene-based resistance has been widely used. This is relatively easy for pathogens to overcome, as generally they have only to overcome a single resistance determinant. Stacking resistance genes is a more effective approach in the long term, as it requires more mutations in the pathogen in order to be thwarted. Introducing a single gene via GMO technology wouldn’t necessarily be any more effective than via traditional breeding, but there are several advantages.
First, biotechnology is faster, once a resistance gene has been identified. Faster introduction of the trait can result in faster application and lower yield loss due to pathogens. This doesn’t solve the problem, but it can reduce the damage done by a disease.
Second, and more importantly, stacked resistance is MUCH easier to introduce via GMO technology than traditional breeding. By introducing multiple resistance determinants to the plant at once, the pathogen is required to have multiple mutations to become virulent on that crop. This is much less likely, as a single mutation is relatively easy to imagine, but multiple useful mutations would rarely happen at the same time.
I personally work on figuring out more durable resistance strategies found in plants. Ones that can’t be overcome by pathogens, for example recognition of pathogen elements that cannot be mutated while the pathogen remains alive or retains the ability to infect the pathogen. This kind of technology makes it much easier for these resistance determinants to be identified, and in the future perhaps they can be introduced to crop plants and create a much more durable resistance.
I think everyone else may have moved on by now, but I just read this and found it really interesting. I would just like to make a few remarks about the points brought up in this interview. First, as someone who is generally anti-GMO, it is refreshing to hear a pro-GMO perspective that doesn’t come from corporate executives with devil horns. However, I do think that there is a certain lack of context going on here. For example, the issue of patents on GMOs isn’t really addressed. Allowing corporations like Monsanto to exercise patents over seeds grants them a terrible amount of control over the food system on a global scale. I think anyone who supports GMO technology has to contend with the fact that it has acted as vehicle to this end for biotech corporations.
It’s also worth pointing out that the biotech industry is essentially also the agro-chemical industry. I don’t think it’s overly cynical to presume that these companies are going to pursue those applications of GMO technology that fit within the chemically-intensive industrial model of agriculture from which they profit. This is what we’ve seen so far. Scheibel mentions the case of golden rice, and confronting vitamin A deficiency in developing countries is certainly an important task. However, as she acknowledges golden rice wasn’t an effective solution. This certainly isn’t proof that GMOs could never be used to address nutritional issues, but I think it is problematic that the same biotech industry that offered golden rice as a solution profits from a agricultural system that discourages the crop diversity that would allow people access to natural sources of vitamin A, greens.
To pursue the science of genetic modification as one’s life’s work and to direct this knowledge towards solving real problems is certainly admirable. However, if one wishes to be an ethical person it’s necessary to honestly assess the plausibility of pursuing these positive goals within the existing framework. If not, then one has to go about changing the conditions. I suppose this is where the debate about change-coming-from-the-inside vs. change-coming-from-the-outside begins. In my opinion though, I can’t see GMO technology being put to responsible use until there is a radical change in the social and economic order (e.g. elimination of corporations as an institution, collapse of capitalism, anarcho-communist utopia).