Tuesday, June 27, 2017

GMO Propaganda Evolution

Junk Science Meets Hollywood

 Papaya! The poster child of GMOs that's going to win your heart... 


Or Agrichemical  Corporate Trojan Horse Dousing Paradise with Pesticides? 


Monsanto, Dupont, Dow Chemical and allies in the processed food industry are waging an expensive media blitz campaign since California triggered a conversation with its ballot initiative to label genetically modified organisms.

It's no surprise to anyone following biotechnology farm wars and knowers of Propaganda strategies to sell the public on safety of everything from Toxic Sludge to Monsanto's first genetically engineered and soundly rejected product--Bovine Growth Hormone, described decades ago in  must read books such as "Trust us...We are the Experts" 

Yet the agro-chemical corporations' brazen deception is still stunning, and it smacks of desperation.  Desperation so profound  that they reached deep into Hollywood to woo and dazzle you with sexy science celebrities Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson.


Behind the scenes, Monsanto is embroiled in class-action lawsuits with victims of  non Hodgkins lymphoma which the cancer experts at the World Health Organization last year linked to  Roundup, the glyphosate-based herbicide sprayed on greater than 90% of commercialized GMOs. But you won't see a health advisory about Monsanto's probable carcinogen in this "fact" based junkumentary.

Instead, the movie focuses on papaya, a boutique fruit representing less than 0.5% of GMOs that Hawaii exports to affluent consumers.  Permit the GMO science persuader-in-chief Mark Lynas, among many others with no science degree of any sort to pummel your brain with his industry cultured science pearls and sit your ass down and cringe through a movie painting critics as ignoramuses and guilting them for standing in the way of science. Science!--Cue beautiful cinematography, clever editing and emotion arousing music pulling your heartstrings. Ah, power of the arts has finally been put to great use to frame meticulously selected, pure-intentioned victimized patent holding scientists determined to help people. Most especially the poor in third world countries.



But what has this movie brushed out as it explores the central question: Can GMOs be a force for good?  As biotechnology advocates plead to increase food production for the next billion hungry mouths about to arrive on our planet, ardent promoter  of GMOs and photogenic scientist next door at my alma mater,  Pamela Ronald and her organic-farmer husband assert that organic and GMO agriculture are complementary, puzzled about all the fuss between radically different worlds of farming-- dumpsters of evidence are piling up that prove otherwise.

Dicamba resistant GMOs that were commercialized in spite of highly predictable drift show that, "you either have to choose to be on the side of using the product, or on the side of being damaged by the product." igniting a war between neighboring farmers, who are just trying to deal with the pestilent superweeds our innovative Roundup Ready technology created - chewing up their farmland. So much for peaceful coexistence. 

Pay no attention to the disease-causing herbicide-sprayed GMO corn and soy that ate America whole -- check out these nifty luxury papayas and "life saving" bananas destined for Africa.

This multi-multibillion dollar agrochemical conglomerate whose mega profits are rooted in selling ever greater amounts of toxic herbicides, insecticides and their associated genetically engineered seeds can't believe you are skeptical of their motives to feed the starving in undeveloped nations as they clamor to expand their global market share.

Ignore the dumpsters of wasted food piling up that our innovative technologically advanced system isn't advanced enough to connect to the hungry-- and pay no attention to the SuperWeeds.
 It doesn't matter that growing hunger rates parallel adoption of GMOs and rising corporate profits, as this independent scientist examining food riots and food crises would have shared with you -- had he been invited to be in Food Evolution. But he wasn't and neither were forty five other highly esteemed scientists.



 It certainly doesn't matter that GMOs are optimized for monocultures, feeding primarily cars (40% goes into ethanol), factory-farmed livestock, junk food industry and our pets. And as a long practicing clinician, I will have much more to say about GMO safety to  pets -- they eat more GMOs than people do.




Behold the arbiters of  "unbiased science and humanitarianism"

Behold the arbiters of.. air quotes.. science and data.




Care to explain why Food Evolution is comparing Monsanto's profits with Whole Foods'?
Fact is my nose detects Public relations and marketing tactics in a supposedly independent science feast.
 Pray tell what Monsanto's profits and their market competitors have to do with scientific facts.
Trying  hard to keep 'Monsanto' dirty fingerprints  out of this documentary.. supposedly an unbiased movie about science, facts, and D.A.T.A. while really only underscoring Public Relations tactics.











DATA NOT DOGMA


The main point the director of this movie drives home obsessively is safety of GMOs,  as solid as if it was written in granite rather than evolving, fluid science. Since rock solid, definitive GMO safety by sheer coincidence, is Monsanto's feverish dream -- it's worth mentioning that Alison, this movie's star, published a "landmark study" hyperbolically spun by the very same supporting actors promoting this junkumentary (including Jon Entine of Genetic Literacy, Kevan Senapathy with her platform on Forbes,  Hank Campbell of Science 2.0 and ACSH...).




They framed data showing  billions of chickens gaining weight  to  the ripe old age of slaughter at 47 days... as evidence that GMOs are safe for your pets over 10-20 years, or your kids over a life time averaging 85 years.  I called it "Junk Science meets Junk Journalism" 



Ah, so the weight gain of billions of chickens was due to genetics - confounding factor she didn't correct for in her famous billions of chickens GMO study? Oh, by the way, the more efficient production of chicken meat must automatically indicate the safety of GMOs.
No, not just to chickens, don't be silly--but safe to you, too, of course.
GMO safety case closed!

If one were to apply Alison & Co.'s methods of  over-interpreting chicken production to health implications in pets and humans, one would  arrive at the  troubling conclusion  that GMOs are in fact associated with obesity. With its world-leading consumption of GMOs, the United States is also coincidentally a leader in obesity epidemic seen in pets and humans  associated with devastating chronic diseases: diabetes, kidney, liver and heart disease as well as cancer. These diseases will never be diagnosed in livestock (Alison's area of expertise) because they have long latency periods, and chickens slaughtered at 47 days just don't live long enough.  And even if it was possible, Alison wouldn't be the one diagnosing these chronic diseases: she isn't a veterinarian! Livestock geneticists can't diagnose GMO harm to health of living patients, any more than plant scientists or astrophysicists -- neither the producers nor the scientists in this movie can speak credibly on GMO safety because they are overstepping into the realm of veterinary and human medicine.

Ask yourself a really simple question. Are you happy with Alison setting (mostly lowering)  scientific standards of risk assessment of GMO impacts on your health?

Would you see this  "expert", environmental activist and an animal welfare aficionado for your own or your four- legged best friend's medical advice? 


https://twitter.com/garyruskin/status/868489555086721025

Thanks @PanTranshuman ;)

Here's a suggestion. Don't be a dunce!  You have every right to feel insulted. 
Get outraged at these Propaganda Mongering  Public-Manipulating  & Infantilizing Relations 

Revenge of Evidence Based Medicine --Science Evolution.  next post.

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