Andrew Weil, his woo, and anti-GMO hysteria...

[roseBudd]

1. This scientific illiteracy of the left...

damages credibility, on real issues, like climate change.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/on-green-dread-and-agricultural-technology/

...A must-read, cited in a Guardian essay mentioned by Kloor, is the European Commission’s 2010 summary of a decade of government-financed research assessing any environmental and health risks from genetically modified crops. It builds on a similar 2001 review.

Together they summarize 25 years and more than $400 million of research by the countries most worried about impacts of this technology and find no basis for the Frankenfood fears of millions of people in Europe or elsewhere.

A line from the newer report summarizing both says much:

The main conclusion to be drawn from the efforts of more than 130 research projects, covering a period of more than 25 years of research, and involving more than 500 independent research groups, is that biotechnology, and in particular GMOs, are not per se more risky than… conventional plant breeding technologies."

The cost of spurning GM crops is too high
The benefits of the technology far outweigh any risks and we must embrace the opportunities created by it

...Meanwhile, the benefits of GM technology are becoming clearer to all. Insect resistant GM cotton and maize has reduced insecticide applications and lowered mycotoxin levels in the maize we eat. Genetic engineering in microbial research has produced new antibiotics and other natural products. JIC's purple tomatoes contain elevated levels of health-promoting anthocyanins.

Food insecurity and climate change highlight the challenges of sustainably feeding a growing world population. Further research using GM methods opens new possibilities for raising and stabilising yields, improving resistance to pests and diseases and withstanding abiotic stresses such as drought and cold.

But in Europe, while taxpayers' money is still paying to develop useful GM crop traits, taxpayers are not benefitting from their deployment. In contrast, Canada, China, the US and South America are blazing ahead with GM and India is not far behind. The latest figures from the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications report 15 million farmers planting GM crops on around 150m hectares in 2010. Many promising GM traits exist, often discovered by academics, but the commercial risks are too great, the costs too high and the rewards too low for the European private sector to invest in taking them forward."

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jul/21/gm-debate