By Vandana Shiva
Michael
Specter's story in The New Yorker about Dr. Vandana
Shiva's work to protect public health from the effects of
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) skewed the facts and fell
short of the magazine's usually high standards for fairness.
In the piece published in the August 20th issue (and in a
subsequent podcast on The New Yorker's
website), Specter makes it clear that he does not approach the
topic simply as a journalist, but also as a strong believer in
GMOs. He makes no secret of the fact that he considers
opposition to GMOs to be unfounded.
But Specter makes his case by ignoring a great deal of
evidence that directly contradicts his opinions. By ignoring
important facts and questions scientific, economic and legal
he allows his personal biases to undermine journalistic balance.
The end product is a story that mirrors the false myths
perpetuated by Monsanto Company on its website and does a true
disservice to New Yorker readers.
Instead of allowing readers to weigh both sides of the
argument and decide for themselves, Specter decides for them. He
erases one side of the debate in order to tip the scales in
favor of GMOs. Readers of his piece, "Seeds of Doubt," could
easily come away with a false impression that the debate over
the utility and safety of GMOs is settled. Nothing could be
further from the truth.
The dangers posed by GMOs are a
mainstream concern, and the debate over their safety and
value to society is far from over. Specter's failure to
acknowledge this undermines his argument in support of GMOs and
harms The New Yorker's reputation for quality
journalism.
Specter roots his critique of Dr. Shiva in easily disproven
myths that are commonly repeated by the biotech industry,
Monsanto Company and other GMO
producers (Monsanto et al.), and their supporters.
Below, we illuminate his major errors and omissions, providing
links to supporting research and articles that refute them. We
encourage those who took the time to read Specter's article to
give equal time to the facts and voices he chose to ignore
completely.
Error #1: Distorting the Relationship Between GMOs and Famine
Specter roots his attack on Dr. Shiva's activism in a
commonly repeated industry myth about the relationship between
GMOs and famine. Just as Monsanto once claimed that a world
without the carcinogenic pesticide DDT would be a world overrun
by death and bugs, the GMO industry now claims that
opposition to GMOs could lead to famines. In repeating this
line, Specter specifically invokes India's Bengal Famine of
1943.
However, as any student of famines knows, the Bengal Famine
did not result from a shortage of food. As the work of Nobel
Prize-winning Harvard economist Amartya Sen and others have
clarified, the famine in Bengal like many other famines took
place at a time when the country had adequate food production.
"Famines often take place in situations of moderate to good
food availability, without any decline of food supply per head,"
Dr. Sen wrote in
Ingredients of Famine Analysis: Availability and Entitlements.
"Undernourishment, starvation and famine are influenced by
the working of the entire economy and society not just food
production and other agricultural activities," Dr. Sen observed
in
Famines and Other Crises. "People suffer hunger
when they cannot establish their entitlement over an adequate
amount of food."
In
Churchill's Secret War, Madhusree Mukerjee documents
how Winston Churchill's well-documented disdain for the Indian
people resulted in callous indifference toward the famine in
Bengal. Mukerjee, a former editor at Scientific American
and a recipient of the Guggenheim fellowship, takes Sen's
analysis a step further, arguing that Churchill
allowed the famine to happen as part of a strategy to
maintain the British Raj's control over India.
There is no question that Churchill, who considered Indians
to be "a
beastly people and a beastly religion" and who referred to
Mahatma Gandhi as a"malignant subversive fanatic," repeatedly
ignored pleas to address the famine. Instead, the British
exported grain from India while millions of Indians starved to
death.
Churchill's unconscionable behavior drew a rebuke from Lord
Wavell, the British Viceroy of India, who called it "negligent,
hostile and contemptuous."
The Bengal Famine of 1943, it should be noted, was not the first
famine to unfold while India was under British control. As Mike
Davis documented in Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino
Famines and the Making of The Third World, Britain had long
employed the practice of
exporting food while millions of Indians starved. Writes
Davis:
"Between 18751900a period that included the worst
famines in Indian historyannual grain exports increased
from 3 to 10 million tons."
By completely ignoring the causes of the Bengal Famine,
Specter misleads readers with this reference. In many cases,
including the case he cites, famine occurred despite abundant
food production. The problem was that a callous dominant force
controlled the food supply and failed to act in the best
interests of people.
Just as the British exported rice and imposed exorbitant
taxes while the people of Bengal suffered, Monsanto et al. today
impose on poor farmers exceedingly high royalties fees for its
seeds. This forces them deeper into poverty and makes it harder
for them to feed their families.
If Monsanto wanted to reduce hunger, it would not be doing so
much to impose deeper poverty on farmers through its overpriced
monopolistic seed scheme that perpetuates unsustainable
dependency. Specter's assertion that
profit-hungry corporations are the antidotes to famine makes
zero sense to anyone who has studied famine.
Further, Specter's assertion appears to be based on the
debunked myth that genetically engineered seeds increase crop
yields. A study by the Union of Concerned Scientists "Failure
to Yield" found that such claims are overstated. Instead,
according to the report, which is based on an analysis of
peer-reviewed scientific literature.
"Most of the gains are due to traditional breeding or
improvement of other agricultural practices."
Even in the US, non-GMO crops have shown better yield
improvements than GM crops, according to
research conducted by the US Department of Agriculture and
the University of Wisconsin.
This report
and others show that when genetically engineered products
are stacked up against other agricultural methods and
technologies, they are only a minor contributor to productivity.
Other methods are more important.
If anything, GMOs and monocultures may actually
increase the risk of famine and ecocide because they disrupt
our natural food system in unprecedented ways, in violation of
the
Precautionary Principle. From a recent report published by
the Extreme Risk Initiative at the New York University (NYU)
School of Engineering:
"Invoking the risk of famine as an alternative to
GMOs is a deceitful strategy, no different from urging
people to play Russian roulette in order to get out of
poverty. The evocation of famine also prevents clear
thinking about not just GMOs but also global hunger. The
idea that GMOs will help avert famine ignores evidence that
the problem of global hunger is due to poor economic and
agricultural policies. Those who care about the supply of
food should advocate for an immediate impact on the problem
by reducing the amount of corn used for
ethanol in the US, which burns food for fuel consuming
over 40% of the US crop that could provide enough food to
feed 2/3 of a billion people."
Notably, Monsanto is a top producer of GMO corn designed to
streamline the conversion of a food staple into
ethanol (rather than alleviate world hunger). Conclusion:
Specter's embrace of the GMO industry's famine canard ignores a
Nobel Prize-winning economist's research into the root causes of
the Bengal Famine, as well as other famines.
In addition, the assertion that GMOs increase crop yields (and
thus food supply) is exaggerated. In particular, it ignores the
availability of other methods, such as conventional crop
breeding, that are more successful at increasing productivity.
Finally, as the NYU paper indicates, contributing to
monocultures of a few crops that are not primarily used for
food, much less food that helps malnourished people, likely
increases rather than decreases food insecurity. This very
well-reasoned argument is completely ignored. Additionally, it
should be noted that the European public has widely rejected GMO
food products while creating societies with less food
insecurity than the United States.
"We strongly object that the image of the poor and
hungry from our countries is being used by giant
multinational corporations to push a technology that is
neither safe, environmentally friendly, nor economically
beneficial to us. We think it will destroy the diversity,
the local knowledge and the sustainable agricultural systems
that our farmers have developed for millennia, and that it
will thus undermine our capacity to feed ourselves."
Statement at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of
the United Nations by the Representative of every African
nation, except South Africa, in 1998
Error #2: Obscuring Vast Difference Between GMO and Natural
Specter also repeats the false claim that what GMO companies
like Monsanto are doing to our food and plants is not
fundamentally different than what has been done for centuries.
He writes: "Nearly all of the plants we cultivate corn,
wheat, rice, roses, Christmas trees have been
genetically-modified [sic] through breeding to last longer, look
better, taste sweeter, or grow more vigorously in arid soil."
But the vast differences between breeding methods that use
processes that commonly occur in nature and those used in GMO
corporation laboratories is substantial. For one thing, GMO
foods often introduce proteins not previously in the food supply
into our foods. The proteins come from organisms such as
bacteria that normally cannot place their genes into our food
crops, yet they enter our bodies when we consume these GMO
foods. We do not fully understand their effects on human health.
This is especially true because the regulatory systems do not
thoroughly test their safety. In the US, the very companies that
want to commercialize these products conduct most of these
tests.
"There is no comparison between tinkering with the
selective breeding of genetic components of organisms that
have previously undergone extensive histories of selection
and the top-down engineering of taking a gene from a fish
and putting it into a tomato," say the authors of the NYU
Extreme Risk Initiative
paper. "Saying that such a product is natural misses the
process of natural selection by which things become
'natural.'"
Dr. George Wald, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and
Medicine in 1967, raised the alarm on these concerns long before
consumers became aware of them:
"Recombinant DNA technology [genetic engineering]
faces our society with problems unprecedented not only in
the history of science, but of life on the Earth
Up to now
living organisms have evolved very slowly, and new forms
have had plenty of time to settle in. Now whole proteins
will be transposed overnight into wholly new associations,
with consequences no one can foretell, either for the host
organism or their neighbors. It is all too big and is
happening too fast. So this, the central problem, remains
almost unconsidered. It presents probably the largest
ethical problem that science has ever had to face."
These unanswered questions and ethical problems have resulted
in widespread public concern over GMOs. Over 90% of Americans
believe GMO products should be labeled, and a majority says they
would avoid buying them if they were. As a result, Monsanto et
al. have spent millions of dollars to
kill proposals for GMO labeling. Monsanto et al.
have not been as successful in Europe. Notwithstanding that
millions of tons of animal feed are
sold to Europe every year, labeling laws coupled with
scientific review based on the Precautionary Principle, in
tandem with widespread public skepticism of GMO products, have
made it nearly impossible for GMO products to be sold there.
The refusal of European citizens to serve as guinea pigs for
Monsanto has
hampered the company's efforts to expand there. Clearly, it
is not only activists who have expressed legitimate concern
about GMOs. Governments and scientists also clearly perceive the
difference between natural products and GMOs, and taken steps to
guard against potential dangers.
Yet Specter completely glosses over this issue, making an
oversimplified comparison to essentially equate GMOs with
natural products and wipe out a key concern of GMO opponents
with one clever sentence. But according to the
World Health Organization, "Genetically modified
organisms (GMOs) can be defined as organisms (i.e. plants,
animals or microorganisms) in which the genetic material (DNA)
has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by
mating and/or natural recombination." In a podcast
accompanying Specter's piece on the New Yorker website, Specter
goes so far as to deny that organic foods are healthier than GMO
foods, a claim that is challenged by many
peer-reviewed studies.
Conclusion: Specter's comparison between
modern biotechnological engineering and other types of
crossbreeding or hybridization is completely misleading. Many
experts, including a
Nobel Prize winner, have articulated why GMOs are not
typically found in nature and represent uncharted scientific
territory. Specter's oversimplification of the differences
between natural and GMO products misinforms readers.
Error #3: Denying the Debate Over GMO Health Dangers
Specter's piece accepts as fact the false argument that GMOs
pose no threat to public health and safety. He ignores credible
research and serious questions about the health risks posed by
GMOs.
For example, in 2013, a group of nearly 300 scientists from
the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental
Responsibility (ENSEER)
signed a public statement calling on GMO companies,
commentators and journalists to stop repeating the false claim
that a "scientific consensus" considers GMOs safe.
"We feel compelled to issue this statement because
the claimed consensus on GMO safety does not exist," they
wrote. "The claim that it does exist is misleading and
misrepresents the currently available scientific evidence
and the broad diversity of opinion among scientists on this
issue. Moreover, the claim encourages a climate of
complacency that could lead to a lack of regulatory and
scientific rigor and appropriate caution, potentially
endangering the health of humans, animals, and the
environment."
The
Center for Food Safety has done an excellent job of
highlighting the potential
risks of GMOs on human health, including toxicity, allergic
reactions, antibiotic resistance, immuno-suppression, cancer and
loss of nutrition. Monsanto et al. and their supporters
typically deny any link between GMOs and negative health
effects, saying there is no scientific evidence to prove it.
Yet, as the Center for Food Safety points out, "the [FDA]
also does not require any pre-market safety testing of GE foods.
The agency's failure to require testing or labeling of GE foods
has made millions of consumers into guinea pigs, unknowingly
testing the safety of dozens of gene-altered food products."
Specter raises the common claim that no one has been harmed
by consuming genetically engineered foods despite many years of
widespread use in the US. But as with other possible food health
risks, long-term harm to public health can only be determined by
doing epidemiological studies, as have been done for numerous
other possible health risks. Yet these studies have never been
done for genetically engineered foods.
The paper on GMOs issued by the Extreme Risk Initiative at
the NYU School of Engineering pokes more holes in the idea that,
because we don't fully understand GMO risks, they must not
exist: "A lack of observations of explicit harm does not
show an absence of hidden risk
To expose an entire system to
something whose potential harm is not understood because extant
models do not predict a negative outcome is not justifiable; the
relevant variables may not have been adequately identified."
In addition to the possible dangers posed by the GMOs due to
superseding natural genetics, there is an added risk from
pesticides. As the
New York Times, Reuters, Forbes and many others have
confirmed, GMO crops have resulted in the
increased use of pesticides and herbicides.
From
Reuters: "Genetically engineered crops have led to
an increase in overall pesticide use, by 404 million pounds
from the time they were introduced in 1996 through 2011,
according to the report by Charles Benbrook, a research
professor at the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and
Natural Resources at Washington State University." Dr.
Benbrook's paper can be found
here.
This increased use of dangerous toxins on crops poses known
risks to human health. Highly credible studies have linked
exposure to pesticides to a host of major human
illnesses, including many cancers, endocrine disruption,
reproductive harm and
autism.
Recent
research from the University of California at Davis found
that "mothers who lived within roughly one mile of where
pesticides were applied were found to have a 60 percent higher
risk of having children with any of the spectrum of autism
disorders, such as Asperger's syndrome," according to the
Sacramento Bee.
"The weight of evidence is beginning to suggest that
mothers' exposures during pregnancy may play a role in the
development of autism spectrum disorders,"said Kim Harley,
associate director of University of California, Berkeley's
Center for Environmental Research and Children's Health.
The UC Davis study was the most recent study to establish a
possible link between pesticide exposure and autism. Clearly,
serious questions have been raised and there is more research to
be done. Yet Specter fails to mention any of this.
Conclusion: Once again, Specter omits or
ignores important research that raises questions about the
health and safety of GMOs. By doing this, he obscures the fact
that the concerns Dr. Shiva and others express about the dangers
of GMOs are rooted in credible research and legitimate
scientific inquiry. Specter's reliance on the classic "straw
man" fallacy is what one expects from polemicists writing at Fox
News or Breitbart, but is troubling for a journalist who writes
for a reputable publication.
Error #4: Erasing the Link Between Monsanto Seeds and Cotton
Farmer Suicides in India
Specter denies any link between Monsanto and the epidemic of
farmer suicides in India, attributing their deaths mainly to the
financial stresses of farming. His explanation mirrors the
explanation Monsanto has posted on the section of its website
dedicated to denying any link to the farmer suicides. And just
like Monsanto, Specter ignores a key fact: Monsanto's role in
creating the debt and financial stresses that drive many farmers
to suicide.
"Cotton farmers are in a deep crisis since shifting to Bt
(GMO) cotton. The spate of farmer suicides in 2011-12 has
been particularly severe among Bt cotton farmers." Memo
from the Indian Ministry,
quoted in the Hindustan Times
The marketing of GMO seeds in India has resulted in farmers
widely planting them without adequate information about their
use and value. Specter greatly exaggerates the GMO seeds' effect
on crop yields when authorities there have attributed most yield
gains to
other technologies, such as increased irrigation.
These seeds are extremely expensive compared to normal seeds,
but they come with the promise of unrealistic results. When
these promises prove false, an alarming number of these farmers
drowning in debt significantly worsened by Monsanto's pricing
scheme end their lives by drinking pesticides. As the brother
of one suicide victim in Maharashtra, the heart of India's
cotton-growing country, told award-winning reporter
Andrew Malone in 2008:
"He was strangled by these magic seeds. They sell us the
seeds, saying they will not need expensive pesticides but
they do. We have to buy the same seeds from the same company
every year. It is killing us. Please tell the world what is
happening here."
Monsanto entraps Indian farmers in an expensive seed monopoly
scheme, driving up their levels of indebtedness. Specter and
others have tried to shift the blame for these suicides on
"debt," but given Monsanto's role in helping to create that
debt, this does not absolve the company of responsibility.
In attacking Dr. Shiva's advocacy for these farmers, Specter
cherry-picks the data in order to deny the suicide epidemic
altogether. Most flagrantly, he uses the national average of
farmer suicides in India to dispute the notion that the number
of suicides has increased. Yet, as Dr. Shiva points out in her
rebuttal to Specter, the suicide epidemic is focused in the
cotton-growing regions of Vidarbha in
Maharashtra state where Monsanto's expensive Bt Cotton (a
GMO strain) has taken root.
From a July 2014
story in The Hindu newspaper:
"With the highest number of farmer suicides recorded
in the year 2013, Maharashtra continues to paint a dismal
picture on the agrarian front with over 3,000 farmers taking
their lives. According to a recent report of the National
Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), a total of 3,146 farmers killed
themselves in the state in 2013. Maharashtra repeated this
performance despite the state registering 640 less farm
suicides than 2012."
From a
paper published in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry in 2008:
"[The] majority of suicide cases are from cotton
growing areas. The cotton farmers in India paying more
prices for inputs like seeds, pesticides, fertilizers,
electricity, water, and labor whereas the price of cotton
has gone down along with decreased productivity"
Specter's failure to acknowledge the fact that the farmer
suicide epidemic is centered in the cotton-growing region, where
Monsanto's significantly more expensive Bt GMO cotton seeds now
dominate, is a telling omission. Prices have increased
exponentially since the introduction of Monsanto's GMO Bt cotton
seeds. As the Indian Ministry of Agriculture put it: "Cotton
farmers are in a deep crisis since shifting to Bt (GMO) cotton.
The spate of farmer suicides in 2011-12 has been particularly
severe among Bt cotton farmers."
In addition to driving up farmer debt by making the cost of
seed significantly higher, Monsanto's GMO cotton seeds increase
pressure on farmers because these GMO crops need more irrigation
in order to grow. In dry regions where water is scarce, this mix
of increased seed prices and increased reliance on irrigation
can devastate farmers. As the Times of India
reported in September, Indian agriculture experts are urging
farmers to abandon the GMO seeds and return to natural cotton,
which is more affordable and less dependent on irrigation.
Unlike Specter, the Indian government and other reputable
press organizations have taken the Monsanto link to the farmer
suicide epidemic seriously. Shifting the blame to "indebtedness"
does not absolve Monsanto in the least. Instead, it repeats
Specter's use of a specific tactic oversimplification to
dismiss concerns that contradict his opinion.
Micha Peled's award-winning documentary on the subject,
Bitter Seeds, is mentioned by Specter in passing. We
encourage people to watch the film in order to hear from Indian
farmers in their own words and understand their perspective on
the suicide epidemic and its root causes.
Conclusion: Yet again, Specter ignores facts
and evidence that contradict his opinion in order to mock the
serious concerns expressed by credible observers, including the
Indian government, and makes evident his lack of journalistic
balance and objectivity.
In Conclusion: Monsanto vs. Dr. Shiva
Michael Specter's New Yorker piece seems clearly
intended to impugn the motives and character of Dr. Shiva. As we
have shown in the preceding pages, he systematically excises
important facts, studies and journalistic reports giving the
false impression that concerns over Monsanto's monopolistic
business practices and GMO products are unfounded. The opposite
is true.
Specter goes so far as to express sympathy for Monsanto,
writing that "the gulf between the truth about GMOs and what
people say about them keeps growing wider" and that Monsanto "is
simply not that powerful." What he fails to mention is that
Monsanto has spent tens of millions of dollars to kill laws that
would require GMO foods to be
labeled in US grocery stores. The company's power to defeat
common-sense laws that most Americans support in principle and
thus keep people in the dark about whether they are ingesting
GMOs undermines Specter's portrayal of Monsanto as
misunderstood and ineffectual.
In addition to downplaying unsavory facts about Monsanto and
GMOs, Specter also did his best to undermine Dr. Shiva's
academic credentials. In fact, New Yorker editor David
Remnick apologized to Dr. Shiva after Specter erroneously wrote
that Dr. Shiva only had a bachelor's degree in physics. In fact,
she has a master's degree in physics and a PhD in the philosophy
of science. As such, she takes into account the scientific facts
against GMOs and unlike Monsanto also weighs the moral
questions.
Malicious stories about people who the GMO industry considers
threats are nothing new or unexpected. Monsanto has a long
history of attacking its critics. In 1962, when Rachel Carson
published Silent Spring a landmark book about the
destructive effects of pesticides often credited with
launching the environmental movement Monsanto went on the
offensive. The company published a parody of Carson's work
titled "The
Desolate Year." It mocked Carson, portraying Earth as "a
hungry world overrun by bugs" without DDT (a scenario that
failed to unfold after the government banned DDT in 1972). Yet
even today, decades after her death, Monsanto defenders like
Rush Limbaugh
continue to attack Carson for raising awareness of DDT's
dangers.
Specter is not the first journalist to come after Dr. Shiva
nor will he be the last. Our goal in putting together this
response is to highlight the manner in which GMO companies and
their supporters demean their critics by ignoring facts, setting
up "straw man" arguments and engaging in perfidious attacks.
They pretend to have the weight of truth and science on their
side but, as we have shown, they ignore many important facts and
questions.
As Specter himself acknowledges, Dr. Shiva articulates
serious concerns that are shared by many people around the
world. This is why attacks on her will not succeed. In the end,
Dr. Shiva is simply one voice among tens of millions of other
voices speaking out in defense of nature, health and justice.
"Much of what she says resonates with the many people
who feel that profit-seeking corporations hold too much
power over the food they eat. Theirs is an argument worth
making," wrote Specter.
Rest assured Dr. Shiva's work will continue. Attempts to
ridicule or silence her will not have the intended effect.
Instead, they will only increase her visibility and thus her
ability to speak forcefully on behalf of those struggling to
survive the capitalistic monopolies of Monsanto et al.
About the Author
Dr. Vandana Shiva
trained as a Physicist at the University of Punjab, and
completed her Ph.D. on the 'Hidden Variables and Non-locality in
Quantum Theory' from the University of Western Ontario, Canada.
She later shifted to inter-disciplinary research in science,
technology and environmental policy, which she carried out at
the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of
Management in Bangalore, India.