Listed below are excerpts of statements from nine different scientific groups, representing thousands of researchers, about the safety risks of genetically modified organisms (all are available online, if one wants to read the reports in their entirety). Taken together, these groups are for genetically modified food what the IPCC is for climate change—conscious attempts by large numbers of scientists to state what is generally accepted in their field. Given the statements below, there is little reason to suppose—from what we know today—that ingesting GMOs poses any unusual risk to human health.
Does that mean that everyone should accept them? Not necessarily. But it would be useful if the discussion moved from the safety of GMOs, almost a nonissue, to the actual object of contention: whether the current version of industrial agriculture can, with the addition of new technologies, provide for the world of 10 billion in a long-lasting way—or if the perils involved (ecological, economic, spiritual) are large enough to require it to be radically revamped.
The National Academies of Sciences (2016)
“The research that has been conducted in studies with animals and on chemical composition of GE foods reveals no differences that would implicate a higher risk to human health from eating GE foods than from eating their non-GE counterparts….The committee could not find persuasive evidence of adverse health effects directly attributable to consumption of GE foods.”
(Committee on Genetically Engineered Crops: Past Experience and Future Prospects. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Genetically Engineered Crops: Experiences and Prospects. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.)
World Health Organization (2014)
“GM foods currently available on the international market have passed safety assessments and are not likely to present risks for human health. In addition, no effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such foods by the general population in the countries where they have been approved.”
(Frequently Asked Questions on Genetically Modified Foods, World Health Organization, May 2014 [“prepared by WHO in response to questions and concerns from WHO Member State Governments”].)
American Association for the Advancement of Science (2012)
“The science is quite clear: crop improvement by the modern molecular techniques of biotechnology is safe.”
(Statement by the AAAS Board of Directors on Labeling of Genetically Modified Foods, 20 Oct 2012.)
American Medical Association (2012)
“Bioengineered foods have been consumed for close to 20 years, and during that time, no overt consequences on human health have been reported and/or substantiated in the peer-reviewed literature. However, a small potential for adverse events exists, due mainly to horizontal gene transfer, allergenicity, and toxicity….[But] thorough pre-market safety assessment and the FDA’s requirement that any material difference between bioengineered foods and their traditional counterparts be disclosed in labeling, are effective in ensuring the safety of bioengineered food.”
(Report 2 of the Council on Science and Public Health [A-12]; Labeling of Bioengineered Foods [Resolutions 508 and 509-A-11], 2012.)
European Union (2010)
“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 that biotechnology, and in particular, GMOs, are no more risky than e.g., conventional plant breeding technologies.”
(Directorate-General for Research and Innovation. European Commission. 2010. A Decade of EU-Funded GMO Research [2001-2010]). Brussels: European Union.)
American Society for Cell Biology (2009)
“Far from presenting a threat to the public health, GM crops in many cases improve it.”
(American Society for Cell Biology. 2009. ASCB Statement in Support of Research on Genetically Modified Organisms. Press release, 30 Jan.)
Researchers from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, St. George’s University of London (2008)
“Foods derived from GM crops have been consumed by hundreds of millions of people across the world for more than 15 years, with no reported ill effects (or legal cases related to human health), despite many of the consumers coming from that most litigious of countries, the USA. There is little documented evidence that GM crops are potentially toxic….The presence of foreign DNA sequences in food per se poses no intrinsic risk to human health.”
(S. Key, et al. 2008. “Genetically Modified Plants and Human Health.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 101:290–98.)
Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities (2006)
“Because of the rigour with which they must be tested and the controls to which they are subject, it is extremely unlikely that GMO products approved for market in the European Union and other countries present a greater health risk than the corresponding products from conventional sources.”
(InterAcademy Panel Initiative on Genetically Modified Organisms. Union of the German Academies of Science and Humanities. 2006. “Are There Health Hazards for the Consumer from Eating Genetically Modified Food?” Statement, International Workshop, Berlin, 2006.)
French Academy of Science (2002)
“All [health] criticisms against GMOs can be largely rejected on strictly scientific criteria.”
(R. Douce, ed. 2002. Les Plantes Génétiquement Modifiées. Paris: Tec & Doc Lavoisier [Rapports de l’Académie des Sciences sur la Science et la Technologie 13].)
Acknowledgments
I began this book by mentioning my daughter. In the interests of fairness and family comity, let me mention that I have two other children whose futures are of equal concern to me. This big book about many things is for Newell, Emilia, and Schuyler.
Countless people helped me along the way: Rollie Natvig of the Sons of Saude guided me through Scandinavian Iowa. Kent Mathewson drove with me to Pithole. Helen Burggraf hosted me in London. Josh Ge took me to carbon-capture plants in Inner Mongolia and water systems in Shanghai and Liuzhou and (in a section that, alas, I cut from the manuscript) rubber farms in Laos and Thailand. Shankhmala Sen helped me get through the coalfields in India, logistically and linguistically; Aqueel Khan arranged for me to meet Shankhmala. Lance Thurner and Matt Ridley shared their unpublished research. Rick Bayless let me visit his garden. Schuyler Mann worked to check the notes and bibliography. Bruce Lundeby helped me with Norwegian archives. Westher Hess and Norm Benson provided me with photographs and insight about Walter Lowdermilk, Westher’s father. (Benson’s forthcoming biography of the fascinating Lowdermilk is high on my to-read list.) Mark Johnson of the Borlaug Foundation took me through the homestead on a frigid winter morning. Madhura Swaminathan invited me to speak to her father in Chennai—my thanks to her and the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation for their hospitality, their willingness to let me poke through their papers, and a host of other things. Transcripts of my interview with Prof. Swaminathan will be available on the foundation website.
An assortment of genealogists ferreted out facts in North Carolina (Anne H. Lee), Iowa (Jan Wearda), Ohio (Dottie Nortz), Long Island (Ottman Research Services), and online (Cynthia and Glenn Clark). Please let me doff my cap to Roger Joslyn, Certified Genealogist, who guided me through the wilds of New York civic bureaucracy with aplomb. Leland Goodman, ace of aces, did the illustrations; Nick Springer, once again, the maps. I am lucky to know them.
At various times I discussed The Wizard and the Prophet, in part or whole, with Kevin Kelly, Neal Stephenson, Bill McKibben, Joyce Chaplin, Tyler Cowen, Larry Smith, Peter Kareiva, Cassie Phillips, Wen Stephenson, Ellen Ruppel Shell, Bob Pollin, Dava Sobel, Dick Teresi, Gary Taubes, Lydia Long, Tyler Priest, Daniel Botkin, and, most of all, Ray Mann (partner in thought as in life). Some of these people disagreed with me, vehemently but usefully; others may be surprised to see their names here. In one such conversation Stewart Brand suggested the first version o
f the title; in another, Cullen Murphy suggested the final version, the second time he has done this for me.
The more I write, the more I am grateful for first readers: the brave, kind souls willing to read part or all of an unfinished manuscript. My thanks to Daron Acemoglu, Joel Bourne, James Boyce, Stewart Brand, Ana Caicedo, Bob Crease, Rob DeConto, Ruth DeFries, Erle Ellis, Dan Farmer, Betsy Hartmann, Susanna Hecht, Jeffrey Kegler, Maggie Koerth-Baker, Jane Langdale, Mike Lynch, Ted Melillo, Narayanan Menon, Oliver Morton, Ramez Naam, Sunita Narain, Ray Pierrehumbert, Michael Pollan, Matt Ridley, Ludmila Tyler, and Carl Zimmer. All found infelicities, misapprehensions, logical fallacies, and plain old howlers. Oliver Morton noted, ever so gently, that by mistakenly typing “million” instead of “billion,” I was erring by three orders of magnitude. I appreciate his—their—forbearance. Remaining goofs are, of course, my own.
This book would not have been possible without the facilities of the archives (sometimes online) at the Rockefeller Foundation (where Michele Beckerman and Lee Hiltzik helped me find images and documents), Guggenheim Foundation (my heartfelt thanks to Andre Bernard), the Denver Public Library (Coi Drummond-Gehrig found marvelous pictures of Juana, Marjorie, and Bill Vogt), Princeton University, Smith College, the Library of Congress, the University of Iowa, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Minnesota. I am grateful for their aid.
I am lucky in my editors. First, those who commissioned articles that fed into this manuscript: Corby Kummer and Scott Stossel at The Atlantic; Andrew Blechman at Orion; Susan Murcko at Wired; Barbara Paulsen and Jamie Shreeve at National Geographic; Cullen Murphy at Vanity Fair; Maria Streshinsky at Pacific Standard; Tim Appenzeller, Colin Norman, and Elizabeth Culotta at Science; and Luke Mitchell at The New York Times. Following them were my editor and his team at Knopf—the superbly generous Jon Segal, the patient Kevin Bourke, and the remarkable Susanna Sturgis. This is my sixth book with Jon. It is my ninth with my agent, Rick Balkin. To say that I treasure their care, attention, and friendship is an understatement.
Special thanks come last:
To Andrew Blechman (for lending his editorial skills at a crucial stage, which helped me arrange and think through this material). To Susanna Hecht (for a zillion discussions and reading suggestions and hospitality in Geneva and Los Angeles). To Michael Pollan (for letting me steal his organizational scheme, which in turn he stole from his wife, Judith Belzer). To Lynn Margulis, who jolted my life in the space of a few conversations. How I wish she were here to tell me how wrong I am about everything!
As I was fumbling away at this project, Mark Plummer, my oldest friend, passed from this world. Twenty-plus years of conversation with Mark—twenty-plus years of his incisive criticism—informed every line of this book. The Wizard and the Prophet is the first substantial effort of mine in many years that he did not read, a fact that makes me melancholy in ways that I find hard to express. How I miss those phone calls that began, “What I hear you saying here is…”
Abbreviations
(for Sources and Notes)
ALP = Aldo Leopold Papers, University of Wisconsin*
AM = Atlantic Monthly
AOA = Norman Borlaug oral history interview, 12 May 2008, American Academy of Achievement, Washington, DC*
BCAG = Boletín de la Compañia Administradora del Guano
BDE = Brooklyn Daily Eagle*
BestR = Vogt, W. 1961–62(?). Best Remembered (unpub. ms.) Ser. 2, Box 4, FF2, VDPL
CCD = Correspondence of Charles Darwin*
CIMBPC = Norman Borlaug Publications Collection, International Center for Wheat and Maize Improvement, Texcoco, México (portions*)
GEC = Global Environmental Change
GFA = Vogt files, Guggenheim Foundation Archives, New York, NY
HS = Hempstead (N.Y.) Sentinel*
HOHI = M. King Hubbert oral history interview by Ronald Doel, 4 Jan–6 Feb 1989, Niels Bohr Library and Archives, American Institute of Physics*
IEA = International Energy Agency
LHNB = Norman Borlaug oral history interview by Paul Underwood, 2007(?), livinghistoryfarm.org
LPMJS = London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science
NBUM = Norman E. Borlaug papers, University Archives, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities*
NYT = New York Times
OGJ = Oil & Gas Journal
PNAS = Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (many articles*)
PPFA1/2 = Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, 1918–1974/1928–2009, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA
PTRS = Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (sometimes A or B)
QJRMS = Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society
RFA = Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Tarrytown, NY
RFOI = Norman Borlaug oral history interview by William C. Cobb, 12 June 1967, RG 13, Oral Histories, Box 15, Folder 7, RFA (also at TAMU/C*)
Some Notes = Vogt, W. W. 1950s(?). Some Notes on WV for Mr. Best to Use as He Chooses, Series 2, Box 5, FF21, VDPL
TAMU/C = Norman Borlaug papers, Texas A&M, CIMMYT records*
VDPL = William Vogt Papers, Denver Public Library Conservation Archives
VFN = Field notes, William Vogt, Ser. 3, Box 7, VDPL
VIET = Vietmeyer, N. 2009–10. Borlaug. 3 vols. Lorton, VA: Bracing Books.
VvV = Frances Bell Vogt vs. William Walter Vogt, Nassau County, L.I., Index no. 3959, Microfilm roll 117, civil cases 3937–3975
WP = Washington Post
* = available gratis online at time of writing
In addition, I abbreviate some publishers’ names:
CUP = NY: Cambridge University Press
HUP = Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
MIT = Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
OUP = NY: Oxford University Press
UCP = Berkeley, CA: University of California Press
YUP = New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
Notes
Prologue
Import of science: Brand (2010:16) makes this case elegantly.
Hunger decline, longevity rise: United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization 2009:11 (~24% in 1969–70); idem. 2017:2–13 (11.0% in 2016). Life expectancy from World Bank (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN). See also R.D. Edwards 2011; Riley 2005; and World Health Organization 2014 (www.who.int/gho/mortality_burden_disease/life_tables/en/).
Global growth will continue: Every economic study I have seen projects overall growth, though many worry about distribution. See, e.g., Johansson et al. 2012 (global GDP “could grow at around 3% per year over the next 50 years,” 8).
“Ecocide”: The term is due to Arthur W. Galston (in Knoll and McFadden 1970:47, 71–72).
Differences in perceptions and beliefs: Luten 1986 (1980):323–24. My thanks to Antoinette WinklerPrins for drawing my attention to this work.
“and durable”: Mumford 1964:2. Technofuturist F. M. Esfandiary called the two sides “up-wingers” and “down-wingers” (Esfandiary 1973).
Environmentalism: For most of the twentieth century the term referred to a school of psychology that emphasized individuals’ environments rather than their genetic inheritance (Worster 1997 [1994]:350). The modern use of the term to indicate a belief in protecting the natural world came in about 1966 (Jundt 2014a:250n).
“one billion”: “Borlaug’s Revolution,” Wall Street Journal, 17 July 2007. The claim seems to have originated in Easterbrook 1997.
Four elements: Though associated with Plato, the earliest known discussion was by the philosopher Empedocles in about 460 B.C.
Predictions of disaster: Devereux 2000:Table 1 (actual famine toll); Meadows et al. 1972 (“one hundred years,” 23); Ehrlich 1969 (pesticides, life expectancy; “42 years by 1980,” 26), 1968 (“is over,” “hundreds of millions,” 1). The “utter breakdown” claim is from a 1970 interview with CBS News; my thanks to Kyra Darnton of Retro Report for sending it to me.
Four years later Ehrlich promised “that a great increase in the death rate due to starvation will occur well before the end of the century, quite possibly before 1980” (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1974:25).
Chapter One: State of the Species
Vogt’s visit: Vogt travel diary, 18 Apr 1946, Ser. 3, Box 6, FF27, VDPL. See also idem., 22 Dec 1943, Ser. 3, Box 6, FF26, VDPL. Chapingo is a small village on the edge of the bigger town of Texcoco.
“or more pressing”: Letter, L. S. Rowe to W. Weaver, 2 Aug 1946, Ser. 1, Box 1, FF38, VDPL; undated drafts are in the same folder.
Margulis’s life: Sagan 2012.
Scale of microworld: Whitman et al. 1998 is the classic source of the 90% estimate, based on Luckey 1972:1292; 1970:Tab. 1. Later modifications include McMahon and Parnell 2014; Serna-Chavez et al. 2013; Van der Heijden et al. 2008. In conversation, Margulis gave me the ten-times-as-many figure, but I have updated as per Sender et al. 2016.
Amazing microworld: See the excellent Yong 2016; Zimmer 2011.
Gause: Gall 2011; Israel and Gasca 2002:211–15; Gall and Konashev 2001; Brazhnikova 1987; Vorontsov and Gall 1986; Kingsland 1986:244–46; Gause 1930 (first article).
Pearl and debate over his work: de Gans 2002; Kingsland 1995 (1985): chaps. 3–4 (dozen articles, 3 books, 75–76); Pearl and Reed 1920; Pearl 1925, 1927 (“characteristic course,” 533). Pearl’s work was anticipated by Pierre-François Verhulst (1838) and built on Alfred Lotka (e.g., Lotka 1907, 1925 [esp. chap. 7]).
Struggle for Existence: Gause 1934.
Time-lapse video: Author’s visit. See also Mazur 2010 (2009):266.
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