GMOs: Courting danger.

     “I see that the EPA is shutting down its scientific research. So, don't worry, no cancer risk.”
              Note to Peter Sage in response to his blog regarding the 2014 GMO ban in Jackson County

I wrote on Thursday that I had voted against the ban on growing GMO plants in Jackson County.

I wrote that herbicide with glyphosate would control noxious weeds in GMO alfalfa, and that the GMO ban blocked that use.

I showed this photo of my nephew holding a puncture vine we had found and pulled from inside a field of alfalfa. This is what I am dealing with, I wrote.

I got pushback from readers. 

Some of the criticism of my post focused on GMO plants themselves, saying they were the product of dangerous science. Some criticism focused on pollen from GMO plants mixing with neighbors' crops. And some critics were worried about the herbicide spray containing glyphosate, which otherwise could have been used to kill noxious weeds within a field of glyphosate-immune GMO alfalfa. They say that glyphosate herbicide is too dangerous to use.

I had a political point: People who may not know much about farm problems were making rules for farmers, and farmers might resent it.

Now retired, Joe Yetter was a career physician in the U.S. military. He was a Democratic candidate for Congress in my congressional district in Oregon. He came in second, which is predictable in this bright red district. He reflects on how humans have changed nature over the past 10,000 years. Doing so is both useful and dangerous. It is human nature to risk doing dangerous things. 

Joe Yetter with two examples of an invasive species

Guest Post by Joe Yetter, M.D.

I was living in Douglas County, Oregon, back in 2014. If I had lived in Jackson County, I probably would have voted for the ban that Peter voted against.

But, dang, it’s complicated.

Let’s start with the admission that life is wildly promiscuous. Bacteria of different genera swap genes faster than lovers swap clothes when caught in flagrante delicto. Most angiosperms (about 80% of all plants on Earth) are the product of ancient unions across the boundaries of species. Trillions of mutations in organisms on Earth are occurring at this moment, any of which may be passed down, or passed from bacterium to human, to insect, to plant, to virus, like notes passed across the aisles in an unruly classroom, instructions for the building of lives. 

This tangled bank is far more tangled and twisted than Darwin could ever have dreamed.

Let’s add to that the knowledge that we humans are animals shaped by the forces of evolution, and admit that culture is one of the forces driving evolution—we domesticated lactating ruminants, and we** turned off our own genes that shut down lactase production after weaning (and so do our cats and dogs).  Our domesticated dogs evolve amylase to digest potato starch—a nutrient they never enjoyed in the wild. Rice promotes cultures based on community and cooperation, as opposed to the cultures of nomadic herders. Chickens are the most successful bird species, ever, thanks to our intervention; thanks, Colonel Sanders.

We mostly ignorant and painfully brief humans have acquired a Promethean power. Our ancestors allowed wolves in by the fire and turned them into Chihuahuas and Corgis, turned wild carrots into something edible, and sorted peas into wrinkled and smooth. What we have now is a power almost beyond comprehension, thanks to scientists like Doudna. CRISPR, gene drives, et al. are not the same as an ancient farmer’s picking the fattest corn kernels for next year’s planting. A child with new genes to replace her sickle cell genes is not the same as any creature that has existed, ever.

Wild carrot

Domesticated commercial carrot

 When I was six, I got a Daisy BB gun.

“Try not to put your eye out with it,” Mom said that Christmas morning, and Dad took me out to the backyard with it. I didn’t put my eye out, and in later years my eyes beheld .22s, .410s, 12 gauges, .30-06s, and so on, under the tree. 

Now, what we have today is not the equivalent of a BB gun or a .30-06, or even a howitzer. It’s the equivalent of the atom bomb of 80 years ago. And in the coming years, it will be beyond the hydrogen bomb in relative terms. 

Prometheus visited this gift upon the whole world. It is everywhere now.

With all that in perspective, the ban on GMO agriculture in Jackson County is pitiful and inconsequential. It was, no doubt, well-intended: protect our farmers from pollen drifting and making seeds unsalable in Europe and beyond. Or it was simply ill-founded fear of the unknown, and all sorts of misinformation.

But BB guns really can put out eyes. And atom bombs do vaporize people. So good aim and restraint are invaluable. It’s wise to organize society and its laws based on reason and caution. It’s reasonable for governments to fund research and to regulate for the public good. Right now, our federal government is in the process of dismantling science, and is in the business of allowing polluters to spew more lead and arsenic and greenhouse gases into the environment. They are also easing regulations on pesticides known to harm humans and other animals and plants and microbial life.

I’d suggest is that voters act with the same sentiments that motivated the GMO ban in 2014, but armed with more knowledge and less prejudice than I would have had in 2014. 

Make government do proper science, and regulate accordingly.

**we: well not all of us. Lactose-intolerance varies across populations. Same is true for our cats and dogs, regarding lactase and amylase.

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