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What Does Science Say About GMOs – They’re Safe

The following is an excerpt of a post at the Skeptical Raptor reviewing a large number of GMO safety studies. 

The science deniers of the world, whether they deny evolution, global warming, vaccines, or GMO safety, spend their time inventing pseudoscience to support their beliefs and claims. As I have written previously, “Pseudoscience is easy. It doesn’t take work. It’s the lazy man’s (or woman’s) “science.” But it has no value, and because it lacks high quality evidence in support of it, it should be dismissed, and it should not be a part of the conversation.”

Alternatively, real science is really hard. And it takes time. And it’s based on high quality evidence. And it is repeated. And it is almost always published in high quality journals. As I’ve said a thousand times, real science takes hard work and is intellectually challenging. You just don’t wake up one day and say “I’m a scientist.” No, it requires college, graduate school, teaching, working in world class laboratories, publishing, defending your ideas to your peers, and one day, if you don’t stop, you will be an authority in your little field of science.

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Without really trying (though it took several days to read through the articles), I found 114 peer-reviewed articles, mostly published in moderate to high impact factor journals that support the safety of GMO crops over a wide range of hypotheses: from transgenic particles in bovine milk to how non targeted insects survive (or don’t). I found several meta reviews, which, as I’ve said before, are the highest quality sources of evidence. None of this research was sponsored by corporations, and frankly, I didn’t have enough time to read all those articles in addition to the ones included here. I even went to the effort to find the 2012 Impact Factors for each of the journals, so you know the quality of the journal. Note that impact factors, though I rely on them, are an imperfect measurement, much like a batting average for a baseball player doesn’t fully explain the skills that he may or may not have.

There were hundreds of other articles I could have included. But these are the ones I judged to be the best. And if you add up all of the conclusions written, a consensus forms. And that is that GMO’s are generally safe. There will be no transgenic DNA in your glass of milk. The transgenic DNA isn’t going to be absorbed through your intestine and cause some autoimmune reaction.

And I just didn’t find the articles that supported my “beliefs” or “opinions.” I found the best articles period. I found the articles that supported the broad scientific consensus that GMO foods are safe.

To read the rest of the post, and review all of the studies mentioned in the post, please visit the Skeptical Raptor