Front page, Miscellaneous, Open Source Intelligence

NGOs about GMOs : “Unhealthy Fixation” (William Saletan, Slate)

10 Aug 2015

“Unhealthy fixation” is a long, detailed, but very clear article. In it, William Saletan, author at Slate, questions “The war against genetically modified organisms [which] is full of fearmongering, errors, and fraud”. This war is very similar to the one against “pesticides”.

One important point in this article is how W Saletan argues that every judgment about agricultural practices should be made case by case, without preconceived ideas. For example, about RR GMOs, he writes : “The more you learn about herbicide resistance, the more you come to understand how complicated the truth about GMOs is. First you discover that they aren’t evil. Then you learn that they aren’t perfectly innocent. Then you realize that nothing is perfectly innocent. Pesticide vs. pesticide, technology vs. technology, risk vs. risk—it’s all relative. The best you can do is measure each practice against the alternatives. The least you can do is look past a three-letter label.”