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A new study suggests that those who follow healthy dietary patterns that prominently feature fruit, vegetables, nuts and legumes may be at a reduced risk of depression.
Common nutrients and food items shared by the three dietary patterns could be behind the observed reduced risk of depression.
The study, published in BMC Medicine, found that adherence to the Mediterranean diet, the Pro-vegetarian Dietary Pattern or Alternative Eating Index-2010 appeared to play a protective role against the illness.
"We wanted to understand what role nutrition plays inmental health, as we believe certain dietary patterns could protect our minds," explains lead researcher Almudena Sánchez-Villegas, of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in Spain. "These diets are all associated with physical health benefits and now we find that they could have a positive effect on our mental health."
While much research has been carried out assessing the role of diet in the prevention of noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease and cancer, far less attention has been paid to the influence of diet on the development of mental disorders.
For the study, the researchers chose to compare three dietary patterns that had previously been found to have inverse associations with mortality from different diseases, including cardiovascular disease and cancer.
A total of 15,093 participants from the SUN (Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra) Project were assessed. The SUN Project is a cohort study that began in 1999 which has previously been used by researchers to identify dietary and lifestyle factors that alter the likelihood of different medical conditions.
Each participant was free of depression at the start of the study. The researchers assessed the participants' dietary intake with food frequency questionnaires completed at the beginning of the study and then again after 10 years.
Adherence to a selected diet was determined using a scoring system. Food items such as meat products and sweets tended to be negatively scored, while food items such as nuts, legumes, fruits and vegetables were positively weighted.
Even moderate adherence to the diets linked to reduced risk of depression
After the follow-up period, 1,550 of the participants reported either having received a clinical diagnosis of depression or having used antidepressant drugs.
Fast facts about depression
Around 6.7% of adults in the US experience major depressive disorder
Women are around 70% more likely to experience depression than men
Of the three diets, adherence to the Alternative Healthy Eating Index-2010 was associated with the greatest reduction in depression risk. This diet is characterized by high consumption of vegetables, fruits, whole-grain bread, nuts, legumes, long-chain omega-3 and polyunsaturated fatty acids intake.
However, better adherence to all three diets compared in the study was associated with a reduced risk of depression, leading the researchers to conclude that this reduced risk may be due to common ground shared by the diets in the form of high levels of certain nutrients.
"The protective role is ascribed to their nutritional properties, where nuts, legumes, fruits and vegetables (sources of omega-3 fatty acids,vitamins and minerals) could reduce the risk of depression," concludes Sánchez-Villegas.
However, while the risk of depression was found to be reduced when comparing moderate adherence to these diets with low adherence, little difference in depression risk was observed between moderate adherence and high adherence. Sánchez-Villegas states that a threshold effect may exist:
"The noticeable difference occurs when participants start to follow a healthier diet. Even a moderate adherence to these healthy dietary patterns was associated with an important reduction in the risk of developing depression. However, we saw no extra benefit when participants showed high or very high adherence to the diets."
"So, once the threshold is achieved, the reduced risk plateaus even if participants were stricter with their diets and eating more healthily," she adds. As a result, this finding suggests that a low intake of certain nutrients could represent a risk factor for future depression.
As this study is reliant on self-reporting from its participants and only measured dietary adherence at two points in time, the researchers state that more research is needed to explore this possible dose-response pattern.
Recently, Medical News Today reported on a meta-analysis published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health that suggested higher fish consumption could reduce the risk of depression.
As the vitriol intensifies in what passes for debate over the safety of genetically modified foods, scientific inquiry, thankfully, continues. A Tufts researcher, Sheldon Krimsky, recently published his assessment of the last seven years of peer-reviewed evidence, finding 26 studies that "reported adverse effects or uncertainties of GMOs fed to animals."
If recent history is any indication, Sheldon Krimsky should expect to be slammed as a “science denier.”
The current vehemence is the product of a well-funded campaign to “depolarize” the GMO debate through “improved agricultural biotechnology communication,” in the words of the Gates Foundation-funded Cornell Alliance for Science. And it is reaching a crescendo because of the march of the Orwellian “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015” (code-named “SAFE” for easy and confusing reference) through the U.S. House of Representatives on July 23 on its way to a Senate showdown in the fall.
In an April New York Timesop-ed, Alliance for Science affiliate Mark Lynas follows the party line, accusing environmentalists of “undermining public understanding of science,” even more than climate deniers and vaccine opponents. Slate’s William Saletan goes further in his July feature, calling those who want GM labeling “an army of quacks and pseudo-environmentalists waging a leftist war on science.”
Who would have known that depolarization could feel so polarizing — and so stifling of scientific inquiry.
Precaution and the Public’s Right to Know What We Eat
The SAFE law sounds like it promises what polls suggest 99 percent of Americans want, accurate labeling of foods with GM ingredients. It likely guarantees that no such thing will ever happen.
Backed by biotech and food industry associations, SAFE would make it illegal for states to enact mandatory GM labeling laws. It would instead establish a “voluntary” GM labeling program that pretty well eviscerates the demand for the right to know what’s in our food. It would undercut the many state level efforts.
Vermont now has a labeling law that survived industry opposition, threats, and a court challenge, which may explain why the industry got busy in Congress. If you can’t beat democracy, change it. The Senate is expected to take up the bill after its August recess.
As written, SAFE is truly the labeling law to end all labeling laws.
The biotech industry is acting desperate for a reason. It’s seen Europe and most of the world close its regulatory doors to GM crops, for now, insisting on the same “precautionary principle” enshrined in the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. That principle calls for a relatively high level of precaution before the introduction of a new technology, to avoid the kinds of unintended consequences that have caused such harm in the past: tobacco, thalidomide, DDT, PCBs, and other cases of industry-backed claims of safety that, in retrospect, proved deadly.
Not SAFE for Science
In a sane world that respects scientific inquiry, we would be engaged in a debate about the appropriate levels of precaution that we as a society want for a technology as novel as genetic engineering. That would be constructive, not to mention depolarizing.
Instead, we get pundits like Lynas and Saletan tarring anyone who dares call for precaution with the stain of being another science-denying zealot who ignores the scientific evidence that no one has been harmed by all the GM foods consumed in the United States.
To reinforce how duped or dumb the American public is, they point to a Pew Institute poll indicating that 88 percent of scientists think GM foods are safe, while just 37 percent of the public thinks so. The gap is repeatedly cited as a measure of how science-deniers are winning the public relations battle, and how ignorant the U.S. people are on the issue.
Maybe not. Is it really a surprise that nearly nine in ten scientists think a new invention is good for society? Not really. As Joel Achenbach explained in his otherwise good piece on science denial in National Geographic, we all suffer from “confirmation bias,” the tendency to interpret information in ways that confirm our existing beliefs. True enough, and guess what group scores high for confirmation bias in favor of new technology? Scientists. Honestly, I’m shocked that 12 percent of scientists think GM food isn’t safe.
What about that skeptical public? Are they really just ignorant and brainwashed? Or is their confirmation bias perhaps informed by their repeated experiences with big corporations telling them something is safe or good for them and finding out it’s deadly. Who in the United States has not lost a family member or friend to smoking-related disease? Given the negligence of U.S. regulatory authorities in accepting industry claims of safety, is the public really so foolish to be skeptical, of both industry and government?
Washington University’s Glenn Stone drove the scientific point home nicely about how long the process of scientific discovery of hazards can be. He documents how DDT was suspected as a cause of breast cancer but studies kept failing to find a link. This is, until 2007, when an intrepid researcher thought to ask if girls exposed to DDT during puberty had a higher risk of breast cancer. More than half a century after they were exposed, she found what no one else had: a five times greater risk in such girls, and a significant additional risk in their female children.
On GMOs and labeling, Stone asks if all the evidence is really in just 20 years into this experiment. Are there comparable studies of GM effects on pregnant or lactating women and developing infants and children? No, there are not.
No Consensus on Food Safety
For those still willing to look past the campaign slogans and slurs, science is still happening. My colleague at Tufts University, Sheldon Krimsky, examined peer-reviewed journal articles from 2008-2014. Contrary to the claims of consensus, he found 26 studies that showed significant cause for concern in animal studies, among many studies that showed no harm.
He identified clear evidence that proteins transferred into the genome of another plant species can generate allergic reactions even when the original transgene did not, a scientific finding that undermines industry claims that the transgenic process creates no instability in the genome. (Scientists even have a name for such a gene: an “intrinsically disordered protein.”)
Krimsky found eight reviews of the literature and they showed anything but consensus. Three cited cause for concern from existing animal studies. Two found inadequate evidence of harm that could affect humans, justifying the U.S. government’s principle that if GM crops are "substantially equivalent" to their non-GM counterparts, this is adequate to guarantee safety. Three reviews suggested that the evidence base is limited, the types of studies that have been done are inadequate to guarantee safety even if they show no harm, and further study and improved testing is warranted.
What about the much-cited consensus among medical and scientific associations? Krimsky found no such agreement, just the same kind of wide variation in opinion, which he usefully ascribes to differing standards, methods, and goals, not ignorance or brainwashing.
Krimsky goes out of his way, however, to document the industry-backed campaigns to discredit two scientific studies that found cause for concern, and he warns of the anti-science impact such campaigns can have. "When there is a controversy about the risk of a consumer product, instead of denying the existence of certain studies, the negative results should be replicated to see if they hold up to rigorous testing.”
That would have been a refreshing, and depolarizing, industry response to the recent World Health Organization finding that Roundup Ready herbicides are a “probable human carcinogen.” Instead of calling for further study to determine safe exposure levels, the industry called out its attack dogs to discredit the study.
Buckwheat may be one of the healthiest foods you're not eating. Along with having numerous health benefits, it is tasty, easy to prepare and inexpensive. Here are some things I love about it:
Buckwheat is not a grain.
Many who are trying to avoid grains find themselves limited to fruit and sweet potatoes as sources of good carbs. Even though it's often included in lists of grains, buckwheat is not a grain. The edible portion is a seed from a plant related to greens like rhubarb and sorrel.
Buckwheat is gluten-free.
Because it is neither a grain nor related to wheat, buckwheat is gluten-free and safe for those with celiac disease and gluten sensitivities. Studies show that even in high concentrations, buckwheat flour and its purified proteins have no immunologic reactions for patients with celiac disease. [1]
Buckwheat is high in essential nutrients.
It is rich in many trace minerals, including manganese, magnesium and copper. It is also a good source of the B vitamins: B6, pantothenic acid, niacin, folate, thiamin and choline.
Nutrients in Buckwheat[2]
Buckwheat has resistant fiber.
Resistant fiber is a compound shown to lower blood sugar after meals, help weight loss, reduce food cravings and improve diabetes. [3] All versions of buckwheat contain resistant fiber, but the boiled kernels, called groats, contain the most at 6 percent or greater. [4]
Buckwheat has several novel nutraceuticals.
Rutin, quercetin and other bioflavonoids: These compounds have been shown to strengthen small blood vessels, which can prevent easy bruising, hemorrhoids and varicose veins. Rutin can also help prevent blood clots, lower LDL cholesterol and the production of histamine, which can improve airborne allergies and food intolerances. [5]
Tannins: Tannins are astringent phenolic compounds most commonly found in tea. They are also present in significant amounts in buckwheat. Tannins have been shown to reduce bacterial and viral infections and improve diabetes. Along with the mix of insoluble and resistant fiber, the tannins in buckwheat can improve important strains of bowel flora, such as lactobacillus and bacteroidetes, while reducing yeast and harmful bacteria. [6]
D-chiro inositol: D-chiro inositol is an exciting compound that may improve many important elements of blood sugar metabolism (such as production of glycogen and insulin sensitivity). Data suggests it may improve polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) [7] and type 2 diabetes. [8]
Bound antioxidants: Recent data from cancer researchers has shown we may have been ignoring an important type of antioxidants. We have mostly considered the antioxidants in fruits and vegetables since most of these are readily available and easy to test in lab studies. Now, it is becoming clear a new category of antioxidants, called bound antioxidants, may be even more important. These are found in buckwheat and some grains and are activated by the bowel flora. Buckwheat is rich in bound antioxidants like glutathione and superoxide dismutase. These compounds are also heat stable and survive the cooking process with buckwheat. [8]
How to use buckwheat.
If you've never made it before, don't worry. Buckwheat is easy to work with. It comes in the form of groats (toasted or raw), noodles and flour. The raw groats are available completely raw or sprouted. The completely raw groats work great for making a grain-free, hot cereal. I don't use the flour much because baking entails dairy, eggs, oils and sweeteners. I'd rather not bother with all the substitutes and labor.
Try these recipes!
Buckwheat Porridge:
Ingredients:
1 cup raw buckwheat groats
3 cups water
Liquid stevia
Powdered cardamom
Instructions:
Place buckwheat and water in a 1-quart sauce pan.
Heat on low 45 minutes or until a porridge-like consistency is reached.
Add stevia and cardamom to taste.
Serve plain or with unsweetened flax milk or unsweetened coconut yogurt.
Makes: 4 servings
Sprouted Raw Groats
Raw buckwheat is easy to sprout at home with a sprouting tray. Just soak the groats for 30 minutes in cold water, rinse several times and place in sprouting tray. Rinse twice daily. They do not grow into long, grassy sprouts (like mung bean or wheat grass). Rather, the seeds open just slightly and become softer and more digestible. This typically takes three days.
You can also purchase pre-sprouted raw groats, such as found in the Go Raw brand of buckwheat granola. Sprouted buckwheat comes ready to eat. Use it like granola, but know that it is a concentrated food. A few tablespoons is a full serving. I love buckwheat sprouts as a portable food for hikes or long runs. They take up very little space and provide lots of energy.
Buckwheat Trail Mix
Ingredients
1 cup sprouted buckwheat
1/3 cup dried currants or diced raisins
1 tbsp. sea salt crystals
Instructions
Combine all ingredients.
Store in a cool, dry place out of light.
Pack in snack-sized, Ziploc bags for a portable snack.
Plan on 1/4 cup per 90-120 minutes of activity. It is that concentrated.
Makes: 5 servings
Toasted groats are also called kasha (not Kashi) and can be found in the kosher section of most grocery stores. They make a great substitute for rice as a side dish.
Kasha Pilaf
Ingredients:
1 cup kasha
1 cup water
1 cup vegetable broth
Instructions:
Place all ingredients in a 1-quart sauce pan.
Bring to a simmer.
Steam kasha for 20 minutes or until liquid is absorbed.
Let sit covered for 10 minutes.
Serve or refrigerate.
Makes: 4 servings
Buckwheat noodles are popular in Asian cuisine for good reason. Along with all the health benefits of buckwheat, I prefer their taste and texture over any of the gluten-free, grain-based noodles I've tried. They cook fast and are great served hot or cold.
Buckwheat Noodles and Ume Paste
Ingredients:
1 8-ounce package buckwheat noodles (also called soba)
1 tbsp. ume plum paste (found in Asian or macrobiotic sections of many larger supermarkets)
2 tsp. Tamari (wheat-free, fermented soy sauce)
2 tsp. cold-pressed, toasted sesame seed oil
2 green onions, sliced
Instructions:
Bring two quarts of water to a boil. Add a pinch of salt.
Cook noodles 5-7 minutes until flexible but firm, stirring frequently.
Rinse noodles in cold water, blot dry.
Pour noodles into a large serving bowl.
Stir in all other ingredients.
Makes: 6 servings
Try having buckwheat twice weekly for the next month. Keep a close eye on your digestion, your weight, how easily you can move without pain, how stable your blood sugar is and the health of your skin. You might see some good, healthy improvements!
References:
1. de Francischi ML1, Salgado JM, da Costa CP. Immunological analysis of serum for buckwheat fed celiac patients. Plant Foods Hum Nutr. 1994 Oct;46(3):207-11.
2. The Food Processor, Version 10.12.0, ESHA Research, Salem, Oregon, USA.
3. Birt DF, Boylston T, Hendrich S, Jane JL, Hollis J, Li L, McClelland J, Moore S, Phillips GJ, Rowling M, Schalinske K, Scott MP, Whitley EM. Resistant starch: promise for improving human health. Adv Nutr. 2013 Nov 6;4(6):587-601. doi: 10.3945/an.113.004325. eCollection 2013 Nov. Review.
4. Skrabanja V, Liljeberg Elmståhl HG, Kreft I, Björck IM. Nutritional properties of starch in buckwheat products: studies in vitro and in vivo. J Agric Food Chem. 2001 Jan;49(1):490-6.
5. Sharma S, Ali A, Ali J, Sahni JK, Baboota S. Rutin: therapeutic potential and recent advances in drug delivery. Expert Opin Investig Drugs. 2013 Aug;22(8):1063-79. doi: 10.1517/13543784.2013.805744. Epub 2013 Jun 25.
6. Serrano J, Puupponen-Pimiä R, Dauer A, Aura AM, Saura-Calixto F. Tannins: current knowledge of food sources, intake, bioavailability and biological effects. Mol Nutr Food Res. 2009 Sep;53 Suppl 2:S310-29. doi: 10.1002/mnfr.200900039.
7. Unfer V1, Porcaro G. Updates on the myo-inositol plus D-chiro-inositol combined therapy in polycystic ovary syndrome. Expert Rev Clin Pharmacol. 2014 Sep;7(5):623-31. doi: 10.1586/17512433.2014.925795. Epub 2014 Jun 5.
8. Larner J, Brautigan DL, Thorner MO. D-chiro-inositol glycans in insulin signaling and insulin resistance. Mol Med. 2010 Nov-Dec;16(11-12):543-52. doi: 10.2119/molmed.2010.00107. Epub 2010 Aug 27.
9. Zieliński H, Michalska A, Piskuła MK, Kozłowska H. Antioxidants in thermally treated buckwheat groats. Mol Nutr Food Res. 2006 Sep;50(9):824-32.
By training, I am a plant biologist. In the early 1990s I was busy making genetically modified plants (often called GMOs for Genetically Modified Organisms) as part of the research that led to my PhD. Into these plants we were putting DNA from various foreign organisms, such as viruses and bacteria.
I was not, at the outset, concerned about the possible effects of GM plants on human health or the environment. One reason for this lack of concern was that I was still a very young scientist, feeling my way in the complex world of biology and of scientific research. Another reason was that we hardly imagined that GMOs like ours would be grown or eaten. So far as I was concerned, all GMOs were for research purposes only.
Gradually, however, it became clear that certain companies thought differently. Some of my older colleagues shared their skepticism with me that commercial interests were running far ahead of scientific knowledge. I listened carefully and I didn’t disagree. Today, over twenty years later, GMO crops, especially soybeans, corn, papaya, canola and cotton, are commercially grown in numerous parts of the world.
Depending on which country you live in, GMOs may be unlabeled and therefore unknowingly abundant in your diet. Processed foods (e.g. chips, breakfast cereals, sodas) are likely to contain ingredients from GMO crops, because they are often made from corn or soy. Most agricultural crops, however, are still non-GMO, including rice, wheat, barley, oats, tomatoes, grapes and beans.
For meat eaters the nature of GMO consumption is different. There are no GMO animals used in farming (although GM salmon has been pending FDA approval since 1993); however, animal feed, especially in factory farms or for fish farming, is likely to be GMO corn and GMO soybeans. In which case the labeling issue, and potential for impacts on your health, are complicated.
I now believe, as a much more experienced scientist, that GMO crops still run far ahead of our understanding of their risks. In broad outline, the reasons for this belief are quite simple. I have become much more appreciative of the complexity of biological organisms and their capacity for benefits and harms. As a scientist I have become much more humble about the capacity of science to do more than scratch the surface in its understanding of the deep complexity and diversity of the natural world. To paraphrase a cliché, I more and more appreciate that as scientists we understand less and less.
The Flawed Processes of GMO Risk Assessment
Some of my concerns with GMOs are “just” practical ones. I have read numerous GMO risk assessment applications. These are the documents that governments rely on to ‘prove’ their safety. Though these documents are quite long and quite complex, their length is misleading in that they primarily ask (and answer) trivial questions. Furthermore, the experiments described within them are often very inadequate and sloppily executed. Scientific controls are often missing, procedures and reagents are badly described, and the results are often ambiguous or uninterpretable. I do not believe that this ambiguity and apparent incompetence is accidental. It is common, for example, for multinational corporations, whose labs have the latest equipment, to use outdated methodologies. When the results show what the applicants want, nothing is said. But when the results are inconvenient, and raise red flags, they blame the limitations of the antiquated method. This bulletproof logic, in which applicants claim safety no matter what the data shows, or how badly the experiment was performed, is routine in formal GMO risk assessment.
To any honest observer, reading these applications is bound to raise profound and disturbing questions: about the trustworthiness of the applicants and equally of the regulators. They are impossible to reconcile with a functional regulatory system capable of protecting the public.
The Dangers of GMOs
Aside from grave doubts about the quality and integrity of risk assessments, I also have specific science-based concerns over GMOs. I emphasise the ones below because they are important but are not on the lists that GMO critics often make.
Many GMO plants are engineered to contain their own insecticides. These GMOs, which include maize, cotton and soybeans, are called Bt plants. Bt plants get their name because they incorporate a transgene that makes a protein-based toxin (usually called the Cry toxin) from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis. Many Bt crops are “stacked,” meaning they contain a multiplicity of these Cry toxins. Their makers believe each of these Bt toxins is insect-specific and safe. However, there are multiple reasons to doubt both safety and specificity. One concern is that Bacillus thuringiensis is all but indistinguishable from the well known anthrax bacterium (Bacillus anthracis). Another reason is that Bt insecticides share structural similarities with ricin. Ricin is a famously dangerous plant toxin, a tiny amount of which was used to assassinate the Bulgarian writer and defector Georgi Markov in 1978. A third reason for concern is that the mode of action of Bt proteins is not understood (Vachon et al 2012); yet, it is axiomatic in science that effective risk assessment requires a clear understanding of the mechanism of action of any GMO transgene. This is so that appropriate experiments can be devised to affirm or refute safety. These red flags are doubly troubling because some Cry proteins are known to be toxic towards isolated human cells (Mizuki et al., 1999). Yet we put them in our food crops.
A second concern follows from GMOs being often resistant to herbicides. This resistance is an invitation to farmers to spray large quantities of herbicides, and many do. As research recently showed, commercial soybeans routinely contain quantities of the herbicide Roundup (glyphosate) that its maker, Monsanto, once described as “extreme” (Bøhn et al 2014).
Glyphosate has been in the news recently because the World Health Organisation no longer considers it a relatively harmless chemical, but there are other herbicides applied to GMOs which are easily of equal concern. The herbicide Glufosinate (phosphinothricin, made by Bayer) kills plants because it inhibits the important plant enzyme glutamine synthetase. This enzyme is ubiquitous, however, it is found also in fungi, bacteria and animals. Consequently, Glufosinate is toxic to most organisms. Glufosinate is also a neurotoxin of mammals that doesn’t easily break down in the environment (Lantz et al. 2014). Glufosinate is thus a “herbicide” in name only.
Thus, even in conventional agriculture, the use of glufosinate is hazardous; but With GMO plants the situation is worse yet. With GMOs, glufosinate is sprayed on to the crop but its degradation in the plant is blocked by the transgene, which chemically modifies it slightly. This is why the GMO plant is resistant to it; but the other consequence is that when you eat Bayers’ Glufosinate-resistant GMO maize or canola, even weeks or months later, glufosinate, though slightly modified, is probably still there (Droge et al., 1992). Nevertheless, though the health hazard of glufosinate is much greater with GMOs, the implications of this science have been ignored in GMO risk assessments of Glufosinate-tolerant GMO crops.
A yet further reason to be concerned about GMOs is that most of them contain a viral sequence called the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) promoter (or they contain the similar figwort mosaic virus (FMV) promoter). Two years ago, the GMO safety agency of the European Union (EFSA) discovered that both the CaMV promoter and the FMV promoter had wrongly been assumed by them (for almost 20 years) not to encode any proteins. In fact, the two promoters encode a large part of a small multifunctional viral protein that misdirects all normal gene expression and that also turns off a key plant defence against pathogens. EFSA tried to bury their discovery. Unfortunately for them, we spotted their findings in an obscure scientific journal. This revelation forced EFSA and other regulators to explain why they had overlooked the probability that consumers were eating an untested viral protein.
This list of significant scientific concerns about GMOs is by no means exhaustive. For example, there are novel GMOs coming on the market, such as those using double stranded RNAs (dsRNAs), that have the potential for even greater risks (Latham and Wilson 2015).
The True Purpose of GMOs
Science is not the only grounds on which GMOs should be judged. The commercial purpose of GMOs is not to feed the world or improve farming. Rather, they exist to gain intellectual property (i.e. patent rights) over seeds and plant breeding and to drive agriculture in directions that benefit agribusiness. This drive is occurring at the expense of farmers, consumers and the natural world. US Farmers, for example, have seen seed costs nearlyquadruple and seed choices greatly narrow since the introduction of GMOs. The fight over GMOs is not of narrow importance. It affects us all.
Nevertheless, specific scientific concerns are crucial to the debate. I left science in large part because it seemed impossible to do research while also providing the unvarnished public scepticism that I believed the public, as ultimate funder and risk-taker of that science, was entitled to.
Criticism of science and technology remains very difficult. Even though many academics benefit from tenure and a large salary, the sceptical process in much of science is largely lacking. This is why risk assessment of GMOs has been short-circuited and public concerns about them are growing. Until the damaged scientific ethos is rectified, both scientists and the public are correct to doubt that GMOs should ever have been let out of any lab.
