GMOs aren't changing your DNA or causing cancer.
Myths about genetic engineering and our foods cause unfounded fear
Few topics in science, health and food elicit more fear than the phrase GMO, when everything we eat is technically genetically modified.
So, I’m going to unofficially petition to retire the acronym GMO; if we want to discuss the technology people are fearful of, let’s be accurate and call it genetically engineered or gene edited.
If you missed my previous piece on the misunderstanding of GE crops, please read that first.
GE crops refer to those that have been genetically modified using genetic tools to add or alter single gene sequences. In the US, 14 food products fall under this category. They are created to confer a benefit to the crop itself, to the farmers/producers, to the consumers, to the environment, or all of the above:
For example, the Hawaiian papaya is genetically engineered to resist the papaya ringspot virus, which nearly wiped out papaya in Hawaii starting in the 1980s.
Summer squash? Genetically engineered to resist the zucchini yellow mosaic virus (ZYMV) and watermelon mosaic virus (WMV) which prevents fruits from growing.
There’s a common misconception that GE crops are created for some villainous profit motive. That is false.
Sure, do these modifications improve profit margins for farmers? Absolutely, but that’s because as a result, crops aren’t being decimated by pests or pathogens, and they are able to produce more food to feed people per acre.
Even in the context of the demonized glyphosate-tolerant crops, of which 6 exist in the US: corn, sugar beets, soybean, canola, alfalfa, and cotton, this is true. (I discussed glyphosate specifically here).
Glyphosate-tolerant crops exist so that farmers can control weeds that would strangle and deprive crop plants of nutrients using a single input, glyphosate, as opposed to several different chemical inputs, plus soil tilling, plus other cost- and labor-intensive interventions. Reducing total chemical inputs: reduces total volumes of pesticides that need to be applied. Reducing soil tilling: reduces soil erosion and nutrient loss.
Both of these things have ecological benefits, which is why they are used by farmers. They ALSO have a cost benefit: minimizing how many pesticides need to be used saves money for the farmers, plus reducing weed growth improves yields, as does minimizing additional manipulation of fields. (and glyphosate does not require large volumes, about 12-24 ounces is used per ACRE of land)
Other genetic modifications like the pathogen resistance for papayas and summer squash? Well, if your crops aren’t being destroyed by pests (whether the pest be weeds, fungi, insects, or viruses), that means you can grow food, which can feed the 8.1 BILLION people on the planet. And you can do so with FEWER chemical additives.
If you recall, countries that use fewer GE crop technologies and more organic pesticides have HIGHER rates of pesticide use, and many organic pesticides are more ecologically damaging than conventional counterparts.
GE technologies are used to improve the stability of our food supply while minimizing the ecological impact.
GMOs are safe to eat and are not changing your DNA or causing cancer
I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve heard some version of this, and it really goes back to a fundamental misunderstanding of biology.
When we eat ANYTHING, we eat DNA. Because we are eating organisms: plants, animals, etc. A chicken egg is an egg. It contains DNA. A tomato is the ovary of a tomato plant. It contains DNA. Lettuce leaves are plants. They contain DNA. When you eat DNA of anything, you digest the DNA into the subunits, called nucleotides. That is facilitated by enzymes in your GI tract, including pepsin in your stomach and nucleases in your small intestine (yes, pepsin is historically viewed as a protease, but it also can digest nucleic acids).
Does eating a non-GMO papaya change your DNA or cause cancer? No.
That’s the same as eating a GMO papaya - which 90% of papayas grown in Hawaii are today. (They are engineered to resist the papaya ringspot virus, which nearly eradicated the crop on the islands in the 1980s-1990s).
Genes are simply sequences of DNA, which are made up of the same 4 molecules (A, T, C, and G), in ALL organisms.
The order and arrangement of those bases determine what protein is produced from that sequence. There’s nothing “fishy” about a fish gene, or “human” about a human gene, because in reality, these DNA sequences are shared across many species. Scientifically, we wouldn’t refer to them based on a species in which they are found, but would simply refer to the gene itself.
Eating a papaya means we eat the papaya cells, which include DNA. Just like in a non-GE papaya, once we eat that DNA, our digestive system breaks it down into those subunit molecules, with NO effect on our own genes or cells. Those subunits, no matter whether they’re coming from a GM food or a non-GM food, are viewed, processed, and used by our bodies in exactly the same way. None of it is changing your DNA.
We are literally always eating genes anytime we consume something.
The overwhelming consensus of scientific experts and scientific authorities around the world is that GMOs are safe to eat. There have been more than 1,700 studies on the safety of GMOs, hundreds of which were independently funded.
In 2016, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NAS) conducted an extensive review of more than 20 years of data, including nearly 900 studies across numerous countries. Their findings were consistent with all other previous conclusions.
GM crops and foods with GM crop ingredients are:
Safe to eat
Have the same nutrition and composition as non-genetically modified crops
Have no links to new allergies, cancer, celiac or other diseases.
In addition, there is no evidence to suggest that consuming foods containing GM ingredients:
Impact fertility, pregnancy, or offspring
Lead to or cause any sort of DNA mutations in people or cause cancer
Harm your organs, cause diseases, or lead to adverse events
Change our genes
Indeed, a systematic review assessing the potential impact of genetically modified (GM) plants’ and infertility concluded that there is no evidence of adverse effects on infertility. And yes, if you saw the recent headlines article about “weedkiller and sperm,” Dr. Kevin Folta and I already tackled that topic here.
The term GMO and GE in the food industry tells consumers NOTHING about nutrition or safety of the food in question.
While activist organizations like the EWG and the non-GMO project like to fear-monger about GE food products, the reality is, your body can’t tell the difference when you eat something.
And that brings me to my next point:
The non-GMO project is a marketing scam.
The Non-GMO Project is an organization that sells the “Non-GMO Project Verified” label to consumer product companies. It is entirely voluntary, and something that companies pay for.
Companies pay for non-GMO certification in order to be able to place the “non-GMO” label on a food package, solely to charge more for that product.
Labeling and media attention around GM products is based on misinformation and fear-mongering. The Non-GMO Project shares graphics like someone injecting something into a tomato to prey off gaps in science literacy. 3,000 brands have jumped aboard their bandwagon, labeling 50,000 products that account for more than $26 billion in annual sales.
This label is not regulated by any scientific or oversight authority, and in reality, this labels can be put on anything: even products that don’t have GENES to begin with or products that don’t have a GMO counterpart. The Non-GMO Project will also sell labels to companies for products that are, scientifically, genetically modified through selective breeding/hybridization or mutagenesis.
You might see a non-GMO label on a bag of popcorn even though there is no GMO popcorn sold commercially in the U.S or anywhere else in the world, or something that isn’t EVEN AN ORGANISM, like TABLE SALT!
If a product does not have the non-GMO label, it does not mean that it contains ingredients from GMO sources. Remember, there are only 14 GE food options that exist in the US. So, if you see anything about GMO wheat, GMO tomatoes, or GMO popcorn, you can be sure it is false.
The Non-GMO Project actively seeks to erode science literacy and trust in the safety of our food. They state: “there is no scientific consensus on the safety of GMOs.” which is false.
GMO foods are safe and have no link to any medical condition.
GMOs aren’t a thing to avoid, and the Non-GMO project labeling is a scam to scare and mislead you - while charging you more money.
GM crops are safe for the environment and offer many benefits to ecology.
By introducing genes that confer resistance to diseases, parasites, and other pests, we can improve crop yield and prevent loss by biologic events. This means GM crops actually require fewer chemical inputs than non-GM counterparts.
Over the last 20 years, GMOs have reduced pesticide applications by 8.2% and helped increase crop yields by 22%.
Blight-resistant potatoes can reduce fungicide use by up to 90%, since the potatoes are already resistant to the fungus that would cause blight.
GE crops can help address climate change.
GE crops can help conserve biodiversity. Because GE crops can reduce chemical inputs and overall pesticide use as well as reduce off-target impacts of broad-spectrum pesticides. More than that, because GE crops can improve yields compared to organic farming (and even non-GE conventional farming), that means more food with less land and less deforestation. In 2018 alone, GE crops saved 59.7 million acres of land and reduced CO2 emissions by 50.7 billion pounds, equivalent to taking 15.3 million cars off the road for one year.
GE herbicide-tolerant crops mean that farmers do not need to till the soil as often. This reduced tilling improves soil health (yes, that includes the soil microbiome that everyone is concerned about), reduces runoff and nutrient leaching, and actually benefits pollinator populations. This increases nutrient-rich organic matter up to 1,800 pounds per acre per year.
GE crops can improve stability of our food supply.
Yep, GM plants can better tolerate extreme weather conditions. This means growing crops in regions that were previously unsuitable due to drought or extreme heat.
Non-browning traits can allow for reduced food waste. GMOs can help to reduce food waste in developing countries where these losses can be as high as 40 to 50 percent for root crops, fruits, and vegetables, 30 percent for cereals and fish, and 20 percent for oilseeds.
GMOs and Monsanto (or Glyphosate) are not one and the same.
Every time I discuss GMOs (or GE crops, as I prefer to call them), someone inevitably uses the red herring “but Monsanto!”
So let’s clear the air: Monsanto and GMO? Not the same thing.
Monsanto doesn’t exist anymore. It’s now Bayer, and they happen to produce pesticides and GE crops, including glyphosate-tolerate crops and their partner herbicide, glyphosate (branded RoundUp here). Bayer is not the only manufacturer of glyphosate either - there are over 700 different products globally that contain glyphosate.
Glyphosate is a chemical with broad-spectrum herbicide function. And I’ve tackled the misinformation on glyphosate previously, I’ll reiterate: glyphosate does not cause adverse health effects in humans, both among farm workers who would be exposed to higher levels of it, and through dietary exposure of TRACE levels. These conclusions are based on decades of data. So even if this is a very strongly-held belief you have, please know that there is not evidence to support it.
But for argument’s sake, let’s discuss some numbers:
The LD50 -- the dose of a chemical necessary to kill fifty percent of test animals -- is a routinely used measure of toxicity.
The LD50 of glyphosate is roughly 5,600 milligrams per kilogram of bodyweight (that’s 5.6 GRAMS per kilogram).
Acetaminophen? The analgesic and anti-pyretic in Tylenol? an LD50 of 1,944 mg/kg (nearly 3x more toxic)
Caffeine? LD50 of 192 mg/kg
Vitamin D?! LD50 of 10 mg/kg
That means that caffeine is 29 TIMES more toxic than glyphosate. But no one is screaming about your morning cup of coffee, are they?
And that doesn’t even mention the fact that glyphosate is water-soluble and is rapidly excreted, so it would never be accumulating in your body.
Ok, but let’s get back to the Bayer controversy.
Monsanto does not “sue farmers” if GMOs blow into their fields.
This pervasive claim about GE crop seeds has persisted for years, even though there is no fact behind it.
Legally, seed companies can sue people if they knowingly use seeds without licensing agreements, but the myth that Bayer sued farmers who unknowingly had GE crops in their fields was a lie.
A Canadian farmer named Percy Schmeiser claimed that he was sued when Roundup Ready canola plants were discovered on his farm. However, the Canadian court that heard the case concluded that Schmeiser intentionally planted Roundup Ready canola seeds without an agreement. So essentially, he got caught stealing plants, and then made up a story to demonize the company he stole from.
GE seed companies also don’t sue farmers for saving seeds.
Again, while seed companies can sue if someone saves seeds related to a specific technology agreement that prohibits that, that is not the norm.
Saving seeds isn’t something many farmers typically do, whether hybrid or GMO, because they don’t breed true. So, this is not a new issue nor is it unique to GMOs. Farmers choose what seeds they want to purchase, so if they want to save seeds, they are able to purchase seeds not under any type of patent.
In fact, in many public sector projects that utilize GE crop technologies including the Hawaiian papaya, insect-resistant (Bt) eggplant in Bangladesh, and Water Efficient Maize for Africa — farmers are free to save and share GMO seeds and no royalties are charged.
GE seeds are not sterile either.
More claims circulate about “evil business” practices claim that GE crop seeds are sterile, meaning that the plant will produce seeds but the seeds won’t germinate. This is also false. While this technology has been developed, this was never commercialized or used in any agriculture sector. This is another way that anti-science activists use terms like “terminator seeds” to fear-monger and villainize the agricultural industry.
Genetic technology should be embraced, not used to scare people.
Genetically engineered organisms are used in many other areas of your lives, probably in ways you don’t realize:
Enzymes in laundry detergent are produced through genetic engineering to improve the performance of cleaning.
Biodegradable diapers are made possible with a genetically engineered microorganisms that can break down the materials in the diaper after use.
Genetically modified soy-based straws are biodegradable and ecologically friendly alternative to paper and plastic products.
GMOs are common in medicine. In the past, scientists used pancreas glands from more than 23,000 pigs to make one pound of insulin. Today, genetic engineering has improved animal welfare, making insulin in a lab without pigs. Fearing GMO technologies means restricting modern science and medicine that benefit humans, animals, and the world.
Do you have a dog or a cat? They’re 100% genetically modified.
Around 32,000 years ago, our hunter-gatherer ancestors were thought to have been joined by wild wolves in East Asia, who followed them to scavenge food.
Over time, the wolves were domesticated and then selectively bred to increase docility, leading to dogs that are related to what are currently Chinese native dogs. Over millennia, traits such as size, hair length, color and body shape were artificially selected for, altering the genetics of these domesticated descendants of wolves so much that we now have breeds such as Chihuahuas and corgis that barely resemble wolves at all! And yes, we have applied these techniques to countless animal species, so let’s not pretend we aren’t “messing with Mother Nature".”
While the method of genetic modification has changed as science advances, the principle is the same. Just because you hear something is genetically modified doesn’t mean it is dangerous. In reality, GM technology improves our lives and the planet. Decades of data demonstrate that GM crops are safe for humans and the environment, but misinformation and fear-based messaging are undermining the potential of this technology.
Thanks for joining in the fight for science!
Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.
Your local immunologist,
Andrea
“ImmunoLogic” is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Feel free to follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below: