We cure cancer with genetic engineering but ban it on the farm.
CAR-T therapy and Golden Rice both rely on genetic engineering. Celebrating one while demonizing the other fuels disinformation that costs lives.
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Note: a slightly different version is originally published for my column, Inside Immunity, in the July/August 2025 edition of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.
As a biomedical scientist working in cancer and infectious disease immunology, I’ve spent decades working with genetic tools and genetic engineering. These technologies have revolutionized human health and have given us treatments for diseases previously untreatable.
Less than ten years ago, these therapies were not available at all; today we have around forty different gene therapy–based treatments for diseases, including cancer, sickle cell disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and more.
The first FDA-approved gene therapy was approved in 2017 to treat B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL). It is a type of CAR T cell (chimeric antigen receptor) therapy. CAR T cells are patient’s own immune cells that are genetically engineered to better recognize a specific protein (antigen) displayed on those cancer cells, allowing T cells to target and destroy the cancer.
This added gene leads to the production of a new receptor protein with characteristics of the normal T cell receptor (TCR) and the new features that enable CAR T cells to directly bind cancer antigens, hence the name. Chimera, in Greek mythology, was a creature with the body of a lion, the head of a goat, and the tail of a serpent. Here, the chimera is the T cell receptor.
To create CAR T cells, we isolate T cells from the patient’s own blood. In the lab, we modify the T cell genes so the T cells will now produce the CAR protein. That’s the genetic engineering part. We grow those engineered T cells up in the lab and infuse them back into the patient, where they can seek and destroy those cancer cells.
The scientific principle and technology behind CAR T cells are based around editing the DNA (the genes) of immune cells to give them new and beneficial functions.
The goal? Create innovative medicines to treat diseases, improve health, and save lives.
But guess what? This same genetic engineering approach isn’t limited to medicine.
In fact, the very same scientific tools are critical in agriculture. At the heart of both agricultural and biomedical genetic engineering is recombinant DNA technology, a tool used to alter genetic material to achieve beneficial outcomes.
In agriculture, it is used to give crop plants beneficial traits like improved nutrition, pest resistance without the need for external pesticides, drought tolerance, and more,
These beneficial traits improve food production and food stability through what you know as genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the first food crop of which was FDA-approved in 1994. Technically, genetically engineered is more accurate, because everything is genetically modified.
Yet I guarantee that you can find someone who praises the virtues of novel cancer treatments while only buying foods with the “non-GMO” label.
If you ask them why, they’ll repeat the same anti-science claims of members of the MAGA crew do about vaccines: GMOs are causing cancer, or chronic medical issues, or filled with “toxic” ingredients. Are you someone who has heard, or even repeated, those claims?
Liberal media outlets are rampant with these claims too. They platform people and organizations who create and spread these claims. To be clear: the claims are lies. They’re based on disinformation from the very same anti-science activist groups that spread lies about vaccines: The Environmental Working Group (EWG), RFK Jr’s Children’s Health Defense, Moms Across America.
For me, this is perhaps the most infuriating part: people are so willing to cling to disinformation when it is tied to their community identity, even if the scientific consensus shows the exact opposite of what they believe.
In farming, just as in medicine, genetic engineering is conferring a benefit.
It is marrying the best of nature and science to improve our lives. Golden rice, developed in the 1990s, is rice that was genetically engineered to produce beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A. When we consume beta-carotene, our bodies convert it into vitamin A, an essential micronutrient.
Rice is a staple crop in low-income countries, but it lacks vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is prevalent in these regions and has serious health outcomes, including blindness, hearing loss, corneal scarring, increased mortality from diarrheal and other infectious diseases, and death (World Health Organization 2009; Song et al. 2023). VAD impacts over sixty-two million children and causes between 125,000 and 250,000 pediatric deaths every year.
Golden rice was developed to solve vitamin A deficiency and save lives.
It is genetically engineered rice where two added genes enable rice to produce beta-carotene that is as readily usable by our bodies as other sources.
To do this, scientists harness a bacterium, Agrobacterium tumefaciens, which naturally infects and transfers its DNA to plant cells. This process was adapted to transfer those new genes into rice plant cells. Those plant cells are cultured in the lab into calli, then plantlings, which then mature into plants that produce beta-carotene in the rice grain in eight to twelve months. This rice has the same growth requirements as regular rice and provides essential vitamin A, helping combat malnutrition and its severe consequences.
It is estimated that up to 2.5 million lives could be saved every year by increasing intake of vitamin A through dietary sources or supplementation.
In India alone, Golden Rice could prevent more than 40,000 pediatric deaths if it were approved and grown in place of regular rice.
You are probably wondering why this hasn’t been deployed worldwide, right? This is such a simple solution to a nutritional deficiency that kills children.
Unfortunately, anti-biotech rhetoric has delayed the approval of Golden Rice in countries that desperately need it—even though extensive laboratory and field-based studies spanning over twenty years have demonstrated that Golden Rice (and other genetically engineered crops) are safe, nutritious, and beneficial. Misinformed public outcry has led to pushback and delayed review and approval of countless genetically engineered crop plants.
In 2021, the Philippines approved Golden Rice for cultivation, the only country to do so thus far. But because of false claims and legal challenges by activist groups such as Greenpeace (yep, many of these ‘environmental NGOs’ are incredibly anti-science), the Supreme Court of the Philippines banned growing Golden Rice in 2023 before it could make a difference.
This ban is based on opinion, not scientific evidence, yet it is halting scientific progress and harming public health. Delayed approval of Golden Rice because of unfounded opposition to genetic tools is estimated to cost 1.4 million life years annually in India alone.
Ironically, people who readily accept medical treatments made through genetic engineering, such as human insulin (the first FDA-approved GMO product in 1982, made by genetically engineered bacteria) often reject genetically engineered food crops, convinced they are harmful.
The reality?
The science between genetically engineered food crops and medical therapeutics is the same.
The regulatory standards and frameworks are extensive and rigorous in both sectors. Both use precise and intentional changes in specific DNA segments to add or improve something.
That’s true whether it is human insulin, cancer cell therapy, gene therapy for sickle cell disease, rice with added nutrition, papaya resistant to a deadly virus, or eggplant that produces insecticide, eliminating the need to treat crop fields with external insecticides. (All of these use genetic engineering, by the way).
What are the common threads of these developments that use genetic engineering? Improved public health. Improved food supply stability and quality. Reduced ecological impact of farming. Additional medical interventions for debilitating and deadly diseases.
And yet misinformation spreads because of low science literacy and intentional disinformation. Anti-biotechnology activism has restricted the development and implementation of these innovations. It’s led to legal challenges and prohibitions based on vibes, not science.
The consequences of misinformation about GMOs extend well beyond grocery store choices. False claims about genetic engineering delay life-saving agricultural innovations that can address urgent global problems such as malnutrition, vitamin deficiencies, climate change, and food insecurity. Golden Rice approval has been delayed for decades by unfounded fears, despite decades of scientific evidence that supports the immense benefit it offers.
Misinformation about genetic medicines reduces people’s trust in life-saving medical treatments such as vaccines, cancer therapies, and more. Right now, legislation is being pushed to ban all medicines based on genetic tools in states across the United States, even while that would apply to things such as human insulin (Love 2025). Rejection of these scientific developments increases costs, slows scientific progress, and reduces access to measures that improve our health and the planet.
Tackling misinformation isn’t just about being accurate—it’s about preventing cultural beliefs, ideology, and unfounded claims from undermining scientific progress, no matter the field.
So why do some people celebrate genetic engineering in hospitals but ban it on farms? Many of these people are the very same ones who consider RFK Jr a threat to public health when it comes to vaccines, yet applaud and support his equally uninformed war on ‘chemicals’ in food and scientific innovation in agriculture.
We cannot afford this inconsistency.
If we trust genetic engineering to save a child from leukemia, why do we reject it when it could save a child from blindness, malnutrition, or death?
The science is the same. The benefits are proven. The data are robust and rigorous. It’s time to apply the same evidence-based standards to agriculture and medicine—and reject misinformation that harms people that is based on misguided fear.
Scientific progress saves lives, whether in a hospital bed or a rice paddy. We should embrace it everywhere it helps humanity.
My ask for you: if you are someone who has held these positions, please consider that anti-biotech rhetoric has been a decades-long disinformation campaign. It isn’t your fault if you’ve been misled by the repeated false claims — but this is your chance to consider this information with an open mind and revisit some of your biases.
The stakes are too high to let ideology overrule science. Lives depend on it, now more than ever.
Now, more than ever, we all must join 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.
More science education, less disinformation.
- 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. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below:
Another excellent and perceptive piece. Dr. Love does a great job highlighting the extraordinary momentum in cancer treatment brought about by genetic engineering. The ability to reprogram the immune system, from ex vivo CAR T therapies to emerging in vivo approaches and CRISPR-edited TILs, represents a true leap forward in how we think about curing certain cancers rather than merely managing them.
What is especially encouraging is the way these technologies are beginning to converge: precise gene editing, enhanced targeting, and immune system reconditioning. The shift from custom-built cellular therapies to off-the-shelf or in vivo strategies could expand access dramatically while reducing cost and complexity.
We are witnessing a transition from proof of concept to scalable therapeutic innovation, and that is deeply hopeful. Of course, challenges remain, but the direction is unmistakably promising.
Great stuff Dr. Love. I was a fan and supporter before this, but as a CAR T patient, now 2 years free of lymphoma, I appreciate the extra background info and comparative argument with ag science.