Seeds of Science: Why We Got It So Wrong On GMOs

by Mark Lynas

Overview

'Fluent, persuasive and surely right.' Evening Standard

The inside story of the fight for and against genetic modification in food.

Mark Lynas was one of the original GM field wreckers. Back in the 1990s – working undercover with his colleagues in the environmental movement – he would descend on trial sites of genetically modified crops at night and hack them to pieces. Two decades later, most people around the world – from New York to China – still think that 'GMO' foods are bad for their health or likely to damage the environment. But Mark has changed his mind. This book explains why.

In 2013, in a world-famous recantation speech, Mark apologised for having destroyed GM crops. He spent the subsequent years touring Africa and Asia, and working with plant scientists who are using this technology to help smallholder farmers in developing countries cope better with pests, diseases and droughts.

This book lifts the lid on the anti-GMO craze and shows how science was left by the wayside as a wave of public hysteria swept the world. Mark takes us back to the origins of the technology and introduces the scientific pioneers who invented it. He explains what led him to question his earlier assumptions about GM food, and talks to both sides of this fractious debate to see what still motivates worldwide opposition today. In the process he asks – and answers – the killer question: how did we all get it so wrong on GMOs?

'An important contribution to an issue with enormous potential for benefiting humanity.' Stephen Pinker

'I warmly recommend it.' Philip Pullman

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472946959
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	04/05/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Mark Lynas is the author of three major popular science environmental books: High Tide (2004), Six Degrees (2008) and The God Species (2011), as well as the Kindle Single ebook Nuclear 2.0 (2012). Six Degrees won the Royal Society prize and was made into a National Geographic documentary.

Lynas was advisor on climate change to the President of the Maldives from 2009 until the coup in 2012. He has contributed extensively to global media, writing for the Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post, Bangkok Post and numerous others. Until 2017 he was a visiting fellow at the Cornell Alliance for Science, Cornell University.
Mark Lynas is an environmental writer and campaigner whose books have drawn attention to the perils of global warming. He is Vice-Chair of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies, a Visiting Research Associate at Oxford University's School of Geography and the Environment, and was Climate Advisor to the President of the Maldives from 2009 to 2011.

He has contributed extensively to global media, writing for the Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and numerous others. He is research lead at the Alliance for Science at the Boyce Thompson Institute, an affiliate of Cornell University, and has co-authored peer-reviewed papers on vaccines, climate and GMOs. He is co-founder of the pro-science environmental campaign network RePlanet, launched in 2021 and now active in 12 countries.

Table of Contents

GMO, GM or GE?
Chapter 1: UK Direct Action: How we Stopped the GMO Juggernaut
Chapter 2: Seeds of Science: How I Changed my Mind
Chapter 3: The Inventors of Genetic Engineering
Chapter 4: A True History of Monsanto
Chapter 5: Suicide Seeds? Farmers and GMOs from Canada to Bangladesh
Chapter 6: Africa: Let Them Eat Organic Baby Corn
Chapter 7: The Rise and Rise of the Anti-GMO Movement
Chapter 8: What Anti-GMO Activists Got Right
Chapter 9: How Environmentalists Think
Chapter 10: Twenty Years of Failure
Notes
Acknowledgements
Index

Editorial Reviews

03/26/2018
Science writer Lynas (Nuclear 2.0) relates his personal journey from anti-GMO activist to outspoken proponent of genetically modified foods in this thoughtful examination of the issue. Although he makes a forceful case that activism against GMO products is misguided at best and disingenuous at worst (citing a campaign in Uganda that used photoshopped images of mutated children), Lynas is at his most powerful discussing the struggle between science and ideology. He describes his intellectual transformation when he decided to survey scientific opinion and discovered many reputable institutions that supported the genetic modification of food sources, terming this period “my own personal Enlightenment.” As the evidence for the safety of GMOs became increasingly convincing to him, Lynas found he had a personal choice to make: “I could betray my friends, or I could betray my conscience.” Lynas observes that the debate has very real consequences for people and the environment, criticizing NGOs for limiting access to GMOs for farmers in developing areas that lack food security. He also charges activists with inadvertently increasing pesticide usage, declaring, “When ideology trumps science... the environment is harmed, people get sick, and some even die.” His book will be thought-provoking reading for anyone interested in this contentious public health question. (June)

Publishers Weekly

In short, Mark Lynas is a saint.” —Dominic Lawson, Sunday Times

“An excellent read, fluent, persuasive and surely right.” —Evening Standard

“Seeds of Science tells the [GMO] story from a unique perspective. The logic of Lynas's conversion is an implicit challenge to both the American right and the left.” —The Washington Post

“Gives readers a firsthand look at both sides of the discourse [...] The book begins with heart-racing accounts of the law-breaking activities Lynas engaged in [...] By the end of chapter 7, science has won the debate.” —Science

“Mark Lynas has written a rattling good account of his conversion from student activist to respected science writer. This is serious stuff, enlivened by all elements of a popular thriller.” —John Deben, Literary Review

“The book is full of factoids that'll make you rethink a highly debated subject, and also what's really going on with those giant apples that don't bruise or brown.” —bonappetit.com

“Seeks to understand why greens, including Lynas himself, saw genetic engineering as an enemy from the very beginning [...] Lynas's experience suggests that the most important mind you can change is your own [...] Lynas has been through the fire to bring us this insight.” —Grist

“Partly a level-headed look at the benefits as well as the downsides of genetic modification, and partly a personal account of how Mark came to believe that the scientific method was, on the whole, not a bad way of analysing questions of crop production and farming. I found it riveting, largely because he writes so well and so open-mindedly, and I warmly recommend it.” —Philip Pullman

“Mark Lynas tells the remarkable story of a mass delusion fuelled by primitive folk-science intuitions, sacred values, and disinformation from some of our most sainted organizations. His exposé is an important contribution to an issue with enormous potential for benefiting humanity, and a gripping account of the tensions that can surround technological progress.” —Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and the author of The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now

“A gripping story of how a passionate troublemaker became an equally passionate campaigner for the facts. Seeds of Science is not only a compellingly-researched argument, it is the tale of how Mark Lynas's life changed. Reading it may change your life, too.” —Tim Harford, author of Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy and presenter of More or Less

“Mark Lynas is a courageous writer whose evidence-based turnaround on GMOs should be a lesson to all environmentalists. A must-read for anyone who cares about our future.” —Simon Singh, popular science writer and author of The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets

From the Publisher

2018-04-03
An environmental science writer takes a deep look at the ramifications of genetically modified organisms over the past four decades.In the 1990s, Lynas (Nuclear 2.0: Why a Green Future Needs Nuclear Power, 2014, etc.) was not content to just march against GMOs; he would wade into test plots at night, swinging a machete at the Frankenplants. However, he admits that he didn't really know a strand of DNA from a corn tassel, so he began intensive research on GMOs. Fortunately, by the late 1990s, there was a large body of work on GMOs, plenty of it suggesting a healthy side to their nature. In the 1980s, writes the author, "we were against the whole forward march of scientific research in the area of biotechnology and the idea of technological control over intimate life processes such as reproduction." As Lynas dug deeper into the literature—from Greenpeace to the National Academy of Sciences, respected peer-reviewed journals to the "low-ranking journal called Environmental Sciences Europe"—he found compelling examples of GMOs doing good, especially regarding the diminished need for cropland and increased production with less insecticide intervention. The author moves back and forth through time, charting changes in attitude as the results came in. For example, in 1974, the NAS voiced "serious concern that these artificial recombinant-DNA could prove biologically hazardous." Then in 1987, they claimed that the risks associated with GMOs were "the same as those associated with the introduction of unmodified organisms." Lynas is aghast that biosafety laws have been stymied by anti-GMO advocates in famine-scorched lands. He is also wary of pesticide and herbicide use and the costs associated with GMOs for poor farmers. He understands patents as a spur for research, but he is appalled that nearly half the corn crop—monocultured, government-supported—goes to biofuels.In this well-tempered, smoothly written book, Lynas calls for balance. Suspicion of all scientific discoveries will lead to further famine and global warming, while unscrutinized experimentation is prone to folly and corporate profit-gouging.

Kirkus Reviews