As I’ve mentioned before, I’m an Australian. But us Ozzies get to meet a lot of Americans.
American author of Seeds of Deception and public speaker Jeffrey Smith’s of Fairfield Iowa, first came to the attention of Australians when he was rolled out by the anti-GM activists to try and prevent Australian farmers being given the freedom of choice on crop technology in late 2007. Fortunately this effort by the anti-technology lobby groups was unsuccessful.
At most meetings organized by these activists that I have attended since that time — and there have been quite a few — stacks of his more recent book Genetic Roulette book were available for purchase, and I snapped up one early on.
A brief perusal of the articles revealed the book was highly biased. Nowhere in the book was there a mention of any of the major good outcomes from GM technology—such as decreased risk of cancer from mycotoxins in moldy corm (see this link for Chassy and Tribe’s efforts on this important topic at Academics Review). On the topics that I was most familiar such as antibiotic resistance in bacteria, Genetic Roulette was deeply misleading and factually wrong.
I decided late 2007 to investigate its claims thoroughly, little knowing how huge the task would be because as it turned out every one of the 65 claims in it — better called myths– was distorted, misleading, plain wrong, or based on misrepresentation or misreading of the sources it quoted.
An early step in providing an antidote for this misadventure appeared in an Australian rural newspaper, which I happily reproduced on my website in November 2007. But that fine article only tackles a sampling of the 65 Smith myths. Other aspects of Jeffrey M Smith’s effort were tackled in other GMO Pundit posts.
Fortunately I was able to team up with Prof Bruce Chassy with University of Illinois and together work through a careful dissection of the book’s claims. We sent our efforts to many experts in particular areas to make sure we got as much rigorous peer review as possible. In some topics, Jeffrey Smith’s claims are based on such flimsy evidence that it was difficult to find experts to take them seriously enough to provide expert review – they were just dismissed as a waste of reviewers time.
The results of our efforts are now published on a special website called Academics Review which we hope will become a forum for a series of other critical reviews where peer-reviewed scientific evidence is brought to shine a light on the wide range of topics that are important for public health or for environmental management, or on any area where modern science can help us make better decisions.
Why write about 65 flimsy myths?
Several people have asked me why I tackled such a time-consuming task. Now that we have the site finished, we can see the effectiveness and wide reach of internet publication. We can enjoy the splendid esthetic attractiveness of academicsreview.org (for which Bruce and I were mere by-standers while real graphic artists and programmers pitched in). And we are continuing to discover new bad outcomes fuelled by Jeffrey Smith’s misinformation — for example the recent disgraceful hold-up of insect protected eggplant (Bt-Brinjal) in India (see for example Seetharam 2010, Tribe 2009). Taking all this in, Bruce Chassy, myself, and our many valued collaborators and reviewers are very pleased (and relieved) to find it was time and effort well spent.
We are now taking pleasure in encouraging other scientists to join us as members on an internet platform designed to put scientific knowledge and expertise to the service of the broad community.
Go to Academics Review and check it out!
References:
Sridevi Seetharam (2010). Should the Bt Brinjal controversy concern healthcare professionals and bioethicists? Indian J Med Ethics.2010 Jan-Mar;7(1)
David Tribe (2009). Blog posting Jan 30 2009. GMO Pundit blog. Agbiotech Hoax Watch 2009 #4. Genetics “expert Prof ” Smith advises developing country about food policy.
PDF 
David Tribe is an applied geneticist, teaching graduate/undergrad courses in food science, food safety, biotechnology and microbiology at the University of Melbourne. 
I read your GMO pundit page. The Academics you mention are funded by none other then the same industry who are passing this stuff on to Americans. It’s in their best interests to try to debunk anyone who might cause them to lose their funding and therefore their own paychecks.
The major commercial food growers in this country are OWNED by the pharmaceutical companies(the same folks paying to spread disinformation studies that tell people eggs, vitamin E and raw milk are all bad for you) and so is the main stream media, who help perpetuate their lies. It’s in their best financial interests for people to get sick because then they have their American Medical Association trained doctors prescribe a little pill or pills (1000% cheaper to make then growing good food) to help them feel better.
One of our current supreme court justices (Clarence Thomas)is a former board member and officer for Monsanto, the only provider of the vast majority of seeds (genetically modified terminator seeds) commercial farmers here in the United States have to use. For you to write about this just proves that you somehow are funded by the same people or benefit some how by the same industry and or are paid by them to spread the same disinformation to Aussies as is done here in the United States.
You and the rest like you are the reason people all over are dying of diseases they should never have to suffer from. Most of Europe has rightly banned any type of GMO’s in their country with good reason. So how much did you get paid to sell out? Your smear campaign won’t work, people are waking up to what you and your profit cronies are trying to push on them, and thats because they are tired of being sick eating all the wonderfully engineered products you are telling them are safe. Go completely natural people and make sure you check where people like this are getting their paychecks from. Follow the money trail and find out to who they really owe their allegiance to.
FACT: America, 5% of the world’s population, 85% of the worlds pharmaceuticals sold here. Now kids are diabetic, on high cholesterol and high blood pressure medication as well as every type of mood control and anti-depressant there is, and obesity is becoming a pandemic. Sure, trust what this guy and all the rest of the establishment say about how safe this stuff really is(n’t!)
‘Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.’ Romans 1:22
Editor’s note: paragraph breaks added for readability. Nothing else was changed.
What’s difficult to understand is why amidst all this conspiracy theory that raw milk is assumed to be safe.