by
Karl Haro von Mogel on 27 December 2010
Hi everyone, I hope you are keeping warm and rested this holiday season. Internet is real spotty where I am in L.A., otherwise I would be putting up a bunch of posts about the Vatican, Wikileaks, and more. But I have a moment in my favorite coffee shop in Culver City to share a little song I put together. As you are probably aware, I’ve been chatting and debating with some folks over at Grist lately, and the conversations have been both revealing and instructive, while also being up close and personal. It was amazing to see as I pointed out that both Tom Philpott and Tom Laskawy were wrong on basic facts and also wrong on interpretations, that they have not once responded to my comments. Doug Gurian-Sherman laid down a bombshell that he doesn’t care if anyone thinks his stuff is peer-reviewed or not, and an anti-GE campaigner thanked me for being the first scientist to explain something to her (brownie points that didn’t last very long, apparently). And amidst a string of personal attacks, a surprise defender swooped in! There’s not enough time for me to find each comment, but the verses here are all based on real comments, you can search my Grist comment account to find them if you like.
And this holiday season, Grist itself sent me half a dozen requests for money as a registered user (besides banner ads when visiting the site), saying that a donation would be a gift that keeps on giving. Truly Grist has been such a gift, but not in the way that they intended. I thought about the important things I observed, and put them all to a familiar tune. Sing along with me as you read The 12 Posts of Gristmas!
On the first post of Gristmas the comments gave to me,
Doug doesn’t give a rat’s ass.
On the second post of Gristmas the comments gave to me,
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by
Karl Haro von Mogel on 14 December 2010
Anastasia and I just got out of a Skype interview with John for Truffle Media, and the question came up, how to visualize a genetically engineered food? As I’m sure you all know when you read articles about genetic engineering, you get all kinds of crazy pictures from this:
To this:
When the scientific truth is more like this:
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by
Karl Haro von Mogel on 2 November 2010
Some of you may have noticed a little restructuring on Biofortified lately, others may have gone browsing around and found an interesting unexplained page, or might have recalled discussions about a new and fantastic database being planned for Biofortified and what we were thinking about calling it. Well now the wait is over and all will be explained. I am pleased to introduce regulars and newcomers to the GENetic Engineering Risk Atlas, aka GENERA.
This is intended to be an atlas of any and all peer-reviewed research related to the relative risks of plant genetic engineering in the context of plant breeding. David Tribe has maintained a list of 300 papers related to this topic on GMO Pundit, and earlier this year we decided that all this information needed to be more visible and accessible to everyone. After searching deep within the bowels of WordPress plugins and php code, I figured out how to use the WordPress platform to host and manage a separate set of custom pages that will store and organize details about each study in a way that people can easily browse and search to find what they want.
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Seralini seeks to dilute biology education
I guess it was only a matter of time. The particular brand of extreme belief about the risks of genetic engineering espoused by Seralini, who is the president of the scientific board of The Committee for Research & Independent Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN), has now spilled over into the inevitable conclusion that anything and everything GMO-like should be in advanced low-air-pressure biosafety labs only. Because simple things done a million times over such as adding a plasmid to a tube of harmless bacteria to demonstrate how basic genetic engineering works is knowledge that French high school students should not have access to. Why? Because doing a safe, controlled experiment “trivializes” a touchy subject.
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