The podcast with Russ Roberts is here.
Taleb’s point is that “science” cannot prove that GMO’s are safe. We know that when organisms evolve using a trial-and-error process of gradual tweaking, that process is safe. But direct intervention to create GMO’s is not the same process.
Taleb says.
The big risk is what can happen when you have two things going together–which is, what happens, Soviet style, is a combination of monopoly of some plants over others, that it’s too large a system; and of course creation of other species that will themselves also be too powerful and then you may kill the GMOs or one may kill the other and you may have huge imbalances in nature. And these imbalances in nature can produce large deviations.
I think I get Taleb’s point. But it strikes me that to cause catastrophic harm, a GMO has to be both weird enough to cause unprecedented things to happen but not so weird that it fails to function as a living organism. That may be an impossible combination.
This is a very strange claim to make. Natural trial and error has a much worse safety record that targeted genetic modifications. The world is full of terribly dangerous products of evolution. Evolution favors successful reproduction, not safety to humans. Often, if not usually, the two are at odds. Many of the plants and animals we consume were originally unsuitable for that purpose, even poisonous, until bred by humans to better serve our purposes.
Traditional crossbreeding gives better results, but even it has been known to produce unexpectedly toxic plants.
The key thing to understand is that the real danger from genetic engineering is not that the gene that’s being inserted is likely to be dangerous on its own, but rather the danger that it will interact in unexpected ways with the genes already present. Of course, that’s a danger with any kind of breeding. The entire point of crossbreeding is to create a novel combination of genes, and this creates the risk that they’ll interact in unexpected ways.
Maybe I am naïve, but I still don’t understand how GMOs are so much riskier than regular old hybrids. Both are “unnatural” in the colloquial sense that word is always used. There is the valid concern that a particular strain would be too invasive, perhaps leading to a Irish potato famine situation, but that would apply to non GMO as well. So I don’t get it.
Overall I was disappointed with his arguments. He is cool with fat tailed risks as long as they are “localized”, but was unable to give an non arm waiving I-know-it-when-I-see-it definition of local. Nuclear power to him is local, but manufactured drugs aren’t. So there is a sense that geography matters, but there are dimensions as well. Drugs for instance are local to the set of people who take them. His own example of Vioxx seems to refute his point, as no one who didn’t take the drug suffered a heart attack, and the problem was eventually discovered. How that is more catastrophic than a nuclear power plant that kills the same number of people I don’t get.
The most likely failure mode of GMOs is that they stress the plant leading the plant to upregulate its production of its own natural toxins/pesticides. Plants generally do this under stress. All plants have natural toxins but in inedible plants the dose is low enough that it doesn’t bother us. Still, even edible plants have toxins in low doses, as the lady who almost died eating raw bok choy daily could testify.
Since the plants have tolerance for their own toxins, it is quite possible for a GMO plant to become poisonous to humans without inhibiting success of the plant itself.
The greatest risk may be that they are often bred to not reproduce naturally making the source a single point of failure.
I take Taleb’s point to be that a GMO could act something like an invasive species that drives out the native ones and becomes a nuisance like Asian Carp or Kudzu. Telling yourself that won’t happen because the GMO is “designed” is unconvincing, given the complexity inherent in genetics and sexual reproduction.
How realistic his concerns are probably has a lot to do with how big the ‘M’ is in the GMO in question, though.
Science means extrapolating from objective, empirical data to conclude the simplest theories that match all avialable evidence. Based on that definition of science, we can conclude with scientific reasoning that GMOs are safe.
In the case of the most popular GMO foods, we have ample evidence that any harm they cause is very very difficult to detect. We’ve been consuming enormous amounts of the stuff, and it’s just not causing any problems that are distinguishable from noise. GMO foods have a better record for safety than air travel.
I believe a large number of GMO foods have gone onto the market at this point. As such, we can also safely extrapolate to new GMO foods, so long as they are developed using similar methods as used in the past.
In addition, the broader notion of GMO includes all genetic splicing, not just splicing done in a laboratory. This broader notion of GMO has been going on for as long as agriculture and domestication have existed. It generally works fine, and all that it does to use a lab is to speed up the process.
In sum, objecting to the safety of GMOs is very much like believing in astrology, faith crystals, or tinctures. You would never believe it if you started from reliable information and then tried to understand the world more deeply. Rather, people believe these things because they have superstitious priors, and then they try to hold onto those priors in the face of mounting evidence against them.
I read one of Taleb’s books a few years back. I thought it was dumb. Nothing he’s said since then has changed my mind.
Taleb’s argument seems to be along the lines of the precautionary principle. (I’ll get to the full interview eventually.) I’ve never been a fan of this logic. How can we ever prove something is absolutely safe? Maybe our ancestors should’ve just stayed in caves.
Wow, discussing GMOs was already so bias-heavy. Now it involves Taleb.