Seeds of Doubt
Full details
| Authors & editors | |
| Publisher | New Yorker Annals of Science |
| Year of publication | 2014 August 18 |
| Languages | |
| Medium | Digital Note: Copyright restrictions mean the attachment below only contains part of the publication. The full document is available for inspection at the Mills Archive Research and Education Centre. |
| Edition | 1 |
| Topics | Arts, culture and heritage > Social and economic history |
| Tags | |
| Scope & content | An extended critique of the work of Vandana Shiva who accuses multinational corporations such as Monsanto of attempting to impose “foodtotalitarianism” on the world. Short excerpt: For years, people have been afraid that eating genetically modified foods would make them sick, and Shiva’s speeches are filled with terrifying anecdotes that play to that fear. But since 1996, when the crops were first planted, humans have consumed trillions of servings of foods that contain genetically engineered ingredients, and have draped themselves in thousands of tons of clothing made from genetically engineered cotton, yet there has not been a single documented case of any person becoming ill as a result. That is one reason that the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the World Health Organization, the U.K.’s Royal Society, the French Academy of Sciences, the European Commission, and dozens of other scientific organizations have all concluded that foods derived from genetically modified crops are as safe to eat as any other food. “It is absolutely remarkable to me how Vandana Shiva is able to get away with saying whatever people want to hear,” Gordon Conway told me recently. Conway is the former president of the Rockefeller Foundation and a professor at London’s Imperial College. His book “One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World?” has become an essential text for those who study poverty,agriculture, and development. |
