AAAS: Serving Society or Industy?

This para­graph of the AAAS press release sounds espe­cially familiar:

Several cur­rent efforts to require label­ing of GM foods are not being dri­ven by any cred­i­ble sci­en­tific evi­dence that these foods are dan­ger­ous… Rather, GM label­ing ini­tia­tives are being advanced by “the per­sis­tent per­cep­tion that such foods are some­how ‘unnat­ural,’” as well as efforts to gain com­pet­i­tive advan­tages within the mar­ket­place, and the false belief that GM crops are untested.

These talk­ing points come straight from the No on 37 cam­paign. For exam­ple, “gain com­pet­i­tive advan­tages”? What does that have to do with sci­ence? Nothing, but it’s a favorite refrain from the No side, which I know because it showed up on the mailer sent to my home.

Also, it’s not a “false belief” that GM crops are untested, it’s sci­en­tific fact. According to David Schubert, pro­fes­sor and Laboratory Head Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute: “Any state­ment sug­gest­ing exten­sive safety test­ing of all genet­i­cally mod­i­fied crops is absolutely false. A major­ity of the new GM crops com­ing through the agri­cul­ture biotech pipeline have had zero test­ing done on them.”

Also, Michael Hansen, senior staff sci­en­tist with Consumers Union, notes that unlike in other coun­tries, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not require safety test­ing for genetically-engineered plants or foods. He also says the AAAS state­ment “is filled with dis­tor­tion and mis­lead­ing state­ments. If manda­tory label­ing of GM foods would ‘mis­lead and alarm con­sumers,’ does the AAAS really believe that 60 other coun­tries are mis­lead­ing and alarm­ing their consumers?”

Just as sus­pi­cious for its pro-biotech spin is how the AAAS state­ment lists other orga­ni­za­tions as claim­ing that GMO foods are safe to con­sume, using rhetoric that strongly echoes the No campaign:

The World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the British Royal Society, and every other respected orga­ni­za­tion that has exam­ined the evi­dence has come to the same conclusion…

Where did this handy list come from? The No cam­paign listed three of these four groups—the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, and the National Academy of Sciences—in the offi­cial California voter guide as con­clud­ing GMO foods are safe. But in fact, the World Health Organization says that ongo­ing risk assess­ments are needed and that “GM foods and their safety should be assessed on a case-by-case basis and that it is not pos­si­ble to make gen­eral state­ments on the safety of all GM foods.” Meanwhile, the American Medical Association favors pre-market safety test­ing, which the FDA does not require. How did a sci­ence orga­ni­za­tion miss all of that?

But back to the sus­pi­cious tim­ing of the statement’s release: who exactly insti­gated it? The state­ment says it’s from the AAAS board of direc­tors. Who are they? The board chair, Nina Federoff has an impres­sive pedi­gree, includ­ing a stint as sci­ence advi­sor to Condoleezza Rice. Curiously, Federoff has been listed as a lead­ing sci­en­tist on the No on 37 web­site since June, where she is quoted as being “pas­sion­ately opposed to label­ing.” Maybe her pre­vi­ous board mem­ber­ship with Sigma-Aldrich Chemical Company helped drive that passion.

And per­haps the anti-GMO label­ing state­ment from AAAS has been in motion at least since June, timed to be released as Election Day neared. Looking over this page of AAAS “pol­icy state­ments,” oth­ers also seem well-timed, but they are on bland issues that war­rant lit­tle sci­en­tific debate. For exam­ple, in March AAAS urged the Tennessee leg­is­la­ture to reject a silly bill aimed at under­min­ing sci­ence edu­ca­tion on evo­lu­tion and cli­mate change. Other let­ters appear to take sim­i­larly uncon­tro­ver­sial sci­en­tific posi­tions or are sim­ply ask­ing Congress not to cut fed­eral fund­ing for sci­ence programs.

So the ques­tion remains: Why this posi­tion right now? Why would such a main­stream sci­en­tific orga­ni­za­tion stick its neck out on a highly con­tro­ver­sial issue just days before the elec­tion? And how we can trust any future AAAS state­ments to be based on sci­ence, instead of what this looks like: A carefully-orchestrated polit­i­cal and pub­lic rela­tions maneu­ver that puts the AAAS motto to shame: “Advancing sci­ence, serv­ing soci­ety.” The only inter­ests this cha­rade serves are those of the biotech, chem­i­cal, and junk food industries.

Michele Simon

Michele is a pub­lic health lawyer who has been research­ing and writ­ing about the food indus­try and food pol­i­tics since 1996. Visit her site at www.EatDrinkPolitics.com/