The Anti-Vaccine And Anti-GMO Movements Are Inextricably Linked And Cause Preventable Suffering

[alp227]

Last edited Fri May 19, 2017, 03:19 PM - Edit history (1)

Kavin Senapathy , CONTRIBUTOR
I expose quackery and bust myths on health, food and science.

The thoroughly answered question of whether vaccines cause autism isn’t really a question outside of conspiracy-theorist circles. The body of evidence shows that vaccination has eradicated smallpox and vastly reduced suffering and death from other diseases, and that vaccines don’t cause autism, cancer, dementia, or long term health problems, and that any minute risk is vastly outweighed by benefits to individuals and society.

Yet with the backing of prominent leaders like Robert DeNiro and Robert Kennedy Jr., anti-vaccine groups fuel common narratives that keep herd immunity down, directly leading to suffering and death. Now with Donald Trump embracing vaccine skeptics, the anti-vaccine movement has earned a hallowed place on the shelf next to other tinfoil hat clad schools of thought. The question of the safety of genetically engineered crops (GMOs) has been answered just as thoroughly, and the anti-GMO movement deserves its own place on the same shelf, not just for being wrong but for its role in unconscionable suffering.

The most notorious figure in anti-vaccine movement history, Andrew Wakefield—the former gastroenterologist and researcher known for a fraudulent 1998 paper linking the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine with autism—has been thoroughly discredited time and again. Yet the effect of his antics is stubborn, with report after report of doctors and scientists combating outbreaks of preventable disease, suffering, and death in the wake of attack after attack on public confidence in vaccines. That this widespread injustice has endured and thrived is nothing short of tragic.

The dark underbelly of the anti-vaccine movement shows what these viewpoints are all about. They are not about evidence or any real threat to human health, but about instilling and agitating distrust in expertise and in the world’s leading scientific bodies. Take Robert Kennedy Jr.’s offer of $100,000 to anyone who can prove that administering vaccines to pregnant women and children is safe. It was a moot exercise, but experts, including pediatrician and medicine and health columnist Dr. Daniel Summers, played along, presenting abundant evidence for vaccine safety. Kennedy, of course, didn't pay up. Summers asked in the Washington Post, “At what point does a body of evidence become massive enough to count as proof? When has a question been answered enough times that it can be put to rest?”

full: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kavinsenapathy/2017/05/18/the-anti-vaccine-and-anti-gmo-movements-are-inextricably-linked-and-cause-preventable-suffering/

TL;DR - Science is science, you can't pick and choose which is most convenient to you.

[dembotoz]

1. bill nye on netflix has an interesting episode on vaccinations

watched it with my kid last night

[gopiscrap]

2. fucking anti vaxers!

My mom had polio as a child because there weren't vaccines available in Germany at the time. It left her with life long difficulties. I have also traveled all over the world and have seen the devastation that diseases have wreaked upon folks that could have easily been avoided with a simple cheap vaccination

[alp227]

4. What's funny is that no GMOphobes have come out yet

Unlike in previous years.

[Doreen]

3. I was talking to some friends who remember when we had polio in this country.

One of my friends talked about iron lungs and how breathing assistance improved but it was not until about 1952 ( if I remember right ) that they had shots which my other friend said were very painful. My friend said she was in school when they discovered the sugar cube medicine for polio. She was in blind school back then and they tested it on blind children because back then blind people ( particularly children ) were used as rats. They now have a syrup but since it is almost eradicated it is not needed. Well, sounds to me like trump wants it back and does not want to offer prevention.

[pnwmom]

5. That's an overbroad and incorrect analysis.

Last edited Sat May 20, 2017, 04:38 AM - Edit history (5)

Some GMO products are innocuous; others are not. The ones that are designed to withstand herbicides are of questionable safety not because of they were genetically modified per se but because the farmers use even more herbicide on these fields, to kill increasingly herbicide-resistant weeds.

Other GMO's might be unsafe to particular people -- e.g., if a GMO introduces an allergen into a plant that that some people are sensitive to.


http://cahnrs.wsu.edu/news-release/2012/10/01/pesticide-use-rises-as-herbicide-resistant-weeds-undermine-performance-of-major-ge-crops-new-wsu-study-shows/

Pesticide Use Rises as Herbicide-resistant Weeds Undermine Performance of Major GE Crops, New WSU Study Shows

PULLMAN, Wash. — A study published this week by Washington State University research professor Charles Benbrook finds that the use of herbicides in the production of three genetically modified herbicide-tolerant crops — cotton, soybeans and corn — has actually increased. This counterintuitive finding is based on an exhaustive analysis of publicly available data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agriculture Statistics Service. Benbrook’s analysis is the first peer-reviewed, published estimate of the impacts of genetically engineered (GE) herbicide-resistant (HT) crops on pesticide use.

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In the study, which appeared in the the open-access, peer-reviewed journal “Environmental Sciences Europe,” Benbrook writes that the emergence and spread of glyphosate-resistant weeds is strongly correlated with the upward trajectory in herbicide use. Marketed as Roundup and other trade names, glyphosate is a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide used to kill weeds. Approximately 95 percent of soybean and cotton acres, and over 85 percent of corn, are planted to varieties genetically modified to be herbicide resistant.

“Resistant weeds have become a major problem for many farmers reliant on GE crops, and are now driving up the volume of herbicide needed each year by about 25 percent,” Benbrook said.

The annual increase in the herbicides required to deal with tougher-to-control weeds on cropland planted to GE cultivars has grown from 1.5 million pounds in 1999 to about 90 million pounds in 2011.

SNIP

https://phys.org/news/2016-09-largest-ever-reveals-environmental-impact-genetically.html

Largest-ever study reveals environmental impact of genetically modified crops
September 16, 2016

According to new research from University of Virginia economist Federico Ciliberto, widespread adoption of genetically modified crops has decreased the use of insecticides, but increased the use of weed-killing herbicides as weeds become more resistant.

Ciliberto led the largest study of genetically modified crops and pesticide use to date, alongside Edward D. Perry of Kansas State University, David A. Hennessy of Michigan State University and GianCarlo Moschini of Iowa State University. The four economists studied annual data from more than 5,000 soybean and 5,000 maize farmers in the U.S. from 1998 to 2011, far exceeding previous studies that have been limited to one or two years of data.

SNIP

Overall, Ciliberto said he was surprised by the extent to which herbicide use had increased and concerned about the potential environmental impact.

"I did not expect to see such a strong pattern," he said.