Russian science turned into PR department of GMO corporations

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

“GMOs were the basis of the“green revolution”(a set of changes in agricultural production in developing countries in 1940-1970), which at one time saved India from hunger, Aleksandrov said. According to him, the increase in the number of people on Earth to seven billion is mainly due to genetically modified foods. “If we want to abandon GMOs, then humanity will have to reduce to one billion with all the ensuing consequences,” Aleksandrov said.

In fact, if without demagoguery, then GMOs are organisms whose genome has been altered by genetic engineering methods, and not any varieties and breeds, including those bred by traditional methods. To deliberately confuse people on this score is beyond scientific ethics.. Just for reference: the structure of the DNA molecule was only studied in the 1950s. Restriction enzymes that shred DNA at a given location - key to the birth of genetic engineering - were not discovered until the early 1970s. The first man-made transfer of DNA fragments from one organism to another using genetic engineering methods was performed in 1972. The first genetically modified agricultural plant (a pesticide-resistant tobacco variety) was not created until 1982. And even in 1996, the area occupied by GM crops did not exceed 17 thousand square meters. km - 100 times less than in 2013. That is, GMOs began to play a tangible role in supplying humanity with food only from the beginning of the 21st century, much later than the "green revolution" and the demographic explosion caused by it. The latter relied on varieties created by the previous, not genetically engineered, in fact - "Vavilov" and "Michurin" methods, but mainly on advanced agricultural technology, on the massive use of mineral fertilizers and pesticides in the Third World. This made it possible, without any GMOs, to bring the world's population to 6 billion people (in 1999). But whether it is correct to forcefully increase it further, taking into account the colossal pressure on the planet's ecology, is a big question.

All this is not a secret: any schoolchild can convict our "Pseudoscientific Commission" of deliberately lying, using Wikipedia. See articles Genetically modified organism, Genetically_modified_crops, Genetic engineering, History of genetic engineering, Green Revolution, etc. AND any well-read schoolchild will conclude: “Uncles lie insolently and to the face. And they probably don't lie for free, because they thereby lobby for the interests of very powerful foreign concerns engaged in biotechnology and the production of food products from GMOs.».

Any well-read student is also able to refute the demagoguery of Academician Aleksandrov, which equates a GM organism with any organism changed by a person. Man has been breeding animals and plants since the Neolithic, and this made it possible to bring the world's population beyond 5 million people capable of feeding on hunting and gathering. But GMO is a very specific thing, tied to genetic engineering and intervention in nature at a level that we are not currently able to assess all the consequences of. Traditional breeding methods cannot, for example, take a gene from a fish and insert it into a plant. Or purposefully invent a grain variety that contains substances capable of sterilizing an entire country in the second generation.

On this topic, there is a soothing quote from the memorandum of our Commission: “In the last 10 years alone, more than 1,700 scientific studies have been conducted to study the effects of GMOs on animal health, human health, the environment and more,” the authors of the document write. - Such studies were carried out in our country as well. Researchers, working within the framework of generally accepted scientific methodology, come to the unanimous conclusion that neither the production of GMOs, nor their consumption in food, even for five generations, does not carry any additional risks compared to conventional products."

Why is this soothing reasoning "noodle"? Because in the case of GMOs, we are talking about a point, targeted effect on the genome. And the result can also have a narrowly focused, strictly targeted impact on health.… The safety of one such intervention says absolutely nothing about the safety of the other. All these 1,700 studies speak of the safety of only those types of GMOs that have been directly investigated, and only in those aspects that have been analyzed. To generalize these studies to all possible cases of GMOs is an obvious lie. In addition, the harm caused depends significantly on the characteristics of the genome of the organism, which is fed products containing GMO tissue. You need to test not on five generations of mice, but on five generations of people, since the mouse genome, obviously, does not coincide 100% with the human one. Moreover, the genes of different people are also somewhat different. In theory, it is possible to create GMOs that are safe for members of one race, but harmful for members of another. Considering the genetic variability of humankind and the number of GMOs already created, the number "1700" does not seem large at all.

If the genome of an organism has passed through the hands of genetic engineers, then it is much more difficult to identify if there is any harmful "bookmark" in it that is dangerous to humans than it is to introduce this bookmark. If we are to use GMOs in agriculture, then only those that were created by domestic scientists, and the entire production cycle of which is located in Russia and is controlled exclusively by our citizens. This is a national security issue.

The difference between Michurin's breeding methods and genetic engineering is like the difference between a Russian stove and a nuclear reactor. The hazard class is many orders of magnitude higher. For some reason, it does not occur to atomic scientists to declare the study of the harmful effects of radiation on the body a "pseudoscience". Ensuring security is precisely the clear awareness of the threat that allows you to take proper precautions. And genetic engineers give us a technology even more advanced (invented later) than the atomic bomb, and they convince us that any concern is stupidity. The study of the potential dangerous consequences of GMOs, even if they have not yet been discovered, should be one of the main directions of scientific research. This direction should be supported and protected by society, since very powerful corporations are interested in suppressing such research, for mercenary reasons. And how do academics look against this background, a priori declaring this branch of research a "pseudoscience" and the public's interest in it as something reprehensible?

The trouble is that any schoolchild can convict our "Pseudoscientific Commission" in a lie, but a Russian scientist working in the structures of the Academy of Sciences can hardly afford it now, since the Commission includes very titled figures, including more than 40 (!) Academicians of the RAS. And all these scientific hierarchs, represented by their leader, Academician Aleksandrov, essentially signed the lie and rubbish that I quoted above. Their power is such that all of Russian science has now been turned into a PR department for international concerns interested in promoting GMOs

« Today [2017-21-02] near the village of Oktyabrsky, Zuevsky district of the Kirov region, the first in Russia opened a seed plant of the American company Monsanto, the world leader in the cultivation of genetically modified organisms … For the fruitful work of the enterprise, the administration of the Kirov region has allocated 63 thousand hectares on preferential terms.

“We have been waiting for Monsanto in the Kirov lands for a long time and have been doing systematic work for several years. Nikita Yuryevich Belykh played a very important role in the negotiations with the strategic investor, and I have already successfully completed this work - said the acting regional governor Igor Vasiliev.

Isaak Levenstein, head of Monsanto Russia, also expressed hope for long-term and successful cooperation.

“We wanted to establish ourselves in the Russian market earlier, but national legislation prevented us. However, the other day we received good news from the Academy of Sciences about the cancellation of the ban on GMOs in the country. We have big ambitions. We plan to feed a huge number of people with our products. We hope to provide retail chains, catering establishments, as well as schools and kindergartens, "he said."

"Schools and kindergartens", of course, especially pleased. Presumably, now a special government circular will be issued - not to feed Russian children with anything other than GMOs. And yes, this is the same "Monsanto", which is cursed in many countries of the world. However, in Russia the legislation on the consumption of GMOs was substantially "liberalized" back in 2013. However, in 2016 it was forbidden to grow GMOs in Russia, and now this ban is likely to be lifted.

In this episode, we are faced with the first consequences of Putin's "reform" of the Academy of Sciences. Despite all the post-Soviet degradation of this institution, the Form itself, which had previously resisted even in the face of Bolshevik inclinations, forced people to "keep their brand", to have respect for their high rank. And after Putin's blows with a sledgehammer, the old men "went to the top." "There is no God, and everything is permitted." And I somehow do not believe that Aleksandrov, even caught in a corruptly suspicious lie, will make himself hara-kiri or at least give up the title of academician so as not to disgrace him. Or at least apologize to fellow citizens for incompetence, saying that he “blurted out without understanding,” since he is a layman in the spheres of biology, medicine and agriculture, and his own specialization is physics and optics. No matter how it turns out that a public and well-paid lie is now a new "brand" of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

As for the "Commission for the Fight against Pseudoscience", we can only rejoice about it. Its members no longer need to go somewhere, to look for pseudoscience somewhere else, if the Commission itself utters ignorant and charlatan phrases.… Now she can work in the format of a circle of alcoholics anonymous: just get together and sand each other in a circle. Taking into account this new factor, I propose to slightly "genetically modify" the name itself: "Pseudoscientific Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences".