The New Yorker and the Monsanto Controversy

Specter, GMO, and "Seeds of Doubt"

Michael Specter raises the specter of Malthusian catastrophe -- a world overrun by a population that cannot be fed -- in order to quiet the claims of Shiva, the iconic anti-GMO leader from India, who categorically dismisses Monsanto as a multinational thuggish corporation that is out to gain control of the world's seed supply. Specter's article focuses in on claims made by Shiva, such as the correlation between GMO and the rise of autism, and faults her for bad science, noting that her facts come from a research magazine that charges scientists to publish in it. This is somehow meant to invalidate the claims that Shiva makes, and Specter's condescending rebuttal of there being a similar correlation between autism and the growth in sales of organic foods shows his own pretensions, his own bias, and his own juvenile rhetoric rooted in a subtly snide commentary on an otherwise highly controversial issue (which he attempts to make more mundane by noxiously defending Monsanto as a champion of the future millions who would otherwise starve were it not for the genetically-engineering saviors of tomorrow). Such is Specter's position. But the fact that it is steeped in the Malthusian dilemma, which is an old holdover of the Enlightenment era, only shows where Specter is going wrong: he is justifying Monsanto on the basis of some "future" problem that needs to be averted, instead of looking at what GMO actually does to the crops, the land, the animals, and the humans who ingest it.

The article is not without its merits. Specter does suggest that part of Shiva's appeal is her cult-like following and her adamant, no-nonsense and no surrender approach to the monolithic corporations that threaten to take over the seed and farming industry. But I can't help but feel biased towards him as I judge that he is on the wrong side of this issue. Having read articles by F. William Engdahl and his book Seeds of Destruction, the 2012 study by Seralini, Clair, Mesnage et al. as well as the 2013 rebuttal by Tien and Huy in the peer-reviewed journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, I believe that GMO foods do pose a threat to the earth, to animals, and to all biological life. Genetically engineered foods and animals (such as the mosquitoes that were unleashed by another corporation like Monsanto in, mysteriously, the same exact spot where the Zika virus suddenly came into being) cause disruptions in the natural order of life -- and our understanding of genetics is just enough that we are able to manipulate them in order to achieve a short-term gain (such as cotton that produces an insecticide now -- an achievement that Specter touts as a reason for why GMO are good) but not enough that we are able to avoid the unforeseen pitfalls that lurk around the corner when we attempt to rearrange the natural order of life on the planet.

Thus, Specter's article is coming from an ideological backdrop that would likely offer up a defense of Margaret Sanger's eugenics program for similar Malthusian reasons as listed in this essay of his. Thomas Malthus's fear of a world starving to death was based on shoddy, WASP-oriented science -- like the science that identified African-Americans and Native Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries as less human than white people. Specter might not agree with that conclusion, but his line of thinking stems from such origins.

Specter, of course, would argue that this is mere correlation -- not causation. But this is one of the weaknesses of his article. He panders to rhetorically-inclined readers, readers who think a clever rebuttal such as this is sufficient to make a point and defeat an oppositional view. It is not. Shiva may have very good evidence to support this correlation as causation. Instead of examining the argument, however, Specter simply makes light of it. This is not a serious study -- it has more in common with the kind of sponsored content that one sees more and more frequently in the Internet universe. Specter's article is like a paid advertisement for Monsanto. But anyone familiar with the work of Engdahl or Seralini et al. would know better than to attempt to defend this corporation and its genetically engineered products.

Thus, it is difficult to take Specter's claims or his arguments seriously. His defense of GMO industry is based on a shaky premise that the future lives of the millions of people who do not as of this moment actually exist depends on the efforts of companies like Monsanto. It is an argument rooted more in fear and ideological WASP-ishness than in actual research. Specter, writing for The New Yorker no less, has the gall to call out Shiva for citing researchers who publish in a magazine that they have to pay to publish in. Meanwhile, he is paid by The New Yorker to publish his defense of the GMO giant. By this logic, if you are getting paid for your words there is more merit to them. By the way, that sounds an awful lot like sponsored content to me.

Specter, in a fashion that is so typical of mainstream media writers, attempts to unite all the various sides at the end of the article and suggest that the world needs them all in order "to prevent billions of people from living in hunger" (Specter 18). Yet by this point, he simply sounds insincere and phony. He has already spent the majority of the article attempting to undermine the position of Shiva and the anti-GMO advocates without giving any sense of legitimacy or validity to their oppositional stance but rather painting it in a light similar to that in which the Luddites stood. He likens Shiva, after all, to the kinds of people who have always resisted technology, progress and advancements. So by the time he gets to acknowledging that all roads will lead to a better tomorrow (including aspects of Shiva's position and, of course, the GMO side of things that Monsanto brings), he comes across as a middle-of-the-road politician attempting to cater to both sides even after he has clearly spent the majority of his time going after the one rather than the other.