20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Some needed fresh air to lend to a stale debate, September 27, 2004
This review is from: The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution (Hardcover)
Dr. Miller and Mr. Conko have done a tremendous service to all of those who care about intellectual honesty. This is a no-holds barred, gloves-off attack, not of the critics of biotechnology, but of the intellectual dishonesty and rampant hucksterism that passes for enlightened debate about issues of complexity nowadays.
Some readers will find the frank, prescriptive nature of some parts of the book unsettling. Good. That is precisely what is required today, to balance the gusher of not-so-frank, less than honest and dictatorial "information" and policy recommendations coming from the other side of the debate.
This book is long overdue, and I cannot recommend it more highly. Miller and Conko challenge you to disagree, and you should feel free to do so. Just make sure you have facts and empirically-based arguments, rather than vague principles in hand, before you venture forth.
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30 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Unique View of Ag Biotech Regulation, February 16, 2005
This review is from: The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution (Hardcover)
The Frankenfood Myth provides, rather colorfully, a history of the regulation of food and drugs in the U.S. and an interesting insider's take on the motivation of the federal employees doing that regulating. It also represents a different point of view in the debate over agricultural genetic engineering. Its authors disagree not only with the not-for-profit organizations like Environmental Defense and Greenpeace, but also with companies in the biotech industry like Monsanto and Novartis, about how to appropriately regulate the products of this "new biotechnology." More middle-of-the-road and consumer-oriented organizations, like the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, aren't approaching it correctly either, the authors contend. Even the National Academy of Sciences, at least in its reports released since genetically engineered crops have been commercialized anyway, has it wrong! Miller and Conko's position may, in fact, be unique.
But their main point--that gene-spliced organisms, particularly crop plants produced for food and drugs, are being regulated too stringently in the United States--is not, in my opinion, adequately documented or otherwise substantiated enough to be convincing. And some of their supporting issues--such as those related to process vs. product, the adequacy of post-market policing, the effects of labeling--struck me as inconsistent as well.
For example, the authors claim, with no citation, that the "regulatory requirements for gene-spliced plants and foods have been ratcheted up steadily for nearly twenty years...." But, over the last nearly twelve years, the USDA has reduced, not "ratcheted up," much of its regulation of gene-spliced organisms--at least of those intended for food (as opposed to drug) production. It created a simplified notification procedure for some varieties of gene-spliced corn, cotton, potato, soybean, tobacco and tomato in 1993, for example, and in 1997 it extended that notification procedure to include all non-weed plants. And, as mentioned in the book, the FDA rigorously regulated the bacterial protein present in every cell of the first, commercialized, whole, gene-spliced food as a "food additive." Going from that level of regulation to the voluntary system FDA uses today doesn't support the authors' "ratcheted up" description either.
Miller and Conko also claim that the "voluntary consultation procedure" currently in effect at the FDA is "voluntary in name only" because "in fact every gene-spliced plant variety commercialized so far has undergone premarketing review." But they give no reference to back up this important claim. And, given that the system is voluntary, it may be impossible to actually establish it as fact.
As to the EPA, which regulates gene-spliced organisms that produce pesticides, and the USDA's oversight of drug-producing crops, the authors' "ratcheted up" regulation comment still doesn't seem to support their broader thesis of "unwarranted regulatory oppression." Over the last decade, all the regulatory "incidents" involving gene-spliced crops--like the putative allergen that got into our food supply, and the animal vaccine that contaminated a soybean crop--occurred in spite of the "oversight" of these two agencies. For EPA and USDA to have "ratcheted up" their regulatory requirements in response to these kinds of incidents seems both warranted and appropriate.
In sum, The Frankenfood Myth outlines problems with the way gene-spliced organisms are regulated in the U.S. It does so using adjectives like "witless" and nouns like "nincompoopery," and so may be especially entertaining for people who like that sort of thing. But Miller and Conko's case for less regulation being the solution to these problems was, for me, too often inconsistent and inadequately documented to be persuasive.
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18 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Comfort Food, October 10, 2004
This review is from: The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution (Hardcover)
The authors do a masterful job of exposing the misapprehension -- spread by regulators and activists, and abetted by the media -- that "genetic modification" is untested, unproven or unregulated. In fact, it is none of these things, but rather is a more precise tool than earlier techniques that can be used to craft various, extraordinarily useful plants, microbes and animals. That is, it could be used for all these things if over-regulation and the objections of activists can be overcome.
The book is not a defense of biotechnology as much as it is a demand for public policy that is based on science and common sense. It is very readable and very persuasive.
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