Customer Reviews

The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution

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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.

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.

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.

Miller and Conko deserve much credit for their painstaking presentation and research. They document and present the issues of what has gone wrong with biotechnology regulation and public confusion and unawareness of the issues. A MUST for anyone who has any interest in thinking about our world.

What a welcome prospective from such a distinguished duo! Extremely well written and informative. Anyone who loves food; is interested in distinguishisng myths of paranoia from scientific reality; and anyone who cares about feeding the starving populations of the world, will enjoy reading this book. It should be required reading for every member of the European Parliament. Their outdated and self-serving "Precautionary Principle" needs to be replaced by a more reasonable approach to GM foods.
Kudos to Dr. Miller and Mr. Conko for their pages of enlightenment!

It is time for people to stop being frightened of gene splicing, etc. when it is the answer to so much hunger and resource consumption. If we are really serious in helping third world countries as well as our own, we must quell these fears of genetic engineering causing us to erupt with three eyes or similar deformities while those in need of such resources are denied the benefit of crops that could relieve their situation.

Henry I. Miller has navigated successfully a very challenging course as a popular writer: weaving together a basic education in bioscience and biotechnology and an orientation to the public policy arena and its responses to scientific advance for a general audience. His book could not possibly be more timely for those of us living in Sonoma County, California as we are facing a ballot initiative in November, 2005 which would ban GMO products and research in our county. This initiative was conceived and is being pushed by the very forces identified and analyzed so well in The Frankenfood Myth. Without this excellent resource, we might have entered this contest unarmed. The book is necessarily detailed and needs to be followed closely. It is not a light read, but then the subject is inherently complex and needs to be treated with appropriate sobriety and seriousness. We are living through an exciting new stage in the evolution of agriculture. The Frankenfood Myth invites us to study and understand that evolution and gives us the means to avoid the fears and terrors which sometimes accompany rapid change while keeping our political balance.

In The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution, food safety experts Henry Miller and Gregory Conko have written a brilliant account of how self-interest, bad science, and excessive government regulation have profoundly compromised the potential of the new biotechnology. This book is a call to action for policymakers to resist a destructive political process that is currently denying enormous potential benefits to consumers throughout the world.


Many Benefits Outweigh Small Risks

The authors make a persuasive case not only that the benefits of food biotechnology far exceed the risks, but also that there has been an abject failure in the formulation of public policy. The result has been, they argue, gross over-regulation of the technology and its products, disincentives to research and development, and fewer choices and inflated prices for consumers.

Norman Borlaug, 1971 Nobel Prize winner for agriculture, writes in the foreword of this excellent book, "As a plant pathologist and breeder, I have seen how the skeptics and critics of the new biotechnology wish to postpone the release of improved crop varieties in the hope that another year's, or decade's, worth of testing will offer more data, more familiarity, more comfort. But more than a half-century in the agricultural sciences has convinced me that we should use the best that is at hand, while recognizing its imperfections and limitations. Far more often than not, this philosophy has worked, in spite of constant pessimism and scare-mongering by critics."


Important Weapon

Feeding the anticipated global population of more than eight billion people in the coming four decades poses a major challenge. The new biotechnology can help us do things we could not do before, and to do it in a more precise, predictable, and efficient way. The crucial question today is whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use that technology.

For a decade, the authors tell us, the United States has produced ever-larger quantities of gene-spliced, insect-resistant corn that yields as much as, or more than, the best traditional hybrids, with far less need for chemical pesticides. No negative health or environmental effects have been observed. Yet there is an immensely strong anti-biotech lobby, especially in Europe, where activists have persuaded many governments to thwart new approvals. They also have successfully opposed the use of gene-spliced corn and soybeans as food aid in famine-stricken parts of Africa and Asia.

In the book's prologue, John H. Moore, former deputy director of the National Science Foundation, notes, "With the exception of nuclear power, there is perhaps no better example of the power of the irrational fear of new technology overcoming the potential benefits than foods produced with the new biotechnology, or gene-spicing techniques."


An Ages-Old Tradition

The history of agriculture is a story of genetic modification. For thousands of years, farmers and agriculturists have selected and crossbred plants with desirable characteristics in order to increase yields, improve resistance to pests and disease, and add or enhance other useful traits. Traditional techniques involved cross-pollination of plants, which results in the more-or-less random mixing of vast numbers of genes, sometimes entire genomes.

Along with the desired traits, however, may come undesirable ones, such as weediness or susceptibility to disease. Even so, the overall result of thousands of years of use of such gradual, incremental improvement has been an enormous improvement in agriculture, which has led to cheaper, more nutritious, and more varied food.

Thirty years ago came the advent of modern biotechnology, with its promise of more precise means of improving plant characteristics. These modifications are less likely to cause unintentional, unwanted changes.


Irrational Fear Breeds Tangible Harm

Miller and Conko address the problems of the new biotechnology that have arisen not from limits of technology itself or from the science underlying it, but from the politics, biases, and hidden agendas of activist groups in opposing it. The authors note that widespread adoption of the Precautionary Principle and similar policy approaches would surely diminish greatly the rate of adoption and diffusion of new technologies like biotechnology and all the promise they represent.

The resulting economic misfortune is by no means democratic: Although the wealthy nations will pay a price, the poor peoples of the world will be most harmed.

Miller and Conko document that the same biotechnology that has allowed American farmers to dramatically increase crop yields has also made it possible for America to assist starving people in other nations during times of crop failure or domestic strife. Nevertheless, anti-biotech activists have successfully pressured the governments of Zambia and Zimbabwe to reject American food assistance, even during times of mass starvation, because of speculative, unsupported claims of biotech risks.

As the authors explain, "These developments in Africa illustrate one of the absurd problems created by groundless fears about technological change and the potentially dangerous over-regulation to which they give rise. Consumers demand assurances of perfect safety from industries and governments, but such assurances can never be made. When we demand something approaching zero risk, the resulting attempts at caution are often done with a tunnel vision that blinds us to the potentially vast human costs of such an effort. Tragically, many precautionary cures are far worse than the maladies they are meant to prevent."

Similarly, the authors note, "Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer cites the examples of an EPA ban of asbestos pipe, shingles, coating, and paper, which the most optimistic estimates suggest would prevent seven or eight premature deaths over thirteen years at a cost of approximately a quarter of a billion dollars. Breyer notes that such a vast expenditure can be expected to cause more deaths simply by reducing the resources available for other public amenities than it would prevent from the asbestos exposure."

Henry Miller, M.D., is a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Gregory Conko is director of food safety policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. They have created in this book a resource that should convince any open-minded opponent of biotechnology that their arguments simply do not hold water.


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Dr. Jay Lehr ([...]) is science director for The Heartland Institute.