GMOs and Glyphosate- A Critique of a Recent Review in *Pediatrics*

Hi everybody, and thank you for joining us today in today's discussion. Today we'll discuss a recent review that came out in Pediatrics, and I'm joined by Dr. Nicole Keller. She's a pediatrician in Illinois, and I'll introduce her here in just a second. But our purpose for doing this is because in our constant discussion of misinformation and disinformation about genetic engineering and what the technologies are and aren't, We find ourselves constantly pushing back against other professionals which exploit the literature in ways which really shouldn't happen. We find false information or misguided or biased information showing up online and being very influential because of its place in our marquee journals. The editorial process may be less than rigorous, and false information now has an authoritative base that really misguides public discussion and even can misguide policy. with this review in Pediatrics last week, it now became permanently part of a lexicon that now we as science communication communicators will have to push back against and we'll have to describe what's good in here, what's not good in here. And so this is why this— I wanted to have this meeting tonight to describe for you what this is, just so you know, and you can describe with your family and associates. And also share online, be part of this discussion. So that's why we're here today. I'd like to first have a discussion with Dr. Keller, and then towards maybe 40 minutes or so, 45 minutes, and then at the end leave the floor open to your questions. And we're very happy to entertain those. I don't know, Nicole, what your night looks like. Mine's real busy, but I'll stay on here as long as there's questions. I'll stick around. No problem. I look forward to that. And we'll go from there. I did mute everybody coming in so it doesn't turn into too much chaos, which sometimes these things can do. But I would really prefer if we just kind of wait till the end for questions and also corrections. You know, if I say something incorrect, please, please help me sort it out because I don't have to be right, but I absolutely have to not be wrong. So, Dr. Keller, tell me a little bit about your practice and what you do.

Yes. So yeah, I'm in Illinois, as you know, and I've been a pediatrician for, oh gosh, 12, 13 years now. I'm a general pediatrician, which means I see kids for the most part in outpatient clinic, but I also do some hospital rounds. And then I additionally have some leadership roles at my hospital as chair of the department, where we do our best to kind of keep up with the things that are changing and keep the medicine we provide as high quality. and up to date as possible.

And physicians are frequently accused of not being up to date. You know, that they'll say, you know, you came out of medical school, you start your practice, you're up to your eyeballs and taking care of patients and dealing with the insurance forms and all the BS that has to become part of modern medicine. So where do you have the time to continue education? And so how much do physicians really rely on the literature, especially reviews in marquee journals, to kind of guide their decisions and guide their Continuing education.

Yeah, I mean, it's a huge part, and especially specialty-specific. You know, for me as a pediatrician, I turn to the AAP and their journal Pediatrics to kind of let me know what's new and what I need to look for. And then other kind of offshoots of that, you know, medical education meetings or their national conference. They even, you know, now we're all doing a lot of podcasting. I listen to podcasts about education and even some ones put out by the AAP as well. So I do that kind of on the run when I'm in the car, in between patients. At lunch, on weekends, all that kind of stuff. For me, it's one of the the joys of medicine is I really like learning. I think you have to to to be in any sort of science field, but also the the kind of educating my patients. So I like learning how the human body works and helping parents for my patients who can't otherwise talk learn about that and help them you know guide their kids to become healthy adults. So that to me is actually one of the most exciting things about medicine. It's a lot of work, but I also really enjoy it. So yeah, I think we do our best, but I think we can all sometimes miss the ball. And I think that's kind of what happened here.

Well, I know the American College of— I'm sorry, the American Academy of Pediatrics and its kind of contrasting organization, the American College of Pediatricians, which are like 2 different organizations, one split off. I talk about this in my class on critical thinking in medicine. What do each one of these represent and who's giving you information? And the sad part is, is that it really looks like the American Academy of Pediatricians, this is the marquee organization and this is the one that is the most authoritative. Now, this is the one that you want to follow if you're a pediatrician. Am I right?

I 100% agree. This is the one you want to become a part of. You want to be a fellow of their association. You want to be able to tell your patients like, well, I follow guidance from the AAP in addition to maybe some other governing bodies, CDC and FDA and all that good stuff. But absolutely. So when I speak with confidence to my patients, it's with their backing. So it's so important to make sure that what they back is accurate.

Yeah. And then so how does the journal Pediatrics play into this in terms of— because they have multiple journals, right? So where does Pediatrics fit into this?

So I would say it's the most research-based. We get the most studies out of it. It's not necessarily op-eds or just discussions or case studies as much. It's really the research and the data and what's new and changing and what might change our practice. So it's really kind of the, the most detail-oriented, and it's got— I mean, the, the list of articles every month is, is huge. It's got dozens of research articles in there every month, so much that they only put, you know, like an abstract basically in the journal, and then they say, here, follow this if you'd like to go learn more. But it's a, it's a big deal. And for this, you know, Some of us only do certain types of subspecialties, you know, lung medicines or pulmonologists and endocrinologists for diabetes, but food we all kind of deal with. So I think that also is where this was like a big thing, because this is something we're all gonna have to educate on to some degree, no matter what our patient encounters are like.

Okay, and so with that in mind, let's turn to this review. So when this review came out, so this review is titled Clinical Report, which is, it says right here, Guidance for the Clinician in Rendering Pediatric Care, and it's titled Use of Genetically Modified Organism Containing Food Products in Children by Abrams et al. And what was your first response to taking a look at this article? Now, I also neglected to mention you also No Food and Farming because you are a farmer's wife.

Yes.

Well, when you're a farmer's wife, that means you're also a part-time farmer.

Absolutely. And I, we raise our kids on the farm and I love being on the farm. And it's one of the best things I feel like about where I live and what I do is I get to take care of rural as well as suburban families. And I, and I really love that. So when I saw this, I was really excited because I kind of felt like things were kind of quiet on the GMO front for a while. I thought maybe the science finally has bled through and people aren't so worried. And I saw this and I thought, oh, perfect. They've laid to rest now the concerns. And then I started reading and, and I was, I was floored. I think my mouth was just wide open. Um, and I was so, um, I was, I was just distraught. Um, it also made me question and kind of go, oh my gosh, did, have I gotten things wrong? Did, am I reading the evidence wrong? And then it made me look back and reach out to people like, You and some other scientists and say, you know what? What am I missing here? That they came out so confidently saying that there's safety concerns when everything that I've learned in the past is okay. And this also to me too. In the past, I first contacted you, Dr. Folta, back around 2017 when I actually attended a conference from the AAP, their national conference, and a speaker there was talking about how the EWG is a resource that we should use for food safety, and they were talking about pesticide concerns, and I again. Was floored. I thought, oh my gosh, here I came to this lecture thinking I can't wait to hear the good information they're spreading. So with that history and then reading this paper, it just made me really feel like we continue to misinform on this topic and we have to start getting it right. And now to have a policy paper, you know, it's not just a lecture at a conference that only doctors are going to. This is a policy paper that, by the way, is marked up like yours is, that everyone's going to read. And there's this accompanying parent one that's meant specifically for families to read. So this is going to get publicity. This isn't just something that doctors are looking at.

Yeah. And that plays out. If you go to Google News and you punch in this, it comes up. And so you now have the authoritative state of— the authoritative source in your discipline now creating news for parents and this for physicians that now has information that for the most part is false. Now, you know, there are some things in here that are right. I think they got some things right, and, and some of their, um, solutions, I, I'm with them 100%. You know, they're— but they're— to me, there seems to be 2 major missions of this work. And I'm saying missions because I sense motivation from the authors, and I can— that's a hard thing to levy. Um, as a scientist, we try to use objective and scientific language that's neutral. And we try to say, we try to talk about, here are the data as they're presented in the consensus, here are some areas where maybe we are looking further, but we keep a much more neutral tone in our language when discussing this. And I think in my analysis of this paper, which has gotten pretty extensive, we can point to areas where the language that's used is over the top, Oh yeah, it's fear, uncertainty, and doubt all over the place. Inflammatory, inappropriate. It's not what you do in a scholarly review. On top of that, the authors are very careful, which I really appreciate. It says pediatricians play a vital role in their efforts to minimize fear-based messaging and support families in shared decision-making. Yes, that's right. And that's why when you create a fear-based document to tell parents their food is poison, you now do a tremendous disservice to the scientific community, to physicians, and to parents. And so that's really our stepping-off point here tonight.

Yes, I totally agree. They said we should minimize fear-based, and then the rest of the article is all about fear, and unfounded fears at that.

So maybe we should start there. I mean, we could do this in a variety of ways. I didn't have a real Good plan for how we can pick through this. But what stuck out to you as the most inappropriate use of verbiage to engender fear around the idea of genetically engineered, or I should say, ingredients that originate from genetically engineered crops?

Yeah, I think the biggest fear that they kept striking throughout the paper in different ways, shapes, and forms is pesticides, right? Whether it is residues or whether a pesticide can cause problems in farming that I'm pretty sure doctors generally don't know a whole lot about in the first place. But anyway, or pesticides might cause cancer. It's all about— they see, they even say it's not so much genetic engineering, but they're worried about the pesticides used on these genetically engineered food and how bad this is for all of us and how we need to minimize it. And then in the same breath, a sentence later, they'll say, but some families may not be able to accommodate this. So, you know, do it within the breadth of what you're your clinical experience and your, your patient interaction can do. So I'm supposed to tell a family that these foods aren't good for them. Oh, but you can't find these other versions or you can't afford it. Good luck. It's just such a disconnect.

Well, let's talk about this. So just to kind of frame this a little bit more, I've been following the area of genetic engineering since the early '80s. I was 10 years old when I took out the first book on recombinant DNA. And I didn't know how gametes got from one thing to the other, but I understood genetic inheritance and that there were patterns we saw. All that good stuff. So I've been following this whole story for a long time, and I really understand. I went from a position of, this is the most cool thing in the world that we can solve problems with, to over the next 40 years, watching it not be allowed to solve problems. And so the switch to fear of pesticides really came about because the fear of the genetically engineered crop itself And so, so we understood its environmental impacts, which we see, right? We know that there's weed issues. We know that. We never saw a single reliable instance of a problem from the ingredients that originated from genetically engineered crops. There's not a single credible report, not a single instance, and this is feeding the majority of this stuff to cattle, livestock, and livestock in general. And then the rest of it is processed into the sugar, oil, and starches and protein solids that we find in processed food. So the stuff in the center of the grocery store. So when the authors suggest you're eating genetically engineered, genetically modified organisms, and I can't even say that because it's so scientifically imprecise, scientists should never say genetically modified organism. We're all genetically modified if we're not clones, right? We're modifications of something else. These are genetically engineered crops, and we consume the ingredients from them, and the ingredients are chemically identical to their conventional or organic counterparts. So there's— so the authors of this report infer that there's something magical and unusual about the ingredients from these crops. And in the beginning, they do say The National Academies finds nothing wrong with this, but they didn't look at the BT very well and they didn't look at glyphosate. So there's this switch, and then throughout the paper they go back to, well, we don't know if there's a problem. Well, there might be a problem, we just haven't looked far enough. Who knows if we look for— so there's this argument from ignorance that, well, there's never been a problem, but you never know.

Yeah.

And when a team of physicians tells you that, it creates that fear and uncertainty. So then there was this shift from the crops themselves and the ingredients from the crops where consensus says there's no problem. And we can talk about, they say in here, well, the consensus is wrong because this group of motivated folks says it. Let's get to that. Um, shift to the pesticides.

Mm-hmm.

And so the big one is glyphosate. So what's glyphosate and, and, and how do you use it on your farm?

Oh, so, you know, I know that we use it here, at least to some degree. We have corn, we have sweet corn, we have soybeans. And I know my husband would know much more than this than I would. So I also don't want to speak to stuff I completely don't know. But I know that we use it early before the crop is even developed, before an ear of corn comes out, before the soybean pod is even there. And I also know that we don't want to use it frequently. It costs money, it makes you use the equipment more, you have to drive on your soil. And It's a waste. So why would it want to be overused? We use it only when we need to because it's effective and because that means we can still live here safely. It's that safe and, and, and reasonable. And like you said, it doesn't mean that it's perfect. This is so much more nuanced than it's right or it's wrong. There are things that we have to think about. Absolutely. But when I prescribe a medicine to a patient today, I sent a lot of antibiotics for ear infections and stuff. I think that the risk is worse for that ear infection not being treated than the medicine I'm giving. But sometimes the medicine I'm giving can have side effects, and I have to make sure I use that in a dose-appropriate way for the right amount of time for the right condition. And that's to me what farmers are doing and what plays out, I know, on our farm and farms all across the world.

Yeah, so this stuff, just to kind of give, add to what you're saying, this is an herbicide that's non-selective. It kills everything plant, okay, really well. Very not toxic to animals and to fungi, things like that. So this is a selective, a non-selective plant herbicide. And years ago, some folks realized that if you could make a plant, and we won't get in the mechanism, but make a plant not sensitive to this herbicide, you could plant your field. And then let those seeds germinate, let the weeds grow, and then spray the herbicide over the top. The crop stays safe, grows right through it, the weeds die. And this is a brilliant mechanism because then those plants can grow quick and shade out the weeds. You don't apply this late in the season. You don't apply it to the pods on soybeans. You don't apply it to an ear of corn. You apply this early. And so it's a, in conventional farming, it's a really cool mechanism.

Yeah.

The authors of this paper do a base rate fallacy in that they, that's always done in these papers that are anti-glyphosate, that says the amount of glyphosate applied since 1996 has gone up 200-fold. So why is that?

Well, because it works and it's safe. And it's also meant that we've been able to not use other chemicals instead. So we use this one because it's safer. And I think that's the same thing, you know, again, I keep thinking this is medicine and agriculture, and we're fighting the same battles that if we have a medicine that we found was unsafe, we're going to stop using it and something else is going to replace it. So yeah, the rate of that is going to go up. It's kind of common sense. And when you think of it that way, it really seems so ridiculous. Some of these arguments like that you're saying that are made out of just volume usage, let alone anything else, like how it actually works and it doesn't work in animals and humans. And Than, you know, wondering how it would actually even have effects and that kind of stuff.

Yeah, the number of iPhone cases sold has exploded since 2008, you know. And so this is the kind of rhetoric that's built into this, that you're being bathed in this stuff. What's actually been shown very clearly is that the environmental impact of this chemical and the relative risk in application for applicators as well as dietary exposure has gone significantly down since the switch to glyphosate. Farmers don't need atrazine as much. They don't need dicamba, the others that they used to use, or not even dicamba so much, but atrazine, other things that really they stopped using almost in a 1-to-1 replacement in terms of kilograms per acre. And this stuff, if you can, do you know the amount that's applied, the rate that's applied of active ingredient?

I have learned this from farmers, but it's a very small volume, somewhere around 2 pop cans to hundreds of gallons to like a football field. So, I mean, we constantly hear about dousing or like you said, bathing. So I would say that's more of a very fine mist and something that is very dilute.

Yeah.

And the stuff works great. I use it on fence lines because you want to control weeds around fence lines, especially electric fences that Ground out if you don't. And we apply about 750 grams per acre, which is again like 2 soda cans worth of this stuff. It's 66 milligrams per square meter. It's a very, very small amount of stuff and it's applied and it goes away. It breaks down in the environment. Very limited environmental persistence. I really want to get back to the paper. Well, let's continue with glyphosate. So the authors build this argument that there's this horrible exposure to this stuff. And it's, they don't use those words, but they build that sense in their discussion. And I really want to get through glyphosate and off of glyphosate to some of the other points. When you're talking about detection, either on a crop, or let's say on a crop, what are we talking about in terms of Its presence in an ingredient or on the raw commodity?

Well, yeah, by the time it gets to us, or even when I take my kids out to the field and we pick our sweet corn from our backyard, it is in such small, minuscule amounts that basically our body pees out most of it. We're talking parts per billion or micrograms. And that small, small volume is well below the tolerance levels that would need to cause any harm in our body. And that tolerance level is not set liberally. It's very conservative. They're making sure that there's plenty of safety room there to know that we're going to stay safe. And these levels continue to be safe. Detection does not equal toxicity. It just means something's there.

Yeah. And I love making this point because I hang around with analytical chemists and they're freaking wizards and weirdos who can detect stuff that's almost not there. And glyphosate is a really tricky one to detect. And I trust the people who do it. They use appropriate methods. I believe the sources in here are correct, but they're talking about detection in urine at 200 parts per trillion, which is equivalent to seconds in 26,000 years. A part per trillion is, is a second in 32,700 or 31,700 years. So this is the small amount that we're talking about. It is so far below, it's orders of magnitude below physiological levels.

Hmm.

relevant levels, and the daily allowable intake, which again are very, very conservative numbers, that these numbers are almost not there. And they're found in the urine, which is where you want them.

Chemistry that—

Yeah, chemistry that's taken in. And we know the pharmacological fate of glyphosate. It moves through the body in stools and urine predominantly, small amount metabolized by a specific cytochrome P450 in the liver. But a very, very— it's water soluble and moves through the body. It doesn't bioaccumulate. This stuff flows through you. So to find it in the urine is a good proxy for exposure. It says that you've been exposed, but you've been exposed to such a small amount. And so when these articles start talking about presence in the urine and preterm gestation, preterm labor.

Yes.

They start to make these associations between— and I don't know if you know these papers, they mentioned one in this document— but associations between preterm labor and glyphosate in the urine. They say, okay, when you have higher amount of glyphosate in the urine, you may have preterm, might be more predisposed to preterm delivery. Do you know the paper they referred to or What the literature on this is?

I do know a little bit about the paper. I have not torn it apart like how I have some other ones. But I also think just even thinking about that, that again, I kind of, without knowing the details, just because something's happening doesn't mean it's causing it. And maybe the reason that they're having more glyphosate in their urine is because they're eating different types of food or they live in a certain area and they're having preterm birth because they have some other struggles in their life and they're not getting good medical care or other things like that. So maybe this isn't so much a, it's causing harm, but there's other things that we need to look at in those communities that they tend to be closer to fields or they're migrant workers and they're working in the field. So of course they're more gonna be in contact with that kind of thing. It still doesn't mean that they're being harmed by it, but there might be other reasons for it. And I just think that that is always left out. It's always just, oh, it's there. And that must mean that this is why it's happening.

Yeah, and this is a major downfall of this paper as a review. They cite a study that was probably pretty reasonable in Puerto Rico where they studied a reasonable number of women, not a big number of women, but it was a case-control study, which means you're essentially taking a retrospective look at, here's the urine I have, and then here's what, you know, is true about me. They take cases and controls, so one group compared to another. And in this, they find that the cases the ones with higher glyphosate, also had preterm delivery, which could be a red flag for toxicity.

Sure.

There's hypotheses about why, effects on the placenta, things like that. But when you read the paper, the authors are perfectly clear of the limitations. The authors say the women in the cases, not the controls, were far younger than 25 years old, which could predispose to preterm birth. The women in the cases had previous history of preterm deliveries, which is probably the strongest predictor of future preterm deliveries. There are all kinds of other socioeconomic— and the authors of the original study, Silver et al., 2016, were clear about those limitations. The authors of this study were not. They ignored them. They said, here's the red flag. Preterm delivery. If you look at the other papers about preterm delivery, and you see how mad this makes me, the other papers on preterm delivery, a nice study from Indiana, they said that there was preterm delivery, but when you look at the graphs, it may have been a day or two, and the authors also say there were zero effects, and you can tell me what this means, on head circumference or weight at delivery. Which seemed to be markers of gestation. You know, so maybe it was a couple days early, but there was zero effect on the fetus, which or the baby that was born. I don't know where crosses the line there. The the baby, the borderline, or the the the fin fin fin fin.

Yes, out of mom. We'll go with baby.

Out of mom, out of mom. And um and and so you know all of these things have to be looked at together. And when you present a review that says. Here's the danger. Without giving the limitations of the studies that were cited, it does a disservice to the reader and it creates that fear and uncertainty and doubt.

Absolutely.

The other thing that really jumps out at me on this, because I know we're running, we're already a half hour into this and we got just scratched the surface, but, you know, when they talk about things like detection in breast milk, right, the first thing they lead with is, well, there's been, you know, there was some study online, but it wasn't peer-reviewed and showed that they couldn't detect it. Then they give reference without citing the work by Shelley McGuire, who's a lactation specialist who teamed up with experts in GC-MS to look for analytical chemistry to look for it, and they didn't find it. A German study looked at 114 pregnant women And who had glyphosate exposure and didn't find it. So the study, the paragraph, as they concluded is, and I, you know, I don't have it right in front of me, but they conclude it in a way which kind of says, yeah, but you know, you just don't know. And it's good that we, and really the, it should have said, if we look in breast milk, we don't find it. End of story. 3 citations.

Yep.

I totally agree. I think that's part of this is that there's a lot of speculation here. A lot of, well, we don't know. A lot of, well, pigs might fly. We just haven't caught them yet. And this sounds very much to me also very anti-vaccine. It's very eerily similar to this stuff. We're moving goalposts. Oh, now we're not worried about the genetic modification. We're now worried about the pesticide. Oh, we're not worried about the pesticide now. We're worried about that it might cause this. Well, none of it has poured out. And like you even mentioned to me as a good reminder, We can't prove something is 100% safe, but thus far we have not shown any dramatic harms of consuming GE ingredients or the residues that might be on them.

No, exactly. There's no evidence of harm. And that's really hard when we talk to the public because the public wants to know, um, they want, yeah, they want zero, right? If you say, well, yeah, there's 200 parts per billion, don't worry about it. Yeah, but we want zero. And it just doesn't happen. I mean, the riskiest thing people do is drive their car today and, uh, or eat a ham sandwich. You know, the, the chance of Listeria or getting in a head-on are orders of magnitude larger than any risk posed by a few molecules in a sandwich, uh, whatever. Um, the other point along that same line is the breast milk one. They mentioned that, um, you know, there are residues identified, um, residues detected in X amount of Canadian whatever. which is great because they say like 94, well, 46, uh, 42.3% of 797,995 food samples obtained detectable levels. Okay, detectable, point, you know, 200 parts per trillion is the limit of detection for most of these papers. And then they mention at the end, and this is where we get into the language that's inappropriate, um, increasing the risk of contamination to meat and dairy products because they say it's used in animal feed.

Yes.

Now, contamination of meat and dairy products, when you could say nothing has ever been detected in meat and dairy products, they raise the specter of, ooh, it just might be there. And, and that one, um, you know, did you have any thoughts on that?

No, I totally agree. It's something that, again, they kind of throw out there as a, let me plant that seed. And maybe if— to me, after reading all this, it's like, maybe if this fear doesn't work out, we've already kind of worked on our next one that we can start to make people fear unnecessarily.

Yeah. The other one that drives me nuts is the use of statistics, statistical significance versus biological significance.

Absolutely.

They'll say here, That when they looked at 80% of urine samples collected in the United States contained detectable levels of glyphosate, significantly higher among 40 individuals reporting pesticide exposure. And this is at 0.63 micrograms per liter or 630 parts per trillion compared to those on organic diets at 0.42 micrograms per liter or 420 parts per trillion. So this is where you start to get into these, um, uh, uh, you know, there's a slight difference between folks who are on organic diets and folks who have conventional, um, exposure, but we're still looking at parts per trillion and levels that have no biological significance when you're looking at that interval. And, uh, and so that, that's the other one. Um, tell me about Agent Orange.

Oh yes, that, that sentence. So there's a sentence in the paper, um, that is talking about additional pesticides that they're worried about, 2,4-D and Dicamba. Again, maybe planting the seed for future concerns that we're going to have here. And they say, oh, and by the way, 2,4-D was also part of Agent Orange that was used in the previous war. And I think, again, this is just inflammatory. You know, they're just trying to scare us at this point. At what point do we not realize that a chemical combined with one might be toxic, but a chemical by itself or combined with another might be totally fine? Um, you know, water is on all this stuff. Water can be toxic by itself, but sometimes it's absolutely needed. In fact, often it is. So it's just this kind of these arguments that are, that are again all fear-based. And when you actually think about it, it's like, wait a second, why, why, why is that even a connection here? Why would you even bring that up other than just make it sound bad?

Yeah, this is, uh, this is— was a big gripe of mine too, um, because they do make a good point about glyphosate-resistant weeds. And this is a big deal. When you continually use, and physicians know with antibiotics, right?

Yeah.

You use these things judiciously because if you use them too much, you develop bacteria that are resistant to them. And the authors are dead on here and they're exactly right. They say 250 weed species in 70 countries. Don't cite it, but I don't have a good citation there. But that's really high and that's a lot. And I believe it. I mean, I There's probably more if we look for them. But to bring up at the end, the older, more highly— this is now you're using Dicamba in addition to glyphosate.

Yeah, Dicamba.

And, yeah, it's a dual or whatever one it is. And Dicamba's got all kinds of other problems of volatility in some areas, in some weather conditions that we can talk about that another day. I've been very critical of the communication of of the companies and folks on this, but they, they say at the end, um, these older highly toxic chemicals. Okay. Highly toxic.

Highly toxic.

Um, 2,4-D was a component of Agent Orange, a defoliant used in the Vietnam War. Now, why would that be necessary in a review of genetic engineering when they're not 2,4-D resistant for one? But then the other side of this is that 2,4-D was not the problem in Agent Orange. Agent Orange was a concoction of 2,4-D, which is dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid, which was another chemical. And when that chemical was purified by one of 16 companies, it was co-purifying with dioxin. And dioxin was what was really toxic and caused all the horrible effects of Agent Orange on troops and on people living in these areas. These are defoliants. They're synthetic auxins. They The plants grow too fast and essentially grow to death. And that's why they were used as defoliants in jungle warfare in Operation Ranch Hand. It really was inappropriate for the authors to raise that one, and certainly many other issues with this particular work. If we go to other—

and we would—

I'd like to get to other folks' thoughts here in a few minutes, and we maybe can continue to Um, uh, look at these, but they talk about the IARC decision and maybe if you want to touch on that briefly, and we can talk about what the IARC is and how that's used as a means to bolster the fear-based component of this work and give a sense of risk where really none is seen.

I totally agree. This was my, my next kind of big thing. And this is, I think, where really a big chunk of the paper lands after they tell us that our pesticide residues are Are too too much there, even though they're barely there at all. So yeah, the IARC International Agency for Research Center—I'm sorry, on cancer. Excuse me. Came up with this designation that glyphosate in 2015 was probable carcinogenic. But as soon as that happened, right away the scientific community basically came out and said, "What are you saying? This is not accurate," and. Since then, it's continued to be criticized from all different areas. No other organization has designated glyphosate as carcinogenic. The EU hasn't. Our EPA hasn't. And there's multiple studies that have also not shown any association with glyphosate. And lymphoma is specifically the concern here, which the authors fail to cite. And that was mind-blowing to me. I have my own collection of agricultural things that I've learned And I could very quickly go to that list and show them 4 or 5 different studies that showed no association when they only cited 3 studies that showed possible associations and studies that were flawed. And they didn't talk at all about that or mention these other bigger studies that were better done that showed no association. They're just showing us their, their bias, their, their omission bias here, and that The more I read it, the more I was just floored by this.

Yeah. And I think just to add to that, the largest study, the Agricultural Health Study, Andriotti 2018, is a massive study of 54,000 applicators and folks of relatively high exposure. And this has been going on for decades now. It's a cohort study, so much more powerful than a case-control study. And that they start everybody together and say, go forward and tell us what you do and how sick you get. And that did not show an association with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, did not show appropriate association. The studies they did cite were meta-analyses. So meta-analysis is an interesting thing. It can be very powerful. Okay? It's a way of taking different studies together and mashing them together statistically and coming up with some sort of a synthesis. If one is powerful on its own, what happens when we look across a series of studies and use the different methods? And can we get something else out of that? It really is a garbage in, garbage out type of thing, or quality in, quality out. And so you have to look at each one very carefully. The one that they cite shows a 41% increase in likelihood of developing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in those exposed in the exposure groups. This was based on a limited number of studies that were put together, including the Agricultural Health Study, but they compared data that were not really comparable. And this is what made it very curious to me. Cancer epidemiologist Jeffrey Cabot, Dr. Cabot, and Dr. Robert Turrone looked at this very carefully in a paper that they published that these authors neglected site that basically said, here's the limitations of that meta-analysis. The other part about the meta-analysis that's always curious to me, and I'm not an epidemiologist, and I look at this carefully, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is a relatively rare disease. You're looking at an incidence of about 20 people per 100,000. And to raise it by 41% incidence, you'd be saying, well, maybe 28 cases out of 20,000, out of 100,000. In very rare cases, can you use these studies to really make those kinds of predictions? And to put all over the news, 41% increase of likelihood of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is a little bit disingenuous. And the other thing about non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is that it doesn't tell you what it is. It tells you what it isn't. There's something like 20 different, 28 different kinds of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma of different etiology.

edgies.

Yeah.

So, so some, uh, they're largely considered idiopathic. Um, they just happen. And to, to kind of— and if this was glyphosate-driven or anything, you know, single, uh, agricultural agent-driven, you would have what's called farmer's cancer, right? It would be a specific kind of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, um, in all likelihood. And, and I know that— and what makes me roll my eyes on this a little bit more Um, the other major thing that's working against the IARC decision is time. This is going on a decade now, and there have been no conclusive studies— and people have been running them— uh, showing from an epidemiological or mechanistic way that there is an association with NHL or anything else for that matter. There are associations that show up here and there, but they're statistical blips that don't reproduce between different studies of different power. And, and I remain open to seeing it, but thus far it just isn't there. And, and the authors put a lot of weight and authority in the hazard-based assessment by IARC, and they continually conflate hazard and risk, and they use the word risk frequently where they mean hazard, or there's no risk demonstrated by the paper. And this is another major part when I take this apart in a formal way that we'll discuss. Do you want to touch on hazard and risk?

Yeah, absolutely. So I love the analogy of a shark bite. That would be a very, you know, sharks are really risky animals. If you're swimming with them, there's a high risk, but we don't swim with sharks often and they don't come and find people very often. So the hazard is, oh, am I getting that right or wrong? That the hazard is low there. It's something that has potential to be risky, but if you're not around it, then it's not going to create a hazard for you. I think also a group called SciMoms previously did like a land picture, and they showed different levels of risk of, you know, a big tree, a little weed, a blade of grass. And, you know, pesticides and that kind of stuff are like a blade of grass in the rest of the risk landscape that we see, you know, sun exposure causing cancer. Um, red meat, that also is another, uh, data point that is conflated as the, you know, 0.2% versus 0.3% or whatever. Um, and this is that risk-hazard thing that is just— it makes for good clickbait and, and sensational headlines, but doesn't always actually play out in the real world that way.

Yeah. And then just to be, um, just to be complete and, and to not be contradictory, um, they do cite Leone et al., which does cite, um, an increased incidence in diffuse B-cell lymphoma Which is a type of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and is specific. There is one study that does show a higher incidence of a specific subtype, which that's great. That's what we would expect. Just to be clear on that one. One of the other things that really freaked me out about this was when they said— they mentioned— kind of jumping around. A little bit here. I'd like to get the audience questions. Let's do that in about five minutes. As they say here, the National Academies did this review, and they do this periodically. The last one they did was 2016, and they said concluded no no unique hazards to human health. And they said, but they didn't examine the hazards potentially from the use of the herbicides or from BT endotoxin.

Yes.

Ah, so now they bring up the specter of BT endotoxins, which are used judiciously in organic production, which we use them all the time. Dipel's great stuff. So what's BT?

So actually, honestly, I think you'd be better off talking about this, but I believe it's a component that helps make sure that, again, we can have a plant grow the crop that we want to grow, and if pests pests come to eat it that they don't survive so they can't get to our crop. Yeah, but you tell me.

Well, it's a bacterial protein. It's a bacterial protein from Bacillus thuringiensis, and it's toxic to specific insects. You can find versions that are specific to Lepidopterans, so your moths and butterflies, some to your Coleopterans, your beetles, and there's not a lot of cross-reactivity with different insects, which means you can target the earworms. You can have a corn plant that makes Bt That specifically makes a protein that kills the organisms, that larvae that feed on it. So the ones that used to go in the end and eat the end of the ear, it kills those. And, and this is huge because now you're able to not have to spray the entire field with broad spectrum insecticide. You're able to, like they do on non-GE corn.

Non-GE, yes.

But they do it, um, there it's corn that protects itself from that pest. So if you scout and you see that, then you, you know, and that is your major pest problem, um, then on your, on your refuge area, now you know that that is the one, you know, that one is being, uh, um, decreased because of BT. BT is not toxic to humans. It's been not toxic to animals. It is a, uh, a wonderful invention. And it works very well. But here they raise the question of, well, we don't know, right? We don't know. And there's been papers over the years that have questioned it, but never nothing ever reproducible.

Well, and I think it's interesting with that, if I, if you don't mind me quickly interrupting, but we can have GE corn that has BT in it, or we can have organic corn that you spray BT on it. So they're okay with organic when it's their way, but, and that's okay to use it that way, but it's not okay for the plant to use it and not to spray it otherwise. Like, again, so contradictory.

Yeah. So maybe the last thing I'd like to get your thought on during this section, and we can stick around and keep going. I could talk about this stuff all day. Um, when the authors suggest, um, the way to get around this is to switch to an organic diet, what does that mean to you as a pediatrician and the clientele you serve?

Oh gosh. Um, this is, I think, to me, what, what churns my stomach, to be honest. Um, just this week, um, I had families ask me about added sugars. and a multivitamin that we were talking about for their child that needed the vitamins otherwise. And well, I don't want to give them a multivitamin because it has added sugar in it in the 1 milliliter that we were going to give. I had a family tell me, well, we only do organic milk because we don't want anything out of plastic, only in the cartons that organic serves us. I had a patient who the family, the parents were scared to give their child non-organic food. And this child was having a condition we call kind of failure to thrive. She was losing weight. She wasn't getting enough nutrition to grow as an infant because parents were fearful of the conventional counterparts, but they couldn't afford the organic, so they were trying other things and not feeding her enough. This is real. This isn't just us talking on a message board or sharing papers in a journal and not talking about them. This is day-to-day things that I see in my clinic that is damaging this message that Hey, this could be dangerous, but it's okay if you can't afford it. Don't worry, you can get it anyway. It scares people off. It makes them have less produce, less fruits and vegetables. And we know, we know that that is what's more harmful. So here we are again, risk kind of weighing here. We're saying it's okay to decrease people's produce intake altogether because then they'll have less pesticide residues, as opposed to saying, hey, Go out and eat your fruits and vegetables, fresh, frozen, canned, however you can get them. We are happy that you're eating fruits and vegetables. That's the message we should be sending. Yeah. Not telling people that they have to look for a certain label that really for our health is meaningless.

Well, and then the worst part of table 1 here, they say, um, genetically GMO containing food crops permitted in the United States. Apples.

Yes. Right. There's only one apple. One apple.

The Arctic apple. Arctic apple. Very well labeled. But still, parents here are not going to say we're not going to feed our kids that.

No, we can't.

Which are cheap, which are nutritious, which are great. Papaya. There's one papaya, excuse me, one papaya, the Hawaiian papaya, that is genetically engineered to resist a virus. Potatoes, affordable calories, vitamin A in the skins. The white russet from Simplot is the only potato, and I don't think that's even commercially available In a 5-pound or 10-pound bag. I mean, maybe it was in Louisiana for a short time. I think it mostly goes through processing. So, you know, here again, the authors mislead the—

All out there everywhere.

Yeah, all your, you know, your apples. And, and so, you know, this is the other thing about the, the organic thing is they don't test for organic pesticides.

Yeah, absolutely.

And, and copper is an awesome organic pesticide. Uh, you know, I, I hang with organic farmers. We're at the farmer's market every weekend. I love them. They work harder than we do because they have to. They're working with one chemical tied behind their back, right?

Absolutely.

And organic has a place. It doesn't necessarily mean that organic doesn't have a place, but we have to use all the tools in our toolbox here. We're going to need to be creative to feed the masses, and it's unnecessarily restrictive for large-scale farming. I think when we talk about gardening or small-scale stuff, organic may be really feasible and really realistic. But when we're talking about not using too much land, lessening our carbon footprint, GE and conventional programs that allow GE and allow these other options is really what we're going to need to settle on. And we need to all work together to be able to do that.

Now, that's a really good spot. You want to take a look at some of the questions here and then we can open up the floor. Under Q&A, there's— it says, I appreciate you doing this, build up dietitians, fearmongering. And okay, so that's just— that's not a question. Thank you, Leah. And then Leah also says, have you heard from AAP? Is there any chance of a retraction involved? And I would say, I did hear from AAP. I wrote to the editor and he said, feel free to add a little footnote on the article on the website. So here's the marquee journal in the discipline that's going to put out false information. And there's so much more that we could go through here. So yeah, it's crazy. They basically said pound sandfold, and so I'm gonna raise it a little bit because of that. I'm gonna kind of we're gonna do this. We're gonna also have some written responses that are coming. We were gonna be on some other podcasts. We're gonna really discuss this thing. So the other thing in the chat that came up, a couple things. I see stats that show that particular cancer is actually declining. I don't. I'd love to see that, Eric. If you got it, if you can send it to me. I'd love to see that. I know age-adjusted cancer rates have gone down in general, and it's possibly because of earlier detection, better surveillance, and earlier treatment, better treatment. And as we enter the age of CAR T cells and all this other good stuff, I love that stuff. Sri Lanka tried to all organic and failed miserably. Yes. And the person driving that was Dr. Vandana Shiva, a philosopher, not a physicist who convinced the government of Sri Lanka to not use genetic engineering or synthetic chemistry. And it drove their industries down in a big way. I could talk about that more. But the most important part is Dr. Vandana Shiva, who's been against genetic engineering, who's made up false information about it for who will never be on the stage with a scientist. And others, Chuck Benbrook, other folks who have been for ages against genetic engineering, wrote a paper in 2016 that was called No Consensus on the Health of Genetically Engineered Crops. And again, says, you know, on GMO crops, health consensus, rather than the ingredients from genetically engineered crops. And, um, uh, this team of the usual suspects makes this proclamation, and then this paper cites that as authority, ignoring the real consensus by all of our professional organizations, by the major— vast majority of scientists, by the AAAS, by the National Academies, by, you know, there's no evidence that's ever been shown, but they cite This one paper in a crappy journal that publishes all the crackpot stuff. I fixed my hat hair. Um, and they cite that. So selective citation, ignoring the preponderance of data to push fear, uncertainty, and doubt. And, and, and that paper has aged like cheese, by the way. So, um, any other thoughts, Nicole, before we see if there's any questions from the group?

No, I think you know this is all. It's it's disturbing that they would do this. I think unfortunately for me, it calls into question their credibility altogether. And you know, I believe they spread good science about vaccines and about a lot of other topics, and I want to keep referring to them and do that with confidence. But this really was disappointing, and I'm really hoping that they'll reach out to somebody or have a conversation. I also reached out to them. I have not heard back. Back from the main editor of the journal, and I also reached out to the first author, and I haven't heard back from them either, even as a member of the AAP. So, you know, I just, I hope they're open to conversation. I've tried to reach out for other things. I've commented on lectures in the past. I've given my phone number and my email and said I'd love to talk more. You know, I think we need to get some agricultural experts in if we're going to make papers about this stuff. Have they consulted any farmers? Have they consulted plant scientists? No, they're going from their perspective, and I think it, as you can see, it can turn out dangerously when you're in your own kind of echo chamber and not asking for consultations.

Yeah, when he wrote me back and said, you know, you basically got no venue, I said, you know, would it be okay for the AAP to publish a paper saying that vaccines cause autism? Yeah, you know, would you tolerate that review? This is parallel to that level, and this is the same level. Level, same level of disinformation. I should note that in the meeting chat section, Eric from Eric Manitoba to everybody has provided a link to that cancer statistic for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. So thank you for that, Eric. I'll be sure to check that out. And that's why I love these things. You guys help me a lot. Any other questions from anybody out there? We got a little hand-raising thing. We got a few people here. I can put up the gallery there. Anybody have a Question from anybody, the participants? Let me see if I can find that. Where's that?

John Guy said, thank you both for doing this. You're welcome, John. My question is, what are some things non-GMO commercial farmers do which are more harmful to the economy environment than GE commercial farmers?

So, okay, go ahead.

Yeah, that's in the Q&A I see there. You know, again, I'm a pediatrician, so I want to stay in my lane to some degree. But I have, I've learned a lot through the years through my farmer husband, and again, through some of The colleagues in our scientific community. And to me, my understanding, a lot of this is it takes more land to grow the crops. You might need to put more resources into it. You might need to spray more often, which means you might damage the soil, you might do more tilling. And those things can also cause damage to the environment in other ways where the GE crop may not need that. And this is also, you know, this is crop-specific, this is land-specific. You know, I'll talk to my husband, I'll say, hey, I heard about this this cool farming method on Facebook. And he goes, yeah, honey, we don't have that kind of soil, so we can't do that. So we all have to do what's right for our land. And farmers are conservationists too. Organic and non-organic can be that way. I hope that people realize that.

Yeah, that's great. And the big one for me is tilling. That when you can use conservation tillage or no-till methods, these have proven to be so advantageous. all around the world, switching to GE, or even I shouldn't say necessarily GE, but I know I was involved in an issue in South Australia. They couldn't use GE crops in certain areas in Australia, but they would use other herbicide-tolerant crops that were mutations that made them herbicide-tolerant, Clearfield. And to not use tillage meant that these massive dust storms that would blow dust into Melbourne just didn't occur anymore. These dust storms of the '80s are a thing of the past. So tillage is my big one in terms of environmental impact. Robert Wager says, hi, Rob, how the rush to fear— how can the rush to fear journalism be countered? And I have a lot of thoughts on that, but what do you think, Nicole?

Oh gosh, this is a big thing. This is a big problem. But I think, you know, stuff like this where we talk openly and honestly about it, I think is really important. I think the review process apparently needs to be maybe reevaluated, or when we're talking about something that is outside of the scope of what our general practice is, you know, this journal is meant specifically for pediatricians or physicians, and they're talking about agricultural practices, there should be a voice from the agricultural aspect of this. And I think if you have that kind of multidisciplinary approach to your research and to the analysis of that research, the review of it, that could really help make sure that Someone's not accidentally spreading fear or misinformation.

Yeah. And the other part of this is maybe a little more rubber hits the road from my side. Nicole's 100% right. What I would suggest is it takes you to write about this. It takes you sharing this on Facebook. It takes you sharing your thoughts on the distortion of information when it happens, because the way we have to fight disinformation is with information and values-based information. Pediatric health is totally important. You're talking to a dad of a 7-month-old. Took me 56 freaking years to do this, and I ain't gonna drop the ball. I'm making sure this kid's happy and healthy and eating all the right stuff. And we don't feed her organic. We feed her from our own stupid land. We, we feed her anything she— she's getting massive. She's a big kid. Bottom line is, is I— pediatric health is something very important to me because it's very personal. And so I also— breaks my heart. To hear people say feed your kids organic, and then I see the organic baby food is $2.79, the conventional baby food is $1.29, and there are parents right now with inflationary pressures as they are that simply can't afford that. And so they they do something. I don't know what they do. They do they opt for cheaper formula or other things to cut the diversity in the diet. We know that the fearful messaging. Changes the buying patterns of parents and that they stay away from fresh fruits and vegetables, which are the best things we should be eating. So anyway, long story short, create the content. And if you can't create the content or you don't want to do it, amplify the content that's good. Share this video when it gets on YouTube. Share this, the messaging that comes from when scientists appeared discussing these things. Write letters to the editor, and it takes 2 seconds to write a letter to the editor of Pediatrics. Request that maybe we get a little clarification from the author team. It doesn't have to be retraction. It just has to be maybe we need to be a little more careful about these things because it's disinformation and Pediatrics has a reputation to uphold. Those kinds of positive messages may go a long way. So it doesn't have to be all fire and brimstone. Take it from me. I mean, you can be a barroom brawler out there and be very, maybe be successful in science communication. But being a diplomat and raising the positive aspects of a venue like pediatrics by keeping it strong with reputation is a much better message to send. So that's how we can make a difference. If we look at soil disruption causes, look in in the meeting chat. Soil disruption is far worse than pesticide applications. No-till is a big thing in canola production. Absolutely. Listen, farmers, growers need to protect the land they grow on more than anyone. And who whines online about the industry they have no clue about. And I agree. Dwight Eisenhower said, it's easy to complain with your mouth full and when your tractor is a Or your plow is a pencil. I just massacred Deutz's quote there. Big respect for farmers. Any other questions from anybody out there? Raise a hand if you can. I think I can even invite you to speak. I can unmute you. I was on one of these about COVID vaccines that had a rather lewd interruption, so I'm really good at fixing these things. So we're going on an hour. Is there any other thoughts, Nicole, from you on the paper?

You know, I think we hit a lot of them. You know, I'm just really hoping that my professional organization and my colleagues can hopefully see through some of the misinformation because we are, you know, as clinicians, we're the floodgates for information for the rest of the public. And we're supposed to look at the research and see what's important and spread that information. And I'm really hoping that what, like we did tonight, and what we'll continue to do with articles and letters and all that stuff, can help make sure that we can spread the good information, not scare people away from food. I really thank you for letting me join this today. This is, it's new for me, but it's exciting, and I'm energized by, by really trying to fix this because it needs to be fixed.

Well, yeah, thank you very much for joining me on this. And, you know, I'll conclude by just mentioning a couple of quick things. One of the neat things about this paper is it serves as a guide for those of us that teach critical thinking in class. This is a textbook example of how you do not do a scholarly review. As an editor, as a reviewer, as an author, this is not how you do it. And when you have omission, which seems to be strategic, when you have arguments from ignorance, which is a logical fallacy, confusing causation and correlation, base rate fallacy, generation of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, misleading generalizations. I'm looking at my paper that I'm writing for the journal that I'm submitting. Seeming deliberate omission, citation of questionable sources such as the no consensus on GMO work, inappropriate inflammatory rhetoric, Failure to provide context in toxicity claims, cherry-picking and ignoring limitations of cited studies, conflating hazard and risk, dismissal of good technology. Oh, this was a big one for me. They continually said stuff like it's all herbicide resistance and pest resistance. There's no good benefit.

It's all GMOs.

Yeah, there's no good use. They even say that there's no benefit that's been shown from GE crops somewhere in here. And, um, I, I, I want to say the BS word. Um, the reason— they mentioned, um, golden rice.

Mhm.

The reason that there have not been more innovations is obvious. When I look at the scientific journals and you look at the garbage cans and autoclaves and freezers and seed storage in a university like mine at University of Florida, there are literally Tens of thousands of dead on the vine innovations that never hit the field. My lab made strawberries that didn't need fungicide. Fungicides are a big deal on strawberries, but the regulatory hoops would have been many to put them in the field, and fungicides work just fine and are non-toxic, and you know at the levels used. So why would the industry possibly want it? They don't want to deal with the pushback. back. They don't want to deal with stop buying Florida strawberries. So our great idea, published a paper, threw them in the autoclave, nuked them, said on to the next thing, on to the next solution that'll never see daylight. And so the point is, is that we can solve a lot of problems in this world, from malnutrition to micronutrient malnutrition, which kills 17,000 people today, to drought link to so many issues that we can solve with genetic engineering that we don't do because of this. Well, this. I'm showing you the— because of this. This creates the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that makes them not excited about pursuing solutions. And so for the authors to trash the technology and say, you know, by the way, we never really saw the rubber hit the road, It drives me crazy. And yields, there's never been a gene inserted to increase yield that's been commercialized. Never happened. We could do it, but strawberry growers in Florida say, don't ever give me anything that's going to increase yield. We got enough yield. Well, we need better quality of fruits and vegetables.

Yeah.

We have plenty of them. And I guess I'll I'll finish this thought with yield increases do happen when there's a lot of pest pressure. Then the BT really shows, it really shines, its value shines. When there's a lot of weed pressure, glyphosate tolerance really shines. But most of the time it just lowers the cost for farmers, which lowers the cost for consumers, which helps the poor afford food. And that right there is a tremendous benefit that these authors don't see.

Yep. Even though it doesn't increase the yield, it means it decreases the loss. And that's, that's just as important. So it's a shame that the AAP, you know, they're meant to help all kids here. And I think they've really thrown the most vulnerable under the bus with this.

Wow. Yeah. So I got nothing else. There's There's another comment here. This has been a real pleasure to hear some common sense dialogue on the subject. I've been trying to educate people about the information, the misinformation about GMO. I use GMO canola and consider glyphosate safest of the herbicides. 35 years and experience, no cancer. Yeah, thanks, Eric from Manitoba. I'll be up in Manitoba at Crop Connect in March. If you're there, come say hi. I'd love to buy a beverage. Yeah, I'd love to. Um, that, that, that is in the IIRC, uh, Class 1.

Yeah, Class 1.

Hey, there he is. That must be Eric. Eric, I think I can unmute you if you want to say hello. Yeah, I can. I think I can unmute you here. Hang on a second. Um, I don't know how to do that. Yeah, I only use this damn thing every single day nowadays. Go ahead, uh, go ahead, Eric. You're going to chime in? What are your thoughts? I think you can unmute.

Hi. Am I coming through? Yeah.

How's it going? How's it going, eh?

All right. Good. Yeah. I just first time I tune into one of your Zooms here. So it's been, like I said, a real pleasure to hear the other side finally. It just— I belong to a number of groups, and so many people are just brainwashed with the whole march again, you know, since the march against Monsanto things started. Now, I'm not going to, you know, I readily admit these are big companies and everything else, corporations. They may have their drawbacks, but, you know, even in the case of Monsanto, I see them doing more good than harm from my end of it. And, but, and yeah, a lot of you, what you've discussed tonight is, yes, just been real back for what I've been trying to tell people. So it was good to hear. I am— one of the big things I run across now, these lawsuits aren't helping. You know, these lawsuits that I think predominantly in California, probably where these wins are starting to happen. So people use that as evidence almost that, you know, oh yes, you know, Roundup does cause cancer sort of thing. I don't know how you fight that. Yeah. But also a big thing that people seem to bring up as an issue is a monopoly on the seed, our food, you know, that they claim this is all an effort of these big companies to control our food. And I keep telling them there's a number of different companies doing similar, you know, techniques with seed and whatnot. It's not just Monsanto. Of course, that's always The big, big problem in their heads. But it's been such a— it's been years of brainwashing. And I don't know if we have, you know, the organic industry to blame for that or who's really behind it. There's got to be money behind it. There always is. But, but yeah, I just— that was one of my things is, you know, the seed monopoly is— I don't know. I don't know what the argument is against that, but I guess we just keep trying.

Yeah, well, let me jump in on that one real quick. And Cole, if you have some thoughts. The seed, the new technologies that are coming, this new gene editing stuff is going to democratize the seed industry quite a bit because now you have smaller companies which are able to use these newer technologies and not have the same regulatory burden to be able to create and send products. So this is a real step forward for us. And, you know, the bigger companies, the consolidation in the industry, all that stuff that's relatively unsavory. But large companies do have the efficiency of scale and have tremendous research budgets, and they can really advance things faster. Your thoughts about the glyphosate trials? You know, I don't want to— I don't want a jury of my peers deciding anything. Um, and, uh, you know, I, I— to put 12 people in a room that, um, are competent to be able to dissect a complex scientific topic, um, is, is pretty tough. And, um, I, I really wish that the science would be taken up in a, in a better way. I think that there should be commissions that are brought about that are doing the studies, that are doing the discussions, that are deciding these cases, um, in, in different way because we're seeing international consensus from regulatory bodies that somehow 12 people you pluck out of the population seem to know better than all the experts, all the academics, and all the regulators. And this is a tremendous setback for science and trust in science. So Nicole, any thoughts?

Well, yeah, no, I totally agree. And I, again, I kind of go back to the fact that medicine and agriculture, We're fighting against the social discussion. Scientifically, a lot of these things are not debated. Scientifically, vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective. And scientifically, glyphosate and GE products have thus far been shown to be safe and effective. No harms have been found, I guess I should say. So they are socially debated. They're not scientifically debated. And I think that gets conflated a whole lot. The big loud voices make it seem like a massive problem. When really the problem isn't there, or the opposite problem. You know, I again, I think about okay, not using GE products and then the losses. Okay, so maybe it didn't increase yield, but then you lost half your crop. What happens to that farmer? What happens to the food supply chain? What about you know vaccines? Okay, you're worried about vaccine side effects. Well, what about the disease it's preventing? You know, everyone wants to argue against a certain thing, but they forget. The reason it came about, and that is important too.

Yeah, you don't go to your AAP annual meeting and read the posters about how dangerous vaccines are. I don't go to my plant biology meetings and read about the dangers of genetic engineering and glyphosate. We read about the limitations. We read about how you don't use it around, how you have to use it carefully around aqueous environments, about how you limit exposure, proper PPE. You know, those are the right conversations to have to really get this right. So, you know, these are socially contentious issues, which means that we as experts have to be very careful about how we approach these social questions and how Pediatrics journal just fed a social fire with gasoline.

Absolutely.

Any other questions out there? Any other thoughts? Because we can put a lid on this thing. It's 9:14 in sunny Florida at night. It would be sunny if the sun was out, obviously.

I don't know, I don't have a question, but I did unmute myself. Can you guys hear me okay?

Go for it. Yeah.

Can you see me okay?

Yeah, we got you.

Well, it's nice to finally unofficially meet you. I've tried to run into you when I was in Florida. So I am the Oceanic Pearl from Twitter, from X. Yeah, we've back and forth for a few years. Um, so I just wanted to say, here's the— pull the curtain, here's me, this is it, I'm a real, real dude. Full disclosure for the group, full disclosure for the group here, Kevin knows this, I do work for a very large global organization, um, that is one of these players in this market. Um, I formerly worked for Bayer and now work for BASF, and I can, you know, I can say to the group here, if it means anything, you know, I'm a normal person just like you and the rest of the folks here. We're not trying to hurt anybody. That's not what we're in this game for at all. And in fact, like you said, with our labs, with our fields, if you want to come on tours and you want to ask questions, our doors are practically open. I mean, anybody can come arrange a tour. You can walk through our fields, whether it's BT stuff in BC or canola here in Alberta. We'd be more than happy to show you around and explain things to you because exactly like you said, Kevin, it's really important to get the truth out there. And we're willing to share it. Here it is. We're willing to show it. So I just wanted to thank you and Nicole. Nicole, I don't think I've met you before, but I just want to thank you for doing what you guys do. I am very grateful for the work Kevin does, and I'm sure I'm grateful for the work you do as well. So I just want to say thank you and introduce myself. Kevin, I am that guy.

No, and you're not a bot or you're a very advanced bot. Yeah, well, this is great because one of the things that amazed me about, you know, that, you know, some folks will say that I'm employed by the companies and I work for the government. I've been a public employee my entire life. The, um, thing that has impressed me is when I have done talks in places like Hawaii during the big debates that were there about the companies being on the island was the extreme level of transparency that was present at all the seed companies that you could go on a tour and you could read the books of the logs of what was sprayed when and how much was sprayed and who applied it and what the PPE was. The detail was so overwhelming. And really does discuss the transparency, which, which is really what they're asking for in here too at the end is we want— well, we got transparency.

Yeah, here it is. You just didn't look for it.

And, you know, maybe one last thing that we could comment on before we break is, you know, they do offer some recommendations at the end. And I don't mind their recommendations. A lot of them are, you know, eat more unprocessed food. These are great things.

I think, you know, I take a little contention with the unprocessed food thing too, because, you know, I have kids that have G-tubes and their formulations are completely processed. Those formulas are totally processed. And I have kids with autism that will only eat chicken nuggets and graham crackers. And you know what? I'm not gonna let that kid go hungry if that's all that they're gonna eat. So I think to me, when we label something good, bad, healthy, unhealthy, that's where we start to get into trouble. Because it's so much more nuanced than that. So we need to focus on, hey, do the best you can. If you can eat as much produce as you can, fresh, frozen, canned, whatever looks good to you, whatever you like, whatever you can find, that's what's most important. Try to do more of that. Try to get more exercise, not focusing on a certain type or again, an agricultural growing method that they know nothing about. That's, you know, what really kills me.

Yeah, one of their other recommendations was not really a recommendation. It says glyphosate, the principal product, has been classified by the IARC as potentially carcinogenic, a potential carcinogen, a probable carcinogen. It says that their prenatal exposures are reported to be associated with risks. And so it's not a recommendation, it's part of maybe a summary. It says summary and recommendations. But they say here one thing that really bothers me. that it's been described by the IARC as probably carcinogenic to humans. If you look carefully at the IARC study, and I'll refer you to Miles Power, does beautiful videos on this and dissected this in great detail. If you look at the IARC monograph and you look at all the graphs and all the pages of Excel tables, they determine things like genotoxicity by looking at something like 134 different studies. And if you look at 134 different studies, 130 of them say not genotoxic, but they hung it on the 4 that did. And even if you go into those, those were studies from South America, from workers who may have had confounding variables. They have all these things that come up, but then they say that this merits further study. The IARC decision, as I mentioned before, was in 2014. We're in 2023. There has not been any additional data showing conclusively this link between any cancer. And, but there have been, they say merits further study. I looked the other day on Google Scholar since 2016, 77,000, 77,000 papers on glyphosate.

Nice.

These are environmental impacts. These are toxicology. These are endocrine disruptor All these different— 77,000 merits further study. Because you don't look for it doesn't mean it isn't there. And to put this in pediatrics— and I'm going to shut up now— I would say their review merits further commentary. Any last thoughts, Nicole? We can wrap it up and call it a night and thank everybody for being here. Where can people find you on social media or Twitter or anything like that?

Oh gosh, I don't do a ton of social media. I'm kind of busy doing— being a mom and being in my day job and stuff. And I'm slightly fearful of social media and backlash. But I'm on Facebook, you can find me under my name. I may consider doing some more stuff after this. You know, I think someone has to do it. And if they don't reach out to agricultural people, then maybe I need to be a bridge. And I can help bridge those 2 gaps. So who knows, we'll see what's coming.

Well, start a Facebook page or a Twitter account or an X account, whatever you call it. That's Nicole Pediatrician, and use it only for professional interaction. I have Kevin M. Folta, which is where you can find me on Facebook or on Twitter @KevinFolta. But I have Kevin Folta on Facebook where I connect with my cousin and friends from high school. Very different thing. So the professional presence is a really important thing. And a place where we can distribute media like this and your upcoming science-based medical medicine potential article.

Yes. Yes.

I wanted to review there. So, so watch for that. And, and I hope you get the bug because your content as a pediatrician farmer is especially powerful. So thank you for joining me. I took a 5-week break to kind of clear the pipes and get my brain back together. I was really sick. I was in the hospital for a while in November and needed to take some time. But you can find me @KevinFolta on Twitter, kevinfolta@gmail.com. I am always happy to answer your questions, talk to your groups, anything I can do to help clear the air and the misdirection. It's what I do and it's my passion and I love doing it. And I will keep doing it till they make me stop. So, um, thank you very much for joining us today, and we'll see you again pretty soon. Thank you, everybody. Yeah, thank you, Nicole. That was really nice. Thank you. You're awesome.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Yeah, take care. We'll end here. Thanks, everybody. Oh, and 4 new messages. Gotta run. Okay, very good. Thanks, everybody. 3 new messages. All right, thank you.