Bill Nye admits he was wrong about GMOs.

[Valigarmander]

Can't wait for all the Monsanto conspiracies.

He’s not making his popular children’s science show anymore, but Bill Nye the Science Guy is still making a public impact by going after pseudoscience and science denial. He’s railed against the idea of teaching creationism in public schools, and he’s come to the defense of climate science and vaccines.

But on another hot-button issue involving science â€" genetically modified organisms (GMOs) â€" Nye has actually angered many scientists. Over the years, including in a chapter in his 2014 book “Undeniable,” Nye has suggested that there’s something fundamentally problematic with foods containing GMO crops. He has argued that GMOs may carry environmental risks that we can never rule out with certainty.

Now, Nye seems to have changed his mind. Backstage after an appearance on Bill Maher’s “Real Time,” Nye said an upcoming revision to his book would contain a rewritten chapter on GMOs. “I went to Monsanto,” Nye said, “and I spent a lot of time with the scientists there, and I have revised my outlook, and I’m very excited about telling the world. When you’re in love, you want to tell the world.”

Nye’s sudden about-face on GMOs might strike some people as suspicious, especially since it came after he visited a corporation that many food and environmental activists detest and that has practically become synonymous with GMOs. But Nye is telling us that, irrespective of the corporation’s business practices, he changed his mind after learning more about the science. Is he right?

Here’s some background information. Normally, humans would have to wait a long time for nature to create new crop varieties by natural selection. To speed things up, humans have performed “artificial selection” since the advent of agriculture some 10,000 years ago. Most commonly, humans have cross-bred plants with the most desirable traits over and over again.

Today, however, humans can skip the cross-breeding process in many cases. In genetic modification, scientists insert new genes directly into plants’ DNA. In some cases, we’ve given crops genes from totally different species.

The process might not sound wholesome or natural. And that’s one of the concerns Nye has raised. In his book “Undeniable,” he suggests we should stop introducing genes from other species into crops, largely because “we just can’t quite know what will happen to other species in that modified organism’s ecosystem.” Essentially, Nye suggested, we can’t cut out the possibility of harm with certainty.

The mere fact that something is a GMO doesn’t tell us all that much, however, about how the plant actually functions. Rather, the way a GMO plant works stems from the new genes and traits themselves, whether they were inserted by scientists or came from the same species. So scientists assess GMOs’ safety based not on whether they’re GMO, but on what their new genes actually do and the resulting changes in the plants.

And since GMOs cover such a wide range of traits, we have to assess them one by one. Although technically it’s not mandatory to test GMOs for human health risks before they hit the marketplace in the United States (a concern of the American Medical Association), all current crops sold here have undergone voluntary review to test for potential toxins and allergens.

Over the years, as peer-reviewed scientific studies on GMOs have piled up, scientific organizations ranging from the National Academy of Sciences to the World Health Organization have analyzed them and reached similar conclusions: GMOs on the market today are no riskier for your health than their non-GMO equivalents.

A recent analysis of the scientific literature also found that GMO crops haven’t been worse for the environment than their non-GMO counterparts and, in some cases, have been better, for instance by reducing pesticide use. That finding echoes a 2010 NAS report that said GMO crops, generally speaking, “have had fewer adverse effects on the environment than non-GE crops produced conventionally.”

Those studies still might not have satisfied Nye. More and more of these studies and assessments could continue to pile up for decades. But just the mere possibility of an environmental impact, in his view, seems to have justified stopping the GMOs.

Nothing in science is ever 100 percent certain, however. For instance, we can’t be sure that our conventional and even organic crops are 100 percent safe, either. In theory, any crop, whether the result of cross-breeding or genetic modification or even mutagenesis (long used to create non-GMO crops such as rice and lettuce by exposing plants to DNA-altering chemicals or radiation) carries the risk of harming human health or surrounding ecosystems.

[Atheon]

Teh syentist are RONG agin!!! That meens Evolitionalism is RONG too!! The olnly thing that dozent change is the BIBBLE! Prase JEBUS!!!!!

[Sal1981]

I hate the word 'natural' in this context. What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Do these so-called environmentalists think a cow would survive 5 minutes in the wild? Or what about hemlock, that's 'natural', but you will soon find yourself dead with a mouthful of the stuff.

[aitm]

Good stuff.

[kilodelta]

I think I'll wait to read Bill's over words before I make any comment... but then again, if he's concerned about the ecosystem, I see GMO reducing the negative impacts of farming on the environment, thus the natural ecosystems. Farms are really controlled artificial ecosystems already. So... I wonder what he'll write.

[Brian37]

Well Bill is doing what theism doesn't adjusting to changing data. How many times has the food pyramid changed over the years. There still is something to argue between unprocessed foods, vs things we tweak. It is always a good idea to monitor and test and have good quality control.

[Solitary]

A Flip Flopper, how dare him change his mind with evidence. Most plants we eat have things dangerous in them from plants defending themselves from pests. Some of these may in fact protect us from diseases like cancer since we have evolved along with them. A lot of our modern medicine is based on plant toxins. The genes that cause many diseases to take over are already in us. I have done everything I could to be healthy using the latest research and still got tumors, a small stroke, and even cancer, as well as blood clots that went to my lungs. There are things I won't eat that have hormones added to them. I was eating a lot of chicken for awhile and started to get breasts from the female hormone added to it. And I  will not touch red meat accept for special occasions now. All one can do is keep up with the latest scientific evidence to be healthy, and then it is hard to even know what is BS or not. Solitary

[AllPurposeAtheist]

With billions of people to feed every single day I don't see where the fear of GMO's are so justified. Would people rather millions starve to death every year? Nothing says unhealthy like starvation. GMO's quite often keep food from quick spoilage. If GMO's can keep 10% of food in production vs 10% spoiled and not eaten how is that a bad thing?

[stromboli]

Modified food crops are all around us. Virtually everything you eat has been modified at some point. GMO's are a hot button issue, but the problem is that it is like saying natural isn't good. The banana you eat is called a Cavendish; that is the guy that modified it from being a hard to consume plantain. Natural is almost nonexistent in crops.

I don't like the idea of GMOs because one company has the ability to modify foods as they see fit without input from the rest of us. But the how and why of modification is something else entirely.

[Solitary]

I'm not worried about GMO's but I am about what is put in our food that is dangerous, and known to be. Look on a label of the food you buy and see what is added, from way too much sugar, to too much sodium, and things you can't even pronounce. What is really bad is when they remove fat and add artificial flavoring and dyes along with sugar to make it palatable. And sea salt is still salt, as well as some sugar substitutes that are still sugar after your bodies convert them. What's weird is that people hate preservatives that keep food fresh, and are an antioxidant that is good for us. Solitary

[d4w6zBak]

..Or maybe everyone has a price?... just thinking... something I've been doing a lot since I stopped going to church.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Monsanto's world headquarters are here in St. Louis, appropriately on Lindbergh St. I hope they keep improving the food supply.

[stromboli]

I should take some pictures......Monsanto has a Phosphate plant in Soda Springs Idaho, about 100 miles north of where I live. The phosphate plant looks like a gigantic oil refinery. But across the road on the Eastern side is an unbelievable sight- literally miles and miles of phosphate piled into squares that are hundreds of feet high and many miles across. Gigantic road graders sit atop the heaps and look smaller than Matchbox toys at a great distance. You can't believe it until you see it, the enormity of scale is almost impossible to describe. I've been by it a couple of times. The entire amount covers more than 20 miles in length and has to be 10 miles or more wide.

And that is just Phosphate. times that a few hundred for every other agrichemical they make.

[Jason78]

A good scientist should reconsider their position when confronted with new evidence. 

[Mermaid]

Modified food crops are all around us. Virtually everything you eat has been modified at some point. GMO's are a hot button issue, but the problem is that it is like saying natural isn't good. The banana you eat is called a Cavendish; that is the guy that modified it from being a hard to consume plantain. Natural is almost nonexistent in crops.

I don't like the idea of GMOs because one company has the ability to modify foods as they see fit without input from the rest of us. But the how and why of modification is something else entirely.

There is a distinction between selective breeding and genetic modification.