Team Members: Claudia Zmijewski, Milana Sapozhnikov, Larry Markel, Danny Aksenov
Project Proposal
Team Blog
[catlist name=lets-go-gmo content=yes author=yes]
Weekly Update for First Week: Claudia Zmijewski
Our group begin to research the basic facts of genetically modified organisms, such as what they are, how they are made, and the hot debate that is currently going on about GMOS. This is the information that we will be including in our final deliverable project, which will be geared towards elementary school children. We are still deciding on how to actually present the project, but so far we know that it’s going to appeal to visual and kinesthetic learners because we want to connect text to pictures as well as include a simple experiment anyone can participate in. This is a temporary idea, since we have to figure out how to actually implement such an experiment without access to certain instruments that are used in biology. Simulations are a possibility. We also came across this website: http://www.nongmoproject.org. This page takes a very strong stance on GMOs, saying that “a growing body of evidence connects GMOs with health problems, environmental damage and violation of farmers’ and consumers’ rights.” We aren’t sure if the gist of our project should be to take a positive or negative stance on GMOs, since most of the information we encountered was centered on the consequences of consuming genetically modified foods. Professor Adams mentioned the Park Slope Food Coop, which also focuses on consuming non-GMO, organic, and local foods. After exploring their website, we came across a a General Meeting that the Coop would be having this Tuesday, but unfortunately, it is open to members only. We are thinking of contacting the Coop or maybe visiting it to ask a few questions about their views on genetically modified organisms, and see exactly how they work to grow their products.
We are also thinking of contacting the Health and Nutrition Club at Brooklyn College, which we joined last year. They usually host a few events during the year, so it’s possible that we would be able to host a Science Cafe type of meeting, or perhaps an informational seminar on what GMOs are as well as their pros and cons. We will be contacting the president of the club, Fathea Azad, to see if she would allow us to have a GMO-oriented meeting and see if she would be willing to answer questions about her stance on GMOs. We will also ask her if she has any suggestions on how we can make our project better.
Weekly Update for First Week: Milana Sapozhnikov
Much of this first week was spent developing our project idea based on class comments, and the comments of Professor Adams and Jennifer Corby. I shared the file that Professor Adams emailed back with the rest of the group members and discussed it with them as part of my role as Communicator. We were all excited to see how interested the class was in our GMO project, and it was useful to hear what they had to say because it emphasized their curiosity about the health effects of GMOs.
Reading over the commentary, one of the words that immediately grabbed my attention was “Monsanto.” I had watched a movie in Genetics class in high school entitled Food Inc. that discussed the monstrosity and greed of this company in particular and others like it. The trailer can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eKYyD14d_0
I had proposed to include parts of this movie in the presentation of GMOs, but this would immediately showcase a very negative perspective of genetically modified organisms. We still have to decide whether we will show segments of this video because we want these children to be able to make decisions for themselves once they are presented with the information. We might show these video bits if we find a video that really underscores the benefits of GMOs.
We also have to decide, for certain, the age group of the people we are presenting to. Some of the group members want to present to elementary school kids while others think that it would be more practical to present these more challenging concepts to junior high school students.
Another thing that I did this week was find and read all my old notes/lab manuals from Biology 2 Lab to refresh my memory of the concepts. I found useful information about the pros and cons of genetically modified organisms, and also found information about the mechanism by which they are created.
For next week I will continue my research and hope to find some “fun” facts about genetically modified organisms – and probably more shocking statistics than actual fun facts but nonetheless something that will spark interest in the students.
Weekly update for first Week: Larry Markel
The first week encompassed getting familiar scientifically with what exactly GMO’s are, where they are found, and what the pros and cons are to having them being genetically introduced into the food that we consume. Once full research will be done to the point of presenting information accurately and objectively, we can move on to deciding how exactly to present the information.
Our group had a couple of ideas, ranging from capturing bits and pieces of video from the movie “Food Inc” , which goes into grotesque detail about how cruel and “fake” the food industry is in terms of what they put into the food. Another idea was presenting the information to a health nutrition club in Brooklyn College. I think that is a brilliant idea because the club is geared towards eating health and learning more information about different types of foods.
Once I am done researching more about the side effects of GMO’s and our group as a whole is done picking a place to present the date, we will have to worry about whether or not we want the information to only spread through to one particular age group. If GMO’s pose a threat to our health, then it would be wise to let the younger generation get a hold of the information.
Weekly Update for First Week: Danny Aksenov
Much of the first week was spent with us digging up our notes on GMO’s from our Bio Lab 2 class, which we took last semester. Since I am the data manager of our group, I must make sure to fact check all the information we have, since GMO’s are part of a relatively new field, which is being constantly updated. Now that we were able to gather all the information we previously had on GMO’s, our plan for the second week is to perform research outside of what we already have, meaning that we will be scouring various sources in the form of research publications, magazines, recent articles, and textbooks.
Our current task as a group is to decide how to present our information to our audience, as well as whether the way we present our information to the audience may vary, based on the age group. We can go several ways about this, presenting our information in different ways, accounting for the fact that there are three different types of learners: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. There are many different combinations we can use, but we will test the ones we think to be the most effective on our friends at the Macaulay Gastronomy Club and at the Brooklyn College Health Club, where we expect to receive the most feedback. This works quite well for both parties, since they will in turn be educated about some of the food that they discuss, while they might provide us with extra facts that we may have overlooked. Plus, a good Q/A session will help us polish and make our presentation more presentable.
For the next week, I will continue organizing and fact checking all the information we gather, as well as furthering my own research on the food industry and the pros and cons of GMO’s. Recently, I have become interested with nootropics, which are labeled as cognitive enhancers, not to be confused with amphetamines, such as Adderall or Ritalin. These drugs tend to be organic and promote the fact that they are non-GMO, which I find to be quite interesting and would definitely like to further explore.
Weekly Update for Second Week: Milana Sapozhnikov
An important point that I picked up on while doing research is that there is no definite consensus among scientists regarding the safety of genetically modified organisms to humans. I had always thought that scientists viewed genetically modified organisms as a practice that is generally safe, which is why companies such as Monsanto go ahead and produce these GMOs. But what was surprising and indicative of my naivety is that many scientists are not really sure whether GMOs actually pose harm to the general population. The article that I came across was from the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility: http://www.ensser.org/increasing-public-information/no-scientific-consensus-on-gmo-safety/ shows that scientists all over the world are not sure as to how safe these foods really are. But then I read statements released by organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science saying “consuming foods containing ingredients derived from GM crops is no riskier than consuming the same foods containing ingredients from crop plants modified by conventional plant improvement techniques.” And then other scientific and government agencies agreed. For example the U.S. National Academy of Sciences found that “no adverse health effects attributed to genetic engineering have been documented in the human population,” and a report issued by the European Commission released a similar statement. An overview of safety studies in Nature Biotechnology also claimed that both critics and proponents of GMOs agree that so far “genetically modified foods have failed to produce any untoward health effects.” The World Health Organization has also supported the claim that “GM foods are not likely, nor have been shown, to present risks for human health.” Soon after, I found statements from scientists with PhDs and MDs saying that they are uncertain about how harmful GMOs are to humans. This constant debate and lack of a concrete answer definitely means that we should not take one side in presenting the information to the students. Originally we thought about leaning toward one viewpoint, but truthfully there is too much uncertainty for us to argue towards one stance. Therefore in our deliverable we need to present both sides of the debate and let the audience make their own conclusions.
I also came across two interesting Youtube videos, one of which was made by the company Chipotle in an effort to express their disapproval of using chemically modified foods and another parody video made by Funnyordie that claims that this giant Chipotle corporation is just trying to play on the popular public opinion of the harmfulness of GMOs.
Chipotle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUtnas5ScSE
Funnyordie Response:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYZgWYZlAZU
With this overwhelming public fear about genetically modified organisms, and some scientists still debating and studying how safe they are, a solution would be to make sure that all these GMO products are labeled. But that flows into another battle. It becomes a legal fight of lingo with phrases such as “all natural” used on unnaturally produced goods and many big agricultural biotechnology corporations paying millions of dollars to prevent labeling. This is the central idea of ongoing political debate regarding labeling legislation.
With all this data about GMOs, we need to figure out an objective way to showcase both sides of the debate and explain the importance of labeling GMO foods so that the public can decide for themselves which products they want to consume.
Weekly Update for Second Week: Claudia Zmijewski
This week I focused on informing myself on the two sides of the GMO debate, mostly by looking at different websites on the Internet and watching several YouTube videos. It’s extremely difficult to take in all of the information from both sides of the debate and try to figure out which side is right, especially if I have no way of knowing if the information is coming from a credible source (as I thought was the case with the YouTube videos). However, watching these YouTube videos is useful because I think it provided me with more personal opinions on the production of genetically modified foods; instead of simply reading monotonous text on a website, I was able to listen to a person speak more intimately about their personal stance on genetically modified organisms/food. One video that stood out the most to me, and was against genetically modified foods, made me feel really bad about what I eat on a daily basis. This is the link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HYNBY5IKAQ. According to this video, “all industrialized countries other than Canada and the United States legally require that a food is labeled if it contains genetically modified ingredients.” This made me think. Why us (and Canada)? Is this really true? Are genetically modified foods that bad that other countries have required GMO labeling/have banned GMOs? I also learned that the foods that are genetically modified in the US are corn, canola, soybeans, cotton, sugar beets, alfafa, hawaiian papaya, zucchini, and yellow squash. At first, I was a bit skeptical because the woman speaking seemed to be making some very extreme comments on genetically modified organisms, but after visiting http://www.nongmoproject.org/learn-more/what-is-gmo/, I saw that those foods are in fact at a high risk for GMOs. I already knew previously that high fructose corn syrup as an ingredient in a food isn’t a good indicator, but this video made me more aware of how bad this ingredient actually is. I’m not going to lie, I am a bit freaked out about this because I see almost all of the ingredients that were discussed in my daily meals. It’s interesting to see how one 13 minute video has already impacted my opinion on GMOs.
Weekly Update for Third Week: Milana Sapozhnikov
This week was mostly spent discussing our options for the digital deliverable and deciding on what we could practically do. After reading about Science Cafés in Surrounded by Science, we think that the general public would be interested in learning about the genetically modified foods they knowingly or unknowingly eat. The challenges we faced is finding a space to hold the event, figuring out what age group to target (which is linked to the space where the event is going to be held), and finding an expert to engage with the audience and also share valuable knowledge. We emailed the Health and Nutrition Science Club in an effort to collaborate with them on this event as we think it would beneficial both to the club members and to other students to learn about the science behind GMOs and how it links to health and nutrition. We also contacted the Macaulay Building advisors to hopefully be allowed to reserve a space there, but we need to find out if people not in Macaulay would be allowed to enter the building. As for the expert we realize that it may be difficult for us to convince an outside speaker to want to come to this event, and then remembered that Professor McEntee in Brooklyn College who taught us Biology 2 expressed her interest in field of biotechnology. We will probably ask her to come speak at the Science Café, especially if it will take place in Brooklyn College. Professor McEntee explains very well, is very knowledgeable, and is very passionate about the things she teaches. She also has a great personality that makes everyone engaged in her discussion. We agreed that she would be a great speaker for our Science Café if she would be up for it. We would record the Science Café and create a short documentary about GMOs, including parts of the Science Café and also other videobits we create.
I also found this link from Nature magazine, which we will use as part of the required 5 sources we use to gather information, that provides many important details about genetically modified organisms.
Weekly Update for Third Week: Claudia Zmijewski
I emailed Fathea Azad, the secretary of the Health and Nutrition Club, the following email:
Hello Fathea,
My name is Claudia Zmijewski and I’m a sophomore at Brooklyn College. I am currently taking a Macaulay Honors College Seminar class that focuses on science and technology in New York City, and am part of a community science group project for the class.
My group (consisting of myself, Lawrence Markel, Milana Sapozhnikov, and Daniel Aksenov) decided to focus on GMOs, and we would like to ask you if the Health and Nutrition Club would be able to host any future event that would focus on genetically modified foods. We were thinking of maybe hosting a science cafe type meeting, but we would first like to ask you for your permission.
Please let me know if you have any suggestions for our project as well. We would appreciate any help.
Thank you for your time!
We hope to hear an answer soon.
Weekly Update for Second/Third Week: Larry Markel
The past two weeks, we have been working on delivering the right information sithout any bias to our audience by researching both the pros and cons of GMO’s and how they impact certain areas of the human body, most importantly a person’s health in general. My Biology Lab class had a lab on GMO’s and the types of food that harbored these GMO’s and we were surprised to find out that almost every single sample food that we were asked to bring in, besides the organic foods, tested positive for GMO’s. This is scary because even if you wanted to change your dietary habits by choosing not to eat foods with GMO’s, it would be very hard due to the fact that you would have to be spending extra money that some individuals can not afford just to steer clear of genetically engineered food. We sent out emails regarding a place to host the event to talk about the GMO’s and also for a biology professor to come speak about what GMO’s are exactly and the type of impact they make on the human body. I found a movie titled “Seeds of Death:Unveiling the Lies of GMO’s” and it talks about the dangers of GMO’s and what they really are versus what food companies are trying to convince the general public they are. Its very interesting and is worth a watch and I think that various bits of information will be taken out of this movie and used during our presentation.
Weekly Update for Fourth Week: Milana Sapozhnikov
This week we received an email from the President of the Health and Nutrition Science Club, Stephanie. She told us that she is interested in working with us and hearing what exactly we are planning to do. We have to email her back to try to schedule something for this semester because she said that time-wise it is pretty tight. We are looking forward to hearing back from her soon so we can finalize the location of the Science Café event.
We have continued to research information about GMOs and compile journal articles about them. We are working on organizing all of our thoughts and ideas for the project.
Weekly Update for Fourth Week: Claudia Zmijewski
After considering the fact that it is already late in the semester to be planning at event with the Health and Nutrition Club at Brooklyn College, we decided to pursue an alternative. Larry suggested a great idea during one of our discussions with Professor Adams, saying that since a majority of our group (myself, Larry, and Milana) were graduates of Brooklyn Technical High School, we could possibly present a brief session on GMOs to a group of high school seniors. Larry still keeps in contact with his old high school organic chemistry teacher, Mr. Thomas Evangelist, who is also the AP of Science at Brooklyn Tech. After speaking to Mr. Evangelist, Larry informed us that we were given the OK to present. All we need to do now is to pick a date to go to Brooklyn Tech and prepare our GMO presentation, which will be now targeted towards a high school student audience.
Weekly Update for Fifth Week: Milana Sapozhnikov
This week we succeeded at finding a location for our “Science Cafe”and are working on finalizing our plans for the event. We reached out to the Assistant Principal of Science at Brooklyn Technical High School, and he agreed to having us do this event during one of his classes. We need to find a way to get the students to sign photo release forms so that we could film the event and include it in our documentary as the digital deliverable component. We are planning to go to the high school either this coming Wednesday or Friday, and currently are working on deciding what information to include in our presentation. We are creating somewhat of a lesson plan, but do not want to make this event into just another school experience for these students. The goal is to present the material in a more informal learning manner, where the students can freely interact during this group discussion. We are excited to see these high school students’ reactions to the information about genetically modified organisms and we aim to present this information objectively so that they could formulate their own stances on the creation and consumption of GMOs.
Weekly Update for Fifth Week: Claudia Zmijewski
We have chosen to go to Brooklyn Tech on Wednesday, November 20th. We are currently working on our GMO presentation, which will probably be in PowerPoint format.
Also, coincidentally, we were discussing GMOs in Microbiology Lecture today, which I thought was pretty lucky for our group. I am taking Microbiology Lecture with Dr. Muth, and Larry and Milana are also taking the class with me. The professor talked about how GMOs are selected for naturally occurring mutations, and he even said that carrots weren’t always orange-they were once white. Unfortunately, we didn’t go into much detail during our lecture since we went on to focus on prokaryotic identification, but I still thought the fact that GMOs came up in one of our classes was pretty cool.
Weekly Update for Sixth Week: Milana Sapozhnikov
We visited Brooklyn Technical High School this week and presented in front of a Regents Chemistry class. We showed the class a powerpoint on genetically modified organisms which included a short video, asked them questions, answered their questions, and asked the Assistant Principal of Science at the school to also input information on the topic as a guest expert speaker. The presentation went very well and we were impressed by how much the students already knew about the topic since they had taken the Biology Regents the previous year. We recorded this presentation and we plan to include parts of the presentation in our digital deliverable.
Weekly Update for Seventh Week: Milana Sapozhnikov
We are in the process of putting together our video/documentary for the digital deliverable component of the project. We want to make the video engaging and also want to make sure that the general public understands the scientific concepts we present to them in the video. We aim to include parts of the presentation we did at Brooklyn Technical High School but also want to include general information separate from the recorded presentation. We are working on outlining the final paper and deciding on which resources we will include. We will split up the different sections amongst group members to distribute the written work equally.
Weekly Update for Eighth Week: Milana Sapozhnikov
We have completed the video/documentary and are going to present it to our class for peer feedback. Based on the comments that we receive back from our classmates and the professor, we will edit the video accordingly to have it ready for the presentation at the Macaulay Honors Building. We are still working on writing the research paper on genetically modified organisms, and are working on creating a website that is informative and engaging.
