Carole Bartolotto tells us in her article for The Huffington Post that GMOs have not been proven safe in humans. In her quest to educate the public, she cites two studies supporting GMOs (one of which she insults the validity of because of the source’s past work), and none specifically against GMOs. She builds up a claim that GMOs could be unsafe to humans since we only have animal tests, and that in the past (in the case of artificial sweeteners), these tests were shown to be uncorrelated to human responses.

It is unclear what she wants to convey to her audience. Does she want to ban or label GMOs? Her combative writing about artificial sweeteners and “diet” foods (which makes up most of her article) makes it seem like she wants to ban them, or at least unable to be served to humans. However, her final statement is “we need GMO labeling so we can do the epidemiological studies that are essential to determine their risk.” I ask, don’t we need controlled epidemiological studies in order to test their validity? We can’t simply slap a sticker on something and watch people eat, so in the meantime, deterring people from eating anything not labelled as “organic” is unprofessional.

The person writing this article dismisses the only statements supporting GMOs (and the only two statements actually about GMOs in her article) entirely. She introduces the viewpoint that some scientists “Some scientists are quite emphatic about this…” and then ends any discussion that does not adhere to her views about the subject, which, by the way, she does not even have. Her entire argument is based around a poor agreement between animal and human toxicology tests. Granted, she gives evidence to back up this claim, but, she has no evidence supporting the opposite (ironic, considering her stance that we do not yet know anything about GMOs).

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carole-bartolotto/have-genetically-modified_b_5597751.html