Genetic Literacy Project
Viewpoint: BPA and phthalate hysteria — Venturing out of its knowledge zone, ‘Consumer Reports’ launches anti-chemical tirade on plastic food packaging
If you want advice on which coffee maker or space heater to buy, Consumer Reports (CR) is where you go ...
When a farmer and a dietitian are the same person: Telling stories to counter misinformation about biotechnology
Jennie Schmidt, Third-Generation Maryland Farmer, Registered Dietitian, Member of the Global Farmer Network | March 1, 2024 Highlights: Combining a ...
Viewpoint: Environmental Working Group’s manufactured ‘dangerous levels of chlormequat in oat cereals’ study underscores the ‘risk perception gap’
The number of messages I received from people, mostly parents, who said they had been terrified to feed their children ...
Viewpoint: Does Donald Trump’s authoritarian style and his popularity among ultra-conservative religious leaders echo the rise of Hitler’s Nazi Germany?
Each September marks the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws, whose passage in 1935 stripped Jews of their German citizenship and ...
Viewpoint: Journal Pediatrics reneges on its commitment to print response to botched article claiming GMOs are harmful to children. Here’s what they censored
A lot has been said about the journal Pediatrics December 2023 Clinical Report on "Using GMOs on Children". The poor scholarship ...
GLP podcast: Bad research sows distrust in science; Pesticides in food aren’t dangerous—unless you eat 340 apples daily
Bad research in peer-reviewed journals is undermining the public's trust in science. What can experts do to stop the flow ...
Viewpoint: Are organizations claimed as “partners” with tort industry-funded Heartland Study aware of the scam? Here’s an ‘open letter’ challenge
Multiple science communicators and scientists have composed a letter to various universities and government organizations that have been linked to ...
When in our evolutionary history did we become ‘human’?
We now know from evolutionary science that humanity has existed in some form or another for around 2 million years ...
Viewpoint: Weighing the costs of relying on government-reimbursements to address America’s ballooning fat problem
Giving everyone that is overweight or obese access to one of the new diet drugs would increase deficit spending from ...
Viewpoint: Money grab — How the Environmental Working Group works hand-in-hand with tort lawyers to generate billion-dollar junk suits
On February 15th, the litigation outfit known as Environmental Working Group, most famous for using public USDA data (although excluding pesticides from ...
Viewpoint: Exploiting chemophobia—Environmental Working Groups’s manufactured study claiming oat cereal contains dangerous pesticides designed to manipulate the media
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) and media outlets are trying to scare people away from demonstrably safe and nutritious conventional food products ...
Organ shortage and genetic modification: Tissues from 3D-bioprinting and GM pigs could address organ shortages but over-regulation causes lags
Modern medicine has produced many kinds of high-tech miracles, among them gene therapy to correct malfunctioning genes, electrical stimulation devices to restore ...
Viewpoint: UK’s organic farming lobby needs to drop its ideological rejection of gene editing if it hopes to remain viable
In July last year, the European Commission published its proposals for regulating plants developed using new genomic techniques (NGTs) such ...
Genetic justice: Polygenic scores and ethnic differences
Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) are powerful tools. They gauge how likely you are to have a given trait based only ...
GLP podcast: Technology keeps debunking ‘The Population Bomb;’ Internet access can harm mental health; Is urban farming sustainable? Probably not
Technological innovations continue to debunk predictions that global population growth will lead to mass starvation. Some mental health experts are ...
Russia’s shadowy disinformation war against the United States and its allies — Here are some of its key targets
Russia’s decades-old propaganda machine seeks to damage the health and prosperity of the country's adversaries. Ukraine and the United States ...
With climate change disruptions of farming and food escalating, scientists look to resilient ancient plant varieties as a possible safety net
In late September, an international team of researchers fanned out across a remote New Mexico mountain range, in search of ...
Is tilapia a human-made freak that we should avoid — or an evolutionary rockstar?
Posts were appearing on my Facebook feed warning against the dangers of eating tilapia. So I decided to do a ...
What’s driving the ‘multi-billion dollar fear-and-smear campaign against genetically-engineered crops’ — and the link between activists and Russia?
Because most of society is between two and six generations removed from farming, to many people that subject is largely ...
Viewpoint: Rejecting hysteria — ‘Alarmism’ over phthalates illustrates importance of embracing established risk measures
In October, in what could turn into a landmark case, a Missouri woman sued cosmetics company L'Oréal, claiming that her ...
Probiotics are ‘enticing target’ for gene editing — but is CRISPR up for the challenge?
Every morning I pop a Pearl probiotic. I try hard not to drop it, for the tiny, slippery yellow sphere ...
Viewpoint: What is sustainability? What are pesticides? The way media and politicians define ideologically diffuse words shape policy – often for the worse
Reality is perceived by the definitions we give; the black and white lines we draw upon a grey canvas. So ...
GLP podcast: Neuralink chip in your brain? CNN’s bunk COVID booster headline; Obesity drugs—the long-term effects
Neuralink has successfully implanted its "brain–computer interface" in a human patient. Elon Musk says the results so far are "promising." ...
Viewpoint: Righteous Risks — Here’s how (and why) environmental advocacy groups misrepresent the risks from innovations but cynically ignore genuine dangers
Synthetic pesticides are under constant regulatory pressure, but not organic pesticides. “Green” renewables and EVs have very little regulatory scrutiny ...
Viewpoint: No, the data do not show that using sex toys release cancer-causing phthalate microplastics into your body
Microplastics are a kernel of biological concern that gets magnified by hype, like endocrine "disrupting" chemicals or weedkillers detectable in ...
England’s gene-editing rules could be far more restrictive than scientists hope
In proposals set out in a recent public consultation document, the Food Standards Agency has confirmed its plans for implementing ...
Here’s how your immune system synthesizes its own antiviral drugs in response to infections
Your immune system makes its own antiviral drug—blocking viruses from replicating their RNA is one way antivirals work ...
Viewpoint: ‘I’m not anti vaccine, I’m pro-vaccine safety’ — Debunking Robert F. Kennedy’s lies about vaccine beliefs
CNN host Kasie Hunt interviewed antivax presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Although she did better than most journalists confronting ...