Errors, fraud, lies, and William Saletan – Part 2: GMO food safety

http://www.gmwatch.org/news/latest-news/16316-errors-fraud-lies-and-william-saletan-part-2-gmo-food-safety

Journalist William Saletan’s appeals to scientific authority do not stand up, says Claire Robinson in the second of a three-part series

EXCERPT:

In his article, Saletan claims to have researched GMOs for up to a year. All the more remarkable, then, that on the vexed issue of GMO safety, he falls for the discredited GMO lobby trick of a vague appeal to authority that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Saletan states that eminent scientific bodies like the World Health Organization (WHO) “have all declared that there’s no good evidence GMOs are unsafe”. The implied question is: who are you to doubt them?

The trouble is that 124 health- or science-related organizations from around the world have declared doubts about the safety of GM foods and/or called for mandatory labelling – something that Saletan vehemently opposes.

Saletan doesn’t even appear to have read the WHO statement on GMO safety that he relies on. Certainly the WHO did say, “No effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of GM foods by the general population in the countries where they have been approved” – though skeptics will note that it is hard to find effects on human health in the absence of any studies.