Thanks to Xiao Cui’s efforts, the issue of genetically modified organisms has increasingly become a public topic, and the related controversies have increasingly been brought into the open—for example, the recent discussion forum held by Phoenix University Questions, which looked pretty good.
Genetically modified organisms and traditional Chinese medicine have basically become a kind of litmus test for aligning with one camp or another; it seems that those strongly in favor of GMOs and against traditional Chinese medicine are the “scientific camp,” while those against GMOs or in favor of traditional Chinese medicine are the “mystical camp.” I have also been asked similar questions to “state my position,” but my answer was relatively ambiguous, and the netizens of the scientific camp had no further interest in discussing it.
Ten years of philosophical training at least allow me to remain skeptical of any judgmental question, because a clear-cut answer is often the least important thing; expressing a simple pro or con position has little meaning, so I still do not want to state a definite stance.
Teachers I know well, including Wu Laoshi and Tian Laoshi, basically also lean toward the anti-GMO side, and this is no accident. After studying in fields such as philosophy of science, history of science, sociology of science, and science communication, those of us in this line of work often have a greater sense of the complexity of science, and can understand that so-called scientific issues are often entangled with various political, economic, and cultural factors; the group called scientists is not especially noble either. And what we take to be “scientific” often is nothing more than shorthand for “what scientists say,” or even, in many cases, merely shorthand for “what science popularizers who claim to be scientific (such as Fang Zhouzi) say,” and among these scientists there are far too many people like Fang Zhouzi, whose credibility is worrisome. Of course, philosophers or any other group are not much more credible either, but because “science is the primary productive force,” the interest relationships behind scientists are often more complicated and the waters deeper, so one needs to be even more vigilant. I also support Tian Laoshi’s slogan, “Be wary of science, be wary of scientists.”
But I do not, like Tian Laoshi and the others, completely reject GMOs. First of all, in my personal life I do not reject GMOs, or rather, I am too lazy to think about them too much: GMOs are fine, gutter oil is fine; I eat both meat and vegetables, and as long as it tastes good, that’s all that matters—who cares whether there’s poison in it or not, out of sight, out of mind. As the saying goes, if it’s a blessing, it’s not a disaster; if it’s a disaster, you can’t dodge it. If genetically modified food really does have certain chronic, hidden harms to the human body, then even vegetarians who insist on non-GMO labels may not be able to avoid them anyway (labels are far too easy to fake), and even if they could, lowering one’s quality of life for that reason would not be worth it.
Whether or not one rejects GMOs in personal life does not prove anything. My willingness to eat GMOs is similar to my willingness to eat at street stalls; it does not mean that I support gutter oil. And someone who does not eat GMOs does not necessarily believe that GMOs are poisonous. In many cases this is a matter of mentality and emotion, rather than a scientific issue, or rather, an issue that can be decided by some objective measurement.
For example, vegetarians reject meat for religious, emotional, or other reasons; this is not a nutritional science issue. Muslims do not eat pork, and for other meats they also require the recitation of scripture at slaughter; this is not a scientific issue either. Although beef slaughtered with scripture recited over it and beef slaughtered without it show no detectable difference in composition, believers still have reason to require that specific foods be labeled “halal” so they can choose.
Of course, the scientific camp would think that religious believers are nothing but superstitious, and that those demands are not worth respecting, but ordinary atheists do not necessarily always choose goods on the basis of “science” either.
For example, if I see someone urinate by the riverbank, I will very likely refuse to drink the water here, no matter how much you tell me that it is pure mountain spring water, or use all kinds of scientific tests to tell me that the urine-contaminated water was already diluted to the point of being negligible, or tell me that the well water I go home and drink is even dirtier, I still won’t be able to swallow it. This kind of aversion does not require any scientific reasoning. Similarly, since I know about the various tricks scientists and related interest groups have played in history, or since I feel uneasy about the act of genetically modifying nature itself, I feel resistant to the safe foods these people solemnly promote, and that too has nothing to do with science.
Another example: two products are similar in quality; one is produced by Aunt Zhang’s factory, and the other by Uncle Li’s. Aunt Zhang is kind and affable, Uncle Li is indifferent and dark-hearted; then I am willing to buy Aunt Zhang’s products and unwilling to support Uncle Li’s business. This is also entirely reasonable and has nothing to do with science.
To give a hypothetical example, suppose a jelly factory develops a technology for extracting gelatin from human flesh. After extraction, it shows no detectable difference from gelatin produced by other methods, and when eaten it provides the same nutrition. Assuming the source of the corpse is also legal, is this jelly completely the same as ordinary jelly? Is refusing to buy such jelly completely unreasonable?
Hardline materialists certainly do not care about these things. They believe that as long as the components are the same and no difference can be detected, then there is no difference between the two. This is also a characteristic of the modern worldview: the world is turned into a picture, and all things are viewed in an “isolated, static, one-sided” way; every thing can be extracted from its spatiotemporal context and thus placed in the laboratory for precise analysis. This is precisely the philosophical basis of the so-called principle of “substantial equivalence” in GMOs. But at least in our daily life, the world has not yet become so rigid.
If we acknowledge that consumers have the freedom to choose products based on their background rather than on the products themselves, then we should allow labels such as “genetically modified” or “non-genetically modified.” Unlike most anti-GMO people, I do not want the government to forcibly ban genetically modified food, and I do not even support compulsory GMO labeling. If consumers are all opposed to GMOs, then shrewd businesses will naturally and voluntarily strive for non-GMO labels, the corresponding supervision mechanisms will then be established, and goods that dare not label themselves will naturally be at a disadvantage. The government should not sit in judgment on science and non-science, and still less should it dominate the market. Right now, many pro-GMO people hope to get more money out of the government, while anti-GMO people hope that the government will issue more prohibitions; I do not support either of these demands. The government may appropriately provide supervision to guarantee the public’s right to know, for example by preventing GMO foods from arbitrarily being labeled as non-GMO. As for whether GMOs or non-GMOs are safer scientifically, or more popular in the market, those are not things the government should manage.
But the GMO issue seems to be about more than just the free market. The key is that, in the eyes of some anti-GMO people, GMO crops harm not only individuals but also the entire environment, involving public safety, and thus cannot be left entirely to the free market. For example, can the production and sale of atomic bombs be left entirely to the free market?
This concern is reasonable. If GMO foods caused immediate poisoning as soon as they were eaten, then there would not be so much controversy. The problem is that the dangers GMO foods may cause are not something that can be revealed in one moment or one place; they may be global and ecological.
If GMO crops were promoted on a large scale, I would not dare believe that they would not affect the ecological environment. Of course, some pro-GMO people will popularize the idea that GMO farmland generally has strict controls, such as mixing it in proportion with ordinary farmland, and that scientific methods are used to detect and control its ecological impact. But the circulation of matter in nature cannot be blocked; changes in crops will certainly affect insects, affect soil, affect microorganisms, and so on, and as for what kind of chain reaction they would ultimately produce in an open natural environment, that is difficult to predict in a controlled, closed laboratory setting.
Some people say that GMO technology, compared with genetic changes in the natural environment and with traditional artificial breeding methods, does not differ in any essential way; it only induces and selects gene mutations at a faster speed and with higher efficiency. Not to mention that this claim is not reasonable in the first place (genetic changes caused by GMOs are often changes that could never occur under natural conditions relying on mutation and hybridization), even if it were true, that difference in “speed” would still be fatal. In the history of natural evolution, the rates of variation among species are more or less similar: when flowers vary, insects change accordingly. The evolution of each species is not just that species’ own affair; every new change must adapt to the other interrelated parts of the entire ecosystem. In the history of evolution, it is hard for one species to evolve while its environment remains stagnant. But the variation triggered by GMOs is aimed only at a certain species artificially isolated by humans; after such a species, whose rate of variation has been altered, is put back into the natural environment, its rhythm will undoubtedly be out of step with the other species in that environment. Thus this externally added stimulus is very likely to become a factor that triggers environmental turbulence. For example, if an alien species invades a certain environment, it is very likely to uncontrollably destroy the original ecological balance. So far, GMO technology has not caused widespread ecological mutation, perhaps because the variation it triggers is not yet large enough, or because the intensity and duration of its effects are insufficient; but if GMO crops continue to be promoted, sooner or later there may be a situation of ecological imbalance. The only question is how severe that imbalance can become. This does not require any essential difference in GMO technology; as long as its impact on genetic change differs quantitatively, it will cause danger, because so-called “imbalance” is itself a matter of rhythms that are out of proportion in different respects.
Modern technology, like the modern financial system, is basically a logic of “borrowing to repay debt” and “eating the next month’s grain before this month’s is harvested”: “pollute first, clean up later,” develop first and control later; what is always emphasized is the increase of efficiency right now. The logic of GMOs is more or less the same. Does the insect-resistant gene really resist insects? Even if it really can resist insects now, insects will mutate accordingly. If GMO crops are indeed nontoxic and nutritionally rich, then insects that can eat these crops naturally have a survival advantage over insects that cannot. According to the laws of evolution, insect species that can resist the insect-resistant gene will sooner or later gain the upper hand. But how does modern technology think to solve this? Very simple: we just need to develop faster than the insects. As long as the updating and replacement of our genes and pesticides always stays one step ahead of nature’s feedback, that will do; when the insects mutate, a new insect-resistant gene will have been invented. This sounds as if it makes some sense, but it is still the same logic as borrowing to repay debt: what if sooner or later the creditors come to collect? Simple—keep speeding up borrowing. As long as each new loan is larger than the last, the old debt can always be repaid. If such a scheme were applied to one person, it would be the shameless conduct of a deadbeat; but when applied to society as a whole, it becomes precisely the operation of the most “advanced” financial system.
But the danger of this approach is that once the pace of development can no longer keep up, the environment will not stop and wait for you. People who live by the sword die by the sword; once repayment can no longer be made, a total collapse may occur. And if the pace of development really can keep accelerating, then the rhythms of humanity and its natural environment will become increasingly imbalanced, the string will be stretched tighter and tighter, and crises will accumulate more and more.
Ecological collapse differs from ordinary risk. Once the overall ecological environment collapses, it is almost irretrievable—in other words, people have almost no opportunity to “learn by trial and error.” Such collapse has occurred in many relatively closed regions in the past, and Easter Island is a typical case. Only in modern times, with so-called globalization, has the space for human survival suddenly expanded to the whole earth. So to speak, humanity has only one Earth; humanity can have countless living environments similar to Easter Island. Therefore, the ecological collapse of one Easter Island can provide experience and lessons for others, but the ecological collapse of one Earth is something humanity cannot bear.
After saying all this, I still only want to express that GMO technology has risks, but I still do not support the government forcing legislation to prohibit GMO research or sales. Why? Because the risks of GMOs are ultimately different from those of the atomic bomb. The danger of the atomic bomb is already clear, so it can be clearly discussed and constrained; but the dangers of GMOs are not clear. This is like saying that if a person has already caused harm, we can convict and sentence him according to the degree of harm he has caused, and thereby restrict his freedom. But if a person has not yet caused harm, and we merely say that he is potentially dangerous, or that he very likely has already caused harm but there is no clear evidence, then we should follow the presumption of innocence and not make a preemptive judgment in advance; even if the probability that this person has committed a crime is extremely high, that still cannot be used as a reason to deprive him of freedom in advance.
What we need is to take precautions before the rain comes, not to strike first; there is a huge difference between the two. I advocate being wary of GMO technology (and other modern technologies), but I do not support strangling their development. I know that you may come to kill me tomorrow, so of course I should prepare in advance and take all sorts of preventive measures, but that does not mean I may kill you first today. Even if it is said that unless I kill you in advance, I am doomed to fall victim to your poison, I still have no right to do so.
Exploration and progress are destined to be accompanied by risk; that is humanity’s fate. When facing death, life gains meaning; and human civilization also always needs to confront the crisis of extinction in order to shine. Faced with environmental crisis, neither of the two extremes is desirable. One is extreme optimism: humanity will always get through the crisis, just as it has countless times before; nature and the market will adjust everything, so there is no need to worry. But this logic is like saying: I have survived many years in the past and have never died, so I will not die in the future either. Or: for the first eighteen years of my life I grew taller every year, so growth will continue forever. This kind of blind optimism is unreasonable. Once human civilization collapses completely, one time is enough; having survived many crises in the past cannot prove that we have transcended life and death. The other is extreme pessimism: if things continue like this, humanity will definitely perish; human civilization is beyond saving, so don’t develop anything—better to return to the womb, otherwise we can only sing elegies. This is like fearing death and giving up on oneself, too afraid to go out and explore.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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