Reviews
No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy by Linsey McGoey
lglazb's review against another edition
1.0
I am sorry, but I can’t take seriously any book that includes “GMO” and “cancer in rats” in the same sentence. Some of the false or one-sided claims included in the book:
- The infamous Séralini study (cancer in rats) was trashed by the scientific community for a number of reasons, including small sample size, poor choice of animals, flawed statistical analysis, lack of experiment data and access to supporting data and improper pathological analysis.
- The Séralini study was obviously cherry-picked from a pittance of (flawed) studies. At the same time, the author does not mention a mountain of evidence suggesting there isn’t anything inherently unsafe about GMO, including a consensus between major medical and scientific organizations on this topic.
- For the specific MON810 crop from the Séralini study, the French Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) concluded in its GMO90+ project in 2018 that “no harmful effects of the MON810 and NK603 maize diets on the health and metabolism of the rodents were detected, even after a lengthy exposure period”.
- The Indian farmer suicide myth has been refuted before this book was published. Cotton production in India is a much more complex topic with many issues, including the scope of initial GM evaluation, risky business decisions, lack of irrigation, lack of government subsidies and lending support. Even 20 years after the introduction of GMO Bt cotton in India, the subject remains controversial, with conflicting evidence regarding alternative methods and true profitability of Bt cotton.
- Inability to reuse the seeds isn’t a GMO-specific issue when you consider that hybrid seeds can’t be replanted as well.
Considering that this book was written not that long ago and all of the points above are easily verified by anyone with an internet connection, it feels like bad investigative journalism disguised as non-biased comments.
In reality, the author allowed for her ideological standpoint to completely control the narrative of the book, which is too often one-sided. That’s a pity because she does raise several valid points which get lost in all the fact-checking efforts.
Sources: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9
- The infamous Séralini study (cancer in rats) was trashed by the scientific community for a number of reasons, including small sample size, poor choice of animals, flawed statistical analysis, lack of experiment data and access to supporting data and improper pathological analysis.
- The Séralini study was obviously cherry-picked from a pittance of (flawed) studies. At the same time, the author does not mention a mountain of evidence suggesting there isn’t anything inherently unsafe about GMO, including a consensus between major medical and scientific organizations on this topic.
- For the specific MON810 crop from the Séralini study, the French Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) concluded in its GMO90+ project in 2018 that “no harmful effects of the MON810 and NK603 maize diets on the health and metabolism of the rodents were detected, even after a lengthy exposure period”.
- The Indian farmer suicide myth has been refuted before this book was published. Cotton production in India is a much more complex topic with many issues, including the scope of initial GM evaluation, risky business decisions, lack of irrigation, lack of government subsidies and lending support. Even 20 years after the introduction of GMO Bt cotton in India, the subject remains controversial, with conflicting evidence regarding alternative methods and true profitability of Bt cotton.
- Inability to reuse the seeds isn’t a GMO-specific issue when you consider that hybrid seeds can’t be replanted as well.
Considering that this book was written not that long ago and all of the points above are easily verified by anyone with an internet connection, it feels like bad investigative journalism disguised as non-biased comments.
In reality, the author allowed for her ideological standpoint to completely control the narrative of the book, which is too often one-sided. That’s a pity because she does raise several valid points which get lost in all the fact-checking efforts.
Sources: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9
jessalex's review against another edition
2.0
Reads more like a collection of cherry-picked anecdotes rather than a cohesive, nuanced argument. I don't disagree with a lot of the content, I just wish it had been structured and argued better.
marx's review
very good! chapter six gives a good background on the current TRIPS waiver issue (though this was written pre-covid) so I found that particularly valuable
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