From John Wallace
In your leader on the project to reinstate American chestnut trees in the US using disease-resistant genetically modified variants, you say “die-hard anti-GM campaigners are unlikely to hold back, given their resistance to projects that might help feed the world” (7 June, p 5).
This disappoints me as it suggests you believe anti-GM campaigners are irrational and misunderstand the science.
If the disease-resistant American chestnut variant had been in the vanguard of GM projects, it might have become a persuasive ambassador for the technology. Instead we got Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybeans.
In a previous article, Andy Coghlan quotes Helen Wallace of GeneWatch UK (22 March, p 6). I find its website a fact-heavy, propaganda-light source of information.
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The publicly funded BBC has balance written into its charter, so is bound to give weight to both sides of a controversy, but from New Scientist I would expect a bit more healthy scepticism at times. Your leader left this “anti-GM nut” less than happy.
Liverpool, UK
• The editor replies:
We agree that not all opposition to GM is irrational or anti-scientific. However, opposition to the clear-cut case of Golden Rice, for example, suggests that there are some anti-GM campaigners who are either ignorant of or indifferent to the science (2 November 2013, p 30).
