In what can only be described as a purposeful attempt to damage its own poor reputation even further, PETA's latest campaign is to change our "speciesist" language.
Groups Who Hate Us
According to PETA, veggie burgers cause cancer because of their iron content. Using their logic, so does soy and spinach.
Carey Gillam is a well-known anti-GMO activist who rejects the scientific consensus, regularly reports easily provable lies, and works for an organization that gets most of its money from 9/11 truthers.
“Their eyes tell their sad stories as ghostly white irises give way to vacant stares. We can look at them but they can’t look back at us. They’ve gone blind because of malnutrition.,” V. Ravichandran, a farmer in Tamil Nadu, India, describing children suffering from vitamin A deficiency.
This is a dual tragedy — first, because more than two-thirds of the children referred to in Ravichandran’s commentary will be dead within a year — blindness from vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is an early sign of life-threatening debilitation — and second, because VAD could be prevented with an accessible, modern agricultural technology.
"Follow the money!" activists shout. The money trail, according to this logic, always leads to lies and deception.
This puerile fallacy, argumentum ad aurum, is just a thinly disguised ad hominem attack commonly used against scientists. Instead of criticizing the quality or conclusions of the research, activists instead assault the integrity of the scientist.
Several years ago, a survey of professional toxicologists revealed that 79% of them believed that the Environmental Working Group and two other organizations overstate the health risks of chemicals. That's why EWG is beloved by activists but detested by scientists.
Vitamin-A deficiency around the world leads to between 250,000 and 500,000 children going blind – every single year. Half of them die within a year of losing their sight. Meanwhile, Golden Rice – a genetically-modified seed than can deliver this essential vitamin – is still not being used in impoverished nations. Here's a look at this pressing issue.
We are being confronted with very important questions about the anti-GMO movement and Mr. Ruskin, an anti-GMO activist who operates the website U.S. Right to Know. Are anti-GMOers also anti-vaxxers?2 If not, then why do they take money from anti-vaxxers?
RT is Russia's propaganda outlet in the U.S. and around the world, which broadcasts "news" that advances the agenda of President Vladimir Putin. Ruskin heads U.S. Right to Know, which insists on GMO labeling as a way of scaring Americans about food safety. And USRTK gets a ton of dough from a group which is known to propagandize for RT.
Taking advantage of today's toxic, confrontational mindset are outlets like SourceWatch. The website is like a politicized, unscientific version of Wikipedia. Volunteers – rather than qualified experts – write smear articles about people and groups they don't like (one of them being us).
'Twas The Night Before Christmas, ACSH-style ...
Looking to fly to an exotic locale and enjoy catered dinners while you lament what peasants outside your hotel are doing to the environment? Then you should join fellow elites in the environmental and conservation movement at the 2016 UN Convention on Biodiversity in the resort town of Cancun.