By Rhonda Gruska
At the end of March, I asked a longtime Northern California holistic nutrition and cooking educator if he had received his COVID-19 immunizations, as he is 65+. He responded, I will if I have to and won’t if I can exercise free choice. I’m not afraid of the vaccine, but don’t like the thought of more and more imposed vaccines. Herd immunity enables us to adapt especially when we are well. Vax don’t eliminate exposure and transmission. Safety and strengthening innate immunity are more powerful than vax in lowering hospitalization and mortality.
A week later, he sent a YouTube link and the message Very congruent with our approach! The word our referenced a wellness related educational private nonprofit he kicked off prior to the pandemic. Curious to learn more about his reasoning for not getting vaccinated, particularly given my interests in healthful cooking and eating, I sat down to watch the video.
The format was a Q&A featuring Zach Bush, MD, who specializes in Internal Medicine and has become prominent on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. The hour long back and forth touched on numerous subjects, such as his divorce, the microbiome, and politics, with COVID sandwiched somewhere in between.
When asked what he thought about the COVID-19 vaccine, he replied that tens of millions of consumers in the United States are all reaching for non-GMO products with everybody bending over backwards to get only organic and now they’re lining up for a vaccine that directly genetically modify their children. In a matter of minutes, this doctor discourages people from getting vaccinated by comparing it to eating genetically engineered (GE) ingredients (more popularly known as GMOs). He then refers to COVID-19 immunizations as the first step towards a genetic modification program.
As someone who avoids consuming GMO ingredients and eats nearly all organic, I was horrified. Currently, the majority of GMO ingredients in our food (in the form of vegetable oils and sugars) are produced with crops grown from Monsanto’s Roundup Ready® seeds containing Bt toxin, an insecticidal toxin tolerant to the pesticide glyphosate. By eating non-GMO, I protect myself from a double whammy; the Bt toxin inherent in GMO seeds that is 
expressed in the plant, and the glyphosate laden Roundup® that is sprayed on these crops. I also send a message to companies that spent millions of dollars defeating California’s mandatory GMO labeling initiative that I support the right to know what is in my food. Eating organic, I contribute to stemming the tide of harmful pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and soil erosion while supporting organic farmers who replace petrochemicals with crop rotation, resilient varieties of plants, compost, beneficial insects, and other sustainable farming techniques.
My concerns about GMO ingredients were validated by two scientists: UCB Graduate and Molecular Geneticist, Belinda Martineau, who was the Principal Scientist at the Davis Bio-tech company Calgene, which commercialized the first GE crop, and UCR Graduate, Entomologist and Capay Valley sheep rancher and cotton breeder, Sally Fox. Both have an extensive and impressive knowledge base regarding the genetic engineering of plants and their work inspired me to learn more about Monsanto’s genetically engineering seeds with a pesticide, thereby creating a market for patented seeds, while at the same time boosting flagging sales of Roundup®. My experience in Davis, a town I jokingly refer to as Monsantoville based on our experience owning an organic restaurant in the huge shadow cast by the ivory tower of a renowned agricultural university; in addition to the knowledge that capitalism and the U.S. regulatory system for GMO food products have let Americans down, may have predisposed me to agree with Zach Bush, MD. However, similar to wanting to know what is in my food, I like to do my homework in other areas too.
As a Slow Food adherent, both personally and professionally for nearly forty years, in addition to being a true believer in the healing power of holistic health practices and practitioners ability to treat many illnesses, comparing COVID-19 vaccines to eating GMO ingredients is like to comparing apples to oranges, or perhaps even rutabagas. There is no scientific equivalency between eating GMO ingredients and getting a COVID-19 vaccine, with one exception: neither of these scientific feats of plant and medical genetic engineering will alter your DNA.
Furthermore, unlike pesticides that harm our physiological well-being, in addition to the health of animals and the planet, medically engineered spike proteins protect us from COVID-19 by mimicking the body‘s natural process when one is exposed to the virus. As Science Journals Research Editor Valda Vinta describes it, each viral particle is coated in proteins, referred to as its “spike” proteins. The tip of each one looks deceptively like a normal, human signaling molecule, so a healthy cell binds to the tip as usual. That’s its last mistake. The virus then snaps the top off its spike, plunges the remainder through the surface of the cell, and injects its RNA. Now it can use the cell to make millions of copies of itself, which eventually burst out, leaving the cell for dead. As devious as the spike may be, it’s also an excellent target for vaccines. The current vaccines teach immune cells to recognize the spike protein, so that it can be bound and neutralized before it impales our cells.
If only our food was tested as well as vaccines! Unfortunately for eaters, the EPA rubber stamped Monsanto’s scientific claims that Roundup Ready® seed was safe, would increase crop yields, help to feed the world, reduce pesticide use, etc. Monsanto even went so far as to ask for and receive exemption from normal pesticide tolerance testing. This is a very different scenario than the FDA recognizing the urgent need for safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines and utilizing its various authorities and expertise to facilitate the expeditious development and availability of vaccines that have met the agency’s rigorous and science-based standards for quality, safety, and effectiveness.
On the other hand, resembling snake oil salesmen of the latter half of the 19th century, Zach Bush, MD, and other lesser known players hanging on his coattails have taken a page out of the Monsanto play book, creating market opportunities during a pandemic to sell themselves, their consulting services, and nutritional products, etc. Irrespective of over 600,000 deaths in the U.S. and a more contagious variant on the rise, Zach Bush, MD, with no medical expertise in epidemiology or virology, and certainly no bona fides in genetic engineering, continues to monetize his brand, while discouraging people from getting free and effective vaccines.
If you are vaccine hesitant because you eat organic and lean alternative medicine, I hope this article assists you with seeing through the false analogies proliferating on social media. If you feel like GE foods are safe to eat because a UCD professor tells you there is scientific consensus that they are, please consider the comparison of apples to oranges, or perhaps even rutabagas!
Rhonda Gruska moved to Berkeley a little over three years ago after living in Davis for nearly twenty-five years. She and her chef spouse, Tony, met at UC Davis and have worked together in the areas of food, politics, and food politics since the early nineties.
There is a lot that could be spoken about in this article. I am going to focus on what I see as the biggest issues.
1. Herd immunity is established in one of two ways.
– The development of a vaccine and acceptance by a calculated percentage of the population, usually somewhere in the range of 70%.
– Enough people in the population are killed by it ( or removed from the general population as in long COVID)to ensure that only those who had or developed some natural immunity to it survive. I’m not sure how many of us would consider such an uncaring solution an acceptable outcome. Personally, I would choose the vaccine.
2.Our DVA is not altered by the vaccines.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/facts.html
3. When we choose what foods to eat, we are affecting only our own bodies and those of our immediate family members. When we choose whether or not to get a vaccine, we are choosing a path that may ultimately threaten the lives of many, many others who have themselves chosen to protect others, but could not stay home out of harms way. Choosing for ourselves is a highly ethical and responsible position. Choosing for others you do not even know…not so much so. I have no problem with those who choose not to vaccinate, as long as they choose to remain in their own homes and have their goods delivered, non contact, to their doorsteps.
“are produced with crops grown from Monsanto’s Roundup Ready® seeds containing Bt toxin, an insecticidal toxin tolerant to the pesticide glyphosate.”
This is inaccurate. These are two entirely different genetically modified crop systems.
Bt crops
Corn, potatoes, and cotton have been modified with short sequences of genes from Bacillus thuringiensis, a naturally-occurring bacteria which is specifically toxic to Lepidopteran pests (caterpillars). It has greatly reduced pesticide use on those crops, especially on cotton as it protects the plants from cotton bollworm. Bt is not toxic to humans.
RoundUp Ready crops
Soy, corn, canola, alfalfa, cotton, and sorghum varieties have had gene sequences inserted that render them resistant to glyphosate (RoundUp is the best-known, but not the only, brand of glyphosate). A gene allowing resistance to glyphosate was taken from a type of bacteria called Agrobacteria and inserted into the crop plants.
This enables the farmer to spray a field and kill nearly all weeds without harming the crop.
It has shifted herbicide usage to glyphosate from a number of other herbicides, some of which were more toxic to the farmer and persistent in the environment than glyphosate. It can reduce herbicide usage overall due to the ability to control all weeds with one application rather than the multiple applications of other herbicides previously needed to control a range of weed species. It also allows farmers to implement no-till practices which have significant benefits to soil health, reduced runoff, and carbon sequestration. A downside is the steady increase in glyphosate-resistant weeds that was predicted, and which has occurred.
Difficult to believe that someone as knowledgeable as you would make that claim.
Choices that are made (regarding food, or any other product) reverberate through the system in many ways. Here’s (just one) potential way:
I believe that the organic farmers subsequently lost this case.
https://www.latimes.com/science/la-xpm-2012-feb-17-la-me-gs-organic-farmers-sue-monsanto-to-stop-patent-suits-20120217-story.html
Ron O has a good point here. Our food choices affect our environment. Our impact is less direct than than through vaccination–others are not affected directly by our presence–but we affect the local ecology of where the food is grown and we affect the global environment through differences in GHG emissions associated with different foods.
Ron O and Richard,
I agree our individual food choices do, in aggregate, affect our environment. But so do an entire host of other decisions we make. Whether or if to drive. Airline travel. Or perhaps the most fundamental decision we all make that has a profound environmental effect, the number of children we choose to have. We could go along this line of thinking forever.
Or we could address the immediacy of that which threatens us all today…the pandemic. If we do not address this issue, separate from the “but what abouts ? ” many of us will not have to worry at all about the carcinogens in our food, the quality of our food or water. We will be dead, or some loved one will be.
Thanks – yes, that’s the point I was noting. And for all practical purposes, we often don’t really have much “choice”. The systems themselves become intertwined and corrupted in ways that are hidden.
Some will be, in regard to your other point. But so far, it hasn’t wiped-out the Vanguard commenter section, at least. And I doubt that it will.
But more importantly, I doubt that talking about it here makes much difference.
Ron
What you posted in no way mitigates what I said. People have the ability to thoroughly research their food choices including the locations in which said food is grown and consume only that which they deem safe enough. That is certainly not true of the virus for which there is asymptomatic spread with no way to detect its presence. To those who say “the vulnerable should just stay home”, I say it is simply not possible for essential workers…or any of their contacts…or any of their contacts.
Please note, nowhere did I say there were not dangers in food choices. Only that there were choices. This is not true of the virus.
Tia: Here is what you said:
This is factually (and grossly) incorrect.
I’ve often wondered about UCD’s connections, and the manner in which information is spun. In any case, here’s another article, from 2012:
Are Monsanto’s Fingerprints on This Op-Ed Signed by a UC Davis Professor? | HuffPost
Ron O and Richard,
I agree our individual food choices do, in aggregate, affect our environment. But so do an entire host of other decisions we make. Whether or if to drive. Airline travel. Or perhaps the most fundamental decision we all make that has a profound environmental effect, the number of children we choose to have. We could go along this line of thinking forever.
Or we could address the immediacy of that which threatens us all today…the pandemic. If we do not address this issue, separate from the “but what abouts ? ” many of us will not have to worry at all about the carcinogens in our food, the quality of our food or water. We will be dead, or some loved one will be.
But more importantly, I doubt that talking about it here makes much difference.
With this, I disagree. I have had the experience of having people tell me that what I wrote influenced their thinking on an issue. I suspect many of us have had that experience. Ordinarily a single individual mind change may not make much difference. With a pandemic, it is possible for the mind that changes to be in the head of a potential super spreader. If I influence one person who is then more careful, and that saves one life, I will never know that, but it will be of major significance to someone.
If it wasn’t a global epidemic (with vast areas within this country and even within the state that totally ignore such concerns), I might agree.
In contrast, you are essentially “preaching to the choir” in this limited venue. And if you tried that outside of this venue (e.g., in those areas that are resistant), you’d likely encounter outright hostility.
Ron
I agree that the Vanguard is a very small venue. I have been spending more time on attempted education on Twitter where I have 11K followers. There is much more, as you noted, hostility…but also many more supportive comments. Because of the size discrepancy of the venues, I probably would not have written this piece for the Vanguard at all were it not with the number of points with which I disagreed with David’s piece.
11K followers is impressive.
Thanks for your efforts.