Dr. Don Huber's Mystery Organism - A Legacy of Disinformation

-

Back before calling out disinformation was fashionable, I was busting biotech charlatans for lying about science to satisfy their personal agendas. 
 
It was seven years ago today that Dr. Don Huber, Emeritus Professor of Purdue University, stood in front of a room of people and scared the hell out of them. I was in the room. His stream of disinformation was disgusting, deliberately and intentionally lying to an audience assembled to learn about food and new technology. 

You can read about the event in detail here. 

At the event he reiterated his claims of a new organism he had isolated from "GMO" crops-- a deadly "virus-like fungus" or "microfungus" that killed plants, caused disease in people and triggered spontaneous abortion in livestock.  The audience was aghast, with audible discomfort in the room. 


Not "scientists" but one unscrupulous scientist that intentionally fabricated a story to influence public perception and sway federal policy.



Long-story short, during the Q&A I asked him if I could obtain a sample, sequence its DNA, and reveal the nature of the organism and stop the crisis. 

After a long, rambling retreat, he said that he and his team in China (yes, China) were sequencing the genome and would release the results shortly.  He refused to accept my generous offer. 

Seven years later... crickets. 

This is the same deadly organism that Dr. Huber reported to US Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack.  He wrote it from his position of authority as a university professor, and noted his military service. He claimed that it was a "pathogen of high-risk status" and "should be treated as an emergency."


 From Cooking Up a Story - A synopsis of the Huber letter to Vilsack

This established expert attempts to mobilize the resources of the United States of America to address a problem that only he can see, a move motivated by his anti-biotech views and a vendetta against a company.  It also was claimed to be caused by glyphosate, making it an harbinger of the future false claims made against the compound.

Seven years after I offered to help him solve this national emergency, there is still no news of progress on the deadly pathogen. 

Because he made it up.  He lied to the US Ag Secretary and millions of people to scare them away from modern farm technology. 

He also went after me personally, sending a brutal letter to my university, condemning my audacity to ask him questions, and explaining that I was "aggressive" and off base how I treated him.  I was nothing other than polite, as was revealed to my boss on audio recordings. 

So this is personal.  I want to hold him accountable, I want the public to not forget his lies.  He intentionally provided false information to influence public perception and policy around agriculture. 

While he had a solid career as a scientist, his disinformation and hostility towards the scientists that held him accountable should be the centerpiece of his legacy.  


Popular posts from this blog

Food Babe Visits My University

-
Image
It was 6:30 pm in the lab and I was just thinking about the last things I'd need to get done before I could go home.  Typical night.  Usually I'm riding home about 7 pm, but an email popped up asking me if I was going to go watch the Food Babe.  A click on a link would take me to the note on a UF Dean for Students Good Food Revolution Events website.  Vani Hari would be spreading her corrupt message of bogus science and abject food terrorism here at the University of Florida. Oh joy. There's something that dies inside when you are a faculty member that works hard to teach about food, farming and science, and your own university brings in a crackpot to unravel all of the information you have brought to students. She might have started from honest roots.  Her story says she was duped by an organic yogurt stand (join the club) into buying taro toppings that were filled with artificial, non-organic colors.  She realized that she could use social media to coalesce
Read more

Film Review: The Need to Grow

-
Image
The recurring ads on Facebook pulled at me to watch The Need to Grow , a documentary film about food and farming.  As someone connected with these areas professionally and personally, I thought it would be worth a watch.  Here is a review. First the good things.  The film is nicely shot and well written.  The majority of the work builds on themes such as nutritious diets healthy soils, and efficient energy. Those are the central underlying values of the film, and ones that I wholly endorse.  However, where the film falls apart is in its approaches to achieve those end points.  Two of the "experts" recruited for the film are none other than Jeffrey Smith and Vandana Shiva, two people with little training in science or farming (and no, Vandana Shiva is not a physicist as the film claims).  The narrator is actress Rosario Dawson, who early in the film makes the proclamation, "Agriculture is the most destructive human activity on the planet." It is clear where t
Read more

Coordinated Disinformation Campaigns on Twitter

-
Image
 Today on twitter I kept seeing the same message coming up, over and over again.  What the heck is going on?  Mia's mom wants major restaurant chains to know that she's not exactly up on the science. The link goes to the Center for Food Safety, an organization that really isn't that is much more of an anti-technology club than a food safety concern.  They speak out against any application of biotechnology, such as the release of the disease-suppressing GE mosquitoes in the Florida Keys.  Somehow when CFS launches a twitter campaign they plaster the Tweet Stream with the exact same message over and over again.  My feeling is that they do this to create the impression of a mass consensus, a movement to essentially bully retailers and restaurants. In this case it is the AquaAdvantage Salmon, a fish grown in inland tanks in Indiana.  First invented in 1989, the salmon has had a rocky road to market, despite the magic of growing to market size in half the time and on a fraction
Read more