Horizontal Transfer of GMO DNA
To the critical science reader, the claims by the anti-GMO world are a goldmine of intellectual turds. Over the last few weeks I've been blown away by the junk that is accepted and promoted by folks like (we don't know their actual name, just their fake sock puppet name) GMO USA. Unfortunately I've been behind on a dozen writing assignments and can't very well put fun discussions like this into the public space without feeling a bit guilty. However, I could not let this one go! To the rocket surgeons over at GMO USA, the work by Oraby et al (2014) is quite compelling. However, to anyone with even a high-school level understanding of the science, these data are just awful, and the conclusions unacceptable. The title says "Horizontal Gene Transfer" when the authors don't even test for it! The manuscript was published in the African Journal of Biotechnology, a journal with an impact factor of 0.5 or so. The lead author, Hanaa Oraby, has some pu