For whatever reason this seems to be the day of “doing things I really don’t want to do.” It’s not 10AM yet, so things can only get better. Today, I’m taking a detour and writing about something different than money.

More than three years ago, I wrote an article about Youngevity, a company that sells outrageously priced vitamins through MLM that appears to be similar to The $100 Pen Pyramid Scheme.

I’ve learned that logic is not the strong suit of the people who have been scammed by such schemes. For some reason, they ignore the extensive scientific proof that vitamins are a waste of money for most people. That’s enough of a debate on it’s own which is why I wrote: Should You Be Buying Supplements?.

However, what really is nonsensical is that the discussion has turned to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). I think these people realize they are fighting a losing battle and are attempting to pick a new one. I try to explain that it doesn’t help them defend Youngevity, but it’s tossing pearls before swine.

In any case, I’d like to have somewhere to direct these knuckleheads. I don’t mind discussing GMOs, but I don’t want it to come at the expense of discussing pyramid schemes… and explaining why vitamins won’t cure cancer. In the immortal words of Captain Malcolm Reynolds, this is my port of harbor (when it comes to GMOs).

I’m not going to defend GMOs as if they are 100% guaranteed to be fine. I’m simply going to present the evidence that I consider significant.

First there is this from Pew Research. Specifically it seems that 57% of US adults consider GMOs to be unsafe and 37% consider them to be safe. However, if you consult scientists (the people who are most qualified to opine), the same research says that 88% consider them safe and 11% consider them unsafe.

In short the qualified/smart people overwhelmingly believe that GMOs are safe… but the public (perhaps uninformed) seem to disagree. There’s more detail on that here

Some might ask how that happens. It seems that there’s an easy explanation: “The war against genetically modified organisms is full of fearmongering, errors, and fraud.”

The stakes are high: As Newsweek writes, Scientists Could Save the World From Hunger, If We Let Them. Imagine solving world hunger. What a huge accomplishment it would be!

These articles that I cite are long and exhaustive in their research.

What if “fearmongering, errors, and fraud” prevents scientists from achieving such a noble goal of ending world hunger? I think you’d have be ten thousand percent sure that GMOs are greatly harmful and be able to quantify that harm before the bad outweighs the good.

Thoughts?