While genetically modified foods are one of the world’s great hopes, wacko environmentalists are winning the war against GM foods in some areas of the world and killing people while they’re at it.

In the winter of 2003, Zambia and Zimbabwe faced such a tremendous food shortage that 2.5 million people were expected to starve. The United Nations sent GM grain that local authorities were told not to give to the people. "We would rather starve than get something toxic," said Zambia’s president. Replied a livid Tony Hall, U.S. ambassador to the UN: "People that deny food to their people, that are in fact starving people to death, should be held responsible…for the highest crimes against humanity, in the highest courts in the world."

In the end, starving people raided warehouses to get GM grain to eat. They were reportedly in good health after eating.

Wacko environmentalists would have them die, as in Peru. Activists ranted: "better safe than sorry," charging that chlorinating water could be dangerous. The Peruvian government in the 1990s bought into it. Chlorinating water can be dangerous to few people but Peru discovered that the alternative is disastrous. When the chlorinating ended, a cholera epidemic began that affected 1.3 million people, including 11,000 people who died.

In a new book, The Frankenfood Myth, authors Gregory Conko and Henry Miller outline the lies in the activist agenda and how it came to be that common sense is losing to partisan pressure and poor people, like those in Peru, Zambia and Zimbabwe, are the biggest losers. The authors, both researchers with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an American think-tank, present a well researched, though sometimes dense, scientifically heavy going and repetitive argument that should change the mind of an honest environmentalist.

But in too many cases, "honest environmentalist" is an oxymoron. Environmentalists have an agenda and harp mostly on lies, half-truths and fear of the unknown, the authors say. Environment activists are "more anti-business, anti-technology and anti-establishment than they are pro-safety. They are consummate opportunists. In their zeal to oppose business interests and disparage technologies they don’t like or that they have decided we don’t need, they seize on whatever opportunities appear. They are never silent, never still, never satisfied."

They are similar to the new extreme left in the western world who, out of envy, hate capitalism and America because, coupled with hard work and Judeo-Christian principles, became the greatest modern-day economic achievement in the world. Capitalism has raised the standard of living of millions of people so that people can eat like the kings of history and has ushered in an era of creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. Little wonder that people refer to Americans as great innovators.

The main focus of The Frankenfood Myth are the issues surrounding GM foods. The authors argue that we already know the positive effects of genetically modified foods. Write the authors: "Many benefits of the already-commercialized gene-spliced plants are not in doubt. They include a reduction in pesticide use of tens of millions of pounds, reduced topsoil erosion, increased yields, and net savings to farmers of time and money – with no known detrimental effects on the environment. Increasing the adoption and diffusion of gene-spliced crops can also improve human nutrition, reduce the amount of land and water needed to produce food, and help save ecosystems from fragmentation and development."

The activist plays on fear. "What if…" the argument begins. But if we play that game we must concede that getting out of bed in the morning is a risk. Yet, we do it because the risk of getting out of bed and eating GM food is worth it. Almost everything we eat has been genetically modified and we are in better health because of it.

The Frankenfood Myth begins with what genetic modification means to scientists. It is the common practice of altering the genetic information in an organism. The GM controversy today concerns the taking of a gene with specific information from one organism and typically shooting it into another to get a desired effect. These desired effects include tomatoes that don’t damage as easily during shipping, corn resistant to disease or insects, and bananas with a medicinal property to fight blindness in those who eat it. While no one complained of the older bio-engineered technologies such as gene-splicing, the latest technology is actually more precise and gets better results, the authors argue.

But scaremongering makes for better headlines. Tragically, a 1975 convention of scientists in Pacific Grove, California, marked the beginning of today’s fear of GM food. Scientists speculated on new genetic technology and with little knowledge in the area at the time came up with talk of a plethora of inventive accidents, including the creation of a Frankenstein’s monster or worse. Two years later, scientist James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA and who had been at the conference, told The New Republic: "(The conference) was an exercise in the theatre of the absurd," noting that the science community didn’t know enough to make such sweeping speculative statements. It "was a massive miscalculation in which we cried wolf without having seen or even heard one."

Watson and others regretted their wild speculation but the damage was done. Newspaper reporters exaggerated what was actually said and activist groups made sure to repeat the wild stories as facts. The result today is that even The New York Times is now more likely to quote the socially irresponsible scaremongering Greenpeace than a credible university study on GM food, Conko and Miller write.

Noise from activists has been so loud that they have trumped scientific knowledge. Instead of asking scientists for input to introduce new GM products to the public, governments have put up enormous road blocks to satisfy public fears created by activists. Activist groups need to be loud to get donations and carry on as an industry. Their cry has created today’s over regulation and has not made people feel more safe but more suspicious, the authors say.

(The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution, Praeger Publishers, Westport, CT, is 269 pages chock-full of fascinating anecdotes and details. Find out more by reaching the Competitive Enterprise Institute at www.cei.org or by calling them in Washington at (202) 331-1010.)