Irish Famine, GMOs, and the Fight Over Food Security

Name: The Truth About GMOs
Uploaded: 2026-03-20T11:24:53.645288+00:00
Duration: 15 min 24 s
Channel: Real Science
Description: Summary and key takeaways on The Truth About GMOs: Summary & Key Takeaways, covering The Irish Famine In the 1840s Ireland was plunged into a catastrophe when

Real Science

Mar 20, 2026

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15 min video

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In the 1840s Ireland was plunged into a catastrophe when late blight, caused by the fungus Phytophthora infestans, destroyed the staple potato crop. One in six people died from starvation or disease, roughly one million lives were lost, and 1.5 million fled the country. The famine reshaped Irish society and left a lasting memory of how a single pathogen can devastate a population.

The Blight and Its Legacy

Late‑blight spores travel on the wind, infecting neighboring plants and rendering potatoes inedible. The potato had been the primary food for the rural poor, so the disease’s impact was catastrophic. Decades after the famine, blight remains a major problem for potato and tomato growers worldwide, costing the global potato industry about $5 billion each year.

GMO Breakthrough: The Innate Potato

In 2015 scientists released the Innate Potato, a genetically modified variety that carries blight‑resistant genes from wild potatoes. The trait reduces the need for pesticide applications by 80‑90 % and saves farmers time and money. Despite these benefits, Ireland—still haunted by its famine history—has banned the Innate Potato and other GMOs.

GMO Debate and Misinformation

Opponents frequently claim that GMOs are created in laboratories, involve viruses or bacteria, and pose health risks such as cancer. Proponents counter that GMOs can end world hunger, mitigate climate change, and are scientifically proven to be harmless. The discussion is often described as “hysteria,” with unresearched claims shaping public sentiment and influencing government policy, usually for the worse.

Understanding Genetic Engineering

Genetically modified organisms are produced through a four‑step process: (1) identify a desirable trait, (2) isolate the genetic material responsible, (3) insert that material into the target organism, and (4) propagate the modified organism. Traits engineered to date include drought tolerance, pest resistance, and improved nutritional quality.

Case Study: BT Maize

European corn borers cost growers more than $1 billion annually in insecticides and lost yields. In 1996, BT maize was introduced, engineered to produce proteins from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (BT). The transgenesis steps involve extracting the BT gene, inserting it into corn cells via tissue culture, gene gun, or electroporation, and growing the modified cells into full plants. The resulting corn produces BT proteins that are toxic to the caterpillars but spare the crop, dramatically reducing insecticide use.

Case Study: Golden Rice

Vitamin A deficiency is a leading cause of childhood blindness and increases disease risk. Golden Rice was engineered to synthesize beta‑carotene, a Vitamin A precursor. One cup of Golden Rice daily could prevent deficiency and potentially save thousands of lives, yet field trials have faced destruction, such as the 2013 incident in the Philippines.

GMO Safety and Testing

More than 500 scientific studies have failed to find conclusive risk to human health from GM crops. BT toxins, for example, require an alkaline gut environment and specific insect enzymes to be active; human stomachs are acidic and lack those receptors, rendering the toxin harmless. Safety testing includes simulated digestion and acute and chronic toxicity studies in animal models.

Opposition and Its Basis

Radical opposition persists despite the scientific consensus. Incidents like the destruction of a Golden Rice trial and Ireland’s blanket GMO restrictions illustrate how public sentiment can override evidence. The reasons for such opposition remain a subject of debate.

Herbicide‑Resistant GMOs and Glyphosate Concerns

Roundup Ready crops are engineered to tolerate glyphosate, allowing farmers to spray the herbicide broadly. Studies show that adoption of glyphosate‑tolerant soybeans has increased herbicide use by an average of 28 % and contributed to an almost 15‑fold rise in global glyphosate application since 1996. Glyphosate can contaminate soil and water, and the World Health Organization classifies it as “probably carcinogenic.” Monsanto has faced lawsuits alleging that Roundup caused cancer, with juries awarding billions in damages and accusing the company of manipulating research and colluding with regulators.

Nuance and Exploitation of Doubt

The technical complexity of GMOs makes them vulnerable to doubt‑mongering. Pew polls reveal a growing share of U.S. adults—49 % in 2015—who believe GM foods are worse for health, a gap larger than for any other science controversy. Allegations of Russian bots and trolls spreading anti‑GMO memes further muddy public perception.

Critique of Corporate Practices vs. GMO Opposition

While corporate practices such as Monsanto’s alleged research manipulation deserve criticism, dismissing GMO technology outright is “simplistic and misguided.” Rigorous study of GMO effects remains essential, but blanket opposition ignores the potential benefits for food security and environmental sustainability.

GMOs and Climate Action

Ireland’s ban on GMOs contradicts its climate‑action goals. Gene‑edited crops can cut agricultural emissions and reduce reliance on harmful chemicals, yet Ireland ranks second‑worst among EU members for tackling climate change. Equating a GMO‑free status with a “green” label is therefore deceptive.

Historical Parallels and Moral Posturing

The present global challenges of hunger and crop failure echo the Irish famine’s devastation. Moral posturing that demonizes GMOs often drowns out sensible conversation about how genetic engineering could alleviate suffering.

Future of Food and Genetic Engineering

The poorest populations stand to benefit most from genetically engineered crops that can sustain a growing world population. As the technology matures, it offers a tool to address malnutrition, climate stress, and agricultural loss—provided that policy decisions are guided by evidence rather than hysteria.

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Takeaways

The 1840s Irish potato famine killed about one million people and forced 1.5 million to emigrate, illustrating how a single fungus can devastate a population.
Late blight caused by *Phytophthora infestans* still costs the global potato industry roughly $5 billion annually, showing the persistent agricultural threat.
The 2015 Innate Potato, a blight‑resistant GMO, can cut pesticide use by 80‑90 % and lower farmer costs, yet Ireland has banned it despite its own famine history.
Over 500 scientific studies have found no conclusive health risk from GM crops, and BT toxin’s specificity to insect gut chemistry makes it harmless to humans.
Herbicide‑resistant GMOs have driven a near‑15‑fold rise in glyphosate use, raising environmental and health concerns, while corporate practices and public hysteria continue to shape policy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does the BT toxin in BT maize affect insects but not humans?

BT toxin requires an alkaline gut environment and specific enzymes found in insect digestive systems; human stomachs are acidic and lack those receptors, so the toxin is harmless to people. This specificity has been confirmed through digestion simulations and animal toxicity tests.

What are the main reasons Ireland bans GMOs despite potential climate benefits?

Ireland’s ban stems from historical trauma of the potato famine and strong public opposition, which influences government decisions. Critics argue that equating a GMO‑free status with sustainability is misleading, especially as gene‑edited crops could reduce emissions and pesticide use.

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Blight Resistant Potato Seeds Recommended

The video discusses the development of the Innate Potato, a GMO variety resistant to late blight, which significantly reduces the need for pesticides. These seeds would offer similar benefits to farmers.

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Bacillus Thuringiensis Pesticide

The video explains that BT maize works by producing proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis (BT) to resist pests. This natural pesticide is derived from a soil bacterium.

Amazon →

Vitamin A Supplement

The video highlights Golden Rice as a GMO solution to Vitamin A deficiency, a major cause of childhood blindness. Vitamin A supplements are a direct alternative for addressing this deficiency.

Amazon →

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Full Transcript YouTube

This episode of Real Science is brought
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The 1840s were a bleak time
in Irish history. Imagine one in every
six people you know slowly painfully
dying of starvation or disease. Then in
the next few years, as many people leave
the country and never come back. And over
the next few decades the number of
people in your town is half of what it
used to be. During the Irish Famine, 1
million people, or about 15% of the
population died. Another 1.5 million
people fled the country in its
immediate aftermath leading to a
permanent decline in the Irish
population. Ireland and the whole world
was changed forever
due to one persistent devastating fungus.
The late blight or phytopthora
infestans is a fungus that attacks the
potato plant leaving the potatoes
inedible.
The fungus spores spread easily in the wind
and quickly infect neighboring plants. It
was particularly disastrous to Ireland
due to the potato being hugely relied on
for food by the rural poor. By the 1850s
the widespread blight eventually ran its
course
but it did not disappear entirely. To
this day blight remains a significant
problem for potato and tomato growers
that has to be battled year after year.
160 years after the famine, late blight
is still a five billion dollar problem
for the global potato industry. Some
potatoes can be bred to have some
resistance to the fungus but this can
take decades. So the reality is that
farmers need to spray their crops with
lots of fungicide every week
indefinitely. But in 2015 a breakthrough
occurred - a new variety of GMO potato was
developed that can resist the very
blight that killed so many. Using blight
resistant genes from wild potato plants,
scientists precisely adapted a version
of the common potato to withstand the
fungal disease. This GM potato, called the
Innate Potato, can save farmers huge
amounts of time and money and can reduce
the amount of environmentally damaging
pesticide that gets sprayed on the
fields - up to eighty or ninety percent.
And so naturally Ireland with its
history of massive crop failure killing
a million people and its commitment to
green agriculture says  - nope let's ban it
and in fact let's try to ban all GMOs.
Okay so what is going on? "so it's made in
a laboratory and more often than not
they're inserting viruses or bacteria
into these plants" "what you need to know
is that the process itself is flawed."
We've all probably seen debate like this.
GMOs are bad, they're bad for you, they'll
give you cancer, they'll give the world
cancer, and that they are literally the
devil. Yet others say GMOs will end world
hunger, stop climate change, and that
they're completely harmless. There are so
many videos articles and interviews on
both sides of this and the amount of
unresearched unscientific claims out
there to sift through is infinite.
There's an ever-present sense of
hysteria when discussing anything to do
with GMOs and this public sentiment
informs government decisions for better
or for worse...usually for worse. But like
most things, the issue of GMOs is not as
black and white as many people would
lead you to believe. GMOs are not what
will save the world nor are they what
will destroy it. Before we get into
whether or not GMOs are good or bad,
let's first understand what they even
are. Genetically modified organisms are
organisms that have been altered using
genetic engineering methods. The key
steps involved in genetic engineering
are first to identify a trait of interest.
Then isolate that trait, insert that
trait into a desired organism, and then
propagate or breed that organism. Most of
the GMOs on the market today have been
given genetic traits to improve their
quality, provide tolerance to drought, or
to provide protection from pests like
the GM potato I mentioned before being
resistant to fungal infection. Another
big example of this in the world of GM
foods is insect resistance. BT maize for
example is a strain of insect resistant
corn. Corn farmers are challenged with a
number of pests, but the most damaging
are caterpillars that are stalk borers,
ear or leaf eaters, and beetle grubs that
eat the roots. The European corn borer
for example was nicknamed with the
billion dollar bug because it costs
growers over a billion dollars annually
in insecticides and lost crop yields. For
years farmers have largely relied on
chemical insecticides to protect their
crops, but in 1996 farmers were
introduced to genetically engineered
corn with resistance to the European
corn borer.
These genetically modified plants
produce proteins derived from the soil
bacterium bacillus thuringiensis, hence
the name BT maize. The proteins that are
produced by the bacteria are crystal
proteins which are toxic to caterpillars
like the corn borer,
and are introduced into the corn through
a process called transgenesis. The first
step in this process is identifying an
organism with the desired trait - in this
case something that is toxic to
caterpillars. Around a hundred years ago
silkworm farmers noticed that
populations of silkworms were dying and
scientists discovered that a naturally
occurring soil bacteria was causing the
deaths. Scientists now know that these
soil bacteria that are toxic to
silkworms are also toxic to the European
corn borer. The next step in the
transgenesis process is to extract the
desired DNA out of the bacteria. This is
accomplished by taking a sample of
bacteria containing the gene of interest
and taking it through a series of steps
that separate the DNA from the other
parts of the cell and isolate the gene
of interest, usually using cloning
vectors. The next step is gene insertion,
in our case getting the BT gene into the
corn. Since plants have millions of cells
it would be impossible to insert a copy
of the transgene into every cell.
Therefore tissue culture is used to
propagate masses of undifferentiated
plant cells called callus, which are kind
of like stem cells in humans. These are
the cells where the transgene will be
added. The transgene is inserted into
some of the cells using various
techniques, such as with a gene gun or by
electroporation. The main goal of these
methods is to deliver the transgene into
the nucleus of a cell without killing
the cell. The cells can then be treated
with a series of plant hormones allowing
it to grow into an entire plant. You now
have corn crops that contain their very
own insect resistance. The huge benefit
of this is that one, the corn crops don't
get destroyed by these caterpillars and
two, that less insecticide is needed to
combat them. Studies have shown a pretty
indisputable decrease in insecticide use
when BT or similar crops are planted. GMO
crops can also stave off malnutrition in
many parts of the world. Vitamin A
deficiency has been recognized as a
significant public health problem
continuously for more than 30 years. The
problem is particularly severe in
populations where rice is the staple
food and diversity of diet is limited, as
white rice contains no micronutrients.
Vitamin A deficiency is the leading
cause of preventable blindness in
children and increases the risk of
disease and death. Mirroring our Irish
Famine example from before, these deaths
are caused by diseases which thrive in
malnourished people. To combat this,
scientists engineered what is called
Golden Rice. This rice produces
beta-carotene which is the precursor of
vitamin A. It's the same pigment found in
carrots and just one cup of golden rice
per day per person can prevent vitamin A
deficiency and has the potential to save
thousands of lives. It's never possible
to prove a food is completely a hundred
percent safe .We can only say that no
hazard has ever been found to exist. And
there have now been over 500 scientific
studies looking for and failing to find
conclusive risk to human health from GM
crops. Take the example of crops
containing insect resistance - many
studies have confirmed that BT toxins
can only work in alkaline environments
and require specific enzymes and
receptors in the insect gut to cause
toxicity. Humans have very acidic
stomachs and lack these enzymes and
receptors and so are not affected by the
BT crystal protein. Other ways scientists
test GM foods before releasing them to
the public
are by simulating the behavior of GM
proteins in the human gut to see whether
the proteins degrade during digestion, or
more conclusively, to test the GM crop on
animal models like lab rats. The rats are
first fed a single meal of the GM crop
or protein to test for acute toxicity.
Then the rats are fed repeated meals of
GM food for 90 days and sometimes up to
a year to test for chronic toxicity,
which is the type of harm that only
appears with repeated use. Despite many
studies like this failing to find
anything harmful about GMOs there is
still radical opposition. In 2013
anti-gmo activists, heavy air quotes
there, invaded and destroyed a field
trial for Golden Rice in the Philippines
setting the study back months and
jeopardizing the technology's
implementation. Ireland as we mentioned
before is trying to approve blanket
restrictions on GMOs citing the need to
maintain their international reputation
as a green sustainable food producer. So
all this leaves many of us thinking why
are people so opposed to something that
seems to be so good for the world? Is
there any basis for this? While the
misinformation that spread seems endless
and the number of bogus claims that
circulate are frustrating it would be
disingenuous to pretend that the rise of
GMOs has only been a good thing, but not
because of the reasons most anti GMO
groups on Facebook and Irish politicians
are claiming. While things like BT crops do
reduce insecticide use there is another
side to the coin. One of the most common
types of GMO crop around the world are
ones that are resistant to herbicide,
specifically glyphosate. Roundup Ready is
the Monsanto trademark for its patented
line of genetically modified crop seeds
that are resistant to its glyphosate
based herbicide Roundup. So in an
opposite way to the BT crops we
discussed before Roundup Ready crops
mean farmers can use more herbicide on
their crops. One study shows that on
average adopters of GE glyphosate
tolerant soybeans used 28% more
herbicide than non-adopters. Another
study says that globally glyphosate use
has risen almost 15 fold since Roundup
Ready crops were introduced in 1996. And
roundup is not exactly good for people
or the environment.
Glyphosate can leak into soil and
surrounding water affecting wild plants
and animals, which ultimately can hurt
the food chain. And recently the World
Health Organization has declared roundup
to be probably carcinogenic, after years
of debate around this point. Other
research points to its possible effect
on mitochondrial and brain function and
animal models. This research is still
being carried out and there's increasing
concern about the chemical combinations
used in commercial weed killers and
their long-term impacts especially for
the people using it every day. And right
now Monsanto is embroiled in lawsuits
with people alleging that Roundup caused
their cancer. A jury in California just
awarded a couple two billion dollars in
a verdict against Monsanto which is the
third in a string of recent court
decisions involving claims that the
company's Roundup weedkiller caused
their cancer. And while a jury is not a
scientific panel of experts and there's
much debate around the truth of these
cancer claims, the money was awarded on
the basis that Monsanto manipulated its
own
research, colluded with regulators, and
intimidated scientists to keep secret
the cancer risks of glyphosate. We could
make a whole video just about the shady
business practices of Monsanto, so it is
not implausible to think that Monsanto
is capable of something like this. So as
we can see this is a nuanced
conversation and any doubt people may
have about this hugely complicated
subject can easily be exploited. Pew Polls
have found that some 49% of US adults
surveyed said that foods with GM
ingredients were worse for one's health
up from 39% just two years ago. Another
Pew poll published in 2015
found the biggest gap between the public
and the experts on the GMO issue that on
any other area of science controversy,
including vaccines, climate change, and
nuclear power. And to make things worse
evidence has emerged that Russian bots
and trolls have been making great
efforts to spread anti GMO memes among
Western audiences in order to undermine
public trust in science. Yes we should
criticize Monsanto and similar large
corporations for shady and damaging
business practices of which there are
many. Yes we should question what role
GMOs should play in our world and study
the effects rigorously. But to say GMOs
are harmful is like saying the Internet
is harmful. Yes it can be used in harmful
ways but it also has the potential to do
absolutely wonderful things for millions
of people. To oppose GMOs unequivocally
as so many do is simplistic and
misguided. Ireland's push to prohibit the
cultivation of genetically modified
crops for example is completely at odds
with the country's ambitions for climate
action, and it is deceitful to equate GMO
cultivation free status with green and
sustainable. Gene edited crops have the
potential to cut climate emissions in
agriculture and reduce harmful chemicals
in the environment as long as they are
regulated properly. A recent report
highlighted how Ireland is ranked second
worst in the EU for tackling climate
change and will not meet its EU 2020
commitments. Yet the push to blanket ban
GMOs continues as Ireland turns away
from a major tool in the toolbox to help
tackle this problem. And if such
politicians had any sense of irony they
might take a look at the people across
the world
from vitamin A deficiency or the crops
failing year after year because of
drought in East Africa and see the
parallels between what is happening
there and their own country's history.
But instead their moral posturing will
add to the increasing tide of voices
drowning out sensible conversation about
this technology. Like plant geneticist
Pamela Ronald has said, what scares me
most with the loud arguments and
misinformation about plant genetics is
that the poorest people who most need
the technology may be denied access
because of the vague fears and
prejudices of those who have enough to
eat. The future of our society is linked
with the future of food and genetic
engineering of our crops is just one of
many ways we can sustain the world's
growing population. You can learn more
about different food and farming
solutions from vertical urban farming to
producing more insect protein in a
documentary titled "The Future of Food" on
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