Tags
agriculture, Biosafety, Biotechnology, Developed countries, food production, GM Crops, regulations
This is my presentation at Georgetown University today March 31, 2014 on B”Biotechnology and Developing Countries”.
31 Monday Mar 2014
Tags
agriculture, Biosafety, Biotechnology, Developed countries, food production, GM Crops, regulations
This is my presentation at Georgetown University today March 31, 2014 on B”Biotechnology and Developing Countries”.
23 Thursday May 2013
The following pretty much summarizes what I know and what is my opinion with regard to the inclusion of socioeconomics in biosafety and/or biotechnology decision making processes.
14 Thursday Feb 2013
Posted Methods, Opinion, Statements
inIn the socioeconomic assessment arena we may do slightly better than the medical research sphere. We typically conduct studies that have a bit larger samples (typical medical studies have 50 or less individuals) and we may not face the number of potential hypotheses that may be posed in the medical field. Yet we do not have proper treatment and control experiments as in the agronomic sciences which allows the researcher to isolate better the relationship between cause and effect. Thus, socioeconomic assessments are subject to many of the same forces, factors, research dynamics and outcomes as those faced by medical research.
In essence, Ioannidis paper is really a wake up call and a demand for ensuring more high quality research and standards to conduct such research. We cannot rely on perceptions, subjectivities and ill-defined anecdotes to guide policy and decision making. Granted, the later are important in helping frame the hypotheses and with thoroughly and carefully conducted qualitative research, can be quite important resources and knowledge to define policy and decision making. We have to be careful about an indiscriminate call for more research as a way to weed out poor quality research.
As Alex Tabarrok reminds us in the blog Marginal Revolution quality checks such as conducting meta analysis of the literature can help address several issues, yet it can also open new ones. In Tabarrok’s words:
Sadly, things get really bad when lots of researchers are chasing the same set of hypotheses. Indeed, the larger the number of researchers the more likely the average result is to be false! The easiest way to see this is to note that when we have lots of researchers every true hypothesis will be found to be true but eventually so will every false hypothesis. Thus, as the number of researchers increases, the probability that a given result is true goes to the probability in the population, in my example 200/1000 or 20 percent. A meta analysis will go some way to fixing the last problem so the point is not that knowledge declines with the number of researchers but rather that with lots of researchers every crackpot theory will have at least one scientific study that it can cite in it’s support.
07 Monday Jan 2013
Posted Opinion posts
inTags
To the quite interesting post in Applied Mythology (To view blog posting click here), I can add that the cost of the impacts of the Anti-GMO movement identified by S.D. Savage in his blog, are much more profound in those countries that need the most this and any other technology that may contribute to alleviating hunger and poverty…developing countries.
In such countries, like my home country Honduras, there is a desperate need of addressing production and productivity issues. Most importantly, the urgency exists to address the needs of small and resource poor farmers with crops and traits which are not likely to be addressed by the private sector including multinational companies. Those likely to address developing countries crops and traits are the international and national research, and academic institutions; precisely those who are more sensitive and vulnerable to increases in the complexity and the cost of compliance with biosafety regulations. Whether these organizations have the capacity to deliver an innovation to farmers are another story and thus one more blog entry in the near future….
We desperately need to rationalize biosafety regulations so that they are indeed protective, reasonable, feasible, transparent, cost and time effective, fair and thus functional. This is the only way to ensure that a potentially valuable tool will not be blocked from use in the future.
20 Tuesday Dec 2011
Posted Background Information, National Policies, Opinion posts
inPolicy and decision makers will have to clearly define what a requirement of conducting “long term” studies mean in terms of data collection, analysis and decision making. Does this mean, for example, that the regulatory/decision making entity will require long term data collection before authorizing deliberate and/or commercial) release?
Note that this requirement leads into an interesting conundrum. How can one collect “long term data” on an LMO release where none has been approved because there is no “long term data” AND How can one approve an LMO release without long term data if required? Obviously a careful definition of what is expected will be critical for designing a functional biosafety system.
The requirement of “long term assessments” also open a host of questions about how to implement such assessment. Will this “long term” data collection requirement be made mandatory for all submissions? Will it be required only for the first application of a specific event? Would this “long term” assessment be done for types of events?
Will this assessment be part of a mixed system, where there is a relatively standard period of confined field trials, multi-locational trials and advanced large trials (such as is required in China) before considering commercial approval followed by a renewable 3-5 year temporary permit – as is done in most countries anyhow- where there is a post-release monitoring assessment, ending in de-regulation if there are no issues raised?
As I have contributed in previous notes, the regulatory lags introduced by these requirements have consequences in terms of opportunities lost, information gained and technology flows which society will need to consider in its decision making processes.