Anti-GMOers want social or ethical concerns to be a consideration in biotech regulatory decision-making. However, this constitutes a slippery slope given that the subjective thresholds they would impose automatically kill science.

Anti-GMO campaigners attacked a meeting of the European Society for Plant Breeding Research earlier this week, reportedly throwing cow dung, urine and rotten eggs at the assembled scientists. They allegedly painted on a wall, “Shit on technology.” A spokesperson for the group reacted by saying that “the science was not silenced.” Dov Greenbaum of the Yale University School of Medicine likens the GMO situation to the townspeople in Mary Shelley’s The Modern Prometheus, whose fears r...