Science is always looking for new ways to protect plants and the environment. In Hawaii, for example, when their staple papaya was under attack by aphids that transferred the "papaya ringspot virus" to plants, legacy breeding and pesticides did not work. A gene gun sending in a GMO did.(1) In the Wall Street Journal, I discussed how a non-corporate, free modification by academics could save the American Chestnut from the natural blight that had devastated billions of trees.(2)

Democrats still oppose both of those breakthroughs but, in a big flip from even 10 years ago, have now embraced the vaccines they once insisted cause autism.(3)

That may be good news for science and plants. If GMOs that prevent disease, like in the rainbow papaya, are called vaccines, the old controversies will go away.(4) The vaccine approach - induced resistance - could protect against multiple pathogens and pests.


In the absence of an effective immunixation strategy, pesticides are necessary to ensure plant survival. Credit: 10.3389/fsci.2024.1407410

The vaccine approach could involve releasing a compound that attracts predators of insects that target the plant. It could involve evolutionary mechanisms that go into action when a threat is perceived but can be implemented much faster than folk techniques like breeding. Since slow evolution is the only way the natural world can gain resistance, this would be a big win.

Combined with weedkillers, incesticides, and other mitigation strategies, it could allay fears about chemicals and genetic engineering - if activists are truly over their fear of vaccines.

NOTES:

(1) No surprise that when Hawaii, the most Democratic state in the U.S., decided they wanted to ban GMOs, they exempted their papaya.

(2) Like with Golden Rice, a chestnut shown to be completely safe was still turned on by environmental lawyers. Lacking their usual "we're not anti-science we're anti-corporate" framing, they fell back on the broader "needs more testing" and "if there was any demand for this it would already have been done" narratives. No surprise they are a $3-billion dollar per-year industry.

(3) A belief so prevalent among progressives on the coasts that some schools had under 30% of kids vaccinated. Which led to Democrats of 1998-2020 rushing to claim that everyone was doing it. Okay, sure. Good luck finding those Trump voters in San Francisco. COVID-19 changed all that

(4) It will still be a struggle. Though left-wing pundits on social media now gush about the HPV vaccine, when it was rolled out and activists said it was Big Pharma trying to exempt itself from lawsuits like Vioxx, and for a cancer that both rare and easily treatable, allies in media and academia were silent. We'd have to see if the change in science acceptance is real or just because they are being contrary to the Republican who rushed the COVID-19 vaccine to market but then decried it once he lost an election - because Democrats who opposed that vaccine, including his opponent in the 2020 race, claiming it was rushed and unsafe - took credit for it after blaming the President for magnifying the harms of COVID-19.