The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us that we are part of a living, evolving ecosystem and often at its mercy. Despite all our accomplishments as a species, a virus accidentally unleashed on the world has wrought enormous destruction around the globe, the effects of which we probably will not be able to fully assess for many years. Although we cannot always anticipate the damage an infectious disease will do, our best bet at surviving the fallout is a commitment to science-based policies that fuel the development of better preventative strategies, most importantly vaccines. The same lesson extends to most environmental and public health challenges we face.

To many people, though, a vaccine isnt a biological roadblock to the spread of infectious disease, but a scheme hatched by Big Pharma and their stooges in government to control humanity. Its appropriate to maintain some skepticism of corporations and the governments that regulate them, indeed such critical thinking should be encouraged among consumers. Nevertheless, healthy skepticism and cynicism are not the same, and people must learn to distinguish the two if we are going to make progress in our never-ending battle against infectious disease and other maladies that threaten humanity.

While this sometimes seems like an impossible task to science advocates, the pro-GMO vegan community has illustrated how people with deep ideological commitments can embrace science, specifically crop biotechnology and vaccines, without compromising their personal beliefs.

If you want to convince someone to change their mind on a controversial issue, dont attack their worldview, which all but guarantees they will dismiss your arguments as a threat to their identity. This is a lesson Vegan GMO, a small community founded by friends with a passion for animal welfare, has taken to heart. Rather than attack the ideology of their target audience, the group uses their shared beliefs to encourage acceptance of crop biotechnology and vaccines in the broader vegan community.

Vegans sometimes oppose biotechnology because a particular application of the technology may be tested on animals or developed using animal products. This categorizes animals as property to be used for human benefit rather than sentient, living beingsan outlook many vegans find abhorrent.

But vegans do not just make animal-welfare arguments, they often rely on anti-GMO misinformation, like the long-debunked link between consuming GM crops and developing liver and kidney problems. Popular veganism proponents such as retired activist Gary Yourofsky have also latched onto playing God arguments based on the assumption that natural food is better food. God made a tomato perfectly when he created it. Leave it at that, he argued during a 2015 interview. Stop altering tomatoes, stop altering everything on this planet. Its fine the way it was created.

Jayson Merkley, a pro-GMO vegan and fellow at Cornell Universitys Alliance for Science, says the answer to this sort of rhetoric is simple: stop testing GM crops on animals, which is sometimes required before a new product can enter the food supply. This simple change in the GM crop approval process would discourage vegans from repeating pseudo-scientific anti-GMO arguments to defend their position on animal welfare.

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Viewpoint: Promoting science with ideology Pro-GMO vegans use animal rights advocacy to boost vaccine, biotech acceptance - Genetic Literacy Project