How NPR Got Roundup Resistant Superweeds Story Wrong

People from the company's cleanup team collected sludge samples from affected ponds for analysis in the early 1980s. The samples sat idle for years in a company lab, until the GMO team thought to look there. When they did, they found the gene they were looking for in that glyphosate-laced sludge from Luling— a gene that "proved to tolerate Roundup far better than any gene the scientists had created in the laboratory," and didn't interfere with plant growth.

In other words, the scientists found that landscapes subjected to regular Roundup exposure develop organisms that evolve to resist Roundup. Or, to put it another way, while they themselves failed to identify the perfect Roundup Ready gene, wild organisms had done so as a matter of course. How could this information not have raised for them the possibility that weeds might develop resistance in farm fields?

NPR might have missed it but evolutionary biologists predicted it years ago.

Funny thing about nature. The more you try to wipe out something, the stronger it will eventually become.

Lesson in there somewhere, forgot what it was.

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