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Genetically modified food: yes or no?
September 01, 1998Genetically modified foods have been entering British supermarkets over this last year. The outcome has been mixed: some have been accepted without hesitation by the public - for example, 'vegetarian cheese' and the puree made from genetically modified tomatoes. But others, notably the flour from genetically modified soya beans, have caused considerable controversy. Why is this? After all, products like insulin, interferon and growth hormone - all made in bacteria or in animal cells by genetic modification - have been accepted by the consumer without question. If it's OK to use genetic modification for medicine then why not to produce more food?
Then, within the last month, we've heard claims about experiments, carried out in Scotland at the Rowett Research Institute, on what happened when some potatoes were fed to rats. At the beginning of the week the story was that the potatoes carried lectin genes and that the new diet affected the animal's immune system. By the end of that week the scientist who published the research had been suspended and the research results had been withdrawn. Not surprisingly, the biotechnology companies responded vigorously. A spokesman for Monsanto said: "It is understandable that such scare stories are reported in the media, and during the course of two days this story has hogged the headlines and many consumers have been misled." This sort of confusion is not good for anyone; but why did the media respond so vigorously to this story? Why indeed did the World in Action programme present the story in such a dramatic, and I consider, biased fashion? Why is the public so concerned - or is it all media hype? And what are the pros and cons of genetic modification for food use?
What is biotechnology?
Over the last twenty years, we have learned how to isolate genes from any living organism, introduce the new gene into another organism, and get it to work there. The process is straightforward and can be applied to any living organism. The DNA is isolated and treated with a special class of enzymes called restriction enzymes which break the DNA down into large fragments about the size of a gene or bigger. This mixture of fragments is then forced into special strains of bacteria or viruses so that, on average, each bacteria or virus contains one piece of DNA. Growth of the mixture amplifies every piece present, the mixture is plated out, and the bacteria or viruses are then grown up from single colonies. Each colony is then screened for the presence of the gene in question. That's the hardest part, but the result will be a bacterium or virus with the sought-after gene - sometimes incomplete and sometimes with other adjacent genes as well. Growing up that bacterial clone then gives milligram amounts of the gene, which can be sequenced, trimmed and special DNA signals added to it called promoters, before it is inserted into the DNA of a bacterium, plant or animal. Because the genetic code is universal, the gene will work in the new host provided the right signals have been attached, and in this way we can make human interferon, insulin or growth hormone in bacteria. In exactly the same way we can now modify plants and animals. The old species barriers have gone.
This technology will lead to many new crop products of three general types:
1. Modifications of the genetic material of plants to extend their shelf life by slowing down the enzyme responsible for the breakdown of the plant cell walls, for example the new tomato, and a melon to come;
2. Modification of the genetic material of plants to produce novel parental lines for the production of new F1 hybrids, for example, rape;
3. Modification of the genetic material of plants to introduce resistance to herbicides or pests, for example, soya, potatoes, cotton and corn.
Modern times.
First, let me make a general comment on the times in which we live. Jennifer Wallace, in her introduction to a recently published book called Consuming Passions, says:
"We live in uncertain times. Though the end of the millennium may only...have fictional value, yet the mythical resonances invoked by 'the end of two thousand years of history' can stir up panic and disorientation."
Then after commenting on what has happened at the end of other centuries, she goes on to point out that the end of this century is characterised by a popular feeling of powerlessness. To quote:
"While a thousand years ago humans worried about God's wrath in the form of fire and plague, now we worry about inner-city decay, youth brutality, complicated machinery."
And especially relevant for our debate, she quotes from a book called The Age Of Anxiety by Sarah Dunant and Roy Porter as follows:
"The unprecedented expansion of everything from technology through communication to shopping has brought with it not only increased demands of choice (in itself something of an anxiety) but also an expanding potential for feeling out of control."....and she continues: "The modern feeling of powerlessness stems not from awesome natural or divine forces, but paradoxically from humans themselves."
Wise words, to which I shall return at the end. But for now, I want to structure my talk about a set of questions.
1. Why do genetic modification of plants?
Two different answers here. The first is to feed a growing world population. Global population is increasing at about 1.5% per year, that is about 87 million per year, and is estimated to reach 8 billion by 2020 from its present 5.9 billion. In addition, loss of land to urbanisation means that the amount of cultivated land supporting food production has fallen from 0.44 ha per person to 0.26 ha per person now, and is projected to fall to 0.15 ha per person by 2050. The need for irrigation is increasing, climate is changing and as people become more prosperous, they replace plant foods with animal foods - which are less efficient in trapping solar energy. So about one-half of the grain produced in Europe, North America and Russia is already used as feed. How are we going to feed all these people? Surely, people say, new approaches will be needed in addition to the continued improvement of existing methods?
On the other hand, others dispute that genetic modification is needed to produce more food. They argue that the planet's food problems are due to economic and political problems, not because we can't grow enough. There's truth in that: for if the world's food supply had been evenly distributed in 1994, it would have provided an adequate diet of about 2350 calories per day for 6.4 billion people, more than the world population. But distributing it that evenly will not be easy, even if the world's population was not increasing. Of course we should try to change some of these practices, but it seems perverse to me to walk away from a potential increase in the world's food supply.
2. Do GM products offer consumers any advantage?
The first two products - the tomato puree and 'vegetarian cheese' - certainly offered the consumer both an advantage and choice. For example, Safeway and Sainsbury sell 170 g of the modified tomato puree at the same price as 142 g of the conventional product - because there is so much less loss in transporting the tomatoes from the field to the processing plant. Not surprisingly the GM puree outsells the conventional product-for they are offered side by side on the shelf. The same is true of the 'vegetarian cheese' which is made by use of an enzyme, chymosin, made in bacteria by genetic modification, rather than extracted from calf's stomachs.
In contrast, the flour from the herbicide-resistant soya, from Monsanto in the US, offers no obvious advantage to the consumer, but rather to the producer, and the consumer has not been offered choice. Of course, the increased yields from this commodity crop should stabilise or possibly even lower the price of the product. However, that remains to be seen; Monsanto have invested millions in this new technology and will want a return.
So why did the company not put consumer advantage higher up their list of priorities? Several reasons I think. First, the European - and it is largely European - reaction from consumers took them by surprise, second it made good commercial sense for Monsanto to offer a package of herbicide and herbicide-resistant seed. Third, and most important, the science was possible. Herbicide resistance genes turned out to be single genes, and these are much easier to transfer then the complex gene systems responsible for say, drought resistance.
3. Are these new foods safe?
Specifically, is this new soya safe? Herbicide-resistant soya was genetically modified by the introduction of a gene from a soil bacterium to make the plant resistant to the herbicide glyphosate. Herbicide-resistant soya has real advantages for the farmer, and this new crop, which accounted for only 2% of the crop in 1996, was up to 15% in 1997 and is predicted to be 40% in 1998.
But how do we know if it's safe? Before it can be used in Britain, it needs Government approval and Ministers take the advice of the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes, which I chaired for nine years. This expert Committee, which includes a consumer representative and an ethical advisor, considered this new product to be as safe as conventional soya, and so advised the Minister. We do not eat soya but the flour made by grinding and defatting the beans. This means that both the added gene and the new enzyme are degraded, and I do not see how they can be of harm in the diet. What we can't exclude is that there might be some unusual allergic reaction to the degraded new protein, but we know enough - not everything unfortunately - to know that it is very unlikely. This is an area where I think more research is needed, and also some long-term monitoring.
But trust in the regulatory process has been eroded recently, especially by the BSE outbreak, where some government scientists and some civil servants appear to have set safety concerns aside for commercial reasons. This Government is seeking to re-establish trust in the regulatory system by opening up the approval procedure. Agenda and summaries of decisions by the Novel Foods Committee have been published for years, now Minutes are being published, the Internet is being used for rapid, widespread communication, and consideration is being given to increasing the number of consumer representatives, and meeting in public.
Is this going to be enough? I am unsure. We live in a time when everyone wants to know everything about everything. I have no concerns about that in theory, but how do we translate it into practice? Perhaps you have some ideas?
4. Why has choice not been offered with GM soya?
The majority of retailers have not been able to offer their customers choice between a modified and an unmodified soya product, because of the lack of segregation in the United States. The Iceland chain has offered choice, for its 200 own label products only, by buying soya in Brazil, where the modified soya has not yet been sown. But it is unlikely that they will be able to do that beyond 2000.
But why didn't Monsanto segregate to start with? First, because although Monsanto sells the seed and herbicide, the shipping is in others' hands. It is not surprising that North American farmers are unwilling to segregate, since there seems to be little demand for it in North America, while the costs would be considerable and would counter any benefit of growing them. And why didn't we Europeans insist that the US segregate? Simply because we had no grounds to do so. The only reason for excluding a food import is on health grounds and there is no evidence at all for harm. The US Government has clearly stated that any attempt to ban the import of soya would be considered a breach of WTO agreements, and that it would take appropriate action.
But could we, with the wisdom of hindsight, have done more? We could have moved earlier to anticipate and co-ordinate the European response (what's new?), but even in hindsight, I do not think we could have forced segregation in the US. They simply would not have believed us - though they do now - and I cannot see the US taking any step to disadvantage themselves over GM crops; just look at their stance over global-warming. We must live in the real world in this debate, and not waste our energy and time on unobtainable objectives.
5. What about the effect on the environment?
The public have been equally, or more, concerned about the effect on the environment. Will these crops lead to an increase in the use of herbicides? Will the modified genes escape into the environment to fill our fields with resistant rape, or will the genes spread to other species? These problems are regulated by the Advisory Committee for Release into the Environment, a committee including a wide variety of skills and views, including 'green' ones. They too have worked on a case by case basis, but are now looking at the possible net effect of several releases. Both expert Advisory Committees are discussing the introduction of some post-marketing monitoring. In these discussions I think that it is important to compare the new practice with current practice; for there is no more reason to think that a gene from a soil bacterium will escape than one of the 100,000 plant genes, and farmers do know how to deal with 'volunteers' in next year's crops, by use of a suitable herbicide.
But is the current regulatory procedure, sufficient in the early days of releases, still adequate, now releases are coming through thick and fast? Personally, I do not think so, and we may wish to discuss just how the regulatory processes could be modified - non-genetically - to increase transparency, public accountability and, crucially, to pick up possible wider implications.
6. What about consumer choice?
If GM soya is as safe as unmodified soya, and we can control adverse effects on the environment, do I want to eat it? Why has there been so much consumer concern because of the absence of choice? Are there ethical issues lying behind such consumer concerns? Let me try and distinguish several issues.
The first is the deep conviction that certain sorts of genetic modification of plants are an unacceptable kind of tampering with nature. This is an attitude expressed recently by the Prince of Wales. This issue runs right back into the question of what people believe about the mechanisms of the natural world, and here scientists and non-scientists will disagree. Scientists see the world as a unity, and importantly a changing unity. So it doesn't seem odd to a scientist to place an experimental flounder gene into a non-commercial tomato, although that would not have occurred naturally. Nor does it seem odd to me as a Christian - it is all God's world. There is of course a separate issue of care and stewardship, but is it intrinsically wrong, even wicked, to move genes around in the way I have described? We will no doubt discuss that.
The second ethical issue is what you might think of as a standard utilitarian cost/benefit analysis, balancing risks of the introduction of GMOs against the likely benefits to consumers, to farmers, and to industry. There are two steps here: the first is to identify the risk of occurrence - and that is a task for the scientist - and the second is to decide whether you think the risk is worth taking, and that must involve a wider community. After all, we take risks every day. A related question to which we have no community position is what one thinks about the precautionary principle, that is to say, whether it is ethically required that one should play safe, or whether it is not actually a mistake to always play safe.
Finally there are issues of rights and justice, about the allocation of benefits and burdens, who stands to win, who stands to lose, whether the gains from GMOs are likely to be distributed fairly. Do consumers have an absolute right to choose not to consume genetically modified foods? That raises questions about upon whom the costs will fall of making those provisions, whether their rights come before other people's rights, whether choice is an absolute value. After all, we are not able to exert such absolute choice when we are sick. Segregation will raise costs; what about those who need cheap and cheaper food? Is this all a middle-class indulgence? Here issues about the developing world are also relevant. These issues are raised by GMOs, but are they intrinsic to the technology?
In summary, GM foods seem to have become a lightning rod for many modern concerns: anxiety about the future of society; scepticism about the regulatory process; the gusts of anxiety about our food - whether it should be organic, pasteurised or GM - hostility to high intensity agriculture; and particularly concern about the way in which the agrifood business has recently consolidated into about six companies world-wide. So decisions about the future of our food are being taken in the US or in Switzerland. Consumers feel they have lost control and blame the technology.
At this point, we are back to where I started. My own position is that the global benefits so outweigh the risks that this technology is with us to stay. But what should we be doing about it, how, and very importantly, why? There is plenty there to talk about!
British Association for the Advancement of Science (The BA)
Over the last twenty years, we have learned how to isolate genes from any living organism, introduce the new gene into another organism, and get it to work there. The process is straightforward and can be applied to any living organism. The DNA is isolated and treated with a special class of enzymes called restriction enzymes which break the DNA down into large fragments about the size of a gene or bigger. This mixture of fragments is then forced into special strains of bacteria or viruses so that, on average, each bacteria or virus contains one piece of DNA. Growth of the mixture amplifies every piece present, the mixture is plated out, and the bacteria or viruses are then grown up from single colonies. Each colony is then screened for the presence of the gene in question. That's the hardest part, but the result will be a bacterium or virus with the sought-after gene - sometimes incomplete and sometimes with other adjacent genes as well. Growing up that bacterial clone then gives milligram amounts of the gene, which can be sequenced, trimmed and special DNA signals added to it called promoters, before it is inserted into the DNA of a bacterium, plant or animal. Because the genetic code is universal, the gene will work in the new host provided the right signals have been attached, and in this way we can make human interferon, insulin or growth hormone in bacteria. In exactly the same way we can now modify plants and animals. The old species barriers have gone.
This technology will lead to many new crop products of three general types:
1. Modifications of the genetic material of plants to extend their shelf life by slowing down the enzyme responsible for the breakdown of the plant cell walls, for example the new tomato, and a melon to come;
2. Modification of the genetic material of plants to produce novel parental lines for the production of new F1 hybrids, for example, rape;
3. Modification of the genetic material of plants to introduce resistance to herbicides or pests, for example, soya, potatoes, cotton and corn.
Modern times.
First, let me make a general comment on the times in which we live. Jennifer Wallace, in her introduction to a recently published book called Consuming Passions, says:
"We live in uncertain times. Though the end of the millennium may only...have fictional value, yet the mythical resonances invoked by 'the end of two thousand years of history' can stir up panic and disorientation."
Then after commenting on what has happened at the end of other centuries, she goes on to point out that the end of this century is characterised by a popular feeling of powerlessness. To quote:
"While a thousand years ago humans worried about God's wrath in the form of fire and plague, now we worry about inner-city decay, youth brutality, complicated machinery."
And especially relevant for our debate, she quotes from a book called The Age Of Anxiety by Sarah Dunant and Roy Porter as follows:
"The unprecedented expansion of everything from technology through communication to shopping has brought with it not only increased demands of choice (in itself something of an anxiety) but also an expanding potential for feeling out of control."....and she continues: "The modern feeling of powerlessness stems not from awesome natural or divine forces, but paradoxically from humans themselves."
Wise words, to which I shall return at the end. But for now, I want to structure my talk about a set of questions.
1. Why do genetic modification of plants?
Two different answers here. The first is to feed a growing world population. Global population is increasing at about 1.5% per year, that is about 87 million per year, and is estimated to reach 8 billion by 2020 from its present 5.9 billion. In addition, loss of land to urbanisation means that the amount of cultivated land supporting food production has fallen from 0.44 ha per person to 0.26 ha per person now, and is projected to fall to 0.15 ha per person by 2050. The need for irrigation is increasing, climate is changing and as people become more prosperous, they replace plant foods with animal foods - which are less efficient in trapping solar energy. So about one-half of the grain produced in Europe, North America and Russia is already used as feed. How are we going to feed all these people? Surely, people say, new approaches will be needed in addition to the continued improvement of existing methods?
On the other hand, others dispute that genetic modification is needed to produce more food. They argue that the planet's food problems are due to economic and political problems, not because we can't grow enough. There's truth in that: for if the world's food supply had been evenly distributed in 1994, it would have provided an adequate diet of about 2350 calories per day for 6.4 billion people, more than the world population. But distributing it that evenly will not be easy, even if the world's population was not increasing. Of course we should try to change some of these practices, but it seems perverse to me to walk away from a potential increase in the world's food supply.
2. Do GM products offer consumers any advantage?
The first two products - the tomato puree and 'vegetarian cheese' - certainly offered the consumer both an advantage and choice. For example, Safeway and Sainsbury sell 170 g of the modified tomato puree at the same price as 142 g of the conventional product - because there is so much less loss in transporting the tomatoes from the field to the processing plant. Not surprisingly the GM puree outsells the conventional product-for they are offered side by side on the shelf. The same is true of the 'vegetarian cheese' which is made by use of an enzyme, chymosin, made in bacteria by genetic modification, rather than extracted from calf's stomachs.
In contrast, the flour from the herbicide-resistant soya, from Monsanto in the US, offers no obvious advantage to the consumer, but rather to the producer, and the consumer has not been offered choice. Of course, the increased yields from this commodity crop should stabilise or possibly even lower the price of the product. However, that remains to be seen; Monsanto have invested millions in this new technology and will want a return.
So why did the company not put consumer advantage higher up their list of priorities? Several reasons I think. First, the European - and it is largely European - reaction from consumers took them by surprise, second it made good commercial sense for Monsanto to offer a package of herbicide and herbicide-resistant seed. Third, and most important, the science was possible. Herbicide resistance genes turned out to be single genes, and these are much easier to transfer then the complex gene systems responsible for say, drought resistance.
3. Are these new foods safe?
Specifically, is this new soya safe? Herbicide-resistant soya was genetically modified by the introduction of a gene from a soil bacterium to make the plant resistant to the herbicide glyphosate. Herbicide-resistant soya has real advantages for the farmer, and this new crop, which accounted for only 2% of the crop in 1996, was up to 15% in 1997 and is predicted to be 40% in 1998.
But how do we know if it's safe? Before it can be used in Britain, it needs Government approval and Ministers take the advice of the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes, which I chaired for nine years. This expert Committee, which includes a consumer representative and an ethical advisor, considered this new product to be as safe as conventional soya, and so advised the Minister. We do not eat soya but the flour made by grinding and defatting the beans. This means that both the added gene and the new enzyme are degraded, and I do not see how they can be of harm in the diet. What we can't exclude is that there might be some unusual allergic reaction to the degraded new protein, but we know enough - not everything unfortunately - to know that it is very unlikely. This is an area where I think more research is needed, and also some long-term monitoring.
But trust in the regulatory process has been eroded recently, especially by the BSE outbreak, where some government scientists and some civil servants appear to have set safety concerns aside for commercial reasons. This Government is seeking to re-establish trust in the regulatory system by opening up the approval procedure. Agenda and summaries of decisions by the Novel Foods Committee have been published for years, now Minutes are being published, the Internet is being used for rapid, widespread communication, and consideration is being given to increasing the number of consumer representatives, and meeting in public.
Is this going to be enough? I am unsure. We live in a time when everyone wants to know everything about everything. I have no concerns about that in theory, but how do we translate it into practice? Perhaps you have some ideas?
4. Why has choice not been offered with GM soya?
The majority of retailers have not been able to offer their customers choice between a modified and an unmodified soya product, because of the lack of segregation in the United States. The Iceland chain has offered choice, for its 200 own label products only, by buying soya in Brazil, where the modified soya has not yet been sown. But it is unlikely that they will be able to do that beyond 2000.
But why didn't Monsanto segregate to start with? First, because although Monsanto sells the seed and herbicide, the shipping is in others' hands. It is not surprising that North American farmers are unwilling to segregate, since there seems to be little demand for it in North America, while the costs would be considerable and would counter any benefit of growing them. And why didn't we Europeans insist that the US segregate? Simply because we had no grounds to do so. The only reason for excluding a food import is on health grounds and there is no evidence at all for harm. The US Government has clearly stated that any attempt to ban the import of soya would be considered a breach of WTO agreements, and that it would take appropriate action.
But could we, with the wisdom of hindsight, have done more? We could have moved earlier to anticipate and co-ordinate the European response (what's new?), but even in hindsight, I do not think we could have forced segregation in the US. They simply would not have believed us - though they do now - and I cannot see the US taking any step to disadvantage themselves over GM crops; just look at their stance over global-warming. We must live in the real world in this debate, and not waste our energy and time on unobtainable objectives.
5. What about the effect on the environment?
The public have been equally, or more, concerned about the effect on the environment. Will these crops lead to an increase in the use of herbicides? Will the modified genes escape into the environment to fill our fields with resistant rape, or will the genes spread to other species? These problems are regulated by the Advisory Committee for Release into the Environment, a committee including a wide variety of skills and views, including 'green' ones. They too have worked on a case by case basis, but are now looking at the possible net effect of several releases. Both expert Advisory Committees are discussing the introduction of some post-marketing monitoring. In these discussions I think that it is important to compare the new practice with current practice; for there is no more reason to think that a gene from a soil bacterium will escape than one of the 100,000 plant genes, and farmers do know how to deal with 'volunteers' in next year's crops, by use of a suitable herbicide.
But is the current regulatory procedure, sufficient in the early days of releases, still adequate, now releases are coming through thick and fast? Personally, I do not think so, and we may wish to discuss just how the regulatory processes could be modified - non-genetically - to increase transparency, public accountability and, crucially, to pick up possible wider implications.
6. What about consumer choice?
If GM soya is as safe as unmodified soya, and we can control adverse effects on the environment, do I want to eat it? Why has there been so much consumer concern because of the absence of choice? Are there ethical issues lying behind such consumer concerns? Let me try and distinguish several issues.
The first is the deep conviction that certain sorts of genetic modification of plants are an unacceptable kind of tampering with nature. This is an attitude expressed recently by the Prince of Wales. This issue runs right back into the question of what people believe about the mechanisms of the natural world, and here scientists and non-scientists will disagree. Scientists see the world as a unity, and importantly a changing unity. So it doesn't seem odd to a scientist to place an experimental flounder gene into a non-commercial tomato, although that would not have occurred naturally. Nor does it seem odd to me as a Christian - it is all God's world. There is of course a separate issue of care and stewardship, but is it intrinsically wrong, even wicked, to move genes around in the way I have described? We will no doubt discuss that.
The second ethical issue is what you might think of as a standard utilitarian cost/benefit analysis, balancing risks of the introduction of GMOs against the likely benefits to consumers, to farmers, and to industry. There are two steps here: the first is to identify the risk of occurrence - and that is a task for the scientist - and the second is to decide whether you think the risk is worth taking, and that must involve a wider community. After all, we take risks every day. A related question to which we have no community position is what one thinks about the precautionary principle, that is to say, whether it is ethically required that one should play safe, or whether it is not actually a mistake to always play safe.
Finally there are issues of rights and justice, about the allocation of benefits and burdens, who stands to win, who stands to lose, whether the gains from GMOs are likely to be distributed fairly. Do consumers have an absolute right to choose not to consume genetically modified foods? That raises questions about upon whom the costs will fall of making those provisions, whether their rights come before other people's rights, whether choice is an absolute value. After all, we are not able to exert such absolute choice when we are sick. Segregation will raise costs; what about those who need cheap and cheaper food? Is this all a middle-class indulgence? Here issues about the developing world are also relevant. These issues are raised by GMOs, but are they intrinsic to the technology?
In summary, GM foods seem to have become a lightning rod for many modern concerns: anxiety about the future of society; scepticism about the regulatory process; the gusts of anxiety about our food - whether it should be organic, pasteurised or GM - hostility to high intensity agriculture; and particularly concern about the way in which the agrifood business has recently consolidated into about six companies world-wide. So decisions about the future of our food are being taken in the US or in Switzerland. Consumers feel they have lost control and blame the technology.
At this point, we are back to where I started. My own position is that the global benefits so outweigh the risks that this technology is with us to stay. But what should we be doing about it, how, and very importantly, why? There is plenty there to talk about!
British Association for the Advancement of Science (The BA)
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Scientific Explorer's Glow in the Dark Fun Lab Science Kit by Scientific Explorer You will love setting up your own Glow in the Dark Fun Lab. Create a light |
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What Is the World Made Of? All About Solids, Liquids, and Gases (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science, Stage 2) by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld (Author), Paul Meisel (Author) Did you ever walk through a wall? Drink a glass of blocks? Have you ever played with a lemonade doll, or put on milk for socks? This latest addition to the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science series introduces the youngest readers to an important science concept: the differences between solids, liquids, and gases. Any child who wants to know why he can't walk through a wall will enjoy Kathleen Zoehfeld's simple text and Paul Meisel's playful illustrations. |
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