Sir Richard Roberts, who shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of RNA splicing, has spent the past decade waging a campaign far removed from the laboratory. Now 82, the Chief Scientific Officer of New England Biolabs sat down with The Storm Media in Taipei to make the case that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) represent not a threat to public health, but one of the most powerful tools available to address global hunger and climate change.
Beyond The Safety Debate
Roberts is blunt about where the science stands. "The opposition claims GMO crops are dangerous," he told The Storm Media. "The pro-science side tells you that, based on research, GMO crops are safe — and no scientist considers them dangerous. Over the past 30 years, millions of people have eaten genetically modified food. Europe has long used GMO crops to feed livestock, including cattle, sheep, and pigs, and this has never been a problem. So how can anyone claim they are dangerous?"
He traces the roots of public resistance not to evidence, but to a coordinated campaign of misinformation. Roberts specifically criticises Greenpeace, arguing that the organisation has spread scientifically unfounded fear of GMOs for financial reasons. He claims that when GMO crops first emerged, Greenpeace initially said only that their safety was uncertain — a position he maintains was deployed strategically to block American companies, including Monsanto, from entering the European market. The tactic worked: donations to Greenpeace reportedly tripled within a year. "The money is the real reason they oppose GMOs," he said. "Opposition is their most effective fundraising tool."
The EU's early adoption of restrictive GMO legislation, shaped in part by that climate of fear, is a central frustration for Roberts. He acknowledges some recent progress — Finland's Green Party now supports GMOs, the UK has eased its regulations, and 46 countries have approved at least one GMO crop — but insists that until the EU changes its laws, the global impact of the technology will remain constrained. "The EU has not changed its legal position on GMOs," he said, "and that makes me very unhappy.
A Critical Tool For Climate And Food Security
Roberts is clear that the stakes extend well beyond regulatory politics. "Facing the twin crises of climate change and food security, GMO crops can play a vital role," he said. "They can be part of the solution — capable of saving the 800 million people around the world who are on the edge of starvation."
He points to ongoing research into crops engineered to absorb greater quantities of carbon dioxide and methane, which could contribute to reducing atmospheric greenhouse gases. As a concrete example of nutritional benefit, he cites Golden Rice — a variety modified to produce beta-carotene, a precursor of Vitamin A — as a technology that could help address severe Vitamin A deficiency in developing countries. "Modern biotechnology using GMO techniques can accelerate evolution, more precisely and more predictably," he explained. "All living things on Earth are constantly changing through evolution, mutation, and natural selection. We are simply speeding that process up."
The Laureate Science Alliance
In 2016, Roberts founded the Laureate Science Alliance (LSA) and launched a letter urging the world to take a science-based view of GMO crops. To date, 183 Nobel laureates have signed on. His next target is the Vatican. Roberts believes that an endorsement from the Pope — and through him the world's 1.4 billion Catholics — could shift the conversation in Europe and beyond in ways that scientific argument alone has failed to do.
The LSA campaign is not Roberts' first foray into international advocacy. He described one episode that stands out: reading in Nature about the case of Bulgarian nurses jailed in Libya and sentenced to death after being accused, without credible evidence, of deliberately infecting over 400 children with HIV at a hospital in Benghazi. Roberts organised a letter signed by Nobel laureates, visited the Libyan mission at the United Nations, and eventually flew to Libya to make his case directly to a son of then-leader Muammar Gaddafi. The nurses were released shortly after. "You don't need a Nobel Prize to take action when you see something wrong," he told the audience at Academia Sinica. "You just
need to be willing to act, and to bring others with you."
Taiwan's School Lunch Law And An Offer To Testify
Roberts' visit to Taiwan surfaced a pointed local question. Taiwan's regulations currently prohibit the use of fresh GMO ingredients and their primary processed products in school meals — a restriction Roberts views as scientifically unjustified and out of step with international norms.
When an audience member asked whether he would be willing to address Taiwan's legislature on the benefits of GMO technology, Roberts did not hesitate. "I would be very happy to," he said. He noted that a recurring challenge in such conversations is communication itself: scientists must learn to explain complex issues in language that non-specialists can understand. "If a scientist uses words that nobody else understands, they might think that makes you seem clever," he said with a wry smile. "It is actually the opposite — it shows you are not thinking clearly enough."
On Science, Failure and Fortune
Roberts' path to the Nobel Prize was, by his own telling, defined less by design than by curiosity and luck. He grew up in Derby, England, the son of a motor mechanic. His headteacher noticed his aptitude for puzzles and nurtured his love of mathematics; he once dreamed of becoming a detective. A chemistry set given as a Christmas gift when he was around eleven — and the discovery that he could make fireworks with it — set him on a different course. He studied chemistry at university and completed a doctorate in organic chemistry, before a book by fellow Nobel laureate John Kendrew, The Thread of Life, redirected him entirely toward molecular biology.
His advice to young scientists is characteristically direct. In an essay titled "Ten Simple Rules for Winning a Nobel Prize," the first rule is: do not set out to win a Nobel Prize. "Focus on doing good science," he writes. "Ask the right questions. Find innovative ways to answer them. If you are lucky, you will make a great discovery; if you are very, very lucky, you might win the Nobel Prize."
Roberts speaks warmly about failure, which he regards as the engine of genuine learning. "When you are doing an experiment and it fails, that is when you really learn something," he said. "Nature is trying to tell you that your hypothesis is wrong. You have to form a new one. That is where the real discovery happens."
He credits much of his success to good fortune — and to a lesson learned as a teenager playing snooker. After a lucky shot set up a promising position on the table, an older player offered him a piece of advice he has never forgotten: "When luck comes your way, concentrate twice as hard on the next move. Make sure the luck doesn't go to waste." He has repeated that counsel to students ever since.
He also credits the commercial model he helped build at New England Biolabs, where revenue from the sale of restriction enzymes and molecular biology tools funds independent research for around 100 scientists. "We use the company's profits to support research — and we let our scientists work on whatever they want to," he said. "We support good science, and we do not depend on government grants to do it."
*Sir Richard Roberts visited Taiwan as part of the Taiwan Bridge Project, a collaboration between Academia Sinica, National Taiwan University, and the International Peace Foundation.
