In 2010, Caitlin Shetterly was sick and getting desperate to find a way to get better.
The writer, journalist, new mother and Hancock County native was living in Portland and suffering from a slew of mysterious and troubling symptoms including facial rashes, a constant head cold, tingling and numbness in her feet, legs and arms, bodily pain and irritable bowel syndrome. Doctors didn’t seem to know how to treat her, and despite trips to specialists, brain scans, neurological workups and drugs meant to treat conditions including fibromyalgia, nothing seemed to help.
Finally, Shetterly was referred to a Yarmouth allergist named Dr. Paris Mansmann. In his office, she finally found a diagnosis that eventually led to relief. But the unusual diagnosis — that she possibly had developed an allergy to genetically modified corn — also led her to start asking questions. She wanted to find out what exactly genetically modified organisms are and whether they can make people sick. Those questions, and the answers she found over five years of research and writing, eventually became the basis for her recently released book, “Modified: GMOs and the Threat to Our Food, Our Land, Our Future.”
“It was a huge endeavor for sure,” Shetterly, whose other books include “Made for You and Me: Going West, Going Broke, Finding Home” and “Fault Lines: Stories of Divorce,” said in a recent phone interview from her home in southern Maine.
She said that while researching and writing the book, she thought often of the work of Rachel Carson, the mid-20th century Maine marine biologist and conservationist whose landmark 1962 book “Silent Spring” sounded a loud warning about the dangers of pesticides and chemicals on the environment.
“Rachel Carson was a guiding light for me,” Shetterly said. “Fifty-four years ago, she published ‘Silent Spring.’ We’ve only ramped up our chemical use. We’ve failed to listen to her message. That’s really concerning to me as a mother and as a person who is concerned with the natural world.”
For Shetterly, after her diagnosis, she began the nearly-impossible work of eliminating all corn from her diet. Wind pollination, birds and human error have meant that just about all the corn that is grown in the United States has been contaminated by GMOs, Mansmann told her. And corn in one guise or another can be found in nearly everything — including toothpaste and iodized salt — except foods prepared entirely by scratch and grown by local farmers.
Meanwhile, within four months of commencing a corn-free diet, Shetterly felt like herself again and she had the energy to start figuring out why. She first examined her unusual allergy in a controversial 2013 article in Elle magazine, called “ The Bad Seed: The Health Risks of Genetically Modified Corn.” The article went viral, Shetterly said, and she found herself the subject of some harsh criticism by pro-GMO voices. After some of the dust had settled from the Elle article controversy, Shetterly found that publishers were interested in her story and the personal way she writes. She decided to start work on “Modified” in part so that she could ask and answer some of the questions that had come up in the aftermath of the article.
In the course of writing “Modified,” Shetterly went on three journeys: to the Great Plains, to see farmers in action working their massive fields of corn and soybeans; to Europe, where she talked to beekeepers about the science and the safety of GMO crops continues to rage; and Berkeley, California, to talk to research scientists about what they have found in the lab and in the field.
Shetterly comes across as a careful, honest writer, who neither sugarcoats nor demonizes what she learns about science and agriculture in the course of five and a half years of research and writing. In fact, one of the most important pieces for her was discovering the vast amounts of pesticides that are in the foods we eat — even in crops that have been modified to ostensibly require less pesticide application.
“I think the real revelation of the book is the pesticides,” she said. “The GMO is one thing, but I’ve come to believe that’s really the smaller part of the picture. The bigger picture is that these crops are engineered to work in connection with these pesticides.”
The same companies often develop both genetically modified crops and the pesticides used on them.
“It’s a conflict of interest,” Shetterly said. “It’s a closed loop — and it’s a pretty ingenious business plan.”
And while those companies may benefit from the increased use of genetically modified crops and pesticides in America, consumers and the environment do not, she believes.
“What was shocking to me was learning just how serious the situation was,” she said. “We’re saturating the planet, our air, our water, with pesticides. I’m really scared for the planet.”
“Modified: GMOs and the Threat to Our Food, Our Land, Our Future,” published by Penguin, is available at major booksellers throughout the state and independent booksellers including Blue Hill Books in Blue Hill, Longfellow Books in Portland, Sherman’s Books & Stationery in Bar Harbor, Portland and Boothbay Harbor, Royal River Books in Yarmouth and The Briar Patch in downtown Bangor. Author Caitlin Shetterly will be signing books 5-7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 16, at Bessie’s Farm Goods in Freeport.