GMO labeling; blood test requirements for marriage

Q: I keep hearing about a bill in Congress that would make it impossible to label GMO foods. And somehow that’s related to the latest attack on Dr. Oz. Can you clarify?—Steven J., New York

A: We sure can. MerriamWebster defines “obfuscate” as “to darken, make obscure, confuse.” You would think a congressional bill called The Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act would be a good thing, right? Well, you'd be wrong, in our opinion. That consumer-friendly-sounding bill is obfuscation at its best. It would KO current state GMO (genetically modified organisms) labeling laws, stop the 17 bills that are now pending in state legislatures and make it virtually impossible for the Food and Drug Administration to mandate GMO labeling.

Critics of this bill call it the DARK act, or Deny Americans the Right to Know act, because, as Scott Faber, vice president of the Environmental Working Group said on April 23's “The Dr. Oz Show,” the bill “is a radical, radical proposal and makes mandatory labeling of GMO foods virtually impossible.”

Fortunately, GMO labeling is now part of a huge national conversation that started, ironically, after Dr. Oz was attacked as an enemy of GMOs—which neither of us is!

We have said many times that we are simply in favor of requiring GMO foods to be labeled, something almost all Americans (over 90 percent) agree with and something that's required in 64 countries around the world, including Russia and China.

No one knows everything about what's good and bad about individual GMO products. But we do know that this bill would allow GMO companies to use a powerful herbicide called glyphosate without your knowledge. This pesticide recently singled out by the World Health Organization as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

For a while we've been so concerned about this pesticide that “The Dr. Oz Show” started a petition asking the White House not to approve a GMO superherbicide called Enlist Duo that contains glyphosate. It required 100,000 signatures to get to the president's desk, and we got over 120,000!

Apparently this kind of public-health activism makes some folks nervous and angry. But we won't stop looking out for your best interests and helping you maintain control over how and what you feed your family! You deserve the right to know what you eat and where it comes from.

Q: Some folks have told me that there’s still a blood test requirement for a marriage license here in Montana— and it’s just for women. Is it true? I thought all the myths about similar blood types were dispelled?—Beverly K., Bozeman, Montana

A: In Montana, a waiver called the Informed Consent/Waiver of Requirement of Blood Test is needed to skip the process and get a marriage license; both the bride and the groom have to sign it, or the bride must get a blood test for rubella (if she's under 50 or hasn't been sterilized). Most other states don't require a blood test at all.

Previously, blood tests were almost universally required (for both parties) for a marriage license. Early on that may have been because there was a mistaken belief that knowing your blood type could tell you if you were somehow related to your future spouse or that, like you mentioned, people with similar blood types shouldn't marry. In the 1930s and early 40s, it was a way to ID folks who had syphilis or gonorrhea—neither of which could be cured until penicillin become available in 1942. But once antibiotics made the scene, most states dropped their blood test requirements for a marriage license.

It's hard to say why only women are checked in your state, Beverly. But since women could protect their fetus from birth defects by postponing pregnancy if they had rubella (German measles), screening must have seemed like a smart move. Despite the fact that a rubella vaccine became available in 1969, Montana still checks for the disease. If you think your state's marriage certification process is unfair, write your local representative to petition for a change, or take a drive to neighboring Idaho, Wyoming, North or South Dakota where neither blood tests nor waivers are required to get hitched.

Mehmet Oz, M.D. is host of “The Dr. Oz Show,” and Mike Roizen, M.D. is Chief Wellness Officer and Chair of Wellness Institute at Cleveland Clinic. Email your health and wellness questions to Dr. Oz and Dr. Roizen at

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(c) 2015 Michael Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet Oz, M.D.