Slashdot Mirror

I'm guessing no one asked for GMO insulin and GMO cheese 30-40 years ago either, but dropping society's dependence on chopped-up cow pancreases and calf stomachs allowed us to significantly ramp up production and lower costs.

Except Russel Blaylock is a known quack, conspiracy theorist, and pusher of debunked pseudoscience (like that mentioned in your post).

https://geneticliteracyproject...

You are completely misrepresenting what happened. You also ignore that food patents have been common for decades well before GMO was even a glint in the eyes of anyone. You can, and people do, patent foods that were created via "traditional" means....Honeycrisp Apples are an example of this....Now....If a bird ate one of those apples, shat it out on another farmer's field and a tree grew...no one would sue that farmer....if that farmer then harvested those apples and started planting HC trees to commercially profit from his accidental tree growth, the patent holders of the HC apple can sue the farmer because he did not pay them for the rights to grow the apple (rights that come with strict brand requirements)

https://geneticliteracyproject...

Although many EU countries do not grow GMOs, Europe is one of the world’s biggest consumers of them.

And that includes France.

But people need their steady supply of hard cheese and insulin.

I guess there are different types of anti GMO people :D
I'm only against GMO'ed food.

For what purpose? Because honestly, there is no rational reason to be opposed to it. Here's what GMO food can (and already does in many cases) do for us:

- Reduced need for landmass for farming. Increased need for agricultural landmass is the #1 reason this planet is losing forest areas.
- Reduced agricultural waste.
- Reduced need for insecticides.
- Reduced need for resources for farming, especially water.
- Increased nutritional value of food while reducing the toxicity. And yes, there is plenty of that in food already.
- Increased flavor of food without needing to add more of what you can do without (i.e. simple sugars.) Possibly reducing it even.

Apparently, Greenpeace doesn't like these things. They don't like saving lives either:

https://geneticliteracyproject...

So what's your beef with all of the above? Keep in mind, nearly all of the negatives you've heard are either outright lies or scientific fraud. There is zero evidence that GMO causes cancer, or any other negative health effect. All of the claims that GMO will "contaminate" wildlife have already been addressed. The claim that "GMO is dangerous because we don't know what it does, therefore it's probably dangerous and should be avoided" is so stupid it's laughable: With GMO, we know exactly what we're getting, whereas with natural breeding, there are millions of unknowns.

http://www.vocativ.com/272885/...
https://futurism.com/two-decad...

Honestly, there is no reason to be against it. You're basically the same as an anti-vaxxer, only you're targeting something else. Possibly you think natural is better, only it is a fact that natural is NOT better, and you rarely eat anything natural. For example, apples don't grow massively oversized and with much higher amounts of sugar than is needed in order for their seeds to consume and survive. It simply goes against the plant's survival, namely because producing all of that extra sugar consumes energy that wild plants are usually in short supply of. Human intervention is required for them to thrive in all but the most perfect growing conditions (which are rare to find.) The fact is, most plants you eat have been bred to be calorie dense enough for us to thrive on. In fact, they are themselves genetically modified, only the means is different.

Pro tip: Your body can't actually digest most natural plant matter, which means most wild plants are inedible for you. Disagree? Then here's a challenge: Go to your nearest wooded area and survive on only plant matter for a month. By the way: All of these little vegetarians and vegans who claim that humans evolved as herbivores are demonstrably false. In fact, there is no one place in the world that vegans can obtain all of the nourishment the human body needs; they can only live on their diet because of the technology available.

And: we want it labeled.

And this is the most ASSHOLE position to have, because it only serves one purpose: To stigmatize the product so that it can't sell. There really is no rational reason to demand to know if it's genetically modified even though this fact is immaterial to the food, while at the same time you don't seem interested in its heavy metal content, which IS a material fact. You're just an asshole for doing your best to make GMO produce unmarketable. Asshole.

Hence we have laws according to it in Europe ...

That's because Europe is stupid. Really, it is. Just as California is stupid for labeling cofee as carcinogenic (It has a ring of truth to it, but this is all relative. Practically everything you eat contains carcinogens, the question is just how much. And by the way, GMO can reduce said content.)

No, the activists haven't lost: Their fear campaign has already caused a lot of damage, and continues to do so. It's hard to sell produce that doesn't bruise (which reduces huge amounts of waste, including waste of what is needed to grow the plant, such as water) because anti-GMO activists have convinced the masses that it causes cancer or that it will make your dick fly off. This even applies to GMO tech that aims to eliminate the chance of acrylamide (a strong carcinogen) from showing up in cooked plant matter (including coffee.) Somebody has already created a potato with this gene, but they're not going to sell it because the mere fact that it is advertised as such also advertises that it is GMO, and for that reason alone, many will not buy it, hence it is not marketable. Furthermore, entire countries have banned it entirely based on anti-GMO bullshit, in fact it's even banned in most of Europe, which activists use as yet another talking point to try to validate their bullshit. Some cities in California forbid it as well, but California already proved that it was anti-science last week, so that isn't any surprise.

https://gmo.geneticliteracypro...

The best thing you, or anybody else can do, is to actively debunk these shitheads (start by pointing out that every bit of research papers against GMO is either false, outright scientific fraud (this is the most common ), or misleading. Also, Greenpeace does by far the most damage. They spend HUGE amounts of money on an ongoing FUD campaign, and believe me, their war chest is quite big. I'd lobby your Congress critters to revoke their tax exempt status, especially given their more about politics than anything else, and they certainly don't give a shit about science (this is the same reason many other countries have revoked their tax exempt status. People have proven them wrong so many times on this, and every time this happens, they just shift their argument. GMO is a huge opportunity to preserve the environment, and when this is shown to them, they still want it banned. Doesn't sound much like an environmentalist organization to me, rather it sounds more like Scientology, who also claim to be environmentalists.

California is provably the most pro-science province in the United States.

I guess that means we're all in trouble.

No, the activists haven't lost: Their fear campaign has already caused a lot of damage, and continues to do so. It's hard to sell produce that doesn't bruise (which reduces huge amounts of waste, including waste of what is needed to grow the plant, such as water) because anti-GMO activists have convinced the masses that it causes cancer or that it will make your dick fly off. This even applies to GMO tech that aims to eliminate the chance of acrylamide (a strong carcinogen) from showing up in cooked plant matter (including coffee.) Somebody has already created a potato with this gene, but they're not going to sell it because the mere fact that it is advertised as such also advertises that it is GMO, and for that reason alone, many will not buy it, hence it is not marketable. Furthermore, entire countries have banned it entirely based on anti-GMO bullshit, in fact it's even banned in most of Europe, which activists use as yet another talking point to try to validate their bullshit. Some cities in California forbid it as well, but California already proved that it was anti-science last week, so that isn't any surprise.

https://gmo.geneticliteracypro...

The best thing you, or anybody else can do, is to actively debunk these shitheads (start by pointing out that every bit of research papers against GMO is either false, outright scientific fraud (this is the most common ), or misleading. Also, Greenpeace does by far the most damage. They spend HUGE amounts of money on an ongoing FUD campaign, and believe me, their war chest is quite big. I'd lobby your Congress critters to revoke their tax exempt status, especially given their more about politics than anything else, and they certainly don't give a shit about science (this is the same reason many other countries have revoked their tax exempt status. People have proven them wrong so many times on this, and every time this happens, they just shift their argument. GMO is a huge opportunity to preserve the environment, and when this is shown to them, they still want it banned. Doesn't sound much like an environmentalist organization to me, rather it sounds more like Scientology, who also claim to be environmentalists.

That's not my experience at all. I've been on the pro GMO side of this ever since I heard it was a thing, primarily out of distrust of food alarmists (there's enough bullshit about food to turn all of California, where these myths are the most prevalent, dark brown. My biggest peeve of the moment is that people actually think MSG is bad, but the opposite is actually true.)

The the worst offenders have all been Democrats. Their reasons are usually because they think GMO harms the environment (the opposite is true) they think it causes cancer, (false) they're on a crusade to make everybody eat organic (try finding an organic purist that isn't a Democrat. Vegans almost universally fall in this category as well, and try finding a vegan that isn't a Democrat.) Another reason it's usually Democrats is because of their very anti corporate stance, and/or they just hate Monsanto, not even bothering to consider that the technology itself is separate from the companies that employ it. The bill to ban GMO labeling was mostly supported by Republicans and mostly opposed by Democrats. Although Obama did sign the bill, in spite of his base labeling him as a coward for "caving to Republicans", and indeed many well known left leaning people here on slashdot were whining about their "right to know" about food's very immaterial GMO status every time that I told them the only purpose is to stigmatize it (i.e. labeling Jews.) Ironically, these guys want to know that more than they want information about material facts that manufacturers aren't required to put on labels, like the arsenic content of apple sauce.

But, if that doesn't satisfy you, then this should help:

https://www.isidewith.com/poli...
https://newrepublic.com/articl...
http://www.weeklystandard.com/...
https://reason.com/blog/2016/0...

Oh, and if you support Bernie for 2020:

https://geneticliteracyproject...
https://www.politico.com/story...

It's all but guaranteed that if Bernie gets elected, and Democrats have a supermajority in Congress, (the later if which could likely happen, given the shit coming out of Republicans lately, especially with net neutrality) you can bet your ass that GMO would end up banned, which would be a huge setback for the United States.

Adenovirus therapy caused the death of Jesse Gelsinger in 1999.

The resulting moratorium caused extreme damage to the the field of gene therapy, the institutions involved in it, and the careers of those practicing and studying it.

It has also been recently proven that CRISPR causes hundreds/thousands off-target changes in mice.

This seems rash.

Seeing how weeds are apparently adapting, in this case, I would rather compare the use of genetic engineering (targeting selective pesticide resistance) to the abuse of antibiotics. It may provide the intended results in the short term, but long-term systematic (and excessive) use seems to result in the much accelerated apparition of stronger pests, creating risks that may be very substantial and yet have generally not been assessed beforehand.

False.

https://gmo.geneticliteracypro...

Superweeds are super only in their ability to resist one or more specific herbicides. Aside from that, there is nothing that separates them from any other weed found in a farmer’s field, and they are not linked specifically to GMOs or to glyphosate.

It would be pretty bad, but not "fucked".
https://geneticliteracyproject...
1) 60% of US crops grow fine without bees. "...Wheat, corn and rice are wind-pollinated. Lettuce, beans and tomatoes are self-pollinated. The 12 crops that worldwide furnish nearly 90 percent of the worldâ(TM)s food â" rice, wheat, maize (corn), sorghums, millets, rye, and barley, and potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassavas or maniocs, bananas and coconuts â" are wind pollinated, self-pollinated or are propagated asexually or develop without the need for fertilization (parthenocarpically)...."
2) of that remaining 40%, not all of the plants require insect pollination; some are merely benefited by it in better yields but can do without.
3) LOTS of insects pollinate that remaining 40%.
https://www.thoughtco.com/inse...

GMO contaminated crops are bad because organic farmers are sued for patent infringement

This has never happened.

I suggest that you read the article you linked to. That you are holding up a mythical bogeyman was in fact established in the court case the article is about (OSGATA v. Monsanto).

GMO is bad because it contaminates non-GMO crops through pollination.

GMO contaminated crops are bad because organic farmers are sued for patent infringement

Organic farmers being sued is bad because the remaining farmers promote a mono-culture crop which is prone to blight.

Aside from my earlier post about GMO actually being able to increase biodiversity, Greenpeace, who is behind every talking point you've ever made on this topic, has blatantly lied to you, multiple times.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Greenpeace also likes to hold two opposing arguments at the same time about GMO Bt, depending on which side best fits their pre-conceived narrative (without doing any actual research) on that particular day:

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Further reading where Greenpeace holds double standards:

https://geneticliteracyproject...
https://geneticliteracyproject...

Drop the anti-GMO crusade. It's pure post-truth populism and anti-science bullshit. To date there is not a single good argument against GMO. And if that's not enough, the most of the anti-GMO scientific papers about health impact were authored by a guy who has an established history of manipulating his data in order to fit his activist narrative:

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

He's currently under investigation by the Italian senate for scientific fraud. And by the way, GMO has been saving the lives of diabetics allergic to cow and pig insulin since 1982.

Aside from my earlier post about GMO actually being able to increase biodiversity, Greenpeace, who is behind every talking point you've ever made on this topic, has blatantly lied to you, multiple times.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Greenpeace also likes to hold two opposing arguments at the same time about GMO Bt, depending on which side best fits their pre-conceived narrative (without doing any actual research) on that particular day:

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Further reading where Greenpeace holds double standards:

https://geneticliteracyproject...
https://geneticliteracyproject...

Drop the anti-GMO crusade. It's pure post-truth populism and anti-science bullshit. To date there is not a single good argument against GMO. And if that's not enough, the most of the anti-GMO scientific papers about health impact were authored by a guy who has an established history of manipulating his data in order to fit his activist narrative:

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

He's currently under investigation by the Italian senate for scientific fraud. And by the way, GMO has been saving the lives of diabetics allergic to cow and pig insulin since 1982.

The GMO crap they produce now is crap, built in pesticides to kill pests and harm people

The only built in pesticide is Bt, which is a protein that was discovered a hundred years ago and is only known to be toxic to invertebrates. All farmers (including organic) use Bt liberally, and you eat it all the time.

herbicide resistant to pass tolerance to closely related species

Actually there's already a solution to that:

https://geneticliteracyproject...

It's also worth noting that the process of using herbicides greatly reduces the amount of water needed, in addition to reducing the landmass and increasing crop yields.

long life with poor digestibility, basically all the crap ideas

Where the fuck did you get this from? There isn't any evidence that they aren't digestible. People like you with your constant spewing of lies are why we can't have nice things:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/harves...

The proteins that have been introduced into foods, to this point in time, have all been shown to be readily digestible and not similar to any known toxins or allergens.

And don't use some crap source like Greenpeace or some conspiracy theory website if you're going to make a counterpoint.

There's another solution: Population control.

Actually, GMO will help with that, and it won't involve any draconian population control methods, rather the population will, of its own accord, just stop reproducing in large enough numbers to continue growing.

Until the past 150 years, less than 10% of the population had any career other than farming. The best way to keep your farm operational was to have as many kids as you could have in order to have additional farm-hands. Thus, having kids was an asset. However, nowadays, having kids is no longer an asset, instead they are a liability as they cost you money without bringing any ROI other than "yay, I had kids!" Thus, the number of children per female is decreasing in developed countries.

If we can make farming more efficient, we can reduce the need for farmland everywhere in the world, reduce the price of food so you need fewer children to sustain yourself, which in turn reduces the amount of natural habitat destroyed, and reduces the population growth.

And if you had bothered to read TFA, you would have realized that GMOs kills biodiversity.

/facepalm

This statement is stupid on so many levels and has been debunked time and time again. It's not going to decrease biodiversity any more than existing agriculture already does and MUST do, and in fact can help increase biodiversity:

https://gmo.geneticliteracypro...

Biodiversity of untouched nature will almost always far surpass that of farmland, and it’s important to keep as much of that nature intact as possible. That’s the primary argument for modern agriculture: efficiently farmed land helps reduce the area of farmland needed. The use of GMOs also significantly increases yields, which reduces deforestation and other destructive practices used to create farmland, particularly in the developing world.

So your entire counter-argument is moot.

And in northern California, this alternative group of religious nutjobs has warped the science curriculum:
https://geneticliteracyproject...

I'm all for a Teach Real Science Act at the federal level, if necessary.

You can't ever take a companies word for the safety of any of their products. What every one should do when they say things like that is point and laugh.

Actually, Bayer is the least of the problem. Azadirachtin, which is a neocontinoid, has no organic alternative, and therefore the whole organic farming food industry (whose lobby has much bigger pockets than Bayer) would most likely collapse without it. So you know what they do? Well, read this:

https://geneticliteracyproject...

I really, really doubt the European Commission would give one shit about Bayer even if it did have bigger pockets (after all, they don't seem to have a problem fighting giants like Google, Microsoft, and Apple,) but because Europe is so damn afraid of anything synthetic or GMO, they're basically willing to trust anything that the organic lobby says. Or to put it another way, synthetic pesticides are like using a scalpel, whereas natural pesticides are like bashing the problem with a big rock. Because the rock is natural, and the scalpel is man made, they trust the rock more.

It may very well not be a coincidence that the rise in popularity of organic food over the last three decades correlates somewhat with the decline in bee populations.

Glyphosate (Roundup) is not a neonic. It is not even an insecticide.

https://geneticliteracyproject...

The stories about Monsanto suing innocent farmers are myths or more complicated than some narratives portray them. Popular Monsanto myths have been debunked over and over, yet they keep being brought up:

http://theness.com/neurologica...
http://www.npr.org/sections/th...
https://geneticliteracyproject...
https://skeptics.stackexchange...

I would at least recommend an excerpt from The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast about Monsanto myths:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

A source that explains it quite a lot better: https://www.geneticliteracypro...

And no, there is not nearly as much consensus that genetic modification is safe as there is for anthropogenic global climate change.

WRONG

http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/29/public-and-scientists-views-on-science-and-society/
https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/01/29/pewaaas-study-scientific-consensus-on-gmo-safety-stronger-than-for-global-warming/

Well okay, seeing as how I'm part of that 'science industry' as you put it, your claim is interesting if true. Let's see here, the first study detected proteins at a level lower than that test can accurately detect (ergo it was noise), the second one doesn't seem to indicate anything special about GE crops, the third one is mere correlation by a known liar with a made up institute (you could use that exact same bogus methodology to link those maladies with organic food sales), the fourth one has been widely debunked for extremely shoddy methodology, then next couple are about glyphosate, not actually genetic engineering, which is it's own often misunderstood topic, the ninth study was based basically on eyeballing pig organs with nothing particularly substantive and was widely criticized when it made the rounds a few years back, and a quick glance over the tenth one looks to me like it does not actually indicate anything about genetic engineering being dangerous, rather it seems to be criticizing not using a one size fits all approach to testing (not a criticism I would make).

So yeah, try again. Maybe explain to me what the causative mechanism is on the genetic and molecular levels and why it shows up in no other type of natural or man made genetic alteration while you're at it because I never really got that part about the claimed dangers of genetic engineering.

Now, about those bribes, know where I can sign up for Monsanto's Free Money Program? Because those stingy bastards haven't been paying me like they're apparently supposed to.

Hear this ----> glyphosate resistant weeds.

Now explain to us why glyphosate resistance is bad. No, really. Are we reserving glyphosate for some distant future when weeds become mobile super predators, and nobody's publicized the fact?

Glyphosate was a broad spectrum herbicide that could only be used to annihilate plant cover. Roundup-ready crops added a gene that provided glyphosate resistance, allowing gyphosate to be used like a selective herbicide. We have plenty of non-selective herbicides. We have tilling. We have fire. Glyphosate resistance is not anything like antibiotic resistence.

In addition, glyposate resistance was coming, GMO crop or not, due to the use of no-till farming. Glyphosate resistance, like virtually all heribicide resistance, has nothing to do with the crop trait moving into the weeds (the one exception that I know of is 'weedy rice,' where you can have hybridization), but with the weeds evolving in the face of a selective pressure.

Treat it, till it, burn it, but the weeds will evolve to resist any control strategy that is applied consistently without varying the crop and herbicide strategy so as to outpace their ability to change. GMO-free crops will solve that problem.

They're both total cranks. Shiva is very active in all sorts of bizarre stuff. He has a computer simulation that shows that GMO soy contains excess amounts of formaldehyde that he refuses to test against actual samples of GMO soy (something about it being undetectable and requiring a totally new kind of science to analyze).

Manufacturers are already required to display all sorts of things they would rather not, including caloric content, nutritional value if any, and actual ingredients used to assemble the product, some of which may resemble food.

Because those things are scientifically proven to be relevant to the health of the human being consuming it. Meanwhile, every single scientific agency and organization has concluded that there is no proven impact to human health from consuming GMOs.

This is the left's Climate Change conspiracy, where the weight of scientific consensus isn't worth as much as your political loyalties.

Why do you think it stigmatizes anything?

I can't imagine why. Where have you been for the past two decades? Have you really missed the controversy, fearmongering, lies, and generally unscientific bollocks that lead up to this? This push for labeling is not coming from plant & agricultural scientists, and for good reason. It is coming from people who already stigmatize GE crops and wish to do so further.

The science pro GMers like to reference shows that GM food is safe to eat. That is moot. It's what GM seeds do to farming that rational people dislike and GMO labelling is a scheme to apply back pressure at the other end of the chain.

Why do you think it stigmatizes anything?

I can't imagine why. Where have you been for the past two decades? Have you really missed the controversy, fearmongering, lies, and generally unscientific bollocks that lead up to this? This push for labeling is not coming from plant & agricultural scientists, and for good reason. It is coming from people who already stigmatize GE crops and wish to do so further.

Non-sequitur. Whether or not our brains could have evolved the way did without meat (baloney), has nothing to do with whether or not being a vegan now is "stupid from a physiological standpoint."

First of all, there's no scientific reason that one should avoid meat (with the exception of meats cured with nitrites.)

Second of all, it's not baloney. We were hunter-gatherers long before we began planting crops. Before we began planting crops, plants that we consumed just didn't have the energy density that they do today. Not only that but wild plants just don't have the micronutrients needed for our own survival, as our livers aren't capable of producing 8 required amino acids, and most plants don't have enough vitamins B12, A, D Iron, and Zinc, and wild plants especially don't. Most importantly however, is that plants lack creatine, which is why brain development in the early days wouldn't have been possible.

Whitepapers:
http://journals.cambridge.org/...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
Also essential for muscle growth:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

So there you have it, three well cited sources for why it's bad from a physiological standpoint.

While I'm sure PETA propaganda says otherwise, but PETA is definitely wrong, likewise so are you.

In fact, if you want a wake up call for why vegetarians can't survive on wild plants, look here:

https://www.geneticliteracypro...

Random mutation is a lot more dangerous than specific deliberate mutation. Random mutation is old school genetic engineering that we've done for thousands of years. Now we're not throwing the dice anymore, we're being very deliberate and meticulous about the changes we're making and the testing we're doing. traditional farmers are not checking to see what kind of random mutations are happening in his field and he's not testing to see how new strains of his crops might affect people. Why don't you have the same insistence on testing for traditional genetic engineering?

It's called the natural fallacy. You see the traditional methods as natural and you have a bias toward natural VS "artificial". The problem here is two fold. One is that traditional farming isn't natural, it's artificial selection that relies on random mutations. Second is that there is nothing inherently more dangerous about something that is artificial versus something that is "natural".

https://www.geneticliteracypro...

I would also like to point out that there is more evidence for the safety of GMO than there is for man made global warming. If you're freaking out about GMO, then you're not only in the anti-vaxxer camp, but you're also in the anti Global warming camp.

But the good news is that you're an intelligent person and you can read the research and change your mind. That's the great thing about being scientifically minded. Changing your mind when presented with enough evidence is not a reason to be shamed but quite the opposite.

If I had billions to gain, id try and disrupt an industry

There's actually truth to this. The organic industry is VERY profitable, and along with that, spend a LOT of money for political and advertising purposes. So many have this image of it being a collection of small geographically separate "locally grown" clubs, but that's just not the case. The fact is, organic food carries HIGH profit margins, and they don't like having conventional or GMO foods cutting into their sales, which is why they've launched a FUD campaign of their own:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jo...

If you don't want the Forbes link (I don't blame you, but use anti-adblock killer if you want to anyways) then here's another article, but not as detailed:

https://www.geneticliteracypro...

It's a known quantity.

Right. . . It is not like there are tons of new discoveries every day , right? Sorry, but your assertion is absurd. Knowing how CRISPR, itself, works in no way reduces the risk when we use it on all the stuff (you know, life on planet Earth) we barely understand.

How about we perform an experiment. . .you and I both get into fully automated cars. I allow you to randomly change binary bits of my car's programming (much like natural mutation). You allow me to randomly change source code functions, configuration values, etc. . . of your car (much like the genetic script kiddie activities you are asserting are complete harmless). Let's see who lives longest. . . : )

It's a known quantity.

Right. . . It is not like there are tons of new discoveries every day , right? Sorry, but your assertion is absurd. Knowing how CRISPR, itself, works in no way reduces the risk when we use it on all the stuff (you know, life on planet Earth) we barely understand.

How about we perform an experiment. . .you and I both get into fully automated cars. I allow you to randomly change binary bits of my car's programming (much like natural mutation). You allow me to randomly change source code functions, configuration values, etc. . . of your car (much like the genetic script kiddie activities you are asserting are complete harmless). Let's see who lives longest. . . : )

Oh?
 
Just go Google it. There are many sources that contradict your claim.
 
The article does seem to offset some of the OP's claims but yours is clearly false as well.

DDT was widely used because it is highly effective at stopping the spread of infectious diseases by killing the vector.

This was before anybody took a critical look at it, and it had already been in use for nearly a century before anybody had. The people saying it was still safe were the ones following the long term momentum, much as the anti-GMO crowd is saying that millennia old organic farming is safe (and in reality it's not safe compared to modern synthetic farming methods.)

In fact one more thing to add: If you're truly concerned about food safety and ethics, then you should be lobbying against organic food, which has on numerous occasions caused death by food poisoning, which stems from the fact that it requires using cow shit and limiting pasteurization.

http://www.geneticliteracyproj...

Meanwhile, guess how many got sick or died from GMO food? Zero. Not a one.

Another thing: Organic food requires a LOT more farmland for the same yield, and it's worth pointing out that making way for farmland is the biggest cause of deforestation.

No, radiation is optional in organic. Organic just means you grow it in cow shit and don't pasteurize it, which is why organic farming is responsible for hundreds of death and thousands of illnesses every year.

http://www.geneticliteracyproj...

But remember kids, GMO is bad for you, even though nobody has ever gotten sick or died from it.

Strange. How do you account for the rapid increase in autism? Your appeal to military alert systems is quaint, but irrelevant. Facts fight quacks, and you provided none, just ad-hominem attacks.

There are a bunch of possible explanations including changes in diagnostic criteria. It's not just mild behavioral cases being "upgraded" to autism. It's the other way too: I know someone who used to work in a an "autism" care home. The kids there were all diagnosed with autism but they were in reality much more disturbed than this. For example, one of the kids got angry one day so he pulled out his eyeball and threw it at a care worker. This wasn't a bad quality care home: these were kids from rich families.

I'm not anti-gmo

Bullshit.

but to suggest that putting Salmon genes in Tomato plants is the same as just selecting between different offspring is incorrect.

This is exactly why I despise the anti-GMO movement. You and the rest of them keep making up and/or spreading bullshit lies because you have this foolish belief that natural is better and/or you have competing economic interests.

First of all, no GMO food that ever makes it to your plate ever has genes from one organism transplanted to another. The "frankenfood" is just another lie that keeps on getting repeated. But it's just that, a lie, usually spread maliciously by people who have an axe to grind against Monsanto, (sometimes they work for the snake oil organic industry who is struggling to compete with inexpensive GMO food) even though Monsanto isn't the only company that produces GMO plants. GMO foods are the result of a study called proteomics, and usually consist of fewer than 200 nucleotides (one pair of AT or GC is a nucleotide) which isn't anywhere near enough to create a full blown gene, let alone being transplanted from another organism.

Second of all, this actually happens in nature all the fucking time. In fact human DNA carries the placenta of some other animal. It permanently ended up in our genome via viral infection. It's a part of one of three full virus genomes embedded into our genome. We have some 100,000 other partial virus genomes embedded into our DNA.

Third of all, no person and no animal has ever gotten sick from GMO food. Ever. Not once. You know what though? Thousands have died and continue to die because they consumed organic food. That is, the organic farming process that produced the food that they consumed was the sole cause of their death. Tens of thousands more have gotten sick from organic food as well.

Sources: (and lots of them)

http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~a...
http://www.cgfi.org/2002/06/th...
http://www.geneticliteracyproj...
http://www.realclearscience.co...
http://www.americanthinker.com...
http://www.science20.com/chall...
http://www.washingtontimes.com...

You know what though? Your stupid little anti-GMO movement doesn't make single a peep about the evils of organic food. Why the fuck do they demand warning labels for GMO food, but they never make any demands for warning labels for organic food?

Explain that one. Why the fuck do we need warning labels for GMO food, but not organic food, when organic food is the only farming process proven to actually kill people?

http://www.geneticliteracyproj...

There are lots of links.

You have to take their reports with a grain of salt. And basing an entire report on their red list is not a good source. Who is going to dig through that pile to find every species that shouldn't be there?

Your criticize me but you probably didn't even know what Drake's equation was before I cited it.

"Many of the world’s top scientists have challenged his research. Dennis vanEngelsdorp called Lu’s first study “an embarrassment” while Scott Black, executive director of the bee-hugging Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, characterized it as fatally flawed, both in its design and conclusions. University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum, who chaired the National Academy of Sciences 2007 National Research council study on the Status of Pollinators in North America called it “effectively worthless” to serious researchers. “The experimental design and statistical analysis are just not reliable,” she said."

As far as cold in Europe, cherry picking a few UK averages doesn't actually impart much information about what's happening. Wikipedia lists unusual cold waves in Europe for 2004/5, 2005/6, 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2012. It's funny you ask me to stick to actual science and data, when I'm the one who pointed out that the actual science and data overwhelmingly support the case that neonics likely aren't the cause of CCD. You sound like a Greenpeace brainwashed whacko who refuses to examine the evidence. Enjoy your envirocult worshipping, I'll stick with the science that's enabled our society to feed 7 billion people worldwide and land rovers on Mars.

Nice try Mike Adams, we know it's you.

• Don Huber
• Gilles-Eric Seralini
• Jeffrey Smith
• Mike Adams
• Stephanie Seneff
• Vandana Shiva
• Vani Hari ("Food Babe")

Compare this list of "experts" to actual people in the biotechnology fields and you find that the opinions come weighted as expected: Comparison of GMO "Experts". Inb4shillcall!

In all honesty, why aren't we already doing this? The problem with the world is dumb people. If we can selectively breed out dumb people, how would the world be worse?

Cardboard tasting Tomatoes: that's why.
http://www.geneticliteracyproj...
If you start selectively breeding just for intelligence, you may end up losing other traits. And no, I'm not suggesting our children will start tasting like cardboard. Perhaps that really hot blonde over there is dumber than you, but would you want to hit it?

Oh, the cardboard tomatoes don't taste bad just due to the lack of sugar: http://blogs.nature.com/news/2...

That is why we need to adapt the environment to our needs.

Incorrect. It is far more efficient to adapt your bodies to survive the environment. Have you learned nothing from your exploration via rovers? We have now the capability to replace patches of brain tissue with electronics. This points the way to the final solution to all of Earth's "problems". You organic chauvinists may not like the answer, but the truth can not be denied: Your flesh is a design flaw.

Captcha: "Organize" Yes, indeed.

Growing carrots, sweet potatoes,mangoes, papaya, or other vitamin-A rich crops is a much more sensible answer -- unless one is devoted to the current exploitative system.

Thank God the poorest people in the world can afford that and the refrigeration and transport necessary to facility that. Stupid poor people for not thinking of hoping down to the local Walmart sooner.

Golden rice only contributes to the problem (economic and ecological) of monoculture.

Bullshit. You think people want to live off rice their whole lives? They aren't going to get this and decide they want nothing else; this is to help until a more varied diet can be available to everyone. Of course Golden Rice isn't the ideal solution, but good luck changing the socioeconomic problems of global poverty before more people die.

Its purpose is to provide good PR for the biotech industry:

So the good that biotech can do is simply dismissed as PR. Nice spin. I suppose vaccinations are just good PR for big pharma and serve no other purpose.

our GM crops are largely untested for safety, and most of the studies on safety that do exist are ones we've done ourselves (trust us!)

Wrong wrong wrong wrong.

they have led to increased pesticides use

In the same sense that switching from a weekly line of coke to a weekly class of wine is an increase in drug use. Now look at the overall environmental impact of switching form less harmful herbicides and tillage to no-till systems using glyphosate and glufosinate...but of course a holistic point of view wouldn't fit the technology bad narrative.

It's not science, it's scientism in the advancement of corporatism.

Everything's a conspiracy when you're wrong.

Here's a clue. Any paper by Gilles-Eric Seralini contains very questionable statistical manipulation of data.

This article describes the large number of problems that more mainstream scientists have with his work:

http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2012/11/19/anti-gm-corn-study-reconsidered-seralini-finally-responds-to-torrent-of-criticism/

Finally, it is notable that Seralini's funding comes from Greenpeace, and organization not shy about distorting facts.