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Indeed let's look at it from that perspective: I'm sure you'd be rather suspect of any study that has received most of its funding from Monsanto. Likewise, would you be in favor of retracting any that reached a very shaky conclusion?

On that same token, would you be suspect of any research study that was funded by any one (or several) companies in the organic lobby? The organic industry is massively profitable, and in fact enjoys much higher profit margins than conventional farming. The organic lobby also dumps all kinds of money into trying to prove that GM crops are harmful, and this particular study was in fact one of those they funded, in addition to this one:

http://www.marklynas.org/2013/06/gmo-pigs-study-more-junk-science/

Seralini is himself an anti-GMO activist who is setting out from the get-go to try to kill GMO farming. This is like having a scientist who also happens to be a catholic minister publishing a study proving that Intelligent Design is true and Evolution is false. Of course I'd retract it. And besides, it isn't even just the publisher who wants it retracted, numerous other independent researchers want the same thing because Seralini himself tried to derail the peer review process:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9ralini_affair

I just looked up that pig study, but it seems a bit unbalanced - note http://www.marklynas.org/2013/06/gmo-pigs-study-more-junk-science/ . The rest of your points are good, no need to rely on flawed studies.

But even if you don't have genetic patents they still have an incentive... Patent for drug X that affect gene Y in this manner.. Or Patent for cheaply and accurately detecting gene Z.

You must be new here. Well, on slashdot, having drug patents is bad too. Usually the reasons range from something to the case the summary makes (patents holding back the cure) to drug patents are made so that the drug is only just effective enough to make people better but not cure the sickness so that they can sell more drugs, to the drug company benefited from research not done by them so they don't deserve the profits, even though they spent billions on encapsulating the drug into a safe form, then making sure it is safe, doing clinical trials to map out all possible side effects, and then bribing the FDA to allow it to actually be sold on the market.

And yes the FDA needs to be bribed, in a manner of speaking. There's a surgery I'm trying to get right now that has been done in Europe safely since 1998 in order to prevent my Keratoconus from getting worse than it already is, in fact complete reversal of corneal degradation happens in upwards of 90% of cases where the surgery is performed, but the FDA still won't approve of it being performed in the US. It needs more "convincing", even after 15 years of very good results.

GMO patents are done on genes that are created from scratch. The anti-GMO movement likes to point out research where some scientists took genes from a fish and put them into a tomato, and cite that as their reason for banning it. The actual changes made however are relatively small, and they aren't copied from an existing sequence existing naturally somewhere else. They form protein structures that are literally invented rather than discovered. Last I checked, patents are for inventions. It's very hard to argue that creating new protein structures isn't inventing - the thing you're taking issue with is the means with which those proteins are created, which is completely irrational.

Most of the anti-GMO movement claims are based on what they see out of Hollywood. In fact every claim you just made has been vetted by a former anti-GMO activist (who was one of the founders of the movement) who found them to be untrue, and for the most part just outright made up due to a popular but irrational fear of any genetic modifications.

I highly recommend watching the video here. It's long, but it actually gives insight into genetic research that I never even heard of until seeing it.

http://www.marklynas.org/2013/01/lecture-to-oxford-farming-conference-3-january-2013/

Of course, the popular theory now is that this guy has been paid off by Monsanto and is now a paid shill and mouthpiece for them, because clearly people only make a huge change in opinion when they've been paid to do so. And I hope you know better than to trust Hollywood, Greenpeace, the vegan movement, and PETA, all of which are well known to deliberately lie and spread false propaganda.

There is one good thing that will come of this though. While "the rest of the world" sticks to conventional farming due to irrational fears, the US will be leading the way in terms of future agricultural sciences, which means future economic strength. Think about what Dr. Lynas said: Farming output has increased by 300% while landmass used for farms has only increased by 12% since the 50's. Organic farming would do nothing except reverse that trend. GMO farming will make things even better however. I really do hope that we never forcibly stick "GMO food" labels on anything, because it will have the same effect on agriculture that sticking radiation output labels on on cell phones would do. This effect has created health problems as is - namely the anti-preservative scare. Now instead of artificial preservatives, food contains celery juice as a natural preservative, which has far more of those scary nitrates th

Trust in nature? Excuse me? Nature is the craziest chemical lab ever existed, period. The sheer amount and variety of things and substances it manages to produce is simply astounding (we probably know about only a fraction of them), and a lot of them are incredibly bad for your health. Viruses transport genetic material between species since the dawn of time. That doesn't mean that cloning a neanderthal would be a good idea, or that we can't produce unhealthy things (we can, we can). It simply means that your reasoning is fallacious, or that you're not reasoning at all. Chances are, 99% of food you eat in your daily diet has been artificially selected by humans by trial and error: it's composed by plants and animals that never existed in nature (and would never had existed in nature). Today, bioengeneering permits us to do the same things, faster, better and safer. If there's a problem here, it lies in intellectual property laws and excessive regulation, not in science. We should grow out of this useless natural-vs-artificial dicotomy, and embrace new possibilities in a way that is both open and responsible, based on rational facts and not on witch hunts. Turns out that a rational analysis of GM foods shows that they could be good for both our health *and* the environment. On the GM food topics, hear mark lynas, he is way more convincing than me: http://www.marklynas.org/2013/01/lecture-to-oxford-farming-conference-3-january-2013/

Also, a better link to the story is here: http://www.marklynas.org/2013/01/lecture-to-oxford-farming-conference-3-january-2013/ with some good reader comments.

link to paper http://www.marklynas.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/FCT-final-paper.pdf

http://www.marklynas.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/FCT-final-paper.pdf

definitely worth a read

That's not how it worked out for the Easter Islanders.

The notion that the Easter Islanders died out due to self-inflicted ecological collapse is a myth.

Talking about Fukushima, let's try to be more factual: the expected death toll is less than you'd expect from a major bus accident. So far we know of no deaths related to Fukushima.

Well then I guess Seimens must have done the sums and found that Nuclear power just isn't a cost effective way to produce energy. Don't worry though, I'm certain they will invest that same money in a more reliable means of producing power, like wind or solar.

Talking about Fukushima, let's try to be more factual: the expected death toll is less than you'd expect from a major bus accident. So far we know of no deaths related to Fukushima.

Every once and while, some apologist for AGW theories suggests that "even if the projections aren't as bad as we feared " combatting the global climate crisis will provide institutional support for global governance...." I wish they'd stop assuming that "making decisions as a planet" is a good thing. It's conspiracy bait.

http://www.marklynas.org/