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Genetically Modified Maize Is Toxic — Greenpeace
gandracu writes "It appears that a variety of genetically modified maize produced by Monsanto is toxic for the liver and kidneys. What's worse, Monsanto knew about it and tried to conceal the facts in its own publications. Greenpeace fought in court to obtain the data and had it analyzed by a team of experts. MON863, the variety of GM maze in question, has been authorized for markets in the US, EU, Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, and the Philippines. Here are Greenpeace's brief on the study and their account of how the story was unearthed (both PDFs)."
Summary?
Monsanto says "cases of liver and kedney damage not statistically significant."
greenpeace says "liver and kidney damage cases are statistically significant." Rats not fat.
No data is given.
Maybe judgement should be reserved until someone has seen this data. I believe both sides here would have no problem with manipulating data for thier own interests.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
Oh -- now they're not pre-biased against it, not at all.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
And now this genetically modified strain will transfer it's nasty genes to the unmodified varietys. Maise is a grass, right? So these genes could conceivably be transfered to: corn, wheat, barley, oats . . . in fact all other grasses.
And I do so have this eating habit! I'm gonna miss it.
BillyDoc
Another mega-company that knowingly concealed a faulty product to keep profits and stock prices high, at the expense of their customer. More and more each day, I just want to buy some remote piece of land, grow my own food, and drop out of society. Of course, they would probably just put a factory somewhere that dumps toxic waste into my water supply. sonsabitches!
Nobody eats corn as it was created by nature: All the variaties of corn in use today are the result of a centuries-long selective-breeding program.
Genetic engenerring just speeds up the process a lot. Not that we shouldn't be careful: There are dangers in modifying foods, and the amount of change has a direct bearing on the amount of danger.
Just don't claim that 'non-GM' corn is 'as nature intended'. It just took humans longer to modify it.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
And we're surprised at this?
There are two sides to this:
(1) GM is bad, and this corn is a good example - see the potential damage
(2) GM is new, some food are bad for you, this is an example where some people are sensitive to...(blah blah blah)
GM peanuts would be pretty toxic to a small percentage of the population, and might even have a (small but barely significant) increase in reaction from those sensitive.
TFA is light on detail, and I'm not a biogeneticist. I think I'll pass on judgement here right now. I don't trust Monsanto to tell the truth, but I also don't trust GreenPeace to not have an agenda.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Between 30,000 and 50,000 thousand people die of starvation every day. Greenpeace and related organizations have already proved they're more worried about fighting biotechnology (regardless of the data) than saving all those lives.
Aye, they make me kind of squeamish too, however they do have the possibility of helping eliminate hunger around the world. Who's to say?
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
However, it is also apparent that no experiments have been carried out to investigate this product's effect on human subjects. The toxicity symptoms found in rats should have been a springboard for further investigation, but it seems it was not (unless this has been covered up).
Unfortunately these days corporate dishonesty is not seen as unusual or unacceptable in any way, so what we need is smoking gun evidence of toxicity in human beings, exceeding such toxicity as may be found naturally in other foodstuffs.
It appears that a variety of genetically modified maze produced by Monsanto is toxic for the liver and kidneys
Keep calm, mazes are not that hard. There is no reason to get that stressed out. Just follow one of the walls at the entrance and you'll eventually get out.
should i avoid products with high fructose maize syrup, then?
The difference is that the meddling now can occur on a deeper level and with more control than what we used to do.
We've been (trying to) improving nature as long as we exist. That corn you think was created by nature is already the result of careful breeding for centuries.
Did anyone else see any data in any of those links? All I saw was Monsanto saying that there are no health risks, and GreenPeace saying that there are. Both are just as biased, so it is a little hard to know who to believe.
They talk about "statistical significance" and "normal variation", but dont say what the actual data shows. What are the standards for natural maise? Are they much different than the genetically engineered products? I am definetly in favor of quality control, but are they just holding genetically engineered foods to higher standards than natural food?
While it is usually better to be on the side of caution, I generally dont like to take a political activist's word for it on important matters like this.
--
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I don't care how great their Goofy Gopher Revue is, this time they've gone too far!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This is the first time I've ever read a news report that shows Greenpeace doing something besides political grandstanding. They actually went out and hired someone to do an analysis of the data. Maybe this is the start of a new trend - results-oriented activism, as opposed to the feel-good activism of the past.
Can't we also just quit being pretentious and call it CORN instead of "maize"?
Unfortunately you don't even have a choice. Even worst, our Canadian legal system has set a very bad precedent for this:0 1dltr0015.html
http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/20
Well good thing this didnt happen with a huge crop like corn. Why if that happened and it mixed with our natural corn we could be in a lot of trouble. Thank god no one eats maize anymore.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
I wouldn't call whaling "technological progress". Also, I haven't seen Greenpeace protest against technological progress in the field of, say, solar power.
Hi,
You would not recognize 'natural' corn if it slapped you in the face. It took thousands of years of humans messing with it's genetical makeup before it became what it is now.
Same for maize and other crops. The tomato you know is nothing like a 'natural' tomato. And don't get me started on cows.
Not saying GM is ok, just that humans have been messing with crops and cattle since the dawn of time and really only the technology used to mess around is new.
Ever heard of mutations? The plant you ate your corn off might have mutated and generates some nerve poison...
I doubt the allegations, since if Monsanto really tried to cover up toxic effects in food that it was selling, it'll lose much more than it ever could earn.
I'll wait for more dependable sources like NY Times or Washington Post (Sci American took a downturn a decade or two ago; seems to be argue politics a lot).
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
See the main problem I have here is that the report is from Greenpeace. To me, these wack jobs have ZERO credibility... especially when there's no empirical proof given and just a bunch of he-said she-said sort of chicken little arguements they always are making.
I'd go with an exclusive diet of GM foods before I'd trust the ramblings of Greenpeace.
This may or may not be true (I'm skeptical when it's just one single study that had some ambiguous questions), but Greenpeace is not the one that ought to report it. Yes, the messenger does matter. If this is really true, give it to a mainstream organization and let them figure it out.
Of course, we know Greenpeace won't do that, since they're all about the publicity.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Everybody knows corn is best if converted to EtOH. My liver has been protesting for years.
I think you're looking for this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization
that idiots will use this as an argument against gm food in general
gm food promises to put vitamin A in rice, develop crops that grow in the desert, etc.: a benefit for mankind
of course, like any technology, it can be abused and treated neglectfully in a way that might make... hepatotoxic corn for example
but this is an argument against IRRESPONSIBLE IMPLEMENTATION, not an argument against a scientitic concept
but luddite idiots won't see it this way
they think they live in the plot of a bad hollywood movie
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
People who claim to be environmentalists should be cheering on GA foods and decrying the use of so called "Organic" farms. With GA and "non-organic" farms you can produce more food per hectacre with less pesticides and animal waste runoff from the nutrients used on "Organic" farms. If we switched over to "Organic" farming we would need to clear more and more land for farms. Farmland ("organic" or "non-organic") is not natural and is essentially a desert dedicated to growing food.
This just in: Virtually all food is toxic.
It has been discovered recently that virtually all food products known to mankind contain either fat-soluble vitamins or other compounds shown to build up and eventually damage the organs that process them when consumed to extreme excess. Even water-soluble vitamins and yet other compounds have been shown to dilute blood, deplete salts, and otherwise wear down the various organs they come in contact with in extreme amounts.
Moreover, it has been shown that virtually all physical objects are toxic in these same regards. Air in too high or low concentrations is extremely toxic. Even completely filtered air has been shown to be linked to negative effects on the immune system, and thus even the cleanest living ideals can be considered toxic!
Furthermore, even non-physical things can be considered toxic - most ideas taken to extreme have been shown to have negative physical consequences for the holders of these ideas. From peace extremists, to defense extremists, to health extremists, to even low-stress extremists, virtually all philosophies and ideas can be shown to be completely toxic in large doses.
Ryan Fenton
Just don't claim that 'non-GM' corn is 'as nature intended'. It just took humans longer to modify it.
And thus people grew accustomed to eating the variations over the centuries. When you modify something and it's vastly different than what the body can handle it can cause serious issues.
I have no opinion on what should and shouldn't be done but I certainly haven't seen all that much benefit, so far, to what we have played with to "help out" nature.
because corn is modified already.
What I want to know is can they possibly claim as the causative product of this toxicity.
Certainly it cannot be the modification process itself, since it uses natural enzymes.
Certainly it cannot be the carbohydrates and fats that cannot have changed.
Certainly it cannot be the proteins that were not altered.
^ What are they claiming is the cause of the toxicity? There has to be a biochemical basis for it, and while they can scream to the press and be believed by the sheep of the general population, I can hardly see a scientific basis for it.
It just seems to me that Greenpeace is following the formula of the religions - find something that is mysterious and unsettling to the average person, vilify it, then profit.
Genetic engineering is not a panacea, but nor is it a boogieman. Genetically modified foods still contain the same amino acids in their proteins as all the other foods, so unless you modify their biochemistry to an extent where they'll produce real toxins, they will be digested just the same.
Actually, if you want to be technical, 'corn' and 'grain' are roughly synonims, and 'maize' is the correct name for this specific type of corn. Just like 'wheat' is the correct name for a different type of corn...
(This is why you'll find references to 'corn' in European texts predating Columbus: it is being used in the general sense.)
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Greenpeace finds everything toxic.
...they could charge $10 for a pack of corn in New York City, and it would sell like hotcakes.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology: http://www.springerlink.com/content/02648wu132m078 04/fulltext.html
So the "Independent Scientists" for Greenpeace got the Monsanto data and reanalyzed it and say there are significant biological differences (which is different from statistically significant). The only definite conclusion though I can find is that rats should not subsist entirely on this genetically modified corn.Looks like we just found the crop for the whole "biofuel" thing for Americans without upsetting anybody, because the damn stuff is inedible. Why not modify it further to make the corn grow in 1 week in a test tube, and our oil problems will be solved!
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
Aspartame has some of the "smoking gun" evidence you mention, yet it is still on the market. The number of people actually poisoned by Aspartame are very low, and treated as "statistically insignificant", so the product continues to be used.
Even if the GMO corn is used by humans and someone is killed by it (not just poisoned), there would just be a number of studies and some finger pointing to show that it was actually something else that may have been responsible for the poisoning. As long as something else may be responsible, there is reasonable doubt and the GMO food would remain on the market.
You need a lot of "smoking guns" to get a product off the market after it's been established. It's much easier to keep such products off the market in the first place.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
1,000,000 people eat non-GM maize 3 times a day for 50 years. How many get sick or die from it?
1,000,000 people eat GM maize 3 times a day for 50 years. How many get sick or die from it?
1,000,000 don't eat for a year due to crop failure and lack of maize. How many get sick or die?
Sometime things that are bad for you are better than the alternative.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Maize = 1. (chiefly in British and technical usage) corn1 (def. 1).
Maze = 1. a confusing network of intercommunicating paths or passages; labyrinth.
Alar causes cancer..
Chocolate causes cancer..
Breathing the air causes cancer..
How about I seal myself in a vacuum and make myself totally safe?
How is adding fish, human, and other foreign genes into plants a natural process? Selective breeding is one thing, splicing animal genes into plants via viruses and bacteria is another.
Just don't claim that 'GMOs' are natural. Educate yourself.
That's like saying there's no difference between nailing a house together and whittling one from a block of wood. One is just "sped up".
Genetic engineering allows you to add things that would otherwise be nearly impossible to obtain from the organism's original genome.
http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/20
Seed-saving is a pretty important factor in trying to increase crop yields in third-world countries as most farmers can't afford to buy new seeds every year. Monsanto are in it for the money, not to combat starvation.
Money for nothing, pix for free
And thus people grew accustomed to eating the variations over the centuries. When you modify something and it's vastly different than what the body can handle it can cause serious issues.
Corn and tomatoes are indigenous to the Americas. When the settlers from Europe or wherever arrived, they ate corn and tomatoes, that had been selectively grown for centuries. They were not accustomed to eating the variations over the centuries and yet they suffered no ill effects.
Have you ever eaten anything for the first time?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I have been reading all over the net that the bees have been just disappearing and creating a real crisis. Bees are absolutely essential in polinating corn and many, many other crops. Could it be that tese GM foods are also toxic to the bees?
I don't want to be sounding like a luddite but I have some really bad feeling about GM foods now. These bees just disappear. Empty hives and no clues?! WTF? And, so far none of the usual suspects are to blame.
That 2012 date is sure looming more real to me.
cheers
Mind | Body | Spirit | Cash
Sorry but this looks exactly like political grandstanding.
Even in the other study that some one referenced I saw no real data and frankly no proof of kidney or liver damage.
One of the findings is that triglyceride levels in some of the mice where elevated. I take that they are saying that is proof of liver damage. However I know that people that eat a lot of high fructose corn syrup and cattle that eat a corn heavy diet both tend to have higher triglyceride levels.
No numbers = no facts.
No facts = political grandstanding.
Show me the data.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
If one paper out of fifty said the GM good showed toxicity in rats, guess which paper Greenpeace would quote?
Selective evidence doesn't make cases impartial. Sadly, the more they do it, the more people think Greenpeace is a bunch of hypocritical phonies.
Genetic engenerring just speeds up the process a lot.
If that's the case, if it's nothing new, how can it be patented?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
but I know that I am not a rat. Maybe if they had found this problem with... say.. pigs that is a much more close relative to us primates THEN I would definitely be a whole lot more alarmed.
Now I am not suggesting the Green Peace did wrong here BUT fear mongering isn't helping anybody.
However Monsanto and their milk products back in the day were non clean too.
My question is if this is not a fight fire with fire deal?
The main difference is that traditional breeding and selection techniques are generally contained within the scope of genotypes that are already present in maize, while genetic engineering can do very extreme things that would never happen otherwise. For instance, one can insert genes from mammals or other higher organisms into maize. This type of "lateral transfer" has practically no chance of ever occurring through any breeding/selection/mutagenesis. So the effects on the phenotype can be much more severe, and not just accelerated in pace.
"NutraIngredients USA isn't exactly a reputable journal..."
n ger/00244/index.asp
RTFA. The peer reviewed journal noted is "Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology" published by Springer. http://www.environmental-expert.com/magazine/spri
Looks a proper journal to me.
"Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology is a repository of significant, full-length articles describing original experimental or theoretical research work pertaining to the scientific aspects of contaminants in the environment. It provides a place for the publication of detailed, definitive, complete, credible reports concerning advances and discoveries in the fields of air, water, and soil contamination and pollution, human health aspects, and in disciplines concerned with the introduction, presence, and effects of deleterious substances in the total environment. Acceptable manuscripts for the Archives are the ones that deal with some aspects of environmental contaminants, including those that lie in the domains of analytical chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology, toxicology, agricultural, air, water, and soil chemistry.
All manuscripts are subject to review by workers in the field for significance, credibility and accuracy, as well as for proper arrangement (format, style, language, etc.) Review articles, abstracts, short communications or notes will not be accepted for publication. Where appropriate, these will be referred to Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, or Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. "
"Real" Mac users are on the decline, since they don't breed (either it's impossible for them to breed or they refuse to.) Therefore, the current generation of real Mac users will die off without any successors.
Just don't claim that 'non-GM' corn is 'as nature intended'. It just took humans longer to modify it.
Slow is good. That is how symbiotic relationships like these are supposed to develop.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Just don't claim that 'GMOs' are natural.
Nobody is claiming that but you.
Have you ever eaten anything for the first time?
Different tap water gives me the runs for days until I grow used to it (usually when I'm on vacation). Even cooking or bathing with the water can cause this for me. I grow used to the water in the new location and return home to sit in the bathroom again for several more days.
And thus people grew accustomed to eating the variations over the centuries.
Last I checked corn didn't grow all that long in Europe (and didn't make up enough of their diet to cause enough genetic shift in the time period it did) so unless you have 100% blood from corn eating Indians you apparently shouldn't ever eat it as your ancestors did not grow accustomed to it over time. Same for potatoes. If you do have 100% Indian blood then you shouldn't eat wheat.
When you modify something and it's vastly different than what the body can handle it can cause serious issues.
And amazingly enough GE crops aren't all that different.
Genetic engineering by itself is not to blame for this toxicity. It's equally possible to make a toxic variant of corn through classical breeding techniques, like people have been using for hundreds of years. The point I want to make, is that you shouldn't discard genetically modified organisms altogether. There still are plenty of examples where GMOs serve very usefull purposes. IMHO, The problem with GMOs is the same as with any other technology: When used in good hands, it could prove to be a benefit to society. When in bad hands (i.e. evil multinational companies), if will only benefit certain people's bank accounts .
As an analogy of my point: nobody on slashdot would be opposed to software simply because of Microsoft's (or SCO or any other evil software company) business practices? Right?
Disclaimer: I have a background in genetics, so I'm supposed to know what I'm talking about. And, as someone who has always been very interested in biology and life sciences, I hugely care about the environment.
the newly builtin insecticide perhaps?
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Of course they'll do that. And after everyone has switched over, and the remaining local breeds of corn have been polluted with the terminator pollen from the GM corn, then they'll start charging an arm and a leg for their seeds.
Changing the genetic code modifies the protiens that the corn produces. Changing genetic code can turn proteins into poison (not all proteins are digestible). Now, such a thing is unlikely- what is more probable is that the corn now produces more of a specific protein than it used to, and the higher dose of this new protein is toxic. Remember, anything is toxic at high enough dosages, even Water.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Ah, but you forget that this is Monsanto corn. The corporation's aura of sheer evil caused the toxicity!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
All computers do is speed up something you can do with abacuses and a rule table.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
A "revolution" in a process can be patented I believe. For instance if you found a way to produce steel that required half the time, or energy, or whatever. I'm not going to get into the entire lawsuits over accidental cross pollination and such, but I think there probably is some basis in there.
but I certainly haven't seen all that much benefit, so far, to what we have played with to "help out" nature.
Are you kidding me? Dispite massive population growth, from 3 billion to 6 billion in the last 50 years, the global malnutrition rate has decreased from 38% to 18% over that same period. Farmer producitivity has doubled multiple times in the last 100 years because of superior agricultural technology. If it wasnt for the "Green Revolution", millions upon millions of acres of additional wilderness would have been destroyed to create more arable farmland.
We only have 2 choices on what to do as a civilization:
1) Continue to increase farmer productivity.
2) Let BILLIONS of people die due to malnutrition.
There is a good argument that there are simply too many people alive for the world to support, but to make that argument you have to be willing to just let people die. It is easy to do when you are sitting 5000 miles away in front of your computer. But it would be alot harder if a 5 year old child was dying of starvation right in front of you.
Because we evolved (or were created) to be a moral species, our only real choice for saving the planet and ourselves at the same time is to increase farmer productivity. So far we have been doing a pretty good job, since the current benefits are staggering.
--
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Let's see
1. This GM maize contains Bt toxins not present in natural maize so as to kill predatory insects.
2. Unlike insecticide spray it can't be just washed off because it permeates the food.
3. We're very careful (these days) about insecticides getting in the food chain because we know (now) they poison us
4. So now our food contains poisons we otherwise like to keep out of our food
5. Doh!
Sounds like GM is a move we would need to be very careful about hey?
selective breeding is like patching code whereas genetic manipulation is like doing wholesale rewrites.
It's a lot easier to royally screw things up in ways that will take a long time to detect when you do wholesale rewrites than patches even though enough patches can add up to just as big a change.
If that's the case, if it's nothing new, how can it be patented?
Oh come on, you just have to look at a significant portion of software patents to know that just because it isn't "new", doesn't mean that you can't patent it.
So Greenpeace found slight differences weight gain and in blood and urine chemistry, within the normal range, that "suggest" liver and kidney toxicity.
To a scientist, "suggest" is a keyword that translates to "I can't prove that this is true, but based upon the data this hypothesis cannot be excluded."
"Toxicity" is also a fairly slippery term that can mean any change in function, and does not necessarily translate to "harm."
In fact, there is no evidence presented of harm. These plants are genetically modified to produce BT toxin, a bacterial toxin that is widely applied as an insecticide. It is favored over standard chemical insecticides because it is generally thought to be less likely to be toxic. It is pretty unlikely that BT produced by the plant as a result of genetic modification is more toxic that BT that is applied externally.
Most vegetables, other than those produced by the most rigorous "organic" methods, has some sort of insecticide residues. So the real question for the average consumer is, "Is BT-producing maize more likely to produce harm than maize grown using standard pesticides?"
Curses!
You seem to be implying that until we understand a mechanism in detail we should proceed as if there are no ill effects. That would maybe be OK if we understood a bigger fraction of the stunningly complex interrelationships at work in living things. But we don't so caution, even extreme caution is wise.
And I don't think Greenpeace has ever profited from anything.
Why do I anticipate if I look at the submitter's profile, I'll find it from Europe, particularly the UK? Americans just dont worry about it is that much. Either Americans have been brainwashed by the big biotech corporation, or more likely, not have been brainwashed by leftists with too much time on their hands.
There is no way that I'm going to volunteer for any testing. I don't play games with my health - it's the most important thing I have. However, there are many people who will be willing subjects, for a reasonable fee. It's possible to hire the subjects from the same pool that the pharma industry uses.
As agribusiness and crop science shoves us relentlessly toward monoculture, thousands of varieties of corn have been eliminated. The article I read (sorry, no link) said that Mexico had a shrinking pool of 1100 varieties from an original 10,000. The same has happened to the potato, rice, and many -- all? -- other crops. And plants we white folk didn't even know were edible have been extincted as hugh swaths are cleared for farmland. As we lose the earth's genetic diversity we lose our options, both present and future.
The genetic revolution started by Mendel and reaching its current extreme in GM foods was unknown to the world's indigineous peoples -- a group still left out of your "nobody". Descendants of the Maya still eat corn untainted by systematic genetic tinkering. The western culture of science, industrialism, and commerce assimilates away our diversity without understanding what it is destroying. And even though Mendelian propagation has been going on for centuries, it is only in the past 60 years that food has diverged so far from its original (and sacred) roots.
There's nothing wrong with the application of science to agriculture. It's just that we've gone way too far with it, without having a clue as to the consequences. A great deal of moderation has been needed for decades. But the agribusiness monsters that chew up people, and turn them into wealth for city folk, have no soul and no way to know what moderation is.
Certainly it cannot be the modification process itself, since it uses natural enzymes.
Just because it's natural does not mean that its non-toxic. There are a lot of poisonous enzymes that occur naturally in the environment. For example, naturally occurring almonds have a poisonous enzyme. A quote from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almond):
Have you ever eaten anything for the first time?
Oh, trust me, I take great care that everything I eat is for its first time being eaten...
Different tap water gives me the runs for days until I grow used to it (usually when I'm on vacation). Even cooking or bathing with the water can cause this for me. I grow used to the water in the new location and return home to sit in the bathroom again for several more days.
It's not the water that gives you the runs, it is the bacteria in the water. Small traces of bacteria are far more likely to cause illness than a new food, or even a food with small traces of chemical toxins, because bacteria are capable of reproducing within your body to large numbers. Over time, your intestinal bacteria reach a new balance and your body adjusts to them.
It can't! The US patent office just fails to realize that, because it's run by fucking morons.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
There is a fallacy to this argument. No amount of selective breeding will confer a peanut gene or BT gene onto corn or soybeans etc. genes!
Disclaimer: I have gotten peanuts on my levi jeans.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
Um, IANAL but I thought that if you created a new strain of foodstuff the old fassion way (breeding) then you could patent it. Nothing new, nothing changed. You can patent it just like you always could.
Although I agree in part with you regarding the selective breeding, as you said, the selective breeding took place over centuries and with no adverse effects on the population. Can that be claimed about the GM-corn? Until it can be, I would stick my **regular** corn.
The studies show that the genetically superior corn protects against rootworm, allowing farmers to produce more grain from the same amount of land and fertilizer, with lower pesticide use. It is in fact much better for the environment than incorporating pesticide in the soil, with attendant runoff. Genes don't end up in rivers.
And what if the studies do show that the corn is harmful to rats if they're fed it exclusively? Neither humans nor cows are raised exclusively on corn, so rat studies have to show a big difference in rat health before any action is taken on them. And maybe it's just me, but I don't particularly like rats, so I'd say being unhealthy for rats would be a plus, not a minus for this corn.
I am surprised that Greenpeace doesn't claim Monsanto is competing unfairly since, through natural selection, rats will do better eating its competitors' brands.
What's more, while I find Greenpeace's analysis off-base, their concern for the world's dwindling rat population is touching. Perhaps Monsanto could compromise with Greenpeace by marketing this corn as diet food for overweight rodents.
sigs, as if you care.
Nobody eats corn as it was created by nature: All the variaties of corn in use today are the result of a centuries-long selective-breeding program.
There is a huge difference here! Indeed, man has been selectively breeding corn for thousands of years. Resistance to certain pests that arises from natural mutations or variations in a population are selected for and encouraged. No naturally bred case that I know of involves any kind of poison that the corn produces to kill pests that would normally feed on it.
The things Monsanto is doing are vastly different, however. They are deliberately embedding genes from bacteria to allow the corn to produce the same sorts of toxins that bacteria produce to protect themselves. One real good example of this that you most definitely would not want in corn produced for human consumption is botulin! Although it would probably kill anything that tried to eat the corn plants, it would also kill poeple that ate the corn from such plants. Botulinic toxin has a lethal dose of a microgram.
There is a huge difference between selective breeding and what Monsanto is doing. It certainly merits a much closer look.
If I remember correctly, Monsanto modified soybeans and corn to be "RoundUp Ready" as they called it. Basically they GE'd the plants so that they would not be affected by Monsanto's RoundUp pesticide, allowing farmers to spray their whole field with the pesticide and leave their crops untouched. So I would venture to say that in order to make these plants resistant, there is probably something being produced by them that is not entirely natural.
But even if this corn does NOT produce anything un-natural, you still have the issue of farmers being able to indiscriminately spray pesticides on their fields without affecting the corn. Undoubtedly this means that more RoundUp is getting on the corn, in the ground, etc., than would otherwise be possible, so I wouldn't doubt that some of the pesticide is moving up through the food chain to us. Either way, you have non-natural chemicals entering the human food supply, which could easily have adverse health effects.
While we're on it, I want to say that Monsanto is about as virulently evil as Greenpeace when it comes to protecting their interests. They have actually made patents on seeds, and have gone after farmers for "patent infringement" if they find evidence of seed on their fields with similar genetic code. Farmers have been jailed over this; Monsanto's kind of like the MPAA of grain. They are even pushing "Terminator" seeds, which are sterile, forcing farmers into purchasing seed from suppliers every year instead of keeping their seed for the next crop. Monsanto tried to cover up reports of the adverse health effects of BGH (bovine growth hormone), the list goes on and on. The wikipedia has decent, somewhat unbiased (IMO) coverage of the issue and I'm sure you can google up some more.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
Umm, most plants produce natural toxins they use for biological warfare against other plants and animals. Most genetic modification is an attempt to either increase a toxin to kill a pest (rootworm) or increase a resistance to a toxin to fight another plant or a artificially introduced toxin. In this case the corn was designed to create a toxin (Bt-toxin (Cry3Bb1)) and as a byproduct also is said to create (Cry1Ab).
So the most probable indication is that one of those two toxins has more of a negative affect upon rats and thus possibly other mammals like humans than was previously believed. Greenpeace responsibly refrained from making specific claims about the intermediate causation as that is still not yet determined. There is, however, a reasonable amount of evidence that this strain of GM corn could be dangerous to humans and animals and should be investigated and possibly pulled from the market or at least labeled until the topic is fully investigated.
It just seems to me that Greenpeace is following the formula of the religions - find something that is mysterious and unsettling to the average person, vilify it, then profit.Greenpeace is a bunch of marketing people for the most part. It is possible every tuesday night they gather beneath an abandoned monastery and eat human babies.That doesn't however, speak to the accuracy or implications of this research.
Genetic engineering is not a panacea, but nor is it a boogieman.Genetic engineering is a science where people mess about with code without understanding the full implications of what that will result in. It's like modifying software while only having read and understood a small portion of the code and not the other code dependent upon it. As such, I think that while it is promising, extra caution and care needs to be exercised and I don't think the FDA or the commercial enterprises involved give a damn about anything but money and are uninterested in taking appropriate precautions.
Genetically modified foods still contain the same amino acids in their proteins as all the other foods, so unless you modify their biochemistry to an extent where they'll produce real toxins, they will be digested just the same.Genetically modified foods almost all produce toxins. The question is did some change to the genetic structure cause it to create different ones or toxins in different levels and what does that mean for normal people? Another part of the problem is the food almost always appears to be the same as non-modified food and is often not labeled. Would you eat some random plant when you did not know if it was edible and no one had ever seen it before? Every GM food is one of those. Most are probably fine, just like most plants are. Some might be developing toxins that are harmful or concentrating something from their environment which is harmful. If we made it to other planets and found them with ecosystems very much like the earth, but separated by millions of years of evolution, would you trust that something that looks like corn has not adapted in such a way that it is poisonous? That's sort of what GM food is, a common food, modified not by evolution but by man in a way we don't fully understand the consequences of. Often the results are beneficial, but caution should be the byword and thorough testing and serious consideration of possible problems. The fact that this corn might be at the grocery store near you with no indication that it is not the natural corn most people expect it to be is a deception and needs to be considered.
If some asshole puts a bullet through your head, they haven't just sped up a natural process.
Agent Orange
Posilac
There is more than enough evidence that Monsanto is willingly and knowingly putting human lives at risk.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
One possible basis of toxicity is discussed in one of the PDFs that the article links to:
April 8, 2003: The German competent authorities publish their assessment of the MON863 application. In their report they state that the amino acid sequence of the Cry3B1 toxin produced by the MON863 maize has similarities to some other toxins. Most notably, the German authority found some "homologies to sequences from Clostridium bifermentans, Caenorhabditis elegans, Vibrio cholerae and Bacillus popilliae." These homologies are of high relevance in respect to human and animal health.
It seems warranted to at least be concerned about the unknown effects of introducing a protein which is classified as a toxin into one's diet. Particularly where the "science" backing it up is not analyzed independently, and cannot be reviewed, as the underlying data submitted to the regulatory agencies is held to be confidential.
Alternatively, you seem to suggest that data or experience suggesting the safe use of substances independently of each other somehow implies they are safely used together. It's fairly easy to come up with counterexamples in everyday life (ammonia and chlorine as cleaning supplies, for example), let alone in the more complex and unpredictable field of biochemistry.
Read the article.
The product in question (MON863) was created to specifically create a toxin (modified Cry3Bb1) in order to protect the plant from a pest called corn rootworm (Diabrotica spp.)
I'm assuming that Greenpeace is excited about this because they believe that the "rat study" shows that there is signs that this toxin has an effect on mammals as well. From the looks of the information presented here, an independent, peer reviewed study would be in order.
Yes, one day I may actually learn to spell...
I like the idea of GM. It's exciting. Humans have always bent nature to suit their goals, and modifying foods at the genetic level is just another manifestation of our ingenuity. Great things are possible.
The problem with GM is that the goals of the people doing it are at worst nefarious (make profit come what may) and at best unknown.
Anatomically modern humans have been around for ~160,000 years. For millions of years before that, and up to about 12,000 years ago (the rise of agricultural societies), evolution optimised us to live off whatever nature threw our way. Then we started doing stuff like drinking cows' milk, and there are some evolutionary optimisations for that.
GM foods -- where genetic modifications are made to foods that could not arise in nature, even through selective breeding -- have been around for what, 15 years? 20?
If I were calling the shots, I would require that GM development happen in strict, bioweapon-level quarantine conditions (since you're dealing with a novel organism of unknown behaviour), and undergo clinical trials at least as rigorous as those required for medicines.
I happen to like this Greenpeace sponsered study: http://archive.greenpeace.org/climate/renewables/r eports/kpmg8.pdf which is
currently transforming the solar power industry. s -selling-solar.html
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Or more to the point:
The poison dart frog is a 100% natural (and possibly organic) product. I dare you to lick and or eat one.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Have you ever eaten anything for the first time?
Funny how you leave out the most important bit, and it's vastly different than what the body can handle , to make your so-called point. It's so stupid, I just need to ask one thing: Are you really "Taco" in disguise?
Yeah - but "speeding up the process" is exactly what causes the problem. Over time different animals have discovered what they can and can't safely eat and stick to that, and the timescale of plants naturally changing their edibility/side effects is the same as our timescale of being able to react to it. With GM you have foodstuffs that we assume are safe suddenly changing overnight, and in ways (adding toxins to help fight crop disease) that can't be assumed to be safe.
GM in general need not be avoided, but Monsanto appear to have screwed up big-time here - this stuff is certainly potentially dangerous, and wiping out a small percentage of the population that arn't able to genetically cope with the toxins they have added is not an acceptable form of "speeded up" evolution. Even if the stuff is only toxic to rats or other animals, not humans, it's irresponsible to put this out into the ecosystem.
http://www.acfnewsource.org/science/ethanol_woes.h tml
e thanols-flawed-concept/story.aspx?guid=%7BEC55D7AD -6E1C-4AD8-912F-A2A0BD4D4299%7D
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/corn-based-
There is evidence that ethanol is a technological dead end because of the amount of energy required to produce it, and we may not be able to grow enough crops to support really widespread use without clearing more land.
I don't know the real answer, but it seems wise not to commit to a technology unless you can be sure of it's consequences.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I don't understand your sig. The Ninth Amendment would appear to be profoundly libertarian, as it makes clear the idea that unenumerated powers reside with the people, not the government.
Gazing the future Recently, I (re)stumbled upon an article called "Environmental Heresies". A good and interesting read for sure, but, like with all these kind of articles, the author (futurologists, they are called, I believe) makes the same basic mistakes as all his predecessors. I'll give some rebutal and critcism: His first point, about slowing demographics, is not very much disputable: it is as it is, and if it's in decline, it's in decline. However, whether we will level out completely, or go down, or up again, is not as clear cut as he seems to portray. The author gives as main reason that people go to cities, but I think this explanation is inadequate, and certainly not enough to explain the changing demographics. It should be noted, for instance, that, during the middle ages, the amount of children born in cities were no less then those on the countryside. What *did* change, though, is the empowerement of women (most notably in matters of procreation) and social and medical advancements. THOSE are the real reasons why demographics change. It also follows that, if, by some disaster or serious economic and scientific decline we would degrade into former levels of welfare and reduced possibility for women to control any family planning, demographics would go up again. It is therefor not an absolute certitude that the world-demographics will continue to decline...this is only true as an extrapolation, if everything remains more or less the same. However, it is exactly the danger of this sort of extrapolation that the author is (also) lamenting against. As for genetically modified (GM) crops, I fear he really simplifies the subject too much to be useful in making a rational decision about the pro's and cons. Basically, he over-optimistically only conveys the pros, while barely mentionning any of the cons - as if they were unimportant. It should be noted however, that with living organisms, you can not simply test it out in the wild, and then expect to be able to put the genie back in the bottle when things go wrong. Once you contaminated a natural area, and the contamination has a sufficiently advantage (in a darwinistic sense) to stay around in the genepool, there is no way in hell you can get rid of it completely, when it turns out it is damaging humans, or other species and ecological systems. Now, his counterargument that those won't survive in the wild seems rather weak. In effect, some GM genes *already* have contaminated other 'wild' crops, and it didn't sizzle out in the wild, on the contrary (a prominent example of that are some strains of GM corn in south-america). So... it may be that some GMs will not survive in the wild, but you can bet some *will*, however. And he, nor anyone else, can garantuee that such GM or hybrid crops can't be damaging or unhealthy to the ecosystem or local species, including humans. Also, the reductionistic view of "we're not doing anything else then what people have been doing for centuries" is somewhat misleading too. Yes, people have been breeding crops, and cultivated crops are not 'natural' in the sense that they occur in the wild...but it's an unfair analogy, because one is comparing oranges with apples. For instance, with GM, it is perfectly possible to make genemodifications between two completely different species of plants. In effect, this trans-species swapping of genes with GM, can be done between animals and plants. In all those centuries that "we have always done this" I would like to see any example where this has actually been done before. No; this is a totally new technique, with new possibilities, certainly, but also new consequences (which we don't know anything about) and new dangers. You can't just shrug those of with claiming, falsely, that we've been using those techniques for millenia. And you can't just merrily test it out in the wild, and see if anything happens. Apart from that, even purely economically, I doubt it has all those beneficial effects the author claims it has or will have - but more about that at the end. About his weather and nuc
The issue goes beyond the actual changes made to the corn. Monsanto finds the natural agricultural cycle incompatible with their business model.They want farmers to buy their seed every year, not plant the best seeds from their own fields. It's sort of a DMCA vs. fair use battle involving biology. I am sure Monsanto would say cross breeding their crops, (even accidentally), would violate their patents. This scares me more than the Frankenfoods scenario because I doubt in the long run that GM crops could survive without constant human oversight. I do realize I am being simplistic and modern farmers probably buys new seed stock every season anyway, but I am not ready to put our future in the hands of " Mother Monsanto".
Even worse, the Terminator genes are dominant. Which has a very devastating effect if introduced by a single farmer in places where farmers still use some of their harvest as seeds for the next year.
Of course, anything can be a poison - the danger's in the dosage. It could be that the levels of toxins which the plant was engineered to produce are sufficient to kill/discourage insects, but not larger (e.g. human) critters (what with our kidneys and liver filtering our blood, and all), and they (Monsanto) looked on it (the new maize), and called it good... not noticing that these toxins were bio-accumulative. It would take a thorough study to find out, for sure, but - as a corporate researcher (not bio-genetics), that sort of oversight wouldn't surprise me.
--EPA
And no, I don't think that the EPA is "in bed" with Monsanto. Much of industry R&D for pesticide companies (like Monsanto) goes into label approval as mandated by FIFRA. It costs a lot of money to change a label once it is approved so companies generally do a lot of research (internal and external) to make sure the effects of the compound are within EPA guidelines. I'm not defending Monsanto, I'm just stating the facts as I know them. Also important to note that Cry3Bb1 hasn't been around a really long time, and chronic studies considering dose*time effects can take a while. Also, Cry3Bb1 is for corn rootworm larvae and is mostly expressed in corn roots -- we don't eat corn roots. The dosage in the ears is very very low as I understand.
When did this site become "Newspeak for Inummerate Ideologues"?
"Can't you recognize bullshit? Don't you think it would be a useful item to
add to your intellectual toolkits to be capable of saying, when a ton of wet
steaming bullshit lands on your head, 'My goodness, this appears to be
bullshit'?"
Neal Stephenson
NutraIngredients USA isn't exactly a reputable journal...
kypper (446750) isn't exactly a reputable poster...
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Actually, I don't blame you. You're probabably a regular FAUX News viewer.
Recently, I (re)stumbled upon an article called "Environmental Heresies". A good and interesting read for sure, but, like with all these kind of articles, the author (futurologists, they are called, I believe) makes the same basic mistakes as all his predecessors. I'll give some rebutal and critcism (but I'll cut it down this time to the genetic-manupilation part:
As for genetically modified (GM) crops, I fear he really simplifies the subject too much to be useful in making a rational decision about the pro's and cons. Basically, he over-optimistically only conveys the pros, while barely mentionning any of the cons - as if they were unimportant.
It should be noted however, that with living organisms, you can not simply test it out in the wild, and then expect to be able to put the genie back in the bottle when things go wrong. Once you contaminated a natural area, and the contamination has a sufficiently advantage (in a darwinistic sense) to stay around in the genepool, there is no way in hell you can get rid of it completely, when it turns out it is damaging humans, or other species and ecological systems.
Now, his counterargument that those won't survive in the wild seems rather weak. In effect, some GM genes *already* have contaminated other 'wild' crops, and it didn't sizzle out in the wild, on the contrary (a prominent example of that are some strains of GM corn in south-america). So... it may be that some GMs will not survive in the wild, but you can bet some *will*, however. And he, nor anyone else, can garantuee that such GM or hybrid crops can't be damaging or unhealthy to the ecosystem or local species, including humans.
Also, the reductionistic view of "we're not doing anything else then what people have been doing for centuries" is somewhat misleading too. Yes, people have been breeding crops, and cultivated crops are not 'natural' in the sense that they occur in the wild...but it's an unfair analogy, because one is comparing oranges with apples. For instance, with GM, it is perfectly possible to make genemodifications between two completely different species of plants. In effect, this trans-species swapping of genes with GM, can be done between animals and plants. In all those centuries that "we have always done this" I would like to see any example where this has actually been done before.
No; this is a totally new technique, with new possibilities, certainly, but also new consequences (which we don't know anything about) and new dangers. You can't just shrug those of with claiming, falsely, that we've been using those techniques for millenia. And you can't just merrily test it out in the wild, and see if anything happens.
Apart from that, even purely economically, I doubt it has all those beneficial effects the author claims it has or will have - but more about that at the end.
So, in conclusion; the author is fully right about some things, but a bit too simplistic (and, perhaps, biased) in other points. The nuclear/weather point is, indeed, logical. The world-demographics is correct, though there is a need for caution as to determine what is the cause, and if simple extrapolation is enough to make a conclusion. As for the GM-crops, I fear he is a bit misguided himself; this is obvious by the naive assumption of how much 'good' GM-crops will do - which is, I suspect, derived from an overly (and typical USA) optimistic viewpoint on capitalism, which I don't share.
GM-corporations do not care about worldhunger, nor about the living quality of poor farmers in third (or first, for that matter) worldcountries. What matters to them is maximising profit for their shareholders. In the authors' view, this is fully compatible with eachother, but I rather think that, in the end, you can't have both: if it's really about maximising profit, then it is about holding control of the market, and if it's about control, then it's not about the freedoms and abilities and rights of the farmer. This already can be seen by the fact many GM corporations have forbidden the 's
The length of time for the modification is important. If you hybridize the product slowly then there is time to see how it works as a food stuff and whether it's safe or not. If you greatly accelerate the process there's no time to evaluate the long term suitability of the modified products.
...we call it corn.
By "we" I mean contemporary Americans, our course.
Genetic engineering allows you to add things that would otherwise be nearly impossible to obtain from the organism's original genome.
Actually it allows you to do things to the organism which are impossible with its original genome. Since you can put genes into the organism where were never present in that species of organism before.
FYI, don't drink the tap water when on vacation in foreign countries ;)
It's not the water, it's the bacteria in the water that's different, and a lot of other countries have a lot more bacteria in their water than you're used to. I find it rather strange you report problems when you get back home again, unless you're away for a number of years (and even then...)
For instance, one can insert genes from mammals or other higher organisms into maize. This type of "lateral transfer" has practically no chance of ever occurring through any breeding/selection/mutagenesis. So the effects on the phenotype can be much more severe, and not just accelerated in pace.
There's also the issue of what "side effects" may be produced. Which may be overlooked, especially if they depend exacly where the alien genes end up in the target organism.
"Natural" does not and never has meant "perfectly safe, non-toxic, and actually miraculously good for you!!!!!". Vitamin C, for instance, is natural. Furthermore, it is necessary to human life. In large doses, Vitamin C is highly toxic. Same goes for really everything else that your body needs. Even water.
..." are in fact "Certainly it could be ..., although it is unlikely that genetic modification would cause this to become toxic."
Now, I also doubt that it is the genetic modification process itself. However, thinking that the use of natural enzymes automagically makes the process non-toxic and non-dangerous is foolish and misinformed.
Proteins are almost certainly altered by genetic modification... if no proteins were modified at all, then the modification would have clearly failed. However, most proteins are not going to be altered. But nonetheless there are some proteins which are altered, and those could be altered in such a way as to become toxic. Or even, they could be modified in such a way as to react oddly with other chemicals in the corn (say the fats and sugars and starches) to produce toxic chemicals.
Containing the same amino acids as the proteins in other foods is in no way a guarantee of non-toxicity. You do realize that most of the components of venoms, eg rattlesnake venom, are proteins which (gasp!) contain the exact same amino acids as foods?
Modifying the gene sequence (that is, genetic modification) is a modification of the biochemistry of the organism. That is precisely what it is. It is not a side effect; it is the entire point of genetic modification. The specific way in which it modifies the biochemsitry is by changing the sequence of amino acids that make up particular proteins produced by the cells. If you change that sequence, you can make any protein you want to, including toxic ones.
Yes, in the vast majority of cases, genetic modification will be benign. But this is no guarantee that it cannot produce toxins. All of the possibilities that you dismissed as "Certainly it cannot be
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Id corn all the rats were fed? Cause I'm pretty sure that a human would be in pretty bad shape anyway if they just ate corn for 90 days and had only water to drink.
And yet the corn itself is growing just fine. Wow look at me, I'm so smart!
Admittedly, it's a bad idea to dismiss the message because of the messenger.
However, in this case Greenpeace has no one to blame but themselves. Had they been more focused on their own credibility and not on publicity at the sake of factual accuracy, then they wouldn't have this problem.
Why are so many posts with factual errors modded up?
No. It means "it's been around for quite a while and we know fairly well what it does, and/or it changes slowly enough that we'll be able notice any changes before they kill us". Of course, the latter part only goes for organisms with relatively long generation cycles (longer than a few hours).
SpringerOnline Journals Archives
n ger/00244/index.asp
from http://www.environmental-expert.com/magazine/spri
"Bringing Yesterday's Masters to Today's Minds
Springer expands the realm of scientific research through the Online Journals Archive package. Scientists and researchers can access over a century of scientific evolution and complete historical information. Springer has created a comprehensive body of scientific, medical and technical research documentation accessible to scientists, researchers and other professionals. We will offer approximately 1,200 journals starting in 2005 by adding all content formerly published by Kluwer, as well as, all content from Volume I, Issue 1, where available, from both the former Springer-Verlag and Kluwer."
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
Mother Nature has no money for attourneys.
As I read it this just means that the data were put back into electronic form. This happens very often in science since many studies exist as hardcopy only after some passage of time. You have to enter data tables either by hand or with OCR and figures have to be measured with a ruler or with data ripoff software. NASA's ADS provides DEXTER for this purpose: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs_doc/help_pages/dexte r.html.s -selling-solar.html
--
Measure the Sun with daily reports in electronic format: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Sentimental Obvuscatory Au-natural Product or SOAP for short, I think that bleeding heart greenpeace hipees would be very interested in some SOAP :)
I guess it would have helped if I RTFA, as I surely see your point now.
What they're doing is pretty damn evil, not to mention stupid.
But what makes this even worse, is that this will cast a dark shadow over the whole idea of genetic engineering of crops, when then public blames the process, rather than the users.
I think we need to clarify what we mean by the terms "natural" and "non-natural" before we can debate which of those categories Monsanto's GM food products fall into.
Ok. If I may gripe for a second: This is where the engineering mindset, which occupies probably around 99% of the /. community (IT guys, coders, physicists, engineers of all types), has trouble coming to grips with biological issues.
Assume for a second that Greenpeace is correct, and that rates of liver damage are statistically significant. That means that, all things being equal, eating this corn is harmful to the rats' livers. Case closed. Aside from figuring out what that reason is in order to fix it, there's no reason to go through all of that--it is a simple application of Occam's Razor.
It looks like you're going through troubleshooting steps..."It can't possibly be this...and it can't possibly be that either!" DO NOT make the mistake of discounting the study because you cannot come up with a root cause right away. First off, in biology it's typically a bad idea to conclude, a priori, that certain variables are not an issue: it's simply a more complex and less well-understood discipline than something as clean-cut as, say, orbital mechanics. Second, you have a much greater potential for interaction effects and emergent properties--stuff you can never predict, but which becomes blatantly obvious once you see it and characterize it...for example, ant colony behavior: if you get some huge number of ants together, the coordination and patterned behavior is fascinating, but it's not obvious from the random behavior of a single ant that such behavior would ever emerge. Once you see it, however, you can easily experiment and track it back to things like pheremones.
The mindset issue comes down to the difference between bottom-up and top-down analysis. Bottom-up analysis will tell you facts, but is poor for integrating those facts. That's what I think you're looking to do. At some point you have to look at the big picture--a view that doesn't tell you much aside from how the facts fit together, and where you should look next. Good analysts do both. Bad analysts either never research facts (this is in fact what you are accusing "religions" of doing) or they fall into the trap of extreme reductionism, wherein you discount observations if your radically simplistic understanding of the universe cannot explain them.
This last is what a friend of mine, who is an aero engineer, does all the time. He knows that physics informs chemistry informs biology informs psychology informs political science--but since he cannot explain election results in terms of the Newtonian motion of atoms, he dismisses any such study as bullshit, as well as the conclusions draw from that bullshit. But you don't have to explain things at the lowest level possible in order to draw meaningful conclusions, such as in this case: Better hold off on eating that Monsanto corn for the time being.
That doesn't seem too alarmist, nor am I trying to vilify genetic engineering. The fact that Monsanto apparently should have made that announcement and instead decided to gloss over it, and thereby profit from others' loss (what you accuse Greenpeace of doing), does tend to make them somewhat vile in my eyes, however.
I would go one step further and note that, when the West sells seed to starving African nations, it's "Terminator" seed.
:)
We don't give those nations a hand up, we put them on life support.
Just another example of how free enterprise and secular science benefit the poor by the innate goodness of their natures...
Ok, maybe that was a poor troll. But only for being obvious, not for being false
Exactly. Search on "plant patents".
'The studies show that the genetically superior corn protects against rootworm'
Won't the rootworm beetle acquire resistance to this trait in the long run. According to this, you have to plant a ring of non-GM corn in order to prevent such a thing, and you still have to use insecticide.
'allowing farmers to produce more grain from the same amount of land'
Can the farmers reuse seeds from their own crop or must they buy new seeds every year. Will non-GM corm be banned as 'uncertified'.
'And what if the studies do show that the corn is harmful to rats if they're fed it exclusively?'
Well it means that feeding them GM corn for 90 days caused organ damage. A human eating lower doses for years is highly likely to get the same results. Assuming my Googling skills are up to scratch, it's to do with the toxin Cry3Bb1 protein introduced into the corn to kill rootworm beetle. It's supposed to be safe for mammals. According to this it is an artificial form of Bacillus thuringiensis also used as an insecticide.
'Neither humans nor cows are raised exclusively on corn, so rat studies have to show a big difference in rat health before any action is taken on them'
Ok, lets feed you exclusivly on GM corn for 90 days and get back to us. Why not include your whole family as well. Ask the family across the street to eat non GM corn as a control
was: Greepeace values rats over humans
davecb5620@gmail.com
Suppose a particularly stubborn insect is endemic in your country, rendering most crops ungrowable.
You have a choice: Import food from outside or find a crop that does grow. Thanks to Monsanto, you can grow GM crops.
Now suppose the food-distribution system is a mess and you can't import enough food to feed all your people.
NOW you have a choice: Grow GM crops or let the people starve.
Disclaimer: Real life is a lot more complicated than this example. There are almost always other choices.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Movie Recommendation ...."The Future of Food" excellent movie about genetically modified food. Monsanto is not a good company, I make sure none of their products end up in my grocery cart.
"Before compiling your next grocery list, you might want to watch this eye-opening documentary, which sheds light on a shadowy relationship between agriculture, big business and government. By examining the effects of biotechnology on the nation's smallest farmers, director Deborah Koons Garcia reveals the unappetizing truth about genetically modified foods: You could unknowingly be serving them for dinner. "
Here in the Midwest, we grow corn....
Maybe they're some U-M hippies?
Oh. Never mind...
There is a good argument that there are simply too many people alive for the world to support, but to make that argument you have to be willing to just let people die.
Not really imho, a lot of malnutrition is caused by local political situations (ie: warlords and idiotic leaders) not the inability for the world to supply enough food. Also current estimates predict the world's population will level out at ~12 billion (birth rates are falling as more of the world become developed) which is likely well within the limits of a sustainable population.
The biggest drive will likely be to make more efficient crops to decrease the amount of land used for agriculture due to high population densities. In the really long term if we ever get fusion or another large energy source working we'll likely move onto "vat" grown foods that are better than pretty much anything we have now.
IAMB (I'm a molecular biologist) and I just read the paper online. Not a horrible study, but not terribly conclusive. Check the Acknowlegment:
8 04/?p=9a49e2d215844a92a26a8eec3e8e4467&pi=0
http://www.springerlink.com/content/02648wu132m07
"Acknowledgments We thank Anne-Laure Afchain for her help in statistical analyses, and the CRIIGEN scientific and administrative councils for expertise, and initiating judiciary actions by the former French minister of environment, Corinne Lepage, to obtain the data. We also thank Frederique Baudoin for secretarial assistance, and Dr. Brian John and Ian Panton for advising on the English revision of the manuscript. This work was supported by Greenpeace Germany who, in June 2005, won the Appeal Court action against Monsanto, who wanted to keep the data confidential. We acknowledge the French Ministry of Research and the member of Parliament François Grosdidier for a contract to study health assessments of GMOs, as well as the support of Carrefour Group, Quality, Responsibility and Risk Management."
Supported by Greenpeace...I love the organization, but there is a possible stigma of bias here. Like big tobacco funding studies scientists likely to do research that favors their cause....
The toxin is obviously Dihydrogen Monoxide! http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
And Soylent Green is people. So what. They're both yummy.
Just don't claim that 'non-GM' corn is 'as nature intended'.
Nature didn't intend anything. And it really doesn't like being anthropomorphised.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Well, it was a troll because it failed to mention that the seeds are drought, disease and insect resistant. Something not found in standard crops. This allows greater yields and the chance that the Africans will friggin' live until next season. That is a hand-up, in my opinion.
There is not a thing preventing the industries and universities on continental Africa from producing resistant and hardy strains on their own. In the mean time, there's also nothing wrong with Monsanto and others to benefit from their efforts.
By the way... Just how much of your assets did you give to Africa?
"It just seems to me that Greenpeace is following the formula of the religions - find something that is mysterious and unsettling to the average person, vilify it, then profit."
err.... whers the profit part? does the proft go to those rich greenpeace shareholders? or maybe its spent on fast cars and luxury holiday homes for the greenpeace board of directors?
Didnt think so.
Comparing the profit motive of a large multinational company that has been known to sue farmers whsoe only crime was having GM corn blown into their fields, with an enviornmental pressure group staffed mainly by volunteers, seems a bit silly.
Most people who would campaign about GM food would rather not have to bother. I'd much rather we could trust food companies and governments to make sure there are no safety concerns over what we eat. Food-scare after food scare has shown this to be not the case. It took BSE for brits to even be told that cattle spines and spinal cord were being ground up and fed to cattle. This is what food producers try to do if you don't have someone keep an eye on them.
The governing party in the UK is largely bankrolled by Lord Sainsbury and lord Haskins (two food millionaires) so sadly we turn to pressure groups to keep an eye on things.
I'm mentioning the Uk because thats where I'm from, so I know more about our situation.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Snake venom is also made from natural enzymes, proteins, fats, and perhaps even a little carbohydrates. Does that mean it's nontoxic? No. All sorts of stuff that is made by natural processes can also be toxic to humans.
I agree with your points. My main beef with the anti-GM crowd is that they single out genetic manipulation in the lab, and not other forms of genetic manipulation (like selective breeding).
Any process that changes the genetic composition of a plant or animal has some potential to cause problems. We need to have standards in place to ensure the food supply is safe - and it amounts to more than just banning products that use recombinant DNA. Farmers have practiced selective breeding since the age of Mendel - usually without much thought to expensive safety testing.
Arguably there is no such thing as "natural corn" these days.
FYI to the parent post. RoundUp is a herbacide and not a pestacide.
That's the real question. Is it for ethanol or for food? If it's for food, which food? People food? Animal food? Many GM foods find their way into processed items like ketchup, cereal (yep, like Corn Flakes), and canned soup, and the food industry is not required to tell you that GM food was used in the creation of these processed foods. So we could already be eating this stuff.
I'm actually okay with GM food being used in these things, but I want a nice big orange label telling me so, so I can choose other products. But, then there's the problem of contaminating or overpowering existing organic crops...
Reminds me of a science fiction short story I read as a kid where this guy travels to the future and finds all the sources of real food are gone or mutated into poison and the only thing people can eat are pills. The government and religious institutions reacted to the crisis by declaring eating real food was obscene. Pictures of real food were considered pornographic.
Wish I could remember the title of that story.
You are right, let me rephrase: "Just don't claim that 'non-GM' corn is 'as the Flying Spaghetti Monster intended.'"
There. That should be better...
'Sensible' is a curse word.
"They are even pushing "Terminator" seeds, which are sterile, forcing farmers into purchasing seed from suppliers every year instead of keeping their seed for the next crop."
Yes. I've even seen pictures on the news at night of Monsanto agents holding guns to farmer's heads, preventing them from buying standard seeds without the terminator gene. Someone stop these bastards from forcing their seeds down people's throats!
If you buy Windows, you're being forced. If you buy Linux, you're not. If you buy Monsanto, you're being forced. If you buy Park Seeds, you're not.
Bullshit.
Genetic modification fundamentally involves altering proteins.
Well, since you clearly don't understand what genetic modifications do, or how proteins work, it is unsurprising that you can't see anything here.
A protein can contain the same amino acids as a non-toxic protein and be a toxin. A protein can even contain the same amino acids in the same order as a safe protein and be harmful (that's what produces "mad cow" and other prion-caused disorders.)
I'm a farmer's son, and 'sterile' seed has been the status quo for almost a century. GMO's just a new way of doing it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_seed
Oh yes, because there are no things in nature that are toxic, hence if it's natural it must be good!
And dosage means nothing, if 1 ppm of protein X in your corn doesn't hurt you then 1000 ppm won't either!
And of course the genetic modification itself is to make the plant express the Cry3Bb1 protein, don't let the fact that it's a delta-endotoxin - that's just a name the last five letters mean nothing. (Well if you're not a beetle it probably doesn't but clearly the proteins have been altered).
Yes because a peer reviewed study that comes to a different conclusion about statistical significance than the company trying to market the stuff is just vilification by religious nutjobs.
All the variaties of corn in use today are the result of a centuries-long selective-breeding program.
Genetic engenerring just speeds up the process a lot.
I don't know what the current situation is, but there was a point in time a few years ago where people were screaming their heads off about "genetically modified food" that had only ever been "genetically modified" through selective breeding and purposeful cross-polination and such. So it wasn't like there were people in a lab splicing DNA from random species into corn or something, but what was being done was effectively the same as the breeding that people have been doing since civilization began. Most of the "natural" food we eat today was somehow domesticated by man for the purpose of food. We continued to breed and replant the mutations or variants that made crops more reliable, made the meat more fleshy, and made animals easier to corral.
Yes, people sometimes eat wild animals that they've hunted or wild vegetation they've found, but mostly that isn't the case. Cows, pigs, and chickens were all "genetically modified" a long time ago, as have carrots, grapes, apples, etc.
I'm not suggesting that there's no danger here, but there definitely have been instances of "genetic modification" being blown way out of proportion.
This corn is -not- something that is likely to have occurred in nature: they spliced in genes for a toxin from a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis. This bacterium does occur naturally, and there are natural process (such as retroviral activity) that in rare circumstances could cause genes from the bacterium to be inserted into the genome of a plant.
What Monsanto has done, however, is to engineer corn to produce the B. thuringiensis toxin, in quantity sufficient to kill insects. Calling this comparable to selective breeding is really in no way accurate.
Monsanto has made a plant produce poison that is only found in the wild in an unrelated bacterium. Eating these crops is going to give you much higher levels of this toxin than you would ever be able to consume otherwise.
I think the biggest concern with genetically engineered crops is the corresponding drop in genetic diversity, but there are side issues like this that are also very messy.
GM potatoes killed half the lab rats
;) the evil corp thats always selling poisons and death. thats what they do in real life
also from monsanto
half the rats that ate it died
it has new acids that have never existed before that literally kill you!
they start using this potatoes in french fries and crap and a large % of the population will get sick, cancer, and/or die
monsantos is THE 'evil multinational corporation' from the movies
I've used Bt in my garden, it's considered an organic pest control. It's a bacteria that produces a toxin to the insects that eat plants. It's considered safe for humans because the bacteria can only survive in an alkaline environment, and human stomachs are highly acidic, so when you eat a small amount of the bacteria on the surface of a vegetable, the bacteria dies in your gut. The "Bad" insects have alkaline digestive systems so the bacteria thrives, producing the toxin, killing the host.
The Bt corn is changing this balance. Since it's producing enough toxin to guard against the insects without having to grow in their guts, there may also be enough toxin to harm humans as well. I'd say more testing is definitely needed, preferably on Monsanto exectutives.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
The real issue with genetic modification is the increases scope and speed of such changes. A person breeding corn might be able to breed to different strains to produce a new one and it could conceivable result in higher levels of some dangerous toxin corn naturally produces. But, given both strains of corn have existed for some time and have presumably been safe to eat, it is a lot less likely than if someone actually targets the genetic code that controls toxicity levels. GM opens up whole new avenues of change that selective breeding and random mutation are highly unlikely to ever touch and as such more caution is required.
Arguably there is no such thing as "natural corn" these days.When people go to the store and buy a corn, they have expectations. Those expectations include that the corn is from one of the many strains that have been being consumed for a long time, or a combination of those strains. They don't expect that corn to have significant changes to its genetic code, and unless it has been exposed to a significant mutagen they are right. I'd argue that passing of corn that has been genetically modified or heavily exposed to mutagens as "normal" corn is not in their best interests and is deceitful. There is a real difference in the risk posed between "natural" corn and GM corn, although to most people educated on the subject that delta is pretty small. By being honest, however, companies investing in such products are motivated both to produce benefits end users care about and to make sure the testing process is thorough so that GM foods earn/develop a reputation for safety.
* Ok, sorry for having posted this before here, but I had some trouble with my login/emailaccount. Anyways, here I go in a definite version:
Recently, I (re)stumbled upon an article called "Environmental Heresies". A good and interesting read for sure, but, like with all these kind of articles, the author (futurologists, they are called, I believe) makes the same basic mistakes as all his predecessors. I'll give some rebutal and critcism (but since this is about GM food, I'll restrict this post to just that criticism):
As for genetically modified (GM) crops, I fear he really simplifies the subject too much to be useful in making a rational decision about the pro's and cons. Basically, he over-optimistically only conveys the pros, while barely mentionning any of the cons - as if they were unimportant.
It should be noted however, that with living organisms, you can not simply test it out in the wild, and then expect to be able to put the genie back in the bottle when things go wrong. Once you contaminated a natural area, and the contamination has a sufficiently advantage (in a darwinistic sense) to stay around in the genepool, there is no way in hell you can get rid of it completely, when it turns out it is damaging humans, or other species and ecological systems.
Now, his counterargument that those won't survive in the wild seems rather weak (many GM corporations claim the same). In effect, some GM genes *already* have contaminated other 'wild' crops, and it didn't sizzle out in the wild, on the contrary (a prominent example of that are some strains of GM corn in south-america). So... it may be that some GMs will not survive in the wild, but you can bet some *will*, however. And he, nor anyone else, can garantuee that such GM or hybrid crops can't be damaging or unhealthy to the ecosystem or local species, including humans.
Also, the reductionistic view of "we're not doing anything else then what people have been doing for centuries" is somewhat misleading too. Yes, people have been breeding crops, and cultivated crops are not 'natural' in the sense that they occur in the wild...but it's an unfair analogy, because one is comparing oranges with apples. For instance, with GM, it is perfectly possible to make genemodifications between two completely different species of plants. In effect, this trans-species swapping of genes with GM, can be done between animals and plants. In all those centuries that "we have always done this" I would like to see any example where this has actually been done before.
No; this is a totally new technique, with new possibilities, certainly, but also new consequences (which we don't know anything about) and new dangers. You can't just shrug those of with claiming, falsely, that we've been using those techniques for millenia. And you can't just merrily test it out in the wild, and see if anything happens.
Apart from that, even purely economically, I doubt it has all those beneficial effects the author (or GM corporations) claims it has or will have - but more about that at the end.
In conclusion; the author is fully right about some things, but a bit too simplistic (and, perhaps, biased) in other points. . In regard to the GM-crops, I fear he is a bit misguided himself; this is obvious by the naive assumption of how much 'good' GM-crops will do - which is, I suspect, derived from an overly (and typical USA) optimistic viewpoint on capitalism, which I don't share.
GM-corporations do not care about worldhunger, nor about the living quality of poor farmers in third (or first, for that matter) worldcountries. What matters to them is maximising profit for their shareholders. In the authors' view, this is fully compatible with eachother, but I rather think that, in the end, you can't have both: if it's really about maximising profit, then it is about holding control of the market, and if it's about control, then it's not about the freedoms and abilities and rights of the farmer. This already can be seen by the fact many GM corporations have
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Nobody eats corn as it was created by nature: All the variaties of corn in use today are the result of a centuries-long selective-breeding program.
When did nature create this corn that we're no longer eating? This whole line of thought is like a fallacy inside a fallacy inside a fallacy... it's making me dizzy.
And, apparently, poisonous. So really you don't need seeds that will grow more than on generation...I see the beautiful logic now!
Really, I'm not clear on what this has to do with whether or not it's a good thing to give people "Terminator" corn. You could give people seeds that grow golden Cadillacs, but if the cars all break down after a year you're not really addressing a transportation issue with them, are you? And while you're fielding questions, can you tell me what my own charitable donations have to do with whether or not it's ethical for Monsanto to sell Terminator seeds?
In reality, the seed most farmers get in Africa is subsidized by their government, meaning, they plant what they are given, which is what the government bought them. If you don't believe that the government officials involved are getting a payout, then I suspect you don't know much about how government works on this planet.
In any case, I suppose you're entitled to your opinion. I do know that farmers in Africa consistently reject GM crops that have riders attached in favor of crops they can manage all on their own...so maybe both they and I know something you don't.
Vitamin C? Yuo chose a pretty bad example. It takes a ginormous dose of vitamin C to reach toxicity in humans, and the body is very efficient about removing it. Large doses do, however, seem to help in overcoming minor infections (colds and such). If I start developing a sinus infection or a cold or something along those lines, I typically take 60+ times the RDA of vitamin C daily until I'm free of it (several doses spread through the day so a heightened level of vitamin C is maintined, as taking it in one dose would just make you piss it back out in about 3 hours).
GM foods aren't necessarily bad. After all, people have been crossbreeding various species of plants and animals for millennia. Crossbreeding is a poor man's GM.
The key thing that distinguishes GM foods from crossbreed foods is that when you crossbreed non-poisonous plant A with non-poisonous plant B, you almost never get poisonous children (although it is possible).
With GM foods, all bets are off. You can do almost anything and if you're not careful, you can produce foods that have significant problems. Worse than that people tend to turn a blind eye to "naturally occurring hormones", so it's not okay if a cow is injected with growth hormone and it's not okay if an Olympic runner injects steroids, but it is okay if the cow naturally produces an elevated amount of growth hormone or the Olympic runner naturally has elevated steroids. (It makes no sense, but that's life). The key problem with GM foods is that they allows us to redefine what is natural and thus sidestep the issue.
Ultimately, the safest way to handle GM foods is to handle them the same way they handle new species of plants/animals. If someone tried to sell a new species of plant that was recently found in the Brazilian rain forest, the FDA would be on their case in a heartbeat. The excuse "it looks like spinach and might actually have evolved from spinach, but includes 100 times more nutrients" wouldn't fly and they certainly couldn't market this thing as spinach (even if it turns out to be perfectly safe and has no undesirable side effects).
People who are antisocial, misanthropic, selfish and greedy tend to see those characteristics in everyone. When they see people who claim to act out of charitable reasons, it enrages them because it casts doubt on their "It's okay that I'm evil because everyone else is" theory. They feel a burning need to show those kind of people in the worst light possible, to prove to themselves and others that no good exists in humanity. Logic doesn't enter into the picture, so don't bother looking for it in posts such as the one to which you responded.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
From TFA:
"MON863 is a genetically modified corn that expresses a Bt-toxin. This toxin is a modified
version of the delta endotoxin Cry3Bb1 which originates from the microorganism Bacillus
thuringiensis. The genetic manipulation is aimed at protecting maize plants against a pest
called corn rootworm (Diabrotica spp.)."
In other words, the corn produces its own insect killer. It's like sprinkling a little Sevin on your corn flakes. Bon apetite!
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
It would be curious if this corn turns out to be very toxic (lets imagine that is it), yet be (in some way) better suited for Ethanol production.
Would farmers still grow it?
aye, you make sense -- but what about other companies that produce Bio-engineered corn? I'm sure there are others. Do all of them forbid seed-saving?
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
How many fallacies can you squeeze into one statement?
These variations had been tested over the course of centuries. They wouldn't have been in wide use if they were toxic.
They undoubtedly ate things that did make them sick. We don't eat them now. Why? Because they made folks sick...
The basic problem is that these GM foods are not getting the long term testing necessary to determine their safety before being widely released to the general public. It's playing with fire. Now, playing with fire is fine, but it's best if that's done by the few mavericks of society, and by their choice. It's not fine when it's forced on everyone without their knowledge.
you are right. they came here ate the corn and even took it bac kto europe where everyone got a nice nasty sikness from it and even died. the early corn/wild corn needed to be boiled in an alkali to convert some of the nasties to a digestable form.
The indians and aztecs did not share that important fact with the asshats that took it, only the ones that were nice.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I experience migraines after consumption of as little as a soda's worth. Just because you don't does
not make the substance less problematic or any less toxic. Many people have a higher toxicity threshold
for that substance than do others.
PKU people can have severe problems from it- there's a very real reason that they put that warning on
the packaging that the stuff's in the food, a PKU person can die from much lower consumption levels.
Normally they'd avoid the foods with the Phenylalanine, but they put Aspartame into the damnedst stuff
these days. Sort of like all the HFCS they keep putting into things like bread, sodas, etc. High
Fructose Corn Syrup's actually more problematic to humans than Sucrose because refined Fructose in the
concentrations we consume makes humans fat and causes those who might have a some level of risk for
Type II Diabetes to actually GET it.
While I understand your sentiments, the things we have in our food supply is disturbing. Things we really
probably ought not to consider acceptable. Aspartame's one of a bunch of them that really do fall under
the category of, "This is probably not a good idea in the first place..." and should be pulled off the market.
I suspect Splenda may even fall under that category (Chlorinated Hydrocarbons are pesticides in most cases
and if you just straight chlorinated Sucrose, you get a deadly toxin to humans...) but since it's less
problematic on the surface for me, as a Type II Diabetic, I'm forced to choose either nothing at all (Other
choices due to market considerations and FDA not approving some viable answers are barred to me...) or Splenda
stuff.
Nice.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
It's not reached the public eye like Vioxx or some of the others. It's almost reached the
threshold, but it's not there yet. It IS a problem all the same.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
... we call it corn.
tone
Agreed, but the rate of change facilated by the new technology is the worrying part. Conventional genetic engineering (i.e. cross cultivation etc) has been slow, and where it went wrong not so many people got affected (if any). Genetic engineering does for food production what nuclear weapons did for warfare - it revolutionises the area by introducing a step-change in technology. Suddenly you can make huge positive changes very quickly, but its a double edged sword - some of those changes might not be as positive as they seem. And making lots of changes in a short time inevitably means some risks get overlooked. So yes, its ignorant to suggest that traditional foodstuffs have evolved "naturally", but it would be equally inaccurate to suggest that GM is just "speeding up what we've always done".
"So I would venture to say that in order to make these plants resistant, there is probably something being produced by them that is not entirely natural."
There are many plants resistant to RoundUp. Most berry plants being a good example, and most ivy is also resistant. Oxalis is another resistant plant. St. Augustine's grass is pretty resistant too.
RoundUp is most effective against broad leafted shallow rooted grasses, not every plant.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
so unless you modify their biochemistry to an extent where they'll produce real toxins
Did you just answer your own question?
If you think that plants cannot produce real toxins, come on by and I'll whip you up a nice mistletoe salad with a hemlock coulis.
Generally the food we eat is a compromise in terms of health. Plants which have no natural defenses are usually expensive and risky to grow while plants with excessive natural defenses are usually expensive and risky to eat.
Many of these GMOs are produced by splicing genes from column A (good to eat but risky to grow) with some from column B (easy to grow but flat out poisonous). Given the motivations of Monsanto and their agribusiness clients I cannot imagine that even the deliberately engineered balance is tilted in favour of the "edible" side. Secondly, they don't know what they are doing. With all due respect to the very bright people that work in this industry, they have absolutely no way of knowing every chemical produced by these plants. Obviously lab tests will weed out the most immediately toxic outcomes but after that you really are just picking and eating random plants out of the yard (in fact, as observed above, you are eating random plants that have already been preselected for mild toxicity).
There have been more people killed by water poisoning than Vitamin C poisoning. But your point holds- everything is toxic at high enough dosages. Vitamin C was just not the best example, even eating a pound of it is unlikely to cause long-term damage (but will give you brutal diarrhea).
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
"Ah, but you forget that this is Monsanto corn. The corporation's aura of sheer evil caused the toxicity!"
I love how this got modded +5 insightful.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
My people call it corn.
(anyone remember that commercial?)
"Eye halve a spelling chequer, It came with my pea sea, It plainly marques four my revue, Miss steaks eye kin knot sea"
The places where you describe this as being a potential problem couldn't afford Monsanto's or any other GM crop
company's prices for the seed grain. Sorry you've rendered your argument kind of moot, now haven't you?
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
BT and GMO is as much about patents as anything else. See the case of Percy Schmeiser. http://www.percyschmeiser.com/crime.htm His field was contaminated by Monsanto genetics. Monsanto sued him and won!
I own a piece of land that has some tillable acres. It had a history of rotated corn and beans sprayed with herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers. I planted it to pasture. http://mikesmind.com/home/?p=33 What amazed me more than anything is that I couldn't find an earthworm on the tillable portion! The earth was basically dead. It's starting to come back now.
Genetic modifications and the subsequent application of chemicals is poisoning our land.
www.mikesmind.com - www.daddyworkathome.com - www.freetofarm.org - www.tenfoottable.com
"The advisory committee's report is not the first to express doubt as to whether the prime goal of Greenpeace activities really is to protect natural resources. Patrick Moore, who co-founded Greenpeace in Canada in 1971, has his doubts, too. He believes that the thrust of the group's campaigns has, for some time, been geared primarily towards self-promotion. And he argues that such misguided priorities can actually end up being harmful to the environment. For example, Moore points out that the sinking of the Brent Spar oil platform owned by the Shell Corporation in 1995 - which Greenpeace protested against by calling for a global boycott of Shell - would have done no damage to the environment. In Germany, Greenpeace officials had to concede that they had misled the public by exaggerating the risk of pollution from oil residues on the Brent Spar platform. Moore also believes that Greenpeace's outright rejection of genetic engineering does not benefit the 'public good', since it tends to scaremonger about pretty safe and good advances in crop production and agriculture more broadly." from http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/artic le/2843/
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Greenpeace issued a horribly-biased report on toxins in computers counting, for example, what some manufacturers promised to do in the future vs. what Apple is doing now. Apple wouldn't play kiss-ass with Greenpeace, nor would Apple donate, so the report was unfairly scathing against Apple and roundly criticized for it.
So the question, do we trust Greenpeace on this?
Yeah. Anyone with a background or even a long-standing interest in biochemistry and molecular biology can spin out lots of _plausible_ chemical interactions that could connect most any biochemical cause with any health effect of interest. The hard part, the part that takes time and money, is finding which of these reaction chains are real. But there are so many possible mechanisms, all reasonable, all with pieces previously observed in some other context, that it's insane to assume some GE product is safe until proven otherwise.
No they are not.
m e.htm
"Springer Verlag" is the (german) root of the scientific publisher founded by a man called "Julius Springer" in 1842 which is now "Springer Science+Business Media" (Which is basically the Springer Verlag merged with Kluwer Publishers). If you are interested here is the company history: http://www.springer-sbm.de/index.php?L=0&id=165
The "Axel Springer Verlag" is a completely different company, which was founded by a man called "Axel Springer" in 1946. See also: http://www.axelspringer.com/englisch/unterneh/fra
The founders of both companies shared the last name, hence the "Springer" in both company names.
I bet these guys use Windows ME and are fucking proud about it. That's the spirit boys!
While I don't disagree with your assertions, presenting roundup as a pesticide is false. Pesticides in general are much more harmful to humans, small animals, etc. than most all herbicides.
Yes. I've even seen pictures on the news at night of Monsanto agents holding guns to farmer's heads, preventing them from buying standard seeds without the terminator gene. Someone stop these bastards from forcing their seeds down people's throats!
Scenario.
1) Farmer A plants terminator seeds.
2) Farmer B plants non-terminator seeds in the next field over.
3) Farmer A's terminator crops cross-pollinate with Farmer B's crops, reducing Farmer B's yield.
4) Nice sales person from company M shows up at Farmer B's door offering a low introductory price on terminator seeds.
5) Profit.
You can't claim this won't happen because it already has. Cross-pollination by RoundupReady crops has already been the basis for a legal case in Canada, where a farmer noticed that some patches in his field were pesticide resistant and deliberately saved and replanted those seeds. Monsanto sued and won.
The certain truth of GM foods is that the genes will get loose, and the terminator gene in particular is nothing more than a weapon of commercial bio-terrorism, a gun aimed at the head of innocent farmers whose fields happen to be adjacent to those who choose to use terminator seeds. To employ your silly analogy, how would you feel if any Windows machine on the same subnet progressively reduced the capability of all your Linux or Mac boxes? Would you be perfectly happy with your neighbours or the company down the street buying Windows?
Personally, I think it should be considered a serious crime to allow GM crops to cross-pollinate any other crop, and that both farmers who use them and companies that sell them should be liable for triple damages for any losses that occur, and unable to claim any recompense for benefits that accrue, to innocent farmers of adjacent fields.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
"And, allegedly, poisonous."
Fixed that for ya.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Those plants weren't "GE'd." They were BRED to be herbicide resistant. No physical modification of genes was involved.
"MON863 is a form of maize genetically modified to make it resistant to corn rootworm."
You make that crop produce pesticides and then consider it a surprise when you get poisoned when eating it?
"The industry says the technology offers vast potential benefits, poses no health risk and has never been shown to contaminate other crops."
Right. And those farmers you sued because they grew their IP without a license did so because they went over to your fields at night and stole some plants. Can't be that there is some natural mechanism plants use to reproduce.
"It's been 53 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment."
WTF? Is that cumulative or something? 15 minutes after your first comment, 30 after your next and so on? And why don't they just show how much time remains until I can post again? Because I know very well when I posted my last comment, even without that pesky message, thank you.
This maize is modified to express Bt toxin, which is a bacterial protein not normally present in maize, so it could conceivably produce toxic effects in the rat. However, I'm not particularly worried by a protein that produces such small effects on blood and urine chemistry, within the normal range of variation, in an animal that has been eating it for three months straight.
Quite right, one caveat though, selective-breeding allows adjusting time, which GMO does not. Things, such as the "Terminator Seed" could not possibly happen in nature. It's all about finding equilibrium.
I already explained below in the thread why it ended up like that, so I find your comment uncalled for. In short, it's pretty lame, or at least, patronising.
And what now, do I have to become equally lame and say somthing like 'I find it to be of supreme irony that you claim I have to learn how to write, to be able to *agrue* effectively.'?
A human with normal intellect will come to the conclusion that shit - such as screwed up layout and spellingsmistakes - happens, and is not indicative of anything which would make one conclude it was done on purpose (or an inability to argue correctly).
In short, I find your sense of supreme irony a bit premature.
If you're not a troll, feel free to look at the same post 'the good (?) of GM food' (under the current nick), and give some sensible comment that deals with the argumentation and not the form, if you please.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Some US farmers have discovered this: when they fed their animals GM grain, they did not multiply. When they gave them normal grain again, that year they multiplied.
It's scary.
"My main beef with the anti-GM crowd is that they single out genetic manipulation in the lab, and not other forms of genetic manipulation (like selective breeding)."
I'm afraid there is a monumental difference. Selective breeding of organisms that are, by nature, biologically compatible is hardly the equivalent of splicing fish genes into rose bushes. That's just my wild example, but it's exactly the sort of thing that's being done. I didn't get super concerned about GM foods until I did some research and found out the extent of the "genetic manipulation" that's going on. They are creating mutant species that couldn't possibly occur in nature on a time frame smaller than on the order of millennia.
Think of the problems we're seeing with invasive species all over the world. e.g. someone empties a fish tank in the Mediterranean and one of the plants ends up covering tens of thousands of acres of the sea floor choking off all life in its path. Now, we're introducing these GM species into the environment that have never even been seen anywhere in the world. It's insane.
There is a very delicate balance in the biosphere which was shaped over immense periods of time with the coexistence of slowly evolving species. Adding these mutant freak genes into the mix is a catastrophe waiting to happen. The risk of unintended consequences is simply too great.
And yeah, in a former life IWAB (I Was A Botanist)
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Monsanto has been know to sue farmers for using their GM seeds without buying them. Turns out the supposedly infertile GM crops had cross-pollinated adjacent fields. Thanks for wrecking the corn supply, Monsanto.
What's the recklessly pro-technology equivalent of a Luddite? Seems like technology's unquestioning cheerleaders are a bigger risk to all of us than technophobes.
I wouldn't say it's an aura... more like a stench.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
Imagine if someone asked you to modify a part of a life-support software system while a patient is hooked-up and relying on it for life. Move over, you have little knowledge of the system as whole and how different parts interact.
People like to spout off about how clever we humans are, but actually we know just a little more than jack squat about the long-term consequences of mucking with the genome.
It's not what we know that is dangerous. Its what we don't know.
--TMK
Look, I *know* it sucks to read the above post, and I explained why below, but still people whine about it, so please read this one instead, then:
3 63917
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=226671&cid=18
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
I agree, but processes like selective breding are usually much slower, which gives us more time to react to possible problems.
The main problem I have with GM plants and animals is not so much possible toxicity, that's something you can always test for. What I am afraid of is creating new "invasive" plants and animals and introducing them into the environment. There are already enough problems with moving plants and animals between continents. I think the last thing we want to do is creating new possibly invasive organisms, especially those that are designed to be more resistant against natural predators and other hardships.
AccountKiller
Farmers have been using herbicides on corn crops for decades. So it's not as if GM corn caused herbicide use.
One might argue that RoundUp is more dangerous, and I can't really speak to that point. I can tell you that a salesman once drank concentrated atrazine to demonstrate its safety to my father, and he didn't die right away.
-Dave
How do sterile seeds cross-pollinate with non-sterile seeds?
Q.
As far as I'm concerned corn/maize is a useless product anyways. Our bodies hardly get anything nutrition from it and it is a poor use of land. Even the ethanol argument falls flat because corn is very poor source of ethanol. Sugar cane is a much better source.
We'd all be much better off if corn just "went away" and we replaced it nutrionally and fuel-wise with other products.
Yikes.
Roundup interferes with certain metabolic pathways that only plants have, which produce aromatic amino acids. Basically, the stuff is a nasty poison but only if you're a plant.
Round-Up doesn't kill vertebrates, but interferes with certain hormones, which aren't critical for survival, but it might give guys tits and make them infertile.
Just wanted to point out that Roundup is a herbicide and not a pesticide.
But you're wrong. There is a difference between GM and long-term breeding. GM introduces modified genes directly which are selected non-randomly and may not even originate in the species being modified. It's essentially an invasive process outside the normal reproductive cycle. Long-term breeding programs do rely on cross-breeding and selective breeding and so they are a kind of manipulation or management, but those use "natural" mechanisms of reproduction to accomplish the goal. I think the difference is quite important and that we end up comparing apples and oranges here. To minimize the concerns of invasive genetic manipulation by saying that selective breeding is also genetic manipulation is to side-step the underlying concern. Of course, it is still incumbent on those asserting a causative relationship between GM foods and any negative outcome to prove that relationship.
I do not have a signature
If Greenpeace had been around when T. Edison was doing all his most brilliant work, we'd never have gotten electricity for public use (too dangerous - although Edison's DC system was less dangerous than Westinghouse's AC system, which is in use to this day).
If Greenpeace had been around when Herr Bayer did his thing with acetylsalicylic acid, we'd all still be chewing on tree-bark every time we got a headache. I mean, have you looked at the side effects of that stuff?
Praise the Maker, Greenpeace wasn't around when H. Ford started churning out cheap automobiles. All that wood, all that metal - hell, Ford couldn't even figure out what to do with the char-coal left over from firing his plants; his stepbrother Mr. Kingsford found a market for it. Greenpeace would've gone ape at the thought of encouraging Americans to cook over an artificial fuel source, I'm sure.
No wonder we can't build stuff like the Grand Coulee Dam anymore.
Was the strain of corn developed for food or industrial purposes. It seems unlikely that if the corn was an industrial crop (laced with a Pharmaceuticals or as a source of an oil to be used in manufacture) that anyone would be shocked that it was toxic.
On the other hand with these strains in the wild and Gene stacking the horrors could be unimaginable.
JACEM
DOC Disinformation Obfuscation and Confusion
The carrot to FUD's stick
Oh but who cares. Corn purchased and eaten as corn accounts for what percentage of corn product in the average american's diet? My guess would be its in the low 1 digit percentages.
Corn byproduct is at least a component in the vast majority of our foods. Soda? Based on corn. Cereal? alot of them contain corn. High Fructose corn suryp is cheaper than sugar here, so it gets used most anywhere that sweetness is desired and corn syrup doesn't fuck up the flavor too bad to be fixed for cheaper than just using sugar.
Its interesting, in some ways it makes corn the most attractive plant for improvements in efficiency since its the basis of our entire diet. However, it also makes it the most risky one to modify.
I mean if zucchini became slightly more toxic... so what? Sure everyone eats it, but most in far lower quantities.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I would claim there are some inherent potential problems with GM crops. It may be true that it's a problem of implementation, but then the implementation should be far more strict, since we're dealing with public health, after all. If GM corporations would adhere to the standards of medical companies that realease new drugs, then mush more security would be added. But you'd still have some problems which is inherent to all GM incorporated in living things. For instance; if a drug turns out to be toxic, you just take that drug of the shelves; if a GM crop or weed turns out to be toxic, it's far harder to put the genie beck in the bottle, especially if that plant has a darwinian advantage. For my other criticism, see: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=226671&cid=183 63917
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Those articles both talk about corn derived ethanol. Brazil gets their ethanol from sugarcane, which is a MUCH better source.
Q.
... the Terminator system works not by preventing pollination, or making the seeds infertile, but by causing the next generation of crops to die at an early age. So the second farmer got as many fertilized seeds as there would have been anyway, but a portion of them had acquired the Terminator gene, and were therefore nonviable.
At least, that's how it was explained to me some time ago. I could very well be wrong.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Because we evolved (or were created) to be a moral species, our only real choice for saving the planet and ourselves at the same time is to increase farmer productivity. So far we have been doing a pretty good
job, since the current benefits are staggering.
I'm not sure that it's really any more moral to allow the human population to grow exponentially, far beyond any reasonable carrying capacity of the Earth, and set us all up for global catastrophic collapse.
(and just because Malthus and others have predicted collapse in the past and have been wrong about the time-frame doesn't mean the day isn't coming where we do reach the limits of how much food can be produced, how much fuel we can burn, how much water we can drink, etc.)
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
I guess sharing the truth and helping to educate people is flamebait now? This is just one of the incidents in which the NIH has been caught pushing an agenda to the detriment of the health of the American people. They KNEW there was no link between eating fat and getting fat, and they pushed that belief anyway. Why would anyone ever do this? The only people it benefits are the corporations marketing prepared food...
If you haven't yet learned to follow the money, I suggest you do so. In a capitalistic society, all things come from a monetary issue; either the desire to make money, or the problems resulting from a lack thereof (like not being able to afford "justice".)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ah. Yes, of course :)
People keep complaining about GM crop sterility because those eviiiil mega-corps force poor innocent farmers to buy seed over and over again. Ummm, correct me if I'm wrong, but no one is holding a gun to the farmer's head and forcing him to buy sterile crops. And these eviiil corporations lefties hate so much haven't suddenly stopped selling non-GM seed. If it's too expensive, he'll simply stick with traditional crops and keep the extra money. However, could it be possible that maybe, just maybe, the productivity benefits from GM crops plus the savings from using fewer *icides more than offsets the extra expense from having to buy seed every year, not to mention the extra expense from paying the patent tax on these new crops? Or do you think farmers are idiots who can't make rational cost-benefit decisions?
Oh, but wait, I have this silly belief that people know their own economic self-interests better than big daddy government. Silly me.
What point was the OP making? That there could exist some evidence (which the OP was uninterested in actually looking for) that would exonerate Monsanto? You'd think Monsanto would be publishing said evidence instead of engaging on a cover-up.
Look, there could be police records out there showing that Monsanto execs dine on a daily supper of ground babies and kittens, but you'd be an idiot if you tried to make an argument based on that.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
This line is what I was referring to
If you want to keep production up, you need to keep clearing rainforest (until you run out), and essentially leave behind an unproductive desert.
My point was that it does not have to be unsustainable. GGP was wrong about that. Thanks for trying to clarify, but you're arguing a point I never made.
Why are so many posts with factual errors modded up?
It's dead. One of the side effects listed is weight gain, which Monsanto doesn't dispute. Worse yet: weight gain in females, weight loss in males. It's all over but the shouting.
(Seriously: that's a really bad sign, especially that it's different in the two sexes. That implies disruption of endocrine function, which is Not Good.)
Codex Alimentarius residues in food allowed: http://www.codexalimentarius.net/mrls/pestdes/jsp/ pest_q-e.jsp
u thority
c odex-alimentarius.html
m l ..."
Well once the Codex Alimentarius goes into effect -in the USA- in 2009 then these disputes will be settled by a judge just checking the Codex and rendering a decision. Hmm who is in support of the Codex - Monsanto and in fact 9 old toxic pesticides will be re-allowed in the food chain because the residual limits in the Codex allow them to be in our food -- Monsanto, hmmm.
Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Alimentarius#A
"The Guidelines have attracted concern from both consumers and industry due to the potential for restrictions on vitamins and minerals as nutritional supplements. The health freedom movement has pointed to greater concerns related to restrictions on dietary supplement ingredients in Europe via the European Food Supplements Directive [1](which utilizes approved lists of ingredients and ingredient forms) and potentially restrictive dosage limits to be based on a Codex model via the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO) Nutrient Risk Assessment Project [2]."
Links to some sites of organizations - natural health - that are in opposition to the Codex:
http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php
http://www.natural-health-information-centre.com/
And finally, the seminal individual behind the Codex:
http://www.heall.com/medicalfreedom/codexabuse.ht
"The IG Farben Cartel was dismantled and split by the Nuremberg Tribunal into the daughter companies Hoechst, Bayer and BASF. With the help of Nelson Rockefeller, their former business partner and US Undersecretary of State after the war, all convicted IG Farben managers were released from prison already in 1952
Now I am freaking out!
Hey, no reason to be cautious in light of found problems. Why on Earth would Monsanto hide such questionable information, when discussions of GM foods were discussed as "drugs" to be tested? Come on, it's just corn, they said. What's there to be afraid of? The sad thing is that it will be farmers trying to rid their fields, likely unsuccessfully, of such products when the public catches wind of this. As I'm in advertising, and green is getting to be a pretty powerful message, it won't take much to create new patterns of purchasing. I better start looking at how to fit a "Non Genetically Modified" banner next to the Transfat Free label!
Think about it the next time you buy a bag of snacks. Have another chip.
Actually it allows you to do things to the organism which are impossible with its original genome. Since you can put genes into the organism where were never present in that species of organism before.
.. this is a probability that DNA in the cell would be arbitrarily modified.
.. but google around
.. you can just plant 1000 crops .. select out a gene A. Then ONLY plant the seeds of the plant containing gene/feature A, so then .. your next generation will mostly have gene A, and 1 out of 1000 will have gene B in addition to gene A. Then you select out the plant with both gene A and B, and plant 1000 of those. After just ten years, you will have a plant that has genes A B C D E F G H I J simultaneously .. a plant that has a 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance of existing in nature.
.. greenpeace just wants money and power .. they're uninterested in the truth.
So what? It can happen naturally as well, and has happened.
Whenever a cell divides, there is the chance of mutation
FACT: Maize is widely believed to be a domesticated plant that was artificially selectively bred thousands of years ago in Mesoamerica by the natives. It also contains genes from other species, this is called cross species hybridization and happens in nature. In fact even the human genome contains DNA from multiple viruses that apparently infected and integrated (non harmful/useless?) DNA into us. Also look up how bacteria can transfer drug resistance genes across species via bacteriophages. Here's a link on that http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/317/7159/657
FACT: Selective/artificial breeding allows you to bring about features in a plant that are extremely unlikely to have existed in nature.
Example, let's say you want a combination features brought about by the presence of genes A B C D E F G H I J (that's 10) to exist simultaneously in a wheat plant, but the probability of a mutation occurring to bring about any one of those (A or B or C etc.) is 1 in 1000 offspring. That means just to get a plant with feature "A" you have to plant 1000 crops. Big deal? Ok, well to get a plant that has BOTH features A and B you have to plant 1000 x 1000 = 1,000,000 plants. Oh, so you want A B C D E F G H I J...? Guess what? That means you need to have 10^30 plants! That's more plants than would have been in existence if you grew acres of that plant only for billions of generations (years?)!
However with selective breeding
This is also the theory behind why combinations of drugs have a greater chance of curing a disease than giving one drug at a time (it prevents resistance co-evolving).
Anyway whatever this crap is well known
But the United States is by far and away the largest producer of corn, soybeans and a big producer of wheat as well.
Corn on this linkSoybeans on this link
Wheat on this link
Monsanto's kind of like the MPAA of grain. They are even pushing "Terminator" seeds, which are sterile, forcing farmers into purchasing seed from suppliers every year instead of keeping their seed for the next crop.
"Terminator" was not developed by Monsanto, and is not owned by them. It was actually made by Delta & Pine Land Company.
Monsanto is in the process of acquiring and merging with Delta & Pine Land but so thus far the two are still distinct companies, and the merger may yet be blocked in court.
This post was brought to you by the Truth-in-Slashdotting Fund.
RoundUp is an herbicide, not a pesticide. As in flora, not fauna. It's easy to confuse things like this when you're like overwrought and really don't know what you're talking about.
"Nobody is doing development of GM'd strains for resistence to infection, pests or drought for free. Look around. No one. Why would that be? No one works for free."
What has that got to do with it? The principle of breeding plants to get better seeds (be it more productive, tasteful, bigger, resistence to diseases, etc.) has been going on for as long as farmers existed. And that's not only done by big companies with huge budgets, but also by local farmers. Did they work for free, then? Nobody is asking anyone to work for free, and I don't see how that remark constitutes a counter-argument to the dangers I pointed out.
"Uh, what orifice did you pull that from? Since when is it a "right" for a farmer to grown anything other than what they themselves have harvested?"
In Europe you have several countries where farmers have indeed the right to use part of their seeds of the earlier harvest to start a new one in the next year. There is a specific name for it, but not being an english-native speaker, I'm not sure how to translate it. Whether they *choose* to do so, or buy starting-seeds of a company is their choice, and doesn't alter that right. They can not use that right anymore if the seeds are patented or if the plants are seedless, obviously.
"Not a stunning endorsement, that. MM, the guy who fabricates? The guy who's film about Flint was based on a complete lie?"
Let me ask the same sort rhetorical question: is that the extend of your counterarguments? Ad hominem attacks, and sneers?
"I think your analysis was indeed "hystorical"."
Meh. Another sneer, is it?
I must say I'm dissapointed; you hardly gave any actual counterarguments, nor provided any links to susbtantiate your claims, nor did you put *any* effort in really trying to have a sensible discussion with logical reasonings. Yeah, you gave me the straw man of 'nobody works for free'(I don't seem to remember that I claimed otherwise and I fail to see how that demonstrates anything about the (non-)dangers of GM crops), a bunch of rhetorical questions and that you don't like MM.
Right. Thanks for your thoughtful input!
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Not really imho, a lot of malnutrition is caused by local political situations (ie: warlords and idiotic leaders) not the inability for the world to supply enough food.
The scarcity of food is what allows the warlords to use food as a source of control. If food was plentiful, they would have to use other methods such as controlling energy/electricity.
Also current estimates predict the world's population will level out at ~12 billion (birth rates are falling as more of the world become developed) which is likely well within the limits of a sustainable population.
You would disagree with alot of "experts" in thinking that we can adequatly feed 12 billion people. We have trouble feeding 6 billion. The experts could be wrong, but what leads you to think that they are? We currently use alot of fossil fuels to drive our agriculture (from gas for machinery to natural gas based fertilizers), and with our energy resources already being streched its possible that our food output might start to decrease soon. We currently produce about 4x the food that photosynthesis would allow because of our use of fertilizers, and most of our fertilizers come from non-renewable sources.
Of course new technologies could continue to make food production easier even with these problems, but its hard to be too optimistic about that.
--
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
And _you_ did your research then? From what I understand, the _whole_ mutation in this particular strain of corn is to make it produce a sort of a natural pesticide. I.e., yes, a toxin.
Now Monsanto basically says, "yeah, but it's not toxic to mammals." Greenpeace says, "whoa, actually that data says that it's somewhat toxic to rats."
Now both positions _could_ be true. It _is_ possible for something to be toxic to insects without being lethal to humans. (See coffeine. It really evolved as a paralyzing poison against insects. See why Robusta is a hardier crop than Arabica: the Robusta plant simply produces more of it. Yet a human can drink lots of it for decades without being too harmed in the process.) On the other hand, the opposite _can_ be true too. And without proper testing how would you know?
So, pray tell, without even seeing the research, how _do_ you know which side is right and which is wrong? Or are you just motivated enough to rant against Greenpeace even when you have no fucking clue what is it about? At least, even as motivated studies go, they did at least do and publish one. You did... what? to get your info on which to base such a swift judgment.
Hand-waving about mutations happening randomly in nature is at best brain-damaged too. Equally random mutations in plants include atropine (nightshade), ricin (deadly in 0.2mg doses and no antidote), solanine, cyanide (wild almonds), etc. And that's just the short list of the most known ones. We could go into a couple hundred other fun natural stuff, including such exotic effects as immuno-suppressors in some moulds. Just because something _could_ have occured naturally doesn't make it automatically safe. All the poisons in this paragraph occured naturally, yet _aren't_ safe at all.
Plus, it often is false as such anyway. Just because something was created via genetic engineering does _not_ automatically mean it could have occured as a natural mutation any day now. There's plenty of GM stuff, like renet-producing moulds or goats whose milk contains spider silk, which would _never_ evolve on their own, not even in another billion years. There's simply no natural advantage in producing those (wake me up when any plant needs to digest fresh milk, which is what it would take to make renet an advantage), and in fact it's a serious disadvantage to waste your energy and aminoacids on producing them.
So, you know, if you're going to go into a whole rant about who's ignorant or worse, it would be nice if you at least took the time to read a bit and have at least some minimal clue what you're talking about.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Change is the only constant.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I thought we all agreed to stop calling corn 'maize' at the same time we decided belt buckles didn't belong on hats?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Genetically modified foods still contain the same amino acids in their proteins as all the other foods, so unless you modify their biochemistry to an extent where they'll produce real toxins, they will be digested just the same.(emphasis mine)
If you read the information in the PDF links, you'll see that they did exactly that. RTFA (and not just the fluff piece in the first link).
But given that there is already enough food produced for every individual on the planet, perhaps we should be looking elsewhere for a solution to hunger?
Mad Cow disease is caused by a virulent protein. No DNA, RNA to it. Just a protein that destroys your brain & is contageous. So there goes your safe protein notion.
And the whole point of genetic modification is to put outside DNA into an organism, so it will create proteins from that outside DNA. Ever see the glowing tobacco plant, where they put the firefly gene for luciferase into a tobacco plant? Or cows that make human insulin, so that we can harvest the insulin to give as medicine. The point of GM is to make one organism produce a protein it normally doesn't produce.
And everything can be modified by a protein. Fats, DNA, tissues, organs, bones. They can all be changed by proteins.
You left out the part where you assumed you knew what was being discussed because you're a know it all moron, but ended up being wrong. That occurred right around #5-6.
Then there's the part where you tried to avoid acknowledging that you said something wrong and made a stupid assumption. That happened right around #9.
I guess this is #10 (Response) AC is tied of watching you say stupid shit, so AC insists you STFU or learn to read
...is that Monsanto screwed up again. Also go eat green potatoes if you think all foods are "digested just the same".
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Percy Schmeiser lost his case because he collected seed that was obviously patented, and planted it all over his land and then made use of that trait. The only reason a farmer would plant seed in a field and then spray it with round up would be because he 1) wanted to kill all his plants or 2)Because he knew that it was round up ready seed and wanted to make use of the the trait. If it was accidental contamination and pollen blowing in from neighboring farms, the round up contribution to his fields gene pool should have been very small. Even assuming that he didn't intentionally "swipe the seed" (which is reasonable) and plant it, he most certainly knowingly propagated those plants selectively and made use of the the trait. THAT is why he lost. It's like if I found a copy of the White Album on my lawn. The right course of action would be to find the asshole who threw it there and charge them for littering. Instead I go and make millions of copies and sell them, and then claim ignorance because I don't know how it got in the first place there and that I have never heard of the Beatles.
This allows greater yields and the chance that the Africans will friggin' live until next season. That is a hand-up, in my opinion.
I'm not really sure that it is. It allows the population there to expand, but not in any sort of sustainable way: it's completely dependent on supplies of the enhanced seeds.
It's the same problem you'd get if, instead of giving seeds, you just brought in lots and lots of already-processed food. You're not solving any problems, you're just putting it off for a while, and probably making things worse: by increasing the food supply, people will have more children that they can't feed, meaning that the entire population will become permanently dependent on imported food that they can't afford. It's an easy way to make sure that an entire nation or continent stays permanently in poverty and debt.
I'm not really blaming Monsanto: they're just making a buck (albeit in an arguably immoral way, but morality has never been a serious barrier to profit); the real problem rests with the people paying for the "aid" who are only thinking one season ahead, and not for longer-term, sustainable-without-continuous-input, solutions.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Generic corn is dangerous .. as opposed to the alternative I suppose, which is starving.
Starving has been proven to cause damage to not only the liver and kidneys, but the heart, lungs, prostrate, genitals, and even the brain.
Given the choice, corn is certainly the lesser of two evils.
Seriously though, Greenpeace is not exactly on the 'feed the world' bandwagon. I mean, its better that people eat only natural foods, farmed with traditional methods that prove costly and ineffectual in certain climates and indeed, whole land masses.
Far better to convince people that its evil food, than to just accept that evil food could be slightly better than NO food. Especially if the evil part is mostly PR, so you can meet your fund raising goals next quarter.
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
http://www.donarmstrong.com
How do sterile seeds cross-pollinate with non-sterile seeds?
The sterile terminator plants still produce pollen, but seeds fertilized with that pollen will not develop.
Clever, huh?
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
This pretty much sums the paper up; they naively assume that they can multiply 0.05 * 494, getting 24.7, and any "significant" results beyond this mean that they can reject the null hypothesis.
Unfortunately, that's completely incorrect. Because they're publishing in a lower tier journal, this sort of thing can sneak by reviewers who are not statisticians.
What they should have done instead is use FDR, Sidak, or the Bonferroni correction to handle their multiple comparisons and compare their p values to 0.05/494 or approx. 0.0001.
(reposting 'cause I pressed return when I should have clicked "preview")
http://www.donarmstrong.com
The scarcity of food is what allows the warlords to use food as a source of control. If food was plentiful, they would have to use other methods such as controlling energy/electricity.
The later aren't quite as essential as the former, my point being that while the rest of the world could feed many of those currently undernourished the politics of those regions prevents such food from getting to those who need it. That is very different from us being unable to grow enough food to feed those people.
We have trouble feeding 6 billion. The experts could be wrong, but what leads you to think that they are?
There is nothing I see that prevents us from, theoretically, feeding 6 billion people easily, much of it is just bad distribution and local politics. The western world consumes much more than it needs to for example. Africa used to have an excess of food, now those same nations are starving because their politicians were idiots (for example they replaced successful white farmers with uneducated black "farmers"). Africa may be beyond fixing right now due to just how much they've fucked their own environment (runoff from clear cutting removing topsoil, etc.) but hopefully that not the case. The agricultural methods in many third world nations are very sub standard which likewise is an area that will naturally improve (as those nations become developed).
We grow many crops that aren't strictly required and raise a lot of meat that isn't efficient use of land as well. Also if I remember the food distribution system is not exactly energy efficient as local food production would be better. We can easily produce a lot more food in many areas but those in charge of those areas simply have no incentive to.
We currently use alot of fossil fuels to drive our agriculture (from gas for machinery to natural gas based fertilizers), and with our energy resources already being streched its possible that our food output might start to decrease soon.
We have enough nuclear energy to last a few centuries, the only thing that can't be trivially made electric are planes and ships (the later can be made nuclear and some reactors can be run by idiots) but that doesn't effect food production much.
Of course new technologies could continue to make food production easier even with these problems, but its hard to be too optimistic about that.
Why? At the rate biology is advancing we'll be able to do a lot in a few decades. It's also amazing what people can do when they actually have incentive (like say fear of starvation), and starving poor people in some third world country are not an incentive for the western world. Granted my own bet is on us finally managing to kill ourselves off by some act of sheer idiocy.
Like I said, in the end we'll probably be eating processed vat grown algae/bacteria. For example we already now of one very nutritious algae but its taste apparently leaves much to be desired.
Technically, you could eat a poison frog. You could eat the meat(tissue). It is the skin that produces the extremely potent neurotoxin, batrachotoxin (not all species of "poison dart frogs" are harmful to mammals, there are about 44 know poison frogs that can really mess up your day). For those 44 that are harmful to mammals, just one lick of their back is enough to kill you. Heck, only 40 micrograms of that stuff can kill a man!
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
You need to educate thyself. I am in ag (and you aren't so pay attention please), and I'll tell you right now Monsanto is NO friend of health, farmers or consumers. Not even close. There is *so* much evidence out there it is astounding. Spend an evening doing some research on their past history. Any place they can be complete jerks, as long as they can squeeze a buck out of it, they do it. And they are really trying to come up with some way to get a global monopoly on food, try their scam with the terminator gene for starters. Look into how they have screwed over farmers with their disgusting canola/rapeseed weed that is spreading all over and infecting other's fields, so they get to *own* those new fields then and sue farmers for "IP" theft.. Look into how they are trying to patent strains of crops that farmers have been using for thousands of years in India. And so on. They make Enron and Haliburton look like upstanding corporate citizens. They've been caught bribing off foreign ag bureaucrats n numerous foreign nations, they are getting away with running OPEN AIR hidden secret test fields where the pollen from their patented crap will escape and keep infecting other fields. And so on.
They need to have their incorporation charters pulled at a minimum, IMO. Just a bad news company all in all. Buying up outside seed companies then stopping production on various strains, to further eliminate competition. I mean, this list goes on and on and on. It is NOT a good idea to reduce biodiversity, that's REAL science. Trying to impose monopolies on food is just pure damn evil, stupid and retarded, no two ways about it. In fact, just from a strictly scientific viewpoint, it is *insane*.
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
They may be blinded by greed, but what does that say about you when you become what you loathe?
It could be that the pest-resistant crops simply don't taste/smell good to pests anymore. There's no reason that pest-resistant crops have to actually be toxic to pests.
dom
I wonder if PETA will now go after GreenPeace for hurting those mice.
That distinction is meaningless, in my mind. In a way, everything is "natural" as it proceeds from nature, i.e. processes in the planet's ecosphere or its constituent's output.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
So, they modified the corn plants to produce an insecticide. Turns out it's not good for us either. No surprises there. Just read the label on a bottle of Malithion or DDT. Those are not good for us either.
Poor Monsanto, they spent a bundle geneticly engineering a plant, and it's not good for what they wanted. Too much tried too fast. That is usually a recipee for failure in any engineering endevor. Looks like Genetic Engineering isn't really all that different from auto design (Edsil) or bridge design (Seattle Narrows). Time to kill that project and start again. (First hint, making a plant poisonous for a general class of animals [insects] will probably make it unsuitable as a food crop for ALL animals. Including Human animals.)
Slow progress is still progress. Test every change. Drop the bad ones. That's how successful engineering is done. There are always unanticipated side effects. Trying to hide the inevetable problems only makes them worse.
(No, I don't have a spell checker.)
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
FROGSHIT!
Had no idea about Verlag being a German word, obviously.
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
My understanding of the scientific process is that data is MORE important then theory not less. They claim to have well controlled experiments that show a harmful effect associated with GM corn. Not having an explanation for the effect is certainly something that would encourage further work, but should in no way preclude taking their experiments seriously. We have gotten so used to having preconceived scientific explanations for new data, that when data shows up without an explanation we assume it couldn't possibly be real. Skepticism is a good thing, but it can be taken too far.
That is very different from us being unable to grow enough food to feed those people.
No, it really isnt any different. You cannot just ignore local politics, they are there. Politics will always ensure unequal distribution of just about everything. If you only have 100% of the necessary food to feed a particular country, there will be starvation. You need 120%/130%/... of the necessary food in order to make it abundant enough that no warlord would be able to use food as a power source.
There is nothing I see that prevents us from, theoretically, feeding 6 billion people easily, much of it is just bad distribution and local politics. The western world consumes much more than it needs to for example.
Yes, the western world does consume more than it needs. But it wont stop. People very rarely take the time to consider their impact on the world. They just go along eating 3000+ calories/day, throwing away another 2000+ calories/day in waste, and driving their full sized SUV to pick up their one child from school. And once the third world starts to get more food, their middle class will become more wasteful as well. It will still take twice as much food as "needed" to be able to feed their entire population.
Waste cannot be ignored, because it is unavoidable. Sure we can limit it, but it will always be there. Anyone who tries to make a home budget but doesnt add in a Miscellaneous column is doomed for failure.
We grow many crops that aren't strictly required and raise a lot of meat that isn't efficient use of land as well.
Again, you are correct that if we all decide to just eat potatoes there would be alot more food to go around. But when given the chance, people prefer to eat meat. A population of people will usually eat as much meat in their diet as they can afford. Only once food becomes very plentiful do things such as health concerns become a problem because of too much meat intake.
Once the third world starts to become more prosperous, the most wealthy of them will start eating more meat just like we do in the US. And again, you have the same problem.
We have enough nuclear energy to last a few centuries
Currently there is about 4.7 million tonnes of known useable Uranium on Earth. Current nuclear production uses 68 thousand tonnes/yr, and produces about 7.6% of the world's energy. While we will find new sources of Uranium along the way, it is rediculous to think that nuclear energy will be such a major contributor to our lasting energy needs. We will run out of uranium in about 70 years even if our consumption never increases, not centuries as you claim.
It's also amazing what people can do when they actually have incentive (like say fear of starvation)
The only people with the power to solve the problems are the ones who have no fear of starvation. I havent met any bio-engineers who have trouble putting food on the table, have you?
Our planet already produces about 2800 calories/person of food. That could keep everyone from starving. But that is with no waste at all, and with no political pressures or unequal distribution of food. Those factors are unavoidable, so even with enough food to feed everyone we still have a great deal of malnutrition in the world today. And it will only get worse as populations rise. We can either turn everyone into greedless robots, or we can increase our food production even further.
--
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I knew someone would talk about mutation, that's why I didn't say that it was impossible, but nearly impossible.
But none of this means anything compared to genetic engineering. Which allows genes to be transplanted in ways that would never occur in nature.
Corn is not a ballanced diet. There are a couple of amino acids that animals need that corn does not make. That's why vegatarians need to combine corn and beans in thier diets.
It's not just corn, many grains have the same problem if you try to exist on a diet of only one crop. We need variety in our diets. Ask any dietician.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
Farmers have NOT practiced CROSS SPECIES selective breeding for centuries. There is simply no comparison between what is being done now with "GM" and what has been done since farming began with just trying to develop more adapted and useful plants. We are getting crops introduced now that are chimeric basically, they would *never* occur in nature no matter what, and no one has any idea at all what the long term effects will be, just the corporations go on the default assumption anything they do with GM is "safe" and it is up to some bureaucrats (in the revolving door industry/government money shuffle) and consumers to do the long term testing.
I think that is pretty stupid.
The only "safety standards" that could apply and would work in the cases of cross species "products" would be generational long studies maintained in highly secure airtight labs, and even then it should be a default until hugely proven otherwise that they could possibly be as harmful as developed bioweapons.
And I am not a luddite, I have just been a gardener and farmer for now more than half a century, and I tell you, some of what they are doing is scarier to me than nuclear weapons proliferation to nutjob nations. because the potential for a mass "whoops" screw up is simply *huge*. Heck's windchimes, just the "normal" invasive species screwups humans have done, sometimes with the best of intentions, sometimes just accidentally, has been destructive enough. I spend enough of my time as it is now just trying to deal with multiflora rose, japanese privet and kudzu, let alone trying to deal with stuff that has been bred on purpose to be herbicide "resistant". To me, it is good science and common sense to be WAY skeptical of a lot of the GM production that is going on now, and I personally take it as a default that if it is laboratory manufactured it is suspect immediately. I save my own seeds, have done so for decades, and none of what I grow is harmful. Those guys can't make that claim with a straight face, because they don't know, this is all pretty much new science what is going on, and it is coming way too fast and hard and with too much "this quarter's profit" mentality behind it for there to be safety claims from their side of any true merit.
I get quite frustrated reading (a) how people don't like that drug companies only cure symptoms rather than underlying causes and (b) GM stuff is bad. How the #!@*&%!, for example, can they cure somebody who doesn't make insulin without introducing some foreign matter (genes or actual cells) that generate the stuff. If you can't stomach the thought of GM food, how are you going to accept GM people??
I know this is Slashdot... People don't have to be consistant with their complaints.
It could be, but in the case of Bt, it absolutely is toxic to the targeted pests.
Roundup is a herbicide, not a pesticide. It's made to kill other plants (weeds).
I do agree with your comments about the evils of Monsanto, however.
"The biosphere is in a perpetual state of unbalance!"
I'm obviously not suggesting that there is a "balance" in the biosphere where everything is going to remain perpetually constant. There is definitely an equilibrium however which provides a certain inertia when it comes to change.
"There is a constant churn of species . . . "
Only if you're considering a timeline of hundreds or thousands of years. An event such as the emergence of a new and unique species is the culmination of an incredibly long slow process, and evolution doesn't happen in a vacuum. i.e. The wolf population isn't going to remain constant and unchanged while successive generations of rabbits have fur that is increasingly fluorescent green.
I say "mutant freak genes" simply because they did not occur in a system where there are pressures and counter-pressures to regulate the rate and degree of change. These GM species never "evolved" in the presence of natural predators nor did they proliferate in an environment of limited resources. There are countless examples of "new" plants and animals being introduced into localized ecosystems(i.e. by transport over long distance) and raising hell in their new surroundings. Introducing a new "GM" species could easily have similar or more disastrous consequences.
Well, the problem here isn't that this is some inevitable result of free trade, but that the terrible treatment of the third world by the west is the direct and intended consequences of a lack of free trade.
If the first world countries didn't have the draconian agricultural policies they have, combined with the protectionistic taxes and tarrifs on agricultural (and other) products, most countries in the third world would be perfectly able to feed themselves without any "help" what so ever from us.
As a side effect, taxes in the west would be lower and food would be cheaper.
No, it really isnt any different. You cannot just ignore local politics, they are there. Politics will always ensure unequal distribution of just about everything. If you only have 100% of the necessary food to feed a particular country, there will be starvation.
They'll always be problems with starvation due to transportation and poverty for example. Using that as a metric is silly.
You need 120%/130%/... of the necessary food in order to make it abundant enough that no warlord would be able to use food as a power source.
The warlords control everything in some regions, you can put twice as much food in and they'll still take control of it. More food does not solve these problems. Likewise warlords make sure that the people cannot grow enough of their own food either directly or indirectly (conflict, etc.). Lacking a local source and with no way to import food how do you expect it to even matter if the rest of the world have 2 times as much food? It's like saying that if we send all our food to North Korea then somehow the government there won't just keep it all by some magic diffusion of food.
I mean just the economics of shipping that much food into a region with very patchwork transportation infrastructure is absurd. Local food production and regional stability would solve a lot of these problems.
Yes, the western world does consume more than it needs. But it wont stop. People very rarely take the time to consider their impact on the world. They just go along eating 3000+ calories/day, throwing away another 2000+ calories/day in waste, and driving their full sized SUV to pick up their one child from school. And once the third world starts to get more food, their middle class will become more wasteful as well. It will still take twice as much food as "needed" to be able to feed their entire population.
That only applies if food is abundant and cheap, once that stops being the case people will change their ways as is always the case. Compare Europe and the US when it comes to say oil usage, the former hasn't had any increase in decades while the later has. By your logic both should be increasing, yet taxes have nicely kept Europeans in check. At worst sane nations will enact laws that limit such things, by taxes for example, which will keep their populations alive. Since food can in many place be grown locally, unlike oil, this would be an effective solution.
Once the third world starts to become more prosperous, the most wealthy of them will start eating more meat just like we do in the US. And again, you have the same problem.
As I said before, no I don't. You are assuming current conditions where food is abundant which by your own assumptions will not be the case. The US used to have oil shortages, now it'll be food rations and shortages. People are creative and politicians will find some solutions given time. Having too much of your population starving generally leads to annoying problems, even Rome knew this.
Currently there is about 4.7 million tonnes of known useable Uranium on Earth. Current nuclear production uses 68 thousand tonnes/yr, and produces about 7.6% of the world's energy. While we will find new sources of Uranium along the way, it is rediculous to think that nuclear energy will be such a major contributor to our lasting energy needs. We will run out of uranium in about 70 years even if our consumption never increases, not centuries as you claim.
There are 4.7m tons of at current prices economically extractable U-235 reserves (which is a very small percentage of total world Uranium, that's mostly U-238). Raising the price will not raise fuel costs that much while increasing the viable reserves. Reprocessing would also do so to some extent. Most importantly while U-235 is the easiest nuclear fuel to use it is far from the only one; reactors exist that use other fuels which are abundant.
The only people with the power to solve the problems are the ones who have no fear of starvation. I ha
My main beef with the anti-GM crowd is that they single out genetic manipulation in the lab, and not other forms of genetic manipulation (like selective breeding).
Nearly all food plants and animals are the product of husbandry. This has nothing to do with GM as the term is commonly understood by everyone but the people who raise this pseudo-objection.
GM foods are different than foods produced by hybridization in that they generally have genes inserted into them from other species that could not be produced by hybridization. In the case at hand, there is a bacterial gene being spliced into a crop plant.
Different ways of producing effects that are similar in the abstract do not necessarily have identical results. You can cross town on foot, bicycle, bus, car or nuclear powered rocket. It would be disingenuous in the extreme to suggest that merely because all of these are "mechanisms to produce motion" and some of them had been used safely for many years that all new ways of doing so ought to be ruled safe and that people who objected to them were unfairly singling them out.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Does anybody with a brain AND a backbone care about what Greenpeace thinks? These are the same idiots who parade around the globe condemning anything that is environmentally unfreindly in a converted, bunker-oil fueled deep-sea fishing ship. Wow, I guess its O.K. to impact the environment significantly if you are telling people it's not O.K. for everyone else to do it. Maybe if they switched to nuclear power.....oh wait.
Anyways, Greenpeace is made up of nothing of extremists who are trying to impose their views upon us all, wheather we like it or not, with the possiblity of a very few actually rational people. They are just another alarmist group who craves publicity by inciting fear about everyday things: Food, water, our homes, and just about every facet of our everyday lives. They accomplish this by twisting real facts that disprove their arguments into new, false "facts" that support their arguments. I'm not saying the every single thing that Greenpeace says is pure fiction, I'm saying that most of what they say is mostly taken out of context and twisted in a manner that is consistent with their beliefs.
GreenPeace has lost credit with rational people because of the hypocritical things they do. Hre are a couple:
---They don't support the burning of fossil fuels, but they will cruise around the globe in a giant ship fueled by bunker oil. They aren't burning fuel to move any product or conduct any trade, just so they can harass and disrupt legitimate ocean traffic. Burning BUNKER OIL (which is so thick and heavy that it has to be melted before it can be burned in an engine) just to be a disruption is even more a way of wastefully polluting thant anything else.
---They promote cleaner, more efficient energy generation, but condemn all other types of energy generation other than solar as being environmentally destructive, yet solar energy is not very efficient, and requires energy storage for cloudy days in large lead-acid batteries, which contain environmentally harmful chemicals, and requires massive tracts of open space to be developed to be of any practical large-scale use.
---They condemn the use of PMBR reactors, because they are nuclear reactors, and anything nuclear will result in another Chernobyl. Nuclear power is THE cleanest form of energy generation we have.
Nobody gives a damn to environmental groups because they are composed mostly of extremists (not every activist is an extremists. I'm not calling supporters extremists. I'm calling the nutjobs who say that everything we do is dangerous and how we must change out ways or else the end of the world is coming.) and weak-minded individuals who will believe anything that they are told, becuase either they believe it, or everyone else believes it, regardless of how irrational it is. The biggest irony with environmental groups is probably nuclear power. Nuclear power is the cleanest, most efficient source of energy there is. Period. GreenPeace and anti-nuclear groups condemn nuclear power becuase it generates huge amounts of nuclear waste. Yet, they fail to mention that they were the source of influence that pressured Jimmy Carter into signing a bill that explicitly forbade the construction of breeder reactors that are used to turn nuclear waste back into nuclear fuel.
About the grain.....
Anybody knows that ANYTHING in a large enough amount is toxic - even oxygen and water. It's just another tactic used by environmental groups as ways of scaring society into believing their ways. Society doesn't believe in their ways because we either don't care, and/or don't believe the validity of their claims. GreenPeace has to resort to scare tactics becuase their claims are so grandiose, blown out of proportion, or factually twisted. GreenPeace won't mention facts that disprove their views, you can bet on that. They won't mention anything that will harm their argument. And that's why nobody cares about them.
Hmmm..... I think that you can now understand the hypocrisy that these alarmist groups spew. It is no w
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I wish I still had some mod points!
Some day Green Peace will thank Monsanto for giving it a reason to exist,... and Monsanto will thank Green Peace for helping them serve the public interest.
Until then, let battle rage.
As far as herbicides farmers use, Roundup (Glyphosate) is pretty damn innocuous to humans. It's why you can buy it buy the gallon at your local megamart and sprayed by Joe SixPack in the same grass where their kids play, when many others are highly regulated. And if you think that farmers don't douse their crops in herbicide before they made the switch to round up, I have a little wake up call for you. Farmers have been dumping selective herbicides on crops for ever and a day now. I'm growing broadleaf plants? Dump herbicide that is toxic to grasses. Growing a grass species? Dump herbicide that is toxic to broadleaves. Either way, we are getting plants that have been thoroughly doused in chemicals. The advantage to the farmer is that instead of having to choose between selective herbicides that will still leave some weeds, a nonspecific herbicide like RoundUp can be used and take care of his weed problems. We win because a friendlier herbicide is used. As for the Terminator system. Yes, one advantage to Monsanto was that you would have to buy seed from them every year. Don't like it? DON'T USE MONSANTO SEED. No one forced them to sign the licensing agreement. If the cost benefit isn't there, why buy the seed? The argument is sort of moot anyway: In the industrialized world farmers are buying new hybrid seed every year ANYWAY, and Terminator technology never made it into a comercial product. Mores the shame, it's a powerful technology to severely reduce the possibility of cross pollination of GM and non-gm lines. You would think the organic farmers would be all over it for their neighbors fields. Oh well. I suppose it is easier to throw your hands in the air and go wailing "FRANKENFOOOOOOOODS!!!!!"
The GMOs issue is not only about toxicity. One of the main reasons for opposing GMOs is it's irreversibility, given the potential risks that it may carry and all the uncertainty and ignorance we have about the subject. This renders genetic engineering a totally indeterminate technology when we are talking about the release of its products on the environment.
Yes, dihydrogen monoxide is tens of thousands times more toxic than the MON 863 maize. But you are not eating it everyday without being able to choose. Also, even if you campaign against it not now but in 10 years, you will still be in time to erradicate its use and therefore its impacts.
With GMOs the case is different - once you release one in the environment you have absolutely no idea of what interactions it may have with it, how it may mutate, replicate and give different results than those that were achieved on a laboratory or on any field trial. Remember the case of BSE, the mad cow disease? This was something that was completely unknown to science - no virus is there, no strange chemicals or chemical balances are there. Just a protein that appears with a different geometry, therefore resulting in totally different phenotypical effects.
Proteins are produced from genes. By messing with genes we are increasing the potential for this type of effects to happen. The biotech industry will naturally keep lobbying our governments and institutions and undermine what should be their role. This is what happens with both EFSA or the FDA, which continuously stand on the side of big industries and disregard the consumers and farmers concerns. As citizens we must stand against this strong lobbies.
You're very fond of absolutes and then quickly back tracking there.
ah -- you're talking about eliminating corruption.
Good luck with that.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Someone better tell viruses they need to start being natural. What were they thinking, specifically changing the genetic material of organisms?!
"I experience migraines after consumption of as little as a soda's worth..."
Headaches from aspartame aren't necessarily caused by toxicity. Normally, when you eat sugar, it's turned into glucose, and the body produces insulin as a response. It's been suggested that the body starts producing insulin as soon as you start eating something sweet - in anticipation of a glucose spike. Of course, with artificial sweeteners, the glucose spike won't come and your body ends up with excess of insulin - causing headaches.
Disclaimer: I have no training/education in this field, and the above info was read on some low-carb diet website a year ago... in other words, the above could be total BS. I would normally never help propogate such unfounded data - I submit it here now, not as revealed truth, but as plausible example of how toxic-like effects could be realised without toxicity.
Y'all are missing the whole point. Monsanto has genetically engineered corn to prevent parasites from eating it. We're the parasites!
The sad part is that "fascism" is going to take the majority of the blame, not the individuals in the Nazi party that actually caused the problem.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
licet differant, aequabitur
It was a very poor troll. If your beloved African nations didn't suck so hard and spend so much time killing one another, they wouldn't need the food that we grow for free, transport to them for free, and then give them for free.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I admitted as much.
Do you realize that 1) we don't send them nearly as much as is reported, and 2) the African equivalent of Joe Sixpack doesn't see any of it because he has brutal warlords in his country that fuck it up for everyone else?
Kind of like Lebanon. It's harder to throw out a bunch of armed thugs than you might think.
Actually it's still worse than your Windows analogy,
It would actually be like a Windows machine taking over and installing Windows on random machines on the network and then Microsoft sending in the BSA.
Surely this sort of behaviour would come under the banner of unsolicited services. Once you know that you have contaminated crops you could just notify Monsanto and tell them to come and collect their product, and only their product at their expense. They can choose to do so in a reasonable time frame (and it's their problem how) or they can bugger off...
GP assumes what it claims.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
you got it TOTALLY right and summarized it like hell
Read radical news here
Eat up. Please. (I love how you mis-spelled 'bread', btw. Freud would be proud.)
I had mod points, but there was no "-1 Gullible" on the available list. (The gullible always tend to be the loudest in broadcasting their astonishing ignorance, their arguments tend to be wonderfully ridiculous houses of cards which fall down easily upon the slightest application of rationality and investigation.)
So thank-you for keeping American advertising and public relations executives employed. Without people like you, they'd all have to give up and go home.
Normally I might bother arguing your glorious points, but there are just so many, they are all so amazingly dumb and, well, frankly, it's easier to just let you eat the toxic sandwich. There's a sort of comfort in knowing that a shmuck will shortly suffer in his own self-created misery. I've seen it happen more than once, and usually it's simply not worth the effort trying to give knowledge to an arrogant fool. The universe tends to be self-balancing that way.
Bye now. And please don't forget to use a generous helping of Mayonnaise made from GM canola oil and to help yourself to a beverage sweetened with Aspartame. Your plummeting IQ and dimming awareness will ensure further amusing posts on Slashdot until at last you vanish altogether in a sad squelch of stupid.
-FL
how would you feel if any Windows machine on the same subnet progressively reduced the capability of all your Linux or Mac boxes?
Dude, that already happens. Certainly the speed of their network connection is affected...
All available data suggest that regardless of any of this, the sun will still come up tomorrow.
FYI, Windows machines use a proprietary version of TCP that unfairly competes for bandwidth with other TCP flows. To answer your question, I feel pretty cranky about it.
Besides RoundUp resistant corn, we have RoundUp ready canola, soybeans, and who knows what else by now. In central Canada, we also typically spray our wheat crops a week or two before harvest with RoundUp, as well as our dry edible beans (BTW I don't think the US allows for the RoundUp sprayed beans to be imported yet, but occasionally ND and Minn. (probably Mich. as well) allow their farmers to use it. Considering that some dry edible beans are virtually unprocessed, and there doesn't seem to be any indication of harmful effects, it seems doubtful that you'd find harmful effects from RoundUp sprayed products which are more finely processed. (Everything I'm saying is stale by at least 6 or 7 years, BTW, since I haven't had anything to do with my family's farm since then.)
Still, I wouldn't put it past Dow-Elanco or Monsanto or any of them to hide research. It just seems like pesticide and GMO fears are a little out of whack. For what it's worth (antecdote) I've been drenched with RoundUp, Treflan, 2-4D, Amitrol and various other pesticides in my life. Maybe I'll suffer horribly for it in the future, but so far, I have no noticeable health problems. ----Wait a sec---what's this lump doing here?---
Herbicides are part of the group of things called pesticides along with insecticides, fungicides, avacides etc. Pesticide means killer of pests, pests include weeds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
BTW, I AM molecular biologist...
Why make GM foods?
There are many reasons, but mainly because they offer a NON-TOXIC way to grow food without using HIGHLY TOXIC pesticides and fertilizers. More yield, and more food for poor countries.
Why is this "CryXXX" line of GM food non-toxic?
Cry lines of maize are not harmful to humans when consumed as the normal amount found foods. Without getting into too much biochemistry the Cry peptide is broken into two parts in the gut of insects only. This active portion is toxic, only to insects, when broken in half. No cleavage or toxic action is found in humans. Large amounts of ANYTHING (including corn) however, is often toxic.
Wait, I heard about a toxic line...
One issue was found with a particular cry line which was resistant to digestion. This line was designed to be more effective against other species of insects by hanging around in the midgut for a longer period. What happened is it was too stable, and was not broken down immediately in the human gut as in the other cry lines. It was also found to be very weakly antigenic to humans (ie, a possible allergy). The combined antigenic properties and extended biological half-life made this protein a VERY UNLIKELY, but possible, human allergy. The line was abandoned, and THE SAFETY SYSTEM WORKED. The anti-GM community rejoiced, and used this as evidence that all GM foods are bad for you, regardless of the fact that the simple peanut is far far more toxic and has killed/injured/maimed more people then this line ever could.
But GM foods are unnatural!
All lines of corn descended from a small, highly poisonous seedpod where the ear was about the size of a thumb. Native Americans grew this crop and selected out the toxins, of which many still remain in small amounts. Modern crossbreeding usually introduces many such natural toxins, and does so in a incredibly chaotic and dangerous manner. GM offers a way to only add one trait that is well understood. Hybridization is FAR more dangerous then a single genetic addition, and for some reason, is allowed without virtually any safety concerns.
What is Terminator Technology?
Terminator Technology IS NOT a bio-weapon. Terminator technology is NOT a method of stifling nearby farmers, or making a farmer dependent on a technology. Terminator technology IS NOT used in food crops (to date) because farmers like to store seeds from one generation to the next, and WOULDN'T buy such a thing.
Terminator technology is a method of CONTROLLING contamination. Terminator technology ususaly makes the plants (IE, pollen) male-sterile. this is quite easy to do with a diploid organism (aka: contains two copies of genes). This could be useful for growing pharmaceuticals in plants. Vaccines, plantibodies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantibody or molecular enzymes designed to breakdown toxins as a dosed injection in hospitals would be designed to not enter the food supply.
Regardless, It is impossible to have terminator technology "escape" and ruin some other adjacent farm. The said crop would not produce viable pollen, and could not breed with a wild-type nearby. Arguing otherwise it akin to stating the world is flat.
What about Schmeiser and Monsanto? The typical David and Goliath opera, right?
What really happened:
Schimeiser, a Canola farmer in Canada since the 70's. He usually lays out about 1/4-1/2 of his land with Canola, the rest with other crops. Around the early 2000s, he sprays a couple acres of non-arable land near some telephone poles with Roundup. Almost all vegetation is killed, but a few Canola plant grow. KNOWING his neighbor is growing roundup-resistant Canola, he collects this seed and plants about 1 acre of Canola apart from his usual crops. This Canola is not
No, herbicides are a type of pesticide, along with insecticides, fungicides etc. Weeds are a type of pest, pesticides kill pests
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
First of all, just because you ( or I ) can't figure out why an organism might evolve some characteristic has no bering on the fact that there may be advantage in doing so; I can't account for rennet, but pea plants (legumes) produce hemoglobin http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcg i?artid=64866... people likely far smarter than I (...and, I 'm guessing, smarter than you!) HAVE figured that one out, but, I think, AFTER it was discovered in nature.
I have no doubt that a corp would be willing so sell "slightly" toxic substances to prop up the bottom line. On the other hand, rat and human metabolisms are very similar, but they are NOT identical.
Many strident voices seem to be saying $( Gene mod technology )== $FAVORITE_MODE_PAINFUL-DEATH. Which is too simplistic a stance to realisticaly describe the system they are talking about.
Frankly the Greenpeace paper linked in to OP seemed a useful contribution to reasoned discussion... right up to the end where the political valve was opened wide ( You, know the part that starts "Greenpeace demands....) I was suddenly reminded that the organization in question is itself hardly a dispassionate seeker after the truth. No less than the agribiz corporations, Greenpeace has an agenda.
Also, your use of the word "fucking" reflects more on you than on any other party to or subject of this discussion. Do you find the reflection a pleasant one?
How about the next farmer who notices RoundupReady crops trespassing on his fields takes the initiative and sues Monsato first for contaminating his fields.
btw: This story should concern everyone greatly. The next time you are in a supermarket just try to find a product that does not contain corn starch or corn syrup. My 4 year old son gets a bad rash from eating corn so we have to check everything we buy. I'm telling you that it is hard to avoid the stuff. So if you were thinking, "Heck I only have corn at picnics", think again!
-- Remember Tuesday is Soylent Green day!
I am perpetually amazed by the number of people constantly quarreling over health safety of GMO.
Instead, how about trying to figure out what actually happens with genetic modifications? Does anyone KNOW?
Or do they buy their own PR BS?
How about comparing GMO to an equally interesting topic? Say, human health?
Health - limited problem scope (aka genetic code), experience of >10k years, limited interaction with other species, low tech still applicable
GMO - open problem scope, experience ~15-20 years, cross-species pollination possible (?), high tech neccessary
As we all know the state of health issues, please explain to me how is GMO "safe".
"unless you modify their biochemistry to an extent where they'll produce real toxins" Bingo. You have clearly not RTFA.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I haven't followed the terminator issue very closely, but I know you picked the wrong example with rBGH. Read the following (yes, I admit, wikipedia. You can look up independent verification if you wish):
I also take issue with this statement:
That would be as opposed to natural chemicals like arsenic or botulism or E-coli enterotoxins?
The only problem is that Greenpeace is a non-profit organisation. I'd like to see more data too, but until then, I'm more inclined to believe a non-profit organisation that concerns itself with the health of the entire world than with a profit oriented multinational corporation with a history of power mongering and bribery[*].
[*] Not in Europe or the US ofcourse, but in Africa, where bribing officials to get them to force the regular farmers do you bidding, is quite acceptable.
I am very much aware that rats have different metabolisms, but then it's still common sense to have it tested, including on human volunteers, before selling it. Is the difference big enough to make it safe for humans? We don't know basically. We have a whole process for testing and approving, say, medicine, so I fail to see why it wouldn't apply here.
Maybe because so far
1. the _vast_ majority of GM stuff is this kind of stuff: plants bred to somehow poison pests/moulds/bacteria, or at least be more tolerant of strong pesticides. (Those pesticides end up in your food too, even if they aren't produced by the plant itself.)
2. because so far none of this stuff has been rigorously tested and proven to be safe, like a medicine would. So basically you're asked to swallow some pesticide with nothing more than the manufacturer's reassurance that it should only kill insects.
Look, even with medicines we have a long history of stuff that was supposed to only kill some organisms (e.g., bacteria), but ended up damaging humans badly. There are even cases where proper testing on humans looked ok, but several years later we discovered that, oopsie, those people are now dying or giving birth to horrible mutants. So being a little circumspect is more than warranted.
It doesn't mean we should turn into luddites, of course, but it's just common sense to thoroughly test the damn stuff. Just because a corporation says "it's good for you", it doesn't mean you should take it as gospel. Other corporations are equally saying that smoking is good for you, or whatever. There's no way one will _ever_ tell you, "my stuff is toxic, don't buy it." So let's have it properly tested, then. That's all.
Other than that, it's a classic ad-hominem fallacy. Just because some voice is strident, doesn't mean they can't possibly be right. So try to focus on what they're saying, not on why it's unfashionable to listen.
Who cares? Having that stuff tested is common sense even without Greanpeace around. So what difference does it make?
It just means I have no patience with fucking morons. (There, I used that word again.) I'm tollerant of common ignorance, but when one launches into whole rants based on little more than ignorance, preconceptions, ad-hominems, and other fallacies, then I won't even bother being diplomatic. If it hurts their feelings... good! Maybe it will stimulate them to actually engage the brains before throwing the mouth into gear. Maybe even, god forbid, actually read a bit first too. Well, ok, it probably won't happen, but it's still a nice dream.
Is that a pleasant reflection? Dunno, I can live with it. Quite happily.
Lemme try a bit more: fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking. Hmm... nope, I still don't feel bad about it. Sorry.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Money for nothing, pix for free
My argument wasn't that they should receive identical treatment, but that the same issues apply to any form of genetic modification. I wouldn't dispute that the risk level would vary.
However, the proposals of others on this thread to treat GM crops like "bioweapons" is also out of hand. Like anything there needs to be a balance, and it should be based on science rather than hysteria. If the risk of GM crops were THAT high we'd have probably killed off the human race by now. That doesn't make the risk zero - everything has risks associated with it and the goal is to manage it.
Keep in mind that there are risks associated with non-GM crops as well. Non-GM crops in theory mean higher food prices. Higher food prices mean that poor people have less money to spend on other things like education, standard of living, and health care. Less money spent in any of these areas means shorter life expectancy, and hence greating curbing GM crops in the end will actually kill people (statistically - but the deaths are no less real). Kind of like doubling the cost of airplane tickets by putting in extra safety standards - the net result is more people die because they choose to drive instead.
GM crops lower the cost associated with producing food - a TREMENDOUS benefit to any society. Now, some of that reduced cost goes into higher profits for a fewer corporations, but most of it goes to consumers.
In the end my point isn't that there shouldn't be ANY regulation of GM crops. My concern is that most of those who demand the highest possible precautions for recombinant crops often don't ask for ANY regulation at all of selective breeding (see comment above by somebody asking for airtight growing areas for generational time periods - not sure if he meant corn-generations or people-generations (I'm sure studies last for the former just for regular R&D work today)). Now, the regulation of one might need to be higher than the other, but it is absurd to think that one is reasonably likely to kill off the entire human race, and the other is unlikely to ever have any problems at all.
Yes. I've even seen pictures on the news at night of Monsanto agents holding guns to farmer's heads, preventing them from buying standard seeds without the terminator gene. Someone stop these bastards from forcing their seeds down people's throats!
h tm
You too? I'll call your "Bullshit" and double.
As part of sweeping "economic restructuring" implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations
http://www.rense.com/general59/newiraqlawoutlaws.
Yes, "forced".
By now, everyone should have wised up to the fact that when Bush uses the word "freedom" he means freedom for _corporations_. But when they passed a law forcing the cradle of civilization to buy Monsanto annually I think it highlighted just how clinically mad this administration is.
Guess I'm safe then! I'm off for a poison frog buffet!
But none of this means anything compared to genetic engineering. Which allows genes to be transplanted in ways that would never occur in nature.
Nice use of the weasel words "in ways". We all know that genes get transplanted in nature all the time (not just via cross species hybridization, a frequently studied example is bacteriophage or retrotransposon vectors that transfer genes/DNA among different species of bacteria. But all of this doesnt matter, because you used the weasel word "in ways", so congratulations for winning the argument by faking.
in ways
Maybe you think weaseling any "argument" this way can gurantee a tie "face saved" outcome as a minimum. But trying to argue a point by being pedantic is not going to fool the wise. Plus it shows you are unwilling to be analytical and interested only in winning an argument rather than either exposing or learning the truth.
This is correct, but it misses a vary important difference between spontaneous mutations and genetically-engineered changes in the genome. A given mutation might occur in one plant in one field on a farm, but a genetic modification occurs, simultaneously, in a largish percentage of the crop that we eat. There's a HUGE difference in the potential effect that change might have downstream.
I don't have anything against genetic engineering per se, but it does amaze me that GM food products are not subject to the same level of scrutiny that pharmaceuticals are. It takes many years -- often a decade or more -- to bring a pharmaceutical to market, involving extensive trials on animal and human subjects. And yet GM corn -- which will be exposed to many more consumers than most pharmaceuticals -- can be brought to market with just 90 day animal trial? That doesn't sound at all safe to me.yet more nonsense from the the land of plenty
idiocy is alive and well in the usa
mind you - evolution or intelligent design is still a option
what a bunch of jokers
quick who has got oil - let's invade
prats
sad motherfukcers
Who makes Africa buy seed from the West?
And of course, as others have pointed out, if Western governments weren't so agriculturally anticompetitive, African economies would be in much better shape.
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
The article states -
"This work was supported by Greenpeace Germany who, in June 2005, won the Appeal Court action against Monsanto, who wanted to keep the data confidential. We acknowledge the French Ministry of Research and the member of Parliament François Grosdidier for a contract to study health assessments of GMOs, as well as the support of Carrefour Group, Quality, Responsibility and Risk Management."
you be the judge
Actually the RoundUp resistance doesn't lead to increased spraying if the farmer has his wits about him. By being able to spray early after germination, weeds that would compete with the crop for moisture and nutrients and stunt growth of seedlings can be eliminated. This gives the crop a good head start so that it can out-compete and supress weeds that germinate later. Think of it like the rainforest where when a tree falls over there's a race amongst all the newly germinated ones to get to the top and get all the sun.
That aside, I don't agree with GM crops - especially the ones where they add genes from other species (xenomorphic?) By adopting the correct cultivation practices, the need for spraying can be essentially eliminated. Natural breeding has brought us to where we are today and it is still continuing to bring dramatic improvements in crops and livestock.
Yeah, you end up with Iraq.
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
It's not for free!
This is a standard drug dealer marketing policy.
Give them the first one cheap (again, it's NOT free!!), when they get hooked and no longer have any alternatives, hike the price! (Afterall, you've been really kind to give it to them soooo cheaply for soooo long!)
If you don't like the way people run thier own politics either offer real help or leave them alone. If you feel they are a threat to you, by all means invade and enslave them if you wish.
But don't pretend to be offering help when you are really just trying to make them totally dependent on you! And then, adding insult to injury, post on a public forum how sad they are for being dependent on you!
And once again, It's NOT free.
Most third world countries have to pay for thier 'aid' (non-government organisations may give stuff away for free, but governments don't) either through loans schemes, or at reduced prices.
Either way, these countries are paying money for the priviledge of becoming addicts!
Quantum Physics a.k.a. sub-molecular statistics
This seems a little odd to me. The CryXX toxins are supposed to only be toxic within an insect gut. Why? They only have their pore forming activity under alkaline conditions. This is why it's dangerous to insects; insects eat plant material with CryXX proteins, proteins become active under alkaline insect gut conditions, insect gut get's holes punched in it, insect dies. Mammalian guts are acidic (to my knowledge, this should be all, right?), and as a result, the CryXX toxins would be inactive in our guts. It leads me to wonder what sort of toxic effect they could be having on the mice. It could very well be that mice livers can't handle filtering the protein; ours may be able to (regardless of how close our genomes are, there are bound to be differences).
Further more, the fact that the German authority found SOME homologies to sequences in C. elegans, vibrio cholerae, and b. popilliae doesn't sound like anything alarming to me; sequence homologies can be common, considering the evolution of proteins seem to follow a cut and paste mechanism, where one motif is mixed and matched with another. An extreme (perhaps bad example on my part), are how our antibodies are amalgamations of different protein motifs, kind of a like a lego model. Before any good conclusions can be drawn, I think would like to know what proteins in the listed organisms have "some" homologies Cry3B1, what percentage of sequences are homologous, and what the hell do those homologies do. Are they phosphatases? Kinases? Some sort of receptor? Are they some integral part of a toxin?
Meh, I guess they did say the cause of toxicity was unknown. I wonder if any sort of assay comparing the proteins expressed in wild type maize and Bt maize could show some sort of difference in protein content. I guess you'd have to look at chemical contents of both varieties as well.
Hum. Does anyone know if Greenpeace has any data to go with their article?
Considering that I don't get it with Splenda, Saccarin, Acesulfame, or Stevia, your commentary is
at least slightly inaccurate. Also worthy of note, I'm a Type II Diabetic- I don't have the same
sorts of Insulin responses that other people do.
Aspartame is the ONLY substance to really do this thing. I consider that to be a potential problem
especially in light of HOW it tastes sweet to you.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Your remark is silly, considering that Peanuts are a natural substance and Aspartame is a
synthetic substance that comprises three neurotoxins loosely bound up and then released
at around body temperature that make it taste sweet. Two of which are very problematic
substances to be taking in.
If it's got nuts, you can probably make a good determination for it. And the peanuts
allergy problem is a new one on the scene- it didn't use to be a problem for humans.
Aspartame was one out of the gate. And, if it's sugar free, you've got to check to see
if it's got Acesulfame, Splenda, or NutraSweet in the makeup. More people have problems
with NutraSweet than most of the other sweeteners combined. About 1/2-2/3rds of the stuff
out there gets put back on the shelf by me these days because I just can't have it.
Sugar Free doesn't mean I can have it.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas