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Roundup Tolerant GM Maize Linked To Tumor Development
New submitter spirito writes with this snippet about rats fed Roundup laced water: "The first animal feeding trial studying the lifetime effects of exposure to Roundup tolerant GM maize, and Roundup, the world's best-selling weedkiller, shows that levels currently considered safe can cause tumors and multiple organ damage and lead to premature death in laboratory rats, according to research published online today by the scientific journal Food and Chemical Toxicology. ... Three groups were given Roundup in their drinking water, at three different levels consistent with exposure through the food chain from crops sprayed with the weedkiller: the mid level corresponded to the maximum level permitted in the US in some GM feed; the lowest corresponded to contamination found in some tap waters. Three groups were fed diets which contained different proportions of NK603 – 11%, 22% and 33%. Three groups were given both Roundup and NK603 at the same three dosages. The final control group was fed an equivalent diet with no Roundup or NK603 but containing 33% of equivalent non-GM maize."
The Chicago Tribune reports that not everyone's convinced of the results: "Experts not involved in the study were highly skeptical about its methods and findings, with some accusing the French scientists of going on a 'statistical fishing trip.'"
All right, we get sick of Slashdot editor bashing, but this needs to be addressed.
The link to the Chicago Tribune is from a Reuters newsfeed. The attribution should be to Reuters, via Chicago Tribune.
For quick reference, any "feed" stories from tribune company are going to have "sns" in the title. Other papers will vary.
(From a former Tribune Co. Employee).
The headline suggests that GM corn causes cancer. This is ludicrous and only feeds the ignorant paranoid anti-GM crowd.
It's ROUNDUP exposure that's linked to tumors - NOT genetic modifications. I am not at all surprised.
I've been saying for years that there is nothing particularly risky about GM foods - it's dumping horrendous of herbicide on things that's risky... this is obvious to me, but not to the ignorant masses.
Don't give the freaks ammunition, please.
Actually the economically advantaged are the ones buying the organic everything.
FTFY.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Now that the problem has been identified, they just need to focus on developing Roundup tolerant GM humans.
1. Analyze a dangerous poison.
2. Modify a crop's genes to be resistant against said dangerous poison
3. Treat modified crop liberally with dangerous poison
4. Have cattle eat crop treated with dangerous poison
???
6. Be amazed at what the poison does to non-resistant life forms.
False dichotomy. No one is saying we must ban everything that gives you cancer.
Ever watched someone die of cancer? You might change the tune of your somewhat crazy rant if you had. The article states that "Up to 50% of males and 70% of females died prematurely" showing "2-3 times more large tumors than the control group" - which is somewhat disconcerting. If those numbers translate to what will be observed in the human population (which they probably won't, as this study was done with the upper bound tolerated limits in food, although consistent with what could be found in the food chain), then guaranteeing food for people now with the promise of a horrible premature death later doesn't sound like a good compromise.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
He says that this is guaranteed to produce Roundup impervious weeds. At some point these super weeds will need very toxic chemicals to kill. The real problem is that vast areas of monoculture are unsustainable.
Nature abhors a vacuum and will fill it up with what can tolerate the environment.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
The solution is simple: Soylent Green.
Mmmmmmm. Yummy Soylent Green.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
You know what has also become Roundup resistant? Giant ragweed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19585341
So, you're telling me that these researchers don't know the difference between giving a chemical with food as opposed to just with water? There's a big difference in how the body (rat or human) absorbs chemicals depending on how it gets there, and what is in the stomach.
It's more than just the concentration. Look at medication sometime: "Take this drug with a full glass of water." "Take this drug with food." etc. etc.
Maybe they should have the rats chomp down on some of the actual GM food that is supposedly so bad?
I always enjoyed the sight of people coming out of the Union Square Whole Foods in NYC with organic groceries. Because the smog, heavy metals, and road traffic exhaust of Manhattan won't give you cancer, but that trace amount of pesticide sure will.
To be fair, they do have above-average produce.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Good, because I like to take my organic free-range beef and then throw it on the BBQ.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
roundup is linked to the tumors not GM food.
Surprise surprise, poison is bad for you.
Of course there's a simple solution to this. Don't just genetically modify the maize to be resistant to roundup, genetically modify people to be as well. There, problem solved. And Monsanto should love that since everyone needs a patent license from them to have a kid.
Actually the economically advantaged are the ones buying the organic everything; the disadvantaged are the ones growing their own "organic".
FTFY... again!
FTFY.
Log in or piss off.
Yeah, right: real hippies actually grow the organic food they eat. I guess that makes them some kind of food geeks.
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
Yeah, we should ban evil pesticides! Down with evil chemicals and modern GM farming! Organic all the way!
True to your user name, I see. Nobody has sugested that all pesticides are bad or that we should return to the 19th century. You do realize that there were no tractors back then, let alone harvesters or combines?
This one strain of corn is what's under discussion, and it looks like it should be banned... if the methodology of its studies hold up. Which it looks as if they may not.
Free Martian Whores!
The successful fight against Natural Selection is something that should be studied.
But they won't give me a grant.
That message brought to you by, I presume, a German (.de in your email address), which is literally famous for the death of vast amounts of Black Forest from acid rain caused by pollutants.
"80% of my last posts, via 10 months, got modded down by a group of rogue mods. Since 2012-09-07 my karma is down to good"
Maybe you got modded down because you're a troll? All pollution regulations work that way, even in Europe, because literally getting 0% of something like that in your water is basically impossible.
The article states that "Up to 50% of males and 70% of females died prematurely" showing "2-3 times more large tumors than the control group"
FT (other) A:
Tom Sanders, head of the nutritional sciences research division at King's College London noted that Seralini's team had not provided any data on how much the rats were given to eat, or what their growth rates were. "This strain of rat is very prone to mammary tumors particularly when food intake is not restricted," he said in an emailed comment. "The statistical methods are unconventional and probabilities are not adjusted for multiple comparisons. There is no clearly defined data analysis plan and it would appear the authors have gone on a statistical fishing trip."
It is only cheaper if you buy organic from a supermarket. The local organic farmers market and organic co-op are as cheap as commercial foods. And organic does fine commercially too.
If you think commercially grown monocultures are as nutritious as organic crops, you are sadly mistaken. And too believing of Slashdot stories
plus GM crap encourages more use of pesticide. See...
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5950
French people don't mess around when it comes to their food, the entire country almost literally shuts down at dinnertime.
You do realize that nearly everyone's already decided one way or the other, based on their political brainwashing, and your sane and reasonable reality-based statements are useless, right? It's the same as a nuclear power argument; you're just ringing a bell for Pavlov's dogs, who will now slobber all over you.
Maybe we should start with people who destroy any chance of reasonable debate by boiling down every argument to two extremes.
Why not Ford or Chrysler farming? Hmmmm?! And then there's Toyota farming that I hear just keeps growing without the ability to stop.
False dichotomy. No one is saying we must ban everything that gives you cancer.
I don't think anyone said it had to be banned, but labeling products that are genetically modified to be round-up resistant (and subsequently sprayed with round-up) is important in allowing consumers to make their own decisions. Currently that is not required by law and is not being done voluntarily. When you go to the store and buy products based on corn, soybeans etc you have no way to know if it's been modified or sprayed with roundup today. Unless you buy the highly expensive "organic" products. If the products were properly labeled, there could likely be some middle ground between the two.
Most likely your tap water contains it too. That stuff is long lived and gets spread around. Your country has an admissible level as well, otherwise except for water from ice cores nothing would be considered drinkable. Whether Roundup should be used at all is another matter and the one that should be discussed, not whether there should be any minimal amount allowable.
Mark Lynas ( https://twitter.com/mark_lynas ) picked some interesting points out of the paper (and links to a mirror of the paper).
30% of the 20 control rats also got tumours.
Here is the key sentence in the article:
(emphasis mine)
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
Or... you could develop a distribution system that isn't so inherently corrupt and wasteful.. Might require a little less war, and it would be less profitable than big agribusiness, but better able to deal with local shortages.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I hate to break this to you but there is a little of everything in everything. You just can't tell until you're able to count parts per million.
I'm the first to admit that I'm no expert on this stuff, but this sounds pretty damning...
Tom Sanders, head of the nutritional sciences research division at King's College London noted that Seralini's team had not provided any data on how much the rats were given to eat, or what their growth rates were.
"This strain of rat is very prone to mammary tumors particularly when food intake is not restricted," he said in an emailed comment.
"The statistical methods are unconventional and probabilities are not adjusted for multiple comparisons. There is no clearly defined data analysis plan and it would appear the authors have gone on a statistical fishing trip."
Mark Tester, a research professor at the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics at the University of Adelaide, said the study's findings raised the question of why no previous studies have flagged up similar concerns.
"If the effects are as big as purported, and if the work really is relevant to humans, why aren't the North Americans dropping like flies? GM has been in the food chain for over a decade over there - and longevity continues to increase inexorably," he said in an emailed comment.
Now, all we have to do is figure out how to feed 7 billion people
1) Ban pesticides
2) Don't feed 7 billion people
3) Saves the environment and improves the quality of life for the rest of the species down the line
You're wrong. There are large numbers of people that are not just suggesting but demanding that all pesticides be banned.
And the numbers he's suggesting aren't if organics were grown via methods from 100 years ago, they are if we actually industrialized Organic farming (which we are in fact doing) The point is that modern farming techniques with GM crops and modern pesticides produce 5 to 10x the yield of Organic crops. If we were to switch to all organic, that would mean we'd have to use 5x the land, 5x the fertilizers, 5x the gas, 5x the manpower to produce the same amount of food we do today. Forcing Organic farming would kill BILLIONS of people. No joke at all. Even if GM crops do increase your risk of cancer over 50 years... starving increases your risk of death rather immediately.
NK603 is as dangerous as cell phone radiation.
ungodly amounts of herbicide
2 kilograms per acre? I think that's about how much bird shit falls on a field annually. I'd have to think about that. Its not exactly the herbicide equivalent of the finale of "cloudy with a chance of meatballs".
I agree with you, eating weird chemicals for the hell of it is not wise, but going all "Refer Madness" and just making stuff up is going to do more to harm the cause than help.
Your neighbor drowning his landscape in bottles and bottles of roundup to control weeds is going to cause about 99.9% of your lifetime exposure anyway. You don't have to apply that stuff until it drowns the plant, farmers know that because its expensive when you're treating 160 acres, but J6P does not.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I lived between two dairy farms and went to high school with kids who actually worked on dairy farms that supplied milk to grocery store chains and gas stations and such.
I'm never drinking unpasteurized milk. The stories I've heard you would not fucking believe.
Then we better ban sunlight.
Calling Mr. Burns!
I tried to find this paper online but I don't think its available as a preprint yet. But I did find that the lead author has been stuffing rats with assorted GMO foods for many years. Sometimes its kidney failure, sometimes its cancer, maybe sometimes nothing happens. The important thing is how many negative results he's had and not published. That's statistical GMO cherry-picking.
Ever watched someone die of cancer?
Ever watched someone starve to death?
Oh no, of course you haven't. Because, thanks to GM crops and pesticides and the vastly improved crop yields they've provided, food today is plentiful in the developed world.
Not that it didn't happen, but can you cite a reference to a time when food was not plentiful in the developed world. I'm honestly curious. I know there are plenty of places in the world where folks are starving, but I've never heard of there being a food shortage in my country (USA) during my lifetime.
Actually, before well into the 20th century, people did routinely starve in the western world--particularly in rural and isolated areas like in the U.S. and Australia. But, either way, the point is that our food yields have kept up with our explosive population growth. That wouldn't have been possible without the much-decried advances in pesticides and GM that everyone seems to be so upset about today. A world of organic-only farming is going to be a world where a LOT of people are going to be starving.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Dose makes the poison. Any chemist or biochemist would tell you that. Selenium is either a mineral requirement or a toxic substance, depending purely on the dose. As is the case for sodium, potassium, and good old fashioned water. On the other hand, there's likely some amount of elemental mercury in your drinking water right this instant. But it's so trace that it's hard to detect without clever setups, and it undoubtedly has no health effects because it's so rare.
If you asked a homeopath, though, the ultra-rare nature of the pollutant is what makes it especially deadly. Heaven help us if the mercury in the water become any more dilute, we'll all die from its toxicity.
And in any event, any analytically chemist would tell you that in many regulations out there, we set unrealistically low requirements for some contaminants. Sometimes its because water naturally has a lot of junk in it, and getting it out on a utility scale is tricky, but more often than not, the 'safe levels' are picked as arbitrarily low numbers by middle manager types without any understanding that the analytical methods for detecting the analyte of interest at that low of a level aren't feasible.
Since the dawn of civilization, rats have caused humanity lots of trouble. Thank goodness Monsanto has figured out a way to get rid of them!
What exactly do you think this is, a ban all pesticides and gm crops statement? If so, you're reading something I'm not. This is a study (methodology questions aside) about does this specific thing give you cancer. Since, as you've pointed out, so many people eat the food being tested, it deserves scrutiny.
It's simple. We test EVERYTHING to see if it causes cancer, and remove the ones that do. In this case, if the data supports the conclusions, that particular company can take the billions it's made so far on those products and use it to develop new ones.
I hate to break this to you but there is a little of everything in everything. You just can't tell until you're able to count parts per million.
Parts per billion, actually. 700 of them in fact for glyphosate. Another way to say "700 ppb" is 1 part in 1.5 million. An acre-foot of water is about a quarter million gallons. So if you had a magical cubical pond, that was about 60 feet on every side including 60 feet deep, and an idiot neighbor sprayed a gallon of the stuff to kill the weeds in his driveway (which is only about 10000 times the recommended agricultural dosage, hurray for retail sale of herbicides to the untrained ! ) and it all ran off into your pond, it would be pretty borderline. Luckily the stuff is chemically unstable and biodegrades fast.
http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/glyphosate.cfm
You can see how a small inland lake can end up contaminated enough to be undrinkable. Or a river. All you need is about a dozen idiots going to home depot then spraying about 10000 times the recommended dosage "just to make sure" after all more is better, right?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
In that case I think banning GM foods would have a much smaller impact that you suppose. Commercial sale of genetically modified foods began in 1994 (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food ). Not that I'm suggesting they need to be banned. I'm for mandatory labeling of products and detailed government sponsored scientific studies on the topic. If the problem was eliminated (or significantly reduced) before 1994, then GM crops and round-up did not play a role.
> Why the fruits and vegetables?
Start at this review of the literature at Hyperlipid , then follow through to the published journal papers linked in the article.
The summary at the end is..
"So in summary plants produce fructose which is both attractive and damaging to mammals. They protect themselves as best they can with antioxidants.
I don't see any causality between fruit and vegetable consumption and improved health."
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
The article states that "Up to 50% of males and 70% of females died prematurely" showing "2-3 times more large tumors than the control group"
Tom Sanders..noted. that...snip, snip... This strain of rat is very prone to mammary tumors particularly when food intake is not restricted," he said in an emailed comment.
If the control group is made of up of the same strain of rats, then the findings are significant. Very significant.
Sorry bro, small organic farms that use intensive growing methods produce equal or greater yields that GM crops without fertilizers or pesticides.
That's funny, bro, I read an interesting recent article that would seem to disagree.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
I just saw a study on how damaging oxygen is to our environment and our bodies.
Horrible stuff oxygen.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Like the one in the US?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
The same strain of rat was used in the controls and fed the same way (just a different variety of corn) and didn't get the tumors.
We knew that already. GM tolerant crops don't necessarily have more weedkiller in them, they thrive more with the same given level of weedkiller otherwise.
There has never been an "expert" linked to Monsanto that has stated any negative opinion of a Monsanto product *ever.*
It's pretty much in their contract.
WTF.. are you in the U.S.? If so how do you know when you're eating a GM product and when you're not? It's against the law to even tell you that.
And this is just awesome : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10050267?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Same strain of rat in the control group didn't get the tumors. While the strain may be extraordinarily sensitive to the effect, the effect IS there.
Stories are stories, science and logic are something else.
http://realmilk.com/documents/ResponsetoJohnSheehanTestimony.pdf
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Electronics are soo cheap I can't see it being unreasonably difficult to produce an army of robots which manually tend to fields 24x7 harvesting or killing only the weeds. Perhaps hyperpsectral camera and pattern matching algorithms could be enough for reasonable machine recognition of weeds.
There may be a large investment in R&D up front yet over the years performance, reliability and affordability would greatly improve. They could even be armed to the teeth with lazers to get rid of any bugs who may be interested in sampling the harvest.
This will save the world from having to deal with side effects of weed killers on humans and the environment... Ultimatly as dead labor drives down costs the system should become cheaper and more effective to deploy with little chance of evolutionary adaption not solvable by a simple firmware update or machine learning algorithm.
You do realize that roundup is an herbicide, don't you?
Ahh, yes. The Ancient Enemy. Sol, taker of life and destroyer of worlds. We must defeat him.
False dichotomy. No one is saying we must ban everything that gives you cancer.
Have you been to California?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
They have roads?
With regards to the last comment:
Not all genetic modifications are the same. The "RoundUp Ready" corn hasn't been on the market all that long.
Many of the other criticisms seem a lot more valid, and need to be aswered. This doesn't mean that he's wrong, but it doesn't appear that he's proven that he's right. (Maybe he has, and the material just hasn't been published yet. Maybe he hasn't. You can't really tell.)
So as of now it's an interesting report, but not something that can be taken as proven.
P.S.: I'm not an expert in this field either, being mainly a programmer. I did have a major in statistics, but I haven't even looked at his work, and if I did I wouldn't trust my stale (several decades since used) knowledge. But that last comment is either silly or biased. Since no attribution is given, and you admit to ignorance in the field, I suspect silly. But it could be read as having come from professor Tester, in which case I would consider it biased propaganda.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Please note that the article didn't say the US had an allowable amount of Roundup in drinking water -- it had an allowable amount that could be SPRAYED ON CROPS, and the testers fed it directly to animals in their drinking water, which is probably where the confusion comes in. The summary implies that they were trying to match the levels you might get through the food chain (eating treated corn), not trying to match what you'd get directly through tap or well water.
Quoting TFA:
"or given water containing roundup at levels permitted in drinking water and GM crops in the US"
"the maximum level permitted in the US in some GM feed; the lowest corresponding to contamination found in some tap waters"
"contaminated drinking tap water, and which falls within authorized limits"
What supposed to bewrong with vegetables? Did I miss something?
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
Way, way off. The numbers are more like a 30% decrease in yields, based on current farming methods. Considering that we haven't applied science to organic farming like we have to chemical farming, due to easy postwar chemical availability, the gap could probably be closed even more. Yes, conventional farms have marginally higher productivity. But you are off by an order of magnitude with your "5x" claim.
Yes, and those signs are to keep the lawyers at bay, not to ban all the thousands of substances which could cause cancer. Those signs about jet fuel causing cancer if ingested, for example, are not part of a movement to replace jet fuel with hydroelectricity.
If by "didn't get the tumors" you mean "30% got the tumors," then you are correct. Seriously, it sounds like a terrible study done by below average scientists. If I was an anti-GMO advocate, I would think twice about hanging my hat on a quacks coatrack. The short term gain isn't worth the loss of credibility long term.
In related news, I just saw this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19594335
It sounds like roundup and GM crops are rapidly nearing the end of their useful life with the weeds becoming naturally resistant to the stuff. If true, this whole discussion is probably moot.
There has never been an "expert" linked to Monsanto that has stated any negative opinion of a Monsanto product *ever.*
It's pretty much in their contract.
*IF* I were the conspiratorial type I would give anything to be a fly on the wall when these same experts enter the grocery store to buy food for themselves and their family.
Crazy JJ did. He/she was implying that anyone concerned about GMO was trying to ban it worldwide. It's a common tactic for smearing a movement you don't like: make it sound like they're advocating something absurd that they're not.
so you're saying that this is only a problem if you over-eat?
oh no worries, then.
I only went through the two links provided in the summary, but it does not sound like quantities were accounted for.
Also, the number of test groups doesn't add up. I'm sure that's just an oversight in the article.
And yes, the control groups did get tumors. They claim they were smaller tumors and occurred later, so a lesser percentage of "large tumors" gets tallied for the control group.
Still, 13 variations and a control group, somehow tested with 10 groups of 10 rats with predispositions for tumors, not controlling for the primary cause of tumors in those rats... something doesn't smell right. All I'm willing to say is it's the article. People in the field are saying it's the research itself.
I already answered that one. Search this thread for Hyperlipid.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Crazy JJ did. He/she was implying that anyone concerned about GMO was trying to ban it worldwide. It's a common tactic for smearing a movement you don't like: make it sound like they're advocating something absurd that they're not.
I assumed he was being facetious to make his point, but you're right - he did say that.
"Mark Tester"? What a perfect name for a research professor. =)
I beleive that many of the "organic farms" considered in that article would not count as "small organic farms". So the claim of the gp could still be correct. I have personally seen a place run using what it called "French Intensive" that was quite productive, though I don't have any figures on just how productive. It was also quite labor intensive, so the comments about cost deserve SERIOUS consideration. I estimate that organic farms, with enough labor, can be more productive than current factory farms. However, the cost in terms of labor would be extremely high. Note that these methods are not used by commercial organic farms, with the possible exception of a few urban farms that have gourmet restaurants for customers.
I, personally, prefer to eat organic food. Not by a large margin, but I have a definite preference. This is largely because I don't trust the vendors and users of agricultural chemicals to have my interests at the forefront of their goals. And because multiple chemicals, each of which is provided at a "safe dosage", have been shown to react with each other to intensify the effects. And this is not tested for when setting the "safe limits". (This kind of interaction is known to be one factor in the continuing decimation of amphibian populations.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You sir, are a moron.
Following your advice is worse than eating roundup without the maize for lunch.
The most successful diets have always been varied ones, that includes all of the things you mentioned.
Meats and other huge sources of protein, however, are dangerous in large quantities, and you should probably only eat about 20-30% of them, the rest should be salad, fruit and carbohydrates.
This is how large parts of Europe eat.
Wanna get thin fast by taking a shortcut such as one of those crazy no-carb-diets?
Good luck living past the age of 50. The reports are starting to come in, and it's not looking bright for you guys.
True. The hippies I know grow their own food. They don't buy organic (or buy much of anything, really.)
Check out my world simulator thingy.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512005637
From what I can tell in the first graph, the results are pretty sketchy. There are just 10 male rats and 10 female rats per group. There are 10 groups with different levels of exposure, but the margin of error seems pretty large. I'm no expert in statistics, but the male control group has 3 deaths before 600 days (out of 10 rats), so +- 2 deaths is statistically insignificant. The 33% GMO male group has less mortality than the control, while the 11% GMO group has much more. That sounds like a fluke to me.
30% of the control group also had tumors.
If the control group is made of up of the same strain of rats, then the findings are significant. Very significant.
Maybe. Caloric restriction is a good way to keep rats from getting cancer and heart disease. If the non-GM corn doesn't taste as good to a rat as the GM corn, extra calories could explain the extra tumors.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
It's not a toomah!
Chemicals rarely have only one effect. This is a real problem when dealing with complex systems, and there are few systems more complex than organic life.
It's also true that chemicals react with other chemicals that are present to become either more toxic or less toxic (will less toxic being the more uncommon reaction). So testing one chemical in isolation to determine the safe dose doesn't tell you enough to be confident of what the safe dose is in the actual environment. Yet that's usually all that's tested. (Think of the complexity of trying to test all combinations of chemicals, and you'll get a part of the reason why.)
So what this guy is doing appears to be setting up a situation where a sensitive effect can be observed. Part of that involved using a particularly susceptible strain of rat. He may have taken other measures. But perhaps he wasn't careful with his statistical analysis. OTOH, his setup produced a grossly larger than expectable effect. So either something is wrong with his setup, or something is really wrong with the normal procedures. And not being an expert in the field I couldn't guess what is going on. FWIW, from reported comments, it sounds like even experts in the field aren't certain what's going on. (FWIW, statistical fishing expeditions aren't unusual, but the resutls that they produce aren't trustworthy. They do, however, serve as useful indicaitons of where to conduct additional research.)
E.g. (about statistical fishing expeditions): If you observe an honestly run roulette wheel for an hour, and do a statistical analyisis of the results, you will find patterns in the numbers produced. These patters are the result of a "statistical fishing expedition". Say more of the numbers tend to be near to the left of the "0" than is expected. This is a prediction, but not a trustworthy prediction. If, however, after making the prediction repeated observations produce the same prediction, then your "statistical fishing expedition" has retrieved valuable information.
So perhaps this study was a statistical fishing expedition, as is claimed. That means that it needs to be validated repeatedly. It doesn't mean that it's wrong, but it means that it's of less significance than if it had been predicted before the study was done.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Christ, everything can give you cancer.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
While I don't lean towards going fully vegetarian (I just recently bought a new smoker, and a Hobart 2912 Meat Slicer...so I'm not quitting meat)....from what I'm reading more and more..it seems to show that we do need to make our meals more plant based. The one thing that was telling to me in the FOK documentary..was showing how in WWII, countries that were overtaken by the Germans, and had their meat supplies pretty much stripped from them...over those years, the incidence of cardio-vascular problems dipped significantly....and after they war, when meat and dairy came back up on their daily diets....disease increased too.
I've become very interested in food lately....give that show and 'Food, Inc' a good watch...both are free for streaming on Netflix and Amazon prime....
I'm not giving up on meat...I love good seafood and anything that moves basically, but I'm going to make most of my daily plates plant based.
I recently did a 30 day juice fast...and I gotta say, I felt significantly better during and after that, due to the huge increase of micronutrients in my diet from veggies and fruit....and another big factor, I've removed most all processed foods from my diet. I like to cook..so, I was getting rid of that years ago...but really....give those documentaries a thoughtful watch.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
"guaranteeing food for people now with the promise of a horrible premature death later doesn't sound like a good compromise"
You say that as someone well fed and not worried about where or how any meal in the future will come from. There are people in Haiti eating cookies made of dirt to make hunger pains go away. Do you think they would hesitate to eat rice that had a 20% chance of causing cancer in 20 years?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Thing is, it wasn't the GMO crops that are reputed to give you the cancer. It's the pesticide. Now, class, for 10 bonus points, who didn't know pesticides are dangerous?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Say "Hi" to heart disease for me.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
They got the cancer form the pesticide not the GMO corn.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
It's long overdue to admit that, just like Republicans can blatantly lie without any lasting effects, corporations are free to kill without any real recognition nor punishment, other than affordable costs of doing business.
From the Middle East, to West Virginia coal mines, to the Gulf of Mexico...such is the way of the real world, and thus ends the lesson.
Sorry, that won't work, either. The trace toxins aquired during the feedstock's life make it more likely to give you cancer. Removing those toxins would cost more than you could afford to buy Soylent Green for, even given economies of scale.
Nice try, though. At least you're thinking ahead...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Thing is, it wasn't the GMO crops that are reputed to give you the cancer. It's the pesticide. Now, class, for 10 bonus points, who didn't know pesticides are dangerous?
True, but the GMO crops are what enables farmers to spray pesticides directly onto the crops. It sounds to me like nature is working this out for everyone, anyway: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19594335
Yeah 'cuz organic farms are run like 19th century farms *eye roll*
And 90-day feeding trials that form the basis of GM crop approvals are long enough????
According to whom? People who didn't like the conclusions? The study was published in a peer reviewed journal, Food and Chemical Toxicology http://www.journals.elsevier.com/food-and-chemical-toxicology, go read the article than come back and post something intelligent.
I bet they are, given their field (heh). Criticizing Monsanto would be just as deadly career-wise as opening a titty bar in Mecca would be in real life.
On top of that, the food tastes better.
I hear this from time to time but from personal experience I have never noticed a difference in taste between organic and GM crops.
There *are* studies that report them to be equally nutritious. I may be dubious about the studies, but they do exist, and it's not unreasonable to trust them. I.e., I know of no systematic bias that they have been revealed to have.
Please not that this does not mean that I *do* trust the studies. I don't. But I am aware that my not trusting them derived from my "priors", and those with different priors could reasonably make other decisions. Nobody has the time or interest to investigate all contexts of all important events in their lives, so they make estimates of probability, and act from there. I *do* feel that too many people find security in pretending that their estimates reflect an actual certainty, rather than a working hypothesis. But it does enable one to come to decisions more quickly, and thus has it's advantages.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Do you live on water? Glutamate is in everything.
--- Do you believe in the day?
As far as I know, it's not against the law to tell you that "This food has not been artificially genetically modified". Some products essentially *do* tell you that. Most processed food doesn't tell you that, because it would be a lie. It generally contains either corn or oil that comes from a mixture of sources such that it's provenance is not clear.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Would not comment and pass it off as the joke it is, but some people think it is insightful or informative.
1) Organic farms can use fertilizer and pesticides.
2) For 99.9999% of the organic farms they don't produce more than conventional farms and don't come close. My parents run an organic farm were we do produce more than conventional farms but that is because the plants that are harvested won't grow under farming methods, organic or conventional, so have to grown wild and harvested as such.
3) taste is usually a factor or ripeness and organic produce is not harvested any differently than conventional. You are thinking that organic means it is picked at peak ripeness and it does not.
if you have that many complaints about farms why don't you start a farm. You can do it for free and whenever the government makes a rule change that make you loose money and property you can smile and happily accept it.
Way to try to squash scientific dissent and peer review, fuckwad. "If they don't agree with an early release of a single study, they must work for the industry!".
Lol... Right, buddy. Riiiight.
I've seen forks over knives. It smelled wrong and indeed it is.
There's a book "The China Study" that is a vegetarian promotion that claims to be based on the China Study data. Then there is the actual China study. The strongest (by far) univariate association in the China study is between wheat consumption and cancer.
The statistics used in the book are simply wrong. This has been exhaustively examined here.
The WWII accounts in FOK are particularly egregiously nonsensical. Derive your information from the available data and you get this
There's a point in FOK that the guy goes back to the doctor after his 'healthy' veggie diet. He gets his readout, they highlight the headline lipid profile on the bits of paper, but darken the rest of it. Pause the film and read the triglyceride number. That man's already got atherosclerosis and is heading for more.
Anyone can make film promoting a viewpoint. Watch 'Fat Head' as an example of a film that establishes the opposite.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Raw milk dairies need to be held to a higher standard. The pasteurization is really there to mask the unsanitary practices that are prevalent.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Show us your data then.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
In tiny quantities. It is the primary signaling chemical between neurons.
Overload cells with glutamates and they die messily (rather than in the ordered aptosis way).
Google for 'excitotoxins'. If you get to Blaylock's talk, he's a crank on many things, but he's right on this.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Ooh, goody an unpasteurized milk kook!
When I don't like science I blindly lash out at the peer review process too!
Fucking dolt.
I have been reading about this all day, and I keep getting flummoxed by something. Am I not reading this correctly?
Genetically Modified(Roundup resistant) corn was fed to some rats
Normal Corn to a second group
Normal corn with Roundup to a third group
The GM corn group and the Roundup group had similar health problems. This makes sense, because the GM corn was probably sprayed with a lot of Roundup(why else would you grow it). Now, the conclusion everyone seems to make is that this proves that the GM corn causes health problems. It seems really odd that drinking Roundup or eating GM corn would cause nearly identical health problems. It makes more sense that Roundup caused problems in both samples, and the GM corn was rather meaningless. Even using that very cursory understanding of the research, it seems to me that the study has almost nothing to say about GM crops, yet "GM" is in the title of every article.
Not that it didn't happen, but can you cite a reference to a time when food was not plentiful in the developed world.
You might be curious to know that no small part of the NAZI's plan to conquer Eastern Europe revolved around food security. In a way it actually worked, too, because the lessons learned about nitrate chemistry during the war were later applied to fertilizers by people who weren't batshit insane, and eventually led to the Green Revolution, which is why so few people are starving today.
But food security was a real issue in the '20's and especially the '30's, even in the US, due to crop failures and adverse climate conditions.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Depends more on the crop selection than anything else.
A Cavendish banana will taste the same organic or not.
My organic broccoli is way better tasting, but is a different strain than you can find in any of the stores. Less dense crowns, looks much more like the flower head that it is.
My kids won't eat store bought broccoli, they got in a fight over who got the last piece of the home grown stuff.
I don't buy organic because it's organic, but I do tend to buy it because of the variety of crop that was used.
-nb
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
It often depends on where the organic and convention produce is grown and when they're picked and what variety they are. A locally grown organic strawberry, for example, should taste much better than a convention one shipped from 1,000 miles away. As I understand it, that's because the local strawberries are allowed to ripen before being picked while the conventional strawberries ripen after being picked while being transported in a refrigerated box. The difference is that strawberries that ripened before being picked continue to produce sugars while the ones in that ripen after being picked stop producing sugars when they're picked.
Where I live this is usually the case, the conventional strawberries are almost always from California and the local strawberries are only available for a few weeks. But the local strawberries have a stronger and sweeter taste than the California ones which are often nearly tasteless (California is far away).
In my experience, it's generally local produce that tastes better, rather than organics. Although some organic food could taste better than the conventional food if the conventional food has been bred to prioritize other characteristics over taste. For example, size, longevity and bruise resistance could contribute to the lack of taste that I've found in California strawberries. Of course, that difference is going to be case-dependant because conventional produce could be prioritize taste over other traits and actually produce better tasting produce than an organic grower, particular if the conventional and organic farms are equidistant from the purchaser.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I believe that I've never encountered an unpasteurized milk kook before. It's quite exciting. I wonder what kinds of science he doesn't believe and what he puts on his cereal in the morning...
Is 1563649 a prime number?
"If the effects are as big as purported, and if the work really is relevant to humans, why aren't the North Americans dropping like flies? GM has been in the food chain for over a decade over there - and longevity continues to increase inexorably," he said in an emailed comment.
True, but Roundup resistant GM maize contaminated with Roundup has not been in the food chain for long--AFAIK. How long some GMs have been in the food chain is irrelevant to this discussion.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
Come on! A serious peer reviewed paper showing bacon protects against cancer should at least garner an 'interesting'.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
My bad, did some research after posting and found this: http://www.agbioforum.org/v12n34/v12n34a10-duke.htm Apparently there are a lot of products that have been on the market for some time and are commonly grown in NA.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
Which was the reason for the Green party rise back in the eighties. It actually helped, acid rain is history for quite a while already.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
"If the effects are as big as purported, and if the work really is relevant to humans, why aren't the North Americans dropping like flies? GM has been in the food chain for over a decade over there - and longevity continues to increase inexorably," he said in an emailed comment.
Actually, life expectancy is decreasing in North America.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-09/life-expectancy-in-the-u-s-drops-for-first-time-since-1993-report-says.html
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
Thing is, it wasn't the GMO crops that are reputed to give you the cancer. It's the pesticide. Now, class, for 10 bonus points, who didn't know pesticides are dangerous?
True, but the GMO crops are what enables farmers to spray pesticides directly onto the crops. It sounds to me like nature is working this out for everyone, anyway: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19594335
Some GMO crops are modified for resistance to herbicides, permitting, but not requiring more use of chemicals.
Other GMO's are modified to resist the pests themselves, thus permitting less chemicals to be used.
A third group of GMO's are modified for reasons completely unrelated to herbicides or pesticides.
It's not the GM RoundUp-Ready crops that cause the problem, it's the RoundUp itself. Organophosphate herbicide is bad for you? Big fucking surprise. Wash your goddamn produce.
.: Semper Absurda
>Say "Hi" to heart disease for me.
My heart disease risk factors have dropped dramatically since going on a high fat diet.
This is not uncommon.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
But banning GMs/Round up will lead to Nuclear War! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_debate
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
FYI, Roundup is a herbicide. It kills plants, not bugs.
Also, I think the last time this came up, itwas said that it isn't actually the roundup chemical that gets into the food, it's one of the carrier chemicals that persists.
Or am I remembering wrong?
Pesticides don't kill people...
People kill people!
A pox on web designers who feel that window.innerWidth == screen.availWidth
Yes, all those corpses will make excellent fertilizer for your organic farms.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
And what do you know! This is just in time for them to be coming out with their new strains that are resistant to their other herbicide products which are much more potent and environmentally problematic.
Effects are cumulative, not discrete. And in many cases the combinations are likely more problematic than the individual effects of a given toxic chemical, which you can think of as the inverse of a cocktail of medications. If several medications combined can cure a problem that the individual medications cannot, then doesn't it stand to reason that the wider the variety of harmful chemicals your cells are exposed to, the greater the chance that the induced damage will overcome the cell's ability to cope, or the body's ability to properly regulate and repair itself? By your logic these people may as well start smoking, because they're already exposed to so much environmental latent pollution. (Yes, I'm being hyperbolic here, but not unduly so.)
If the prime concern is really to feed people them I'm sure we could take away a good amount of land used for producing corn to feed livestock to feed people and just devote it to growing various produce crops to directly feed people.
I don't know what's confusing you, but this model of eating has been the official norm in European countries since at least 1965.
The US has now also adopted it as the national standard for eating:
http://www.choosemyplate.gov/
(Look at the pie chart image to get a sense of how to divide your intake)
You, my friend, with the provocatively opposing diet to all norms are the one needing to explain how your advice isn't outright dangerous.
http://michaelgrayer.posterous.com/in-which-i-blow-a-gasket-and-get-very-uppity
Sample size of TEN. The article goes more in depth, but for fuck's sake...
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Because, thanks to GM crops and pesticides and the vastly improved crop yields they've provided, food today is plentiful in the developed world.
Pesticides and fertilizers have helped yields quite a bit, GM not so much. Other scientific field testing is far more effective at increasing yeilds, such as soil testing for Ph, nitrogen fixation, and other chemistry has helped boost yields a lot, as has different plowing strategies, improved weather forecasting, etc.
The biggest benefit of modern farming techniques is the use of mechanization. What used to take an army of farmhands now takes only a few people running machinery, lowering your food costs considerably.
Well over half of Illinois is cropland. You just couldn't plant as many acres as that before modern machinery, there just weren't enough people to plant, tend, and harvest.
Free Martian Whores!
I've said this before, and it warrents saying again.
The only thing homeopathy cures is dehydration.
So in other words, the experimental diet increased the incidence of tumors?
Lack of adjustment for multiple comparisons can be a huge problem. If you compare too many things, there is a high likelihood of finding some that meet the "standard" criterion for "statistical significance" purely by chance. There does not seem to be adequate justification for the nonstandard statistical approach taken, and one can't help wondering if they chose this analysis because standard methods, with proper adjustment for multiple comparisons, did not find "statistical significance." Minimally, the issue of multiple comparisons should have been addressed in the discussion, and standard statistical analyses (e.g. ANOVA) should have been provided in addition to the complex regressions.
Another troubling thing is that I could not find any statement that the experiments were done "blind" such that the investigators were unaware of which rats got which feed until after the experiments and analysis were complete. It is very easy to bias your results if you know which was which, even unintentionally. The absence of a clear dose-repsonse relationship is also more suggestive of artifact than a genuine toxicological effect.
I am not the AC you replied to, but I do think that is what the article said.
I don't doubt that there are issues to be addressed, but some of the negative comments go far beyond the evidence themselves. I object to claims that there is no merit of any kind. I grant that the study may be overly sensitive and/or not generalizable to humans. It is, however, indicative that the subject matter is worthy of followup.
Now the rats who eat our corn will die!
In Reason We Trust
If the control group is made of up of the same strain of rats, then the findings are significant. Very significant.
Not necessarily. If the effect depends on an abnormality in the rats that does not present in humans then it is only significant to rats.
Actually the economically advantaged are the ones who think they're buying the organic everything.
FTFY.
FTFY, dawg
I heard you like FTFY so...
My webcomic
Researchers found that NK603 and Roundup both caused similar damage to the rats' health whether they were consumed on their own or together.
The chance of a herbicide OR a GM protein having the exact same effect seems incredibly unlikely to me, especially when both follow a threshold instead of varying with dose. It really looks more like a systematic error in the experiment to me.
And there's also the issue of the lack of information on whether there were differences between the various groups of mice in how much they ate and their growth rates, and the fact that they only had 10 rats per group.
At a minimum, the study needs to be replicated in a different stain of rats, with much more then 10 rats per control group.
In mice the effects of caloric restriction are particular to the strain of mouse used: in many strains there's no effect. In primates it appears that caloric restriction works when the control group eats enough to get fat. There's little difference between macaques fed enough of a healthy diet to keep them at a normal weight for 20 years and macaques fed CR levels of the same diet (other than being very skinny and less active).
I guess you must have missed the word nearly in my post.
The same strain of rat was used in the controls and fed the same way (just a different variety of corn) and didn't get the tumors.
The control group of rats did developer tumors naturally, of smaller size. The experimental groups got various concentrations of different gm food, and three of those sets were dosed with varying levels of pesticide directly, in their drinking water.
Throw in some shady math, and nothing about this study sounds legit. I'm not surprised scientists worldwide are already calling BS.
Keep in mind that not all strains of corn are the same, and will not have the same calories per unit weight or other nutritional values.
Consider for a moment the possibility that the control group was fed with a lower energy density corn than the monsanto strain; even a small amount of caloric difference can have a very large impact on lifespan and health in old age. Consider a second possibility that the rats simply liked the monsanto strain more, and ate more of it as a result.
This study is definitely a data point against monsanto; but it is not a very strong one, and it has a huge pile of conflicting evidence to overcome or address.
Alter Aeon Multiclass MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com
Those researchers are total wankers anyways, if your going to do a two year study, why in the world wouldn't you have populations that ate roundup-ready feed w/o roundup in it, regular feed w/ roundup as well as roundup-ready w/ roundup and regular feed W/O roundup?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Oh sure, somebody will try to replicate the study.
The golden rule of studies is that, as a non expert, until that has happened successfully, you should pay them absolutely no attention.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Smoking has an actual link to cancer. Traffic exhaust has an actual link to cancer. Living in Manhattan makes you statistically more likely to develop cancer.
Eating organic food has no link whatsoever to cancer. If there is a link, it must have some complex relationship like you posit, or the link must be very marginal. I'd say it's less like a New Yorker beginning to smoke and more like someone worried about swallowing some ocean water after peeing in the ocean.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I have no problems with truth, but do people understand that going, "Zomg hey you! It's a genetically-modified frankenfood, oogity boogity boo", that that is itself a kind of fraud? That is well beyond a simple precautionary stance principle.
Which itself, by the way, may be more harmful than good in certain cases. The flippant statement "Did they study the effects of starvation, too" digs deep because it may be a wise position.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
A really good example of this is a pineapple from the store versus a pineapple that you buy in Hawaii if you happen to visit. Oh my god is that stuff good when you get it there.
Herbicide!
Practically all studies have issues to be addressed including this one. My primary objection is to rejecting it outright, especially on the grounds that we can't afford to lose productivity. It reads very much like trying to shout down bad news.
I'm for mandatory labeling of products and detailed government sponsored scientific studies on the topic
Why single out GE crops? Why should they get special restrictions while everything else (like the conventionally bred toxic Lenape potato and herbicide resistant Clearfield wheat) gets a free pass?
I agree that we shouldn't reject it outright, and I don't believe that it is being rejected outright by the research community. However, it is being greeted with a healthy amount of skepticism, and for good reason - it makes a strong claim, on what initially appears to be fairly weak evidence, that goes against a much larger body of existing research.
This is how things are supposed to work. Time will tell us whether or not it's a legitimate claim, as there will definitely be people who try to duplicate or verify it. But as I mentioned above, there's already a lot of evidence against the claim, and odds are pretty strongly against it panning out.
Alter Aeon Multiclass MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com
The research community is likely doing the right thing as a whole, I was referring to the /. community (see subject line).
I'm for mandatory labeling of products and detailed government sponsored scientific studies on the topic
Why single out GE crops? Why should they get special restrictions while everything else (like the conventionally bred toxic Lenape potato and herbicide resistant Clearfield wheat) gets a free pass?
Sounds good to me, labeling them appropriately won't hurt.
Even, if your comment would be right (obviously you did not get the point that the USA don't regulate tap water properly, in most cities it is - regarding european standards -undrinkable) being wrong would not make me a troll.
Perhaps I should change my sig again as all but two or three of the rogue mod gang got cought and punished anyway ^_^
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
And what is your point? ... (at least in europe).
You still believe coal plants are distributing uranium, mercury, arsen in deadly doses over the land, don't you?
News update: the year 1975 is 37 years ago
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You, my friend, need to show why obesity follows malnourished populations as well as over-nourished populations. You need to show why the 'eat less, exercise more' mantra has gone hand in hand with a rise on obesity as fat intake goes down and carb intake goes up.
The government advice is widely ridiculed by anyone who pays any attention to the nutritional research.
Try read 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' by Gary Taubes for an excellently researched analysis of the inconsistencies in the commonly accepted models of obesity. 'Why we get fat' is the same thing, but shorter and easier to read.
You should also be able to explain why high fat, low carb diets consistently cause people to lose weight and improve their lipid profile. Check out the results of the 'A to Z' study for a well run comparison of weight loss diets (hint - low carb wins on all metrics). If the government advice was consistent with reality, these results would not happen.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
My personal data is here.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
The local organic farmers market and organic co-op are as cheap as commercial foods.
Only if you're on SNAP or WIC or equivalent and get extra farmer's market bonus bucks. If you're buying it with your own money, it's definitely not cheaper. Picked closer to optimal ripeness, so potentially slightly more nutritious or delicious (or... sometimes not...), but not cheaper.
Also, it's quite unreasonable to expect the local farmer's market to also be organic. The small farm operations really cannot afford to weather too many bad seasons that could've been prevented with herb-, pest-, or fungicide. They will still try for you, but it's not better to have no tomatoes when you could've had not organic tomatoes one year.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
... I've removed most all processed foods from my diet. I like to cook..so, I was getting rid of that years ago...
So.. I guess you stopped cooking, then?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I don't completely trust studies either. For me, the main thing that matter are what I *do* trust (e.g. axioms, conclusions derived from first principles) and what I can do with the options before me.
Its reasonable to deduce from first principles that organic food has similar inherent nutrition (Vitamins, minerals) compared to non-organic. This is because (assuming non-GMO crops), both types of food grew using similar genetic processes. However, organic food has less pesticide residue. As pesticides are mostly toxins that affect humans too, this has the effect of lowering the *overall* nutrition of non-organic food.
This study backs up this conclusion :...
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/09/04/3581865.htm
http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2012/september/organic.html
The non-organic food most probably had better yields. But if I can obtain organic food at an affordable price, the per-hectare crop yield becomes immaterial -- for me, organic is better as its toxins are fewer.
have not been properly done.
Their trials are just like the tobacco industry trials; durations too short, improper controls, no follow-up, no real attempt to find problems, rather, every serious attempt to conceal them.
http://geneticroulettemovie.com/
Soylent Green Bacon!
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
They'll add the following to their marketing:
* Now shown in studies to control rodents and other pests!
Those researchers are total wankers anyways, if your going to do a two year study, why in the world wouldn't you have populations that ate roundup-ready feed w/o roundup in it, regular feed w/ roundup as well as roundup-ready w/ roundup and regular feed W/O roundup?
Sorry?
For each sex, one control group had access to plain water and standard diet from the closest isogenic non-transgenic maize control; six groups were fed with 11, 22 and 33% of GM NK603 maize either treated or not with R. The final three groups were fed with the control diet and had access to water supplemented with respectively 1.1 x10-8% of R (0.1 ppb of R or 50 ng/L of glyphosate, the contaminating level of some regular tap waters), 0.09% of R (400 mg/kg, US MRL of glyphosate in some GM feed) and 0.5% of R (2.25 g/L, half of the minimal agricultural working dilution).
So they did exactly what you asked for. Why do you call them wankers?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
You know nothing because you didn't read the paper. Why not read it before commenting?
http://research.sustainablefoodtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Final-Paper.pdf
Watch this Heartland Institute video
There are large numbers of people that are not just suggesting but demanding that all pesticides be banned.
There are nuts in every debate, but they haven't shown up in this one yet.
Free Martian Whores!
If the prime concern is really to feed people them I'm sure we could take away a good amount of land used for producing corn to feed livestock to feed people and just devote it to growing various produce crops to directly feed people.
If there wer actually a food shortage I would agree with you, but there isn't. The world produces more than enough food to feed everyone; greed and politics are the only things keeping people hungry.
Free Martian Whores!
No....I cook most everything I do from scratch.
I start with raw fresh veggies. I often make my own stocks, sometimes I even make my own ground and stuffed sausages, home pickled and canned things...and hopefully soon, I can get all my stuff together and start home brewing again...all grain brewing.
You can't avoid some pre-processed foods in today's world, but for about 99% of my shopping, I shop on the perimeter of the grocery store, where it is fresh veggies...meats, dairy....
I don't buy much of anything in the center aisles of the store...save for a few condiments (ketchup, mustard), beer/wine/liquor (they sell all that in grocery stores here in New Orleans), and spices.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
A Comparison of the Effects of Three GM Corn Varieties on Mammalian Health
From the Abstract published in 2009 ...
"We conclude that these data highlight signs of hepatorenal toxicity, possibly due to the new pesticides specific to each GM corn.". .... This is what you are saying - that the damage could be from the pesticide residue..
But you dismiss the possibility of the the effects being from the genetic modifications, and the scientist doing this study don't. .
Instead they close the by abstract saying ...
"In addition, unintended direct or indirect metabolic consequences of the genetic modification cannot be excluded."
Toxins produced by and applied to GMOs are already found in most North American human blood samples including fetal blood of those consuming typical diets. This is an experiment without fully informed participants. I say experiment, because it's happening to us without any conclusive safety data.
We're getting more and more powerful genetic analysis tools and longitudinal sample sets are of course more available with time.
My point is: Don't be dismissive. Keep an open mind. Be a good scientist.
The data isn't in yet and you know it.
I reccommend trying out scholar.google.com with two Greasemonkey scripts: "Google scholar citation explorer" and if you don't have journal access (get it via your local libray site?) try "Google scholar immediately available highlighter".
Keywords: GMO, toxicity, GM corn, rat, NK 603, MON 810, MON 863
Why not just call it corn?
According to the paper (p. 4, emphasis mine):
It's like a cult with you guys isn't it?
The governments are wrong, and handwaving weirdos selling you advice, like Atkins and Taubes know better, it's like the New Age thing all over.
Why don't you read the first two hits on google:
http://reason.com/archives/2003/03/01/big-fat-fake
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2011/05/16/thin-body-of-evidence-why-i-have-doubts-about-gary-taubess-why-we-get-fat/
Everybody knows no-carb diets are a quick fix for fat people wanting to become thin. But the question is, at what price?
It's like putting oxygen on a fire and then wondering why the surroundings are burning along with the BBQ.
Even if you feel comfortable risking your life, it's not ethical to go around telling others to do the same.
why obesity follows malnourished populations as well as over-nourished populations
The vast majority of the populations in the world is overnourished. The malnourished clearly look it, so I don't understand what you're trying to say (Hint: you don't need to be thin to look malnourished).
The government advice is widely ridiculed by anyone who pays any attention to the nutritional research.
Scientists frequently ridicule certain nutritional researchers, since the area of nutritional "research" contains such a large amount of loud self-proclaimed experts.
All their so called research falls flat because there is no reliable metric by which to measure the rate of health degradation based on foods, on spans shorter than 3 decades.
Proper research may surprise you. Have you read books like The China Study?
Good luck with sticking to your messed up paradigm. It'll get you in the end.
Yes I have read the China Study.
But I'm not going to bother firing science at you because your mind seems closed to anything other that texts that confirm your worldview.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Yes, I'm sure you're right, come back to me in a decade if you're still alive.
Soylent green eggs and ham!
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
How would you know if the mod gang got caught, or ran out of mod points or simply stopped caring?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
They got stripped of modding rights .... only question is ow how many where fakes/alts of the person behind it.
How would you know if the mod gang got caught, or ran out of mod points or simply stopped caring?
Who is modding whom is obviously trackable in the DB.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.