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Black Swan Author: Genetically Modified Organisms Risk Global Ruin
KentuckyFC writes It's 20 years since the FDA approved the Flavr Savr tomato for human consumption, the first genetically engineered food to gain this status. Today, roughly 85 per cent of corn and 90 per cent of soybeans produced in the US are genetically modified. So it's easy to imagine that the scientific debate over the safety of genetically modified organisms has been largely settled. Not for Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan and several academic colleagues who say that the risks have been vastly underestimated. They say that genetically modified organisms threaten harm on a global scale, both to ecosystems and to human health. That's different from many conventional risks that threaten harm on a local scale, like nuclear energy for example. They argue that this global threat means that the precautionary principle ought to be applied to severely limit the way genetically modified organisms can be used.
... it means that vaccinations cause downs syndrom?
We've been modifying organisms for thousands of years, through splicing and selective breeding, and others.
OH NO, LOOK AT THIS HORROR WE LIVE IN TODAY.
not the same thing retard...
You mean the same precautionary principle that led the US government to indoctrinate a generation of kids in the food pyramid, leading to generational highs of sugar intake and obesity, and probably millions of early death, because scientists thought that fat might be responsible for heart disease?
Be careful with anything that starts with "ignore evidence to begin with"
If only that were true.
And we've been comparing apples to oranges for just as long.
What they don't bother to put in TFS is that the 85% of corn and 90% of soybeans currently running modified genes are only modified to make them immune to glyphosate (aka "Roundup-ready"). There only real risk is that maybe by some huge stroke of bad luck, some other plant (a weed, say) picks up glyphosate resistance from these genes. The thing about that fear tactic is that it's not too unlikely that pest plants will eventually pick up glyphosate resistance anyway, and it's not really a scary prospect since glyphosate is only relied on for farming, and if it stops working they can move on to a different herbicide for us to debate over.
Making glyphosate resistant corn? Probably going to have 0 repercussions, and the worst-case scenario is not unlike the chemical resistance issues we face in almost every other area of biology (i.e. penicillin resistant bacteria). Making a corn-tomato-hemp hybrid that grows a foot a day and re-roots itself whenever it's cut down? OK maybe we should talk that one through a little more. Scare mongering with the "GMO will make our planet a Mad-Max wasteland of anarchy" is really unproductive.
of extensive testing, trials, heck, even labeling. But after 20 years of GMO products, and absolutely no significantly measurable negative ecological/human impacts, I'm thinking maybe we should turn down the rhetoric a bit and continue on.
Sure, there are risks with mono-culture corps (see: Bananas). And yeah, farmers who use excessive herbicides are dumb.
But if there were truly a significant health risk in GMOs in general, we should have seen it develop by now. Odds are though that there will be some GMO products that aren't safe and that there will be some GMO products that enable dumb farming practices. But the exact same statement is true if you remove the letters "GMO".
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Yet, let's equivocate all forms of modification to mean the exact same thing, rather than accept complexity and think about the specific details.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
In a world where shit like aspartame is railroaded through approval because of political connections, why in the fuck would I assume anything is "settled", just because it is commonly sold and used?
It's interesting to discuss certainty in the context of the author of The Black Swan. His book is about how people do a piss-poor job of preparing for never-before-seen scenarios.
Like how they design skyscrapers to resist ground-level bombing and natural disasters, but until 9/11 there wasn't any engineering attention to jet-fuel temperature fires damaging the superstructure(there is in new buildings now).
I disagree with his hypothesis. The abstract doesn't articulate some particular case, but just some "you never know, so don't predicate the whole world on it" logic. That's in keeping with his previous books' premise, but fundamentally the argument is implausible: unspecified disaster due to widespread adoption.
For example, if something, say corn, is genetically modified to have DNA from a non-kosher animal in it does that food item also become non-kosher? The same could be asked of if the restriction was vegetarian or vegan. How exactly would that work out?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
As a child who was indoctrinated under the food pyramid, I can categorically tell you that I completely ignored it.
Of course, I'm also not obese, so perhaps you are on to something.
Seriously, though, how much impact did that program really have? I think the real issue with sugar intake is that sugar (or HFCS) is cheap, is tasty, and is in everything. Also, unlike say arsenic, any bad effects are usually deferred. That seems like the actual issue, and is probably why there are still obesity today.
Where are we getting killing all insects from, and why was that concern not brought up when we just use pesticides? I think we are actually a great deal closer to having resistant pests than no insects.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Hey. I like this approach.
For everyone that believes GMO's are EVIIIIIILLLL, if they ever want a dog or cat for a pet they should only be allowed the choice to take a wolf or a tiger home....
I'm as liberal any one on Slashdot. While I don't know the author's political leanings, I will say that this GMO flavor of fear-mongering has usually been generated by the left.
"War makes me sad." - Me
Oh sh8t, we are....Creationists!? See, there is a Creator, and we are him (or her).
Table-ized A.I.
my understanding is, all is done in the US for animals, to grow fast and big. And this is also relflected amoung US people going fat, for a big part of the US population. We all look like the animals our farmers breed. Maybe a chance in Europe we will still have less fat people, at least in france, as meat coming from the US is ban. and the sort of chemistry to make animals grow fast, ban. At least this is the case today. But i do tend to think, it could be a relation between those, the way US farmer breed their animals, and the reason why more people get fat. Something likely difficult to prove, because there is big money behind. But worth investigating, i think.
my 2cents, comments, if that can help.
You forgot your mandatory optional fearless medication, citizen. Please step into the nearest confession booth so that you can be happy. Only commie mutant traitors are afraid.
The computer is your friend.
The first half of the paper (dealing with statistics) is all well and logical.
The second half (dealing with GMO) makes several unfounded claims with no citation. Why does the author assume that GMOs have a non-zero risk of causing global catastrophe? Without any justification for that statement, you can just as easily claim that *not* using GMOs have a non-zero risk of causing global catastrophe.
I think the biggest problem is that we want bad foods and good foods, when biology doesn't work that way (with a few exceptions for outright toxic food). What is best for you is dependent upon the rest of your diet. So, if you eat ten pounds of rice to satisfy the hunger you get from not having three strips of bacon for breakfast, you end up worse than you would if you had just ate the bacon in the first place. We are seeing a bit of a flip side to this now with the anti-carbs fad diets, and people just load themselves up with fatty foods.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Hey, it worked for Sigfried and Roy!
Or should that be, "Hay! it worked for Sigfried and Roy!"?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
And we've been comparing apples to oranges for just as long.
Actually, before there were apples and oranges, there were some people cultivating a variety of bushes with barely edible fruit and wondering if there was any way to get them to ripen larger, taste better, and spoil slower. 500+ years later, here we are, comparing apples to oranges (neither of which existed in its current form back then).
Or, were you trying to make a joke?
Because changing things slowly over decades is exactly the same thing as changing it in a single generation, only you don't get any warning that you're about to screw up big time coupled with the ability to make changes that would otherwise be astronomically unlikely.
Well, it worked for Siegfried.
Yep, there's a sharp divide among us peoples on the left involved in environmentalism between those who see our environmental stability as crucial to human happiness and preserving natural beauty for future generations versus those who think "natural=good" "unnatural=bad". We put up with the latter group because a lot of times the goal is the same(save our national parks, keep our drinking water free of contaminants, limit global warming) and allies are necessary to win elections.
But we also have to repeatedly distance ourselves from the "no nuclear ever", "GMOs are evil", "herbal remedies are better" beliefs that can actually hurt the environment. And some of the biggest environmental concerns pragmatists(natural runoff pollution affecting river DO levels, water rights concerns, the occasional animal population control measure) have don't excite those groups, which sucks too.
It is connected. There's a lot of sugar in processed foods today because they took the fats out and had to do something to make it not taste like salted cardboard.
Then there's all of those people who consumed great quantities of artery clogging transfats because they were told it was the 'healthy choice' and butter would kill them.
But note the people who made those claims aren't paying for the stents and bypasses.
Coming from an agricultural state I can say without a doubt Fear Mongering is produced by those trying to make a buck and sold to the stupid, Politics of left right center have no bearing on things it's just a product to sell. Democrat Republican hippy or business tycoon it's all just playing to the crowd for attention.
Because we have never made something we thought was absolutely safe and then had decades of remediation and lawsuits when it turned out to be a very bad idea.
The people who pit asbestos in everything thought it was 'just a mineral' and a non-toxic one at that, so what could go wrong with that durable, effective, and fireproof insulation?
What is the difference between selective breeding and genetic modification?... nothing.
GM is more efficient at selecting genes but no qualitative difference.
BTW, mother nature has been doing GM for millions of years and randomly inserting genes across all types of organisms and so far, that seems to be working out just fine.
So please, Keep Calm and Don't Panic.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I am not saying that GMO stuff will be totally harmless. But it isn't any worse than non-GMO stuff, like asbestos.
As such, it does not need to be outlawed, just reasonably regulated (and that does not mean labels that will encourage fear).
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Of course! Every article has a Frist post!
What's really driving obesity is the engineers in the processed food factories trying to optimize the perfect mix of ingredients that people find irresistible. Because irresistible = profit. And unlucky for the rest of population, irresistible usually involves a high calorie mix of fat and sugar.
TL;DR: You waived your hands like OP, but it's still not a magic trick.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
will randomly create something dangerous
How about intentionally create sometime dangerous in an unforeseen way? There are plenty of examples of that, for instance did you know that peanut allergies spiked after companies started roasting peanuts at a higher temperature in order to get them roasted faster? Turns out the increased temperature causes a protein to denature to a form that has a higher allergenicity than before. Not that that stopped anyone from doing it. More profits to be made selling cheaper peanuts to fewer people.
I agree that there's not going to be any random surprises where someone tries to make a bigger corn cob but ends up with a mobile man-eating plant, but adding toxins to a plant we're supposed to be eating is going to need more testing to ensure that it's not poisonous to us, ideally by someone who doesn't have a vested interest in just declaring it safe and then retiring with a golden parachute before it begins to accumulate sufficiently in brain tissue to cause Alzheimer's.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
You don't need a hypothesis. For risk, we look at probability and impact. The impact here is off the scale. The probability is unknown. There's a lot of people here pretending they know the probability, but I haven't seen any evidence to say we do know it. That's all you need to know to understand that we should approach GM crops cautiously. I assume all the 'Go GMO crowd' are children, with no experience in the world. Children, and idiots, think everything they don't understand is easy.
I think the real issue with sugar intake is that sugar (or HFCS) is cheap, is tasty, and is in everything. Also, unlike say arsenic, any bad effects are usually deferred. That seems like the actual issue, and is probably why there are still obesity today.
You might find this interesting: Sugar: The Bitter Truth by Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology. It's about 90 minutes, but worth the watch. He describes how Fructose (from wherever, sugar, HFCS, etc...) is metabolized by the liver in a similar fashion as alcohol, but w/o the physical limitations of consuming too much alcohol, and raises triglycerides and cholesterol, etc...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
...or better yet: "The Africanized Swan".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No, sorry, you have to have a justifiable concern, even if questionable, to object to something. "It could be bad, maybe, we just don't know" isn't enough.
I skimmed the paper and the paper is a bit air-headed and unfocused when it comes to the biology.
They are a bit implicit, but it appears that their main failure scenario depends on the idea that with GMO you get huge monocultures where agriculture is dominated by relatively untested species, which could be susceptible to plant diseases. This is true, as far as I know. And I suppose that the risk of global catastrophic outcomes could very well be real.
They also seem to assume that with non-GMO breeding techniques you do not get huge monocultures where agriculture is dominated by relatively untested species, which could be susceptible to plant diseases. This is not true AFAIK.
So yeah, there is risk. But I don't understand where the GMO factor comes into the equation.
As opposed to idiots that think that everything they don't understand is hard and wrong.
Peanut allergies are also higher in people whos mothers did not eat peanuts for fear of it affecting their babies.
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A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
What is the difference between selective breeding and genetic modification?
For starters, you can't breed a jellyfish with a zebrafish, no matter how kinky they are. But you can take the flourescent genes from a jellyfish, put them in a zebrafish, and make Glofish.
Modifying organisms by having one breed with another is vastly different than turning off and on specific genes of dna.
;-)
It is like working with several programs through an interface as opposed to changing the code directly. Hope you put in a try catch.
Scott Carr
Here they come. There is an absolute army of pro-GMO astroturfers who set their RSS feeds to trigger a fire alarm whenever GMOs are mentioned. They admit this.
You are not allowed to suggest there are dangers to GMOs. You are not allowed to point out any studies that suggest there are dangers to GMOs, because they will answer, "It's just one study" or, "It was a flawed study" or, "The researcher is being paid by the global anti-GMO elite!". You are not allowed to know whether the food you buy is licensed by Monsanto. You are not allowed to object to intellectual property laws being applied to basic foodstuffs. You are not allowed to know whether what you feed your family is made from GMO products for any reason whatsoever. If you say, "As a consumer, I want to know the provenance of the food I eat," they will say, "You are stupid and bad and anti-science". They will compare you to anti-vaxxers, Nazis, Michael Vick, Nickelback and Stalin if you suggest that GMO foods should be labeled as such. They will tell you that companies should not be allowed to label their food as "Contains no GMOs" if it does not in fact contain no GMOs because that would be unfair to the chemical industry.
They use approximately the same sealion techniques as GamerGate. They will politely ask the same questions, over and over, saying "Where is your proof!" and when you show them the proof, they will say, "Those scientists are all being paid by Al Gore/Whole Foods/PETA;/George Soros/or the worldwide cabal of billionaire organic farmers.
They will come by the dozens. You cannot win. I'm telling you, leave this one alone.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yes, because your dog Sniffles is actually the product of genesplicing of a dog and fish genes and requires massive amounts of pesticides to live.
So, SHUT UP YOU ANTI-GMO PEOPLE. You are stupid, and wrong and want people to starve because you would like to know the provenance of the food you give your families.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I agree, the pro-GMO astroturfers are the worst fear-mongering shills I've ever seen.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I think the proposition that NOT using GMOs risks global catastrophe might have more odds in its favor than using GMOs.
Consider:
Bananas, citrus, chocolate, coffee are all threatened by pathogens or climate change. There are some credible pathogen threats to wheat as well.
In the case of citrus, the ONLY (**ONLY**) resistant variety to citrus greening disease, out of ALL the citrus varieties on the plant, is a GMO variety that has genes from spinach spliced in.
So we have a case of, worldwide collapse of citrus production, OR GMO citrus.
I think I'll take the GMO citrus, thank you very much. If I were a Florida planter, and I weren't worried about anti-GMO hysteria, I'd be replacing my citrus orchards (as they die) with GMO plants.
As I referred to above, similar threats are either now or are poised to decimate bananas, coffee, chocolate, and wheat, though I'm not so sure that the naturally resistant variety situation is so dire in those cases.
Best,
-PeterM
Except low-carb diets actually work, and extreme no-carb diets seem to work but have side effects. This suggests that the general wisdom of "load yourself up on grains, eat little meat" is not actually healthy.
Sugars and starches absorb immediately as energy. Proteins and fats are useful for structure, but also derivable as energy. Processing protein and fat requires a great deal more effort than processing sugar, which simply hits the blood and triggers insulin, binding it into glycogen.
It's often common wisdom that you can fill whatever hunger you have by eating piles of fruits and vegetables as snacks. Nobody ever says this outright, but they recommend directly to eat fruits and vegetables if hungry between meals. Imagine just sitting at your desk all day, munching Doritos and pretzels; now imagine being healthy by eating an apple, two kiwi fruit, and munching on a two pound bag of cherries. As you observe, people wish to believe fruit is good for you and actively makes you healthier, and so eating a ton of it makes you a ton healthier.
I generally consume mushrooms, bacon, sausage, eggs, and steak as my breakfast foods. This is taken with almond milk with Ovaltine in it, or with fresh squeezed orange juice. My lunch often consists of a sandwich, so there is some grain in my diet. Dinner may have some bread, or a sweet potato, or some such thing. Notably, starch causes food fatigue, while high protein intake helps you function when sleep deprived; mushrooms are rather neutral in either regard. My breakfast is very protein-biased for logical reasons, and I am only shy of pizza because I don't know how to eat pizza (just keep eating until painful...).
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While it may be true that the risks of genetic engineering are underestimated; it is also true that Mr. Taleb overestimates the risks of everything. Into the hidey hole!
That's not how genetics work. Things change because of mutations and the resulting plant is either able to reproduce or not. That mutation could be something significant like making the plant blue instead of red or it could be totally benign. How well it reproduces offsping and how well they survive determines what traits move on. In the case of Tifton-85 a hybrid bred bermudagrass it produced cyanide gas killing the cows that ate it. That could never happen in nature right?!? The thing people seem to forget is we are not inserting "artificial" or "animal genes" we are inserting gene sequences. This is not like computer programming where you have Java and C and C++ and HTML. You have DNA and you have RNA. You take a sequence from one organism that you've identified as the source of the trait and you put it into another organism and it can copy that DNA just like any other DNA. Every type of life that we know uses the same type of building blocks...there is no difference between the DNA in you and the DNA in a Redwood tree or a soybean.
People who are thinner tend to prefer a sweerer whipped concoction than fat people, who prefer a fatter, not sweet whipped concoction. That knowledge is 30 years old.
Fat people are fat because of savory desires rather than sweets (to borrow a culinary term for non-sweets cooking AKA most cooking).
But i's thr breads and cereals aspect -- grains, in bread and pasta, that generates excess calories and sugar in the blood. Too much sugar...in the form of those buns and fries with that paltry 300 calories of burger-and-cheese in a Big Mac.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
" Today, roughly 85 per cent of corn and 90 per cent of soybeans produced in the US are genetically modified. "
Yet we still exist. Why don't I have tentacles and nine eyes yet?
And furthermore, I recently had another vaccination, for shingles.
Actually yes, because we now know that transgenic processes occur in nature too.
Actually, before there were apples and oranges, there were some people cultivating a variety of bushes with barely edible fruit and wondering if there was any way to get them to ripen larger, taste better, and spoil slower. 500+ years later, here we are, comparing apples to oranges (neither of which existed in its current form back then).
This is not even remotely the same thing as modern gene-splicing. People have NOT, for thousands of years, implated jellyfish genes into food crops, and set them loose in the wild. Talk about comparing apples to oranges! You're comparing kittens to fireflies.
Wait! Never mind. They've crossed those, too. (Actually it wasn't fireflies, but some kind of bioluminescent bacteria, if I remember correctly.)
Apples and oranges indeed. Comparing this to gene splicing between unrelated organisms really is more like comparing bacteria to kittens.
No one. Taleb et. al. claim that GMOs are under the precautionary principle (PP) - something they just invented.. I mean formalized. A nuclear accident is not because its effects are local. GMOs are, I assume because they can spread. They are 'pro-ruin'. I wonder on what time scale they expect this ruin to happen since we have been fucking with plants an animals for thousands of years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... . There is no accurate estimation of the chances that GMOs will ruin us because they don't understand the risks or lack of risks because they don't understand the technology and biology they are talking about. They don't understand the 'risk' of what might happen when one strain crosses with another and just how much gene mixing is going on without humans doing a single thing to guide it. But let me explain it fatuously... what happens if a naturally occurring drought resistant plant crosses with a nearby fungal resistant plant? MAYBE DEATH GENES!!!! It might spread! And humans don't need to be involved!!! Did I say DEATH??? Why aren't we all dead by now? Is it perhaps because Taleb et al really don't understand what happens when genes mix and spread? Do they not know that genes aren't magic monoliths that have been around for years, unchanging? More "weird" crossing happens every single day in Spring than mankind is likely to do in the next 50 years of cross breading (and in the next 100 years inside a lab). If they are concerned about the random events that might happen when one plant crosses with another we should immediately slash and burn all sexually reproducing crops whether GMOed or not. I see less fear mongering about Ebola on FOX News. This is appalling.
What other people think of me is none of my business
11 billion people is the current population projection for humanity, and that's a projection you can have some real confidence in. So the question is do you take the best means the incoming billions off the table or do we get cracking and throw everything we have at the problem. Pretty sure if we don't solve the problem nature in her usual fashion will do so for us.
s/implated/implanted
The greatest danger from GMO technology is that it enables malice. If ISIS taps the House of Saud bank account deeply enough, it could come up with an Ebola-rabies-common cold doomsday virus much faster and more certainly than by hybridization.
Fortunately, the same technology allows us to develop treatments to diseases, malicious or natural, correspondingly faster than before:
http://www.iflscience.com/heal...
We can't put the toothpaste back into the tube. Our 'recusing' from GMO technology would do nothing to prevent misuse of the tech by anyone still using it. It would only prevent us from developing a response.
What is the difference between selective breeding and genetic modification?... nothing.
Wrong. Genetic modification allows for a greater range of modification in a shorter time than can be achieved with selective breeding.
As Ben Parker wisely noted many years ago, "With great power comes great responsibility". Does our current food industry collectively have the great responsibility to wisely handle the great power of GMO? They have pretty clearly demonstrated that they do not.
so other than being completely wrong, he's on to something.
Billions of times a day, natural processes substitute random genes from all different kinds of organisms.
Natural selection takes care of it.
We are not in a Frankenstein movie... more like Rube Goldberg.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I guess you've never heard of bacteriophages (and similar organisms) which do take genes from one organism and put them in another... billions of times every day.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Today I learned that suggesting that everyone on the other side of a debate is on the take from some shadowy cabal of corporate interests is only ridiculous and dishonest when "they" do it.
But pigs don't fuck glow worms. Ever. Heck, they don't even get to first base.
And yet ... http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3kKz...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I guess that's why I'm getting all those spams telling me bananas will kill me... fructose!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Do the diff of the genetic material before and after, in the case of 1) "natural" mutations, 2) selective breeding, and 3) GM. And don't look for just the number of "lines" of code, but look at the structure and correlation among the changes. Then, apply exponential growth to the diffs -- and the fact that we cannot possibly predict the effect of either 10, 20 or 100 years downstream, and you'll see what's different.
I thought it was gonna be something new from Bruce Sterling, also author of a "Black Swan" story.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
As a child who was indoctrinated under the food pyramid, I can categorically tell you that I completely ignored it.
Then you weren't actually indoctrinated.
Time to drop a reality bomb on the debate. Here's a few fun facts nobody ever mentions:
Asian carp are taking over and causing immense damage in the Great Lakes. They are not genetically modified.
Any GMO at any time can be poisonous or deadly or cause cancer and we wouldn't know it for years and years. The threat hasn't gone away, it just hasn't happened yet.
Unfortunately for the hippies, not every single GMO is bad. In fact, changing one protein in the skin of a fruit or the plant's roots rarely affects the edible part of the plant.
GMO is just accelerated adaptation. Any plant can become hazardous to humans or nature. Did you know humans are almost the only animal that can eat Avocados without becoming violently ill or dying and humans are one of the only animals that can't eat crabapple berries. That's just nature being nature.
Have you compared the size of a pig and a glow worm ?
I think a glow worm would be pretty well fucked if a pig stood on it...
You sir have gone entirely too far, choose your second, pistols at noon by the old mill. Be there if you aren't a coward.
What is the difference between selective breeding and genetic modification?... nothing.
GM is more efficient at selecting genes but no qualitative difference.
BTW, mother nature has been doing GM for millions of years and randomly inserting genes across all types of organisms and so far, that seems to be working out just fine.
So please, Keep Calm and Don't Panic.
Once upon a time, certain single-celled organisms happened upon a new process to make food, and its only novel byproduct was free oxygen. For a time, things continued swimmingly as the iron on earth rusted, until it was all rusted and no longer consumed the oxygen. Then most organisms couldn't cope with this highly toxic element and died. Certainly today, this is seen as a valuable transition on the way to life as we know it, but I'd hardly like to be on the other side of it.
The real problem is that people like to eat, and they prefer to eat foods that are high in calories. Also, once they leave childhood they prefer to minimize exercise. This is a bad combination, but it isn't unique to humans. What's unique to humans is that they can usually find a lot of reasonably tasty food with minimal effort.
Go watch lions in a zoo, and see how much they sleep. This is normal. If you want an animal to be active, you limit its food supply, and arrange things so that activity is require to get anything that isn't dead boring to eat.
N.B.: This effect is less marked in smaller animals because:
1) It takes less effort to move, and
2) Smaller animals need to eat more often.
But humans count as larger animals.
This is oversimplified, of course, but there is no magic dietary food that you can eat or avoid to solve the problem. He's right that we have no real need for sugar, but we also only need a small amount of fat. But if we eliminate both we tend to OD on protein, which has its own problems.
I think the best fad diet of recent times was the oat bran diet. It still didn't solve the problem, of course, but it was minimally harmful.
FWIW, I tend to avoid sugar, and minimize fats (with some exceptions for olive oil...but even that only in moderation). But I like to eat, and I'm not active enough....and I weigh about twice what I should.
The only group of people I'm aware of that aren't *vigorous* exercisers and aren't overweight are strict vegetarians...or orientals who eat a traditional diet, which is nearly the same thing. (Or very young...though even there the percentage of overweight is increasing rapidly. Probably because their ability to run around has been sharply curtailed over the last several decades.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
it's still just DNA. who cares where it came from, what's important it what it does!
the bioluminescent gene for example just encodes for the creation of a pigment and a catalyst enzyme. you could eat that and nothing would happen, your digestive system would just break them down.
besides, a freak mutation COULD have recreated exactly what they did in a lab and we would have selected for it.
the only thing we've done now is remove the need to wait for the right mutations to pop up.
I guess that's why I'm getting all those spams telling me bananas will kill me... fructose!
Watch the video, it's from an academic series on campus. The guy seems to know what he's talking about, unless you don't like actual experts. Fructose from a fibrous source (apple, banana) is better as the fiber slows the processing of the sugar, unlike, say, in a soda.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Yes, the modern gene-splicing is much safer. Do you know that wheat lost most of its protein content due to selective breeding? Maize lost most of its fat content due to a genetic error (so its wild predecessors are much healthier).
If the same happened to a GM food then it'd be banned quicker than you can say "paracetomoxyfrusebendroneomycin".
But you can breed together a tree and a beetle.
Or a beetle and a bacteria - http://blogs.discovermagazine....
You mean the same precautionary principle that led the US government to indoctrinate a generation of kids in the food pyramid, leading to generational highs of sugar intake and obesity,
You think the food pyramid did that? The real reason is that Nixon saw a food shortage coming and didn't want to deal the political fallout of that. So he started subsidize corn, which resulted in a massive explosion of High Fructose Corn Syrup being added to everything that Americans eat. That's what's causing high sugar intakes and in increase in obesity.
If we follow the logic in this book, then we should ban everything up to and including stone tools and fire. For example:
- Computers: might give rise to an artificial intelligence that will destroy everything. Ban them.
- Agriculture: might cause people to lose their natural aggressiveness so they'll be easily conquered by the alien invaders. Ban agriculture.
- Fire: might cause the global firestorm that will destroy all the life. Ban it.
- Stone tools: they might spark the fire that will destroy all the life. Ban it.
- Medicine: might cause humanity to lose natural immunity to diseases. Ban it.
And so on.
But I don't believe that the pro-GMO goonswarm that shows up at every one of these discussions is part of any shadowy cabal. Most of them are your basic pop skeptic who simply believe whoever's marketing department spends the most money. Nothing will get a pop skeptic's juices flowing like accusations of "anti-science", as long as the accusation is loud enough.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Since this process took many millions of years, it's unlikely that you'd be on the wrong side of it in your short life.
The climate is changing rapidly now and that is much more likely to be a threat to you in your lifetime.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
The whole point that Taleb is trying to make is that you (resp. our species) might be wrong on this in some cases: he claims that if it can be reasonably argued that the consequences of a fuck-up in a given area would global and catastrophic enough, there is a case to be made for not taking chances in the first place. Even if said chances look just fine from the viewpoint of our current knowledge on the matter.
> People have NOT, for thousands of years, implated jellyfish genes into food crops
If "food crop" means "something people actually ate", then we still haven't. Did you bother to actually google the story you're "quoting" with such feigned authority?
> Comparing this to gene splicing between unrelated organisms
Nature has been gene splicing between unrelated organisms long before we came around. Eight percent of your DNA is from viruses, for instance.
Huh? Wut?
Monsanto wants to make money. Lots of money. So you need lots of happy little people making other happy little people. They certainly can cause inadvertent harm - I think this is somewhat downplayed although I disagree with Talub, et all that this is a planet wide potential catastrophe. But to compare Monsanto with ISIS is silly. Religious nutjobs are just that. Telling them that Allah didn't say that all women are property or that they're not really going to heaven on the back of a vest full of TNT isn't going to get you very far.
If there was clear and convincing evidence that GMO was bad, then Monsanto would be shut down. That's the big difference. Right now, there are some concerns, but no clear and convincing evidence of that.
The failure of the argument presented by Talub et al is that even a total, world wide vector that killed off one GMO line (say, potatoes) would not result in world wide damage (as would a 10 km asteroid). The human race would work around a potatoeless planet, eat more maize or tomatoes or McDonald's or Tofu or whatever. It would be a problem, but a manageable one - largely on the level of a major tsunami / hurricane / earthquake. Bad, but not that bad.
Not game over by any means.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
...I just walked outside, and seriously, I saw "genetically modified organisms" EVERYWHERE.
Flowers, pumpkins, dogs, hell, I even saw genetically modified people sipping coffee like ...like it was normal!
It's a bloody catastrophe, why isn't anyone else afraid?!?!?!?
-Styopa
You might want to loosen the tin foil on your head a bit.
So his answer to the question "Should we turn on the Large Hadron Collider?" is "no," given that there is a conceptual risk that it would create a black hole that could destroy the Earth. The fact that our current understanding of physics dismisses the possibility of such an event would seem to be irrelevant to him, according to your understanding of his argument.
Once you extrapolate that out, it becomes clear that that argument leads to permanent paralysis: we can undertake no new activities (and, in fact, cannot continue activities we have previously conducted safely) on the off chance that our current knowledge fails to account for a potential catastrophic risk. "Sure, we've flown jet airplanes for decades, but maybe the next LAX->LGA flight is the one that will hit the tipping point and set our atmosphere on fire for reasons we don't yet understand."
Nasty. Swans are already mean as all get out and now you want to genetically engineer them with African bee dna, so they behave like killer bees.
Black swan: Cygnus atratus
Africanized honey bee: Apis mellifera adansonii
Africanized Black Swan: Cygnus atratus adansonii (variety: Winged Death).
Attacks in flocks of thousands and chases you for miles. Almost as bad as sharks with lasers, but can fly and travel on land. Doctor Evil would be proud.
Yes. While it may be a 'safer' way to view factoring risk, lumping what you don't know into an unacceptable risk category just isn't going to work. We would pretty much stop in our tracks. Of course, you can argue that this is exactly what we should do - take a technological 'time out' and let society get it's hands and heads around what we've created in the last 300 years, but I think that is a fool's errand. Not going to happen.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
That description is very subjective and undoubtedly leads the model to say whatever one wants it to say, in this case, GMO bad!
I compared the death counts. See: Agent Orange, dioxin and others.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And conversely, they don't tend to make healthy food poisonous. But insert the wrong gene and you can achieve crazy health problems in a single season.
Actually no. That comparison would be against poison berries. Which can in a single generation be combined with corn and ruin a staple crop for humanity.
If you think GMO's are a threat to humanity, just imagine most of us starving to death.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
They have a great responsibility to pump up their bottom line. Does that count?
It's only evil when Monsanto does it.
Yes, the modern gene-splicing is much safer.
Tee hee
Do you know that wheat lost most of its protein content due to selective breeding?
Do you realize that this was the desired outcome? Other varieties of wheat still exist. We don't use them for most things on purpose.
Maize lost most of its fat content due to a genetic error (so its wild predecessors are much healthier).
But we cultivated the less-healthy kind on purpose. And if you made it healthier, it wouldn't taste as sweet.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Billions of times a day, natural processes substitute random genes from all different kinds of organisms.
Natural selection takes care of it.
Right. Because nature doesn't plant whole fields full of monocultures.
We are not in a Frankenstein movie... more like Rube Goldberg.
Nature is more like the latter, most of our attempts to control it are decidedly like the former.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You mean the same precautionary principle that led the US government to indoctrinate a generation of kids in the food pyramid, leading to generational highs of sugar intake and obesity,
Nonsense, and also bullshit. The NIH tried and tried to prove that fat was bad for you. The closest they got was showing that taking drugs to reduce your cholesterol count reduced your risk of heart disease. Then they claimed that fat and cholesterol were bad for you, and then the food pyramid was based on that. And that was known bullshit. Guess what came next? The meteoric rise of the processed foods industry.
because scientists thought that fat might be responsible for heart disease?
No. A deliberate attempt was made to prove that, and then having failed to do so, a deliberate attempt was made to sell the idea anyway. Gary Taubes covered this material some years ago, and we have already had debates about it. Your side lost.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The real problem is that people like to eat, and they prefer to eat foods that are high in calories.
You can do this by eating a lot of fat, and it's harmless without eating carbs with it. And fat is tasty, it's even sweet in its own way.
The only group of people I'm aware of that aren't *vigorous* exercisers and aren't overweight are strict vegetarians...
Most of the strict vegetarians I know are fat. (Not vegans, mind you, vegetarians.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
[Citation needed]
Let me demonstrate the authors' "precautionary principle", which says that if an action has even a slight or unknowable risk of causing absolutely devastating harm, you shouldn't do it.
If I leave the house tomorrow morning, there is a chance I might get run over by a truck and killed -- as far as I'm concerned, that's the ultimate in devastating harm. In contrast, the benefits of me leaving the house on a given day (earning some money, keeping my job, seeing the sun) are modest. Therefore I should just stay in bed.
It's ridiculous, but that is *exactly* the argument they're using against GMOs.
I think you're making a bad leap there. Much of the reason that eating fruit is better for you (at least compared to Doritos), is because comparatively, it is much bigger than the junk food for the same amount of calories.. so it fills you up. Plus, at least some fruit does have some nutrients you need.
I say this as someone who definitely prefers the Doritos, but do know that "filling myself up on fruit" sometimes works.
Do you realize that this was the desired outcome? Other varieties of wheat still exist. We don't use them for most things on purpose.
Modern wheat has much lower protein content than it would be possible with a healthy genome. Also, modern wheat plants are little Frankenstein monsters with highly polyploid genomes riddled with mobile elements. Turns out that higher protein content can be achieved by fixing some of the problems caused by inbreeding during selection: http://www.researchgate.net/pu...
But no, that's eviiiiiil GMO and natural breeding can't be wrong.
But we cultivated the less-healthy kind on purpose. And if you made it healthier, it wouldn't taste as sweet.
Not modern "we". Maize was cultured by Native Americans and its loss of fat was a genetic accident. Corn with higher fat content would have been even more nutritional (fat is more energy-rich), healthier (less sugars!) and probably just as tasty. See: http://www.plantphysiol.org/co...
Then there are soybeans. Do you know that soy can't be eaten without processing because it's enriched in anti-nutritional compounds? We can now eliminate them through GM by knocking out relevant genes. Is it also TEH EVILZ?
Then there are soybeans. Do you know that soy can't be eaten without processing because it's enriched in anti-nutritional compounds? We can now eliminate them through GM by knocking out relevant genes. Is it also TEH EVILZ?
I can't eat it with or without processing. I can't digest it. Gives me horrible indigestion and gas every time. If it's hidden in a recipe, I can tell after the fact. Soy is just TEH EVILZ anyway, except maybe the sauce.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You can't eat it exactly because of these compounds. You probably can eat carefully prepared fermented soy (tofu).
From: http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-...
----
"The EPA had done a variety of tests on this organism, all of which indicated that it would not be toxic to humans or animals. They were only a few weeks away from releasing these bacteria into the wild, when Michael Holmes, a graduate student at the University of Oregon, came looking for an interesting thing to study for his doctoral thesis."
Under the direction of his academic advisor, Elaine Ingham, Holmes elected to do his thesis on the effects of this genetically engineered KP on plants, something which had not occurred to the EPA, as it was not required for the release of new genetically modified organisms, Lawton notes in his Acres USA expose.
Holmes study revealed, after testing samples of plants growing in sterile soil, soil with regular KP and soil with genetically engineered KP, that no plants in the latter soil were growing as the alcohol produced by the bacteria had killed them all.
At the time, Lawton notes, the EPA was envisioning that farmers would use these bacteria in a kind of fermenting process to convert plant material into a mixture of 17% alcohol and 83% mineral sludge, which could be poured off into the soil and reused.
"If that had occurred, the genetically engineered KP could have colonized the entire planet over the course of several years, turning all of the soil where it grew into barren dirt."
Ingham said that problem was and still is that the EPA only looks at the immediate impact of new genetically modified organisms on animals, and does not take into account the larger impact on the ecosystem as a whole. That approach can work to a limited extent when working with chemicals, which can break down and dissipate over time. But living organisms have the ability to procreate and overwhelm the natural ecosystem.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
You can't eat it exactly because of these compounds. You probably can eat carefully prepared fermented soy (tofu).
No, no I cannot. That's what I just got done telling you, which you would know if you could read. Try re-reading the sentence "I can't eat it with or without processing." until you are enlightened.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You mean a world where Orange and Banana trees are dying in droves because they are giant monocultures that are getting wiped out by a single disease?
I read the internet for the articles.
Sure there's a difference. I don't have genes to produce lignin.
As for the tifton85, you apparently don't know that it is still being used as forage and that it only rarely produces cyanide under stressed conditions, like sorghum and other grasses.
Tifton-85 is also sterile, so unlike some of the GM crops, it isn't likely to spread far (other than via rhizomes).
However, I never said breeding CAN'T go wrong, just that it tends not to go as wrong as quickly. The issues you noted are exactly that warning that you don't get with GM.
I'll give you a citation, but it's not going to change your mind. You've made your decision and will not budge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.agentorangerecord.c...
http://vietnamawbb.weebly.com/...
We're talking a minimum direct death toll of over a million to estimates that reach as high as somewhere between 3 and 4.5 million deaths. Plus, an additional 400,000 children were born with birth defects attributed directly to exposure to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD). "TCDD has been described as "perhaps the most toxic molecule ever synthesized by man".(Galston 1979,[13] cited in [14])"
And, "The National Toxicology Program has classified TCDD as "known to be a human carcinogen", frequently associated with soft-tissue sarcoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Hodgkin's lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).[17][18]"
So, the people who concocted "the most toxic molecule ever synthesized by man" are exactly the people I want controlling the food supply. What could possibly go wrong?
You are welcome on my lawn.
The same company that made thalidomide also made penicillin. You're saying that Monsanto can never have any good product again?
Also, I had wrongly thought your "killed more people" actually related to *food related* products. It doesn't, so it's even more tangential to the discussion of GMOs.
Yes, and Stalin had a great sense of humor, I hear.
You are welcome on my lawn.
No. For existing varieties it's about lowering costs to the farmer.
That's from being hybridized, not from being genetically modified.
Citation needed.
From: http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-...
---- Did you read that entire article? I'm trying to figure out if you are agreeing or disagreeing with me. Ingham has been discredited, Lawton is acknowledged to have been a victim of a hoax, and the link serves only to disprove this assertion that GMO's are-a gonna kill us all.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Oh, for chrissake:
http://omicsonline.org/open-ac...
http://www.theatlantic.com/hea... (this one is notable because the author received death threats immediately after publication)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05...
Did I call it or what? My first post in this comments section predicted that I would be compared to anti-vaxxers. If I were to continue, I guarantee I would soon be compared to racists, Nazis and worse.
Look, I don't care if there are GMO plants. I just want it to be spelled out, right in the "nutritional data" that is already on the label, that this food is the product of a patented organism.
I find it interesting that all these "pro-Science" people are so vehemently opposed to this one bit of truthful information being given to consumers. For some reason, the believe there is a fact that consumers don't have the right to know. Further, there have been industry lawsuits attempting to stop companies who do NOT use GMOs from labeling their products as NOT containing GMOs. Go figure. I guess "Science" is fungible when it comes to people's right to know what they're eating. Since when has "Science" been in favor of people not knowing something.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't worry about them one bit. If they want to make those choices, I have no problem. I see them all the time, buying package after packaged of processed foods (where most GMOs end up).
Sometimes, I even help them because they can't reach the top shelves, since they're so fat they have to ride a scooter to shop for groceries. Yes, GMOs are clearly good for you, judging by the people I see who consume them almost exclusively.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I was hoping you'd go for another paragraph and start talking about SJWs and ethics in journalism.
You are welcome on my lawn.
By that logic, GMOs cause people to be more accepting of gay marriage. We should do research to find the causes of these things, of course, but there's no reason to pick on whatever random tech/group/idea has an image problem at the moment.
First, we have the US and Europe.
Second, it isn't any different than any other industry - what was the sulfur content of the oil used to make your keyboard?
First, Monsanto et al do 'proudly' label their products, advertise them, even explain in great detail what all their varieties do - but you aren't buying large quantities of seed, so you don't see it.
Second, as long as people are freaking out about GMOs keeping quiet makes more sense than making yourself a target for anti-GMO activists. You really think it makes financial sense to be the only company with a 'Frankenfood' sticker on their products?
But if I could put a question to you - why this tech? Out of the thousand of fairly new techs that go into billions of products, why this one and not, say, cell phone radiation, hormone analogues in plastic, ...?
Yeah, I used the term because you did, it seemed apt. I will more politely request that next time you might lead with data and not diatribe.
Labeling is not an issue I take a position on, actually, except to say that the subject is not itself scientific. We're not talking about data being made available to researchers. Whether the public has a right to know is an important issue, but more of a marketing and commercial interest than a scientific one.
If those studies are all we have to worry about, I will not worry too much. Thank you for providing the links. One question though: on the off chance that GMOs are the significant danger that Taleb thinks is possible, what will labeling help?
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
So you're admitting that you have no actual response. Fine by me.
So, you truly believe that the pests won't quickly evolve resistance to whatever mechanism is spread by those modified genes? Thanks, that's all I need to know. NEXT please.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Look, we're just using desktop machines to do gene splicing, not the plants themselves. It's way more efficient that way. A lot of this "bioreactor" gene splicing consisted of waiting for the desired mutation to appear. Let's repeat: the humans often waited for the right mutation to appear, and then tried hard to preserve and spread those mutations in face of negative selection pressures. This is really no different than getting some jellyfish gene into a food crop, just that the road to the desired effect is much shorter.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I'm not anyone's astroturfer, I merely recognize the fact that doing the desired genomic modifications directly, in a focused manner, is much more efficient than the inbreeding needed for standard breeding. Standard breeding is simply what the old technology allowed: we had no other means of tweaking the genome. Now we do. Sure we can create organisms that can be dangerous to some ecosystems, but in reality there's so much competition between the organisms that it isn't like we will immediately wipe out all edible plants worldwide. There can be bad things happenening here and there, that's a given, but that is a given no matter what genetic modification methods you use. That's also a given if you do nothing specific at all. Of course with GMO techniques, we're way more efficient at potentitally screwing up, so screwups are to be expected more often, even screwups that can have temporarily bad economic effects (say raising price of crop x by a small integer factor). In most cases, though, we know enough to weather such fuckups in the developed world. I certainly agree that fallout from GMO "oopses" can royally fuck up agriculture in less developed countries, or in areas with less diversity in food crops.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Yes, the modern gene-splicing is much safer. Do you know that wheat lost most of its protein content due to selective breeding? Maize lost most of its fat content due to a genetic error (so its wild predecessors are much healthier).
If the same happened to a GM food then it'd be banned quicker than you can say "paracetomoxyfrusebendroneomycin".
"Excuse me sir, we've just discovered that ingestion of this particular GMO-introduced gene over a twenty year period causes a serious medical condition."
"Well, Jenkins, hop to it, ban foods containing that gene faster than you can say 'paracetomoxyfrusebendroneomycin'!"
"Right-o, sir. It's a popular and useful GMO gene, so we'll be banning the now-dominant varieties of wheat, corn, barley, maize, oats, rice, soy, lentils, tomato, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, alfalfa, spinach, kale, potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, parsnip, turnip, most varieties of squash, citrus, apples, and pears, most stonefruit, and about half the varieties of berries. I'll send out the notice right-away."
"Actually, I feel like some lunch first. Care to join me? Where would you like to head."
"Hmm, thinking about that list. There's a good field opposite. You do like grass, don't you sir?"
The first reference doesn't talk about evils of GMO, but about the evils of a particular herbicide. The second one talks about miRNA and how genetic material transfers directly from the food we eat into our bodies. This is not by itself pro- or anti-GMO, it's merely a strong point that supports proper testing of GMO foods - something that, admittedly, Monsanto has long argued unnecessary. Again, this doesn't make any particular GMO dangerous, it merely prompts at what should we look at when testing such organisms for consumption by humans and livestock. The third reference shows some fallout from RoundUp-resistance genes jumping from crops to weeds. Again, this doesn't show any danger ingerent in GMOs themselves, but in a particular modification. Just as software development techniques can be used for good and bad, the genetic modifications can be used for good and bad. We need to learn how to use them for good. DUH :)
Has Monstanto been demonstrably lying through its teeth to the public, repeatedly? Sure. There's no news here.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
The weirdest thing is when you grow up in a European country that has a more reality-based food pyramid instead of a politics-based one. Then you go to the U.S., look at a cereal carton, and go WTF?!
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
it's still just DNA. who cares where it came from, what's important it what it does!...
What's important is "what it does" in combination with other DNA and mutates in ways that almost certainly would not have occurred without invasive genetic modification. Not to mention "what it does" in combination with other organisms and with its environment.
The point here is that the interactions of the systems we're dicking with are so complex that we have no possible way of even predicting the outcomes, never mind controlling them. If you're not into reading what Taleb has to say, you might want to at least have a(nother?) look at the concept of Requisite Variety.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
So turn off this gene. Duh. Problem solved.
Oh, by the way, it turns out that the predominant strain of wheat and maize contains a genetic poison from a nasty bacteria (horizontal gene transfer for TEH WIN!). Entirely natural.
Now let's ban all maize and wheat production on an off chance that some poor bacteria can infect their genomes some time in the future.
This is not even remotely the same thing as modern gene-splicing. People have NOT, for thousands of years, implated jellyfish genes into food crops, and set them loose in the wild. Talk about comparing apples to oranges! You're comparing kittens to fireflies.
At first I downmodded you because this is very much an overrated and purely sensational statement, but I have a better idea; I'll just correct it.
You made two completely false points, but first I'm going to address the second one: None of these man caused gene splices have ever been "set loose into the wild." In fact not a one of them has ever been outside of a lab environment. This is all done just to understand how genes work in general, and isn't used for producing GMO food.
Now your first point has maybe about 25% truth to it, the rest of it is...well...bullshit. This been going on for a lot longer than thousands of years, perhaps billions actually. In fact you yourself are the result exactly the kind of splicing that you describe, and so am I, and everybody else. In fact the entire portion of our genome that gives women a placenta was embedded into our genome from some other animal. This happens in nature all the time, viruses are the main cause. The human genome contains some 100,000 gene sequences from viruses, making up some 8% of our total DNA.
http://phenomena.nationalgeogr...
Yet somehow in spite of that fact, the world hasn't ended.
As for GMO food...well...actual truth of the matter is that the genes "implanted" into plant DNA to make GMO food are synthetic. They usually consist of around 15 different nucleotides. They were developed under the study of proteomics, which is an entire field that is dedicated to understanding how proteins work, which includes knowing how to build them. The typical change is to prevent the plant cells from being able to absorb glyphosate, effectively making them immune to it.
Consider this: Given that there are around 15 (give or take) known and very specific nucleotides configured in GMO foods, when during natural reproduction, some hundreds of thousands of nucleotides are changed in unknown ways, why is it that you consider the GMO food to be more dangerous?
I mean that's an insanely stupid conclusion to draw. The only thing I can conclude is that the very wealthy, very high profit margin organic lobby is paying you an insane amount of money to go around telling people bullshit stories about frankenfood.
(Isn't drawing silly conclusions fun?)
GMO's are only a "done deal" in countries where Monsanto has managed to buy off the government. China, Europe, and many nations have taken emphatic "no" approach, and outright banned GMOs in many cases.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
All swans are black here in Oz, they also like to surf.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Yet we've been eating both crop DNA and jelly fish DNA for thousands of years with no ill effects. Please be specific about what risks are introduced by mixing the two. And please provide evidence that we've actually been doing this for food crops.
> There only real risk is that maybe by some huge stroke of bad luck, some other plant (a weed, say) picks up glyphosate resistance from these genes
Well, I'm glad we have you to think through every single possible chemical, biological interaction between a genetically modified plant and the rest of the environment, which we humans understand and can model perfectly. Complex coupled system dynamics ... easy for jeffmeden! Of course we can predict all the consequences of our actions, especially when applied on an industrial / global scale in a short few years. Why worry that there may be something that we haven't thought of which will manifest itself in a generation or two. After all, it's only the world's food supply and our life support system (the environment) that we're talking about here. If by some astronomically unlikely chance we've made a mistake we can just hit the reset button and try again. There is a reset button on the Earth, right?
Apparently, it is. At least to the severely damaged palates that have been eating processed crap rather than real food.
Yes. Genetic engineering, which is what the article is about.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The point here is that the interactions of the systems we're dicking with are so complex that we have no possible way of even predicting the outcomes, never mind controlling them
If that were true. We wouldn't be able to put these genes in there in the first place. Just because it is too complex for you, or you are ignorant of what we can and do model. Doesn't mean other can't.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
We found out that aspestos causes a variation of diseases that are quite mean. We removed asbestos from the buildings, decommissioned the ships built with and had a generation of sailors and construction workers where bad lung diseases and some other sicknesses caused quite a few to live and die in agony.
If we find out that cellphones cause some form of super-agressive brain cancer that pops up quickly after 15-20 years of exposure to GSM microwaves, then tomorrow all cell-towser will be on the ground and our generation will the the one with brain cancer. No big deal. Some first world kids die off, humanity can live with that easyly.
Same with Nucler Power. Even such disasters as chernobyl or fukushima are compareatively contained. ... Ok, I'm sounding cynical here, fukushima isn't contained, it's a hideous mess, but one can still see this possibly retreating in the next few thousand years .... errrm, well ... anyway ...
All, or most of it, quite simple, lesson learned and humanity moves on. Aspestos is regulated, Germany drops nuclear, 3 more fukushimas and the rest will follow, all more or less fine and dandy.
However - big however - add in biotech and things look vastly different.
Only one haywire designed bacterium has to get into the wild and we're all dead 5 months later. All humans on the entire planet. Think "Planet of the Apes Prevolution" style, only without remaining protagonists.
Nuclear is kinda so-so (except for some idiot at the nuke warfare trigger of course), but biotech - no way. One wrong move and fukushima looks like a walk in the park. Imagine Ebola, but with the brakes removed.
Bottom line:
Basically he's right. You don't fuck with biotech. And we need serious regulations in place for that. I second.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Ah, good question. Here's how:
In every study done, upwards of 90% of the population of countries in which GMOs are sold support labeling, and indicate that they would avoid products with GMOs. Why isn't it possible that consumer rejection at that level won't stop this effort by transnational corporations to take over the world's food supply through the use of intellectual property laws?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Oh, I know that. But the tropes in this argument for online discussions are so well-ingrained that it's the same every time.
If you want labeling in GMO foods, you are called,
1) Just like the anti-vaxxers
2) An anti-science conspiracy theorist
3) A racist
4) A Nazi
My main concern is in the economic and political ecosystems. And I believe GMOs are dangerous for both. I agree with all the rest of your points.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You can argue from an empirical, scientific standpoint all you want; but common consideration doesn't work that way. People do, in fact, assume that anything and everything that's good for you is beneficial, which is why we had to tell people to stop drinking 2 gallons of fruit juice every day if they didn't want diabeetus.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
it's still just DNA. who cares where it came from, what's important it what it does!
This is a very important point about the genetic modifications that seems to be ignored most of the time. The companies that make the GE food crops are not food companies, they are chemical companies. They don't make food that grows better or has more nutrients or uses less water. They make crops that allow the use of more pesticides, insecticides, and weed killers. So the food crops that are genetically modified are more poisonous from all the stuff sprayed all over them. That's not even counting the crops that make their own poisons. If a crop was bred through natural means to be poisonous, it would be just as bad. But somehow we find having poison in our food supply to be a good thing!
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
I think that it all boils down to necessary and necessarily deadly experimental aspect of the sciences and engineering. Just as we had to learn fracture mechanics by killing a bunch of people in BOAC Comets, we'll have to learn crop genetic engineering by fucking things up here and there. It's the necessary price of progress, I think.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
But no GMO companies are interested in making something more nutritious. They want farmers to buy more chemicals. They are chemical companies after all. Chemical is even in Dow Chemicals name and I'm pretty sure Monsanto cares more about selling the weed killers than they would ever care about selling crops that might be more nutritious.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
requires massive amounts of pesticides to live
Since when is this true of any organism?
because your dog Sniffles is actually the product of genesplicing of a dog and fish genes
At the breeding level, no, your dog is the product of many generations of selective inbreeding, to the point that most purebred dogs have serious genetic defects and health problems. But your dog does undoubtedly have quite a bit of DNA from other species. Retroviruses are helpful like that.
The same company that made thalidomide also made penicillin. You're saying that Monsanto can never have any good product again?
Also, I had wrongly thought your "killed more people" actually related to *food related* products. It doesn't, so it's even more tangential to the discussion of GMOs.
The only reason they sell the *food related* products is to get the farmers to buy more of the poisonous killing products. They sell weed killer and insecticides. The seeds are only there to get you to buy more chemicals.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
It is not possible to demonstrate the non-existence of possible effects. The Precautionary Principle requires proving the absence of danger. Therefore, it's a load of crap.
I'm amazed how much objection genetically modified foods are receiving from the public. It smacks of a fear factor that exists in any new science where people don't fully understand it and there for reject it. What most people don't know, and probably should is that practically every food you buy in a store for consumption is genetically modified food. There are no wild seedless watermelon. There are no wild cows. There are no long stem roses in the wild. List all the fruits and vegetables and ask yourself is there a wild counterpart to this? If there is, it's not as large, it's not as sweet, it's not as juicy, it has way more seeds in it. We have systematically genetically modified all the meats and all the foods we eat since we cultivated them. It's called artificial selection. Now that we can do it in a lab, all of a sudden you wanna complain? You like red delicious apples? We manufactured those, it's a genetic modification. The silkworm as we cultivate it has no wild counterpart because it would die in the wild. So no silk even anymore. We are creating and modifying the biology of the world to serve our needs, and I don't have a problem with that because we've been doing it for tens of thousands of years. So chill out,
Oh, before I offend you too much, that wasn't my own statement, but Neil deGrasse Tyson. A fairly widely well thought of spokesman for science within the scientific community.
I'm amazed how much objection genetically modified foods are receiving from the public. It smacks of a fear factor that exists in any new science where people don't fully understand it and there for reject it. What most people don't know, and probably should is that practically every food you buy in a store for consumption is genetically modified food. There are no wild seedless watermelon. There are no wild cows. There are no long stem roses in the wild. List all the fruits and vegetables and ask yourself is there a wild counterpart to this? If there is, it's not as large, it's not as sweet, it's not as juicy, it has way more seeds in it. We have systematically genetically modified all the meats and all the foods we eat since we cultivated them. It's called artificial selection. Now that we can do it in a lab, all of a sudden you wanna complain? You like red delicious apples? We manufactured those, it's a genetic modification. The silkworm as we cultivate it has no wild counterpart because it would die in the wild. So no silk even anymore. We are creating and modifying the biology of the world to serve our needs, and I don't have a problem with that because we've been doing it for tens of thousands of years. So chill out,
Oh, before I offend you too much, that wasn't my own statement, but Neil deGrasse Tyson. A fairly widely well thought of spokesman for science within the scientific community.
Oh no, glyphosates(round-up) and some GMO crops in some study show a possible statistical correlation with negative health factors! We should quickly abandon all of modern agriculture to make sure we don't destroy the health of western civilization! Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.
GMO foods are have been ubiquitous in the western diet for multiple generations already. How to health factors and benchmarks for those generations compare to the ones prior to them? They are radically better. GMO fruits and vegetables that have longer shelf lives alone have vastly improved the health of people across the region. That longer shelf life doesn't just mean a corporate mega supermarket chain can buy more yachts because they reduced losses to waste and increased sales. Those increased sales also mean that lowered prices and greater geographic availability of fresh fruit and vegetables improved the diets of consumers. Even as a kid in central Canada fresh fruits and berries were very limited, but today it's taken as a matter of course you can go out and buy fresh anything in the dead of winter if you're willing to brave the 10foot snow banks between you and the store.
Sorry, all the fears and studies about potential small scale impacts of GMO crops is dwarfed by the current good of the dietary improvements that GMO has brought.
So writing a mystery novel qualifies one as an expert on biology and genetics?
What's really driving obesity is the engineers in the processed food factories trying to optimize the perfect mix of ingredients that people find irresistible. Because irresistible = profit. And unlucky for the rest of population, irresistible usually involves a high calorie mix of fat and sugar.
And just as importantly, that the food never cause us to be satiated and stop eating. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02... http://www.nytimes.com/interac... When they call us consumers, they mean literally, physically.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Wrong. The first commercially-available GM plant (tomatoes) was marketed as a healthier and tastier alternative to non-GM plants. And it actually was much tastier, because it allowed tomatoes to ripe while still on the vine, not on the way to the market.
Don't be afraid folks, the order of events is supposed to be war, THEN, famine and pestilence after that.
Wait a minute, we've been at war for 13 years ...
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Most people who have been around would say tomatoes tasted much better before. Now they have very little flavor, but they have that nice red color that everyone wants no badly.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
I'm ashamed of you guys. Over 300 posts for an article mentioning "Black Swan" and not one of you has cracked wise about Natalie Portman, hot grits, and petrification? Geez, it's even almost on topic! This just isn't the Slashdot I used to know and love.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
You make a mistake if you believe "modern agriculture" only means what goes on in a laboratory.
What year do you place the beginning of widespread use of GMOs? I think if you look at those "health factors and benchmarks" for the years after that among the populations eating GMOs you will find that there is no evidence of improvement and some evidence for the opposite.
non-industry citation needed for dietary improvements from GMO crops.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yes, that's because better-tasting tomatoes are too difficult to handle. They are too easily damaged so it's not cost-effective to sell them in supermarkets. The GM tomatoes in question actually turned off the biochemical pathway that made ripe tomatoes so easy to break (please not, they haven't even inserted new genes or anything!).
Why are you eating long-stem roses?
Again, if your main source for information about nutrition is a TV astrophysicist, there's a problem.
And the problem with Tyson is that his status as a popular TV star on the Fox Network has led him to believe that he is an expert in all fields, and has led TV viewers to believe that he speaks for all of science.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And think of the number of those genetic "experiments" that failed because the result just wasn't successful.
Do you really trust a transnational corporation whose only goal is profits to take the place of the trial and error of natural selection? Good luck with that.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"Harmless to humans"? Wow, where did you get that?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Speaking personally, I have little problem with this type of GM food. I would still think we should be allowed to know what we are eating, but this does not bother me. It is the GM creations where more poisons can be used or the plant creates it's own poison that bother me. And mostly it comes down to not trusting the company to tell me it is safe to eat. The tobacco companies tried that for many years but we eventually learned the truth. I see some studies that show animals are not doing so great on this new corn, so I have some concerns. I still eat Doritos, so I know I am getting it, but it still worries me. And the weeds are just getting resistant anyway, so it will just lead to a post-herbicide end game much like the medical community is worried about our upcoming post-antibiotic time that seems to be coming.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
I lost track, were you talking about GMO foods or anthropogenic global climate change? Ironic isn't it? To hear the anti-GMO crowd cry about how they aren't allowed to dissent, while I suspect there is a strong correlation between those folks and those who believe in anthropogenic global climate changes crying out "settled science!"
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Fat is not harmless. It's just differently harmful than are carbohydrates or protein.
I'm told that vegetarians that allow themselves dairy products may be fat. Perhaps I haven't met many of them.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I see some studies that show animals are not doing so great on this new corn, so I have some concerns.
That's actually not true. All the independent studies point out that GM foods are safe. All the studies showing harm from GM foods are poorly controlled and/or outright fakes.
We can always be wrong. This means that any particular action can be assumed to have a non-zero chance of ending the world, given some completely unforeseen combination of circumstances. This also means that failure to perform any particular action can be assumed to have a non-zero chance of ending the world. The only reasonable thing to do is to protect against known threats and try to build a margin to handle potential effects of unknown threats, and we're going to screw that up now and then.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Actually, less went wrong with asbestos than is generally perceived. The asbestos normally used in homes is much safer than some other forms, although it shouldn't be handled casually or by the typical handyman. There were a lot of ill effects for miners, and some of the industrial use was quite dangerous.
There's also the question of what we would have used instead of asbestos, and what consequences that would have had. Would something more dangerous have been used? Would there have been inferior construction? More expensive construction? All of these have their own hazards.
The lawsuits were severe partly because there had been suspicions of problems from asbestos for quite some time, and the asbestos companies were suspected (probably correctly) of being dishonest about the risks.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That is exactly what the cigarette / GMO companies would say. You just outted yourself as a shill. And I'm not talking about a study, I'm talking about the farmers raising the animals.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Can the "not doing well" be quantified? What does it fucking even mean?
And yes, I've actually worked in molecular biology (not on GM foods) and I know a little bit about it.
Not doing well would be things like higher rates of miscarriage and more premature death of the animals. Monsanto says the Gly-(however the herbacide is spelled) will not make it through the digestion, but it is found in the animals and humans blood. We depend on a myriad of little critters living in our gut. How can eating a bunch of poison not affect them and us.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Glyphosate has been used for ages, even before the glyphosate-reistant GM plants. Before the glyphosate even much worse pesticides were used. So I think your 'farmers' are talking shit or pining for the good old days when the grass was greener.
Sure, and they don't use way more than has ever been used before. That is the whole point of the genetically modified corn afterall. And with the weeds becoming resistant they keepeusing more.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Actually, no. Farmers used more glyphosate prior to GM food. That's because GM corn (or rape) can outcompete weeds if give some headstart (a small amount of glyphosate to suppress the early growth of weeds). Resistant weeds are also a non-issue, there always were resistant strains.
Please, stop spreading FUD with unsubstantiated allegations from some 'farmers'.
You are trying to say I am spreading FUD, but it is quite apparant you are straight up lying. It is a well known fact that the amount of glyphosate being used has gone up very dramatically. It is also a quite well known fact that weeds are becomming resistant. Even Monsanto knows this, but they have the next thing in the line up, so they aren't too worried. And you are somehow implying that the creation of the GM corn was completely unnessary as the corn can beat out the weeds anyway. You are obviouly a paid shill. It is apparant that you are very bad at your job though and should be fired from it. I guess I would rather have bad shills out there spreading obvious lies than to have someone more effective at it, so keep it up. This will be my last reply, I am finding this to be a waste of time.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Sure, the total _amount_ of glyphosate used has gone up because people use more GM corn. However, the amount of pesticides used per square mile has gone _down_. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
So it's apparent that you are a paid shill of so called 'organic' food and your main task is to spew unverifiable FUD, about some 'farmers' suddenly growing horns and hooves after using glyphosate or some other similar nonsense. Of course, with zero links to reputable studies.
Well, there's been gene-splicing in the lab for a few decades. Climate has been around a lot longer.
Hard to get "settled science" in such a short period, don't you think? How do you test for long-term effect if something has only existed for 20 years? Give it a little thought.
And the fact that GMOs are patented has made it a lot harder for studies to be done. Researchers have been sued for studying GMOs. For the industry, this is a feature, not a bug. It's like people who say "fracking is safe...SETTLED SCIENCE", when we aren't even allowed to know what's in hydrofracking fluid because it's protected as a "trade secret".
I'll tell you what IS settled science: Transnational corporations would throw a baby off a bridge for a $1 jump in stock price. These are not people you want controlling the food supply. I'm sure you agree.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Oh, I forgot. You're about to ask for a citation, so...
http://articles.latimes.com/20...
You are welcome on my lawn.
If that were true. We wouldn't be able to put these genes in there in the first place. Just because it is too complex for you, or you are ignorant of what we can and do model. Doesn't mean other can't.
You are looking at FAR too narrow a scope. Can geneticists predict the immediate and close-in effects of what they do? Yes, most of the time they can. Can they accurately predict what will happen many generations down the line, in combination with cross-breeding, spontaneous mutations, and the environment? No, they cannot. And then there is always the "we don't know what we don't know" factor - and that's why people like Taleb urge caution. Hell, Monsanto put the whole Roundup-Ready juggernaut in motion while seeming to not even consider that weeds might develop resistance to glyphosate. Guess what? We now have glyphosate-resistant weeds. Monsanto dropped the ball on that relatively simple matter - do you really think their predictive capabilities are any better when they're doing something really hard like genetic modification?
You seem to have a pretty simplistic view of the vastly complex world we live in.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
But it's strange and I can't pronounce it so it must be bad.
But it's done by scientists who are real smart and they say it's OK so it must be good and safe.
See what happens when you argue from authority?
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
why have experts if their opinion has no special weight?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
what it "does" will likely be to, if anything, cause the plant to fail and die and probably not even germinate.
this fearmongering rooted in ignorance is silly.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Except not even that will happen.
A gene is a protein. As a protein it will be broken down and digested or passed out the other end, and thus poses zero threat.
No genes enter your body when you eat something, GMO or not.
The most an introduced gene could do is cause the plant to concentrate or synthesize harmful chemicals/toxins, such as alkaloids (already common in the plant world).
Take corn: Corn doesn't naturally produce those things. Unless you use something like hemlock as the source of your drought tolerance gene and include the sequences controlling toxin production/storage, introducing drought tolerance from a drought tolerant plant is unlikely to magically confer on the corn any harmful attributes.
The most harm I worry about coming frm GMO is the so called Roundup Ready GMOs and their brethren. Not because the plants themselves are harmful, but because they encourage even more liberal usage of pesticides and herbicides, which is neither good for hte local envirnment, or longterm consumer health.
But GMOs created for drought tolerance, or reduced resource use, or improved nutrional value are largely not a concern and will be vital in the coming years.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
you're are certifiably insane and doing nothing but fearmongering based on your own ignorance and distrust.
gene splicing is more likely to create a dud (a dead lump of cells that dont function) or even have no effect, than to achieve the desired changes.
i suggest you learn a bit about genetics before commenting. it takes considerably more effort than just cutting and paste a sequence of proteins from one creature to another to get a result.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
i know quite a few conservatives who are all ove the antigmo antivax bandwagons as well (and those two beliefs seem to go together a lot we well in my experience).
as far ive seen it doesnt really have a right/left divide but is fairly equally represented on both sides.
which really says more about our education system, particularly of science, than anything.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
you are the biggest troll and spreading the most fear and ignorance of anyone in this entire comments section.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Like all things, moderation is key.
But we put sugar is bloody everything.
Jon Oliver did a good bit on it just last Sunday.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Modern wheat has much lower protein content than it would be possible with a healthy genome. Also, modern wheat plants are little Frankenstein monsters with highly polyploid genomes riddled with mobile elements. Turns out that higher protein content can be achieved by fixing some of the problems caused by inbreeding during selection: http://www.researchgate.net/pu... [researchgate.net] "
i'm not sure what your point is, but from a cooking standpoint there are reasons for using flour with lower protein amounts, e.g. cakes and sweat breads, a higher protein level makes for a denser more elastic bread/dough... it sounds like you think when it comes to flour the higher the protein the better...?
let's just agree to ignore both of you and find the facts out for ourselves... the only real way to ever deal with this type of discussion that brings out the shills on both sides.
"Labeling is not an issue I take a position on, actually, except to say that the subject is not itself scientific. "
so you do take a position, which is clear since every statement in this post exerts a position against labeling. (if not outright against it, then maligning it in someway).
"The same company that made thalidomide also made penicillin. "
You mean produced, sold and profited from penicillin?
they didn't discover or figure out how to mass produce penicillin mind you, just knew it would be profitable to do so and thus did so to turn a profit.
what's your point exactly?
on to
"Also, I had wrongly thought your "killed more people" actually related to *food related* products. It doesn't, so it's even more tangential to the discussion of GMOs."
if a company produces a product that knowingly kills people because it is profitable, then maybe they shouldn't be allowed to develop food products or run healthcare. so no not very tangential and more the fucking point.
Yes, higher protein content would have been better. The wheat genome was damaged far back in the history, long before sweat breads were invented. Had it been a recent development ("Look! New GM flour for easier baking!") you'd be decrying it as Satan's intervention designed to starve poor people.
That's right. When genes are combined in nature and it's something failed, the worst that can happen is a dead lump of cells. For industry, it just means they have to increase the marketing budget.
Do you happen to know the difference between Roundup Ready Corn #1 (which patent is about to expire, except it really isn't) and Roundup Ready Corn #2? Monsanto just moved the part of the gene for the specific trait where not even mold wants to grow on it to a different part of the genome. So, by moving that bit of code from over here to over there They get another 26 years of patent protection.
This kind of patent protection, by the way, is the biggest form of corporate welfare there is. Can you imagine, in 2014, with the speed of innovation, to think the government guarantees monopolies to corporations for twenty six years? I don't like corporate welfare and I don't like patented organisms and I don't like patented basic foodstuffs. It put too much power in the hands of corporations that would gladly poison entire ecosystems if it means a .$0.50 bump in stock price.
You talk about my "ignorance", but I'm arguing with people who believe "science" has proven GMOs absolutely healthy for people to eat. Now I ask you, is that the kind of thing you would ever read in a scientific paper of any kind? "So our findings clearly prove that GMOs are absolutely healthy to eat". If you think so, then you are the ignorant one.
You are welcome on my lawn.
No, I mean what I said. Whether or not doorknobs should be painted purple is also not a scientific issue, and I take no position on it. I have an opinion about the rhetoric being used in this debate, or should I say the style of demagoguery.
On the one hand, I have no problems describing Monsanto as an evil, duplicitous corporation. If you read the link I provided, their only issue with PCB toxicity was getting all the money they could out of it before the public caught on. On the other hand, there has been and continues to be considerable scientific scrutiny of the dangers of GMO products, which was not the case with PCBs for at least several decades.
With regards to labeling, if it's not an immediate health hazard, I don't really care: it's not going to affect my purchasing habits whether or not it's there. I would support the idea of data being made available to the public on the Internet, and wouldn't you know, there are already several sites where said information can be obtained. Similarly, no one has been able to demonstrate any harm (to humans) from rBST milk; it's not something I am going to loose sleep over. It's not a health issue, it's not a scientific issue, it's just a marketing ploy. I'm not very amenable to marketing, still less so to frenzied, largely factless ranting about hypothetical dangers.
If you want to make this a personal crusade, then I am happy for you. I have enough real problems in my life that I don't have to go looking for more. If you have room in your life to be worried about the genetics of the food on your plate, that puts you ahead of about 90% of humanity. Some day I will have to return to the first world so that I can have those kind of problems too.
As an aside, I don't think "exerts" was the word you were looking for. You maybe meant to use "exhibits"? I could perhaps "push" or "peddle" an opinion, "exhibits" is a little passive.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Except not even that will happen.
A gene is a protein. As a protein it will be broken down and digested or passed out the other end, and thus poses zero threat.
No genes enter your body when you eat something, GMO or not.
A gene encodes a protein, but there's plenty of occasions where ingestion of particular proteins has very serious consequences (and even in cases we already know about with longer periods before diagnosis is possible than GMOs are tested over before release). For example., http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
Secondary effects from things those proteins in turn produce are also problematic. The issue is that whereas with selective breeding we have the capacity to wreck one crop (and then, as noted in the original article with various factors making that less likely over time than GMO even in a single species), with GMO we are in a position to pollute all our food crops at once with something we later discover was harmful after all.
Do you really think that an entire corporation, nay, an entire industry filled with geneticists and other people who do this stuff for a living just conveniently forgot about this little possibility? Glyphosate was widely in use before GMO crops were available, which is why it was chosen as the resistance event target.Bad farming practices by farmers who don't care about the long term viability of their crops who don't practice proper crop rotation, buffer zones, and other anti-resistance techniques should be the ones you're blaming. There are even pests that have evolved resistance to anti-resistance techniques. It's a lot easier to jump on the bandwagon and blame a company who is most known by the FUD passed around by anti-technology activists, though.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
They make food that survives to harvest in much greater numbers. Food that uses less water or is more nutritious doesn't mean jack if the majority of it is eaten by pests or can grow from being choked out by weeds.
I think you probably have no idea what amounts of chemicals are sprayed onto foods and would probably be dumbfounded at what little concentrations are needed to be effective. Hint: we're talking about ranges like ounces per acre of active ingredient, diluted into gallons of water, of a chemical that is less toxic to humans than the table salt that is thrown into most foods or the caffeine found in most soft drinks, coffee, or tea.
Every plant produces its own pesticides or they'd go extinct. Whether or not that toxin affects you has to do with not only dosage but also whether or not you are one of those pests that can even be affected by it. You make it sound like scientists are just randomly throwing genes into plants to make them produce cyanide when this couldn't be farther from the truth. Lots of FUD here, as usual.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Hey now, at least be fair. "Some farmer told me" coming from a guy who can't even spell the name of the herbicide he's arguing against yet knows all about it is certainly at least just as reputable as a well-controlled study with data you can look at. Right? Right?!
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
You make it sound like scientists are just randomly throwing genes into plants to make them produce cyanide when this couldn't be farther from the truth. Lots of FUD here, as usual.
No, they test it. But the people who test it are the same ones that sell it. I'm sure we should have listened to what the tobacco companies said all those years about it being completely safe, huh? They already said there would be no detectable levels of roundup to make it through the digestive tract into the bloodstream. Well it has been detected in the bloodstream of pretty much every person alive. So if they are lying about that, what else are they lying about.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Classic case of SAS (shill accusation syndrome). It's what happens when their arguments are shown to be bullshit and they have nothing left to use. It's a shame it's so common when this topic comes up. Almost like they're all reading the same bullshit on Mercola or NaturalNews, right?
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Well, since glyphosate itself isn't a GMO nor is it produced by GMO plants, I'm not sure what your point is in regards to GMO food since glyphosate has been in use much longer than transgenic technology has been around. BT toxin on the other hand, is a GMO byproduct/pesticide that is perfectly safe for humans in all tested quantities, and demonstrably so. You're going to have to produce citations for every one of those claims also: that anyone ever said glyphosate is completely safe (nothing is, dose = poison), that "they" said it wouldn't be detectable, that it's been detected in "pretty much every person alive", etc. It's detectable in blood and urine of farmers because they're exposed to it at much higher levels than the general population are, through both inhalation and skin absorption, not through digestion. When you consider how little is actually sprayed onto a field, compounded with harvesting, storing, transporting, processing, and finally cooking food, that there would be any detectable residue of glyphosate going into your mouth, bypassing being digested by your digestive system and entering your bloodstream, that's a highly, highly dubious claim that you're going to have to show some serious evidence for. Where are you getting these claims?
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Name chemical an insecticide that Monsanto sells. Good luck finding one. You have it exactly backwards.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
You conveniently leave out the important bits about the Defense Production Act. Monsanto (and 8 other companies) didn't just produce Agent Orange for the fun of it, it was made specifically for the government, at their demand, for their use to their spec. And even after being informed about the dioxin contamination, the government said "fuck it" and used it anyway. To attribute all those deaths to Monsanto is misinformed at best, outright lying at worst, IMHO.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Compare this list of "experts" to actual people in the biotechnology fields and you find that the opinions come weighted as expected: Comparison of GMO "Experts". Inb4shillcall!
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Billions of times a day, natural processes substitute random genes from all different kinds of organisms.
Sure, but they are usually similar related organisms. For instance, natural processes usually don't result in Jellyfish sharing genes with Rabbits:) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqQ-DSKObTI
No, actually these natural processes take genes from all different types of organisms from both the plant and animal kingdom and inject them into vastly different species. Most of the time it doesn't work out but sometimes you get a useful mutation that benefits the organism.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Which is why i think GMO's ought to be done by universities and governments for the public benefit, not by corporations for profit, and one of the goals should be genetic diversity for exactly the reason you state.
Also, I'm uncomfortable with a corporation having so much influence over the world's food supply.
Last, the profit motive would compel a company to attempt to sweep problems under the rug more than publicly funded development would.
So, I'm pro-GMO, but I think it should be done by the public for the public.
--PM
Lots of creatures share lots of genes with lots of other creatures. The whole concept of genes "belonging" to particular organism rather than being discrete units of function independent of the organism they find themselves in seems, to me, to be where these discussions fall short. It smacks of essentialism with a hint of naturalistic fallacy thrown in for taste.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Share, as in we all, right now, have genes in common with lots of animals and plants because of common ancestors. I understand that. But how exactly would a Jelly Fish share genes with a Rabbit?
Share, as in we all, right now, have genes in common with lots of animals and plants because of common ancestors. I understand that. But how exactly would a Jelly Fish share genes with a Rabbit?
Are you talking about some multi step path that could conceivably transfer a Jelly Fish 'glow' gene into a rabbit like:
Jelly Fish gets eaten by fish, fish eaten by bear, bear poo fertilizes a plant, rabbit eats the plant?
You just answered your own question. I'm not sure how I could make that any clearer. Genes are genes, they just do what they do, and lots of creatures share the same genes.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
I'm talking about the ones we don't share. That is the concern. Taking wildly foreign genes from species that would never co-mingle, and have zero common ancestors.
I'm not saying GMO's are bad, just that we can't kid ourselves that genetic engineering is equivalent to cross breeding/selective trait breeding.
You're missing the point. Animals share some genes because those genes do the same thing in one organism as they do in the other because the genes don't care which organism they're in, they just do what they do. We all share the same molecular machinery for reading DNA. You're creating a distinction without a difference when the gene doesn't really give a shit. It's an argument of essentialism and ignorance of the workings of genetics, no offense.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.