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Genetically Modified Crops Are Safe, Report Says (nbcnews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Genetically modified crops on the market are not only safe, but appear to be good for people and the environment, experts determined in a report released Tuesday. "The committee delved into the relevant literature, heard from 80 diverse speakers, and read more than 700 comments from members of the public to broaden its understanding of issues surrounding GE crops," the report reads. Panel members read more than 900 reports. A lot of concern centered on health effects. The committee determined the following: there is no evidence of large-scale health effects on people from genetically modified foods; there is some evidence that crops genetically engineered to resist bugs have benefited people by reducing cases of insecticide poisoning; genetically engineered crops to benefit human health, such as those altered to produce more vitamin A, can reduce blindness and deaths due to vitamin A deficiency; using insect-resistant or herbicide-resistant crops did not damage plant or insect diversity and in some cases increased the diversity of insects; sometimes the added genes do leak out to nearby plants -- a process called gene flow -- but there is no evidence it has caused harm; in general, farmers who use GM soybean, cotton, and corn make more money but it does depend on how bad pests are and farming practices; GM crops do reduce losses to pests, and if farmers use insect-resistant crops but don't take enough care, sometimes pest insects develop resistance. The National Academics of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have put the evidence up on a website for skeptics of the report. The report also includes a 'Summarized Comments Received from Members of the Public' section for people to look up the facts to answer their concerns.
There are people today who are concerned that there is DNA in their food. They will not believe this report any more than the people who think global warming is a lie or that the creationist 'museum' is factual..
The issue of GMO food has passed rational debate and entered into religious fervor. Some silly report isn't going to change a thing.
I don't doubt that GM crops are safe. But what about the dirty tricks companies play, such as patenting a gene sequence? Or writing contracts that forbid farmers from harvesting seed, forcing them to buy new seed each time? Or deliberately modifying the genome so the plants are fine with respect to food, but don't produce viable seeds?
Are those things really in society's interest?
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Do they say who financed the report ? Who are the scientists that wrote the report ? Full disclosure guys, full disclosure.
If it ends up being financed by Monsanto or written by scientists financed by big agro double lol.
Go to the website and do your own research.
"And Gould said all the vested interests are revealed on the website. "They can look to see if something we reference is funded by industry," he said.
It's from the National Academy of sciences, so you are in denialist class denial if you don't give it some credence.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If you think cancer is bad try starving to death from lack of food. We need GMO to make the most efficient use of land.
Or we need to stop the population growth, mainly through education and giving people powers over their own bodies and future. Without old men telling them that there's an invisible creature that wants them to make more babies, and that they can't get pensions to live on, but if they squeeze out a few more babies, surely they will be taken care of if they grow old...
Starvation and overpopulation goes hand in hand. Higher production and better distribution of food only enables the poor to increase population growth, pushing back the problem to the future, where it will be even worse due to more people.
And higher production of just some kinds of food means even more lack of variety among the poor, who have to eat what is available and cheapest. That's not a good recipe for better lives.
Given that we've practiced some form of artificial selection for centuries, it is pretty much safe to say that crossing two organisms that produce edible food will almost invariably result in a new organism that produces edible food. Most of the things that we don't know are ecological, e.g. the risks of creating a monoculture that is susceptible to a specific disease that doesn't exist yet. Those issues are certainly cause for concern, but they're unlikely to be a health issue.
By contrast, when manually editing genes, it wouldn't be entirely implausible for someone to accidentally slip a recessive gene sequence into an apple tree seed that, when present in both chromosomes, would cause the production of cyanide. And then in the second generation that isn't supposed to exist, suddenly you have fruit that look normal, but kill people....
Look, I'm not saying that GMO foods are bad, or that they don't provide significant benefits for humanity, particularly when it comes to creating drought-resistant crops that can survive in areas affected by famine, etc. What I'm saying is that no one has the right to force someone else to take unknown risks without that person's knowledge or consent, and deliberately unlabeled GMO foods do just that.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It's from the National Academy of sciences, so you are in denialist class denial if you don't give it some credence.
I've been over this with the anti-GMO crowd before. There are actually a lot of organizations, ranging from government to nonprofit organizations, that are very much in favor of GMO technology. However each time you list one of them, the anti-GMO crowd comes up with some excuse as for why they're not trustworthy. Here's a list I can name off of the top of my head:
World Health Organization
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
U.S. Academy of Sciences
American Medical Association
American Heart Association (Nifty little tidbit I might add: http://newsroom.heart.org/news... but don't let any anti-GMO people see this or else they'll think the AHA is in on the Monsanto conspiracy as well.)
Girl Scouts of America
The last one in that list is particularly interesting. Why? Because they've been the target of change.org petitions and massive parental protest against what is perhaps their biggest source of income: cookies. And yet still they remain steadfast in their opinion that, indeed, GMO is safe.
And you know what? I happen to agree. I also don't have any financial interest in GMO or any other agriculture, nor do I work for one. In fact I actually work for a major non-profit health care provider. I also happen to believe that GMO will eventually completely solve issues like world hunger and foodborne illness, and possibly even chronic disease as well.
Most of those organizations are pro business growth at any cost, that's why they like GMO and fund research to sell it.
That, dear sir, is one of the most amazing accusations I've heard in a long time. There are some who would say the opposite.
The farmers of the world that GMO claims to help are so sick of top down reorganization they will not buy it , its that simple.
You seem to think that GMO=Monsanto, and throw all GMO under the bus with Roundup ready seeds. That's really unfortunate, and wrong minded.
GMO farming is buying into a system you don't control that will ultimately control you. Notice the careful wording about the situations where pests become resistant, that's because its not magic. If you offer a choice to indiginous farmers (without destroying their land first) they reject it.
And more of the same. GMO foods, even if you don't buy into my idea that given the inherent nature of sexual reproduction, everything is genetic modification, and we've been doing it manually for a long time. But since a lot of people don't understand genetics, we can narrow it to just modern laboratory based manipulation.
So since anti-GMO kooks are all pissed off at Monsanto - which in itself is not a bad idea, given that they are inadvertently breeding some kickass Roundup resistant weeds - they allow their outrage to extend to fruits and vegetables that have been engineered for better nutrition, longer shelf life, and other very positive aspects that make the produced food actually better in all measurable ways than the base food source.
And even when we don't do it in the lab, we've been doing it since we harvested wheat and corn, selecting for the seeds that stayed on the shafts first by accident, and later by cross breeding for desired characteristics.
And just to be certain, we sometimes created things that were bad for us using this method - enter the Lenape potato: http://boingboing.net/2013/03/...
So in your hatred for Monsanto, and your apparent wish to throw all GM under the bus because of that, do you now want to freeze all genetics in their present form, so that everything stays exactly the same? REduction to absurdit isn't difficult when the basic premise is absurd to begin with.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.