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Stop Bashing GMO Food, Say 109 Nobel Laureates (nytimes.com)
The New York Times reports:
More than 100 Nobel laureates have a message for Greenpeace: Quit the G.M.O.-bashing. Genetically modified organisms and foods are a safe way to meet the demands of a ballooning global population, the 109 laureates wrote in a letter posted online and officially unveiled at a news conference on Thursday in Washington, D.C...
"Scientific and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and consistently found crops and foods improved through biotechnology to be as safe as, if not safer than those derived from any other method of production," the group of laureates wrote. "There has never been a single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals from their consumption. Their environmental impacts have been shown repeatedly to be less damaging to the environment, and a boon to global biodiversity."
Slashdot reader ArmoredDragon writes: As an echo to that comment, one of the key benefits of GMO is increased crop yield, which means a reduced need for deforestation to make way for farmland. GMO food such as Golden Rice, which improves the micronutrient content of rice, and Low Acrylamide Spuds, which are potatoes engineered to have reduced carcinogen content compared to their natural counterparts, can possibly solve many health problems that are inherent with consuming non-GMO produce. And for those concerned about patent-related issues, many of these patents have recently expired, which means anybody can freely grow them and sell the seeds without the need to pay any royalties.
"Scientific and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and consistently found crops and foods improved through biotechnology to be as safe as, if not safer than those derived from any other method of production," the group of laureates wrote. "There has never been a single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals from their consumption. Their environmental impacts have been shown repeatedly to be less damaging to the environment, and a boon to global biodiversity."
Slashdot reader ArmoredDragon writes: As an echo to that comment, one of the key benefits of GMO is increased crop yield, which means a reduced need for deforestation to make way for farmland. GMO food such as Golden Rice, which improves the micronutrient content of rice, and Low Acrylamide Spuds, which are potatoes engineered to have reduced carcinogen content compared to their natural counterparts, can possibly solve many health problems that are inherent with consuming non-GMO produce. And for those concerned about patent-related issues, many of these patents have recently expired, which means anybody can freely grow them and sell the seeds without the need to pay any royalties.
Facts schmacts, evidence be damned. 95% of the GMO bashing dosent involve facts, evidence, critical reasoning or any type of actual science outside of social. Just like vaccines, more "scientists" decrying the naysayers won't help. Now if 109 music, movie and sports stars came forward we may be talking some actual change in perception.
So far all I hear are a bunch of "concerned" people with various naturistic hippybullshit beliefs, or unspecified concerns over "genetic modifications", ignoring the wide variety of things that are being done, and the fact that everything we eat has been genetically modified by cultivation or quicker means. We should not create new religions, prove it or it doesn't exist.
Monsanto continues to push the argument over to whether modified genes are safe. The logical argument against GMOs is not that there is anything wrong with modifying genomes, but in what we have modified them to do, which is to be raised in soils heavily laden with chemicals, Round Up in particular. This has caused a massive increase of such chemicals in our diet. They have been linked to cancer, autism, and a slew of gastrointestinal problems.
Yeah that's all fine and good but have you read *obscure mommy blog article*
More than 100 Nobel laureates also think that everyone should stop worrying about AI's turning into SkyNet.
Along those same lines, more than 100 Nobel laureates think that the undead apocalypse will never happen.
It's not the food that I'm concerned about but the potential for 'interesting' spread of the genes to other plants.
(Interesting as in 'May you live in interesting times.' )
"But I read on the internets that GMO food is made by Big Corporation whose only motive is to line their pockets, not help people. These foods will change our DNA to make us docile and less fertile so the elites can lord over us. And the food tastes like crap, too."
Yet when asked to show the evidence for such statements they always come back with, "I can't remember" or we find out the source they read is nothing but a conspiracy web site or a completely discredited report.
But they'll continue to maintain they're right and everyone else, including every scientist who performed a study showing there is no issue with GMO food, is wrong and is only saying things are okay because they're in the pocket of Big Corporation.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The impact of usin of certain herbicides that GMO round-up allows has to be studied, not at a consumption level, but at a what-happens-to-people-that-inhale-thr-herbicide level.
GMO companies should be aware of the bad practices in the use of their products, like those stories of farmers gassing dead the non GMO competition of their neighbours (and their neighbours themselves), and then shielding behind alleged research that says its all good... They know its not ok to throw round up at someone and should work to prune out from the market those kind of practices for their own good.
I was previously against any GMO food, but after learning more about the subject it might not be that bad. I'm not saying GMO is solid, but it certainly is not one sided evil. I think the challenge for both perspectives is real information. Currently it's mostly FUD (on the no side) and Marketspeak (on the yes side).
.net is not popular around these parts, but the geek outs on dotnetrocks is really cool. Richard is awesome at reading up on specific topics, and that show really has some cool insight into gmo. They even made a followup in may. Also worth listening too.
Information is key.
I can recommend listening to dotnetrocks geek out on GMO here https://www.dotnetrocks.com/?s...
I know
I have no problem with the general idea of GMO plants by themselves, but when you have Roundup Ready plants and plants engineered to be immune to chemicals, all those chemicals that are getting sprayed freely on all the plants are now going into your body.
I don't care who monsanto hires this week. I still don't like GMO, and I still don't like monsanto's business practices.
And hey, why shouldn't I have the freedom to eat GMO-free food?
If it's so safe, label it as GMO like other countries do and let people choose. Any time you have to hide something, there's usually a reason. Simply sell your mutant vegetables cheaper than regular and at Walmart, the weirdos will buy it.
Only if you use the farming methods which are already devastating our cropland. Contrary to popular belief, organic farming doesn't mean that you only use stuff on the USDA approved list. It means a cyclical system in which feces gets returned to the fields. This is a perfectly safe thing to do if you observe basic safety standards, and if you're not overmedicating your population so severely that their waste becomes a health hazard on that basis; crap left to sit around for a year turns into dirt. It can happen much more quickly if you add a little compost and stir it occasionally, but that's not strictly necessary. Or you can use systems like AIWPS to permit the use of ordinary flush toilets and sewer architecture.
Tilth is not in itself inherently harmful, although it is unnecessary and a waste of energy input. Monocropping is inherently harmful, especially when it is done continuously, without the benefit of crop rotation. This has become more and more common in factory farming. This is essentially hydroponic farming in a soil medium. Everything that the plant needs has to be supplied manually, and it's done using synthetic fertilizers made from petroleum.
It's not that GMO is inherently bad. It's that the majority of it is controlled by untrustworthy assholes who use it to no good end. They're patenting life and selling it back to us.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
GMO's are just BAD, like nuclear power, vaccines and anything else that doesn't sound cool at a hipster cocktail party.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
when companies like Monstanto can't use our patent system to control people's access to food. I've seen poor countries have to turn down offers for free grain because they can't risk the GMO stuff being planted and then their farmers getting shaken down. It's _food_. Just regulate it already so there's enough profit motive to keep people interested as opposed to living like god-kings.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Modified over tens, hundreds, or thousands of years of selective breeding for the desired traits.
Just kidding, kinda.
I do wonder a bit though when we start putting arctic fish genes into plants to make them frost tolerant[1]
Or "insecticides" into food crops[2]
I do want plenty of testing before it starts showing up grocery store shelves.
[1] http://www.public.iastate.edu/...
[2] http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/vista...
Genetically modified organisms and foods are a safe way to meet the demands of a ballooning global population
This may sound scientific but it is actually political, and includes an implication that something at all has to be changed due to this "ballooning global population", and that there are no other "safe ways" with less tradeoffs and side effects to achieve this change.
As an echo to that comment, one of the key benefits of GMO is increased crop yield, which means a reduced need for deforestation to make way for farmland.
This one is a lot easier to identify as political. It has couched within it the implication that deforestation is needed to make way for farmland. Not just that it's needed, but this proposed solution admittedly doesn't even do anything but reduce the need. That's just insane and stupid.
... elephant in the room, more that 109. Ballooning population. That the problem, and unless the traditional solution mass starvation is considered acceptable, the reversal of the ballooning population is what the 109 nobel laureates should address. Without a change in the rates off replication no short term increase in the ability to provide protein will have any lasting impact.
Exactly.
Whatever happened to the simple principle of labelling things?
We have to list ingredients, unless they are only used to "process" the item. So, we could literally dip the item in Agent Orange, as long as we then washed the item afterward. Never mind that things have membranes that are porous -- we washed it off!
We preserve nuts with sulfuryl fluoride, a product used to fumigate houses. A product that have caused serious and permanent damage when people went back into the house too soon. But none of that product remains on the nuts? Who says? Who tests? Why no mention on that bag of almonds?
We have to list ingredients, except with bottled water, where we helpfully list the calories and grams of carbohydrates. Why don't we list the amount of dissolved solids, and/or calcium, etc.?
We worry about mercury in our drinking water, but not in our flu shots, even when the amount present is 25,000 times higher than what we would allow in drinking water. Why?
Companies introduce new pharma or pesticides/herbacides, and the EPA trusts the company's tests. Until enough people die, etc. to prompt a sufficient hue and cry that the EPA feels bad enough to take the company rep out for a good tongue lashing at an all-you-can-eat lobster fest.
I come here for the love
Tinfoil hat people are the nerd branch of the SJW subculture.
lucm, indeed.
Really, as someone who actively avoids GMO and boycotts GMO users, I hate it when people throw things like 'Golden Rice' and 'Low Acrylamide Spuds' because those are positive examples of GMO, but most people who are avoiding GMO are doing so because they don't believe Roundup-Ready Soybeans is a responsible example of bio-engineering for health, at it has been shown to create cycles of superpests while putting known carcinogens in our food supply.
For some reason, I'm coming up blank to describe the difference between responsible and irresponsible GMO.
Stop Bashing GMO Food, Say 109 Nobel Laureates
I will continue to speak out loudly against GMO food.
Not because it's unsafe. But because it's immoral.
GMO foods are almost always the subject of abusive patents. I believe that it is absolutely immoral to enforce patents on any of the processes of life. I believe that we all have a natural right to freely engage in nature for the purpose of survival -- including the planting and harvesting of all seeds, regardless of their origin.
I believe scientists when they say that GMO foods are safe -- provided that they reach that conclusion in a process that is completely untainted by corporate funding.
But it's totally inappropriate for scientists to tell me to stop bashing GMO foods. Those scientists are ignoring the immorality of patenting food. I don't expect them to take morality into consideration, because morality is outside the realm of science. But to me, the moral issues are far more important than any scientific ones. I would rather live in a world of intellectual freedom than a world of intellectual oppression -- even if it means a less efficient agricultural system.
...but none of those dangers are the ones the anti-GMO idiots are ranting about. And they're mostly philosophical or theoretical dangers, such as effects of biological "intellectual property". Meanwhile, they discount that GMO food could be safer, via having reductions in natural toxins or artificial pesticides. Also GMOs have an intelligent design process plus testing (rather than random mutation and no testing). For a good laugh, compare the list of dangers an environut claims vs those from a biologist.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Assume all modifications are safe.
Are all humans working with them perfect and not malevolent? (No.)
Can we ensure no cross contamination or impact to other species (plants, insects, whatever) is ever possible? (No.)
Further:
A select few individuals on the planet control the vast majority of the food supply. They control the direction its going, the cost to buy seeds, and the seeds themselves because they've been engineered not to germinate or produce viable offspring past the first generation.
The food supply becomes increasingly monoculturistic and susceptible to infestation, plague, or other failure, at a global scale.
The crops are sprayed with increasingly potent pesticides which end up in the soil, in the water, in the plant (not just on it), and in our bodies. These chemicals are known to fuck you up.
I have over and over gripped about the same thing. Seriously, the lack of logic on ithe anti-GMP types is nothing less than amazing.
The reason why ppl scream about GMO food is that a FEW of the modifications has been to make these plants resistant to round-up. TO be honest, that is stupid that they are doing that. It will only be a matter of time before that gene is spread to weeds and make worthless. That is real. However, the question of how that gene will move is not from human intervention by from normal mechanisms.
The point is,that it does not matter HOW the gene is transfered, but the types.
The anti-GMOs need to educate themselves and focus on where the issue is (the massive wasteful use of round-up) rather than their pointing to the means which helps us in so many ways. For example, Rice is being made resistant to Salt which is a real issue for Asian rice. And Corn is being developed that can tolerate major droughts. These are all happening via GMO. And these changes are NOT harmful to the globe or the environment.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
the difference is that they ppl have the background and intelligence to realize that GMO is NOT the issue. Sadly, you anti-GMO have neither the background, nor logic to figure out where the real issues are. The fact that you attack GMO and think that it is any different than what happens in life is nothing less than amazing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If there is not enough food population will stop balloning.
GMO will make it baloon even more.
None of the Nobel Laureates have any knowledge in the field of GMO.
It's pretty normal, but sad, human nature to think because you are the best in one field that you are the best at everthing.
Idiots.
While I agree with the notion that GMO solve a lot of problems and are often superior, the whole premise of this letter is spectacularly wrong. This is like the Brexit or Remain letters signed by celebrities before the referendum, to sway the vote. If you can sing a song or act in a soap, it does not make you an expert on politics, and I dislike you for thinking your voice is worth more than, say, my neighbour, based on your singing talent.
Here are the people who signed this letter:
http://supportprecisionagriculture.org/view-signatures_rjr.html
Why do they pretend to be biotechnology experts? Do biotechnology experts claim to be an experts in physics as well?
And like the Brexit or Remain letters, if you support black or white, you're both wrong and then we get into the realms of propaganda. Biotechnology is not white yet. Many dislike it because they think we're playing God. I don't believe in God and don't think that, but we're definitely playing a game with millions of years of evolution and all its trial and error. There's a lot of guessing, but essentially we don't know yet what the long term dangers of GMO and its monoculture are. I don't think it's more dangerous, but it is a gray area. But this propaganda tells me to believe its white.
To be clear, while I have some hesitation about GMOs, a lot of it is about the ecological uncertainties (what happens if the 'Frankenfish' gets into the wild and out competes/outgrows wild salmon) and the corporate practices behind it (Monsanto monopoly and aggressive practices against independent farmers, etc).
It's not just about gene splicing or wearing tinfoil hats, there are very legitimate concerns about GMOs.
Also, don't lump everyone together, I'm 100% pro vaccine, but I do have reservations about GMOs.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
many of us, and our children, are living with the explosive increase in allergies stemming from the introduction of primarily modified wheats in the 70's. It can take DECADES before the full range of negative health effects from consuming modified crops are known.
In addition to problems with consuming the crops, are the effects on both us and environment from using larger amounts and the stronger variations of pesticides that these new crops require, and the issue of corporations like Monsanto basically owning the farmers who have to resort to buying their seeds.
For the most part, I'm alright with genetically modified foods that are resistant against pests. The only thing I'm not OK with is genetically modifying plants to grow in nutrient depleted soil. If the soil doesn't have any nutrients, the food is going to be useless to me when I eat it.
By all means keep making it, people will eat it. I am not bashing it.
Please label it so people can choose not to eat it.
I believe that the food itself is probably OK for human consumption although GMO food (especially tomatoes) does seem to have much less and/or odd flavour. I think the biggest risk about GMO food is oddly overlooked, and that is that it will lead to a varietal monoculture controlled by a single company (Monsanto). Do you really want a single corporate with their thumb on all corn production for example? Do you really want to loose your choices of different varieties of things?
Also look at what happens when a disease hits a monoculture, It already happened to bananas in 1965, and even todays bananas still seriously risk going extinct. http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/22/...
Accusations that anyone is blocking genetically engineered ‘Golden’ rice are false. ‘Golden’ rice has failed as a solution and isn’t currently available for sale, even after more than 20 years of research. As admitted by the International Rice Research Institute, it has not been proven to actually address Vitamin A Deficiency. So to be clear, we are talking about something that doesn’t even exist.
And about alternatives;
The only guaranteed solution to fix malnutrition is a diverse healthy diet. Providing people with real food based on ecological agriculture not only addresses malnutrition, but is also a scaleable solution to adapt to climate change.
Suppose you are at such a party, you are opposed to vaccination, and you don't buy GMO food. Which do you talk about first?
Even shampoo is non-gmo and gluten free for twice the price.
GMOs could be a fantastic boon for humanity. the keyword is could. The sad fact is that current engineering efforts directed toward making food have all been toward making food more addictive. They want people to buy more and more food even if it kills them and guess what, it is killing people.
I fear we may end up with monstrosities like sugary vegetables and based on what I've seen in the market, this fear is justified.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Not as long as companies can patent the genes and basically force farmers into submission.
The problem of GMOs is one of possible systemic risk due to genomic changes which would never occur in nature and could have unanticipated interactions with other organisms and therefore the wider ecosystem. GMOs really mean transgenics, a very different process from breeding or inducing mutations.
Of these 109 laureates only one has any connection to risk analysis and that is Robert Merton. He was a founder of the hedge fund LTCM which blew up with a loss of nearly 5 billion and had to be bailed out by the government to prevent systematic collapse of the financial system.
Contains: GMO will be treated the same way, causing market failure when there is a demand and in fact a need for those products.
That is not how "demand" works. Scientists need to make their case to consumers. Consumers have a right to demand the labels, full stop.
This is the standard big-food position in the US. The same thing happened during mad cow. A few companies wanted to test every cow and brag about it on the label. FDA said, "you can test every cow, but you can't brag about it, because that would imply that our spot-check system isn't 100% effective. We are infalliable, and our industry-negotiated spot-check system is perfect. Your criticism of it is illegal because you would be misleading the public into dissent."
If scientists don't want this to happen, they need to pay more attention to their credibility. They cannot be allowed to earn it with a bludgeon. A real scientist won't try.
The only thing that worries me about GMO is when they are made more Roundup (glyphosate) resistant. That means the crops can be drenched in a pesticide that would have otherwise killed them. Humans, on the other hand, have not been genetically modified to better resist Roundup. Maybe Roundup is perfectly safe. I'm just weary of consuming anything that's designed to kill animals.
But that's not the problem. The Intellectual Property issues should be enough to convince the average slashdoter GMOs are a bad idea.
You think having to buy the same song three times is bad, think about starving because of IP.
You think GMOs are made more resistant to certain bugs/diseases? Think again, almost all GMOs are made to withstand higher pesticide doses, so some company can sell more poison.
We produce enough food globally to easally feed all humans. Even if we could double the food output by GMOs people will still be starving.
At last, GMO monocultures are a very bad idea. One bug/disease and we're in the dark ages again.
It's not that GMO is inherently bad. It's that the majority of it is controlled by untrustworthy assholes who use it to no good end.
Then please offer true rejections. If you think it's the food-consuming public's business to dictate how farmers run their farms, good luck with that, but don't try to shift the debate to GMO.
They're patenting life and selling it back to us.
First you claimed "GMOs are a sign of bad farming techniques," then supported it with "using petroleum fertilisers is not mandatory." Then you summarised with, "you can't patent Life, man."
You are being brief, so discussion will jump around. understandable. but it's typical of what's wrong with the GMO discussion. It is basically, "I hate science and miss horses. Also, assholes are rampant in the realisation of my magical sacred faerie-tale vision of farm life, so we have to punish them with frustration by blindly reversing every large decision they make."
Experts built the Titanic.
I'm totally happy with GMO. But I would require all such organisms to be Open Source.
There would be money to be made in the manufacture and sale of the crops. There would be no financial pressure to misbehave. There would be no financial gain in developing them, but do you know, if they're that good, people will develop them anyway.
This is what we should be pushing!
Having GMO labeling is every bit as pointless as saying what particular state and county it was grown in, or whether it's kosher or halal. Really, it is.
The reason food has an ingredient list is so consumers can identify possible allergens prior to consumption. If it's not listed on the label, then it is immaterial to the food.
GMO's could be safe, but a significant portion are not. Thanks to our "for sale" highest bidder government, who allow substandard testing regimes to be accepted in the approval process.
Their is a world of misery headed our way thanks to these vested interests. The public is right to not trust these people. Is it any wonder why medical issues seam to be consuming ever more resources and funds look at the source, the food we eat.
The real risk inherent in genetically modified organisms involves the fact that genetic manipulation is becoming increasingly arbitrary, with new techniques that essentially allow building up of genomes or sections of them from human-designed or computer-designed combinations of the basic letters AGTC.
Thus it will become possible to create organisms that are almost arbitrarily different than existing organisms.
It is far from inconceivable that one of these substantially-artificial organisms could take over a large ecosystem niche from existing organisms, AND have a second, unanticipated and quite possibly negative effect.
I can't be more specific about the threat than that, and importantly, neither can the proponents of unleashing arbitrary GMOs into ecosystems.
The risk probability may be very low, but the severity could be compensatingly extremely high, due to the self-replicating nature of the threat, and also the fact that until it happens, its negative effect would be an unknown unknown and would be almost impossible to mitigate rapidly enough.
The following, while it is a science fiction novel, illustrates plausible scenarios, given the near impossibility of controlling the spread of new arbitrary artificial pathogens:
https://www.amazon.ca/Windup-G...
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
What's wrong with bash? Tcsh is pretty cool, but you can't use it for any real programming. Wait, where am I? Sorry.
Then you summarised with, "you can't patent Life, man."
Oh no, you clearly can. The question is whether you should be able to, and I would obviously argue against.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The laureates are looking at it strictly through the lens of science. They are correct given the logic and brief history of experiments to date. Not qualified to fact-check it myself so I'll believe them.
However if they are being 100% honest they must admit they ignore the issues around how that science is being applied and used for real business. For example it enables the establishment of monoculture in the food supply puts it at high risk of infection. As went the Gros Michel so goes the Cavendish soon. Is there enough genetic diversity in the animal food supply to resist a new superbug? Of course there are other issues with the big business around control of the GMOs and the close relationship they have with government.
Only one question - if GMOs are truly safe then why can't they just be labeled as such in the store? I like to know my ingredients and I'll choose. Why are big business and government trying to hide it?
Fuck Greenpeace. They don't want us to "meet the demands of a ballooning global population"
They want us to die.
Anything that doesn't involve hairshirts, self-loathing, and hundreds of millions of dead humans getting off the planet to "let nature heal" is beyond those assholes.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
"Only if you use the farming methods which are already devastating our cropland. "
In what world does hydroponics not apply to GMO?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The statistics used to say that GMO foods will not create a problem. They are heavily flawed and in serous need of a bit of applied chaos math with genetic outcome variations. The 'safe margin' used in the generation of mutation included no viral strains present in the habitats where the foods are raised. Scientists have definitely not finished mapping the proteins responsible for cell behavior when a cell is presented with infection. This means that we HAVE NO IDEA what viruses may or may not arise from infection of a GMO used for farming. Absolutely NO IDEA. Never modeled or studied.
Genomics isn't a simple statistic of probability of mutation. Millions of organisms interact with each other in every ecology, and only weak statistical probabilities based on weak environmental observations are enough for the 'intellectual elite' to declare us safe?
That's not science, that's gambling in an establishment known for cheating.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Whatever happened to the simple principle of labelling things?
We will label GMOs when you have to wear a label letting everyone know you're a moron.
Enjoy your parasitic Helminth worm infestation...
This is precisely how plagues start.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
One should always hear both sides, and this article does exactly this with an update.
About the bashing of ‘Golden’ rice Greenpeace says:
Accusations that anyone is blocking genetically engineered ‘Golden’ rice are false. ‘Golden’ rice has failed as a solution and isn’t currently available for sale, even after more than 20 years of research. As admitted by the International Rice Research Institute, it has not been proven to actually address Vitamin A Deficiency. So to be clear, we are talking about something that doesn’t even exist.
It has only failed because people who should have no say are freaking out about it. It isn't available for sale because people who should have no say are freaking out about it. To be clear, we are talking about something that very much exists. It did take some 24 years to go from concept to result, however, because research like this hard work. It has only "not been proven" in the sense of it has not yet been rolled out in large numbers to subsistence farmers who's children are at risk of blindness due to malnutrition.
And about alternatives;
The only guaranteed solution to fix malnutrition is a diverse healthy diet. Providing people with real food based on ecological agriculture not only addresses malnutrition, but is also a scaleable solution to adapt to climate change.
Right. Don't give subsistence farmers the opportunity to grow healthier food for themselves. Don't let them live the lives they know. Force them to live the lives of other people, rich [by comparison] people. Just make these extremely poor people stop being extremely poor, or just give them all the good food they need. The solution is guaranteed to work, but nobody has figured out how to make the solution even happen. No solution that doesn't actually exist can be considered to be scaleable.
My problem with GMOs is not that the scary stuff that Greenpeace peddles, but the business practices of companies like Monsanto. I also have a problem with the supposedly "pro-science" folks who are anti-GMO labeling on the basis that scare-mongering will keep people from buying GMO-labeled products. I have a Ph.D. in a scientific field and one my absolute most deeply held beliefs is that nothing is more anti-science than withholding information. Don't like what people do with that information? Tough. It's your responsibility as a scientist or pro-science person to educate your audience. Telling people they've got it wrong and don't worry, they should just trust you, and no, we're not going to have a conversation about this is flat out anti-science, period, end of story. If you want people to be OK with GMOs, fine, I agree with you, but it do your job as a scientist, give people complete information, and help them understand the issue instead of making them feel like they're too stupid to understand it.
By the way, one of my other deeply held beliefs is that if you are a scientist and you cannot explain your field to a layperson in a way that they can understand, you probably don't understand your own field very well. In other words, if your excuse is that people are too uneducated to understand, then I think you need to reassess how you're explaining things. You're the educated person, the onus is on you to share your knowledge. If you can't do that, shut up.
And my own skepticism. Genetically modifying food on the molecular level is not the same as breeding. You will never see in nature where mechanical and chemical means are used to cross species like it's done in the lab.
Actually this is 100% false. Not only do genes cross from species to species in nature, but it actually happens all the time. In fact the human genome -- your genome -- has some 100,000 gene fragments from some other species inserted into it. Three of those genes spliced into you are actually complete gene sequences, one of which is responsible for the human placenta.
http://www.isciencemag.co.uk/f...
Fuck Greenpeace. They don't want us to "meet the demands of a ballooning global population"
They want us to die.
Anything that doesn't involve hairshirts, self-loathing, and hundreds of millions of dead humans getting off the planet to "let nature heal" is beyond those assholes.
No shit. I'm pretty sure the groups behind the anti-gmo, anti-vax, and anti-medicine movements are really just trying to push a goal of population culling. Let's make sure all those poor people stop consuming resources and just die off. Because, let's face it, it won't be a 1st world problem and the people pushing this shite are certainly not living in the 3rd world.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
The major issue for me is that there have been no long-term health studies for the effects of GMO foods. Regulatory policy and market seem to dictate that you are the lab rat, whether you like it or not.
Tell me these battles are being fought any differently, with dueling protesters and everything. Facts hardly enter the picture.
I do want labels though, just like I want signs and color to indicate where the bike lanes are. Doesn't that make sense?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
More than that. SJWs are pro Global Warming or whatever they are calling it this month. SWJs cry science science. EXCEPT with the GMO stuff? So GMO = Climate Change. Explain how scientist works for one cause but not the other.
After years of research scientists are still debating if milk is good or milk is bad. They are still debating carbs vs fats vs protein ratios for humans.So what does this mean. More useful would be to comment on what will happen if Trump comes in power. That will still be considered logical with respect to Democracy atleast and anyone can comment on Democracy.
Got any proof that a significant portion is not safe to humans? Humans are living longer and healthier than at any time in history, so you better have some strong evidence proving GMO is bad.
Leave those kids alone. They have SJW'd themselves out of worthwhile sexual relationships by perverting the female role into a pseudo-male one. Sick pop beats and ghetto videos of cleavage are all they have left. Let them sit around in their saggy shorts and their backwards ball caps, tattooed like drunken sailors, faces buried in their pitiful cellphones, worthwhile social interaction totally alien to them. Have some fucking pity, man. They are so lost.
> NLs leveraging their social status to sway opinions in matters in which they are no better qualified than Bono or Mike Tyson.
I bet you can't name a single nobel laurete who isn't OBVIOUSLY smarter than Mike Tyson in general. Any NL is highly literate, which makes them more qualified than Tyson on any subject other than perhaps boxing, and ear bitingb
> it, it won't be a 1st world problem and the people pushing this shite are certainly not living in the 3rd world.
I literally can't tell if you are talking about GMO or anti-GMO as the people pushing both are all 1st worlders and both claim the other is trying to harm 3rd worlders.
No, they don't. Labels can indicate benefits, too. There are nutritional labels, labels that say, "organic" or "kosher" or even, "New and Improved!".
The bottom line is that consumers, who are paying for every goddamn thing including the research into GMOs, want labels indicating GMOs. It doesn't matter why. They're paying the bills, they get to make consumer choices for whatever reason they want, including ones that you might think unimportant.
You are welcome on my lawn.
When the average health of citizens in countries that consume a lot of GMO-food is clearly above the average health of the world, I will consume GMO-food. Currently this clearly isn't the case, and there is no sign of this situation improving, so don't hold your breath.
You are funny.
http://www.infowars.com/watch-...
You are welcome on my lawn.
It was all about bashing Monsanto — the "evil" company, that specialized in GMO seeds and holds thousands of patents.
European competitors in particular were so afraid of it rising, they started a PR campaign to mongering fears of GMOs. The campaign created public's perception so negative, some countries (France, Germany) ban GMOs outright and vandals attack growers. Lately Monsanto (and DuPont) must've started fighting back, because American media began defending the technology — even calling its opponents "anti-Science" (where have I heard that before?).
But now that a German firm is seeking to buy Monsanto, Europeans need to be disabused of their misconceptions too.
GMO-haters have nothing but FUD — they've heard it is (or may be) dangerous, but don't know why — somebody told them... See also "chemtrails" and "Trump is racist".
Unfortunately, even in the US food can not be labeled "Organic", if it contains GMOs...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Wouldn't it be better for the society to agree on some kind of international legal and financial framework that would fund public research in GMOs?
This I think is the key to the problem. GMO technology could do bad things if it is not handled responsibly and in today's world the only thing you can trust large corporations to do is to look after their short term financial interests even, stupidly, when that damages their long term interests...and before you come up with counter examples just remember that the CEO can change so even if a company is ethical now there are no guarantees for tomorrow.
I would absolutely trust the work done by publicly funded biologists bound to follow strict ethics guidelines and required to publish in peer reviewed journals. The system is not perfect but mistakes do tend to get found and corrected. However I worry a lot about the GMO research done by large corporations. We have already seen that some pharmaceutical companies repeat drug tests until they get the result they need do show a drug works. How likely is it that a company would repeat GMO testing until the results show that it is ok to deploy? What happens if a scientist in such a corporation has an idea that something might be wrong with the product and wants to do extra tests to confirm it is ok? An academic could do the tests to learn something but would a corporation risk jeopardizing a major product for a test which is not legally required?
I will eat GMO foods all day. I'm not worried about eating them. But I think it's crazy to assume that artificially introduced genes in plants and animals will not spread throughout whole species over time. That kind of regulation just can't be enforced enough. And there are so many mechanisms at play in DNA that we only partly understand. A researcher could write over some 'junk' to add genes to rice, and then it turns out the 'junk' contained a RNA suppressor of a crop-destroying rice virus. We don't know enough.
The problem is the label doesn't help consumers make informed decisions, it just helps them make irrational ones. Anything GMO related is also possible in non-GMO foods.
Consumers don't know what they actually want.
How do you label a food as GMO? What is GMO exactly?
If you mutate a seed with radiation or you cross breed with chemical mutagens that is currently qualified as organic in the USA and EU. Those are considered to be completely safe and traditional methods of engineering.
Why is using radiation okay but inserting a specific gene at a specific location not okay?
Saying something is GMO tells you nothing and it is just feeding into fear.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Whatever happened to the simple principle of labeling things?
Vermont passed a GMO Labeling Law that went into effect July 1, 2016. As NPR noted, since most food companies can't (read: won't) practically make different labels for different states, the effects of this law will cover national food labels.
Now... The US Congress, pushed by AG companies, is voting on a bill next week to (basically) preempt this law:
This bill would delay labeling for up to two years while the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture develops rules for the labeling of genetically engineered foods. The Secretary would be charged with developing three options of disclosure including a plain language label, a symbol, and electronic or digital links accompanied by the wording “scan here for more food information”.
[Not sure a QR code instead of words would be that helpful while grocery shopping.]
More links at: http://www.google.com/search?q=vermont+gmo+labeling+law
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Genetically modified organisms and foods are a safe way to meet the demands of a ballooning global population, the 109 laureates wrote in a letter posted online and officially unveiled at a news conference on Thursday in Washington, D.C...
No, they don't actually know that, they can't...
Why? Because they don't have hundreds of years of experience with it, and that much at least will be needed to know if we are totally screwing with our food supply or not...
This is our food, without it, we all die. This is one of the most important things we can touch, next to our air and water...
We don't have any idea what the long term evolution changes will be to the general food supply with all our tampering, but I do know that we already have narrowed down a lot of foods due to selective harvesting and many varieties of foods are already gone.
They are playing around with Pandora's box, assuming the contents won't hurt anyone. But they haven't had the box open long enough to really know the outcome...
If GMO conferred any immediate* benefit (be it increased strength, intelligence, etc), there would be no need for the Marketing(tm) department to have to be legislated into mentioning** the fact that a product contains GM-derived product. But the fact remains that currently, the majority of GM's only benefit** large corporation that created the GM genes (aka Monsanto) and/or large-scale farmers that can afford and use GM crops for increased crop yield.
I for one eat product that are derived from GM products. The real issue is that GM is just an Another Ploy(R) to increase the revenue of certain multi-national corporate conglomerate. I'm not anti-GM, I'm just anti-GM-to-be-used-to-enrich-bottom-line-of-corporations. Monsanto isn't doing this for the benefit of mankind, they are doing this so they can sell more Round-Up(tm) (aka glyphosate) and claim that they are doing a service to the world by doing that. And in doing so, they are suing those who have inadvertently cross-bred their own crops with neighbor's use of RU-ready strains, charging an arm and a leg for seeds that contain those genes, and pay for** marketing that extoll virtues of GM.
--sf
* Look at cigarette industry for products that are harmful that had to be legislated into displaying what kind of harmful ingredients
** Marketing loves to exploit any way to positively spin product. The fact that GM crops does not immediately benefit consumers, but only the back-end producers should be some warning sign that the GM crops aren't all that are hyped up to be.
I heard a reporter on NPR mention that there's also a general belief that non-GMO foods are (should be) less expensive. Not sure AG companies want to foster that belief...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
crap left to sit around for a year turns into dirt.
Enjoy your parasitic Helminth worm infestation...
This is precisely how plagues start.
If only you had ever composted anything, you would know that heat alone will solve that problem if you only put all the crap in one pile.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's more like bashing Ford for it's role (along with GM) in, say, killing off public transit or the electric car. The producer is distorting the market and large parts of human civilization for their long term profit; and doing it at a scale that's hard to grasp...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
crops/species invading and replacing natural non patented species we have every right to bash them and question them.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Its like Ford towing away your current car, putting in their own car in its place and then demanding money from you for the car they just put in stating that because its in your parking spot you own it and have to pay them for it.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Here is what really happened:http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/01/107-nobel-laureate-attack-on-greenpeace-traced-back-to-biotech-pr-operators/
The problem is the label doesn't help consumers make informed decisions, it just helps them make irrational ones.
Maybe so. But people should be free to make irrational decisions.
Vitamin pills, homeopathy and feng shui are just a few examples of irrational things that lead people to spend their money unwisely. In a free society, that's just part of life's rich tapestry.
If a sufficiently significant proportion of the population wants labels, they should have labels. Your definition of irrationality is irrelevant.
Patents, related collusion/corruption are the main problem with GMOs my friend.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
in which feces gets returned to the fields
I guess we finally know the meaning behind your username...
By doing GMO the likes of Monsanto aim to hoover up even more loot. If there is anything else that comes out of it it'll be more of an unlooked for accident (good or bad), something that was never intended or more likely even thought about.
I'm going to side with every state and federal regulatory agency in the US, which bans any use of human waste on food crops, over your assertion that it's trivially easy to render safe.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
As long as the companies creating them are for-profit I'm against GMO foods. I would be preferred to be against specific GMOs, but no one is even talking about labeling which parts are GMO, only that anything in the food was modified or not, so I must be against all of them. GMOs are not one thing and we shouldn't be treating them as such.
How long did the tobacco industry legally swear that smoking was safe? How often do pharmaceutical push less than idea solutions to make a profit. Just look at all the cold meds that are completely useless. Most of the top sold common cold meds do absolutely nothing for the common cold, their only effects are placebo based as the active drugs are far, far below the effective doses. Why should we trust the food industry when history tells us they'll be corrupt? We don't even have to wait for the future. Companies have been putting sugar into everything, tweaking the fat+salt+sugar ratios to hit the bliss-point where it tricks your body into wanting it more. Look at the labels. Many fruit juices, such as orange juice, has more sugar than soda.
All the GMOs I've heard about are making the food taste better (solely through increased 'natural' sugar levels), prolonging shelf life (adding preservatives or making the food harder to digest), or allowing increased use of branded weed killers while being grown. The one group that was working for increased nutrition in the food failed (Golden rice). Are there any other companies that are trying to increase the quality in terms of health gained from the eating food rather than their profit?
And what is good nutrition? The medical community keeps flipping back and forth on what's healthy and what's not. They seem to be more wrong than right when it comes to overall health. Instead of modifying food to contain one or two nutrients that we know are low, we should be encouraging people eat other foods that have those by default as those people are likely also low in other areas that we don't understand as well. The world is not starving due to lack of food. We have plenty of food to feed everyone. The problem is poor distribution.
I bought and planted raspberry plants last year (so much cheaper than buying raspberries from the store). The majority of available plants had disclaimers saying it was illegal to sell the raspberries, sell the plants, or give them to someone else to replant.
Perhaps we should take note of the "blooming population" mentioned as a reason for needing GMO crops. Should we try to accommodate excessive population levels or work towards mandatory levels of reproduction that are safe and sustainable. I find nothing wrong with GMO crops bur I find a whole lot wrong with the notion of population growth being allowed and a lack of restoration of quality to all areas to go in the direction of a vibrant natural environment. At this very moment i live on a huge salt water estuary that is is severe crises due to algae blooms that are toxic destroying not only wildlife but bans all contact with humans on our beaches and waterways. It is caused by agricultural run off and global warming as well as allowing homes to have been built too near the Indian River and its lagoons. Growth is a devastating negative and we here only bullshit about real solutions. In Florida one answer would be to only allow indoor farming such that no run off could ever occur from agriculture. In other words, plainly said, we need very radical changes. We also need to disallow any new housing or residences in many of our counties as well as restricting tourism. These types of solutions can not be accomplished with our current forms of government.
Yes, I really like the labels that say organic, tells me which products are over priced to serve an indoctrinated audience.
Gazing the future
Recently, I (re)stumbled upon an article called "Environmental Heresies". A good and interesting read for sure, but, like with all these kind of articles, the author (futurologists, they are called, I believe) makes the same basic mistakes as all his predecessors. I'll give some rebuttal and criticism:
His first point, about slowing demographics, is not very much disputable: it is as it is, and if it's in decline, it's in decline. However, whether we will level out completely, or go down, or up again, is not as clear cut as he seems to portray. The author gives as main reason that people go to cities, but I think this explanation is inadequate, and certainly not enough to explain the changing demographics.
It should be noted, for instance, that, during the middle ages, the amount of children born in cities were no less then those on the countryside. What *did* change, though, is the empowerement of women (most notably in matters of procreation) and social and medical advancements. THOSE are the real reasons why demographics change. It also follows that, if, by some disaster or serious economic and scientific decline we would degrade into former levels of welfare and reduced possibility for women to control any family planning, demographics would go up again. It is therefor not an absolute certitude that the world-demographics will continue to decline...this is only true as an extrapolation, if everything remains more or less the same. However, it is exactly the danger of this sort of extrapolation that the author is (also) lamenting against.
As for genetically modified (GM) crops, I fear he really simplifies the subject too much to be useful in making a rational decision about the pro's and cons. Basically, he over-optimistically only conveys the pros, while barely mentionning any of the cons - as if they were unimportant.
It should be noted however, that with living organisms, you can not simply test it out in the wild, and then expect to be able to put the genie back in the bottle when things go wrong. Once you contaminated a natural area, and the contamination has a sufficiently advantage (in a darwinistic sense) to stay around in the genepool, there is no way in hell you can get rid of it completely, when it turns out it is damaging humans, or other species and ecological systems.
Now, his counterargument that those won't survive in the wild seems rather weak. In effect, some GM genes *already* have contaminated other 'wild' crops, and it didn't sizzle out in the wild, on the contrary (a prominent example of that are some strains of GM corn in south-america). So... it may be that some GMs will not survive in the wild, but you can bet some *will*, however. And he, nor anyone else, can garantuee that such GM or hybrid crops can't be damaging or unhealthy to the ecosystem or local species, including humans.
Also, the reductionistic view of "we're not doing anything else then what people have been doing for centuries" is somewhat misleading too. Yes, people have been breeding crops, and cultivated crops are not 'natural' in the sense that they occur in the wild...but it's an unfair analogy, because one is comparing oranges with apples. For instance, with GM, it is perfectly possible to make genemodifications between two completely different species of plants. In effect, this trans-species swapping of genes with GM, can be done between animals and plants. In all those centuries that "we have always done this" I would like to see any example where this has actually been done before.
No; this is a totally new technique, with new possibilities, certainly, but also new consequences (which we don't know anything about) and new dangers. You can't just shrug those of with claiming, falsely, that we've been using those techniques for millenia. And you can't just merrily test it out in the wild, and see if anything happens.
Apart from that, even purely economically, I doubt it has all those beneficial effects the author claims it has or will have - but more
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
No science no source, sounds legit.
My wife has to follow an intricate renal diet, so we have to squint at all the tiny type on every food label to make sure that none of the ingredients, normal dietary components for everybody else, might be serious problems for her.
So hippie moms, please do not clutter up our nutrition labels with your irrelevant Luddite crap. Your baseless GMO hysteria could literally kill.
It is easy to do correctly, if you have enough space, proper equipment, etc. It's even easier to do it wrong...and for that you don't need much space or equipment.
Also, even if the composting is done incorrectly, I believe that it's still safe if only used on plants whose edible portions never touch the ground. (I'm not *really* sure of this, but I believe it to be true.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
> How do you label a food as GMO? What is GMO exactly?
Really? You're going to try and pull that stunt? All that shows is how utterly untrustworthy ANY GMO is. You're making our arguments for us. You can't be trusted, therefore you deserve even higher scrutiny.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> The problem is the label doesn't help consumers make informed decisions it just helps them make irrational ones.
That is irrelevant. You don't get to base public policy decisions on bullshit like that in a democracy.
Of course your clear an obvious contempt for people just pisses people off, make them more incensed, and make them even more distrustful then they would be otherwise.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
So since seemingly all GMO foods are completely safe and have been thoroughly tested by Monsanto and other companies, we can label them in clear language that they are GMO products and a URL to the specific GMO modifications in plain language.
Of course, this is about as likely as simple gun control measures in the US. If there is nothing to hide, let's not hide it!!!
I actually don't mind certain GMO modifications, like making potatoes less toxic. But other things, like adding natural insect toxins and repellents to plants are an issue. It's not that the more benign ones are going to kill you directly, anymore than they are directly killing bees, usually parasites kill the bees because of their weakened immune systems (also weakened by pesticides). Many of these natural toxins are not fatal to humans, but they are mildly toxic to us if you are young and healthy, no problem. If lots of different products make these changes and you add them together, and if you are undergoing chemotherapy or some other weakening condition, you shouldn't be eating stuff with those types of modifications. In the US, how would you know, most of these aren't labeled. If Monsanto admits that some people shouldn't eat certain modified products then people might not buy them, so F*CK you weak people.
When there is nothing to hide, all researchers will be able to test these products and Monsanto and others, will welcome this extra testing. We might even engage in some long term testing of certain modifications on small groups of humans and/or animals instead of the entire population at once.
None of this will change until hundreds of thousands of people are definitively proven to have been hurt by this. It probably won't be something that happens quickly, but only from long term exposure. When it does happen, no matter how many warnings were received by these companies from their own people, no one will be prosecuted. After all, if your a greedy businessman, that is considered normal and it would be uncivilized to hold you accountable.
Thanks for all the GMO fish.
Golden rice has reportedly proven difficult to cultivate. Yams, squash, carrots, kale, spinach, etc. are good sources of vitamin A, and were traditionally cultivated before the push for cash crops...but if you're going to eat the rice, it's not a part of your cash crop anyway.
Also, I'm not certain how much vitamin A there is in how much golden rice. I've never happened to run across the figure. I find it quite plausible that yams are in incredibly better source of vitamin A that is an equal weight of rice (either both or neither being dried).
Since golden rice is (or was) free for non-commercial use, and trial plots were grown by private individuals, if it were a success, then it would have by now become widespread, though not commercial. It hasn't. So the people who grew it didn't find it worth replanting.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The big problem with GMO probably isn't the GMO part. It's that the plants are modified to survive toxic pesticides. They also modify them to look better while losing the nutritious parts. So I don't see a problem with GMO food, but I do see a problem with the motivation behind it.
Monsanto is the problem people have with GMO foods, not the quality of the foods. Also stop putting hormones and antibiotics in animals.
Low Acrylamide Spuds
Would anyone care for some uranium-free orange juice? How about feeding your cat with low ash cat food? What about washing your hands with reduced-bacteria hand wash?
Ask me about repetitive DNA
I'm glad the term "SJW" got around, it's a lot like "sheeple". It doesn't mean anything and you can tell the person saying it is really bad at thinking for themselves so they just adopt a blanket derisive term for anyone they disagree with. It's a good easy way to identify stupid and saves me from reading your further idiocy, thanks!
Exactly. And a GMO label will serve the same function. You'll be able to know which products you're paying a license fee to a multi-national petrochemical company that also makes chemical and biological weapons.
You are welcome on my lawn.
But the job of the government in this case is to help consumers, not scare them. GMO labels scare people without reason and it's just another regulation on the food producers for how they make their labels. I imagine after the next wave of scaremongering, we'll get more labels "WARNING: CONTAINS DNA".
We make public policy decisions based on what's best for consumers all the time. I don't think most people were asking for laws requiring seat belts
Found the SJW, guys!
Here's how this goes:
Golden Rice researchers: We made Golden Rice, it has 10 units of Vitamin A in every serving, which is very good
Greenpeace: Not good enough. We've arbitrarily decided that nothing less than 100 units of Vitamin A would be any help, we're going to fight to prevent this product even being available
Golden Rice researchers: Oh, that's sad. We'll do more work
Later: Hooray, now Golden Rice can make 150 units of Vitamin A in every serving, that's awesme
Greenpeace: OMG. Now you're poisoning people. Vitamin A is a deadly poison. We injected a litre of pure Vitamin A into a rat's brain and it died, proving nobody should touch the stuff. Golden Rice is toxic and we'll fight to ensure it's never used.
Greenpeace works to fight this because it sounds vaguely like something their hippie supporters would want to fight, they don't care about facts, and nor do their idiot supporters. Getting the message out that Greenpeace isn't about actually doing any good it's about siphoning off money from not-too-bright free-the-whales types is a good thing EVEN IF Golden Rice doesn't end up seeing widespread use.
http://responsibletechnology.o...
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
You are the stupidest of the arrogant fucks we mock in the comments here. Funny how my "devestated cropland" has gotten a better yield of corn and soybeans every year except 5 in the last 123 that there are records for. Take your fearmongering lies and go starve in sub-saharan africa or north korea.
But thats not true. It has been shown in studies, Tang et al comes to mind, that Golden Rice is very efficient in addressing Vitamin A deficiency. Why would the IRRI admit that? My only guess is that they asked them 15 years ago when IRRI indeed had no proof(!) that it actually works.
Yes, Golden Rice is not available for sale, alas developing a GMO crop takes years and costs about 150 million bucks. Golden Rice has no big company behind it, it's basically free, no profit. So, nobody pushes it because there is money to be made. On the plus side: Current field trials in Bangladesh are very promising.
Oh, and about the alternatives: Fantastic! We just need to solve the world hunger problem and everybody will be fine. Who would have thought, that it is that easy ...
Being a Nobel Laureate does not make one automatically an expert in every field. Can a genetically modified organism be harmful to consumers? Absolutely can, and you do not need a Nobel to realize that.
We are built to digest certain types of organic compounds. A GMO may introduce changes to those, or completely new compounds. In which case, they will not be properly digested, and can, for example, harm the intestinal lining or introduce unwanted stuff into the blood stream. Testing for this is very hard. You can only proclaim 'it is safe' till proven otherwise... Now, it should be MY CHOICE to avoid GMO foods, because I do not want to discover the hard way 10 years from now that they cause nasty stuff. For that, labelling GMO foods is a reasonable requirement, allowing me to avoid GMOs, and 100 Nobel Laureates to only consume GMOs if they so please
It isn't *just* about the crops, it's what the plants do to soil they are planted in. They essentially negate the possibility of anything else growing in it. Given there are numerous studies about this that are easily searchable online, what is required for a nobel prize these days?
So, for you, the anti-GMO thing is a dishonest "science" wrapper around the actual left-leaning political/economic argument against intellectual property laws. Oh, I'm not accusing you personally of dishonesty (though I realize it could be read that way) just that the wrapper of science as generally applied is being applied dishonestly presuming your position is the position shared by your peers in the cause.
Intellectual property laws are a tricky problem. The founders of the USA put them into the Constitution, unlike most other things that get called "Constitutional" and which people only imagine/project into it. They had good reasons: They wanted to encourage invention and creativity and thus wanted to protect the ability of the creative to BE creative for a living, and they also wanted to prevent the abuses of the creative which had been displayed throughout Europe by various monarchs over the centuries. There's an unending list of art, music, and inventions that were claimed "for the crown" without just compensation in Europe over the centuries, which not only harmed the creators of these things, but also caused many inventors to hide/obscure their inventions thus limiting the societal impacts. American IP laws were a bargain: The country guaranteed the creator of something a protective monopoly FOR A LIMITED TIME, in exchange for full disclosure of the creation and the ability for everybody to use it and derive other things from it after the limited-time of monopoly expired. This was a fantastic bargain for the United States, which eventually put a man on the Moon.
Corporations and lawyers are the problem with modern IP laws. Lawyers have created entire companies dedicated to nothing but frivolous IP-based lawsuits (something our founders NEVER intended but which judges (mostly lawyers) and politicians (mostly lawyers) have allowed and expanded). Corporations, as artificial persons, want to live forever and live off of their earlier works forever, and thus have convinced the politicians they have bought to keep extending the durations of IP ptotections, thus breaking the basic Constitutional IP law bargain with the public. By all rights, our nations founder's would have meant that all the famous Disney works, for example, would now be in the public domain and anybody could now show those works for free and even create new stories with the characters. Same for Star Trek. All the "fan fiction" based on classic Trek is EXACTLY what our founders intended. But modern corporations would rather keep milking the old IP than create a new stream, and are thus being precisely anti-Constitutional.
If one is a Marxist, then by all means rant against IP laws and dream of a day where nobody owns anything, with the destruction of IP as the first shot in a war against all property ownership.
If one is not a Marxist, then the proper vector is to attack all the modern corporate/lawyer-driven mutations of our IP laws which have been greased by mountains of "campaign contributions" AKA bribes. The IP laws of the US, used to be very beneficial and they could be again; they simply need to be returned to the original intended configurations particularly in the limited durations of the monopoly granted.
I don’t care how stupid you think the general public is. Food sensitivities are a serious health concerned for a sizable portion of the population. They need to be able to reliably determine what is in their food without fear of cross-contamination and hidden gochas. I believe that this right to know extends to GMO foods on principle.
There’s also a selfish aspect to this. My wife is allergic to corn (either that or one of the molds that commonly grows on corn). Most corn products are NOT LISTED as being corn products in most processed foods. So far, the most reliable way she has to avoid corn is to avoid GMO foods because the number 1 genetically modified food is corn.
Golden Rice has not yet been released to the public due to the super-complicated legislation implemented thanks to Greenpeace. Instead of simply putting the transgene into all local varieties (fast and easy), the original transgenic rice (one transgene event that has passed all tests) has to be crossed with local varieties and then backcrossed. Takes ages and scientifically makes no sense.
You suggest that as a bad thing, but that is assuming definitions again and imposes a morality that you prefer rather than what someone believes.
We already have a surplus of food that is thrown away. People who are starving are doing so because they cannot afford to buy food. In order to buy food, you need money, earned by providing something of value. Industrial farming has only very little requirement of human labor, so the people in the poor countries cannot provide anything to sell except for handing over control over their natural resources to foreign countries. This handover does happen, but the ones profiting from it are those who control the resources via weapons bought in exchange for money.
Most of the produce generated with industrial farming technology is exported in order to feed the lifestock in already rich countries. Filtering food through lifestock reduces the nutritional value by about a factor of 10, and still the people in rich countries overgorge themselves to a degree that many are overweight.
Corporate controlled agricultural production of which GMO is the crown does not lead to financial structures feeding the hungry because it voids their means to earn a living.
Patents only last for a limited time. So if Monsanto creates some new beneficial whizz-bang crop they get to patent it and profit from it for about 20 years and then anybody can use the invention for free (free of IP costs that is, not free of the costs to make the thing in question, of course).
If your concern is that nobody will be able to make the new crop after the patent expires then THAT should be the attack you make; to get the Patent, Monsanto must file a document with the patent office that makes the invention clear to anybody familiar with the art. If they have failed to sufficiently disclose, then the patent is invalid.
For some reason, I cannot escape the idea that these anti-Monsanto rants are just Bernie-types on an anti-free-markets warpath. They all seem to be rants about the big evil business making a profit, with the veneer of some conspiratorial implications that the whole world will be threatened with mass starvation if we do not bend to the will of the mighty Monsanto. Patent law does not create that scenario.
Anybody with the proper resources and education is free to take Monsanto's patents TODAY and replicate the work (thereby proving the patents valid) or show that the work cannot be replicated (thereby invalidating the patents as insufficiently disclosed). You just cannot put the results into the market without buying a license from Monsanto. If the Monsanto patents are invalidated then your problem is solved, and there is no problem. If the Monsanto patents are proven valid, then you can sleep easily knowing that in 20 years when the patents expire everybody on Earth will be able to freely use the new plants and food will be healthy and abundant.
I'm sure this headline could be achieved as well: "110 Nobel Laureates Concerned with GMOs, sign letter, blah blah blah"
"There has never been a single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals from their consumption"
"Here we document that modified Bt toxins are not inert on human cells, but can exert toxicity, at least under certain in vitro conditions. In vivo implications should now be assessed. Our results raise new questions in risk assessment of food and feed derived from genetically engineered plants." ref
Whenever GMO stuff comes up here, the usual anti-patent, anti-IP, pro-open source brigade is suspiciously absent.
Companies having closed-source patents on the food on our table is OK. Yet different companies having software patents or selling closed-source software is bad.
Typical. Science people are heroes when they support their views, and shills when they don't.
At this point one has to wonder, it does appear that those SJW wimps pick sides based on what the conservatives support/oppose, and the whole scientific thing is total bullshit.
lucm, indeed.
If you have a few minutes to spare, watch this Alex Jones rant at he beginning of Doug Stanhope's show...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=...
the guy is like quicksands, by the time you realize that you're not on terra firma you're already doomed to a long and dangerous escape
lucm, indeed.
GMO can be quite OK.
And it can be very dangerous, depending on the introduced traits. Bad traits is what we bash, not the GMO concept.
I'm all for tastier vegetables produced through GM; I don't vegetables with nastier poisons to, well, better poison me. It's a world of difference...
Nothing is unequivocally harmless. There is no guarantee that the nongenetically engineered organism won't develop an unsavory mutation or get a gene useful to humans transferred to another organism in such a way that that organism becomes harmful or more harmful to humans. With such loose controls on nongenetically engineered organisms, the safe bet is that this has already happened multiple times. There are no guarantees no matter what you do. However, I think it is best for all intelligent kind to seize control of its future and let the uncertainties be of its own making, correction on its own terms. No matter the timescale, it is both very short and far too long.
We should also modify the weather as long as we have preparations in place to change the weather again where the undesirable consequences make themselves known. Everybody says don't do this, don't do that and never do this, but be prepared to do the other when the undesirable consequences happen. Because do or no do, there are always going to be undesirables.
Sopurce required. I've been googling, and googling, and all I could find is that the _sewage_ cannot be used in _organic_ plants. So I call bull
No, I'm suggesting it's a good thing.
You are welcome on my lawn.
See if the GMO have been introduced to society, then we had a debate and anyone could freely decide to make the research and either eat them or not based on their own judgement, then we would have all these people promoting GMO so their market share increases and we would be saying positive things about them to overcome the fears.
But they were forced on everyone, we cannot even make the choice, the company behind them is just plain evil by almost any moral standards so... the reaction is exactly the opposite. We will keep bashing them and lobby for laws that outright prevent their introduction, until this changes and people won't be forced. You should know this by now.
Almost anything in society is opposed by maybe a 1-5% minority, which is extremely vocal, but will shut up if given a choice to avoid what they oppose.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
GP has a point because literally everything that lives on this planet has genes from other species transferred into it. It happens quite often. The human genome alone has over 100,000 foreign sequences inserted into it, without at least one of which, human reproduction would be much less efficient, and in fact we may have gone extinct long ago without it.
http://www.isciencemag.co.uk/f...
Citation
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The food we've grown since the dawn of time. That plus controlling overpopulation. Maybe we shouldn't be creating technologies which enable overpopulation, using arguments about preventing deforestation to push public acceptance of them?
Let all the extra billions of people on our Planet figure out on their own how to feed themselves.
The GMO isn't the problem. The problem is the pesticides. And the plants soak up a certain amount of pesticides. Long story short, you are consuming pesticides.
But isn't urine generally sterile?
industrial scale monoculture, enforced with roundup and wiping out everything else. Killing off soil cultures, fungi and insects will not be worth the economic payoff in the long run.
Look I am for GMO for a variety of reason, but the first time a kitten get calamari gene through cross breeding, or tomato get human gene through cross breeding, is the first time your argument will be valid. All those genes you speak of are either gained through virus over evolutionary period of time or simply because we had common ancestry and that again speaks of evolutionary time. It is plain misleading and genuinly make people mistrust usd when we try to "sell GMO" that people keep insisting that it is the same mechanism. When I try to sell nuclear power I don't fucking tell people it is the same principle as steam power. Because while superficially it is true, it is obvious to many that the heating element is utterly different. Stop being gits and pretend this is the same as cross breeding by farmer. It is not. But neither it is evil magic. It is just another form of easily transferring gene without spending 100000 of years.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I hate to tell people, but it's not so much about "unintended long term effects" as it is as a viable attack vector by corporations or governments. Control the food supply and you can put whatever you want in it, target whatever bodily system you want.
You are wrong. You will likely always be wrong, because that's the kind of stupid you are.
If consumers want labelling, why do they buy stuff that isn't labelled? Such products exist, so it's not because they aren't available. Yet, the overwhelming majority ignore such products. Perhaps you are confusing your wants with everyone else's? Perhaps you shouldn't project so much. Your interactions with real people might improve.
The GMO-free food should be labelled: CONTAINS CARBON.
Considering how many anti-GMO nuts are likely also scared by the idea of carbon, I think it would be a wonderful thing to do to their precious minds.
Don't you know? Democracy is only good when it comes to the same decision you would make. That's exactly how the Left thinks.
What is forgotten by people bashing GMO is that there is no one thing that is GMO. Any modification you make renders something GMO. Some are clearly innocuous, like tweaking the expression level of an existing gene, and some may potentially be dangerous, like expressing an insecticide in a plant. Making blanket statements about GMO foods is never going to cut it.
soylentnews.org
Could be in response to this 2013 statement by scientists warning of GMO risks?
"Global Scientists Issue Stunning GMO Safety Warning"
http://sustainablepulse.com/20...
A response coordinated by the agtech industry?
"107 Nobel Laureate Attack on Greenpeace Traced Back to Biotech PR Operators"
http://www.counterpunch.org/20...
That Plutonium is good for your health. There is no negative effect.
aaaaaaa
Why is using radiation okay but inserting a specific gene at a specific location not okay?
Because only the latter is clearly patentable. The EULA imposed by GMO plant patent holders tends to forbid saving seeds for replanting, and this is antithetical to traditional sustainable farming. It's the same reason that some people prefer free software.
Take the active ingredient of Vietnam-era Agent Orange and label it as RoundUp weed killer, then genetically modify plants to not die from this poison so that farmers can spray massive amounts ($$$$) of RoundUp on their crop. Only the crop survives. Everything else dies.
Monsanto 'forgot' to genetically modify humans. We are not 'RoundUp-Ready'. So while our GMO food drenched in RoundUp poison survives, we humans are not insensitive to it. Small amounts of Glyphosate are being found in every food ingredient, even in organic food grown close to fields where RoundUp is used. Organic plants also interbreed with GMO plants in the natural way, so 100% organic farmers are sued by Monsanto for what the military terms as 'Collatoral damage'. Organic farmers get sued for illegally using patented Monsanto seed that just blew over from GMO fields. And those farmers cannot pay the legal muscle to fight Monsanto... So everyone pays.
Monsanto is getting rich on poisining our food, racketeering our farmers, poisioning humans.
No, dummy. The point wasn't that consumers want labels on everything, but they clearly want labeling on GMOs. Research shows that up to 90% of consumers want GMO foods to be labeled.
http://www.justlabelit.org/wp-...
You are welcome on my lawn.
So is National Socialism but I see you didn't mention that irrational decision
"Actually this is 100% false. Not only do genes cross from species to species in nature, but it actually happens all the time. In fact the human genome -- your genome -- has some 100,000 gene fragments from some other species inserted into it. Three of those genes spliced into you are actually complete gene sequences, one of which is responsible for the human placenta."
Which is one documented problem with GMO's such as Round-Up-Ready. The changes pass to the weeds they are supposed to fight, (or the weeds naturally become immune to Round-Up) creating weeds that are harder to kill.
Most of us hippie-dippie conspracy-theory tree huggers just want GMO foods to be labeled so we can make informed decisions on our own. I personally would like to experiment to see if avoiding GMO foods will relieve my inflamed bowel syndrome. It seemed to while I visited France for a month two years ago, but I'm having trouble determining if it's GMOs or something else bothering me here in the USA because it's difficult to tell if I'm avoiding GMOs.
I also worry about a corporation whose business model is to be the sole source of all food seeds, GMO or not. Monopolies have been shown to be detrimental to the capitalistic system.
I had a child with a corn allergy (thank God she grew out of it...) I get the pain of avoiding corn in the modern diet.
The right answer, however, is proper labeling of CORN as it is a common allergen, though not typically causing as violent a reaction as say, peanuts.
As it stands those with this particular allergy are subject to a brutal game of epi-roulette identifying foods with corn in them.
--- Mercutio was right.
I'll stop bashing GMO foods when GMO foods stop being used as the means to legally ensure that there can be no such thing as self-sustaining food production.
exactly since humanity has been Genetically Modifying crops since before we as a species knew what genetics was.
Before making a fool of yourself, you should be looking for the opposite... ANYONE who says human excrement CAN be used on food crops. You won't find it.
But I can give you a start:
You'll find mostly the same restrictions, in almost every state.
Federal rules are... less concise. They require permitting, long time periods between last applying waste and when crops can be harvested, lots of remediation steps, etc., etc.:
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
In which country? It was my understanding that it had been grown privately by small groups in India and China. True, this was as a test, but if the farmers had thought it worthwhile they would have kept seeds.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Point of fact, the quote you've provided was from Greenpeace's apology, not from the assessment of the WaPo reporter. I'll take various studies with data to back them over Greenpeace FUD:
From the Wikipedia entry on Golden Rice:
Clinical trials/food safety and nutrition research
In 2009, results of a clinical trial of golden rice with adult volunteers from the US were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The trial concluded that "beta carotene derived from golden rice is effectively converted to vitamin A in humans". A summary for the American Society for Nutrition suggested that "Golden Rice could probably supply 50% of the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) of vitamin A from a very modest amount — perhaps a cup — of rice, if consumed daily. This amount is well within the consumption habits of most young children and their mothers".
It is well known that beta carotene is found and consumed in many nutritious foods eaten around the world, including fruits and vegetables. Beta carotene in food is a safe source of vitamin A.
The Food Allergy Resource and Research Program of the University of Nebraska undertook research in 2006 that showed the proteins from the new genes in golden rice showed no allergenic properties.
In August 2012, Tufts University and others published research on golden rice in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showing that the beta carotene produced by golden rice is as effective as beta carotene in oil at providing vitamin A to children.
So a biased source (advocates for labeling) fund and distribute the results of a "study" confirming the belief they wanted to confirm. I suppose they are learning from the worst - Tobacco, etc.
Cross breeding is a form of gmo - slow and crude perhaps but I do like the new corn
I'll believe, either way, after I've read the notes, tests and publications of the Scientists who are responsible for these innovative alterations.
I suspect you'll have more problems if you suggest putting human beings up for sale again, you won't even get to the point where labels would be useful.
I was a fan of gmo but if those dumb ass Nobel laureates endorse it I might have to rethink my position.
Vitamin pills, homeopathy and feng shui are just a few examples of irrational things that lead people to spend their money unwisely. In a free society, that's just part of life's rich tapestry. If a sufficiently significant proportion of the population wants labels, they should have labels. Your definition of irrationality is irrelevant.
No. Required labels should be for things that have demonstrable consequences for the consumer - anything else turns a useful tool for protecting customers into a political circus.
What's next, natural foods must be labeled "non-fortified"? Regular medicine - "non-homeopathic"? Houses that haven't been checked by charlatans have to be advertised as "potentially haunted" and have a "feng shui" rating?
You decided, without the availability of long-term studies regarding the effects of GMOs on health, to promote this crap.
So fuck off, all 109 of you.
I know there'll be flames, but I reject this message.
To get approval for a gmo, corporations like Monsanto have to submit 2 reports to the FDA saying the thing is better. Nobody cares if they (as is done) don't publish 5 or 10 unfavourable reports. That passes for "science." It's worth noting that approving GMOs as essentially the same as normal foods was done by an ex-Monsanto head of FDA against the advice of FDA Scientists. What do they know?
The soil degredation evident over 5 - 10 years with monoculture GMO crops is evidence that they're not the panacea they're cracked up to be. Instead of balanced natural soil diversity, repeated ploughing & spraying leaves the soil impoverished, the farmers with the expense of weedkillers, fungicides, pesticides, fertilisers and the food poisoned; the essential microbes & fungi in the soil are wiped out,. & worms greatly diminished. In some places, the workers on the breadline end up poisoned too, but have no choice but to continue.
Are they harmful to humans? Physically, I don't know, but I don't like where some genes inserted in foods are said to come from.
Economically, very often. All that Amazon rain forest cleared for GMO Soy & Corn has not brought wealth to the locals, but it degrades by the year.
The folks behind the campaign to include selective breeding as "Genetically Modified" earned their dollar. "Don't like GMO, then stop eating anything that grows". Changing the definition of something to turn public opinion isn't new, but it's a stretch to lump a lab manufactured genome in with dog breading.
But isn't urine generally sterile?
No. That is a myth. Urine is effectively sterile for your own body. But it can contain pathogens, and you should avoid coming in contact with other people's urine unless you're already coming into contact with their other bodily fluids and it doesn't matter. Even saliva is more dangerous than urine, unless it has blood in it, but that happens sometimes too.
What's not a myth is that composting toilets work, and they work fine. There's a shitload of them on the market, pun intended. You can also simply build Lengen's Bason Toilet or similar; the short form is that it's a concrete box trivially built on site, with a rebar crank in the bottom of the vault which is used to stir the contents in order to speed up composting. In less than a year, feces becomes soil that can be directly applied to your garden by hand without risk. Odor is managed by the use of an external exhaust which is piped above the dwelling, and a sealing seat. But here's what's interesting in light of your comment: urine is ideally separated. It can be used as high-nitrogen fertilizer after settling for twenty-four hours or so.
Here's the real rub: a decentralized fecal waste infrastructure like this, when used as the basis for fertilization of one's own food, is utterly and completely safe and saves significant amounts of energy. It is, in fact, the basis of real (Not "USDA certified") organic farming; a cyclical system that promotes personal health by promoting soil health. The closest thing to that with a certification label is "biodynamic" gardening, but that's also mixed up with some mystical claptrap that will probably keep it from ever becoming mainstream.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They just ignore the fact the 99% of GMO only "improvement" is to survive different pesticides that are sprayed in millons of tons over millon o people every year. Talking of golden rice is just a marketing stunt and not the issue, pesticides in the food are the issue, also it's been proven GMO DONT PRODUCE MORE, they even produce less than some agroecologic techniques.
Wow, the cynicism of Greenpeace knows no bounds. The international Rice Research Institute has had nothing but positive attitude towards Golden Rice. What's more they often decry the destructive actions of Greenpeace, an organization that may have been behind the destruction of the Rice Institute's Golden Rice test fields (although that is just a speculation) and now they dare to put these words in the Institute's mouth?!
Truly despicable.
Any respect that I might have once had for Greenpeace is gone.
Please no Ad Hominem Dr. Don Huber https://youtu.be/xKcjT5QK3Lg
I have to concede, you're right.
Now to move the goal posts: Anyone who won a Nobel prize for something they did.
At what point are people going to stop saying "just let me do this and we can feed more people" and realise that we are going to have to tackle the population growth problem?
That is not how "demand" works. Scientists need to make their case to consumers. Consumers have a right to demand the labels, full stop.
How's that working for you, full stop. Clue: It's not, full stop
Just another day in Paradise
Which is one documented problem with GMO's such as Round-Up-Ready. The changes pass to the weeds they are supposed to fight, (or the weeds naturally become immune to Round-Up) creating weeds that are harder to kill.
They're not harder to kill, just harder to kill with roundup.
Many GMO foodstuffs are modified so that they tolerate far greater levels of pesticides, herbicides, etc. Those GMOs may not be harmful, but the elevated levels of 'cides means elevated levels in our meals That cannot be good.
Many others are modified so the pant produces pesticides, etc themselves. Again, that cannot be good.
Some people have food intolerances or allergies. New chemicals in their food can set off new intolerances and allergies.
Many GMO foodstuffs have been shown to NOT improve the productivity over time of a farm.
Many 'cides have been shown to kill off the organic productivity of the soil, so that the farmer is more and more reliant on chemical soil boosting, to make up for soil impoverishment.
There are far too many downsides to a lot of GMO, and unproven upsides.
It's all a scam.
wake up and hold your nose
Anti-GMO. The people pushing to prevent technologies that would allow people in third world to continue to live. If we start having food shortages you can bet it won't kill people in North America or Europe, at least not until most of the third world is completely wiped out.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
There is general scientific agreement that food on the market derived from these crops poses no greater risk to human health than conventional food, but should be tested on a case-by-case basis. Scientists tend to be more concerned about the potential for genetically modified organisms to cause ecological damage.
From Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food_controversies )