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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.
Actually, social science is important for the GMO debate: a significant portion of it is how it makes people dependent on corporations with tight imaginary property control and what impacts that could have in the long run. That remains even if the biological arguments of the opposers to GMO are shown to be invalid.
Ezekiel 23:20
Did you even read thhe summary? Hint: look at the last sentence.
lucm, indeed.
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.
Tight corporate IP control and the potential for homogeneity in the food supply are both valid concerns wrt/ GMO food. But aside from the occasional, non-specific, and inarticulate rant of "Monsanto is teh evilz!"; a very tiny minority of the anti-GMO crowd addresses either of those issues.
Instead, it's nearly all incoherent rants about how "frankenfood" is not what "mother nature" intended for us to eat. They don't cite scientific research to support their arguments, they cite "alternative medicine" websites and some random person's blog. They don't use dispassionate reason and peer review, they use scare tactics and heartstrings. Sorry. But these are not the sort of people with whom I care to have any sort of conversation.
We can solve the corporate control problem with patent reform. Drop them back to the original term of 14 years, close the "change one minor thing and re-patent" loophole, and make damn sure they STAY at 14 years and don't let them ever become renewable or extended and grow out of control like copyright has. Frankly, I don't begrudge a business a 14-year monopoly on "super rice" or "Roundup Ready" whatever... Or, for that matter, a song or a movie, 14 years would be perfectly fine and respectable for copyright too... so long as everything did truly enter the public domain at the end of that term.
The problem of very productive GMOs encouraging homogeneity in the food supply would be a bit harder and would require more nuance, and possibly regulation, to solve. But I'm sure if we disregard the scaremongers and consider things reasonably; we could work the problem and figure a solution.
Imagine all the people...
The logical argument against GMOs is not that there is anything wrong with modifying genomes
No, it is and always has been exactly that. Where do you think the whole "frankenfood" argument comes from? Stop being so naive.
which is to be raised in soils heavily laden with chemicals
If chemicals are bad, then quite honestly, you should just stop eating period. Every plant that exists is made up of thousands of chemicals. In fact you should stop drinking and breathing too for the same reason. You should probably stop existing too, because your body has thousands of chemicals within it as well.
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.
No, they haven't. Glyphosate in particular has only been found dangerous to those who handle massive quantities of it at a time, just like many other chemicals, including ones that reside within your body and are supposed to be there. And autism? Are you fucking kidding me? Do you have any idea what autism even is? No, of course you don't; you listen to whatever bro science you find on AlexJones.com and believe it's fact without bothering to cross check it. And besides, your claim is complete bullshit:
http://www.snopes.com/medical/...
People like you are the reason so many hipster douches are horribly wrong on this issue. You are seriously exactly the type of person who would have followed Hitler just because he made a bunch of populist (yet very incorrect) arguments about why Jews are ruining the world. Think as an individual for once in your life. If a bunch of your friends or some "really cool dude" you know makes an incredible claim, view it with a critical eye until you've done your own research. Pamphlets handed around and random "nature is best" blogs don't count as research, in case you had to ask.
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...
GMO is for Liberals
As
Global Warming is for conservatives
Liberals have a hard time realizing that something is safe.
While conservatives have a hard time realizing that something is dangerious.
We need to take the political nonsence out of science and teach science as it suppose to be a method of determining truth by a rigorous set of rules. Let's not put on TV every new hypothesis and call it a theory. So people jump blindly on scientific guesses before the process runs it corse.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.