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Planting GMOs Kills So Many Bugs That It Helps Non-GMO Crops (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: One of the great purported boons of GMOs is that they allow farmers to use fewer pesticides, some of which are known to be harmful to humans or other species. Bt corn, cotton, and soybeans have been engineered to express insect-killing proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, and they have indeed been successful at controlling the crops' respective pests. They even protect the non-Bt versions of the same crop that must be planted in adjacent fields to help limit the evolution of Bt resistance. But new work shows that Bt corn also controls pests in other types of crops planted nearby, specifically vegetables. In doing so, it cuts down on the use of pesticides on these crops, as well.
Entomologists and ecologists compared crop damage and insecticide use in four agricultural mid-Atlantic states: New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. Their data came from the years before Bt corn was widespread (1976-1996) and continued after it was adopted (1996-2016). They also looked at the levels of the pests themselves: two different species of moths, commonly known as the European corn borer and corn earworm. They were named as scourges of corn, but their larvae eat a number of different crops, including peppers and green beans. After Bt corn was planted in 1996, the number of moths captured for analysis every night in vegetable fields dropped by 75 percent. The drop was a function of the percentage of Bt corn planted in the area and occurred even though moth populations usually go up with temperature. So the Bt corn more than counteracted the effect of the rising temperatures we've experienced over the quarter century covered by the study.
Entomologists and ecologists compared crop damage and insecticide use in four agricultural mid-Atlantic states: New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. Their data came from the years before Bt corn was widespread (1976-1996) and continued after it was adopted (1996-2016). They also looked at the levels of the pests themselves: two different species of moths, commonly known as the European corn borer and corn earworm. They were named as scourges of corn, but their larvae eat a number of different crops, including peppers and green beans. After Bt corn was planted in 1996, the number of moths captured for analysis every night in vegetable fields dropped by 75 percent. The drop was a function of the percentage of Bt corn planted in the area and occurred even though moth populations usually go up with temperature. So the Bt corn more than counteracted the effect of the rising temperatures we've experienced over the quarter century covered by the study.
Are you a bug?
We already have roundup-resitant amaranth. I can't wait for BT resistant insects.
For the same reason birds can eat holly, deer can eat hellbore, and butterflies can eat milkweed,but you can't... you fucking imbecile.
The "pesticide" is a 100% natural component, harmless to all life except for a few specific bugs that can't digest it, and has absolutely no negative effects.
Luddites like you need to be hung from lampposts.
So you think peanuts are poison?
[nt]
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Just in case anyone thought that a bug-free world would be a wonderful thing.
What a massive load of fear mongering bullshit... The pesticides you're celebrating killed bees and other animals, seeped into drinking water, caused a worldwide spike in cancer, thyroid disease, and sterility. The GMO "pesticide" you're decrying is entirely natural and non-toxic to anything except for a few specific species of insects.
The whole "gluten free" diet craze and celiac disease may be more of an allergy to genetically modified wheat than gluten
In Europe we basically have no GMO corn/wheat. Nevertheless quite a few people have problems with gluten.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It doesn't matter how many studies there are that show the good effects of GMO, people will still oppose them, and mostly for irrational reasons. Furthermore, they will ignore the times when natural foods are harmful or when non-gmo has ended up with poisonous foods. Again, for mostly irrational reasons.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
explain how it is that corn that kills bugs isn't poisonous?
Oxygen is poisonous to many living things.
Back in the pre-GMO days, sprayed pesticides could be washed off. Sprayed pesticides are primarily concentrated on the OUTSIDE of vegetables. Husks and pod shells are typically discarded and protect our food from being contaminated by pesticides. It was more labor intensive for the farmers, sure, but the food was likely healthier for consumers.
Healthier except for the people ingesting the pesticides that had contaminated their drinking water?
Silly person. You’re using these pesky things called “facts” where as the GP’s fact-free opinion is clearly superior and more correct.
Corn, wheat, and soybeans were some of the first crops to be genetically modified.
Total hogwash. There is no commercially grown GMO wheat, and neither corn nor soybeans contain gluten.
100% natural? No, it's fucking spliced in, there's nothing 100% natural about it. It's literally a cell program to cause the corn to secret pesticides.
but it doesn't kill all of them :(
[($)]
Oxygen? That's a toxic chemical! I'll stick with all natural organic cyanide.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Growing anything to decent yields involves pesticides, in one form or another. Your typical Non-GMO, certified organic produce gets sprayed with pesticides too, it's just a list of old pesticides. Heck, compounds that you naturally find in many plants harm insects already. Humans have an immune system: Do you think that plants are helpless? What we do with pesticides, and GMOs in particular, is to make the plants 'win' their race vs insects and diseases faster than they would without is. Now, what really matters is how much of the pesticide remains in what we eat, and how toxic it is to humans or other parts of the ecosystem we don't want to harm. Take neem oil: OK for humans, not terrible for birds, but then when it's washed off into the river, fish get poisoned, and organic farmers raise their hands and claim they are not to blame for anything.
To our knowledge, bt toxins are not a big issue for humans: First, you have to still manage to eat a lot of that stuff, which is no easy, given that the toxins break down. But if you end up eating a huge dose for some reason, you might get allergy-like symptoms, and the toxins will break down in your body in a couple of days. There's many dangerous liquids to drink in a modern farm, but a swig of a bt liquid is not anywhere near the top half. Now, if anything, the GMO makes things better than the old alternative of spraying with the same toxin: It's produced in the leaves, which is probably not what you eat, and will stop being produced when the plant's cells die.
So the answer is 'we are pretty sure bt toxins are pretty benign compared to other pesticides and herbicides' If you want to complain about something GMO companies are doing nowadays, see what is happening with Dicamba, which is just too good of a herbicide, and either the tests for the new formulation's safety are wrong, or many farmers just fail to follow the directions.
You forgot the /sarcasm
I've met more conservatives (think: antiscience) than liberals with issues about GMOs.
Hm, missed biology classes often?
Like to recall what the lethal dose is to kill a kg of bugs and what it is for humans?
Ah, ha? Does it ring s bell?
No? Then shut your mouth.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
All other aspects are secondary or non-existent wiped under the table.
It cannot be what may not be is the policy.
The minds of the actors in this game are convoluted and corrupt.
Good luck!
Perhaps it doesn't kill us right off the bat, but I suspect it still does some damage to our guts.
I don't. The Cry toxin produced by Bt crops works by binding to a receptor that mammals simply don't have.
I am very leery of eating popcorn nowadays because it seems to irritate my guts quite a bit.
Popcorn is a specific variety of corn. People don't seem to realize it, but field corn, sweet corn, and popcorn do not come from the same types of corn. A lot of field corn is GE, some sweet corn is GE, but there are no genetically engineered popcorn varieties on the market.
Reducing pesticide sprays SOUNDS like a good thing, until you realize that the GMO plants and produce are pesticides themselves, inside and out.
What do you think is happening when non-transgenic crops are conventionally bred to more pest resistant? Chemical defenses, otherwise known as pesticides, are a key method of defense for a kingdom of organisms that can't swat at the things eating them. All plants produce pesticides, every last one of them. Every species you eat brings you more and more pesticides. With genetic engineering, they're just doing one more. I don't see that as alarming in the slightest.
Killing bugs isn't a good thing.
That it kill bugs in a large area isn't positive.
Perhaps ironically, in most cases this would be more healthy than either GMO or non-GMO corn.
...is entirely natural and non-toxic to anything except for a few specific species of insects.
allegedly
Equate to large tumors in mice
NEWSFLASH: Rats bred specifically to develop tumours tend to develop tumours. This groundbreaking revaluation brought to you by "Dr" Seralini.
explain how it is that corn that kills bugs isn't poisonous?
Explain how chocolate which kills dogs isn't poisonous?
Sure, but jalapenos don't give you Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma.
And Vaccines! A lot of them are made with genetically modified organisms as well. /s
> In Europe we basically have no GMO corn/wheat. Nevertheless quite a few people have problems with gluten.
Not in SE Europe, and compare to us, the rest of you don't even eat wheat or wheat products.
No, you don't.
1) He didn't say DDT never hurt anyone. He said the study on which the ban was based was flawed.
2) He said nothing about malaria vaccination.
3) He did not say anything close to your twisted straw-man version.
Zero for three. You are worse at hand-waving and fact-twisting than the people you detest, but you can't see it.
The things that kill bugs don't affect humans most the time.
Plants do have toxins which affect mammals to various degrees. For example, after a drought in Texas the surviving grass was fairly toxic to cows and it put off seed that produced grass that was fatal to cows.
Many foods humans eat require fermentation, cooking, aging, grinding, washing, deskinning and other preparation methods.
And it's a problem when humans eat these food "raw". Raw vegetables can be bad for you. Juicing uncooked Kale, Broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables are known to enlarge your thyroid when eaten raw in larger quantities.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Perhaps ironically, in most cases this would be more healthy than either GMO or non-GMO corn.
How's that line working?
Unless there are side-effects from its widespread use that are not apparent from small scale use. Like most of nature, it depend upon probabilities.
Also, it is probably not a wise idea to screw with the bottom of the food chain, especially when we live at the top.
please, let's not bring Jimmy Carter into this.
In other words, we expect you to pay up even if you don't use them.
At the bottom of the
But how about the insects that are beneficial for us humans one way or another? They may as well be impacted by this and that's concerning.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Why does everything need to have a negative trade off?
Sure it is great for stories but in real life things are not fair or balanced.
They are usually trade off of some sort, they are not usually a measurable 50/50 split. Often they are 80 good and 20 bad. In many was it is less of a trade off but an opportunity cost.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Its cute how you two fuktards didn't try to dispute my FACTs... just started trolling. VERY Telling about the condition of Slashdot these days. Thank you for showing off just how PATHETIC you are. The fact that people think you two fuktards are "Funny" is just disgusting....
What facts? The Séralini study have been severely debunked and have since been retracted.
Not only that but Seralini also doesn't understand statistics: "A 2015 reanalysis of multiple animal studies found that Seralini chose to forgo statistical tests in the main conclusions of the study. Using Seralini's published numerical data, the review found no significant effects on animal health after analysis with statistical tests."
Well for one there does not exist any GMO popcorn so your troubles with popcorn must definitely does not come from GMO:s. Secondly the exact method how BT works is well known and only effects insects, in fact BT is actually naturally produced and is also used as a pesticide by non-GMO farmers (including organic farmers).
And no you cannot just wash off sprayed pesticides, the pesticides leaks down into the ground where the plants roots are and thus is also gets inside the plants. Compare this with a GMO such as BT Cotton where the Cotton itself produces BT which is a process that stops as soon as you harvest (i.e kill the cotton) it.
BT is produced by i.e caterpillars in nature, it's not an invented chemical. It's also used as a pesticide by non-GMO farmers including organic farmers. And the method by which BT affects insects is well known and understood, the things it attacks in the insects does not even exist in mammals.
Hardly, more like 99%
So ban all farming? Or are people actually believing that non-GMO and/or organic farming does not use pesticides that affect the insects and environment in way more ways than these GMO crops?
Well when you considering that "Flying Insects Have Been Disappearing Over the Past Few Decades, Study Shows" and that "Even Common Species Are Becoming Rare", this may not such good news after all.
Why would producers genetically modify crops to tear up your guts from the inside? That does not sound like a viable business strategy (nor legal).
Yes that study was poorly done. However a major problem with DDT is that it's half-life in soil can be between 20 days and 30 years and it will bio accumulate in i.e birds. In the war against malaria these things might well be less dangerous that the malaria so there DDT might have a good use but that is a different question.
It has never been found to be cancerous. Yes a working group of the WHO (IARC) released a paper in 2015 where it claimed to link glyphosate to cancer but it turned out that every citation in their study pointed in the opposite direction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
an nor does GMO:s or glyphosate.
Organic farmers uses tons of pesticides including BT. What organic farmers cannot use is synthetic pesticides.
So cells and DNA are not natural now?
We poisoned the food instead. But don't worry, they say this poison is friendly. Friendly to us, our bodies, our guys, our microbiome, our unborn children, to plants and insects we need to survive, to our ecology.
Like Casper, the friendly ghost.
If the insects wouldn't want then they wouldn't die from trying to eat them.
(for varying values of Monsanto)
They already do it when the seeds drift.
If they can show the benefit of the GE crop has drifted they will assign a value to that benefit and send a lawyer and an invoice.
https://www.vanityfair.com/new...
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
No that is not what TFS or TFA claimed and nor what is happening. The GMO crops kept the population of pests in control which helped the non GMO crops (since the number of pests is lower). There have not been a single instance of a GMO crop spreading it's modified genes to other crops, so how you can say that it's a "well-known behaviour" is quite strange, one could almost say that it's a lie.
Bt corn contains a protein toxic to insects. If you consume said protein, it denatures in your stomach acid and becomes an amino acid nutrient source for you.
We used to spray Bt on crops, meaning anything that touched it--lady bugs, mantises, honeybees, the like--would pick up residue, and end up ingesting the pesticide. Now we put it into the plant by genetics, and so insects have to eat the plant to ingest the chemical. They chew on corn leaves and die.
Considering that the bugs damage plants because the plants are a food source (population growth in abundance) and we've made part of that food source toxic, it's unsurprising planting Bt corn would protect nearby crops.
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Bees consume pollen from Bt corn. It seems to not affect them in the slightest, in terms of survival, weight, and colony performance. Study notes there are many fiddly-bits we could look into to determine if Bt-fed bees are identifiably-distinct from non-Bt-fed bees.
They fed these bees using pollen cakes wholly made of Bt corn pollen, so they have maximized the diet. The only bees with a distinct statistical outcome are those fed Imidacloprid (flea killer).
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Uh... chocolate contains a toxic alkaloid, just in low concentrations. Your dog is less-good at metabolizing it properly.
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Plants do have toxins which affect mammals to various degrees.
I've got a plant growing in my yard that can give you a heart attack if consumed in large enough quantity (and it's not very much). If you use a hydrochloric acid bath to extract the alkaloids, wash away the l enantiomer with Chloroform (only the l enantiomer is soluble), extract the d enantiomer in ether (both are soluble), and then remove the single oxygen atom from the molecule using a volatile hydrocarbon as a wash, you get a white powder called d-n-methyl-alpha-methyl-phenyl-ethyl-amine hydrochlorate salt, or d-Methamphetamine HCl for short. Not something you want in your body.
If you nibble on it a bit, it'll clear your sinuses.
the surviving grass was fairly toxic to cows and it put off seed that produced grass that was fatal to cows.
Apparently the toxin in peanuts was evolved through selective breeding. By accident.
Let's not get into the whole capsicum annum species.
Many foods humans eat require fermentation, cooking, aging, grinding, washing, deskinning and other preparation methods.
Taro root, along with anything else containing oxalic acid or calcium oxalate.
Raw vegetables can be bad for you
Soy beans.
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Sure, some things are poisonous to other creatures but not humans, and vice-versa. Dogs can't eat as much chocolate as humans and survive. Chocolate is thus a poison (toxin) but it's harmless to Humans (and many other animals).
Some of it comes down to pH, Human stomachs are acidic, insect guts are basic. It makes sense that strong chemicals in the complete opposite direction (pH wise) are going to have different effects.
Agree with all you said but I think your corn reaction could be a lifetime worth of systemic damage caused by eating plain, non-GMO corn. Unlike us, the original Americans knew corn is harmful without processing. Please google https://www.google.com/search?...
> Are you a bug?
My rare condition that you've never heard of is due to a malfunction in a gene we have in common with slime mold. If you are enough of a science groupie to defend Monsanto, then you should also believe in evolution and grok the possibilities there.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
nixtamalization
> Why would producers genetically modify crops to tear up your guts from the inside? That does not sound like a viable business strategy (nor legal).
Based on that we would have no cigarettes, booze, opiods, lead paint, asbestos, or exploding cars.
Do you have such naieve blind faith in government too?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The whole "gluten free" diet craze and celiac disease may be more of an allergy to genetically modified wheat than gluten
In Europe we basically have no GMO corn/wheat. Nevertheless quite a few people have problems with gluten.
For the most part "problems" with gluten in Europe are imagined... Same goes for anywhere else. Very few people actually have Celiac or a gluten intolerance and most people pretending gluten is a problem for them are just following a fad diet.
It's got nothing to do with whether wheat is GMO or not.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Thank you for your insightful and well thought out post. I particularly enjoy the part where you back up your assertion with anything at all.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
explain how it is that corn that kills bugs isn't poisonous?
Explain how chocolate which kills dogs isn't poisonous?
Bad example... Chocolate is poisonous. Humans can simply metabolise more of it. Chocolate contains Theobromine, which is the poisonous bit. However it has such a weak effect on us humans that it takes approximately 40 KG of milk chocolate to create a potentially fatal dose.
With pesticides, they're usually targeting a receptor or chemical that humans simply don't have.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Did we know those pesticides were going to do all that before we started using them? I guess we knew they were harmful to humans, but never thought it would do all the things you describe.
I wonder what history will tell us about these "natural" solutions in GMO food. I'm no expert, but gut bacteria (for example) is just getting some attention, and isn't well understood. Do we know (for example) that eating GMO food doesn't harm gut bacteria? What about the bajillion other things we need to keep us alive and healthy?
GMO is a bit like nuclear power. There's a need for some of it, but no where near as much as the initial hype indicates, and history will show us that humans can pretty much f-up even the most noble, well designed and well intentioned things, given enough time and enough money to corrupt a few people in charge.
butbut! GMO! evil! the devil! Unnatural!
PLEASE let us educate our GMO fearing, but responsible friends that love nature, that GMO tech is not dangerous, but PATENTS on FOODCROPS are!
#monsantostillevil
How condescending of you. Most people aren't pretending, they're arguably confusing the specific component of those products that's making them sick, but that doesn't mean that they aren't on the right track. There's more than one component in wheat and while it's a mistake to assign every wheat related intolerance to gluten, it's not helpful to have people like you being condescending pricks about it.
Just because that particular thing is natural in one organism, doesn't mean that it's OK to put it into a different one.
Welp, there goes our stem-cell research, then. /sad-trombone
No. Conservative crazies are worried about chemtrails and fluoridation. Liberal crazies are worried about GMO and vaccination. Keep it straight!
Not judging the GMO debate here. This could be linked to the problem with giant monoculture. Of course with only one species grown on large areas, the respective pest will strive. Here we have multiple species, engineered to be nearly the same except for bug resistance, so the bug population is kept under control. Before we had smaller areas, with completely different species, some of those who also did not share the same bugs and the result was the same: more bug diversity, which also means less of the bad one. I think it has been known for some time now that growing multiple, different species will reduce pests proliferation.
What sig ?
You hypothesize, you experiment, and then comes the bit that a lot of people struggle with - you LEARN. And then, the even harder bit, you don't repeat the mistakes.
GMO, as practiced in the early days, was a disastrous mistake.
GMO, as practiced now, is not peer-reviewed, is patented to prevent testing of claims, and is wrapped in trade secrets. That puts it closer to witchcraft than science.
GMO, as it could be done, would be properly and independently tested, peer-reviewed and would not involve non-specific toxins. Ideally, it wouldn't involve toxins at all. You can always increase yield and plant height. The former reduces the fraction of the crop lost and the latter reduces crop lost by weeds and ground pests. Most early varieties of wheat and corn grew much taller, so it's gene replacement therapy not GMO.
Oh, and those buggers can get off my lawn!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Sterile GMO bug killing plants YOU DO NOT EAT which exist solely to kill pests! ,etc.)
No contamination, corps get their money replanting without banning sane farming (seed collection, replanting, not infecting the genepool
Time for the rodent eating venus fly trap mixed with snake DNA!
How about a spider plant-- made with real spider DNA?
Scarecrow plants... ah, no... we didn't put in human DNA... (hey, did that plant just move towards us?)
Instead of wasting efforts to hide harm done to our foods by biohacking analog systems we don't hardly understand at any level, we can just make some seriously fatal plants that get the job done! NO NEED to seriously regulate them-- because nobody eats them except pests!
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> Are you a bug?
I'm a feature.
Have you ever heard the phrase "couldn't see the forest for the trees"?
"Vaccines are beneficial, GMO has yet to offer any significant benefit."
Except the removal of various pests from destroying our crops? Avoiding famine is a fairly significant benefit.
"Vaccines are peer-reviewed, GMO is not."
Yes, and no. If you are speaking in a strictly academic sense, then yes, I concede that vaccines may be more closely reviewed than GMO crops. However, GMO crops are still closely watched, by the producer of that seed, the farmers who grow it, and the government.
"Vaccines are not made with the sort of GMO that is of concern."
Oh, I think it is of some concern. Fear of GMO leads to fear of Vaccines -> I imagine there is a wonderful diagram that shows a beautiful convergence between people who fear GMO, and Anti-Vaxxers.
"Only a moron links unassociated issues. Don't be a moron."
Ad hominem.
"Oh, and get off my lawn."
You seem to be associating my high uid with age; this is not the first account I've made on /. (lost the password to the original).
Planting BT GMOs kills most Moths and Butterflies in the area around the field, as well as in it.
Moths and butterflies are pollinators, so killing most of them means killing most of their pollinated plants.
Many pollinated plants have very specific pollinators, so killing the moths and butterflies kills the pollinated plants.
Many times, if the species is not wiped out, the bugs will develop resistance in the survivors.
So eventually some of the bugs could come back slowly, in areas not inclement to the bugs.
Another words, the bugs may not die out in the optimum environments, and then spread back out.
This process can be very slow.
They die out elsewhere because they are already weakened by the pesticide.
In the meantime, foods are eliminated from our diet.
People could wind u starving in some areas because of the GMOs.
Other GMOs are resistant to pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides used on them.
This means that stronger spraying can be done on these crops.
The stronger spraying is also killing many pollinators like bees, (honey bees, solitary species, bumblebees); pollen wasps (Masarinae); ants; flies including bee flies, hoverflies and mosquitoes; lepidopterans, both butterflies and moths; and flower beetles. Vertebrates, mainly bats and birds, but also some non-bat mammals (monkeys, lemurs, possums, rodents) and some lizards pollinate certain plants. Among the pollinating birds are hummingbirds, honeyeaters and sunbirds with long beaks; they pollinate a number of deep-throated flowers.
Die-offs of bees and hummingbirds are already occurring.
Many food crops require pollinators, or GMO seeds.
Not good for the world.
wake up and hold your nose
So is oxygen. We're just good at living with just the right amount of it. Breath pure O2 for several hours straight will render you blind, unable to go back to breahing normal air, followed by nervous system shutdown and then death.
The concentration makes the poison
I am very leery of eating popcorn nowadays because it seems to irritate my guts quite a bit.
Check your gall bladder.
I had a similar problem several years ago. I'd go the movies and get the ginormous tub of popcorn. I'd wake up in the morning with a pain. But it would be gone by lunchtime.
Then it was a sharper pain in the morning. But it would be okay by lunchtime and be gone by dinner. But it took longer and longer to recover and the pain was worse and worse.
Finally, when it was really bad, I went to the hospital. I was thinking it might be my appendix or something. Turned out my gall bladder was gangrenous and that corn, being difficult to digest, would exacerbate the problem.
I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on television, but it's worth getting it checked.
There's no evidence that it removes pests any better than any other method, so that's not a reason, that's an excuse.
GMO is not closely watched, that is prohibited under the licensing agreements. As for the government, no, they obviously don't watch either, which is why destroyed stock ends up in the market place. They also don't have any competency, and the EPA has been practically shut down by Trump.
If you were my age, or with my background (which, interestingly, includes not only academia, science and farming, but technology as well), you'd have known better.
And, yes, I consider you a youngster if you don't remember the other methods used for pest control.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Not to mention DHMO. That shit is in our drinking water, too.
Quite easy. I can eat onions. Onions can kill a dog or cat. They have a compound that causes red blood cells in dogs and cats to rupture. Just because it's poisonous to them doesn't mean it's poisonous to me.
DHMO is not organic, quite inorganic in fact.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
You can stop using a GMO just as you can stop using a pesticide. There have still to this day not been a single incident with a GMO spreading it's modified genes to another plant/crop.
None of those teared up your guts and killed you straight out directly. Cigarettes will take decades in order to kill you while they at the same time make you addictive so it's one hell of a good business model (not counting morality here). Booze and Opiods are not killing you unless you abuse them. Lead paint and asbestos have their place as well, it's just that you cannot use them everywhere and they where both used way before we discovered that they where bad for your health (they both go back thousands of years).
Never heard of any one deliberately creating exploding cars.
Except of course that GMO:s are not from the "same brain trust that thought that DDT was OK or that is currently killing off bees through pesticide use". DDT was discovered and put to use in a time when there where no control of what substances companies and people used. GMO:s are put through many extensive tests before they are allowed on the market, something that i.e is not done for cross-breading which is what should scare you more.
Farmers don't watch their crops? Licensing agreements for GMO organisms forbid farmers from watching those organisms as they grow? You took your stupid pills this morning, didn't you.
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I see that you don't recognize that you've just made an argument and refuted it, all in one run-on sentence.
The rest of your post if chock full of false limiting assumptions, hyperbole, and silly panic.
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15 words out of 50. That's 30%.
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Your banana claim is false. There are still small areas of old-style banana production.
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Vaccines are beneficial, GMO has yet to offer any significant benefit.
Total utter bullshit. GMO has proven to be incredibly effective at its goals, primarily among them is increasing crop yields. The number one reason behind destruction of forests and other habitats is to make way for more farmland. GMO has already gone a long ways in reducing the landmass AND water required for farming. The reason you don't know this is because you're willfully ignorant about it and you're only willing to look for something bad to say about it.
Why do you think farmers have adopted it en masse, in spite of patent royalties often attached? Because it still reduces their cost. (Once Monsanto's glyphosate resistance patent expired, many university and other sources began giving the seeds away for free because they recognize its environmental benefits.)
I don't know your motivations, but presumably they include one or all of:
- Generally thinking natural is either usually or always better (false)
- GMO is a corporate conspiracy (false)
- GMO causes cancer (this is a whopper: the scientist who tried to prove GMO causes cancer committed scientific fraud, just like the one who tried to prove vaccination causes autism)
- GMO is deleterious to human health (false)
- GMO is bad for the environment (another whopper, people who talk about bad agricultural practices and tie them to GMO conveniently ignore that all of those apply to traditional crops as well.)
- GMO contaminates wild plants (In the past this was feasible, but not anymore.)
- We don't know what all genetic modification does, therefore it's better to ban it (false and false; unlike other methods of getting plants to have desired traits, we know EXACTLY what the modification did because it is very precise and targeted, whereas other methods we have no idea what all changed.)
- OH MY GOD FRANKENFOOD! They put a salmon gene in the tomatoes they sell! Scary! (This was actually an experiment to better understand how certain genes work. They've done similar things like put eye genes from a rabbit into a fruit fly, replacing its own eye genes. This was an experiment to prove that genes are modular between species. I somehow doubt they intend to put fruit flies on store shelves.)
- GMO is bad because Monsanto (This is easily the most senseless argument. Yes, Monsanto has a history of unethical behavior, and yes, they hold a number of gene patents. But this is as senseless as saying that we should stop using computers because of Microsoft and Google.)
Tese arguments are all very similar (if not the same) as the arguments anti-vaxxers use. They also, like you, believe that their hated subject provides no benefit. This is why those of us who take a more objective approach to this can't tell the difference between you and anti-vaxxers: You're the same thing, only with the sole exception that you're against GMO instead. Much like vaccination, nearly every scientist that has gone against GMO has credibility problems.
I'm not surprised that there are more anti GMO people than anti-vaxxers though, namely because of the billions of dollars spent to lobby against it, as well as paying lots of money to commission studies to try to find anything that they possibly can to use against it. The organic industry (which has huge profits and deep pockets, and many big name brands you see at every grocery store, gives them lobbying money) is trying its hardest to gain regulatory capture by having its biggest competitor banned.
Greenpeace is also lobbying against this, and in a really bad way: Organic food, which they promote, is BAD BAD BAD for the environment. Really, it is, and the fact is that it doesn't actually provide any proven benefit at all. Organic is incredibly wasteful on both landmass and water usage. Essentially, organic is what you get when you revert agricultural technology to what we had in the 1950s. If the whole world suddenly went on an organic diet, you would see mass famines overnight -- including
The abbreviation you want is e.g., not i.e.
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All those people wailing about species going extinct are going to be delighted to learn that GMO plants are extinction-proof, unlike every other living thing.
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So, can you give us a definition of "GMO" that this bad, such that non-bad things don't fall under that definition? Because 'GMO' is a very vague term that could refer to either insect-killing pesticide-built-in corn, or it could be as simple as Golden Rice which has beta-carotene.
You deliberately ignored the word "primarily". Most pesticides can be almost entirely washed off.
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The whole "gluten free" diet craze and celiac disease may be more of an allergy to genetically modified wheat than gluten, in my opinion.
Good thing it's just an opinion because you are horrendously ill-informed about those two concepts.
Gluten is a specific protein produced by wheat, barley, rye, and other grain crops. The issues with gluten manifest as either celiac's disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Celiac's is an immune response that triggers in the small intestine which can lead to damage in the intestine which prevents nutrient absorption. People with this condition can eat wheat if it is the parts of the wheat plant that do not contain gluten. If you really want to go down this path of GMO inducing celiacs then by all means finance a study to identify whether GMO vs non-GMO gluten proteins differ as the reaction in the intestine is known to be to these specific proteins.
Wheat allergies, on the other hand, are when proteins in wheat, there's 27 of them including gluten, cause the body to create antibodies in response. Wheat allergy can manifest itself throughout the entire digestive tract as well manifest itself in the respiratory system with inflammation and tightening of the tissue. Since the allergy can be in response to any of the wheat proteins you can't have any wheat. Like the gluten concept, it's almost undeniable that wheat allergies have nothing to do with GMO products most since it is quite easy to show that individuals with wheat allergies do have allergic reactions to spelt.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
For the most part "problems" with gluten in Europe are imagined... Same goes for anywhere else. Very few people actually have Celiac or a gluten intolerance and most people pretending gluten is a problem for them are just following a fad diet.
Which I'm totally fine with. My sister has Celiac's and the various places that either have gluten-free offerings or don't look at you like you're crazy when you ask what can be made gluten-free means she can usually dine out with us now. So maybe there's some fad stuff going around, but it side-benefits those who absolutely can't have gluten.
As per usual with he left, irrational fear of progress and chemicals killed off millions of people - in this instance, through malaria. Humorously your single post furthering this lie may kill more children than any kind of attack ever has or will.
3) Anyone who disagrees is directly responsible for killing children.
3) He did not say anything close to your twisted straw-man version.
Sounds like he summed it up pretty accurately to me.
depends on how much weight we put into each word considering the context of what was discussed
BT corn planted adjacent to non-corn crops caused moth numbers to decline in the area of non-corn crops. it sounds great to suggest that BT corn was infecting non-GMO corn, which there's evidence of, but that is hardly what the article was writing about unless you're seriously suggesting that BT corn is capable of cross-breeding with peppers and green beans in the wild.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Most bread is made from wheat ... or pizza, or pasta.
No idea what you are talking about.
And most important: most grains contain gluten, not only wheat.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
For the most part "problems" with gluten in Europe are imagined... Same goes for anywhere else. /. : You are an idiot!
Frankly, I hate me to say that so often on
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Modded me Flamebait, really? So much for a rational discussion. I see the GM trolls are hard at work today.
I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein
OK, your argument is filled with these pesky things like "facts" and "reasoned logical argument". But, as an ignorant layperson, putting stuff in my food that kills bugs seems like it could have the potential to cause me harm as well (history seems to suggest that much perceived as safe ends up not so safe) . And as a privileged westener with the ability to pay extra for the non sustainable "organic" food. Why wouldn't I?
Demand all you want, just like all the other two-year-olds.
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I've planted my field with plants that exude a powerful lawyercide.
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This makes me want to get rid of my computer.
--
I like to run on a treadmill because I love to hate myself sometimes -- Laura
The use of DDT to control Malaria also save millions of lives.
As to GMOs being natural and there for safe, that is also nonsense. Long ago a bug resistant celery was produced using traditional plant breeding techniques. Worked great, except if slightly bruised it produced a lot of toxin that ended up killing a few people.
There is a difference between GMOs and cross-bred plants. For one thing, in cross-breeding you have to go past a gatekeeper (the two species must actually cross). In GMOs you do not. Also, the longer periods involved in crossing would tend to make problems more apparent.
See https://gmoanswers.com/ask/ple... for how the GM industry views this.
Thanks ... your's is an insightful post
https://blog.bulletproof.com/h... I highly recommend listening to this man. Zone out for the first five minutes of ads... Its worth it believe me
There's no evidence that it removes pests any better than any other method, so that's not a reason, that's an excuse. ...
If you were my age, or with my background (which, interestingly, includes not only academia, science and farming, but technology as well), you'd have known better.
Those two paragraphs do not mesh. If you had anything like the background you claim to there is no way you would be making the kind of idiotic claim which constitutes your entire first paragraph.
But, as an ignorant layperson, putting stuff in my food that kills bugs seems like it could have the potential to cause me harm as well (history seems to suggest that much perceived as safe ends up not so safe) .
There is lots of stuff in your food which kills bugs, and the vast majority of it is completely "natural". The most obvious example is caffeine; plants evolved it as a defense against insects. There are hundreds of similar examples contained in many of the vegetables you consume every day. How much time do you spend worrying about them?
And as a privileged westener with the ability to pay extra for the non sustainable "organic" food. Why wouldn't I?
I dunno ... morals? A commitment to truth? Or is that all too passé?
There is a difference between GMOs and cross-bred plants. For one thing, in cross-breeding you have to go past a gatekeeper (the two species must actually cross).
False dichotomy; those are not the only two ways in which new species are developed. Popular alternatives include immersing plants in chemical baths, or bombarding them with radiation, and then seeing if anything interesting arises. Both of those methods are apparently perfectly acceptable in "organic farming".
The narrative for GMO's today sort of resembles the narrative for cigarretes 50 years ago: "They're beneficial with no proven harmful effects." According to a forbes article I just dug up (https://www.forbes.com/sites/gmoanswers/2016/06/01/why-gmos-dont-cause-cancer/#68ade01f6bc8) "Pesticides are proteins, and no proteins have ever caused cancer." Which is the sort of BS marketing lie that is very very easy to disprove.
So just in that one article the monsanto representative was lying through their teeth to forbes. Why would they do that? Well, because GMO's actually DO cause cancer (http://responsibletechnology.org/gmos-and-cancer/) (https://www.ewg.org/agmag/2015/10/monsanto-s-gmo-herbicide-doubles-cancer-risk#.Wq0zRujwaUk).
I expect in a few to ten years when Monsanto agents start retiring and dying off, we'll hear some stories about "How Monsanto paid me to kill a bunch of people, by lying for 20 years."
How much time do you spend worrying about them?
Zero. That's the point. I'm paying to not worry; it's the farmers job to think about these things.
And as a privileged westener with the ability to pay extra for the non sustainable "organic" food. Why wouldn't I?
I dunno ... morals? A commitment to truth? Or is that all too passé?
So any time you purchase anything you make sure that every element from every part of the supply chain is 100% sustainably, and ethically sourced? That you own nothing that every other person in the world can not access? That every single thing you do or consume could be scaled out to every single person on the planet?
A nobel endeavour if so; but somewhat arbitrary if you're just picking and choosing when it's convenient.
Hell ... oxygen is even poisonous to humans in high concentrations!
The down side is that it also kills the good insects, like Honeybees.
BT and neo-nicotinoid-laced crops hurt the very pollinators we rely on.
Pollinators like Honeybees are heavily relied on for nearly half of what we eat in the USA.
It is indeed a dilemma: How does one help the crops w/o hurting the good bugs?
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
If it kills bugs and doesn't need pesticides, just what do you think that will do to humans? Sterilize them, cause deformities, kill them? Oh, probably all three. NO thank you!