Especially, when unadulterated crops get cross-pollinated with the suicidal gene.
Yeah, that's kinda the point. When cross pollination occurs, if you don't want transgenes, you don't get them. And I like the notion that GMO crops are adulterated somehow.
The terminator technology only protects financial security of the patent holders.
Heterosis already does that pretty good. While it is true that that must be a nice little side effect for seed companies, and may indeed be their major reason for developing them (probably is, wouldn't surprise me, although I'd like to know why plant improvement scientists are supposed to work for free and those companies shouldn't protect their financial interests like every other for-profit enterprise on the planet)), it is absolutely false that is is the only thing it does.
And yes. People DO save seeds. Er... I mean they DID, until they started getting sued.
Some people do. I do. The majority of farmers don't. There's a difference between your home garden, a specialty grower, and the majority of growers. Even those that do grow stable non-hybrid seeds might even buy seed every year. Bagging blossoms and cleaning seed is a PITA.
Monsanto funded your "scholarship," didn't they?
Oop, you caught me. Yes, with their infinite monies the Great Monsanto-GMO Conspiracy (not to be confused with the Great Global Warming Conspiracy, the Great Vaccine Conspiracy, the Great Evolution Conspiracy, or every other crackpot notion) has paid off pretty much every botanist, geneticist, biochemist, molecular biologist, agriculturist, and just about everyone else in relevant fields.
Wrong. Wrong.Wrong I could dig up more from my bookmarks, but it's late here and you get the point. You might be thinking of the study titled 'Failure to Yield' a study claiming that GMOs actually had lesser yield (although it was based on data showing an increase). Actually, yield gains in developed countries are relatively low, only like 3-5%. But that is because pesticides already pushed yields to the limit. If you replace pesticides with resistant GMOs, it isn't that much difference (but make no mistake there still is a difference). Where Bt GMOs really shine is in developing countries where they might not always have access to pesticides. There, the difference can be dramatic. And of course in the case of viral resistant GMOs or fungal resistant GMOs they can make the difference between an industry continuing to exist or disappearing (without GMOs there would be no Hawaiian papaya industry and I've read some very promising information about GMOs with anti-fungal proteins).
the plants are killing insects indiscriminately (see honeybees)
The cry proteins used in the Bt GMOs are actually very specific, much more so than the pesticides they replaced. Do you have any evidence (besides some anti-GMO nutter's rantings) that Bt plants are in any way responsible for CCD, which need I remind you occures even in countries where GM crops are banned?
Also, familiarize yourself with terminator gene
I've done genetic engineering before, so I'm already pretty familiar with that thanks. Terminator technology was developed to prevent unwanted gene transfer. You know, that thing the anti-GMO groups are always complaining about. ISo, a safeguard to prevent that would make them happy, right? Ha! These people are harder to please than anti-vaxxers. They just put a nasty spin on it and freaked out even more! In other words, damned if you do and damned if you don't.I know what you (the agricultural layman) must be thinking: how horrible to keep farmers from saving seed. But you miss something very important: no one really does that anyway (besides those growing heirloom crops, the smae people the terminator gene would protect). Back in the early 1900's pretty much every farmer realized that if you use hybrids, superior crops but whose seeds do not possess genetic uniformity (making them unsuitable for seed saving), you could get higher yields. The gain was so much that it justified the cost of buying new seed every year. So, ever since then, farmers bought their seed from seed companies. Almost a hundred years later, GMOs get the blame. Makes no sense, but that's the anti-GMO movement for you. As an aside, some people are working on GMOs with apomixis traits, meaning the seeds are basically clones and as such the hybrid vigor would be preserved thus eliminating the need for seed vendors. But anyway, the terminator trait, despite the ill will directed toward it, is more misunderstood than dangerous. Course you could say the same thing of every other GM crop.
Yeah, those Bt crops needing less pesticides & containing less mycotoxins and those Ht crops needing less soil eroding & environment damaging tillage both giving higher yields are just sooooo terrible.
But in seriousness, the issue of putting a biologically active compound in a genetically modified food crop could be done reasonably safely, to a point. It just depends on the crop. If you use something that is propagated sexually and is known for outcrossing, like corn, that would be a pretty bad idea (part of the reason why, despite being as pro-GMO as they come, I have some real reservations about the so-called pharma crops that involve getting pharmaceuticals from grains). However, if you used something like a potato or a tree fruit, where propagation is virtually without exception asexual (and IIRC potatoes tend to be inbreeders like the related tomato anyway), then your chances of crossing are slim at best. Of course, it then becomes an issue of making sure it doesn't get mixed in with the rest of the potatoes or fruits. Of course, even if you did do it, then they'd just ban anything producing the THC, and all your research effort would be for nothing. All in all, it would be a lot better to just repeal the asinine prohibition bullshit.
If you've eaten papaya from Hawaii anytime in the last decade or so you already have. Having never been to Hawaii I don't know how the taste of a shipped papaya compares to a fresh one but I doubt any difference can be attributed to the transgene...variety, freshness, time harvested, ect sure, but not the single extra protein, a viral coat protein likely to be present in higher quantity in non-GMO varieties.
Who holds the patents? Are the farmers allowed to harvest the seed for replanting?
I'm guessing the University of Hawaii, and IIRC, you can save the seeds of the Rainbow papaya. Golden Rice too, when it's approved, although you might have to pay a licensing fee if you're in a developed country. It really isn't that big of an issue there though. Obviously in developing countries where seed sources might be too expensive or just not there that's an issue, but farmers, in general, haven't saved seed for decades, preferring the superior vigor of hybrid seed (hybrids and GMOs are of course different things, but since most GMOs are hybrids, lots of people confuse the genetic instability and unsuitability for replanting of hybrid seed with the licensing agreements of corporate made GMO seed), so that really isn't as big of a deal as it's made out to be.
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, it makes you wonder how Garfield Minus Garfield, which is not only allowed to continue but approved by Garfield creator Jim Davis, affected that property. Positively, you would assume, because it doesn't seem like there is any sense to give up free publicity and fan following, and I suspect shutting things like that down is due to dated and uncreative thinking.
And if you like Family Circus, might want to give Dean's Comic Booth a shot (a few are NSFW).
Just before everyone starts hating, it isn't all that bad. I'm normally more a fan of a bit more violent programming, but it is a unique change of pace (and does have the occasional joke that would go over it's target audience's head...good night folks!), and MLP kinda grows on you. Yeah, go figure. I'm not saying it's for everyone, nor am I saying it would be my absolute first choice of cartoon, but don't knock if you haven't tried it.
Yeah, I think pretty much the same way, applying it also to how things can be sold and marketed. If, for example, someone really believes in homeopathy, well that's their right to treat themselves with it, be their ailment a cold or cancer (although you'd really hope they have access to complete information before doing so). And if someone wants to sell them what they need for it, they should be allowed too. However, they should not be allowed to call it medicine, nor should they be allowed to mention any medical benefits whatsoever. If someone wants to sell a one part in a billion tincture of Mountain Dew and someone else wants to take it to cure their insomnia, more power to them, but if vendor wants to claim it is actually medicine, then that is fraud and should be dealt with accordingly.
This. No one can be an expert on everything. A lot of people aren't scientifically literate enough to understand why, say, homeopathy is wrong, let alone the medical value of a questionable treatment that actually has an active ingredient, and even people who are scientifically literate can still get fooled if they're in something outside their area of knowledge. In my field (agriculture) I can usually tell a good claim from a questionable one, but once I go into drugs & medicine, although I consider myself a skeptical, rational, scientifically literate person, I could very likely still be taken advantage of because that's not my area of expertise. I know I've seen perfectly rational intelligent people say things about my field that, from my point of view, where just dumb, so I have no illusions that, without some trustworthy source of information to look to, I could just as easily do something dumb. No man is an island, and there's nothing wrong with not knowing everything, and just because someone can't tell good science from some jackass's magical potion (or some less than honest pharma company) doesn't mean they deserve to get conned, and the fact is, none of us are immune to a good enough con. And when you factor in that people are sick, scared, and sometimes desperate, you're damned right someone should be looking out for all those who could not navigate through this stuff on their own.
Look at how many so-called alternative medicines turn out to be just quackery, and how many turn out to be vindicated. There is a heavy skew toward bad ones.
Pharma companies are unsung heroes of our time. They separate us from the misery of the natural world. Natural life if brutish, painful and short.
Hey, I love living free of polio, measles, mumps, rotovirus, ect. courtesy of the pharmaceutical sector. I like that there's all kinds of helpful medications for things that were once a death sentence developed by the drug companies. I'm not trying to say they're this big evil cabal or anything like a lot of conspiracy nutters make them out to be, just that I still wouldn't put it past them to screw a lot of people over given the opportunity.
Not surprising. Anyone can put together a compound with homology to a biologically active substance and do a quick short term test to see if it has an effect. But it takes a lot of money to see if it isn't screwing up something in the long term. I'm not saying that the FDA is perfect; given that they are generally have more stuff to look over than resources to look over it all, no doubt they make mistakes. But I don't see how it is an argument against them that they increase costs. Making sure things work and work safely is expensive, and while it is absolutely true that some things out there are way over-regulated, and maybe you could make the case that sometimes that happens with the FDA's drug approval, I don't consider drug oversight in and of itself over-regulation, even if it does increase the cost.
Protecting me from snake oil salesmen (like your Burzynskiquack) who have the one true cure for cancer is exactly why I want the government involved in health. You shouldn't be able to make shit up and pass it off as medicine, and you bet I want someone looking over real science before something goes to market where it can do real damage either if it is dangerous or if it just doesn't work and prevents people from getting real treatment. Could this lead to a a legitimate treatment being overlooked due to those big bad close minded doctors who just can't see the brilliance of (insert probable pseudoscience but possible real treatment here)? Maybe. But it's better than the alternative, and it is much more likely that they'll be preventing lots of bad treatments rather than suppressing a few good ones.
And it's funny that the people always bashing the FDA (usually because their favorite quackery didn't get approval) are always the same ones hating on the pharma companies. Uh, hello, who the hell do you think is keeping those guys in line? You really want them running amok?
Why don't you? Imagine this. Imagine you are at a train crossing, and the train is coming. It is heading right for some people, tied to the tracks. There's a switch, and if you flip that switch, you will switch the tracks, sending the train to a different track. But on this track, instead of people, everything you own is on the track. Question is, do you flip it? Well, we all know what everyone says: 'Of course I flip it! People are more important than things!' But the reality is, we face that situation every day, and most of us do not flip the switch. We could sell off all our possessions, collect all our money, and maybe make a difference in some impoverished starving village somewhere, but we don't. I'm sure you've bought some unnecessary trinket or gizmo or gourmet latte in recent memory, or could find someone to buy that nice 3 digit UID off you and you could keep someone from starving of malnutrition or give some disaster relief or whatever else. But we don't. Fact is, very, very few of us do. We're all just as guilty, by our actions, of saying Fuck the Poor. But that's life isn't it? Just something to think about when you condemn others of wasting money that could potentially go to a good cause.
Here at my university, after the budget cuts were announced the first thing we cut was the agricultural science department. I guess because it's not very glamorous anymore, and some of it is long term (and apparently no one needs to eat anymore, glad we got that one taken care of.). One of my interests is pomology (the study of fruit producing plants), and almost all of that got cut just about everywhere due to it's long term nature, so I wouldn't say it is out of the question that something similar could happen to other fields.
This is true. In fact, there's actually a National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is doing it. Total number of beneficial effective medical techniques they have developed via the use of chiropractic, homeopathy, chi, acupuncture, or any other so-called alternative medicine: 0. Their yearly budget: something in the range of $120 million. Your (if you're an American) tax dollars at work.
Well, that explains why, on YouTube, videos with good music always tend to get taken down. I think, 'Now what kind of idiot would force down free promotion? I never even would have heard of this music had it not been for YouTube.' I always figured a monkey, and an exceptionally stupid one at that, was behind those takedown notices.
And don't forget that agricultural research in Europe has a tendency to find itself on the wrong side of an angrydesrtuctivemob. Food producers won't like the lost subsidies, and lot of people in Europe just don't want science in their food so I can't imagine they'll support more research either.
Except... it will kill off honey bees and Monarch butterflies. (like some other perfectly "safe" genetic engineering)
You do realize that nobodybelieves that anymore don't you? Sure, GMO Bt pollen can affect monarch larva, but not all that much, and no where near as much as the alternative (pesticide sprays), but that study basically force fed the pollen to the caterpillars and, surprise, they died, and that's been blown way out of context by anti-GMO interest groups like the organic consumer's association and Greenpeace. As for bees, I was unaware that there were even poor studies that linked CCD to GMOs.
Probably by outlawing petri dishes and lab equipment. I can see the anti-freedom pro-drug war idiots now. "What legitimate use could someone have for petri dishes and lab equipment BESIDES making drugs?!"
Meanwhile scientific research has revealed that GMOs are not as good as traditional breeding methods for producing improvements.
Wrong. Is that why so many university scientists do GE work? This false dichotomy thing is getting really old. Every anti-GMO person always brings that claim up, but it's absolute bull. Sometimes you NEED genetic engineering. PRSV, BXW, Ug99, you're going to want to use GE to confer resistance to those. For some traits, like fungus resistance, insect resistance, or some types of biofortification, you can get much better results with GE. Sometimes genetic engineering can't help a bit and you NEED conventional breeding. For example, if you're breeding fruits or vegetables for flavor, GE won't be appropriate because of the genotypic complexity of the phenotype you seek. Only those with an irrational bias try to make it look like two tools are mutually exclusive, because last time I checked, scientists can and do use both (you usually have to for GE). I've never heard anyone (who wasn't some anti-GMO illiterate anyway) make that claim.
GMOing typically costs $100,000,000 for a trait. Traditional methods cost $1,000,000 per trait and get better results.
Testing and excessive regulation is why they cost so much. Ironically, this is largely due to the anti-GMO movement. They raise the barriers to entry for a GMO, then point at the problem THEY CAUSED and act like it is an argument against GMOs. That's the same thing they do with Monsanto. Hey, let's make the barriers to entry so high no one but mega-crops can get in then complain about the mega-corps' monoply. Morons. And you do not get better results because, as I have already said, you use them for DIFFERENT THINGS. Go find me a conventionally bred rice or cassava with Vitamin A, or PRSV resistant papaya. You can't because they're not there,not the last time I checked any reliable source anyway. Also, GMO is not a verb. Do you even know what it stands for? I ask because in my experience most anti-GMO people don't. Absolute ignorance never stopped them from telling the experts what's what though.
No need to GMO frankenmonsters.
'Frankenmonster' or the more common 'frankenfood' is an emotional bullshit term. Look at the difference between corn and teosinte, or between wheat or triticale and it's ancestors species (plural, wheat is a hybrid of three, triticale is wheat x rye). You wouldn't even recognize them, Compare apples, grapes, bananas, pears, cherries, ect to their wild counterparts. Seedy, small, sour. Look at the difference between tomatoes, potatoes and beans and their wild relatives. Small, nasty, and kinda poisonous. Look at broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts. Different things? Wrong, same species, mutants created by the hand of man from a common wild mustard. Ever wonder how they made seedless watermelons? Heck, look at all the breeds of dogs. What are they if not frankenwolves? How many genetic changes happened to get all those things? How many mutations and chromosome count increases are there in cultivated crops? A lot. If it's frankenfood you're worried about, it's already here. And don't give me that 'oh, that's natural genetic change' bullshit. There's a reason the appeal to nature is a fallacy. Change is change, trust me, plants aren't smart enough to figure out if a gene got there via agrobacterium mediated transformation or an altered indel or transposon insertion. If plant breeding were invented today the anti-GMO crowd would try to outlaw it. The ONLY reason those guys are Ok with it is it's old, they don't understand it, it's never been in some movie (much anti-GMO sentiment is due to monster movies) and they'd look like even bigger idiots if they protested it too.
Reminds me of that time some guy said that he didn't agree to a EULA because he had his cat click the mouse, but there, it was still determined that clicking by proxy is the same as clicking without proxy. And yet, dropping a bomb by proxy is not hostile? What? If I have an automated killbot shoot someone is it still murder?
I did. Lost Crops of Africa vol 1-3 and Lost Crops of the Incas. Informative, although definitely a narrow topic. When you think science books you think more like textbooks with broad overviews and lots of information, which these certainty are not. If you're deep into a specific area, some of these will be useful. If you're just some normal person looking to learn more about something,well, these aren't exactly Light and Matter. I found a number of things on genetic engineering next to them, but skimming them, these are scientific, and they're books, but I wouldn't exactly call them science books, more like reports on the state of the science and policy ideas & suggestions than anything. I can see how these would be useless to the average reader.
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Especially, when unadulterated crops get cross-pollinated with the suicidal gene.
Yeah, that's kinda the point. When cross pollination occurs, if you don't want transgenes, you don't get them. And I like the notion that GMO crops are adulterated somehow.
The terminator technology only protects financial security of the patent holders.
Heterosis already does that pretty good. While it is true that that must be a nice little side effect for seed companies, and may indeed be their major reason for developing them (probably is, wouldn't surprise me, although I'd like to know why plant improvement scientists are supposed to work for free and those companies shouldn't protect their financial interests like every other for-profit enterprise on the planet)), it is absolutely false that is is the only thing it does.
And yes. People DO save seeds. Er... I mean they DID, until they started getting sued.
Some people do. I do. The majority of farmers don't. There's a difference between your home garden, a specialty grower, and the majority of growers. Even those that do grow stable non-hybrid seeds might even buy seed every year. Bagging blossoms and cleaning seed is a PITA.
Monsanto funded your "scholarship," didn't they?
Oop, you caught me. Yes, with their infinite monies the Great Monsanto-GMO Conspiracy (not to be confused with the Great Global Warming Conspiracy, the Great Vaccine Conspiracy, the Great Evolution Conspiracy, or every other crackpot notion) has paid off pretty much every botanist, geneticist, biochemist, molecular biologist, agriculturist, and just about everyone else in relevant fields.
Yes they are, because higher yield is a myth
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong I could dig up more from my bookmarks, but it's late here and you get the point. You might be thinking of the study titled 'Failure to Yield' a study claiming that GMOs actually had lesser yield (although it was based on data showing an increase). Actually, yield gains in developed countries are relatively low, only like 3-5%. But that is because pesticides already pushed yields to the limit. If you replace pesticides with resistant GMOs, it isn't that much difference (but make no mistake there still is a difference). Where Bt GMOs really shine is in developing countries where they might not always have access to pesticides. There, the difference can be dramatic. And of course in the case of viral resistant GMOs or fungal resistant GMOs they can make the difference between an industry continuing to exist or disappearing (without GMOs there would be no Hawaiian papaya industry and I've read some very promising information about GMOs with anti-fungal proteins).
the plants are killing insects indiscriminately (see honeybees)
The cry proteins used in the Bt GMOs are actually very specific, much more so than the pesticides they replaced. Do you have any evidence (besides some anti-GMO nutter's rantings) that Bt plants are in any way responsible for CCD, which need I remind you occures even in countries where GM crops are banned?
Also, familiarize yourself with terminator gene
I've done genetic engineering before, so I'm already pretty familiar with that thanks. Terminator technology was developed to prevent unwanted gene transfer. You know, that thing the anti-GMO groups are always complaining about. ISo, a safeguard to prevent that would make them happy, right? Ha! These people are harder to please than anti-vaxxers. They just put a nasty spin on it and freaked out even more! In other words, damned if you do and damned if you don't.I know what you (the agricultural layman) must be thinking: how horrible to keep farmers from saving seed. But you miss something very important: no one really does that anyway (besides those growing heirloom crops, the smae people the terminator gene would protect). Back in the early 1900's pretty much every farmer realized that if you use hybrids, superior crops but whose seeds do not possess genetic uniformity (making them unsuitable for seed saving), you could get higher yields. The gain was so much that it justified the cost of buying new seed every year. So, ever since then, farmers bought their seed from seed companies. Almost a hundred years later, GMOs get the blame. Makes no sense, but that's the anti-GMO movement for you. As an aside, some people are working on GMOs with apomixis traits, meaning the seeds are basically clones and as such the hybrid vigor would be preserved thus eliminating the need for seed vendors. But anyway, the terminator trait, despite the ill will directed toward it, is more misunderstood than dangerous. Course you could say the same thing of every other GM crop.
Yeah, those Bt crops needing less pesticides & containing less mycotoxins and those Ht crops needing less soil eroding & environment damaging tillage both giving higher yields are just sooooo terrible.
But in seriousness, the issue of putting a biologically active compound in a genetically modified food crop could be done reasonably safely, to a point. It just depends on the crop. If you use something that is propagated sexually and is known for outcrossing, like corn, that would be a pretty bad idea (part of the reason why, despite being as pro-GMO as they come, I have some real reservations about the so-called pharma crops that involve getting pharmaceuticals from grains). However, if you used something like a potato or a tree fruit, where propagation is virtually without exception asexual (and IIRC potatoes tend to be inbreeders like the related tomato anyway), then your chances of crossing are slim at best. Of course, it then becomes an issue of making sure it doesn't get mixed in with the rest of the potatoes or fruits. Of course, even if you did do it, then they'd just ban anything producing the THC, and all your research effort would be for nothing. All in all, it would be a lot better to just repeal the asinine prohibition bullshit.
I'd like to taste a "rainbow papaya".
If you've eaten papaya from Hawaii anytime in the last decade or so you already have. Having never been to Hawaii I don't know how the taste of a shipped papaya compares to a fresh one but I doubt any difference can be attributed to the transgene...variety, freshness, time harvested, ect sure, but not the single extra protein, a viral coat protein likely to be present in higher quantity in non-GMO varieties.
Who holds the patents? Are the farmers allowed to harvest the seed for replanting?
I'm guessing the University of Hawaii, and IIRC, you can save the seeds of the Rainbow papaya. Golden Rice too, when it's approved, although you might have to pay a licensing fee if you're in a developed country. It really isn't that big of an issue there though. Obviously in developing countries where seed sources might be too expensive or just not there that's an issue, but farmers, in general, haven't saved seed for decades, preferring the superior vigor of hybrid seed (hybrids and GMOs are of course different things, but since most GMOs are hybrids, lots of people confuse the genetic instability and unsuitability for replanting of hybrid seed with the licensing agreements of corporate made GMO seed), so that really isn't as big of a deal as it's made out to be.
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, it makes you wonder how Garfield Minus Garfield, which is not only allowed to continue but approved by Garfield creator Jim Davis, affected that property. Positively, you would assume, because it doesn't seem like there is any sense to give up free publicity and fan following, and I suspect shutting things like that down is due to dated and uncreative thinking.
And if you like Family Circus, might want to give Dean's Comic Booth a shot (a few are NSFW).
Just before everyone starts hating, it isn't all that bad. I'm normally more a fan of a bit more violent programming, but it is a unique change of pace (and does have the occasional joke that would go over it's target audience's head...good night folks!), and MLP kinda grows on you. Yeah, go figure. I'm not saying it's for everyone, nor am I saying it would be my absolute first choice of cartoon, but don't knock if you haven't tried it.
Yeah, I think pretty much the same way, applying it also to how things can be sold and marketed. If, for example, someone really believes in homeopathy, well that's their right to treat themselves with it, be their ailment a cold or cancer (although you'd really hope they have access to complete information before doing so). And if someone wants to sell them what they need for it, they should be allowed too. However, they should not be allowed to call it medicine, nor should they be allowed to mention any medical benefits whatsoever. If someone wants to sell a one part in a billion tincture of Mountain Dew and someone else wants to take it to cure their insomnia, more power to them, but if vendor wants to claim it is actually medicine, then that is fraud and should be dealt with accordingly.
This. No one can be an expert on everything. A lot of people aren't scientifically literate enough to understand why, say, homeopathy is wrong, let alone the medical value of a questionable treatment that actually has an active ingredient, and even people who are scientifically literate can still get fooled if they're in something outside their area of knowledge. In my field (agriculture) I can usually tell a good claim from a questionable one, but once I go into drugs & medicine, although I consider myself a skeptical, rational, scientifically literate person, I could very likely still be taken advantage of because that's not my area of expertise. I know I've seen perfectly rational intelligent people say things about my field that, from my point of view, where just dumb, so I have no illusions that, without some trustworthy source of information to look to, I could just as easily do something dumb. No man is an island, and there's nothing wrong with not knowing everything, and just because someone can't tell good science from some jackass's magical potion (or some less than honest pharma company) doesn't mean they deserve to get conned, and the fact is, none of us are immune to a good enough con. And when you factor in that people are sick, scared, and sometimes desperate, you're damned right someone should be looking out for all those who could not navigate through this stuff on their own.
you got any statistics to back that up?
Look at how many so-called alternative medicines turn out to be just quackery, and how many turn out to be vindicated. There is a heavy skew toward bad ones.
Pharma companies are unsung heroes of our time. They separate us from the misery of the natural world. Natural life if brutish, painful and short.
Hey, I love living free of polio, measles, mumps, rotovirus, ect. courtesy of the pharmaceutical sector. I like that there's all kinds of helpful medications for things that were once a death sentence developed by the drug companies. I'm not trying to say they're this big evil cabal or anything like a lot of conspiracy nutters make them out to be, just that I still wouldn't put it past them to screw a lot of people over given the opportunity.
Not surprising. Anyone can put together a compound with homology to a biologically active substance and do a quick short term test to see if it has an effect. But it takes a lot of money to see if it isn't screwing up something in the long term. I'm not saying that the FDA is perfect; given that they are generally have more stuff to look over than resources to look over it all, no doubt they make mistakes. But I don't see how it is an argument against them that they increase costs. Making sure things work and work safely is expensive, and while it is absolutely true that some things out there are way over-regulated, and maybe you could make the case that sometimes that happens with the FDA's drug approval, I don't consider drug oversight in and of itself over-regulation, even if it does increase the cost.
Protecting me from snake oil salesmen (like your Burzynski quack) who have the one true cure for cancer is exactly why I want the government involved in health. You shouldn't be able to make shit up and pass it off as medicine, and you bet I want someone looking over real science before something goes to market where it can do real damage either if it is dangerous or if it just doesn't work and prevents people from getting real treatment. Could this lead to a a legitimate treatment being overlooked due to those big bad close minded doctors who just can't see the brilliance of (insert probable pseudoscience but possible real treatment here)? Maybe. But it's better than the alternative, and it is much more likely that they'll be preventing lots of bad treatments rather than suppressing a few good ones.
And it's funny that the people always bashing the FDA (usually because their favorite quackery didn't get approval) are always the same ones hating on the pharma companies. Uh, hello, who the hell do you think is keeping those guys in line? You really want them running amok?
Why don't you? Imagine this. Imagine you are at a train crossing, and the train is coming. It is heading right for some people, tied to the tracks. There's a switch, and if you flip that switch, you will switch the tracks, sending the train to a different track. But on this track, instead of people, everything you own is on the track. Question is, do you flip it? Well, we all know what everyone says: 'Of course I flip it! People are more important than things!' But the reality is, we face that situation every day, and most of us do not flip the switch. We could sell off all our possessions, collect all our money, and maybe make a difference in some impoverished starving village somewhere, but we don't. I'm sure you've bought some unnecessary trinket or gizmo or gourmet latte in recent memory, or could find someone to buy that nice 3 digit UID off you and you could keep someone from starving of malnutrition or give some disaster relief or whatever else. But we don't. Fact is, very, very few of us do. We're all just as guilty, by our actions, of saying Fuck the Poor. But that's life isn't it? Just something to think about when you condemn others of wasting money that could potentially go to a good cause.
Here at my university, after the budget cuts were announced the first thing we cut was the agricultural science department. I guess because it's not very glamorous anymore, and some of it is long term (and apparently no one needs to eat anymore, glad we got that one taken care of.). One of my interests is pomology (the study of fruit producing plants), and almost all of that got cut just about everywhere due to it's long term nature, so I wouldn't say it is out of the question that something similar could happen to other fields.
This is true. In fact, there's actually a National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is doing it. Total number of beneficial effective medical techniques they have developed via the use of chiropractic, homeopathy, chi, acupuncture, or any other so-called alternative medicine: 0. Their yearly budget: something in the range of $120 million. Your (if you're an American) tax dollars at work.
Well, that explains why, on YouTube, videos with good music always tend to get taken down. I think, 'Now what kind of idiot would force down free promotion? I never even would have heard of this music had it not been for YouTube.' I always figured a monkey, and an exceptionally stupid one at that, was behind those takedown notices.
And don't forget that agricultural research in Europe has a tendency to find itself on the wrong side of an angry desrtuctive mob. Food producers won't like the lost subsidies, and lot of people in Europe just don't want science in their food so I can't imagine they'll support more research either.
Except ... it will kill off honey bees and Monarch butterflies. (like some other perfectly "safe" genetic engineering)
You do realize that nobody believes that anymore don't you? Sure, GMO Bt pollen can affect monarch larva, but not all that much, and no where near as much as the alternative (pesticide sprays), but that study basically force fed the pollen to the caterpillars and, surprise, they died, and that's been blown way out of context by anti-GMO interest groups like the organic consumer's association and Greenpeace. As for bees, I was unaware that there were even poor studies that linked CCD to GMOs.
How would society deal with this?
Probably by outlawing petri dishes and lab equipment. I can see the anti-freedom pro-drug war idiots now. "What legitimate use could someone have for petri dishes and lab equipment BESIDES making drugs?!"
Meanwhile scientific research has revealed that GMOs are not as good as traditional breeding methods for producing improvements.
Wrong. Is that why so many university scientists do GE work? This false dichotomy thing is getting really old. Every anti-GMO person always brings that claim up, but it's absolute bull. Sometimes you NEED genetic engineering. PRSV, BXW, Ug99, you're going to want to use GE to confer resistance to those. For some traits, like fungus resistance, insect resistance, or some types of biofortification, you can get much better results with GE. Sometimes genetic engineering can't help a bit and you NEED conventional breeding. For example, if you're breeding fruits or vegetables for flavor, GE won't be appropriate because of the genotypic complexity of the phenotype you seek. Only those with an irrational bias try to make it look like two tools are mutually exclusive, because last time I checked, scientists can and do use both (you usually have to for GE). I've never heard anyone (who wasn't some anti-GMO illiterate anyway) make that claim.
GMOing typically costs $100,000,000 for a trait. Traditional methods cost $1,000,000 per trait and get better results.
Testing and excessive regulation is why they cost so much. Ironically, this is largely due to the anti-GMO movement. They raise the barriers to entry for a GMO, then point at the problem THEY CAUSED and act like it is an argument against GMOs. That's the same thing they do with Monsanto. Hey, let's make the barriers to entry so high no one but mega-crops can get in then complain about the mega-corps' monoply. Morons. And you do not get better results because, as I have already said, you use them for DIFFERENT THINGS. Go find me a conventionally bred rice or cassava with Vitamin A, or PRSV resistant papaya. You can't because they're not there,not the last time I checked any reliable source anyway. Also, GMO is not a verb. Do you even know what it stands for? I ask because in my experience most anti-GMO people don't. Absolute ignorance never stopped them from telling the experts what's what though.
No need to GMO frankenmonsters.
'Frankenmonster' or the more common 'frankenfood' is an emotional bullshit term. Look at the difference between corn and teosinte, or between wheat or triticale and it's ancestors species (plural, wheat is a hybrid of three, triticale is wheat x rye). You wouldn't even recognize them, Compare apples, grapes, bananas, pears, cherries, ect to their wild counterparts. Seedy, small, sour. Look at the difference between tomatoes, potatoes and beans and their wild relatives. Small, nasty, and kinda poisonous. Look at broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts. Different things? Wrong, same species, mutants created by the hand of man from a common wild mustard. Ever wonder how they made seedless watermelons? Heck, look at all the breeds of dogs. What are they if not frankenwolves? How many genetic changes happened to get all those things? How many mutations and chromosome count increases are there in cultivated crops? A lot. If it's frankenfood you're worried about, it's already here. And don't give me that 'oh, that's natural genetic change' bullshit. There's a reason the appeal to nature is a fallacy. Change is change, trust me, plants aren't smart enough to figure out if a gene got there via agrobacterium mediated transformation or an altered indel or transposon insertion. If plant breeding were invented today the anti-GMO crowd would try to outlaw it. The ONLY reason those guys are Ok with it is it's old, they don't understand it, it's never been in some movie (much anti-GMO sentiment is due to monster movies) and they'd look like even bigger idiots if they protested it too.
In conclusion, you're wrong.
if it's any thing like what happened with tech tv and G4 all the good shows will die.
Glad I'm not the only one who thought that. Really, who is still watching that channel? Do they have anything worth watching?
Reminds me of that time some guy said that he didn't agree to a EULA because he had his cat click the mouse, but there, it was still determined that clicking by proxy is the same as clicking without proxy. And yet, dropping a bomb by proxy is not hostile? What? If I have an automated killbot shoot someone is it still murder?
Could I get some thetans to go with my subluxations?
1. Forbid legitimate purchasers and owners of the device from doing ANYTHING you don't homogenize, pre-approve, pre-chew, and charge for.
I think this is the analogy you're looking for.
9000. It's over 9000.
I did. Lost Crops of Africa vol 1-3 and Lost Crops of the Incas. Informative, although definitely a narrow topic. When you think science books you think more like textbooks with broad overviews and lots of information, which these certainty are not. If you're deep into a specific area, some of these will be useful. If you're just some normal person looking to learn more about something,well, these aren't exactly Light and Matter. I found a number of things on genetic engineering next to them, but skimming them, these are scientific, and they're books, but I wouldn't exactly call them science books, more like reports on the state of the science and policy ideas & suggestions than anything. I can see how these would be useless to the average reader.