Selective breeding occurs over time, any negative effects (health, environmental) appear gradually (over generations) and can be tracked, studied and mitigated.
GMOs are strictly studied before being released to market. In fact, the exaggerated regulation keeps a very high barrier to entry, and is responsible by the current strength of Monsanto.
Based on my regular reading of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, I think there's a better a argument that the right-wing is anti-science. Read Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science. Creationism, anyone? Stem cell research?
You may disagree that human embryos have a right to life, but to label pro-life people as "anti-science" is utterly dishonest. Saying that they are "anti-science" because they oppose the effects (human embryo death) of one specific type of research is like saying that I am anti-science because I oppose the research of Josef Mengele.
I don't even want to enter into the underlying subject matter (right to life of human embryos) here. I just want the debate to stay adult, instead of being dominated by name-calling.
Second, the scenario you describe is utterly unrealistic. You: 1) Ignore the market for certified "organic" foods 2) Ignore the fact the scientists study plant varieties and store their DNA, so they can't all disappear like you suggest 3) Ignore that Monsanto has competitors, both private companies and governments 4) Ignore that the scenario you describe could happen with conventional artificial selection just as well as with GMO's
And, you mention Microsoft. Why do you treat computers and plants so differently? You say genetic engineering is evil because there is Monsanto. By the same logic, computers are evil because there is Microsoft. Then why do you use computers?
The real concern is creating a crop monoculture engineered to meet Monsanto's short term needs (eg to sell roundup-ready seeds every year, then selling the roundup, etc), and not the long-term needs of society or even just farmers.
First, rejecting genetic engineering because you don't like Monsanto is like rejecting computers because you don't like Microsoft.
Second: why would the situation you describe apply only to genetic engineering? Wouldn't conventional artificial selection lead to the same situation? And why do you think the farmers can't sort out what is in their long-term interest?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration currently requires labeling of GE foods if the food has a significantly different nutritional property; if a new food includes an allergen that consumers would not expect to be present (e.g., a peanut protein in a soybean product); or if a food contains a toxicant beyond acceptable limits.
Please do read the entire link above. It contains a reasonable summary of the debate.
From the comments, a lot of people have been wondering exactly what "private" means here. With most "non-private" NASA contracts, NASA has direct control over the overall design of the vehicle and uses cost-plus contracts with companies (with massive amounts of red tape) to actually build it; cost-effectiveness is actually undesirable for contractors under those contracts since it means they get less money and there's a strong desire to funnel out work to politically-important congressional districts to maintain political support when cost overruns occur. In this new "private" paradigm NASA pays fixed-cost for the cargo delivered and it's up to the company to determine the best way to meet those goals, and the company is also permitted to commercially sell their services to other customers. It sounds like a small difference to some, but as we've seen it ends up being a one or two orders-of-magnitude more cost-effective for the taxpayer.
Maybe we need to change this? It's a rather sad statement that profit trumps all and is the only valid motivation for expanding our horizons.
Please remember that the profit motive includes charitable donations, such as the X prize and the Bigelow prize.
Between space tourism, commercial satellites, research performed by private universities and private companies, charitable donations, (in the future) space mining and (farther in the future) space colonisation, we have plenty of profit motive to fund space exploration.
Running a voluntary economy simply means that we respect people's property rights, instead of taking tax money from them by force and spending on projects that often turn out to be inefficient, or corrupt, or boondogles, or simply not worth the cost.
Many projects that today are performed by the government would, in a freer society, be performed by private organisations, if the government wasn't undercutting them through the use of tax money taken by force. Others wouldn't be performed, because they simply wouldn't be worth the cost.
I am not a libertarian anarcho-capitalist, and, in particular, I don't think right now that the government should completely step out of space exploration. But I do think that the government needs shrinking. And I do think that much of the American space exploration could be done voluntarily (instead of by force) and that, among that portion of space exploration that needs government involvement, some part of it simply is not worth the cost right now (but probably would be in the future).
Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the acute effects killed 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki
So the combined death toll is 150,000-246,000 (average 198,000).
And please read (it is just 4 paragraphs) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_bombing#Depiction.2C_public_response_and_censorship And I also remember (from a documentary) a Japanese man telling that he walked over the ruins of his house, collected his wife's remains in a bucket, and took it to the cemetery. That managed to disturb me even more than the many children who were murdered or maimed.
Now, don't take me for an anti-American. Those people who vilify America for its "imperialism" are often hypocritical leftists. They scream day and night about the Atomic bombings and the wars of Vietnam and Iraq, while turning a blind eye to the 100,000,000 cadavers left behind by Marxism. They scream "crime against humanity!" when a mass-murdering terrorist is water-boarded, but they forget that Marxists would take innocent people and take out their teeth, crack their ribs, smash their toes with a hammer and extract all their fingernails with pliers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Rokossovsky#Great_Purge.2C_trial.2C_torture_and_rehabilitation is just one random example. They also forget about the countless women that the Chinese government abducts in order to kill their babies.
The only people that I see consistently and uniformly opposing war atrocities are the followers of Pope John Paul II's culture of life, and the libertarians.
Speaking about libertarians, I find myself agreeing with much of what libertarian Thomas Woods says. I agree with non-interventionism, replacing authoritarian national governments with decentralised federations, the right to homeschool, and other kinds of liberty.
Absolutely. The USA may have made mistakes (such as using atom bombs against Japanese men, women and children - see http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/denson7.html), but it is not even close to the level of evil seen in the Soviet Union, the PRC, or Al Qaeda.
Speaking of Islamic terrorism: do you know of any studies/argumentations about the likelihood of Iran using atom bombs against Israel? There are 1,573,000 Israeli Arabs and 1,240,000 Israeli Muslims (many, but not all, of the Arabs are Muslims) - not counting the people in the Palestinian territories that are not Israel citizens. Would Iran really kill countless innocent Muslim civilians, including women and children? I mean, Ahmadinejad may be a buffoon, but AFAIK he is no Hitler and no Stalin. I would like to see this debated.
I imagine how the guy who copied those 9 lines of code must be feeling. He cost Google a truckload of money in legal fees.
I just expect the judge to give an honest value for those 9 lines. Like $80 or something. Simply for justice (in financial short term, it matters little if they cost $90 or $9000, since the lawyer fees are much higher).
I used to be a nuclear energy fan (considering that much of the anti-nuclear sentiment is Luddite hysteria), but the Iran situation made me reconsider. I fear that nuclear power generation might advance the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
And according to Wikipedia, solar will start reaching grid parity in 2015 and wind in 2020/2025. I think we can get by with hydro, coal (with pollution-reducing technology) and natural gas until 2025.
In the data for April, only Net Applications put MSIE significant ahead of Google Chrome. The other 3 sources, on average, give *lower* usage of MSIE than Stat Counter.
As for what I have read from the case, it is pretty clear that it derived from Monsanto, and that the farmer was aware. I am not saying it makes it OK, I am just really tired of people taking documentaries for truth. They have become the weapon of choice for propagandists, and if people aren't critical of them, they are going to end up believing Expelled or some other such nonsense.
It can be worse. People could believe in Michael Moore.
Slashdot Mirror
See
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09371.html
Selective breeding occurs over time, any negative effects (health, environmental) appear gradually (over generations) and can be tracked, studied and mitigated.
GMOs are strictly studied before being released to market.
In fact, the exaggerated regulation keeps a very high barrier to entry, and is responsible by the current strength of Monsanto.
Based on my regular reading of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, I think there's a better a argument that the right-wing is anti-science. Read Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science. Creationism, anyone? Stem cell research?
You may disagree that human embryos have a right to life, but to label pro-life people as "anti-science" is utterly dishonest.
Saying that they are "anti-science" because they oppose the effects (human embryo death) of one specific type of research is like saying that I am anti-science because I oppose the research of Josef Mengele.
I don't even want to enter into the underlying subject matter (right to life of human embryos) here. I just want the debate to stay adult, instead of being dominated by name-calling.
Shame on you.
FIrst, see http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2875183&cid=40116361
Second, the scenario you describe is utterly unrealistic.
You:
1) Ignore the market for certified "organic" foods
2) Ignore the fact the scientists study plant varieties and store their DNA, so they can't all disappear like you suggest
3) Ignore that Monsanto has competitors, both private companies and governments
4) Ignore that the scenario you describe could happen with conventional artificial selection just as well as with GMO's
And, you mention Microsoft. Why do you treat computers and plants so differently? You say genetic engineering is evil because there is Monsanto. By the same logic, computers are evil because there is Microsoft. Then why do you use computers?
See
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2875183&cid=40115673
The real concern is creating a crop monoculture engineered to meet Monsanto's short term needs (eg to sell roundup-ready seeds every year, then selling the roundup, etc), and not the long-term needs of society or even just farmers.
First, rejecting genetic engineering because you don't like Monsanto is like rejecting computers because you don't like Microsoft.
Second: why would the situation you describe apply only to genetic engineering? Wouldn't conventional artificial selection lead to the same situation?
And why do you think the farmers can't sort out what is in their long-term interest?
From http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09371.html
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration currently requires labeling of GE foods if the food has a significantly different nutritional property; if a new food includes an allergen that consumers would not expect to be present (e.g., a peanut protein in a soybean product); or if a food contains a toxicant beyond acceptable limits.
Please do read the entire link above. It contains a reasonable summary of the debate.
Rejecting Genetic Engineering because you don't like Monsanto is like rejecting computers because you don't like Microsoft.
because nobody in their right mind would buy it
Smart, non-Luddite people would.
Also, notice that this privatisation effort is being conduced by
the more-letitst-than-Frankling-Roosevelt Obama administration.
If you are more leftist than Obama, you need to reconsider your values.
From a comment in latimes:
From the comments, a lot of people have been wondering exactly what "private" means here. With most "non-private" NASA contracts, NASA has direct control over the overall design of the vehicle and uses cost-plus contracts with companies (with massive amounts of red tape) to actually build it; cost-effectiveness is actually undesirable for contractors under those contracts since it means they get less money and there's a strong desire to funnel out work to politically-important congressional districts to maintain political support when cost overruns occur. In this new "private" paradigm NASA pays fixed-cost for the cargo delivered and it's up to the company to determine the best way to meet those goals, and the company is also permitted to commercially sell their services to other customers. It sounds like a small difference to some, but as we've seen it ends up being a one or two orders-of-magnitude more cost-effective for the taxpayer.
Maybe we need to change this? It's a rather sad statement that profit trumps all and is the only valid motivation for expanding our horizons.
Please remember that the profit motive includes charitable donations, such as the X prize and the Bigelow prize.
Between space tourism, commercial satellites, research performed by private universities and private companies, charitable donations, (in the future) space mining and (farther in the future) space colonisation, we have plenty of profit motive to fund space exploration.
Running a voluntary economy simply means that we respect people's property rights, instead of taking tax money from them by force and spending on projects that often turn out to be inefficient, or corrupt, or boondogles, or simply not worth the cost.
Many projects that today are performed by the government would, in a freer society, be performed by private organisations, if the government wasn't undercutting them through the use of tax money taken by force. Others wouldn't be performed, because they simply wouldn't be worth the cost.
I am not a libertarian anarcho-capitalist, and, in particular, I don't think right now that the government should completely step out of space exploration. But I do think that the government needs shrinking. And I do think that much of the American space exploration could be done voluntarily (instead of by force) and that, among that portion of space exploration that needs government involvement, some part of it simply is not worth the cost right now (but probably would be in the future).
Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_debt#CBO_long-term_scenarios
I hope you're joking.
Troll!?
Mods, have some honesty please!
"Troll" is not a substitute for "I disagree".
And according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_bombing
Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the acute effects killed 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki
So the combined death toll is 150,000-246,000 (average 198,000).
And please read (it is just 4 paragraphs) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_bombing#Depiction.2C_public_response_and_censorship
And I also remember (from a documentary) a Japanese man telling that he walked over the ruins of his house, collected his wife's remains
in a bucket, and took it to the cemetery. That managed to disturb me even more than the many children who were murdered or maimed.
Now, don't take me for an anti-American. Those people who vilify America for its "imperialism" are often hypocritical leftists.
They scream day and night about the Atomic bombings and the wars of Vietnam and Iraq, while turning a blind eye to
the 100,000,000 cadavers left behind by Marxism. They scream "crime against humanity!" when a mass-murdering
terrorist is water-boarded, but they forget that Marxists would take innocent people and take out their teeth, crack their ribs, smash their toes with a hammer and extract all their fingernails with pliers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Rokossovsky#Great_Purge.2C_trial.2C_torture_and_rehabilitation is just one random example.
They also forget about the countless women that the Chinese government abducts in order to kill their babies.
The only people that I see consistently and uniformly opposing war atrocities are the followers of Pope John Paul II's culture of life, and the libertarians.
Speaking about libertarians, I find myself agreeing with much of what libertarian Thomas Woods says. I agree with non-interventionism,
replacing authoritarian national governments with decentralised federations, the right to homeschool, and other kinds of liberty.
Regards
Absolutely. The USA may have made mistakes (such as using atom bombs against Japanese men, women and children - see http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/denson7.html), but it is not even close to the level of evil seen in the Soviet Union, the PRC, or Al Qaeda.
Speaking of Islamic terrorism: do you know of any studies/argumentations about the likelihood of
Iran using atom bombs against Israel? There are 1,573,000 Israeli Arabs and 1,240,000 Israeli Muslims (many, but not all, of the Arabs are Muslims) - not counting the people in the Palestinian territories that are not Israel citizens.
Would Iran really kill countless innocent Muslim civilians, including women and children?
I mean, Ahmadinejad may be a buffoon, but AFAIK he is no Hitler and no Stalin.
I would like to see this debated.
We need a republican hero to block this effort!
No one opposes research involving stem cells that does not kill human embryos.
By resorting to straw man, you just show you have no real argument.
I imagine how the guy who copied those 9 lines of code must be feeling.
He cost Google a truckload of money in legal fees.
I just expect the judge to give an honest value for those 9 lines. Like $80 or something. Simply for justice (in financial short term, it matters little if they cost $90 or $9000, since the lawyer fees are much higher).
And now Oracle is leaving with nothing but a huge invoice from the lawyers ... the same lawyers who lost the SCO trial(s). (Go figure.)
As always the lawyers win.
What percentage of legislators are lawyers?
Please see http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/denson7.html.
It argues that those 170,000 people died unnecessarily.
I used to be a nuclear energy fan (considering that much of the anti-nuclear sentiment is Luddite hysteria),
but the Iran situation made me reconsider. I fear that nuclear power generation might advance
the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
And according to Wikipedia, solar will start reaching grid parity in 2015 and wind in 2020/2025.
I think we can get by with hydro, coal (with pollution-reducing technology) and natural gas
until 2025.
What do you think?
How can Democracy function properly if we're not well informed, and half of what we hear is the voice of money talking?
It remembers me of the 1984 book. The totalitarian government made sure that newspapers contained nothing but astrology, sports and crime...
I explained myself in http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2865083&cid=40075109
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser_market_share#Summary_table
In the data for April, only Net Applications put MSIE significant ahead of Google Chrome. The other 3 sources, on average, give *lower* usage of MSIE than Stat Counter.
As for what I have read from the case, it is pretty clear that it derived from Monsanto, and that the farmer was aware. I am not saying it makes it OK, I am just really tired of people taking documentaries for truth. They have become the weapon of choice for propagandists, and if people aren't critical of them, they are going to end up believing Expelled or some other such nonsense.
It can be worse. People could believe in Michael Moore.