out of control. Here's a good documentary on the subject of GMO's video.google.com/videoplay       and then there is Dr.Vandana Shiva  current.com/topics/88793829_dr-vandana-shiva/ she wrote a very important book called "Earth's Democracy"

I wouldn't say the EU is trusting dodgy science or that the US are eating very unsafe food. The EU is just being more cautous. Although from what I have read, none of the GM crops eaten by people in the USA are particular unsafe or have been proven unsafe. Let me put it this way, they are safer than Mc Donalds. That isn't saying much but still. They should be labeled though, Im not sure if they are in America.

Clearly nothing! is worse than gay marriages!

-Awesome find, Kevin.  I mean, not awesomely-cool, but importantly-awesome.

 

Fuck genetically-engineered crops. They are about one thing and one thing only:

Control

Mansanto can now sell GE seed to farmers, who are then unable to replant their own seed. (Not that farmers typically grow their own seed, but that's not the real point here.) In fact, if wind blows GE seed from one farm to another, the second farm is then legally bound to destroy the blow-over, or face getting sued by Mansanto.

This whole patenting of genetics has gotten way out of control. I'm not against GE crops in general; I'm just against the corporate control of GE crops. (Yes, farming is largely a big-corporation thing too; but right now, I have several farmers in the [distant] family, none of which work directly for a big corporation.)

As for the resistance-building: it seems like a natural thing (no pun intended). I mean, we've known for years that anti-bacterials result in bacteria that are resistant, which in turn results in anti-bacterials becoming simply reclassified as "smelly chemicals." The same seems trivially true for genetically-engineered resistances.

Anyway, sorry about my rant. That's just a whole big can o' worms for me. "Intellectual property" is becoming the second-most dangerous thing to society, after only gay marriage.

As much as I'm against patents in a general sense, I am horrified that they are put into use on living beings. This will go nowhere good.

 

Europe (EU) around 500 million people have banned/restricted GM food as potentially unsafe, crop yields really are a somewhat minor matter

 

You're using the wrong framework. History has established that mucking with our food can be dangerous, and that the dangerous effects may not show up for many many years: Ie: pesticide use.

Hence it is logical to assume that mucking with food can be dangerous. Hence it is logical to ensure that mucking with food isn't dangerous before allowing its widespread use. Hence it is logical to ban the use of untested products.

The thing is, each new GM crop are tested, they are tested and tested and tested. You know when people say GM crops aren't even tested? It is basically a lie. What they mean to say is they have been tested far more than any other food. By unsafe it doesn't mean people will start vommiting blood 20 years after they have a bite to eat for some unkown reason. They mean cancer causing agents etc. but I get the feeling the people who shout about this like the impresion they give. makes it seem different from the rest of our food. I have met quite a few people who have been given the completely wrong impression by these people, duno if you have. Also a frighting amount of the food we eat do the exact same things people think GM crops do. I have put a link at the bottom that give a list of food additives and where you find them, take a look through them and see what you eat. take a look at salt for example. Am I saying that I am 100% sure they are safe? no but the evidance so far seems to suggest they are.

 

http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm

I completely disagree. Manipulating the genetic structure of a life form is taking the risk of introducing a harmful substance by accident. We are a long way from knowing how every gene works, and genetic changes can make immense differences in final product.

It is possible that these foods being discussed have been sufficiently tested, I wouldn't know one way or the other. But taking precautions is perfectly logical when making changes to one of the single most necessary resources to our species.

Let's talk about terms here.  I know I'm only a molecular biologist, but the "genetic structure" of a "life form" sounds like pretty mushy language to me.  To take the example of the Cry toxins encoded in Bt corn, what you have is a strain of Zea mays, complete with the normal 10 chromosomes, one of which has had added to it a gene that produces a toxin that we already spray on lots of vegetable crops.  This toxin is nasty for insect pests but it only becomes toxic when it encounters an alkaline pH in the insect gut; my gut and your gut and your neighbor's dog's gut is acidic and therefore, a Cry toxin cannot do diddly shit to us.  

But of course, there is the possibility that a Cry toxin could somehow react with compounds within the cytoplasm of your corn plant and make some kind of new toxic substance, I suppose.  However, this possibility becomes vanishingly unlikely when one considers that Cry toxins form near chemically inert crystals when in a pH neutral environment like vegetable cytoplasm.  This is certainly good for corn, because the origin of this toxin is Bacillus thuringiensis, a soil bacterium that has lived all over corn plants since they started to shoot up.

Well, the marketing department is actually set on calling them "Cunnilingus/Fellatio Proxies".  We're arranging for one of the Fox News Blondes to grow one by mid-summer; it's quite a coup...

I should be quiet.

Papers?  Links?  I'm really not trying to be a dick here, but just stating that "evidence" exists is not the tactic of a rationalist.

The abstract is certainly interesting, though I can't find the full text (or any mention of the paper) on PubMed, so I'm wondering where they published (I don't see a journal title either).  I wouldn't make a judgment on Bt corn being dangerous without some more evidence.  Ten or so articles pointing to that kind of thing in refereed literature (and in English--like it or not, it's the language of science right now) would be a good start.  Also, the site containing the abstract is hardly neutral on the subject of GM crops, though that's a side issue, admittedly.

The point that seems to be ignored from the OP is that GM crops may not increase crop yields sufficiently in any case, which actually is an interesting development.  The question of whether GM crops are dangerous to consume is moot if they don't provide a higher yield consistent with a higher cost to the grower.

So the tactic of a rationalist is to play down the fact that two types of corn that are being grown ubiquitously throughout the earth have been shown to cause sterility in laboratory animals?

I think DDA's point (and I'll throw my hat in the ring here, too) is that it hasn't been shown to cause sterility. One abstract from one experiment does not demonstrate something conclusively; particularly if the study wasn't peer reviewed before being published.

That's a really disgusting sentiment. The food people and the animals we eat consume is such an important issue it's surprising to me that anyone would make light of such a thing. Certainly the findings of that study could be wrong I never said it was proof. I just wanted to be sure what the tactics of a rationalist were. Apparently they are to pooh pooh the information or be misanthropic and say it's a good thing. Also peer-review is a prerequisite to making policy decisions but it's not really an excuse to be completely incredulous.

 

 

 Damn, dude.  I didn't realize there were off limits topics for humor.

Look, you're jumping off the deep end here and making a lot of gross mischaracterizations.  I don't mean to speak for DDA, but I'm pretty sure that neither of us is suggesting we just toss anything on a plate so long as it hasn't been proven unsafe.  That's absurd.  But by the same token, it's equally absurd to take something off the plate because a few fringe scientists and lots of non-scientists think it might potentially be harmful in some very ill-defined way.

Genetically engineered food has been tested for safety, and it passed the short term tests.  There's no way to gather empirical data about long term effects when there hasn't been a long term yet, so the best thing we can do is go with our best scientific guess, which is that the genes we've altered in these crops are expressing in the way predicted by evolutionary theory.  If it turns out later that there is evidence of negative effects, we'll address that.

The bottom line is that it's dumb to trust 500 million non-scientists when the scientists who could give credible, empirically backed answers have not been consulted, even if it's a really emotionally volatile issue.

 

 

Actually, I probably would.  I trust the news about as much as I trust... well... come to think of it, I can't think of any source of information I trust less than the news.  I'm also in the food industry, and quite science savvy, so...

yeah.... anyway...

Cause.. yeah... government funded studies are always reliable.

 

 

 

As far as I know there hasnt been any papers saying GM foods are dangerous but the default position by the EU is assume any new drug or food is dangerous until proven otherwise.

It seems unlikely that there are any short term risks as you havent got any mass health problems in the US due to food (well bar too many fat people) the interesting fact is the media/politics of it.

A few years back GM food was public enemy no 1, no islamic terrorism, not global warming not gay marriages but GM food. It just shows the media can make people scared of anything literally anything. Works in reverse too isnt British beef stil banned in the US despite everyone in the UK still eating it without any ban in the last 50 years?. All American beef is banned due to growth hormones

99% of health scares are pure politics 0% science

Yes. Yes it is.

If a study has been published without having been through any peer review process, you can use it to wipe your ass with but not much else. Without proper peer review, how do you know that the results weren't faked? How do you discern between solid testing and flawed testing?

Ouch.

Could we get a quick straw poll on whether I quoted geirj out of context?  I didn't mean to, if I did, but I don't think I did in any case.  And for that matter, if I did, was it more or less out of context than attempting to paint me as a eugenicist because of a Bertrand Russell quote in my sig? 

And as to the second point, you're correct.  Splicing foreign DNA into crops isn't the same thing as hybridizing and selective breeding.  It's orders of magnitude more precise, for one thing.

I don't know that it isn't flawed or faked but I also don't know that something that is peer-reviewed isn't flawed or faked. I just think there's less of a possibility that it is. Also you act as if all peer-review happens before publication or that you don't ever hear about research before there's an opportunity for review. You may say that no scientific claim gets past your peer-review filter and you dismiss everything that lacks peer-review without reservation but I think you're exaggerating.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying Kevin. My ignorant judgment trumps all you fuckers and scientific consensus.  This is my 500th post and I'm gonna go smoke my bong. You guys go create genetic hybrid plants with live viruses and grow them in the open air hoping it'll kill everybody or whatever the hell you do.  Over and out.

 

From this statement alone, anyone in the food science industry can dismiss you as just another uninformed alarmist.