[onoway]

http://www.ted.com/t...e_us_who_we_are

It seems to me that when you combine this with the findings of other studies that the bacteria in the gut is altered when provided with GMO food, the old saying you are what you eat is being shown to be literally true. At least one study found that altered gut bacteria in humans are a precursor to diabetes. Children living in a highly urban area and eating a lot of processed or semi processed foods have different bacteria in their gut as opposed to children living in a somewhat isolated rural area without access to processed foods. Might the trend being pushed by most governments and industrial ag plant patent owning chemical companies toward GMOs beginning to result in the astonishing and dismaying leap in the incidence of asthma, autism, obesity and childhood cancers as well as the (now considered to be epidemic) occurrence of diabetes, arthritis, some adult cancers, and depression in adults.

Consider that many GMO crops have hormone disruptors embedded in their genetic material, and we are told by the patent owners that although these will have an affect on other life forms including mammals, they won't affect humans. That's been shown to be untrue, as common sense would suggest..(Talking about exceptionlism!) but studies showing these results somehow seem to be quickly swept away. The PR says that GMOs are necessary for us to feed the world but that has not shown the promise that was predicted, in fact, studies have shown non industrial based commercial farms are both more productive and more profitable in the long run.

They are also far more resilient and reverse rather than cause desertification, which is one of the major threats to food production as more and more land becomes basically sterilized by agricultural chemicals, many of which end up in the food we eat.

GMOs are the apple being held out to Snow White. Unfortunately, there's unlikely to be anyone wandering around who will save us from the results of eating the apple.

[mike777]

Again the problem with genetically modified foods is that all food is genetically modified, all food.

All foods that are modified using "genetic engineering techniques" have been modified by nature, humans are nature.


Foods have been modified by humans for about as long as humans have been around.


With all of the above granted foods modified by humans hundreds/thousaNDS of years ago have a track record of safety that newer modified foods do not. I guess that is the worry.

----------------------------------
non industrial based commercial farms...BTW WHAT are these?


if they are more productive and profitable sounds like a good investment idea.

[mikeh]

Are there any actual peer-reviewed studies demonstrating that Gmo food is harmful. I don't like the patent issues that some such as Monsanto use to control use of their products, although the issue isn't as black and white as some would depict, but that is a completely different issue. There is a vast amount of rejection of knowledge these days We have the vaxxer idiots and I confess to thinking that the anti Gmo people are pretty closely related in attitude. Maybe I am mistaken, but are there any valid studies showing harmful effects? Just showing a change in gut bacteria is meaningless. You can change your own gut bacteria in many ways, and you probably do so on an ongoing basis, unless you consume an extremely boring diet. You have to read information such as Gmo foods causing changes in bacterial content in context rather than having a knee jerk reaction

[chasetb]

IF what you are saying is true, then answer this - would you rather have people starving, or feed them the GMOs so that they don't die due to malnutrition? The world produces more than enough food for everyone to eat, the problem lies in cost and distribution. You can thank GMOs for that (and all food nowadays has been Genetically modified, HOW it was modified is the kicker).

[akwoo]

There has always been an slight hint (though no more than a slight hint) of the global middle suppressing the global poor in environmentalism.

Let's say, as a ridiculously simple toy model, that we have two possible options.

1. Kill all but 3 billion people right now and have allow the rest to sustainably live on Earth.

2. Keep going as is, destroying Earth, until a catastrophe comes in 50 years, and have to kill all but 1 billion people.

Let's further stipulate that the killing won't be completely random but rather will be highly skewed towards having the richer and more powerful survive.

If you're among the 3 billion that won't be killed, and especially if you are among the 3 billion but you or your descendents are not on track to be among the 1 billion, you're going to prefer (1). On the other hand, if you're not among the 3 billion, you'd much rather take your chances with (2). If you're among the top half a million and neither you nor your descendents will be targeted under either scenario, you don't care very much.

I'd be highly skeptical of anyone arguing that either option is somehow ethically superior to the other.

[y66]

My food guru, Mark Bittman, says:

Quote

By themselves and in their current primitive form, G.M.O.s are probably harmless; the technology itself is not even a little bit nervous making. (Neither we nor plants would be possible without “foreign DNA” in our cells.) But to date G.M.O.'s have been used by companies like Monsanto to maximize profits and further removing the accumulated expertise of generations of farmers from agriculture; in those goals, they’ve succeeded brilliantly. They have not been successful in moving sustainable agriculture forward (which is relevant because that was their claim), nor has their deployment been harmless: It’s helped accelerate industrial agriculture and its problems and strengthened the positions of unprincipled companies.

But the technology itself has not been found to be harmful, and we should recognize the possibility that the underlying science could well be useful (as dynamite can be useful for good), particularly with greater public investment and oversight.

Let’s be clear: Biotech in agriculture has been overrated both in its benefits and in its dangers. And by overrating its dangers, the otherwise generally rational “food movement” allows itself to be framed as “anti-science.”

If anti-G.M.O. activists were successful in banning G.M.O.'s, we’d still have industrial agriculture, along with its wholesale environmental degradation and pollution, labor abuse and overproduction of ingredients for the junk food diet.

What about labeling? I’m in favor of transparency — I want to know what’s in my food — and labeling G.M.O.'s may well be the thin end of the wedge. But that G.M.O.'s are in the forefront of the battle for transparency is perhaps unfortunate, since they play on irrational fears and are far less worrisome than the intensive and virtually unregulated use of antibiotics and agricultural chemicals.

Maybe all I’m saying here is this: There are two important struggles in food: One is for sustainable agriculture and all that it implies — more respect for the earth and those who live on it (including workers), more care in the use of natural resources in general, more consideration for future generations. The other is for healthier eating: a limit to outright lies in marketing “food” to children, a limit on the sales of foodlike substances, a general encouragement for the eating of real food.

Both sustainability and healthier eating affect us. Very few people can avoid struggling daily with the avalanche of bad food and the culture and propaganda surrounding it. Near-hysteria or simple answers lead to unachievable situations and nonsolutions. More effective would be shifting the food culture, the relevant business models and public policies — a gradual and concerted movement toward making production and consumption simply “better.” That is what the good food movement should be about.

That last paragraph makes a lot of sense to me.

[y66]

OP, you might enjoy this NPR story about the possible relationship between hypercleanliness and allergies and this NYT story about the relationship between exposure to microbes, allergies and autoimmune disorders.

[onoway]

mike777, on 2015-February-28, 19:50, said:

Again the problem with genetically modified foods is that all food is genetically modified, all food.

All foods that are modified using "genetic engineering techniques" have been modified by nature, humans are nature.


Foods have been modified by humans for about as long as humans have been around.


With all of the above granted foods modified by humans hundreds/thousaNDS of years ago have a track record of safety that newer modified foods do not. I guess that is the worry.

----------------------------------
non industrial based commercial farms...BTW WHAT are these?


if they are more productive and profitable sounds like a good investment idea.

Sorry but that's total nonsense, verbal gymnastics at best. The genetic material which naturally can coexist is within a group. Nothing outside that group has the capacity to interact successfully to generate life. A flower can rub pollen on your arm for a million years but you are never going to grow a petunia there, nor develop the ability to photosynthesize. There are jokes about men are men and sheep are nervous but never yet has that led to a creature half human and half sheep, although people have certainly had myths about centaurs, satyrs harpies etc. Genetically modified foods which are of concern are an entirely different thing than hybrids or anything at all that possibly could occur in nature. What farmers and others have traditionally done is select for preference of the expressed genetics within/across families; different varieties of wheat with each other, or cousins like wheat and rye for example. In animals an example are mules, the result of crossing donkeys and horses. These can and do exist in nature. Farmers have also selected out for varieties which have done well and by the process of selection have developed new varieties. But you can look for all the time that the earth has existed and you will NEVER find jellyfish genes occurring naturally in a potato. However, they now exist in genetically modified potatoes because they have been put there.

To try to say they are the same thing is like saying selecting the Q !H out of your hand to play and manufacturing the Q!H out of the table napkin to play is the same thing.

The most common modifications, though, involve such things as rendering the seed sterile (the terminator gene) so farmers can no longer save seed or select out what works best for them but must buy seed every year. One question that comes to mind is what does it do to the nutritive value when a "seed" in effect is no longer a seed, as it no longer has the capacity to generate a new plant. Obviously any plant which developed that gene naturally would become extinct in short order. A side concern would be what happens when there is no competition in the market and what that implies for food costs in the future? Another one is that many of these GMO plants derive from similar if not the same stock so the specter of the Irish potato famine comes to mind, as it was largely a matter of only one variety of potato being grown and it had no resistance to a blight which unexpectedly showed up.

The other common modification, and the one I'm talking about here involves installing genes which have been designed so plants can take poisons in the plant without dying. Thus you can spray the plants to a farethewell with herbicides and fungicides and insecticides and they happily take them in but keep growing. You may have been told to wash your fruit and vegetables to rinse off any chemical residues. Not going to help when those chemicals are part and parcel of the food itself.

These are IN the food you are eating, and the USDA last year approved an increase in the amount of such poisons it allows to be present in food. If they weren't there, then this would not have been required. The increase was necessary, because just as we now have flesh eating disease and other antibiotic resistant diseases which have been spawned by overuse of antibiotics, so insects and plant diseases have begun to develop immunity to the poisons, so they have to use stronger and stronger ones, and/or more of them.

The other thing about GMOs is that they are HIGHLY dependant on fertilizers, so much so that when farmers in South Africa weren't instructed to provide a high enough amount for their crops, even Mondanto admitted it led to at least a third of the corn crop failing to develop kernals at all, hundreds of thousands of acres. Aside from the obvious fact that a total failure of the plants to produce anything sueful whatsoever unless heavilly fertilized is hardly a resilient crop to depend on for food security, virtually all fertilizers have natural contaminants in them, such as cadmium, zinc, uranium etc. These are also obviously in minute quantities, but again, over time they build up both in the soil and in the plants grown in that soil. Again, we are told that the levels of such contaminants is safe for human consumption, but that's again based on what is known to kill quickly, not what happens with continuous consumption. Selenium is essential for many of the animals we raise (and to humans) but in miniscule amounts, selenium poisoning is not uncommon in livestock.

A little bit of arsenic won't kill you, and neither will a little bit of most of these poisons, although farmers are advised to use hazmat equipment to deal with many of them. Over time, though, those infinitesimal amounts will add up, just as they will with arsenic. How long can people eat tiny amounts of poison daily before it starts to have an effect? Nobody knows, because we are told that these things are just fine, trust them, nobody's died from eating GMO foods yet. Do we know that? No. We only know that nobody has IMMEDIATELY died from eating GMO food. There are many many poisons which won't kill you immediately but over time will do you in, often highly unpleasantly, and generally people are advised to avoid them. GMO technology is deliberately and knowingly causing poisons to be part of the food we eat.

You may not be old enough to remember the whole sad story about thalidomide. Scientists and doctors all raved about it. ONE doctor said she wasn't convinced and she was vilified mercilessly, until finally someone started looking a little closer at why so many children were suddenly being born with flippers or no limbs. Turned out she was right and all the scientific community that had jumped on the bandwagon far too quickly was wrong. We are seeing the same frantic rush to adopt GMOs as was once the case to approve thalidomide. If the doctors and scientists didn't consider even the possibility that thalidomide might be implicated when they were faced with something so dramatic as a child unexpectedly born with no arms, how can they be expected to consider anything less obvious such as the astonishing increase in autism or children's cancer wards? I read today that cancer is now the leading cause of death in children in North America. WHY? A couple of days ago I read an interview with a doctor who said he now frequently sees women under 35 with ovarian cancer, something virtually unknown when he started practice. WHY?

But then.. it's as you say, good business model at least for the moment, as the chemical companies don't have to deal with the health care costs and the anguish of families dealing with the results of their "scientific" hubris. Or the clean up of the rivers and lakes or the salting or desertification of untold acres of land, or the drilling into and draining of water deposits which may be millennia old and which will not readily be replenished. All of these things go hand in hand with GMO crops, as was very clearly demonstrated in India when they abandoned traditional farming practices and embraced new technology and GMOs wholeheartedly. That led directly to India eventually declaring an area comparable to the Prairies to be GMO free, GMOs to be banned forever, with the UNANIMOUS approval of over 600 scientists who had seen the destruction and death this caused, thousands of farmers committing suicide when they could no longer raise any crop at all on their land It's all been well documented, google Dr Vandana Shiva.

Selling hard drugs is also very profitable they say, as long you don't have to pay the costs. Tobacco companies are now being held somewhat responsible for the damage which has been attributed to tobacco, something else that doctors used to say was just fine, if not heartily endorse. Even so, smoking is a CHOICE, not a necessity as is food.

[mike777]

"Genetically modified foods which are of concern are an entirely different thing than hybrids or anything at all that possibly could occur in nature"


This is the basis of what you write about and is just nonsense.

You just do not seem to understand that whatever humans create is fully an act of nature. What ever humans destroy is fully an act of nature. In fact you do not seem to accept that humans are a part of nature, fully nature.


What humans create or destroy is 100% a part of nature. It is fully nature. What a star creates or destroys is fully nature, what the birds and the bees create or destroy is fully nature, what humans create or destroy is fully a part of nature. You do not seen to understand this. Humans are nature.

What you seem not to accept is that nature kills, nature destroys. You do not accept that genetically modified foods, modified by humans, are fully a part of nature.
----------------
"You may not be old enough to remember the whole sad story about thalidomide"
Yes I am old enough and this story of success is always the excuse used over and over again. IN fact I meant to add it to my post since I knew you would use it.

---------

I end by reposting this part of my post.
With all of the above granted foods modified by humans hundreds/thousaNDS of years ago have a track record of safety that newer modified foods do not. I guess that is the worry.

[mikeh]

onoway, on 2015-March-01, 10:34, said:

Sorry but that's total nonsense, verbal gymnastics at best. The genetic material which naturally can coexist is within a group. Nothing outside that group has the capacity to interact successfully to generate life. A flower can rub pollen on your arm for a million years but you are never going to grow a petunia there, nor develop the ability to photosynthesize. There are jokes about men are men and sheep are nervous but never yet has that led to a creature half human and half sheep, although people have certainly had myths about centaurs, satyrs harpies etc. Genetically modified foods which are of concern are an entirely different thing than hybrids or anything at all that possibly could occur in nature. What farmers and others have traditionally done is select for preference of the expressed genetics within/across families; different varieties of wheat with each other, or cousins like wheat and rye for example. In animals an example are mules, the result of crossing donkeys and horses. These can and do exist in nature. Farmers have also selected out for varieties which have done well and by the process of selection have developed new varieties. But you can look for all the time that the earth has existed and you will NEVER find jellyfish genes occurring naturally in a potato. However, they now exist in genetically modified potatoes because they have been put there.

To try to say they are the same thing is like saying selecting the Q !H out of your hand to play and manufacturing the Q!H out of the table napkin to play is the same thing.

The most common modifications, though, involve such things as rendering the seed sterile (the terminator gene) so farmers can no longer save seed or select out what works best for them but must buy seed every year. One question that comes to mind is what does it do to the nutritive value when a "seed" in effect is no longer a seed, as it no longer has the capacity to generate a new plant.

Your sincerity is clear, but is exceeded by your ignorance. Making a plant sterile has zero impact on the nutritional value of the plant or its 'seeds'. A mule is sterile, yet mule flesh is, I think, likely to be just as nutritious as the flesh of a donkey. I have news for you: cook a potato and plant it...it won't produce a plant. Put a vitamin pill in a planter...it won't sprout a vitamin plant. You apparently don't have a clue about how animals process the things we call food.

Quote

Obviously any plant which developed that gene naturally would become extinct in short order. A side concern would be what happens when there is no competition in the market and what that implies for food costs in the future?

why do you think food is still relatively cheap, given population densities? What the heck does this have to do with safety of GMO food? It may have a lot to do with anti-combine laws, but that is about freedom of ideas, not preventing use of technology.

Quote

Another one is that many of these GMO plants derive from similar if not the same stock so the specter of the Irish potato famine comes to mind, as it was largely a matter of only one variety of potato being grown and it had no resistance to a blight which unexpectedly showed up.

Mono-clonal issues are important, but this is a business argument, not a reason to fear GMO foods...it is a reason to require that biodiversity is respected. And, by the way, as you note later, one of the goals of genetically modifying plants is to make it LESS likely that a naturally occurring problem would destroy valuable crops. France lost its vineyards, saved only by the fact that by that date California had a lot of vines that could be transplanted. A common form of banana is under threat from natural causes, as are some forms of coffee bean and so on.

Quote

The other common modification, and the one I'm talking about here involves installing genes which have been designed so plants can take poisons in the plant without dying. Thus you can spray the plants to a farethewell with herbicides and fungicides and insecticides and they happily take them in but keep growing. You may have been told to wash your fruit and vegetables to rinse off any chemical residues. Not going to help when those chemicals are part and parcel of the food itself.

Many plants naturally produce anti-pesticides already. You do understand that 'everything' is made up of chemicals, don't you? We are all entirely made up of 'chemicals'. So many anti GMO people seem to think that a chemical is always bad! I got news for you.....have a sip of water...make it the purest, distilled water imaginable....you're drinking a chemical known as H2O, aka water.

Quote

These are IN the food you are eating, and the USDA last year approved an increase in the amount of such poisons it allows to be present in food. If they weren't there, then this would not have been required. The increase was necessary, because just as we now have flesh eating disease and other antibiotic resistant diseases which have been spawned by overuse of antibiotics, so insects and plant diseases have begun to develop immunity to the poisons, so they have to use stronger and stronger ones, and/or more of them.

You do know that the misuse of anti-biotics has nothing to do with GMOs? You do know that in fact the evolution of drug-resistant bacteria is the result of naturally occurring genetic modification of the bacteria.

A legitimate concern that we didn't understand that bacteria can evolve defences to antibiotics is no reason to stop trying to improve things. Yes, drug-resistant bacteria are a problem and will likely continue to be one and may get worse. However, what would you prefer? To have never developed them? I'd be dead were it not for antibiotics, and millions of others can say the same. People routinely died from simple bacterial infections. In addition, if we are going to overcome drug-resistant bacteria, it won't be by wishful thinking...it will be through science and technology.

Quote

The other thing about GMOs is that they are HIGHLY dependant on fertilizers, so much so that when farmers in South Africa weren't instructed to provide a high enough amount for their crops, even Mondanto admitted it led to at least a third of the corn crop failing to develop kernals at all, hundreds of thousands of acres. Aside from the obvious fact that a total failure of the plants to produce anything sueful whatsoever unless heavilly fertilized is hardly a resilient crop to depend on for food security, virtually all fertilizers have natural contaminants in them, such as cadmium, zinc, uranium etc. These are also obviously in minute quantities, but again, over time they build up both in the soil and in the plants grown in that soil. Again, we are told that the levels of such contaminants is safe for human consumption, but that's again based on what is known to kill quickly, not what happens with continuous consumption. Selenium is essential for many of the animals we raise (and to humans) but in miniscule amounts, selenium poisoning is not uncommon in livestock.

Just because one company makes and sells GMO product in such a fashion is not a reason for barring GMO foods. Monsanto is a company whose business practices look, to me, to reflect a remarkable lack of ethics, tho I suspect that many who work for them would see it differently. But the idea of banning GMO foods because of the dubious practices of one company seems a bit.....weird.

Quote

A little bit of arsenic won't kill you, and neither will a little bit of most of these poisons, although farmers are advised to use hazmat equipment to deal with many of them. Over time, though, those infinitesimal amounts will add up, just as they will with arsenic. How long can people eat tiny amounts of poison daily before it starts to have an effect? Nobody knows, because we are told that these things are just fine, trust them, nobody's died from eating GMO foods yet. Do we know that? No. We only know that nobody has IMMEDIATELY died from eating GMO food. There are many many poisons which won't kill you immediately but over time will do you in, often highly unpleasantly, and generally people are advised to avoid them. GMO technology is deliberately and knowingly causing poisons to be part of the food we eat.

You may not be old enough to remember the whole sad story about thalidomide. Scientists and doctors all raved about it. ONE doctor said she wasn't convinced and she was vilified mercilessly, until finally someone started looking a little closer at why so many children were suddenly being born with flippers or no limbs. Turned out she was right and all the scientific community that had jumped on the bandwagon far too quickly was wrong. We are seeing the same frantic rush to adopt GMOs as was once the case to approve thalidomide. If the doctors and scientists didn't consider even the possibility that thalidomide might be implicated when they were faced with something so dramatic as a child unexpectedly born with no arms, how can they be expected to consider anything less obvious such as the astonishing increase in autism or children's cancer wards? I read today that cancer is now the leading cause of death in children in North America. WHY? A couple of days ago I read an interview with a doctor who said he now frequently sees women under 35 with ovarian cancer, something virtually unknown when he started practice. WHY?

Equating thalidomide with GMO is hardly a logical argument.....thalidomide would never make it onto the market these days, precisely because we have, as a society, learned some lessons. In addition, the sum of human knowledge has increased vastly since those days. Yes, you can argue that we still don't know enough, and that it is possible that horrible things will happen. But you can make that sort of scare-mongering argument about anything....you have zero evidence, and you would want to condemn millions or billions to starvation just because you don't want to see a drought-resistant food in your produce department.

Quote

But then.. it's as you say, good business model at least for the moment, as the chemical companies don't have to deal with the health care costs and the anguish of families dealing with the results of their "scientific" hubris. Or the clean up of the rivers and lakes or the salting or desertification of untold acres of land, or the drilling into and draining of water deposits which may be millennia old and which will not readily be replenished.

What the heck has this to do with GMO foods as a concept?

Quote

All of these things go hand in hand with GMO crops, as was very clearly demonstrated in India when they abandoned traditional farming practices and embraced new technology and GMOs wholeheartedly. That led directly to India eventually declaring an area comparable to the Prairies to be GMO free, GMOs to be banned forever, with the UNANIMOUS approval of over 600 scientists who had seen the destruction and death this caused, thousands of farmers committing suicide when they could no longer raise any crop at all on their land It's all been well documented, google Dr Vandana Shiva.

I did....and I read more than you did, I think. Yes, she is suely beloved of the Oprahs and the Dr. Oz's of the world, but she is almost completely lacking in scientific credibility. She opposes the use of GMO cotton, despite the fact that such cotton is vastly easier to grow, with high crop yields, and a marked decrease in the need for pesticides. She opposes gmo rice that was modified to contain a 'chemical' that eliminates a form of blindness that would otherwise affect (and historically did affect) hundreds of thousands of the poor in India. The fact that you think she can be trusted says a lot about your credulity.

Quote

Selling hard drugs is also very profitable they say, as long you don't have to pay the costs. Tobacco companies are now being held somewhat responsible for the damage which has been attributed to tobacco, something else that doctors used to say was just fine, if not heartily endorse. Even so, smoking is a CHOICE, not a necessity as is food.

Again, wtf does tobacco have to do with the concept of GMO?

Much of what you write seems intended to invoke memories of mistakes that humans have made....and, yes....it is possible that GMO foods 'could' be a mistake. But without GMO foods, we cannot expect to sustain the current population, even without the horrors that will flow from global warming. Meanwhile, you ignore all of the good that arose from pursuit of technology. You refer to thalidomide, but not to the myriad of medications that keep so many alive and functioning. Would you ban antibiotics? Would you ban cancer-treating drugs? Would you require us to go back to ploughing with oxen? Would you prefer not to have a computer, or the internet, with which to voice your luddite worries? No, of course not.

Only people who have no knowledge of history would yearn for a return to pre-technological ways of living....and all of them imagine that they would be the societal elite...it's silly. Technology carries costs and the costs can't always be known in advance, but shutting down technological striving is utterly idiotic.

[nige1]

IMO onoway is right to warn us to be wary of GM foods. In the same way, we should be careful about many other modern potentially profitable but risky scientific enterprises. There are lots of examples (microwave radiation, fracking, wind-farms, nuclear fission and fusion, addicting people to pure nicotine, ostensibly to wean them away from cigarettes, ...). They all seem to suffer from sloppy, easily corruptible regulation. We can learn lessons from past experience (phosphorus matches, asbestos, tetraethyl lead, addicting a generation to barbiturates and amphetamines, CFCs, ...). Problems arose that were hard to predict. So far we've been lucky enough to recover from our mistakes. but such recklessness is a hostage to fortune.

[mikeh]

nige1, on 2015-March-02, 10:54, said:

IMO onoway is right to warn us to be wary of GM foods. In the same way that we should be careful about many other modern potentially profitable but risky scientific enterprises There are many examples (fracking, wind-farms, nuclear fission and fusion, addicting people to pure nicotine, to wean them from cigarettes). They all seem to suffer from sloppy, easily corruptible regulation.

wind farms? yes, they kill birds, but so do hunters, farmers, other birds, cats, pollution, airports. Yes, it would be smart to ensure that no wind farm is built on a migratory route, but otherwise wind farms appear to be a pretty good thing.

nuclear fusion? Since when is nuclear fusion used, outside of bombs (which, I agree, are not a good thing). I am not an advocate of unfettered technological 'progress', but scare tactics with no factual support (in terms of GMOs) are worse than the problems they claim to warn us about. Some technological advances have proven to be flawed, but the vast majority have been beneficial, so advocating a mindless, uninformed opposition to something that seems to be working well is counter-productive. That isn't to say that very careful work is not required.

[Zelandakh]

We should also all be wary of cars and other vehicles (not only pollution but also accidents); of sports like rugby (concussion, neck injuries); and even just crossing the street. One of the statistics I remember when the National Lottery was launched is that you have a greater chance of being killed on draw day than having a winning ticket (about 1 in 14 billion as I recall). Did that stop people buying tickets? Of course not. Nor should a very small chance of a small potential health risk necessarily stop us from developing GM foods. Of course risks are all relative; but the truth is that even if the risks were tangible, production would have been halted already. The biggest problem so far has been that or cross-polination. A bio-farm within a certain distance of a GM farm cannot guarantee that their crops remain pure. Such matters are not a reason to scare-monger about GM foods but rather present new challenges to overcome for the technology to be successfully implemented and integrated into the more traditional farming landscape.

Finally, there is very good evidence to suggest that eating processed meat is a far greater risk to health than any GM food. And yet I do not hear many calls to remove bacon, ham or burgers from shelves. That is a good exampe of the difference between the perceived risks and the reality of it.

[RMB1]

Zelandakh, on 2015-March-02, 11:22, said:

Finally, there is very good evidence to suggest that eating processed meat is a far greater risk to health than any GM food. And yet I do not hear many calls to remove bacon, ham or burgers from shelves. ...

Not many but some - more room for lentils on the shelves.

[Trinidad]

mikeh, on 2015-March-02, 11:06, said:

wind farms? yes, they kill birds, but so do hunters, farmers, other birds, cats, pollution, airports. Yes, it would be smart to ensure that no wind farm is built on a migratory route, but otherwise wind farms appear to be a pretty good thing.

There are some arguments against wind farms. I consider most of them bogus, but I can list a few of them, nonetheless:

• They are economically unsound: The cost to build and maintain them (money/energy) is more then what they yield in money/energy.
  
• They are noisy.
  
• They are ugly.

In the Netherlands there is quite a bit of discussion about whether we should build more wind farms. Now, for the Netherlands, I think the energy solution should be based on combining large wind farms with small scale solar power (roof tops) and smart storage solutions.

The biggest problem is that -unlike Canada- the country is densely populated. This means that wind farms will end up in somebody's backyard, inevitably in the sparse amount of relatively quite countryside that we still have left. If you have just retired from the city and bought yourself a little house in the countryside with a nice few over some fields and dunes to grow old, you will not be amused if you get a wind farm in front of your window. You cannot completely ignore these arguments.

The alternative is to build these wind farms off-shore. For the Dutch that is a piece of cake (it is our national pride that anything we can do on land, we can do even better at sea), but it will make the wind farms more expensive and, hence, less efficient.

Having admitted to these, fairly genuine, concerns about wind energy, there are a few locations in the Netherlands where I fail to understand why there is no wind park there yet. As an example, in the North of the country, we have a 32 km (20 mile) long dam. The only thing that is there is a road on top, water on one side, water on the other side, a couple of locks, and a large amount of wind. I don't understand why this dam, miles away from anybody's backyard, isn't filled completely with wind turbines.

Rik

[ArtK78]

Zelandakh, on 2015-March-02, 11:22, said:

One of the statistics I remember when the National Lottery was launched is that you have a greater chance of being killed on draw day than having a winning ticket (about 1 in 14 billion as I recall). Did that stop people buying tickets? Of course not. Nor should a very small chance of a small potential health risk necessarily stop us from developing GM foods.

I don't remember if I have told this story on this site yet.

My father is a retired dentist. He sold his practice to another dentist who had worked with my father as an associate for some time. One day when one of the lottery jackpots got large and everyone was buying tickets, my father asked his associate whether he had bought any tickets. He replied that he didn't play the lottery, as one was more likely to be struck by lightning than to win the lottery.

After my father retired, this other dentist was leaving the office one day. As he walked towards his car, he was struck by lightning! If it were not for the fact that the local police station was just across the street from the rear of the dental office where he was walking and a couple of police officers saw what had happened, he probably would not have survived. As it was, he was in the hospital for several months and I don't believe he ever practiced dentistry again.

[onoway]

mikeh, on 2015-February-28, 21:28, said:

Are there any actual peer-reviewed studies demonstrating that Gmo food is harmful. I don't like the patent issues that some such as Monsanto use to control use of their products, although the issue isn't as black and white as some would depict, but that is a completely different issue. There is a vast amount of rejection of knowledge these days We have the vaxxer idiots and I confess to thinking that the anti Gmo people are pretty closely related in attitude. Maybe I am mistaken, but are there any valid studies showing harmful effects? Just showing a change in gut bacteria is meaningless. You can change your own gut bacteria in many ways, and you probably do so on an ongoing basis, unless you consume an extremely boring diet. You have to read information such as Gmo foods causing changes in bacterial content in context rather than having a knee jerk reaction

The study that I first read regarding this was done in Scotland and like so many others seems to have vanished into the ether.Much of the early information and links I had were on a now defunct computer so I can't retrieve them. One study maybe 15 years ago, not entirely sure of the date, was a joint university research project looking at the use of glyphosate..a chemical intricately involved with GMO plant production..and its effect on the workers in the tomato industry in Ontario. Their findings of health issues including prostate cancers and spontaneous abortions among the workers alarmed then sufficiently to call for a world wide ban, as although each chemical used was not in itself extremely dangerous, the combination intensified the lethality considerably. I sent a copy of that study to various MPs in Ottowa and was told that the government was satisfied that everything was just fine and not to worry.

A professor in New York which studied the effects of feeding hay dessicated with the same chemicals to milk cows found the use of chemically dessicated hay was strongly correlated with an increase in abortions. (I was interested in that one as friends of mine had all their Quarter Horse mares abort when they unknowingly bought and fed hay that had been chemically dessicated). The professor was told to withdraw his publication of results or the university would have funding withdrawn and he might even be in danger of losing his job.It is very difficult now to find that study.

This interview with Dr. Don Huber, Professor Emeritus of Plant Pathology, Purdue University on discovery of new organism and crop disease, livestock infertility and threats to U.S. food and agriculture, done more recently, speaks to that problem https://www.youtube....d&v=HPAq5KbmiMI

Complicating access to research further is the focussed attack on anyone who dares to publish anything remotely anti GMO, frequently with innuendo and often with outright lies. Typical of the reaction to a possibly negative impact of anything related to GMOs is this article which painfully tracks an article, an attack on the article and the response by the person who was attacked, Dr. Elaine Ingham, a very highly respected scientist who has worked with soil science for many years.
http://www.gmwatch.o...er-klebsiella-p This article was not the one I was trying to find but she has so many links now it was taking too long to find the one I wanted. This one demonstrates both the use of innuendo, slander and outright lies used to discredit anyone who questions the forward march of whatever idea someone proposes which might make some money, and how careless officials sometimes are with their mandate to safeguard.

Lead author Gilles-Eric Seralini, a biologist at Caen University in Caen, France and president of CRII-GEN's scientific board, who got some smuggled GMO and fed it to rats with rather dramatic and alarming results was vilified, slandered and threatened with lawsuits if he did not retract publication of the research.

There is another link regarding comments from a former PRO GMO scientist who now is against it. http://articles.merc...o-dangers.aspx#! This did not get the publicity that Dr Ingham got and indeed I didn't even know about it until I stumbled over it trying to find an entirely different article.

IF the GMO foods are safe, why won't the developers allow long term impartial studies?

One of the major problems facing researchers is the intransigence of the GMO companies to ALLOW any research. In regard to a research project regarding pigs:

The lack of a controlled feed-growing environment potentially calls the results into question, according to Kent Bradford, Ph.D., director of the Seed Biotechnology Center at the University of California, Davis.

“These are different products,” Bradford told Food Safety News. “For example, soy beans can have a wide range of phytoestrogens. The amount varies widely by production.”

But the study’s researchers had little choice but to work with retail GM grains due to one nearly insurmountable research hurdle: grower’s contracts.

Anyone who buys GM seeds is required to sign a technology stewardship agreement that says, in part, that they cannot perform research on the seed. Without express permission from the biotech patent-holder, scientists and farmers risk facing lawsuits for conducting any studies.

“Any study you want to do with these engineered crops, you need to get the company’s permission,” Hansen said. “Could you imagine if tobacco research was only done when the tobacco companies had the final say?”

In July 2009, a group of 26 public sector scientists wrote to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to complain about the restrictions imposed on them by the patent holders of GM seeds. In part, they said critical questions regarding GM foods could not be answered without more research freedom, which has still not been established."

A couple of years ago people in Britain who bought manure and spread it on their gardens watched in horror as their gardens all promptly died. The manure was from cows who had eaten feed that had been sprayed and at least some of the chemical had passed right through their systems and was still potent enough to kill any plant it came in contact with. Will these chemicals really have no effect on human metabolism? Why are there no studies showing that, then? It is ironic to me that pro GMO people are constantly claiming that people who have serious reservations about GMOs are anti science.. Where is the INDEPENDENT LONG TERM science showing they are SAFE?

GMOs are not necessarilly bad, the technology holds out a good deal of potential, but because of the patenting of seed and life forms, it has become primarilly a mechanism for profit, with no oversight or responsibility for consequences whatsoever. Indeed, for a while, it was made illegal for anyone to sue or challenge Monsanto in the American courts, they were actually seemingly set above the law.(No longer the case) The link between the companies producing them and the companies controlling the fertilizers and chemicals they require to produce a crop and the companies buying the crops for the commodity markets means that global food production, if relying on GMOs, virtually rests within the control of about 4 or 5 companies, Monsanto among them.

These companies are trying to extend their reach further to make it actually illegal to grow much of anything other than their seed (which of course, farmers must buy each year). They started out with soybeans and canola and quickly moved into other crops, now they are moving big time into vegetable seed. They have bought a number of very large seed companies, sometimes in partnership, and use them as false fronts to introduce seed which is NOT identified as GMO seed, into the public.Companies which once claimed they would never sell GMO seed are now strangely silent - or actively quietly lying as some of the seed they sell has indeed got GMO markers. If you read the fine print you find companies like Seminis now are "sister" companies..ie companies linked to Monsanto and the development of GMO seed.

The latest information is that they are also moving into GMO tree crops as well, olives and apples among the new targets.

Combine this expansion into every food crop with laws in the EU and now in Canada severely restricting the legal right to save, sell, trade seeds ( in Europe that includes vegetable seed, don't know if that applies in Canada -yet-) and it makes the anti monopoly lawsuit vs Microsoft look like a very very minor thing indeed. All this with no independant long term studies on the safety nor any consideration for the proven environmental destruction inherent in the way GMO crops are grown, nor any CHOICE allowed for the public to exercise as to what they choose to eat.

Absolute power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, is that the saying? What if the companies with the power had already been demonstrated in courts of law to be corrupt to start out with? Let's let them have virtually total control over humanity's food supply, why not!

So it gets very complicated but there are a whole lot of issues involved with GMOs which extend far beyond the actual seed itself, but are interconnected intimately with GMO food production. We KNOW that monocropping, the farming technique for which GMOs are designed, is harmful to the soil. We KNOW that the fertilizers and pesticides essential to their production are harmful to the environment. (Consider the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, now said to be the size of New Hampshire and agricultural runoff is responsible for most of it). We are TOLD - by the people who stand to profit by GMOs - that the studies showing problems with GMOs are all nonsense and bad science but there is no independant research showing they are safe, quite aside from any other consideration.

According to the Institute of Responsible Technology :The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) doesn’t think (GMO foods are safe). The Academy reported that “Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food,” including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, faulty insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system. The AAEM asked physicians to advise patients to avoid GM foods.

Before the FDA decided to allow GMOs into food without labeling, FDA scientists had repeatedly warned that GM foods can create unpredictable, hard-to-detect side effects, including allergies, toxins, new diseases, and nutritional problems. They urged long-term safety studies, but were ignored.

I can track down some individual studies but these links were the fastest to offer. As an interesting adjunct, I watched a TED talk the other day in which the speaker enthusiastically said that within the very near future any undergraduate would be able to do genetic modification in his or her dorm room. The thought boggles my mind, not because of the technology, but that anyone could seriously consider this a good thing.. many undergraduates are not precisely the responsible people we might hope them to be. ( Not that all adults are either but still). It's like giving the materials and instructions for making an atomic bomb, without the risk of radiation contamination.

[mike777]

Your rather lengthy article makes 2 main points.

1) Food, an apple to use your example, using methods developed over hundred of years have a long safety record, stuff invented last night in the lab do not.
2) Long term studies are rare on most stuff in the world, they are very expensive and take time. Most stuff in the world do not and in fact will not have studies on them. (See point one)

If we are rich enough we like to have a fully informed choice. Unfortunately many are not rich enough and their choice is eat the lab apple or go hungry.

It is also good to have watchdogs and skeptics out there such as yourself since we will never in our lifetimes have enough studies short or long term.

[onoway]

mikeh, on 2015-March-02, 01:17, said:

Your sincerity is clear, but is exceeded by your ignorance. Making a plant sterile has zero impact on the nutritional value of the plant or its 'seeds'. A mule is sterile, yet mule flesh is, I think, likely to be just as nutritious as the flesh of a donkey. I have news for you: cook a potato and plant it...it won't produce a plant. Put a vitamin pill in a planter...it won't sprout a vitamin plant. You apparently don't have a clue about how animals process the things we call food.

What a STRANGE analogy, a chunk of mule sirloin is not at all the same as the seed of the plant. People have recognized for some time now, that sprouted seed are more nutritious than the plant at any other stage, broccoli seed for example containing a great deal more of the cancer fighting elements than at any other time or in any other form of broccoli. When the seed cannot sprout, why on earth would it be reasonable to think it has the same food value? Please show me ANY research which might suggest this might be so.




why do you think food is still relatively cheap, given population densities? What the heck does this have to do with safety of GMO food? It may have a lot to do with anti-combine laws, but that is about freedom of ideas, not preventing use of technology

food has stayed cheap for a couple of reasons, one being the relative newness of North America so the virtually untouched richness and depth of the topsoil and abundant water in comparison to the population. Another has been the cheap fuel which allowed for huge tractors and machinery to traverse the fields several times per crop and transport the crop to market and from the market to the consumer. It has also been the abundant and cheap fertilizers upon which we have become ever more dependant, like heroin addicts. All of these are in decline or are becoming prohibitively expensive. USDA scientists figure the average farm doing monocropping techniques is losing an average of an inch of topsoil per acre per year, water is becoming more difficult to access, as now people are drilling into ancient aquifers which will not readilly replenish (If they would we wouldn't need to access them in the first place) and drought is likely once more to be a spectre in North America, not just in places like Ethiopia. Fertilizers and fuels are highly volatile in price and accessibility, whether or not you think peak oil is real.

Also are you truly not aware of the subsidies being handed out by the government? If those were removed, and the true costs of producing the food (virtually none of these subsidies available to organic farmers, btw) you would see a very large spike in food prices. You are paying those prices anyway, just through subsidies rather than directly.


Mono-clonal issues are important, but this is a business argument, not a reason to fear GMO foods...it is a reason to require that biodiversity is respected. And, by the way, as you note later, one of the goals of genetically modifying plants is to make it LESS likely that a naturally occurring problem would destroy valuable crops. France lost its vineyards, saved only by the fact that by that date California had a lot of vines that could be transplanted. A common form of banana is under threat from natural causes, as are some forms of coffee bean and so on.

A primary cause of these is the practice..necessary for GMO crops to be practical - of monocropping, something which has led to disasters in non GMO crops such as the plantations of pines that the timber companies planted to reforest areas they had clearcut, and which led to pine beetles romping their way through thousands of acres of trees, a banquet of fresh pine with not a barrier in sight. A further problem is indeed the use of one variety, so that if it gets hit, then there's nothing to fall back on. You may not be aware that the same thing happened with GMO corn in the US a few years ago with a virus. Finally they found one variety of corn in China which was resistent to the virus. Since now almost all corn is contaminated with GMO genes, if something new comes along again, then the world production of corn could be in major trouble.Of course, since the virus' and insects are developing immunity to the pesticides it's only a matter of time until this happens.

Many plants naturally produce anti-pesticides already. You do understand that 'everything' is made up of chemicals, don't you? We are all entirely made up of 'chemicals'. So many anti GMO people seem to think that a chemical is always bad! I got news for you.....have a sip of water...make it the purest, distilled water imaginable....you're drinking a chemical known as H2O, aka water.

Your point?

You do know that the misuse of anti-biotics has nothing to do with GMOs? You do know that in fact the evolution of drug-resistant bacteria is the result of naturally occurring genetic modification of the bacteria.

And you would maintain that bacteria and virus' etc would not evolve in reaction to the threat posed to them by the chemicals used for growing GMO crops? That seems extremely optimistic and somewhat wishful thinking, since it is already happening.

A legitimate concern that we didn't understand that bacteria can evolve defences to antibiotics is no reason to stop trying to improve things. Yes, drug-resistant bacteria are a problem and will likely continue to be one and may get worse. However, what would you prefer? To have never developed them? I'd be dead were it not for antibiotics, and millions of others can say the same. People routinely died from simple bacterial infections. In addition, if we are going to overcome drug-resistant bacteria, it won't be by wishful thinking...it will be through science and technology.

It will be by the understanding that natural systems have evolved over millions of years to interact, and that we try to short circuit these interactions at our peril. It wasn't the developement of antibiotics that was (is) the problem as you noted ( it think..if not you ought to have) many plants have antibacterial properties. Most of our drugs, in fact have been developed at least in the initial stages from plants. But as someone once noted, even a surfeit of water can kill you, and trying to develop ways to stop too much water from killing you seems a bit fruitless. i.e stop telling non swimmers they ought to be able to jump overboard in the mid Atlantic in a hurricane and not drown. OTOH teaching people to swim and where it's safe to do so makes perfect sense.

Just because one company makes and sells GMO product in such a fashion is not a reason for barring GMO foods. Monsanto is a company whose business practices look, to me, to reflect a remarkable lack of ethics, tho I suspect that many who work for them would see it differently. But the idea of banning GMO foods because of the dubious practices of one company seems a bit.....weird.

The producers of GMO foods spend untold amounts of money to stop laws requiring them to label their food as containing GMO ingredients. That seems as though it would be a logical and relatively easy thing to do, but they are extremely resistant to doing so. Don't ban them, label them, tell the truth about them, and let the people decide. They are not willing to do either, so they should imo be banned UNTIL they ARE willing to do so. These people are not willing to allow people to make a choice and that is a huge red flag. What are they afraid of? If nobody wants them then why should these companies be allowed to FORCE people to eat them?


Equating thalidomide with GMO is hardly a logical argument.....thalidomide would never make it onto the market these days, precisely because we have, as a society, learned some lessons. In addition, the sum of human knowledge has increased vastly since those days. Yes, you can argue that we still don't know enough, and that it is possible that horrible things will happen. But you can make that sort of scare-mongering argument about anything....you have zero evidence, and you would want to condemn millions or billions to starvation just because you don't want to see a drought-resistant food in your produce department.

Actually thalidomide IS on the market these days, just not prescribed for morning sickness anymore. So much for that argument.

As far as nothing like that being able to get onto the market now, it was fairly recently that drugs sold to help people feel less pain from arthritis was ..after being on the market for some time,discovered to cause heart attacks. Well, dead people don't feel pain as far as we know, but it would be nice to know death was a distinct possibility before you took the drugs.

As far as the other, it would seem to be far more useful to help people learn to treat their environment in a way which mandates against drought as well as using drought resistant plants, and this is being done - but NOT by any of the GMO companies. I've posted in other threads some examples of absolutely desertified land being brought back to prodictivity and becoming absolutely sustainable. This is the exact opposite of what happens with GMOs as the farming procedures for GMOs have been demonstrated to lead to desertification and salination of soils, followed by an ever greater dependence on chemicals and expensive seed. The other option is not starvation or an unending dependence on charity, but a resilient diverse and HEALTHY soil with adequate moisture to supply the needs of a sustainable agriculture.



What the heck has this to do with GMO foods as a concept?
no idea what you are referring to


I did....and I read more than you did, I think. Yes, she is suely beloved of the Oprahs and the Dr. Oz's of the world, but she is almost completely lacking in scientific credibility. She opposes the use of GMO cotton, despite the fact that such cotton is vastly easier to grow, with high crop yields, and a marked decrease in the need for pesticides. She opposes gmo rice that was modified to contain a 'chemical' that eliminates a form of blindness that would otherwise affect (and historically did affect) hundreds of thousands of the poor in India. The fact that you think she can be trusted says a lot about your credulity.

Now you are showing your ignorance. She is absolutely a highly respected scientist (except by Monsanto cultists). Time Magazine identified Dr. Shiva as an environmental “hero” in 2003 and Asia Week has called her one of the five most powerful communicators of Asia, Forbes magazine in November 2010 has identified Dr. Vandana Shiva as one of the top Seven most Powerful Women on the Globe.Dr. Shiva has been a visiting professor and lectured at the Universities of Oslo, Norway, Schumacher College, U.K. Mt. Holyoke College, U.S., York University, Canada, University of Lulea, Sweden, University of Victoria, Canada, and Universite libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. In 2011, Dr. Shiva was the Wayne Morse Chair at the University of Oregon in Eugene.

Dr. Shiva has received honorary Doctorates from University of Paris, University of Western Ontario, University of Oslo and Connecticut College.

Among her many awards are the Alternative Nobel Prize (Right Livelihood Award, 1993), Order of the Golden Ark, Global 500 Award of UN and Earth Day International Award. Lennon ONO grant for peace award by Yoko Ono in 2009, Sydney Peace Prize in 2010, Doshi Bridgebuilder Award, Calgary Peace Prize and Thomas Merton Award in the year 2011.

She is actively involved with the concerns for water quality and availablity and for sustainability for people. Growing cotton will not sustain people, they cannot eat cotton, no matter how great or little the pesticide use. Using LESS pesticide is hardly a glowing recommendation for growing it in any case. Cotton is a notoriously heavy user of chemicals so not a first choice for land use, especially if grown as a monocrop and in an area suffering from food and water insecurity.

Golden Rice, to which you refer, has more of the "chemical" ( you seem to be referring to vitamin A, since that was what all the hype was about) that will reduce blindness than other rice does, true.
According to the data I could find, to receive the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA), it is estimated that 144 g of the most high-yielding strain would have to be eaten. Compare this to malabar spinach. Vine spinach leaves and stem are incredibly rich sources of vitamin A. 100 g fresh leaves provide 8000 IU or 267% of recommended daily allowance (RDA) of this vitamin. Malabar spinach is an easilly grown and popular garden plant which costs pennies as opposed to golden rice. Which makes more sense for people with little money to spend on food? But of course, Golden rice is patented and malabar spinach is not, no profit to be made there.


Again, wtf does tobacco have to do with the concept of GMO?

WTF does it have to do with it? Simple. It has to do with it in that it took a long time for people to wake up to the fact that tobacco has health implications which were not immediately apparent. So saying that GMOs never killed anyone may be in the same category as a doctor in the 1950s saying tobacco is GOOD for you! Smoke lots! You'll feel great!!

Much of what you write seems intended to invoke memories of mistakes that humans have made....and, yes....it is possible that GMO foods 'could' be a mistake. But without GMO foods, we cannot expect to sustain the current population, even without the horrors that will flow from global warming. Meanwhile, you ignore all of the good that arose from pursuit of technology. You refer to thalidomide, but not to the myriad of medications that keep so many alive and functioning. Would you ban antibiotics? Would you ban cancer-treating drugs? Would you require us to go back to ploughing with oxen? Would you prefer not to have a computer, or the internet, with which to voice your luddite worries? No, of course not.

Only people who have no knowledge of history would yearn for a return to pre-technological ways of living....and all of them imagine that they would be the societal elite...it's silly. Technology carries costs and the costs can't always be known in advance, but shutting down technological striving is utterly idiotic.

Well your diatribe about my "luddite" worries is ill directed. There's no need to go back to oxen and pretechnological days, nor have I suggested it. Indeed technology has made it possible to know and understand just how and in what ways GMOs are dangerous, and that their claims are both premature and inaccurate.

It's interesting that you regard my interest in "mistakes" as a yearning to return to the "good old days" I would suggest that people who don't learn from past mistakes are doomed to repeat them and the consequences of some mistakes are too costly to risk.

Nor have I suggested anything like what you are accusing me of. Your comments are certainly an indication that modern technological advances in understanding how to manipulate opinion is (at least sometimes, for people who don't look too closely,) successful. Being pro or anti technology just because it IS technology is idiotic. A blanket approval for all and let the chips fall where they may is no longer useful any more than the idea of nuclear war is useful, technology itself has made it highly dangerous to follow that road of primitive thinking that war has ever solved anything at all in the long run.

Unless of course, you subscribe to the idea that wiping humans off the face of the planet would be a good thing, in which case there's really nothing to discuss.

[mikeh]

onoway, on 2015-March-02, 15:01, said:

According to the Institute of Responsible Technology :The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) doesn’t think (GMO foods are safe). The Academy reported that “Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food,” including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, faulty insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system. The AAEM asked physicians to advise patients to avoid GM foods.

Do you have any clue as to what that 'Institute' is? It is run by Jeffrey Smith, a man who has written against GMO foods without the benefit of any actual qualifications to do so. He has no scientific training. His 'degree' is from the Maharishi University of Management! His books are self-published. Of course, he has appearances on that reputable dispenser of valid consumer advice...the Dr. Oz show. If you are at all interested in the credibility of Oz guests, google Green Coffee Bean scam.

So the quack Smith promotes the unaccredited 'AAEM', an organization described as promoting quackery by quackwatch.

You, of course, accept all this stuff as 'serious', legitmate. Meanwhile you reject the opinions of actual experts in the field....this is a very dangerous attitude. It is precisely the same attitude that had thousands convinced that vaccinations caused autism, leading to the resurgence of several childhood diseases that had been virtually eliminated.

Trusting self-promoting quacks with an eye on the buck is becoming increasingly prevalent. It really is a form of luddism, even tho you sincerely abhor the description. The ability to convince is the hallmark of the charlatan.

You should really start demanding that your sources have expertise in the subjects about which they write.....that way you might learn some real facts. Of course, real facts aren't as interesting as conspiracy theories or doomsday scenarios where you are possessed of the truth that will save us all. Am I exaggerating? I don't think so, since you closed your second response to me by suggesting that people who disagree with you must be comfortable with the idea of wiping out all of humanity! It must feel so good to be so right!