GMO opinions?

[YesIAMJames]

I used to conciser anti-genetic modification advocates to be a bunch of crazy uneducated scaremongers. However This website does appear to make some valid arguments against GM foods such as tests showing baby rats dying after eating GM food. It does make some bold claims such as GM food offer NO BENEFITS. All it's evidence is against GM food, so it seems a bit illogical that it argues against all genetically modified organisms.

I'd like to hear other peoples opinions about the site and it's evidence, is it just pure propaganda?

http://www.responsibletechnology.org/

 

[lrkun]

Did you know that some chokolates, if eaten by a breed of dog, will kill the dog? But such chokolate is harmless to humans. @.@ That's not even GMO.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-a-Chocolate-Bar-Killed-My-Dog&id=3981400

Maybe that certain type of food is poisonous to rats. Anyway what matters is that it's not poisonous to humans, and if someone says we're playing god, let's play god.

 

[Zerosix]

http://www.responsibletechnology.org/

Just had a quick look at this and the first artcile it had was a promotion for the "Health Ranger" Mike Adams. For those who don't know about him, he's one of these nutcases that promotes 'natural' cures as apposed to traditional medicine.

You can read up on this "dangerous conspiracy-mongering crank" @ http://theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1506

The rest of the site looks like fear-mongering bs.


Most of the food we eat has already been modified one way or another so I personally have no problem with gmos.

 

[Aught3]

I see Jeffrey Smith is there too. You get to know the names of the critics and realise they're not interested in presenting a fair argument. Charles Benbrook is another name to watch out for.

There are threads discussing GMOs around this site.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

I used to conciser anti-genetic modification advocates to be a bunch of crazy uneducated scaremongers. However This website does appear to make some valid arguments against GM foods such as tests showing baby rats dying after eating GM food. It does make some bold claims such as GM food offer NO BENEFITS. All it's evidence is against GM food, so it seems a bit illogical that it argues against all genetically modified organisms.

I'd like to hear other peoples opinions about the site and it's evidence, is it just pure propaganda?

http://www.responsibletechnology.org/

Yeah... sounds like fear-mongering propaganda to me.

Let's talk about non-human animals eating GM food and having issues. What does that have to do with people? Possibly absolutely nothing. If GM soy is missing some trace minerals that humans can get from other things, the lack won't affect our health either way. If GM soy is lacking some trace minerals that an animal needs, and it is fed nothing but GM soy and can't get that mineral from another source, it will cause health problems in that animal that would never occur in humans.

 

[YesIAMJames]

The rat test showed a 50% mortality rate among baby rats fed GM soy as opposed to 10% among rats fed non-GM soy.

I support GM tech 100% as long as it is done safely, intact I think it will be vital to our survival as a species if our population raises much more.

I'd like to make a video pwning the living crap out of this site at some point so I need specific refutations of some of the claims on the site. I've got a few already.

 

[YesIAMJames]

http://www.responsibletechnology.org/

Just had a quick look at this and the first artcile it had was a promotion for the "Health Ranger" Mike Adams. For those who don't know about him, he's one of these nutcases that promotes 'natural' cures as apposed to traditional medicine.

You can read up on this "dangerous conspiracy-mongering crank" @ http://theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1506

The rest of the site looks like fear-mongering bs.


Most of the food we eat has already been modified one way or another so I personally have no problem with gmos.

I hadn't heard of him but those guys make me absolutely sick. The worst offender I know of is Mathias Rath. You can read about him here.

http://www.badscience.net/2009/04/matthias-rath-steal-this-chapter/

 

[borrofburi]

I've always been curious... I tend to come down in favor of GMO... but people always assert there are studies proving GMO is bad for you. So I publicly asked (on my equivalent of twitter) for objective reasons why GMO is unhealthy, beyond the naturalistic fallacy... I haven't read any of these yet (I'm in a major time crunch, the time I currently spend on the forum is to keep me from going insane from workin gto much), but here's the list so far:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a905128938
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1244824/Fears-grow-study-shows-genetically-modified-crops-cause-liver-kidney-damage.html
http://www.springerlink.com/content/cw661u3345p6q464/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2793308/
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2095.2008.00630.x/abstract
http://www.biol.umk.pl/pareek-pdf/pareek2008-3.pdf#page=143

These could range from true, to misunderstanding, to essentially lies, for all I know. I'm posting them partially so I don't lose them, and partially because maybe some of you already have knowledge of these.

 

[Aught3]

Doesn't look like this research has ever been published in a peer-review journal. This is the closest I can find: http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v25/n9/full/nbt0907-981.html?lang=ja

 

[Time Lord]

i rekon the GM food and other gentic modifications are the way for the future because our population is increasing and our normal way of getting food will not be able to sustain our needs.

 

[Yfelsung]

No one should be for or against genetic modification as a whole.

Used responsibly, any science can lead to amazing things.

Used irresponsibly, any science can lead to horrible things.

The argument has no place in the public, because the public is uneducated and uninformed. This is science, so let them battle out the pros and cons in a lab.

My grandmother thinks God will destroy us for even doing traditional plant hybrids, she doesn't deserve to have a voice in the scientific debate of genetics.

When the public gets involved it just becomes a bunch of rhetoric muddying the issue.

 

[sofiarune]

This may come as a surprise to some people here but I'm actually against GMOs. I think conceptually they're a great and I don't think having fish genes in tomatos is a medical concern (unless say.. you're allergic to fish but this can be resolved by labelling foods with genetic modification).

I'm against GMOs because of what businesses have done to them... when you have massive companies suing farmers because their fields were contaminated by neighbouring farms who use GMO seed. I'm against the fact that these companies have conditions to using their seeds, including that you cannot save seeds for the next season but rather have to buy more seeds the next year.

There's also a real danger of having GMO crops becoming ferral and screwing up the ecology of the area. There's a real danger of us losing control of GMO organisms by accidental introduction into parts of the environment we didn't intend. Just look at what has happened when we've accidently introduced species to environments in the past, this potential exists.

 

[borrofburi]

There's also a real danger of having GMO crops becoming ferral and screwing up the ecology of the area.

source?

 

[Aught3]

Sofiarune, actually the reason you are against them is not that surprising. Distrust of the way big companies have managed their products is a pretty legitimate reason, given their record. I think the problem may have more to do with the way IP is managed in general and especially in science. I've written a little about that here: Could you patent the Sun?

And I see Borr beat me to it but I think the risk to ecological systems is often overstated or not quantified at all.

 

[Yfelsung]

Not to mention that it's only a risk if you consider the environment static.

Even if we released every GM organism we ever made into the wild, the environment would adapt.

Short of scouring the planet of life with fire, it would adapt eventually. Even the fire situation would likely leave one or two things, and eventually that would lead to a new ecosystem.

There ain't a lot we can do to completely fuck the environment.

 

[borrofburi]

Not to mention that it's only a risk if you consider the environment static.

Even if we released every GM organism we ever made into the wild, the environment would adapt.

Short of scouring the planet of life with fire, it would adapt eventually. Even the fire situation would likely leave one or two things, and eventually that would lead to a new ecosystem.

There ain't a lot we can do to completely fuck the environment.

If you accept this argument as logically valid, I've got an argument that proves global warming isn't a problem (and can even show that there are good reasons to think global warming is GOOD)... Or, in more clear terms: our worry is not that the environment won't adapt, but that the environment we are comfortable in will change to an environment we aren't comfortable in (also we would like sources of genetic diversity so we can continue to better understand and control genetics).

 

[Yfelsung]

Not to mention that it's only a risk if you consider the environment static.

Even if we released every GM organism we ever made into the wild, the environment would adapt.

Short of scouring the planet of life with fire, it would adapt eventually. Even the fire situation would likely leave one or two things, and eventually that would lead to a new ecosystem.

There ain't a lot we can do to completely fuck the environment.

If you accept this argument as logically valid, I've got an argument that proves global warming isn't a problem (and can even show that there are good reasons to think global warming is GOOD)... Or, in more clear terms: our worry is not that the environment won't adapt, but that the environment we are comfortable in will change to an environment we aren't comfortable in (also we would like sources of genetic diversity so we can continue to better understand and control genetics).

Global Warming is neither good or bad, it simply is what is happening. The earth has a fluctuating climate, always has, it went from volcanic to ice age without our help. Sure, we're making it worse probably, but we can't stop it and it's not like it wouldn't have happened eventually.

The great thing is, we're part of nature too. We're just animals like everything else capable of the same, and actually better, adaptation. No matter how bad we fuck up the planet, odds are humans can survive it. Sure, we may be living in bunkers below the earth, but we will adapt like any other organism.

And my example was an extreme (with the fire and the scouring), odds are even if we released all the GMOs it wouldn't lead to a complete collapse of the ecosystem, they're still all based on existing organisms and would likely simply fill that organisms niche at the possible expense of the base organism. It would still be evolution via natural selection, being that the selective pressures put on the organism are still natural, it's just that they have an unnatural competitor in the mix.

Hell, GMOs could be the KEY to fixing damage we've done. If we can create faster breeding cod we can fix almost the entire ecosystem of Eastern Canada, which we destroyed by overfishing the cod. With new, faster breeding cod we'd no longer need to do the seal cull, which would increase food for orcas and some bear species, which would allow them to deal with overpopulations in other areas caused by their lack of population.

Don't always look on the bad side.

 

[olay198912]

A subtle variant of the mean reversion case is put forward by Jeremy Grantham of the fund management group GMO.
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