genetically modified produce.

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by leopold, Jan 1, 2010.

  1. John99 Banned Banned

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    So you say. Maybe you should learn how to spell before you go dictating how everyone should live.
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    That, at this stage of the game, is no longer an innocent mistake or confusion of terminology. It's a damaging and reprehensible lie.
    Get your money back for malpractice, and find a good school to further your education. Even a "behavioral ecologist" needs a better understanding of genetics than that.
    That is the fear, yes - some kind of rapid "adaptation" that we can't fix and can't return to what we were depending on.
     
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  5. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    not the way we do it now and not using genes from such different species. Before on at least the cellular level sex took place. We bypass that now. We are guessing that we can control the variables and using the world's population as test animals.

    Except 1) this is not why companies are developing these foods, they actually want to control farmers and poor people even more than they are controlled now 2) it does not seem to be cutting into starvation.
    Guilt, guilt.

    This is just loopy.
     
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  7. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    it would be too early to know what the ecological differences are, let alone the consequences inside our bodies of this food. The reason GM foods got out there so fast was because governmental oversight is owned if not identical with industry. And these are the people, in general, who can afford to publish and carry out studees. I mean hell the tobacco industry managed to go many decades with pro-tobacco research, but we do not learn from history.
     
  8. Hercules Rockefeller Beatings will continue until morale improves. Moderator

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    :wallbang:

    All the same tired old anti-GM crop propaganda. It’s absolutely no different to people who think fluoridation of water is bad, who think immunisations are bad and who believe creationism over evolution. They read a few websites, they watch a few YouTube videos, they mix in a few conspiracy theories, and they hybridize it all with their own misconceptions and pre-existing prejudices ...... and hey presto! GM crops are a massive environmental and health hazard.

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    "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

    And that axiom is never more elucidated when people start crapping on about the dangers of genetic engineering of crops.

    If you want to see someone systematically shoot down all the cherry-picked inaccurate misleading nonsense anti-GM arguments, have a browse through this guy’s blog: (pre-dominantly relevant to Australian issues but also broadly applicable)

    http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/
     
  9. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    like those loopy people in Finland, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland.


    Let's lump them all together so it seem easy.

    Why not include those who are against mercury in fillings too. Oh, well that wouldn't look so good.
    Lot's of interesting hypotheses in your generally aimed ad hom.
     
  10. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    I have to agree with HR on his points. Remember our talks about speculation?

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    That's exactly what most of the people in the groups he mentioned are doing. They take wee bit of information and go nuts with it by extrapolating it out to reach some ridiculous conclusion.

    It's actually no different at all from how silly superstitions get started. Someone, somewhere happens to notice a coincidence of two things - that may have NO relationship at all with each other - and then he tells his brother who tells his neighbor.... And pretty soon lots of people start seeing the same thing (even if they really don't, they think they do). Just like Friday the 13th. If you consider it bad luck, you can certainly always find bad things that happen on that day. But are they statistically more than any average day, say over ten years? Of course not.

    People are forever making idiotic connections. ("I heard a rooster crow after dark - that means someone is about to die.")

    And then there are those (I take it that you are one of this particular group) who are highly suspicious of any big business and all governments. Who think that business/governments are secretly experimenting on us and doing all kinds of evil things to us behind our backs. That's called paranoia - a malfunctioning of the brain - and isn't completely sane. (Of course, there are many different levels of it and yours seems very, very mild. But that just isn't true of the whole group - and it's a *huge* group, too.)
     
  11. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    4,101
    I could post links to scientists who have serious problems with gm foods and back these up with research. His post is a bunch of hallucinations about where the critics are coming from. This is ad hom, against forum rules and rather poor argument. If he had started with his link and responded to people's points, that would be a respectful and useful post. What he did was lazy and rude. It had no points. It had an on topic link. The topic is gm foods not amateur psychology or groups against fluoridation. You can start a thread on these other topics if you both like.

    So I assume you did not understand my reference to those countries in relation to fluoridation. Those countries no longer fluoridate. Despite their high levels of science and technology, and atheism, and the fact that they stress rationality way above the mean for countries worldwide, their concerns must be similar to people thinking when roosters crow someone is going to die.

    That's a hypothesis about people responding to other issues. It would be like if I made a list of groups that listened to governments and corporations and were naive for doing this and said you and Hercules were like them. As an ex college professor, let me tell you that is poor argument and several fallacies efficiently run together.

    More hypotheses that may or may not have any relevence to any of the posters in this thread.
    I think it is sad that I must label this a straw man argument for you.

    My you do go on.

    With all due respect, Fuck you.

    Here some links to 2 groups of scientists whose arguments I have found convincing enough to think that the rapid spread of gm was not remotely in line with the precautionary principle....

    http://www.i-sis.org.uk/MRC-pr.php
    http://www.rense.com/general86/doct.htm

    I picked two links quickly, but there are many scientists with concerns about GM foods with reference to research. I base my concerns on on scientific research coupled with knowledge about how profit can, note 'can', drive companies to act and also to create, control and manipulate research. You can PM Hercules all you want and speculate about the mental states of people you disagree with, but here, well, you should both know better.

    There are many scientists around the world who are very concerned with GM foods. Further, as I pointed out earlier, the regulatory bodies in the US and industry are way too deeply connected, especially after Bush 2.

    Your hallucinations about my mental state are 1) not grounded in reality and 2) inappropriate in these posts.

    Further in the Swine Flu thread I backed up my assertions with a great deal of links to respectable organizations and newspapers. You on the other hand have done nothing so far to back up your assertions there about people who have concerns about certain kinds of conspiracies. You referred to all of them having neurological disorders and you also agreed with very illogical arguments of a poster whose beliefs you share there.

    Instead of being condescending and making off topic ad hom posts why don't you demonstrate rationality and respectful dialogue instead of presuming you and those you agree with are the ones capable of it.

    I mean really.

    In fact, you've made enough of a habit of it, I will use the handy ignore button in relation to you. All the best. Bye.
     
    Last edited: Jan 2, 2010
  12. technetium Registered Senior Member

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    I agree genetically modified crops may well become necessary in order to feed much of the world, but relying on a handful corporations to control these products is dangerous. Removing genetic (or other) variation in crops & livestock is puting all your eggs in the one basket where all are suceptable to a common pathogen or production problem as occured in this case: w3.digitaljournal.com/article/270101 (I can't post links yet

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    Mankind is still here because it had enough genetic diversity to ensure that some people survived the Black Death, Spanish Influenza or countless other plagues over millions of years of evolution and the same is true of most life on Earth today.

    In a fairer world the Schmeisers in Canada would equally be able to demand of Monsanto that they prevent their seeds "contaminating" other crops.
     
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Compared with the proponents of GM foods, those people are paragons of prudence and sanity and careful research.

    I've seen GM proponents claim that these engineering techniques are no different from traditional plant breeding. I've seen them claim that genetically inserted resistance to atrazine in a crop plant was for the purpose of allowing the farmer to use less atrazine. I've seen them claim that no agribusiness corporation would risk the health of food consumers, the long term productivity of farmland, the environmental health of the landscape, or the food supply of the poor, because it would be bad for business. I've seen them claim that the people doing the engineering understand all the possible side effects of releasing these engineered genetics into the world - that they have a good handle on all that might happen.

    There is apparently nothing so foolish and contrary to sense or reason that a GM proponent won't believe it. The rest of us have to step in, and impose a little adult supervision and regulation.
     
  14. Walter L. Wagner Cosmic Truth Seeker Valued Senior Member

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  15. Scaramouche Registered Member

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  16. kmguru Staff Member

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    Would not it be better to separate GM foods between those that are spliced within the same specis and those that are from the animal kingdom or viruses from out side of the plant specis?

    It could be difference between cold virus and HIV/AID virus?

    I do not think it is wrong to design a plant to protect it from its natural enemy, but we want to make sure that the enemy is not human.

    Besides plant enemies, also there is nothing wrong to increase nutrients, color, taste, size, better nitrogen fixing etc....rather than saying all GM foods are bad.

    Just a thought.
     
  17. Walter L. Wagner Cosmic Truth Seeker Valued Senior Member

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    That's not a bad suggestion, kmguru.

    We know that viruses readily insert viral genes into eukaryotic DNA. But in nature, it's usually limited to their own genes. Sometimes this can have a profound beneficial effect when it becomes fixed in a species' gene pool. Another thread wherein I posted showed that there are a half-dozen viral genes inserted into the human lineage that have become fixed (all people have them), and have been adapted to assist in human placentation. Other viral gene inserts likely produce other benefits after fixation/selection over time.

    But that is likely the exception, not the rule.

    I believe that insertion of a bacterial gene into a plant, as referenced in the links above, which will then produce a poison for bugs within that plant (as an internally generated pesticide), can have far-reaching implications for people and other species.

    I was unaware of the apparently numerous articles showing a link between certain GM foods and negative reactions in people. I have not read the articles themselves, which I will do shortly, but it appears that since there are so many cites, it appears that there is good evidence to support that. This should give great cause for concern about giving free license to any group of people (Monsanto, other ag-companies, or any other scientific enterprise) to do whatever they want when they have a vested financial interest in their product, or derive their income from their work. It appears that regulatory oversight needs to be increased, if it is not too late to shut the barn door.
     
  18. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Or those genetic sequences completely artificial, radically modified in the lab, etc - - - sure.

    Along with some regulation of the means of insertion, establishment of expression, etc (shotgunning stuff easily mobilized by bacteria or viruses, attached to accelerants of expression, etc, into the landscape, is still a problem), that would be a sound basis for sensible regulation of the field.

    Good luck with that, politically. Who will feed the starving in Africa, if herbicide sequestration and root poisoning of North American nematodes is not allowed in patented hybrid soybeans?
     
  19. kmguru Staff Member

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    Rather than going to either extremes, I think we should look at the whole thing objectively and separate Danger - don't know - possibly safe categories and ban the Danger side to focus on the "don't know" part.

    Also someone needs to do some serious research as to how adaptation occurs in nature because the GM food may not last too long before organisms except humans adapt (due to short life cycles of the bugs) - then where we would be?
     
  20. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    This is Monsanto doing, not GM doing, you can't blame the tools.
     
  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    We're not blaming the tools, we're advocating regulation of their use.

    You can't store dynamite in your garage and use it to shovel your driveway in the city, for example. That doesn't mean we're blaming dynamite for blowing up in people's faces.
     
  22. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    Right now Monsanto regulates itself.

    http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=209

    or doesn't really.

    Until such time that citizens in general can regulate the use of these tools, they should be banned because of how broad these tools can influence things. Very few people get to make anthrax strains in their basements, even corporations. Though that also is using tools.

    Right now corporations can play fast and loose with this incredibly dangerous tool.

    First change the ability of citizens to regulate the use of this tool, then bring it back into well monitored use.
     
  23. Hercules Rockefeller Beatings will continue until morale improves. Moderator

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    Exactly as I was saying ......

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