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GM Crops: Should We Be Scared?

CplFerro said:
Is that why GM plants are spreading into the wild and into other farmer's fields, so that the corporations can turn around and sue those people?
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Monsanto sued one guy who purposely and intentionally replanted something he wasn't supposed to, if that's what you mean.
New crops have always blasted pollen and seeds into the environment, including mutant strains developed by bombardment with radiation, as the quoted Economist bit in this thread points out. It's just that with GM products, we can actually track it.
These are people patenting genes in /my/ body, so they can suck me dry for some patented medical treatment? It's all about money, and the government is in bed with these clowns.
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Got no clue what you're on about here, but I don't think it's on the same topic anyway.
Nuclear energy is another case where government mismanagement is used as an excuse to dump what is an invaluable set of technologies. The very mindset that hates the government so much in principle, and hates Western civilisation and the people who built it, helps create a self-fulfilling prophecy of incompetence.
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But you say the government is in bed with clowns. Not sure whether that menas you love or hate the government; to me, a coulrophilic government is sort of disturbing. At least the mental picture.
 
Interesting point, delphi_ote. I guess what I'm wondering, after researching some of this, is whether plants with bug genes are really scarier than plants that have mutated due to bombardment with radiation or chemicals? Especially since we can track them so accurately with gene testing. If someone says StarLink corn is in their corn flakes, we can actually test for it.
 
ysabella said:
Interesting point, delphi_ote. I guess what I'm wondering, after researching some of this, is whether plants with bug genes are really scarier than plants that have mutated due to bombardment with radiation or chemicals? Especially since we can track them so accurately with gene testing. If someone says StarLink corn is in their corn flakes, we can actually test for it.
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Absolutely true. But to be fair, putting bug genes in plans is probably altering their genetic makeup in a more significant way. Also, a gene may have properties that make it more readily transferred from one plant to another or from one location in the plant genome to another. In my brief time researching plant genetics, I was constantly suprised at how robust and sloppy their genomes are. Entire copies of their cloroplast DNA can just slip into their nuclear DNA and be copied for thousands of years. Tandem copies of genes abound. Genome wide dupilication events are more common than I ever imagined. This is stuff that would kill us dead, but plants seem to thrive on it.

That said, the paranoia is totally unwarranted. If we keep a careful eye on these things, not only will we be able to keep ourselves safe while reaping the benefits of GM, we'll be able to learn more about the processes that underlie life itself.
 
Melendwyr said:
No more scared than we should be of previously-existing breeding methods.

How scared should we be of previously-existing breeding methods? Very. It's to them that we owe our disease-prone monocultural stocks, which require more fertilizers and pesticides to remain healthy. Also, native plant populations can become contaminated by massive crop farming. AND the original stocks of many of our crops are being driven out of existence by the competition, and plant scientists desparate to maintain biodiversity are having to track down scarser and scarser native plantings of indigenous people.

In short: DOOM.
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You seem to imply that famine was rare and all was wonderful prior to plant hybridization.

Modern hybrids were developed to combat disease, be more pest resistant, provide higher yields, be drought tolerant, etc. depending on the target environment.

BTW, it seems logical that higher iyield plants would require more fertilizer than heirloom varieties since you are taking more stuff out of the soil each year. You have to put back what you take away or you eventually have no yield at all.
 
I think that such blanket ban is silly. Every] GM food is bad? Every single one?
CplFerro said:
Is that why GM plants are spreading into the wild and into other farmer's fields, so that the corporations can turn around and sue those people?
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Cite?

These are people patenting genes in /my/ body, so they can suck me dry for some patented medical treatment?
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Cite?

CplFerro said:
And how will unregulated computing poison my food or patent my genes?
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How will GM? Note: patents are a form of regulation. If you object to patents, you are objecting to regulation.
 
manny said:
Yes. We should be scared. As we're learing in this thread, GM crops is woo for liberals. The science of it is well established, the benefits clear, the alleged risks overstated or made up from whole cloth. But many people who side with science and common sense on most issues hate GM crops because it is corporations doing it for money instead of university scientists doing it for, well, money and fame. We should be scared that millions or tens of millions or even hundreds of millions will die and billions left needlessly in poverty because of fear of GM crops.
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It's not the technological aspects of GM that are cause for concern. It doesn't matter where a new plant comes from. We have a long history of unintended consequences arising from introducing something new into an environment, and a long history of not being careful enough before we did it. GM is more of the same, and needs to be treated with great caution.
 
hodgy said:
I am selfishly in favour of (and personally promote) organic livestock (I love to roast a well reared piece of pork and I hate the cruelty of factory farming).
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Rant alert.

This attitude makes me see really red, and I may not be entirely coherent here, but basically "organic" animal husbandry is so inimical to animal welfare that I wouldn't eat organic meat on principle if it tasted like the nectar of the gods.

There are two issues here. The one you seem to be focussing on is the husbandry standards of healthy stock. This may or may not be better in organic herds. Certainly you're not going to get the evils of the real "Stalag Hen" variety, but many conventional farms have very good welfare standards, and many so-called free-range systems have miserable conditions for the livestock. Welfare in this respect has little to do with whether or not an individual farm can tick the boxes that allow it to call itself "organic".

The second issue is the important one of the prevention of disease and the treatment of sick animals. This is where organic farming sickens me. The use of many (if not most) properly tested, safe, effective and licensed medicines is forbidden. Farmers are encouraged and indeed instructed to use unlicensed, unproven and non-safety-tested preparations, under the laughable heading of "natural" remedies. This includes the use of some very toxic compounds for disease "prevention", far more toxic than the licensed products, simply because they aren't tested and licensed and so aren't "big pharma" medicines. It also includes the heavy promotion of homoeopathy.

Most farm animal vets simply tear their hair out over "organic" livestock farms, despairing over the animals being allowed to suffer from eminently treatable conditions because waiting till the problems go away on their own (assuming they do) will not lose these animals their "organic" status while giving the poor, thin, scouring calves a dose of much-needed wormer will. And the amount of woo coming out of the organic proponents about homoeopathy being "good for" mastitis and so on would just make you throw up.

It has been shown in objective tests that the overall welfare standards of organically-reared animals are not better than conventionally-reared livestock and may often be worse. Anyone who is choosing organic meat for animal welfare reasons had better go away and do some serious reading, and have a rethink.

Rolfe.
 
Thank you for opening my eyes Rolfe! Great post.

I originally thought this thread might answer my questions about WHY people would think that GM foods in and of themselves might be harmful.

It never occured to me that economic reasons or mistrust of the "big bad corporation" would engender the fearmongering.

I was all ready to hear some "Attack of The Killer Tomatoes" woo!
 
Rolfe said:
The second issue is the important one of the prevention of disease and the treatment of sick animals. This is where organic farming sickens me. The use of many (if not most) properly tested, safe, effective and licensed medicines is forbidden. Farmers are encouraged and indeed instructed to use unlicensed, unproven and non-safety-tested preparations, under the laughable heading of "natural" remedies. This includes the use of some very toxic compounds for disease "prevention", far more toxic than the licensed products, simply because they aren't tested and licensed and so aren't "big pharma" medicines. It also includes the heavy promotion of homoeopathy.

Most farm animal vets simply tear their hair out over "organic" livestock farms, despairing over the animals being allowed to suffer from eminently treatable conditions because waiting till the problems go away on their own (assuming they do) will not lose these animals their "organic" status while giving the poor, thin, scouring calves a dose of much-needed wormer will. And the amount of woo coming out of the organic proponents about homoeopathy being "good for" mastitis and so on would just make you throw up.

It has been shown in objective tests that the overall welfare standards of organically-reared animals are not better than conventionally-reared livestock and may often be worse. Anyone who is choosing organic meat for animal welfare reasons had better go away and do some serious reading, and have a rethink.

Rolfe.
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Interesting, I didn't know this. Organically raised humans do not fair so well at times of critical illness either, so isn't it hypocritical to expect animals to be treated this way too?
 
Interesting thread . I've just read though most of it . Seems to me there is more common sense here than in a shed load of ' newspapers ' who have stirred up things mainly just to sell a few more copies .
Both sides are well argued.
I think that , like it or not , we are stuck with science although we need to be very careful with things like this .
On the organic aside , I thought this just meant using natural fertiliser and avoiding stupid things like feeding antibiotics to healthy animals ? I wasn't aware that stupid things like not using modern vet: treatments was a part of this . I rarely buy organic food anyway , I get the impression that the main difference is the price . I mean , organic honey ! How do they know where all those bees go ?
 
homer said:
On the organic aside , I thought this just meant using natural fertiliser and avoiding stupid things like feeding antibiotics to healthy animals ? I wasn't aware that stupid things like not using modern vet: treatments was a part of this . I rarely buy organic food anyway , I get the impression that the main difference is the price . I mean , organic honey ! How do they know where all those bees go ?
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Yeah, the thing is that in theory, organic livestock is put in less stressful and condensed situation than regular livestock, which should reduce the occurence and the spread of diseases. The problem is that when disease does occur, few conventional treatments are allowed and there is heavy reliance on "natural" treatments which usually means stuff like homeopathy. I wouldn't be surprised that vets only get called when things have gone bad for way too long and the "natural" treatments have been ineffective.

One thing I would love to see is studies on the incidence of disease in factory farms vs organic ones, and the references that Rolfe alluded to. I do believe there's a happy medium between abusing antibiotics in highly condensed conditions and the "let's not stress the livestock but not use effective treatments when problems occur" organic philosophy. It might be rarely implemented though...
 
Rolfe said:
It has been shown in objective tests that the overall welfare standards of organically-reared animals are not better than conventionally-reared livestock and may often be worse.
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Do you have a cite for that?
 
Meanwhile, back at the OP...

I think most peoples fears are centered around an imaginary scenario invovling genes gettin loose into their own cells. Like eating GM corn that has a wasp gene spliced in to make the corn ...um.. predatory to insect infestatioons. Then, the people eating the corn will make babies with skinny waists, compound eyes and stripes on their butts. From this unreasonable fear springs more reasonable justifications for banning. Of course, folks have been eating pork for years without getting cloven hoofs, kinky tails, or 18 inch penis's that rotate...well, only rarely.
 
casebro said:
From this unreasonable fear springs more reasonable justifications for banning.
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From this fear we get the reasonable justifications for banning? I think not. I've yet to see a reasonable justification for banning GM.
 
Beausoleil said:
It's not the technological aspects of GM that are cause for concern. It doesn't matter where a new plant comes from. We have a long history of unintended consequences arising from introducing something new into an environment, and a long history of not being careful enough before we did it. GM is more of the same, and needs to be treated with great caution.
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I think we have a tendency to overlook how robust life can be sometimes. There are consequences, yes. But life seems to do a good job of adapting to what we've caused.

These two articles are about bacteria which naturally evolved the ability to digest nylon. Yes, nylon.
http://content.febsjournal.org/cgi/content/abstract/116/3/547
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=345072

Not that we shouldn't be careful, but I don't think the public has an appreciation for how tough life can be (then again, they don't seem to have an appreciation for the fact that species evolve at all...) This whole "you shouldn't play God, because you don't know the consequences" theme is harped on to the point that it just doesn't mean anything anymore.
 
delphi_ote said:
I think we have a tendency to overlook how robust life can be sometimes. There are consequences, yes. But life seems to do a good job of adapting to what we've caused.
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In case you haven't noticed, we're in the middle of one of the Great Extinctions, and we're causing it.
 
delphi_ote said:
I think we have a tendency to overlook how robust life can be sometimes. There are consequences, yes. But life seems to do a good job of adapting to what we've caused.

These two articles are about bacteria which naturally evolved the ability to digest nylon. Yes, nylon.
http://content.febsjournal.org/cgi/content/abstract/116/3/547
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=345072

Not that we shouldn't be careful, but I don't think the public has an appreciation for how tough life can be (then again, they don't seem to have an appreciation for the fact that species evolve at all...) This whole "you shouldn't play God, because you don't know the consequences" theme is harped on to the point that it just doesn't mean anything anymore.
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What does bacteria evolving to digest nylon have to do with my point?

Life will adapt, of course, but that's hardly a consolation to me as I try to keep the kudzu under control in my backgarden, or the builder who has to eradicate Japanese knotweed. Surely you didn't interpret my remarks as suggesting GM was a threat to life (whatever that might mean).

There is a long history of introducing species from one ecosystem into another, then discovering it was a mistake. 100 worst invasive species...

http://www.issg.org/database/species/search.asp?st=100ss&fr=1&sts=sss
 
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