Monsanto

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I would like to join this thread at some point soon. (will read up from the beginning first)

A sweet tip I heard regarding Round-up weed kill. To combat the pest of the plant, find the enemy of the pest. Take the enemy and crush it. Add it to a Ltr bottle of water and shake vigorously. Add this water to a bucket of water, stir well and spray it over the plants (avoiding weeds)

The pest smells its enemy, and death. The pest should then be happy feeding off the weeds.

Lots safer than altering the genetic structure of corn for resilience to Round-up.

 

[psionl0]

You say that is if it's a bad thing. https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=0&chdd=0&chds=0&chdv=0&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1373243460259&chddm=514556&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=INDEXDJX:.DJI&cmptdms=0&q=NYSEM&ntsp=0&ei=OwjaUdCCLoWFrgGEuAE

Obviously, the ability of shareholders to make a profit out of the company trumps all scientific research - pseudo or otherwise.

 

[Dymanic]

And 'peer reviewed' scientific papers can be just as suspect

"Open access" does not mean not peer reviewed.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Obviously, the ability of shareholders to make a profit out of the company trumps all scientific research - pseudo or otherwise.

True.

 

[Brainster]

I read it perfectly well, thanks.

Oh, sorry, I could have sworn it was you who wrote this:

What evidence do you have that Heinemann is a 'nut'? You do realise that Brainster made up that slur about him being an AIDS denier and a 9/11 truther?

Italics addded for emphasis.

You pointed out that he is a cell biologist, and that another cell biologist (who as far as we know has no relation to him whatsoever) is an AIDS denier and a Troofer. The implication was that he's a loony who we shouldn't listen to. Why else make that post? It was just an attempt to slur Heinemann, and from at least one comment following it from another pro GMOer it did work.

I threw it out there as an oddity that might not mean anything at all, which I pointed out in my post. And it was only after you misread my post that other people correctly read your post and assumed that I had said what you claimed I did.

 

[kookbreaker]

http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=e2&commodity=corn&graph=yield

was what I was referring to - comparison of EU-15, EU-27 and USA yields.

And?

No, not even close. If Monsanto person's in charge then it's suspect you have to have someone impartial or the whole thing's a charade.

Is he actually in charge? Because all we have is the hysterics of an anti-GMO site. Perhaps he is simply a respected scientist who is stepping in to advise before they make more mistakes.

I don't know that paper, but if it's the one I'm thinking of they remarked that the Monsanto 'research' was over a very short period whereas the tumours they found developed over a longer timescale.

http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/surprise-monsanto-funded-research-finds-their-products-safe

Then we are talking about the Seralini 'study' and what looks like a reaction to it.

The 'tumors' were inevitable for 80%+ of lab rats. That is what they develop near the end of their lifespan. This is why using them to the end of their lifespan will result in tumors no matter what they do, plus a host of other problems.

Here, let Dr. Novella explain it to you:

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-gm-corn-rat-study/

or Orac:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2...os-it-reminds-me-of-the-antivaccine-movement/

Now if Monsanto's study has faults, why don't you find them rather than crying 'Wah! Monsanto sponsored it". Frankly I don't care much - you need to prove that there is an issue in the first place before whining about any other studies.

 

[GlennB]

A sweet tip I heard regarding Round-up weed kill. To combat the pest of the plant, find the enemy of the pest. Take the enemy and crush it. Add it to a Ltr bottle of water and shake vigorously. Add this water to a bucket of water, stir well and spray it over the plants (avoiding weeds)

The pest smells its enemy, and death. The pest should then be happy feeding off the weeds.

Lots safer than altering the genetic structure of corn for resilience to Round-up.

Is this a subtle joke, one that I'm not getting?

 

[Henry Bannister]

Oh, sorry, I could have sworn it was you who wrote this:


Italics addded for emphasis.

Errm the quote you gave showed that I'd understood your post exactly. So to did my original response in #402 starting 'This is just atrocious ...'

I think you must mean my post #406 where I said:

Can I just check the logic here? Because cell biologist Heinemann is an AIDS denier and a 9/11 Truther we can’t believe what he says about genetics?

With that, I wanted to see whether anyone else had misunderstood what you'd written. Skeletor in #404 had written:

"Do you believe that HIV causes AIDS? Medical science has proven it. Misinformation about the HIV/AIDS connection killed millions in Africa alone. If a person who studies Cell Biology refuses to make the connection, there is something wrong.

As for someone being a 9/11 Truther...I wish you a lot of luck on this forum. Truthers post poorly edited YouTube videos, cherrypick quotes, and make a mockery of themselves on a regular basis.

If this scientist holds these views, then it is reasonable for us to completely disregard whatever else they say as 'woo.'

and sure enough the Central Scrutinizer bit in #408:

Why would we even waste time listening to a nut, when there are tens of thousands of other cell biologists in the world who aren't nuts?

and seemed to have accepted your slur at face value.

I threw it out there as an oddity that might not mean anything at all, which I pointed out in my post. And it was only after you misread my post that other people correctly read your post and assumed that I had said what you claimed I did.

You were making a slur - he studies "prokaryotic and eukaryotic microorganisms" which sounds very esoteric - it means he is a cell biologist. Because somone else studies "prokaryotic and eukaryotic microorganisms" (is also a cell biologist) and is an AIDS denier and a 9/11 Truther, then you were suggesting (not stating it) with no evidence at all that Heinemann was quite possibly an AIDS denier and a 9/11 Truther to try to discredit him.

It was not an "oddity" at all - they just both happen to be cell biologists. It was dishonest and you should have retracted it.

 

[Henry Bannister]

People would be better off putting their money in something more ethical than tobacco manufacture, smuggling cocaine for example.

 

[Henry Bannister]

And?

Where is the great increase in yield that GMO promises?

Is he actually in charge? Because all we have is the hysterics of an anti-GMO site. Perhaps he is simply a respected scientist who is stepping in to advise before they make more mistakes.

He’s Associate Editor for Biotechnology which strongly suggests that he’ll be the first port of call for papers on biotechnology.

http://www.journals.elsevier.com/food-and-chemical-toxicology/editorial-board/

If they wanted a respected scientist they could surely have found someone impartial.

Then we are talking about the Seralini 'study' and what looks like a reaction to it.

Fair play, I said that I didn't know the study.

Now if Monsanto's study has faults, why don't you find them rather than crying 'Wah! Monsanto sponsored it". Frankly I don't care much - you need to prove that there is an issue in the first place before whining about any other studies.

If Monsanto sponsors research then that research isn't impartial, is it? GMOers on here are rejecting information from anti-GMO sites out of hand, you can't then uncritically accept pro-GMO Monsanto-sponsored research.

 

[Skeletor]

I would like to join this thread at some point soon. (will read up from the beginning first)

A sweet tip I heard regarding Round-up weed kill. To combat the pest of the plant, find the enemy of the pest. Take the enemy and crush it. Add it to a Ltr bottle of water and shake vigorously. Add this water to a bucket of water, stir well and spray it over the plants (avoiding weeds)

The pest smells its enemy, and death. The pest should then be happy feeding off the weeds.

Lots safer than altering the genetic structure of corn for resilience to Round-up.

Is this a subtle joke, one that I'm not getting?

Why am I thinking of "Conan the Barbarian" now?

If Monsanto sponsors research then that research isn't impartial, is it? GMOers on here are rejecting information from anti-GMO sites out of hand, you can't then uncritically accept pro-GMO Monsanto-sponsored research.

We could have an independent scientist that somehow has a connection to Monsanto (his father's brother's cousin shared a dorm room in college with a future Monsanto executive) and could be dismissed by anti-GMO activists as a shill for Monsanto.
I do agree that we can't simply accept pro-GMO research "as is." I do feel that if it's peer reviewed, has solid science to back up the claims, regardless of the outcome (pro-or-anti-GMO...or anything else for that matter) then I'll accept the results.

 

[kookbreaker]

Where is the great increase in yield that GMO promises?

In the era chosen by those writers there is a rough increase from 8 MT/HA to 10, a 25% increase with an alleged increase in herbicides of 7%.

http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=us&commodity=corn&graph=yield

(I don't know why your link was to the EU yields)

He’s Associate Editor for Biotechnology which strongly suggests that he’ll be the first port of call for papers on biotechnology.

http://www.journals.elsevier.com/food-and-chemical-toxicology/editorial-board/

If they wanted a respected scientist they could surely have found someone impartial.

I really doubt an associate editor can muffle research if properly done.

Fair play, I said that I didn't know the study.

If Monsanto sponsors research then that research isn't impartial, is it? GMOers on here are rejecting information from anti-GMO sites out of hand, you can't then uncritically accept pro-GMO Monsanto-sponsored research.

[/QUOTE]

Unlike the horror show papers that anti-GMO researchers have produced you have yet to show that the science in the Monsanto sponsored papers are flawed. You can't just cry 'wah! Monsanto sponsored it!' and expect it to be rejected out of hand.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

People would be better off putting their money in something more ethical than tobacco manufacture, smuggling cocaine for example.

Depends on the returns. Plus it's illegal.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Where is the great increase in yield that GMO promises?

You've never spoken to a real farmer, have you?

If Monsanto sponsors research then that research isn't impartial, is it?

False. This is a common anti-GMO nutwad argument. You may want to consider not using it. Especially on a skeptics forum.

GMOers on here are rejecting information from anti-GMO sites out of hand, you can't then uncritically accept pro-GMO Monsanto-sponsored research.

Properly done peer reviewed studies aren't pro or anti anything.They go where the evidence takes them.

 

[IDB87]

Just saw someone mention this Monsanto stuff on Facebook. No dog in this hunt, but has monocropping and soil biodiversity in relation to GMOs been touched upon? Or is just "Things we don't understand are scary"?

 

[Wayward son]

Do you have references for him being a ‘notorious anti-gmo professor’ … rather than just a professor who is against gmo? I did a quick search and he seems to be a respected researcher published in a number of peer-review journals (Food Microbiology, Proceedings of The Royal Society, Food & Chemical Toxicology, … ) and well cited by other scientists.

h t t p://academic.research.microsoft.com/Author/23519088/jack-a-heinemann
h t t p://w w w.biomedexperts.com/Profile.bme/549320/Jack_A_Heinemann

Linus Pauling was an amazing scientist who nevertheless went off the rails with his vocal claims on vitamin C. The same goes for other accomplished scientists who descended into promoting nonsense claims like Margulis and W.D. Hamilton. In no way am I comparing Heinemann to great scientists, I am simply saying that being accomplished in your own field does not grant you immunity from making nonsense claims in another field. Heinemann talks complete nonsense when it comes to GMOs and has for many years.

He was actually comparing several crops over that time, some GMO some not. (Incidentally, the post I originally queried was the Central Scrutinizer quoting a farmer asking "Why are people opposed to Monsanto? We get higher yields using a lot less fertilizer and pesticides than we did 30 years ago". So a choice of 1986 was not so bizarre perhaps. )

If you think that it is fine to include 10 years of data before GMOs were used as part of the GMO data then that speaks to your own intellectual integrity and standards.

So far from Heinemann getting the results he was looking for, you seem to actually agree with him? His conclusion from that seems (rather than the ‘pile of crap’ you suggest) fair to me: “These results suggest that yield benefits (or limitations) over time are due to breeding and not GM, as reported by others (Gurian-Sherman 2009), because W. Europe has benefitted from the same, or marginally greater, yield increases without GM.“

As Chris Preston shows, when Heinemann's data is done properly it shows:

Yield increases per year by standard regression (ha/hg/yr) for Maize:
US 1961-1995: 1073 +/- 113
WE 1961-1995: 1392 +/- 95.08
US 1996 - 2011: 1273 +/- 231.4
WE 1996 - 2011: 887.4 +/- 334.8

While it is not significant due to the large error bars, it is thoroughly dishonest to claim that the results show WE has had the same, or marginally greater, yield increases.

http://gmopundit.blogspot.ca/2013/06/why-do-heinemann-2013-use-wrong-year-to.html

If you didn’t read the article beyond the third paragraph there were some other concerning trends that he points out, for example on the genetic diversity of the crops in the US (and gives references to some of the dangers of that).

"Maize Lines Are More Diverse Than the Human–to–Chimp Comparison"

"Springer et al. [6] compared B73 to another modern inbred and report an unprecedented level of structural diversity—differences in gene copy number and hundreds of genes present in only one line. Soderlund et al. [3] also point out that maize has many genes not found in other higher plants. What selective forces in both the progenitor wild species and modern cultivar have elevated gene generation and allelic diversification (from length polymorphism, single nucleotide changes, and transposon insertion/excision events) orders of magnitude higher in maize than most other plants and animals?

http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1000723

Heinemann is not an authority on this subject. He is simply talking out his ass. In 1970 Southern corn leaf blight ravaged the US, by the next year conventional breeding methods had completely ended it. With biotechnology techniques such problems are corrected even faster and better.

While it is true that Mexico, with it's diversity of corn varieties, did not suffer from the same corn blight their yields for 1970 were 1 MT/HA, compared to the US with 5 MT/HA (DURING the time of this terrible blight). In 2013 Mexico has risen to 3 MT/HA, compared to 10 MT/HA. So I don't see any benefit for the US moving to a system where they produce 30% of the US' current yields.

http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=mx&commodity=corn&graph=yield

Segnosaur: I’m not sure why he just gives data for France – it is apparently though the largest of the European corn-growing countries. Down to 12% insecticide use for a whole country without GMO, though – seven times the reduction of the US using GMO. Surely an interesting result.

The most interesting thing about that result is that after 3 hours of various google and scientific literature searches it seems Heinemann completely made that number up. It bares zero resemblance to anything I could find. France is still ranked roughly fourth highest in the world in pesticide usage. The only journal article I could find that included insecticide use in France reported a 1% reduction from 2001 to 2004.

If a country managed to produce reductions anywhere near the supposed claim that Heinemann made about France, it would be found every where. Greenpeace would be trumpeting it. It would be all over the place in newspapers, scientific journals, Government of France websites. But the claim exists no where except for being vomited out of Heinemann's mouth.

Heinemann is a notorious anti-gmo liar.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Heinemann is a notorious anti-gmo liar.

I've never met an anti-GMO nutwad who wasn't a liar. Their entire argument is based on lies. The keep repeating "GMO's cause cancer" and "GMO's haven't been tested enough", both of which are lies, and they know they are lies, but they keep repeating them.

 

[Cassidy]

Yes, this works really well, although it might be difficult to identify the enemy of the pest. I think spiders work best, but I have heard that lady bugs do too.

Which have you used?

Dead lady bugs.

 

[marplots]

Dead lady bugs.

I'll give it a try.

 

[Skeletor]

Dead lady bugs.

Y'know...on a small scale (perhaps in a 3x3m greenhouse) this might work pretty good, but how long does it last? How many lady bugs per liter? I'd imagine you would have to get thousands of lady bugs for the average outdoor garden.

Another related thought: Have companies sought out pesticides that mimic the scents of predatory insects? I guess the only downside would be you'd have a lot of these insects coming around, seeking to 'mate' with the plant.