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No it isn't...Sound like your an advocate for MONSANTO
why are you so hung up on Monsanto? Do you realize that most GMOs are being developed by small scale entrepreneurs and labs who don't have the goal of global domination
Originally Posted by GuyNTexas However, independent researchers ... read: not research funded by monsanto and conducted by their shills .... have witnessed severe health effects in animals fed GMO ... development of massive tumors in lab rats .. a very common starting point for safety research prior to using humans as lab rats!!!!
Rats get tumours no matter what you feed them. Mine developed tumours after eating only healthy organic food. Rats get tumours, period. Look it up.
Not a Monsanto apologist, just setting the record straight. Correlation does not equal causation. That's why the only study done was so incredibly flawed.
The biggest single mistake people make is conflating GMOs with Monsanto and vice versa. Much, possible most of the transgenetic research projects today are small, independent labs and university labs who are just working for a better world, not trying to achieve world domination.
I agree, this may be a fair point. Still, it is hard to separate the two.
Corn in the US is 90% GMO, so in effect they are subsidizing GMO corn.
Monsanto's patented gene alone is in 80% of all US corn.
As I pointed out in the Food forum, to be accurate the USDA's figure for this year is that 85% of the corn grown on the US is GMO, and all of that is field corn, not the sweet corn that people eat.
The reason for the USDA's support of "Round-Up Ready" crops is obvious... they developed the technology, which was later sold by auction. Monsanto bought it for a billion dollars, and subsequently licensed other organizations to use it, as is normal with valuable technology patents. But the patent is running out. As soon as it lapses many, many more organizations will be able to begin working with the technology without paying license fees to Monsanto. Then I think you'll see an explosion in research and development in this field.
Also keep in mind that the corn genome contains 32,000 genes, more than humans have, and that it has already been transformed by man so dramatically that most people can barely recognize its wild ancestor as being related at all. So the manipulation of a few genes by artificial means does not change the basic nature of the corn at all. It's still corn! And that is the whole point. If it wasn't still corn it would not be a valuable commodity.
I agree, this may be a fair point. Still, it is hard to separate the two.
Not really. Not if you read about what is really going on in the field versus the sensationalist propaganda the anti-GMO activists keep flooding the internet with.
The virus resistant papayas that saved the Hawaiian industry was created by one researcher with a part-time assistant, and the seeds were distributed free of charge by the University of Hawai'i. The Golden Rice Project was developed as a humanitarian project to save children in rural Asia from death and blindness, and is a non-profit venture. The Gates Foundation is funding research to use GMO technology to fight malaria. Another organization is doing the same with Dengue fever. There are hundreds more examples, from hundreds of other orgs that you never hear about because the public discussion has become so polarized.
There is no question that Monsanto is a towering symbol of corporate evil, but there is a tremendous amount of very good work going on in this field which has nothing to do with Monsanto or its corporate tactics.
The facts are, GMO products have undergone no significant safety testing at all. However, independent researchers ... read: not research funded by monsanto and conducted by their shills .... have witnessed severe health effects in animals fed GMO ... development of massive tumors in lab rats .. a very common starting point for safety research prior to using humans as lab rats!!!!
Thanks for bringing that point up, because it is important to understanding what is going on here. The French study purporting to show that GMO corn caused rats to develop tumors was trumpeted far and wide by the anti-GMO activists as proving that GMO corn is dangerous. And it still is being circulated by people like you, even though the research was completely destroyed by peer review within 2 days of its public release. Virtually every single element of the research project was deemed defective, from design to conclusion, to the point of appearing to be a deliberate fraud. Later the French Academy of Sciences condemned the report... but how many of those stories have you read?
Among some of the deceptive practices: Choosing rats for the study that spontaneously develop tumors no matter what they are fed. These are certified for research use for only three months of age for that very reason, but the study followed them for two years. It was far too small a study to be statistically valid, and only 2 rats died. In other words, it was conducted to try to prove a specific, prejudged conclusion, whereas a true scientific study is conducted to discover the truth.
And in other news, that original bit of misinformation, never corrected on the psedoscience sites, is generally accompanied by the triumphant reference that France doesn't allow GMO corn to be grown. So here's another follow-up... as of last week two varieties of GMO "maize" have gotten the green light to be grown in France. I predict that more of the bans against transgenic crops will fall as science begins to demonstrate, in real world terms, that the fears are unfounded.
And here's Mark Lynas's mea culpa and apology about starting the anti-GMO misinformation flood. He now admits much of what they said was just made up.
Quote:
So I did some reading. And I discovered that one by one my cherished beliefs about GM turned out to be little more than green urban myths.
I’d assumed that it would increase the use of chemicals. It turned out that pest-resistant cotton and maize needed less insecticide.
I’d assumed that GM benefited only the big companies. It turned out that billions of dollars of benefits were accruing to farmers needing fewer inputs.
I’d assumed that Terminator Technology was robbing farmers of the right to save seed. It turned out that hybrids did that long ago, and that Terminator never happened.
I’d assumed that no-one wanted GM. Actually what happened was that Bt cotton was pirated into India and roundup ready soya into Brazil because farmers were so eager to use them.
I’d assumed that GM was dangerous. It turned out that it was safer and more precise than conventional breeding using mutagenesis for example; GM just moves a couple of genes, whereas conventional breeding mucks about with the entire genome in a trial and error way.
But, aside that fact ... it takes very little in terms of intelligence to read the technical literature on these various GMO products that produce their own toxins, and thusly, the insects and pests either won't eat it, or die from eating it.
And it takes very little intelligence to understand that the Bt toxin you are referring to is so safe that Organic farmers have been using it for over 60 years, because it is not toxic to humans or other mammals, and isn't even toxic to many insects, just to a few specific pests... but how many of those stories have you read?
Thanks for bringing that point up, because it is important to understanding what is going on here. The French study purporting to show that GMO corn caused rats to develop tumors was trumpeted far and wide by the anti-GMO activists as proving that GMO corn is dangerous. And it still is being circulated by people like you, even though the research was completely destroyed by peer review within 2 days of its public release. Virtually every single element of the research project was deemed defective, from design to conclusion, to the point of appearing to be a deliberate fraud. Later the French Academy of Sciences condemned the report... but how many of those stories have you read?
Among some of the deceptive practices: Choosing rats for the study that spontaneously develop tumors no matter what they are fed. These are certified for research use for only three months of age for that very reason, but the study followed them for two years. It was far too small a study to be statistically valid, and only 2 rats died. In other words, it was conducted to try to prove a specific, prejudged conclusion, whereas a true scientific study is conducted to discover the truth.
And in other news, that original bit of misinformation, never corrected on the psedoscience sites, is generally accompanied by the triumphant reference that France doesn't allow GMO corn to be grown. So here's another follow-up... as of last week two varieties of GMO "maize" have gotten the green light to be grown in France. I predict that more of the bans against transgenic crops will fall as science begins to demonstrate, in real world terms, that the fears are unfounded.
And here's Mark Lynas's mea culpa and apology about starting the anti-GMO misinformation flood. He now admits much of what they said was just made up.
And it takes very little intelligence to understand that the Bt toxin you are referring to is so safe that Organic farmers have been using it for over 60 years, because it is not toxic to humans or other mammals, and isn't even toxic to many insects, just to a few specific pests... but how many of those stories have you read?
I'm waiting for someone to trot out the story about the Indian farmers committing suicide because of the GMO seeds, seven years BEFORE Monsanto came into the picture.
I'm waiting for someone to trot out the story about the Indian farmers committing suicide because of the GMO seeds, seven years BEFORE Monsanto came into the picture.
Yeah, we've seen a dozen iterations of that claptrap in the now-forbidden GMO thread in the green living forum. Thanks for pre-empting it here.
You're welcome.
Now, I'm one of them there tree-hugging liberals, but I don't think GMO foods are all bad. I would like to see GMO food labeled so people could make their own choices. (Well, to think they're making their own choices)
Furthermore, I hate dishonesty. When I see the tumour and suicide claptrap, I haz a sad.
Sure. Most people are pretty clear that our Constitutional right to Freedom of Speech protects your right to say what you want to say. Maybe not so clear is that it also protects your right not be forced to say something you don't want to. Here's a single paragraph from that lengthy court document which pretty well sums up the court's reason for voiding Vermont's mandatory rBST labelling law:
Quote:
Although the Court is sympathetic to the Vermont consumers who wish to know which products may derive from rBST-treated herds, their desire is insufficient to permit the State of Vermont to compel the dairy manufacturers to speak against their will. Were consumer interest alone sufficient, there is no end to the information that states could require manufacturers to disclose about their production methods. For instance, with respect to cattle, consumers might reasonably evince an interest in knowing which grains herds were fed, with which medicines they were treated, or the age at which they were slaughtered. Absent, however, some indication that this information bears on a reasonable concern for human health or safety or some other sufficiently substantial governmental concern, the manufacturers cannot be compelled to disclose it. Instead, those consumers interested in such information should exercise the power of their purses by buying products from manufacturers who voluntarily reveal it.
Last edited by OpenD; 10-02-2013 at 12:25 AM..
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