chadn737

I had a dream about topics that give me a headache and it happened.

Of all the potentially boring topics....

Claims of even being able to isolate collagen fibers from dinosaur remains have been extremely controversial. Consider then that DNA isolated from frozen Mammoths is highly fragmented....it would be impossible to merely inject ancient DNA into an egg and recover such an organism.

Some are. It takes $137 million dollars typically to develop a GMO. Some aren't. Those developed by companies are patented. They would go bankrupt if they weren't. Some are developed by academic and philanthropic organizations and they are made freely available. An example of the former would be Bt cotton. An example of the latter is Golden Rice. However, many third world farmers are willing to and want to pay more for GMOs because it increases yield, decreases other costs, and increases their profits. There are several references on the drop in hunger. Yes, the EPA and USDA have power to prevent a product from entering the market. There are multiple experiments that have to be done. For instance, in the case of Bt crops, which produce a natural pesticide, the experiments are done on toxicity on non-target species. The effects of Bt on insects like Bees were done from the start. I'll write more later, have to run at the moment.

Exactly. Thank you for explaining that because I fear that my explanations got bogged down in some nastiness.

1) As this study accounted for those factors, they can actually make that conclusion. 2) Basic population genetics....migration shifts allele frequency. 1) To be replaced with handwaving about selection? Ha! The study actually tests these factors, no handwaving involved. 2) The large effect alleles involved in human skin color are known. There may be small effect alleles, but that is not going to explain large shifts. If selection were a cause, a far more likely explanation is that these alleles were eliminated due to linkage to another allele not involved in skin color. For instance, the decimation of Native American populations due to small pox had nothing to do with selection on skin color, yet it had the effect of greatly reducing the number of Native Americans and any associated alleles. 3) I have no idea why you seem to think I favor recessive alleles, I have said nothing on that matter and it is senseless. 4) You seem to imply that genetic drift only occurs in small or isolated populations. That is not the case and I have made no claims on that matter. 5) Isolation has been a factor of human evolution in many cases. For instance, Jewish populations had relatively little outbreeding in comparison to other populations for much of their history. That is why there is such strong population structure in Jewish people at the genetic level. Even today, there are numerous examples of assortative mating leading to reproductive isolation...Amish, Hutterites, etc. 6) The scenarios you proposed are confused and make little sense. About that.....see below: That is wrong. Assortative mating can be part of natural selection. For instance sexual selection leads to assortative mating. It is wrong, however, to say that all assortative mating is natural selection. Assortative mating can result due to temporal and/or spatial separation. For instance, if humans migrate and settle a new region, interaction with the original population will be reduced or cutoff. As a result, a nonrandom mating will occur. Individuals in one region will tend to mate with people from that region. Large scale migration of Europeans to North America don't explain the appearance of white skin in North America? Seriously? Elimination of Native Americans by Europeans doesn't explain their reduced presence? Seriously? You don't need isolation and inbreeding in such cases. If assortative mating based on racism were simply an amplification of environmental selection, then one would not expect segregation in these regions.

A lot of plants abort flowers due to environmental conditions. For example, soybeans will abort up to 80% of their flowers depending on factors like water, temperature, etc. Its a way to ensure that the available resources are used to their full effect rather than being spread too thinly amongst too many fruits. Phosphorous is not known to induce flowering in anyway. Typical flowering cues are day length or amount of light and temperature. However, a deficiency will induce flower abortion in some fruits, like melons. I am not certain about fruit trees, but it is very possible. Phosphorous is most often a problem in areas of high rainfall, which leads to leaching and acidification of the soil. There are many possible explanations for flower abortion and in general not every fertilized flower will produce fruit.

Much of it is distribution, but there are many reasons to be concerned about overall production. For one, much of our production is used for purposes other than food production or even feeding livestock. Significant amounts of the US corn harvest goes towards ethanol production. Secondly, redistributing the production of the first world to those regions that most need it is probably not the best approach. Its the old adage of "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." It is more than merely feeding people, it is also giving them independence and alleviation of poverty. By making resources available to third world farmers, we can do both. This is exactly what happened during the green revolution, when the number of chronically hungry people in the world dropped from 60% to 17%. We also have to think in terms of population growth. In the next 50 years, we will have around 3.5 billion additional people and in the next 20 alone, a 50% increased demand on our cereal production. GMOs alone wont solve this problem, neither will genetic diversity. The green revolution was fueled in no small part by breeding, but also fertilizer and pesticide usage. Going forward, GMOs will be an integral part. Though there is a lot of untapped genetic diversity within plant species, there is only so much. Some species are just diversity poor...Soybean for example. Maize has incredible diversity, but soybean surprisingly lacks a lot. Thats why many breeders are trying to integrated the diversity found in related, yet different species. Its not just about production either. Millions of people suffer from vitamin A deficiency, even though they get enough calories to live. Engineering crops with increased nutrient content (like Golden Rice) can directly address this issue. 40% of our food supply comes from irrigated lands, which accounts for 70% of water consumption. One of the major areas of research and development in GMOs is finding ways of dealing with drought. Then include the fact of climate change, new pest pressures (human movement spreads new diseases, weeds, insects to regions they never were before), land degradation, etc and we have a major challenge ahead of us. GMOs are an essential component of the toolbox. GMOs are tested by both the EPA and USDA (other agencies in other nations) for their effects on wild species. Domesticated species in general are not good at competing alone with wild species. They possess traits that make them less competitive. The concern then is with gene flow of the specific trait out of the domesticated crop to wild relatives. This is of a concern, and there are extensive studies of gene flow to and from crops and wild relatives. The USDA also directly tests and regulates this issue. A lot of it will depend on the specific trait. For instance, glyphosate resistance is only of advantage in cases where glyphosate is sprayed. So primarily in the field. Traits meant to confer increased value, such as high oil content, would actually be disadvantageous in the wild as it diverts resources and energy towards traits that are not involved in survival. Of all the concerns, I find gene flow and resistance to be the only truly valid ones with any backing by scientific evidence. However, agriculture has forever altered the landscape and there are alternative considerations tradeoffs. If we risk gene flow into wild relatives, is that a worst fate than requiring more land and more habitat destruction? I'm interested in discussing this more, but can't at the moment.

1) Some grammatical issues to be dealt with. For example, there is a huge run-on sentence in the first paragraph. 2) You cite Seralini et al. (2012) to support an early assertion. You should be aware that this study was highly flawed and retracted based on both technical flaws and ethical violations. I would against citing it, especially since its no longer published.

This entire response could be summarize as asking the question "How do we assess safety?" The regulatory framework and the methods of doing so have been in place for at least two decades now and the scientific consensus is that this is sufficient to provide safety to the public health. In my last response I addressed how we do this. P.S. Its ok to use periods and break run-on sentences up into multiple sentences.

You're the one making unsupported assumptions regarding selection overtone. I have made no claim except that you have to account for population discontinuity, demographics, effective population size, etc in order to claim that there has been selection. In the case of South India, the previously linked paper clearly showed that this was not explainable by natural selection, but rather was a factor of demographic shifts and migrations. Lets step back and take a very basic review of population genetics. The skin tone of a population will change if the underlying allele frequency changes. The allele frequency can change due to one or more factors: 1) Natural Selection 2) Assortative mating 3) Mutation 4) Genetic Drift 5) Gene Flow (Migration) 6) Meiotic Drive In this circumstance, Mutation is going to be minor to irrelevant as is Meiotic Drive. So the question is, did the allele frequencies change due to Natural Selection or because of the other factors. An important factor here is the effective population size Ne. If Ne is small, then the effects of genetic drift are much more pronounced and allele frequency changes can occur due to random fluctuations alone, no natural selection. Assortative mating, or non-random mating, can also shift the population structure. This can result from cultural/demographic factors. Consider that 8% of men in the former Mongol Empire (0.5% in the world), carry Genghis Khan's Y-Chromosome. This is not because there is selective pressure on the Y-chromosome itself. Genghis Khan had access to any woman he wanted, as did his sons and their sons. Men in that society at the lower end had less access to women. As a result, allele frequencies shifted. Gene flow, should be obvious. Sample the population of South Africa a 1000 years ago, and you would find very low or no alleles associated with white skin. Sample that population again today and you would find a significant number. Was that due to natural selection? No, white Europeans simply migrated there and today make up a significant minority of that region. There are multiple explanations, that is why you never assume natural selection. In population and evolutionary genetics the null hypothesis is one of neutrality. In other words, one tests for selection against the assumption of no selection. A lot of bad research, particularly in genome wide association studies, has been conducted over the years because people failed to account for population structure and other factors that give false association. You, throughout this thread, have failed to account for all these factors. The only source you cited, on skin tone in India even demonstrates the folly of assuming selection without accounting for these factors. Your argument sounds a lot like a Creationist, pushing back the time frame and asking "where they got it"? Once again you simply assume selection without eliminating other possibilities. Again lets go back to basic population genetics. Remember the effective population size, Ne? If Ne​ is small, genetic drift gets larger. I know you have heard of population bottlenecks. If a region were settled by a very small initial population, taken from a larger population, then you could have very radical shifts in allele frequency from that alone and not due to natural selection. This is exactly what has happened in many islands, Iceland being the best studied. You are going around starting with the assumption of natural selection, yet lack any the necessary evidence to support. I have never claimed that there is not natural selection. I have only argued that your assumptions are groundless until you actually test for selection. You have no evidence of selection in any of those circumstances. You are simply assuming selection on skin tone without actually having tested for it. In some of these examples, its simply outrageous. For instance, the killing of most of the Native American population was due to lack of resistance to the diseases introduced by Europeans. That had nothing to do with whether or not their skin color was beneficial. The time scale here is also so incredibly short, that its really hard to believe that it was selection. In contrast, migration and admixture...not to mention the demographics imposed by racism...were so overwhelming that it makes for a far more realistic explanation. Actual human geneticists agree, as I showed previously.

Once again, Overtone dodges the challenge to support his claim of negative health effects with evidence. Support or retract overtone. Stop dodging. This is wrong. When making random mutations, you really have no idea what you will get. The fact that it is in "existing code" (quite frankly this reminds me of creationist talk) is irrelevant. There are many ways in which such random mutations could have potentially harmful effects. As the mutations are random genome wide, there have not been methods of detecting many of the secondary mutations until very recently with whole genome sequencing. Even then, with only a handful of species with descent genomes, its very difficult to identify all of such mutations. With a transgene, its very strait-forward to identify copy number and insertion site. For instance, it could lead to expression of potentially toxic or allergenic genes expressed in one part of the plant to be expressed in those parts that are now edible. Or maybe a protein is mutated into an allergenic form? There are a vast array of ways in which random mutagenesis could generate potentially harmful effects. Genetic changes are restricted only by selective pressure and in domesticated species, the selective pressure comes from artificial selection imposed by humans. If you had an allergen that affected only a segment of society or traditionally was never expressed in edible parts, but led to increased yield in field trials, this could pass through any traditional methods as they are untested. Millions have food allergies as it is, yet despite thousands of years of evolution by artificial selection, we have not eliminated those allergens. The primary traits under selection in traditional breeding are yield and agronomic traits. Much of domesticated plant genomes are not as constrained. Traditional breeding, including random mutagenesis, has a greater chance of increasing expression of endogenous allergens. In fact such methods alter the composition of the plant far more than does transgenic approaches, whereas the induced changes are targeted and known with transgenics. The important difference is that GMOs are all tested for such effects, whereas random mutagenesis and traditional breeding are not. This fact alone makes GMOs far safer than random mutagenesis or traditional methods. You must be scared as shit of evolution and Mother Nature. She's been spreading genes around by horizontal gene transfer for millions of years without any regulation. Thats how you end up with snake retrotransposons in cows. You should go debate her. At least humans regulate the genetic engineering they do. Transgenes do not possess special properties that allow them to move around. A transgene integrated into a plant genome is as stable as any other gene in that genome. It has as equal chance of jumping across phyla as the native genes of that plant. In fact, if you take into consideration native transposons, its probably less likely. The environmental effects of any GMO is tested by the EPA and USDA before deployment, unlike traditional breeding, random mutagenesis, or really any other agricultural practice. Farmers can go and clean till a field without regulation, despite the massive erosion and nutrient runoff, but GMOs are all tested prior to commercial release. I.e. overtone asserts his opinion without doing a literature search. There have been a huge number of papers on gene flow between domesticated and wild species, both transgenic and non. I.e. overtone asserts a lack of research contrary to all the papers and lists of papers given to him. Once again, overtone's opinion trumps science. Support your claims with evidence or retract. You are doing nothing except asserting your opinion contrary to all evidence.

Agreed.

Ironically....the use of GMOs is directly responsible for reducing CO2 emissions. Funny considering the comparisons being made to climate change denialism. 1) Let me point out that you ignored all my calls for you to support your claims of health risks to challenge me on a publication date that we both agree occurred before commercialization and human consumption. Once again, I challenge you to support your claim of health risks or retract it. I will not allow you to get away with making unsupported assertions. 2) Actually no. That is not the final regulatory hurdle. I actually already showed this in the other thread. "To be commercialized in China, a GE food crop must undergo seven stages: research, pilot experiment, environmental release, experimental production, safety certification, multi-ministerial approval and the Ministry of Agriculture’s final approval. Applications are made to the GMO Biosafety Office of the Ministry of Agriculture. The applications for all stages of a field trial, environmental release and commercialization are referred to the National Biosafety Committee. The Committee is convened by the Ministry of Agriculture. It examines the applications and gives its recommendations to the GMO Biosafety Office. Since 2008, it meets three times a year. Then the Ministry of Agriculture itself, or a multi-ministerial meeting in some cases such as GE rice, will decide on whether or not to issue a safety certificate for cultivation to start. These certifications are restricted to the provinces that have been identified in the applications, and are usually valid for five years depending on the crop. Without such certification, there can be no commercial planting. It is noteworthy that biosafety certificates and commercial approvals are issued on a provincial basis and not for the country as a whole. In the case of GE rice varieties that have been recently ‘approved’, the National Biosafety Committee has issued the biosafety certificate for the two rice varieties, and this applies only to Hubei Province. The biosafety certificate is of limited duration, valid from August 17, 2009 to August 17, 2014. It may be one to two years before commercial approval is granted, and there will be a multi-ministry committee decision on this. Furthermore, the requisite process of obtaining new seed variety registration and a production license, involving further trials and seed selling, will take at least one year, so it may be some time yet before GE rice is actually commercially grown and produced in China." http://biosafety-info.net/bioart.php?bid=587 So no, it was not yet approved. It had passed stage 5 of 7 towards commercialization, but as this article clearly states, it was not yet approved for commercialization. It still had two regulatory hurdles yet to clear.

1) I.e. contrary to the published research, overtone still refuses to provide evidence of health risks and makes more excuses. 2) I.e. overtone merely asserts that the Chinese study did not address health concerns, but can't be bothered to specify exactly what. Why? Because overtone's opinion trumps science. 3) Overtone ignores the fact, pointed out to him in another thread, that the Chinese study was published before commercial use of Bt rice. Overtone mistakes the fact that because the Bt rice passed one regulatory hurdle in 2009, does not mean that it was being commercially produced or even used for human consumption. Yes overtone, I am going to write mocking replies until you take the intellectually honest route and provide scientific evidence for your argument as I have challenged you many times to do so. Your biased opinion does not an argument make.

I.e. contrary to the evidence overtone insists there must be dangers! 1) I.e. contrary to the evidence (Chinese study for example) overtone insists there are health effects. 2) The Chinese studied showed absolutely no bad health effects (in one case there was a statistically significant improvement!). 1) I.e. overtone has no evidence and despite a vast body of research, overtone insists that there are. Why? Simply because that is overtone's opinion and that trumps science. 2) You contradict yourself. Claiming Bt and glyphosate to be safe and introduce into a challenge to show health effects, the red herring of resistance. I.e. overtone comes up with an excuse as to why he has no evidence of negative health effects and why overtone is justified in dismissing all evidence to the contrary. I'm tired of your arguments from repetition. These unsupported assertions are not evidence of risk. Support your case or retract it. These are scientific forums and science should have the last word, not your unsupported opinions.

Actually, a more fit analogy is that fear-mongering of GMOs is equivalent to climate-change denialism. You have an extensive amount of research behind genetic engineering and safety testing just as you have an extensive body of research supporting climate change. It is through the scientific method that we learn and know about what dangers there are and whether any fears are justified. Pointing to the extensive research supporting the general safety of GMOs is how one makes a valid argument. Its called providing evidence for ones claims. This can be contrasted with the general and baseless claims about health risks and other dangers. To insist that its dangerous contrary to the evidence is the same as a climate-change denier insisting that there is no evidence of climate change. Both amount to denying scientific evidence. It is hypocritical to me that you support one claim (climate change) based on scientific evidence, then reject another claim (genetic engineering) in spite of scientific evidence. That so much of your arguments revolve around the corporations, while ignoring that 80% of technology in the pipeline is not from corporations (Golden Rice anyone?) is evidence that you seem more driven by political ideology than actual scientific evidence. I insist that the we leave anti-corporatism out of such arguments for this very reason, because it causes people to go with their political biases rather than facts. If you really want to make a case, then provide evidence of health risks. Show that there is a health risk. Support your argument with evidence, not fear mongering.

That is false. Its an urban myth. The Canadian case had nothing to do with cross-pollination. A farmer deliberately held back seed, for which he had signed a contract not to do, and planted that. The farmer broke his contract. There was nothing accidental about it.

Yeah, you look at phenotypes and how they are inherited. This has been done since the dawn of genetics. Feeding studies are conducted for every GMO prior to approval. Not a single commercial GMO has not undergone such testing. Not all such studies are published and oftentimes they are published after their initial use in obtaining approval. The consensus of multiple scientific organizations is that 90 day feeding trial are sufficient to assess the safety of GMOs. http://dbtbiosafety.nic.in/guideline/OACD/Concepts_and_Principles_1993.pdf http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/biotech/en/ec_june2000_en.pdf Using the publication date is not necessarily a good judge of when the study was conducted or when if it was used in obtaining appoval. The fact that such studies continue to be conducted is due to multiple factors. For one, everytime a new GMO is made, it goes through the regulatory process. Even if Bt corn were shown safe 6 years ago, they still test anew for Bt rice, Bt tomato, or whatever. Many transgenes, like the Bts are actually a family of genes, which then go through the process for every different gene used. A study conducted in 2012 does not mean that Bt was never tested before. Of course, there are many with an agenda, such as Seralini, who also actively conduct work to find something wrong, even if fraudulent. What such evidence looks like is exactly the sort of evidence presented. Feeding trials that test for factors like allergenicity, carcinogenicity, etc, etc.

Often times when you are doing stuff like this, such as handling with paper, you are creating a very artificial situation. Paper tends to have lots of electrostatic charge. I've had it stick to me before...does that indicate that I evolved to have some sort of electrostatic interaction? I find it highly unlikely that under real-life conditions...changing temperatures, moisture, etc, etc that this will be a factor.

First off, it should be noted that I linked you to a report on the study, not the actual study itself. Many details are not available in that report. The full study can be found here. Secondly, it was a multigenerational study. Offspring of the first generation fed Bt rice were raised through reproductive age and allowed to have children, who were themselves analyzed. Looking at very old ages, past reproductive abilities is irrelevant. The multigenerational and reproductive aspects is what this study addresses. Because it carries across multiple generations, it does address long term aspects, as these are offspring of rats raised on GMOs who were themselves offspring of rats raised on GMOs. 1) In 2009 China issued a safety production certification for Bt rice, however, this does not mean that it was approved for commercial production or human consumption. This was after 5 years of study. 2) Bt crops have been extensively studied since the start. Safety assessments of Bt rice were conducted as early as 2007, 2 years before biosafety approval in China. It should be noted, that many safety studies are submitted to the monitoring government organizations and not published or published after submission for government testing. This study was conducted by the Chinese governing bodies. 3) I have posted in this thread multiple long term studies, some well before 2012, in multiple species. It is note worthy that you completely ignore those studies and repeat your assertions. This is nothing more than argument from repetition. Let me repost some of these studies, since you obviously missed them, assuming you just didn't ignore them: There have been multiple such studies, some lasting up to two years and others across multiple generations. For instance there was two year study on feeding Bt corn to lactating Dairy Cows. There was three year study in mice that spread across three generations....from conception to death. Consider the study done in quail that spanned 10 generations. Again you simply repeat your assertions despite evidence presented to the contrary. Are you familiar with the fallacy known as argument from repetition? Earlier I gave you multiple reasons for why the Seralini study was fraudulent and retracted. I even pointed you to the editor-in-chief's own statement on the matter. You have just completely ignored this and repeated yourself contrary to the facts laid out. Since obviously you ignored them earlier, let me lay out the reasons for the retraction again: "The biggest problem was that the rats he used. He used the Sprague-Dawley rat line, which is known to have a very high rate of tumor development compared to other rat lines. Under normal circumstances, up to ~80% of individuals will develop tumors. In other words, Seralini deliberately picked a rat line that he knew would develop tumors. It was guaranteed no matter what he fed them. He never mentioned the amount of food fed, which the incidence of mammary tumors in this line is also linked to the amount of food fed. If Seralini overfed GMO corn compared to non-GMO corn, the incidence would increase simply due to the amount of food, not the food itself. The study didn't use enough control rats and it used a 90 day experimental design on 2 year study. It used unusual statistical methods, that alone is a sign of potential fraud. It is possible in many instance of any experiment to generate statistically significant results if you just pick the right test/model. So when you see somebody pick non-conventional methods, it often is a sign that they didn't find the result they wanted by standard approaches and so went fishing. The recommended number of rats for a carcinogenicity study is 50 in a group, Seralini used 10. Ironically, rats fed glyphosate directly actually lived longer at higher dosages than the control. Then there is the ethical part of it. Seralini did not euthanize the rats after they developed tumors, as is required by ethical standards, but instead let the tumors grow to enormous size so that he could take sensationalist photographs." So take your pick. These were the reasons the paper was retracted. Bad design, ethical violations, abnormal statistics, important details left out, and a line of rats deliberately picked to develop tumors. Secondly, you can't compare the studies. Seralini was conducting a carcinogenicity study, the Chinese paper was not. The recommended number of individuals changes with the type of study. Furthermore, the Chinese paper has 45 rats per group. Seralini had 10. Seralini had more rats total because he had more groups to test more factors. However, statistical power is not determined by total number alone. The more factors and test groups you have, the more complicated the statistical analysis becomes. Your statistical power does not increase if you do not increase the number of individuals in a group. In this case, the Chinese actually had far greater statistical power with their 45 rats per group than Seralini did in his 10 rats per group. Not only that, they had the same number of rats in controls and test groups. Seralini did not. This is by far a well designed study, compared to the fraudulent mess of Seralini. Thats because I linked you to a news article originally and not the original paper. However, I am glad you brought this up. Lets look at what differences were found. 1) AST levels lower in F2s fed transgenics. This is actually a good thing since AST levels are an indication of liver damage. 2) TP levels were higher in F2 males in comparison to the AIN93G control, but not in comparison to MingHui63. MingHui63 is the non-transgenic parent of the TT51 Bt line. In other words, the differences, if real, were due to variety and not the transgene. 3) These differences were within normal ranges for Wistar rats. "Mean AST was lower ((p < 0.05) in F2 male and female rats consuming the transgenic TT51 rice diet compared with the control diet. AST mostly exists in the liver cell, when liver cells or some tissue have been damaged; it can increase AST concentration in the blood. Therefore, AST is a sensitive index for reflection of the liver cell damage. But the AST decreasing in the transgenic rice group was not considered adverse effect. Mean TP values were higher (p < 0.05) in F2 male rats consuming the transgenic TT51 rice diet group compared with the control group. But there were no significant differences in Mean TP values in F2 male rats consuming the transgenic TT51 rice diet group compared with the MingHui63 rice diet group. Further, these values were within the historical data range in this lab of Wistar rats (AST, 75.7–118.9 U/L in males, 58.2–129.9 U/L in females; TP, 48.5–74.7 g/L in males). Similar findings have been reported in other studies and were also not considered as an indication of adverse effects (He et al., 2008, Kilic and Akay, 2008 and Zhou et al., 2011)." You really should have taken the time to look up the original study rather than imagine you can know everything about it from a news report. 1) The study tested a vast range of health indicators, not just reproduction. Everything from serum chemistry, hematology, body weight, histopathology, sex serum, survival, etc. 2) It was not "years after the deployment". See my explanation of what a safety production certificate actually means. "addresses the wrong crop in the wrong way"? That makes no sense. This was a crop proposed for human consumption, so how exactly is it the wrong crop? Its being tested for numerous indicators of health across multiple generations...how is that the wrong way? I have no idea what you are going on about with "estrogen mimickry" because that is not really a concern with Bt. There is nothing similar between estrogen and Cry proteins. Rats are used to study health effects for humans at all levels, including drugs. The study you link to has nothing to do with human health, but environmental effects....you seem to be taking a shotgun approach here, throwing multiple irrelevant and nonsensical issues at a discussion of health. Talk about your red herrings. Secondly, you claim Bt is safe, yet complain about the supposed and false lack of long-term studies. Make up your mind. This group conducted a very well designed study specific to the questions asked. You seem to support the fraudulent Seralini study, but then falsely accuse well conducted studies like this one of deception. 1) microRNAs are found in nearly all, if not all Eukaryotes. Your body is full of them produced by microRNA coding genes in your own genome. They are an amazing finding, but its just another level of regulation. It should be noted, that Richard Jorgensen, a plant biologist, discovered the effect of RNA silencing long before Mellows and Fire and yet was jipped out of a Nobel since it was in plants and not animals. 2) That example comes from rice in general, not transgenics. If anything, this demonstrates how much more we know about the safety of transgenic foods than any other. People have been eating rice for thousands of years with no safety testing. Meanwhile, every transgenic is tested for safety at multiple levels. Not only that, we know exactly what is put in a GMO. I am also bothered that the review you referenced didn't properly cite the research paper that made that claim. 3) GMOs have the ability to help conserve soil. No-till did not take off until roundup ready and other herbicide resistant crops first became available. The result has been reduced CO2 emissions and reduced soil erosion. EXACTLY! 1) The references to microRNAs and HDL/LDL has nothing to do with GMOs. 2) How are "GMO cropping practices exacerbating the problems". This is an unsupported claim, just like the claim that they reduce genetic diveristy. 3) GMOs have had documented positive impacts. For instance the increased utilization of No-till, reduced carbon emissions, etc. 4) How are GMOs encouraging us to screw up the soil? This is yet another unsupported claim. Your link doesn't support this claim.

This happens all the time with small seeds. After years of handling Arabidopsis, I can say they often stick to paper. I find it really far-fetched to think this evolved rather than simply the fact that they are small and so such forces under right circumstances could have an effect.

Another long term study. This one a two generational study of rats fed Bt rice. No differences observed.

Just because skin color changes does not mean it is the result of natural selection. That is an unsupported claim and one you have made many times. Although multiple genes are involved, we know many of them and especially the large effect alleles. That these alleles are not under selection is evidence against selection. Considering that I made this exact argument many posts ago, it should be obvious that I agree. I raised this very example as evidence against your claim of selection.

Yes, forget what the experts say. Ignore all the evidence that I have presented. Ignore the very paper that says there has been no selection in South India. You know better based on nothing more than assumptions. Once again, when presented with evidence to the contrary, you turn a blind eye and simply repeat yourself. Argument from repetition.