GMOs May Feed the World Using Fewer Pesticides

[iNow]

Can you cite any scientific study that shows that GMOs do any harm?

Here's the summary version of his response to this question in the previous post: No.

[overtone]

Here's the summary version of his response to this question in the previous post: No

You can't paraphrase, let alone summarize, what you have not followed, or bothered to comprehend - please quote, instead.

 

If puzzled by that observation, or doubtful, review examples like this (wherein several scientific studies are made available indicating various harms from GMOs, btw, but that's not the point):

Here's one: http://boingboing.ne...food-the-a.html Following the references there - to the UCS, Greenpeace, Paul Voorsen's assessments, Doug Gurian's reports, etc etc etc, can take you to the research eventually.

The piece you've just cited basically says, "Do yields decrease when using GMO crops? Uhmmm... depends on what you mean by yield.

And along with posts like that, you make demands for "evidence" and "support". Hello?

Edited December 6, 2013 by overtone

[iNow]

If puzzled by that observation, or doubtful, review examples like this (wherein several scientific studies are made available indicating various harms from GMOs, btw, but that's not the point):

And along with posts like that, you make demands for "evidence" and "support". Hello?

The link you've cited from Boing Boing discusses crop yields (whether GMO seeds truly have higher yields intrinsically than traditional seeds, or if instead they merely fend off attacks from pests better than traditional seeds and hence don't die as much or lose output in the same way non-GMO crops would). The link you cited does NOT discuss harms to human health from GMO crops.

 

Did you perhaps intend to share a different link?

[overtone]

re "The scientific research conducted so far has not detected any significant hazards directly connected with the use of GE crops;"

 

Please show me the scientific evidence of harm done

This is worth separating out: the confusion of hazard with harm that so bedevils the GMO apologists here is really kind of strange. Is that distinction really so subtle? Obscure?

 

If somebody pushed them off a roof, what would these guys require for "scientific evidence of harm done" as they passed the tenth floor?

 

What's the problem with these guys?

 

edit in:

 

(whether GMO seeds truly have higher yields intrinsically than traditional seeds, or if instead they merely fend off attacks from pests better than traditional seeds and hence don't die as much or lose output in the same way non-GMO crops would)

No, you have missed the point again. Do not paraphrase other people in this matter - you aren't following the arguments well enough.

 

 

 

The link you cited does NOT discuss harms to human health from GMO crops

Follow the references as mentioned in the post - the UCS site, Gurian's work, etc. Edited December 6, 2013 by overtone

[John Cuthber]

Overtone, you seem, to have missed this

 

 

Please show me the scientific evidence of harm done.

Not citing evidence when asked harms your argument gravely.Also

the man falling from the 10th floor may have seen reports like this

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cfoi.nr0.htm

 

so he would have every reason to worry. There is already scientific evidence for harm from falling.

Where are the corresponding reports for GMO deaths?

r did you not realise that you were arguing against yourself there?

Edited December 6, 2013 by John Cuthber

[overtone]

 

 

Overtone, you seem, to have missed this

I quoted it, and responded directly.

 

 

Not citing evidence when asked harms your argument gravely

I haven't been asked about evidence for my argument. But I did provide quite a bit, above. It's in all the earlier posts - give them a read.

 

so he would have every reason to worry. There is already scientific evidence for harm from falling.

Where are the corresponding reports for GMO deaths?

Deaths or harms? Hazards or harms? Harm from falling off that particular building, under those circumstances, after being pushed? You have little evidence of that.

 

Just aping the posts above. You guys seem baffled by a fairly simple argument there.

 

Or we could patiently try again: Accomplished disaster is not the issue. Harms already suffered are not the issue (despite the partial list provided above). Terminal cluelessness is kind of the issue, but setting that aside - let's see:

 

Harms from breeding resistance in serious pests, and making worthless one's primary and best defenses, are surely known to you - DDT and malaria, penicillin and various bacterial diseases, that kind of thing. So that's a given.

 

Harms from genetic uniformity in one's major crops - we have the corn smut in the US, back a few years now (1973?); the current problems in the cocoa and coffee plantations - maybe the most serious these days is rubber tree blight, and historically the Irish potato famine. I think we can take that for granted.

 

Harms from failing to prevent cartel control of one's food supply and agriculture - the seige of Leningrad, analogous situations with Standard OIl and OPEC, the politics common to "banana republics", the US illegal drug market, etc - that seems pretty clear.

 

Harms from destroying local food security and creating dependence on distant economic powers come in there somewhere - the various events of the late British Empire illustrate, as does the Haitian earthquake.

 

Harms from introducing brand new, poorly researched, and unfamiliar adulterants into the human diet in such ubiquity and crypticity that it is difficult and expensive to avoid them - hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup - we know better, all of us, right?

 

Harms from abetting genetic invasion of the ecological landscape - now we're getting into some brand new arenas. Our theory is inadequate, here. Only a fool would assume safety, though, in such territory of the unknown.

 

Harms from sousing the landscape and soil with certain poisons one used to employ moderately - see above for resistance, but also side effects like micronutrient binding.

 

Enough of a list for starters?

[iNow]

Follow the references as mentioned in the post - the UCS site, Gurian's work, etc.

It's not MY job to support YOUR argument. If such references exist, just share them here.

 

I haven't been asked about evidence for my argument. But I did provide quite a bit, above. It's in all the earlier posts

What the what?!? You actually have been asked... repeatedly... by me and by others, so... Uhm... okay. Moving forward... Which post(s)... please cite the post number... had evidence of harm to humans being demonstrated empirically?

 

Harms from breeding resistance in serious pests, and making worthless one's primary and best defenses, are surely known to you - DDT and malaria, penicillin and various bacterial diseases, that kind of thing. So that's a given.

As it is with existing crops, on which we throw mountains of fertilizers... which in addition to their other demonstrated harms... also breed resistance in serious pests.

 

Harms from genetic uniformity in one's major crops

One would think this is an argument IN FAVOR of being able to genetically modify crops. If the need for genetic diversity is so critical, do we not have significantly greater ability to introduce said diversity via intentional genetic modification?

 

Harms from failing to prevent cartel control of one's food supply and agriculture - the seige of Leningrad, analogous situations with Standard OIl and OPEC, the politics common to "banana republics", the US illegal drug market, etc - that seems pretty clear.

This is not a problem specific to genetically modified crops, but crops in general. You're really grasping at straws at this point by suggesting this.

 

Harms from destroying local food security and creating dependence on distant economic powers <snip> Harms from introducing poorly researched, and unfamiliar adulterants into the human diet in such ubiquity and crypticity <snip> genetic invasion of the ecological landscape - now we're getting into some brand new arenas. Our theory is inadequate, here. Only a fool would assume safety, though, in such territory of the unknown.

Tell us all again how this is anything other than a fear-based argument?

.

 

 

Not citing evidence when asked harms your argument gravely.

QFT

[John Cuthber]

I quoted it, and responded directly.

 

Yes, you did respond, but you didn't answer.

If someone asks me the time and I say "Yellow with greenstripes- especially in the South" it's a repsonse, but it's not an answer.

 

You said " Check out how long it took to "show" that industrial hydrogenation of vegetable oils did harm. Consider that it was flat out lethal, directly killing people that whole time, and will continue to kill ..."

which isn't anything to do with GMO.

 

Please actually ansewer the question.

Please show me the scientific evidence of harm done by gmo.

Edited December 7, 2013 by John Cuthber

[Ringer]

 

 

That isn't true, and my guess is the falsehood is unintentional.

What the guy meant to say, if he was not being deliberately deceptive, is that he thinks the science has detected no direct and significant accomplished harm or damage so far. He's wrong about that, but at least not dishonest or terminally silly.

The collection of the research is possibly valuable, in other words, but the "overview" is apparently confused.

Or maybe not confused, exactly: The other possibility is foreshadowed in this quote from the abstract:

 

That doesn't sound good, does it. There is no "scientific consensus" on the large, varied, and quickly changing question of the "safety" of GE crops. There is no such thing, realistically - each new engineered crop, deployment procedure, economic situation, end usage of product, and ecological context is a different safety question. A "consensus" on glyphosate resistant soybeans in Kansas would not apply to Bt expressing cotton in Bangladesh - if such a consensus existed in the first place, which it does not.

So somebody - and it sure won't be any of the self-described "scientific" folks here - has to plow through that "selected" pile of papers, and see what's up. Until then, of course, no conclusions relevant to the thread can be drawn, except that some Italian guy with credentials thinks GMOs have checked out as benign so far - right? You do see that, I hope?

 

 

btw: This confusion of risk and hazard with accomplished harm appears to be a result of an organized campaign of media framing of the issue, an interesting example of the effects of media propaganda on the language and discourse of even apparently technical fields. On this thread, discussion of observed areas of serious risk is called "speculation", and like a falling man passing the tenth floor, we are supposed to accept as legitimate, valid "position" the conclusion that if no disaster has been confirmed to have struck then there are no evidences of trouble or observable areas of danger and hazard for us to consider. It sounds goofy when put like that, but reread this thread - there it is.

 

 

So your answer to evidence is statements with no backing and/or conspiracy?

[John Cuthber]

"So somebody - and it sure won't be any of the self-described "scientific" folks here - has to plow through that "selected" pile of papers, and see what's up. "

Already done. It's called peer review.

[A Tripolation]

 

 

Harms from destroying local food security and creating dependence on distant economic powers come in there somewhere - the various events of the late British Empire illustrate, as does the Haitian earthquake.

 

 

Uh, what? How does GMO implementation lead to this at all? You realize that if us farmers can't get ahold of GMO seeds, we'd just plant regular seeds, right?

[overtone]

 

Yes, you did respond, but you didn't answer.

I answered. I can only dumb it down so far, and then I have to rely on the good faith and comprehension of the reader - apparently, that's a significant problem, in this matter.

 

 

 

It's not MY job to support YOUR argument. If such references exist, just share them here

I shared them. You have to recognize them, and follow them, and stop misrepresenting the links and articles and arguments that contain them, and deal with the issues as posted, and - - grow up, get a clue, or whatever the hell your problem is here.

 

 

 

Which post(s)... please cite the post number... had evidence of harm to humans being demonstrated empirically?

Every post of mine which referred to empirical facts - such the the development of resistance matching the theoretical predictions, the wholesale conversion of US agtriculture on the basis of less than a decade's experience with just a couple of GMOs, etc etc etc etc etc.

 

You aren't following the argument, so you don't recognize any of that stuff. I don't know why not. IQ? Background? Got a political horse in this race? Can't read English? Dunno. I can't force you to follow the argument. But I can refuse to treat this bullshit line of incomprehending and repetitive nonsense with respect.

 

This is maybe a clue:

 

As it is with existing crops, on which we throw mountains of fertilizers... which in addition to their other demonstrated harms... also breed resistance in serious pests.

The more I look at that, the more I suspect one major problem here is that you guys don't know what any of this stuff is. You don't, for example, know what fertilizer is or how its used.

 

I'm not sure what you think you're talking about, but resistance to fertilizer is probably not it.

 

 

Harms from genetic uniformity in one's major crops

One would think this is an argument IN FAVOR of being able to genetically modify crops. If the need for genetic diversity is so critical, do we not have significantly greater ability to introduce said diversity via intentional genetic modification?

Not a single GMO crop in the real world has increased the genetic diversity of the agricultural landscape - quite severely the oppositie.

 

China's customized rubber trees, for example, are even less genetically diverse than their varietal ancestor. And that is disaster poised to hit big.

 

Again, I'm talking about reality. In theory, if someone had a few million dollars and got the whim to do it, such a pro bono effort would be a valuable benefit of this technological advance. It's definitely part of the great and shining potential of genetic engineering. We see early efforts in such arenas as breeding American elms resistant to blight. Meanwhile, on this planet, Monsanto et al have no such whimsical agenda - and the whole field is rapidly their playground and nobody else's.

 

 

 

"Harms from failing to prevent cartel control of one's food supply and agriculture - - - "

This is not a problem specific to genetically modified crops, but crops in general.

Never mind "specific" - it is a bad problem, and overwhelmingly characteristic of the current GMO deployments - much more so than other agricutlural innovations, even such dubious "advances" as patented hybrid seeds. Again: paying attention to what is actually happening, not handing out potential as an answer to reality.

 

 

 

Tell us all again how this is anything other than a fear-based argument?

Apparently, anything bad that hasn't happened yet is merely a "fear", and any discussion of risk, hazard, harm, etc, is "fear-based" until after the bad thing has happened - at which point, as with the essentially inevitable resistance to glyphosate, Bt, etc, it's too late to do anything about it.

 

When the neighbors point out that storing dynamite in your attic is dangerous, are they handing you a "fear-based" argument? .

 

 

 

"So somebody - and it sure won't be any of the self-described "scientific" folks here - has to plow through that "selected" pile of papers, and see what's up. "

Already done. It's called peer review.

More stuff to wade through. You volunteering? Have at 'er.

 

 

 

Uh, what? How does GMO implementation lead to this at all? You realize that if us farmers can't get ahold of GMO seeds, we'd just plant regular seeds, right?

Really? You won't plant anything Monsanto et al have bought up for their engineering (the best performing). And you won't plant anything that cross-pollinates with your neighbor's GMOs. And you won't be planting anything newly developed by cutting edge innovators in public labs set up for your benefit (replantable, independent of agribusiness chemicals and support, etc). And you won't be doing any of that independent stuff in a third world country where all the financing, access to land, affordable fertilizer, etc, now depends on cooperating with a multinational corporation.

 

You'll be planting, at best, whatever Monsanto thought was not worth sequestering of last generation's seed-breeding efforts.

 

And you'll be paying a lot for those "heirloom", niche market seeds, the oddball fertilizers etc you need, even the ever scarcer and more expensive machinery. Your banker will have some concerns - just a thought.

[sialic acid]

Yup, GMOs are the answer.

 

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/131217/ncomms3918/full/ncomms3918.html

 

 

As always the REAL truth lies somewhere in the middle.

[iNow]

For anyone who is curious, the above conversation sort of continued itself over in this other thread (until it got locked): http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/79216-anyone-heard-this-on-genetic-engineering-of-cornsoy/

[Endercreeper01]

We don't need GMO's to feed the world. Even though 1 billion people are starving, farmers produce enough food to feed over 12 billion people.

This is do to a range of factors, such as waste, distribution, and how animals eat more food then they produce.

If the population of earth gets big enough (over 12 billion), we might have to use GMOs in order to have enough food.

[iNow]

I find this compelling, and it seems to exhaustively debunk many of the counter claims that were being made in this thread.

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2013/10/14/2000-reasons-why-gmos-are-safe-to-eat-and-environmentally-sustainable/

The claim that genetically engineered crops are understudied-the meme represented in the quotes highlighted above-has become a staple of opponents of crop biotechnology, especially activist journalists. Anti-GMO campaigners, including many organic supporters, assert time and again that genetically modified crops have not been safety tested or that the research done to date on the health or environmental impact of GMOs has all been done by the companies that produce the seeds. Therefore, they claim, consumers are taking a leap of faith in concluding that they face no harm from consuming foods made with genetically modified ingredients.

 

That is false.

 

Every major international science body in the world has reviewed multiple independent studiesin some cases numbering in the hundredsin coming to the consensus conclusion that GMO crops are as safe or safer than conventional or organic foods. But until now, the magnitude of the research on crop biotechnology has never been cataloged. In response to what they believed was an information gap, a team of Italian scientists summarized 1783 studies about the safety and environmental impacts of GMO foodsa staggering number.

 

The researchers couldn't find a single credible example demonstrating that GM foods pose any harm to humans or animals. The scientific research conducted so far has not detected any significant hazards directly connected with the use of genetically engineered crops, the scientists concluded.

 

<snip>

 

In short, genetically modified foods are among the most extensively studied scientific subjects in history. This year celebrates the 30th anniversary of GM technology, and the papers conclusion is unequivocal: there is no credible evidence that GMOs pose any unique threat to the environment or the publics health. The reason for the publics distrust of GMOs lies in psychology, politics and false debates.

Here's the referenced overview of the 1,783 studies on GMO crops: http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Nicolia-20131.pdf

[overtone]

I find this compelling, and it seems to exhaustively debunk many of the counter claims that were being made in this thread.

You do?

 

Why? Just read this, carefully, with open eyes:

 

This year celebrates the 30th anniversary of GM technology, and the papers conclusion is unequivocal: there is no credible evidence that GMOs pose any unique threat to the environment or the publics health.

That doesn't ring evey warning bell there is?

 

That is empty, bullshit, completely unsound in argument and extrapolation - the nonexiatence of the supposed ":exhaustiveness" , and the inadequacy of this research to the support of any such claim as "safety" is immediately obvious to even cursory inspection.

 

Do we need to rehash, again and again and again, the same obvious stuff?

 

Look: We have less than twenty years of large scale real world experience with even one of these modified protein and code complexes in even one source of human food. There are dozens hitting the market, unlabeled and untracked.

 

The genetic diversity of the vast majority (80% and rising) of the American food supply has been 1 reduced and 2) corrupted (by the one or two genetic complexes shotgunned into every single plant, engineered for mobility). That is simply plain fact, and 17 thousand studies cannot show otherwise.

 

1783 studies would not be enough if they were long enough (impossible), were addressed to the correct issues (the issues have not even been "exhaustively" identified), were public and available rather than proprietary and selectively published (the unpublished, withheld stuff may outnumber the published), and were honestly performed in the spirit of discovery and evaluation (corporate stuff never is, rule of thumb). Apparently it sounds like a big number to you guys - it's peanuts, skimming. Do you really not comprehend the implications of the fact that this stuff is new? Brand spanking found-another-continent controlled-fission rub-two-sticks new? This is why the propaganda schtick of "we've been genetically engineering our crops for hundreds of years" dishonesty is so dangerous - people think a few studies and somebody's figured it all out.

 

Or look at the publication dates of the only couple of studies Ringer could sift out of his spam list - hundreds of irrelevant studies, and i bet every one of them in that pile you find "compelling" - that even addressed the matter - 2012. 1783 studies, and it's in 2012 we see published a three or four month ingestion study of a few pigs fed one variety of Bt engineerred corn. That was last year. They're doing these preliminary baby step studies now, and you find that "exhaustive"?

 

We'd have to wade through quite the pile to find out how many of those 1783 studies even partly addressed any of the concerns here, but if a few months of feeding a few pigs one of the most familiar and best studied GMOs is publishable in 2012, that pretty much answers the general question - doesn't it.

 

So this:

 

In short, genetically modified foods are among the most extensively studied scientific subjects in history

is about equivalent to the TV ads claiming "sugar is sugar". It's marketing. Propaganda. A sales campaign, by the people who brought you trans fats and cigarettes and broadcast DDT and leaded gasoline (with very similar arguments at the time, and actually a sounder scientific basis). They don't know what they are talking about - but they don't care. It's not their job.

 

There is no safety in the situation revealed by such circumstances. There is no "exhaustive" anything. How is that even a matter of debate? .

Edited December 27, 2013 by overtone

[iNow]

You are arguing using hand-waving and fear-based assumption. I find that much less compelling than the data. That is all.

Your position is basically, "To hell with what the data says. I know I'm right. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"

[overtone]

 

 

You are arguing using hand-waving and fear-based assumption. I find that much less compelling than the data.

You have it backwards. I am the only one here who has argued from evidence using reason. The rest of you are arguing from authority and assumption, without any actual evidence at all, without addressing the issues you pretend to respond to, and using ad hominem and pejorative in place of reasoning. Do I need to quote?

 

 

 

Your position is basically, "To hell with what the data says.

No. My position is that you are overlooking what the data says, what theory says, what hundreds of years of experience say, and every other relevant aspect of reality you have before you, and swallowing a propaganda line as fatuous as it is venal, as obviously corrupt as it is obviously wrong.

 

Let's just take one single, narrow, unwarrantedly restrictive matter: the effects on human health we can expect from switching the bulk of the directly consumed US food supply over to food made from the two most widely marketed and actually implemented genetic manipulations - Bt expression and glysphosate resistance. We are expressly ignoring the hundreds of other issues large and small, economic and political and ecological and nutritional and medical and so forth, and considering only that one arena, OK? We set aside 90% of the matter, and ask only about this one field of hazard and investigation. We are standing directly on the strongest position of the GMO promoters, the one they focus on obsessively, the one they change the subject to whenever those other issues arise. Got that?

 

Then we have the following, verifiable back in this thread and every other on this topic, verifiable in the larger world:

 

You have not presented here any evidence whatsoever that anyone has even begun to adequately investigate the various consequences of long term human ingestion of the genetic complexes at issue.

 

You have handed us instead a single multigenerational (not even rat lifetime) feeding study in rats, a three month one generation feeding study in pigs published last year, a multiple page spam post of irrelevancies, and a Forbes article with obvious propaganda rhetoric in it (I quoted an egregious example, but really the whole thing - ) discussing an obviously dubious claim you have not checked out from a couple of scientists you have not checked out,

 

and in presenting that spamming and that Forbes article you have ignored the directly relevant issue of selection - the fact that much research has been withheld from publication by it corporate sponsors,

 

and you call the resultant posting "data". And even in those pathetically inadequate circumstances, when (as in the rat feeding study) the results were actually ambiguous you present it as if it were solid support.

 

As far as I can tell, and I've quoted some of the evidence for this assessment above, you guys have no idea what the safety issues even are, with just those two manipulations and direct consumption narrowly considered. You have no idea how many of those 1783 studies even dealt with them, let alone in such a manner as could indicate safety. You don't know whether a different sensible and prudent interpretation of many of those studies would not in fact discover plenty of evidence of harm or threat or concern (as a second look at the rat feeding study did) - you take the word of Forbes magazine journalists extrapolating from some scientist's careful language that ought to give you pause rather than confidence.

 

And while you have no idea what's actually in those studies you refer to, and while when you look at them none of you can seem to find even one example - even one, of the dozens you would actually need just a first one - of a study adequately dealing with any aspect of this single narrow matter you yourselves have chosen to be obsessive about, you present these ridiculous counts and multiple page spammings of them as if it were what - data? Evidence?

 

Look, you don't need great piles of Forbes magazine rhetoric and authority here - you need a few actual studies, some actual data, actual evidence. 1783 irrelevancies and inadequacies and dubious interpretations count as zero evidence of safety. One good, adequate, public, carefully done study would outweigh them all, here. A few dozen such would be the beginnings of an actual argument from evidence.

 

The closest we've seen here of that was a lifetime 200 rat feeding study of glysphosate resistant rat food, referenced by me in my role as sole provider of actual evidence here, recently pulled for vague reasons by its original peer-reviewed publisher while under overwhelming political and economic pressure. And the evidence from that study was not so good, eh? Maybe not enough rats - enough to get published respectably, but not enough to withstand the pressure brought to bear. So you what - ignore it? The normal response would be to find the better studies, the ones with more rats and longer times and so forth. Funny that - apparently, there aren't any. Not posted here, for sure. Plenty of criticism, no replication.

 

So that's the situation on the strongest ground the GMO promoters have - ground so narrow that even if matters were settled there we would still have a large and wide-ranging discussion in front of us about the value and safety of GMOs.

[pippo]

OK, looks like the members here know way more than me on this. Thats why I posted. But, can we agree at least on one point about the pesticides aspect of all this- That GMO's allow for much less pesticide use? Wasnt that one of the main benefits of GMO's? Cmon, pesticides are bad, for the most part, on the environment, at least where residue lingers/runoff/etc. Pesticides or GMO's? Lets pick the less evil. Feedback appreciated as always. I go with GMO's.

[overtone]

That GMO's allow for much less pesticide use? Wasnt that one of the main benefits of GMO's?

No, that's not true.

 

Some GMOs are engineered to express the pesticide Bt in some form, which can somewhat reduce the topical application of pesticide in the interval before such expression breeds resistance in the targeted pests. But that is not "less pesticide" - it is more pesticide, pesticide in every single plant all the time. Fortunately - or actually by design - Bt varieties comprise one of the most benign pesticide families available, and its expression means it is initially confined to the plant - it does not wash off, get sprayed into the wind, etc - so its overuse in this fashion is as benign as overuse of a pesticide can be.

 

In general, GM crops are modern bred seeds engineered to be farmed in industrial ways, usually in close collaboration with multinational agribusiness interests - with fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, irrigation, purchased licenses year by year, etc. As GMOs spread, so will use of pesticides and herbicides and fertilizers and the other accompaniments of industrial farming.

 

edit in: Of course in theory genetic engineering could be employed to drastically reduce the need for pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, irrigation, fertilizer, yearly seed purchases and licenses, even land area and shipping or storage costs, everything currently supplied by agribusiness - the potential here is huge, with good research and sound scientific approaches and careful deployments. It's just that so far it hasn't been, the current program of industry dominated development does not encourage such benefits or basic research, and there's only a hint here and there of that potential some day being realized somewhere - maybe Brazil, or India.

Edited December 28, 2013 by overtone

[iNow]

No, that's not true.

Actually, it kinda is... and that's what the OP put forth, complete with reference link.

[overtone]

That GMO's allow for much less pesticide use? Wasnt that one of the main benefits of GMO's?

 

No, that's not true.

 

Actually, it kinda is... and that's what the OP put forth, complete with reference link.

No, that's not true either.

 

If you bother to read the link, you will discover that (as has been discussed at some length here, multiple times, with repetition, right in front of your eyes and in short, declarative sentences) the great benefit of crops needing less pesticide is a potential benefit only

 

(the specific example quoted being a future potato that would potentially need less fungicide, not pesticide, but we can leave such indications of journalistic unfamliarity in the kinds of sources quoted here as "data" to another wrangle) -

 

and will only apply to a few GMOs even then - meanwhile, few or none of the current GMOs actually deployed on this planet need less pesticide than the crops they replace, and several of them are engineered to produce large quantities of excess pesticide automatically as they grow; which results in a considerable increase, not decrease, in the pesticide exposure experienced by the pests - and the consumer.

 

The best we have so far, along the line of "less pesticide", are the crops currently engineered to express Bt varieties during the holiday before they breed resistance into the targeted pests. Even here we have the unfortunate circumstance that Bt family pesticides tend to be specialty poisons, essentially harmless to all but a few target organisms (that's their advantage, as well, in topical application), so quite often in real life other and topical pesticides must be employed on top of the expressed Bt.

Edited December 29, 2013 by overtone

[iNow]

GMOs do, in some cases, reduce the need for pesticides. In other cases, they increase the need. Your argument is wrong simply because you continue to phrase it in the absolute, arguing that "GMOs increase, not decrease, the need for pesticides." That is true in some instances, but not all.

 

My argument is not that GMOs always reduce the need for pesticides, so if that's the point against which you're arguing, you are arguing with a strawman. My argument is that GMOs have already and can continue in the future reduce the need for pesticides in some instances, which is a positive outcome. This same position is what is described in the OP (the article that I shared that you just accused me of not having read).

[overtone]

 

 

GMOs do, in some cases, reduce the need for pesticides.

Do they? In which cases, how often, and for how long? Some evidence would be nice. You have already mistaken the OP link - do you know what you are looking for?

 

So far, the only deployed GMO I know of that even bids to reduce pesticide load in the environment is the Bt complex engineered into some crops (cotton, most significantly). In practice, the resistance developed and the specificity of the Bt variety has forced the use of auxiliary pesticides on top of the Bt - so (sometimes after a short holiday of effectiveness ) actual ongoing reduction of pesticide load in the field remains to be demonstrated, even if only topical application is measured and the pesticide load built into every single plant is ignored.

 

The fact that a lot of this stuff is planted in areas with poor regulation and a thriving black market in agricultural chemicals hampers accurate assessment, as does the proprietary nature of most of the research and measurement involved, but production levels and regional consumption quantities of the major pesticides have not dropped with the introduction of GMOs - even the Bt specific varieties.

 

 

 

Your argument is wrong simply because you continue to phrase it in the absolute, arguing that "GMOs increase, not decrease, the need for pesticides.

This is my claim, in the post you responded to:

 

meanwhile, few or none of the current GMOs actually deployed on this planet need less pesticide than the crops they replace, and several of them are engineered to produce large quantities of excess pesticide automatically as they grow; which results in a considerable increase, not decrease, in the pesticide exposure experienced by the pests

Notice the differences between my actual claim there and what you ascribe to me.

 

My argument is that the GM crops deployed so far, and the ones coming on line immediately, all require pesticide loading in the field at more or less current levels necessary for comparable farming practices (the increase in pesticides usage seen upon most GMO introductions is not from the GMO itself, but from the industrial farming techniques and contractual details accompanying its introduction). That is not an "absolute" claim about "GMOs" in abstract - it is an observation of the circumstances that currently obtain, all but universally so far (exceptions sparse and short lived).

 

 

 

My argument is that GMOs have already and can continue in the future reduce the need for pesticides in some instances, which is a positive outcome. This same position is what is described in the OP

So what you need is some evidence. The OP, for example, omits the "have already" part, at least with any evidence.

 

My objection to your claims is that the "have already" aspect is without support. We haven't seen the positive outcome coming out, yet, and there are no immediate prospects of that positive outcome appearing.

 

No one is arguing against the potential of genetic engineering to do many good things in modern agriculture. It hasn't done any of them yet, and is not about to, is the deal.