overtone Posted January 6, 2014 Posted January 6, 2014 (edited) Alright, I posted a over 100 studies with data about GMOs and I reassert his call for evidence. You posted a bunch of article names - several screens worth - without discussion or reference. Spam, essentially. When asked to find and argue from, among the several screens of irrelevancy and spam you posted, a single study that actually supported your contention of safety, you were unable. The closest you have come so far was a two generation (less than a year) rat feeding study addressing the medical aspects of one particular engineered genetic complex in one crop used for human food, and a one generation (less than five months) pig feeding study addressing some health aspects (not complete autopsy) of a different genetic engineered complex in one crop being considered for human food. Meanwhile, I have argued not only from your two there, which provide evidence for my contentions rather than yours - the date of publication of the pig feeding study proving that even those limited and inadequate researches have just begun, the rat study actually producing ambiguous results before being cut short - but also provided a considerable amount of other evidence in the form of common observations of biological reality easily recognized on a forum such as this (what Darwinian theory predicts about engineered single-pesticide expression in monocultures, and the harm of current trends, say) references to published studies (such as the two year 200 rat feeding study that showed severe health damage from the glyphosphate resistance complex inserted into soybeans by Monsanto), historical references to situations relevantly similar, and examples of complacency's reward in the past (leaded gasoline, trans fats, etc), observations of serious flaws and obvious delusions in the safety claims of public sources ("we have been genetically engineering our crops for {thousands / hundreds / since 1970s / 30 / pick a number they're all bs years now, with no harm done" ) and most importantly, an actual argument connecting this evidence with my claims. That makes me unique in this thread. Given that this is the mainstream, accepted science section of the forum and the mainstream, accepted view is that GMO's are safe, That is false. The mainstream accepted view is an agreement with the OP, that GMOs may (the technology has the potential to) feed the world using fewer pesticides. There is no argument there - no one denies that, or even questions it. This tech is extremely powerful, and creating crops that require fewer pesticides is only a small aspect of its potential benefits. The discussion would be about potential obstacles, problems, etc. So: There is no "mainstream, accepted view" on the safety of "GMOs". For starters, that is an impossibility - there is no such property of anything shared by all GMOs, safety or hazard or benefit or harm or anything else. The only possible accepted view would be that a particular GMO had been tested enough for reasonable assurance of its harmlessness in its intended use. And we don't have that, even. What we have is a corrupt political situation in which most of the research is proprietary, enormous pressure is being exerted by profitable corporations to sway regulatory and other political opinion (hundreds of millions of dollars), and in the middle of this it is possible to find a few scientists able to compile a rough agreement among most of their peers that "the available research" does not provide "evidence of harm" from a couple of the currently marketed usages of GMOs. I mean, that's sort of a reasonable thing to say - if someone came around with a clipboard and asked the specific question: "Does the available research demonstrate harm to human health from eating GMO based food" I would say no. Read Ringer's list, if you have an afternoon - that's the available research, and there's nothing there. And the question is: So? Inferring the general "safety" of "GMOs" from that, officially making decisions based on a blanket inference of safety supported in that completely invalid manner, is exactly what has given us most of our serious problems from technology - even from technologies much less powerful, much better understood and controlled and known, and far easier to handle, than this brand new stuff. It's a famous, frequently described, standard issue error of public discourse and policy. That's what blew up the Challenger, that's what fed hundreds of millions of Americans enough engineered trans fat to kill a serious percentage of them, that's what built Fukushima in a tsunami zone, that's what handed the Irish one of the world's worst famines ever. And the prevalence of that kind of public justification and political "reasoning" is probably the major issue in any thread discussing any actual deployments of GMOs - there is no argument over their potential, but some serious issues involved in what is happening and approaching in the physical reality here. Notice how far divorced from existing physical reality, how future focused, the GMO enthusiasts are - we are living in Monsanto's world, not the Federation's. You do realise that citing a single death due to GM - - - The first guy to demonstrate a single death due to trans fats demonstrated, simultaneaously, several million of them. That's a situation we would like to avoid, yes? Edited January 6, 2014 by overtone
Endy0816 Posted January 6, 2014 Posted January 6, 2014 (edited) As I think was already mentioned, the "200 Rat study" was flawed. http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2012/09/24/does-genetically-modified-corn-cause-cancer-a-flawed-study/ ...and the Rats given Roundup in their drinking water lived the longest. We've been selecting for size, taste(sugars) and ease of manual harvesting. These are the nice, wholesome, "natural" crops we're talking about here. In the process we've introduced a number of undesirable traits along the way. We need to undo at least some of these in less than the thousands of years that it took to get to this point. Ocean problems are going to mean an increase in crop production. Mainly for our livestock barring acceptance of insect protein and/or lab grown meat. Anything that doesn't mean yet more land converted with resultant pollution is something worth investigating. Probably won't be a choice in the end. Necessity moves society forward like little else. Edited January 6, 2014 by Endy0816
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