I find myself constantly talking about GMO's to non-biologists

overtone · March 19, 2014

I'm pretty sure we've had this discussion about the 'lack' of research of GMOs. Do I need to post another wall citations?

Your unmoderated spam deluge? It's already linked above, by a poster with more courtesy. I have already referred to one of the articles in it, as evidence for my observation that no GMOs, not even the few we have a little experience with, have been adequately evaluated for even basic safety to the direct consumer in the human diet - let alone the widely varied and morecomplex and longer term concerns of less apparent urgency.

So far, you haven't posted a single citation that actually supports your claims, and I have borrowed two or three of your posted citations to support mine. Saved me the trouble. But no need to spam again.

2)
Thats the nice thing about actually posting your sources, its very easy to go back to the original source and show when its being misused and misrepresented. That you quote mined this paper is now evident and on record for all to see.

2) I'm not sure if you are making a thinly veiled ad hominem on the authors or just trying to insert your interpretation into their very well written paper

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I was trying to avoid impugning the authors's integrity, in case they did not intend to leave the impression that, say, lack of detection of harms implied an established or consensus absence of hazard, which would be - let's say - "misleading". In your case I think it's just illiteracy, like your use of "ad hominem" above.

And I pointed to the care with which they avoided making the kinds of obvious falsehoods you ascribe to their article - a care visible in your expanded quoting as well. What, exactly, for example, is the "scientific consensus" they claim to illustrate a consensus about ? Hint: it's not a scientific consensus that GMOs are safe. These guys are not idiots.

You are making an appeal to ignorance, continually claiming that it must be dangerous because we don't know.

I'm claiming that it is dangerous on grounds of Darwinian theory, observation of fact, and two century's experience with the closest analogy fields we have.

And yes, I am claiming it is dangerous because we don't know. You are claiming it is safe because we don't know.

However, we have an extensive body of research, -

Don't be silly. I pointed to what you have for research - a 2012 pig feeding covering one gestation and birth event is the best you've got for the best studied GMO on the market, selected from a list of thousands of even less adequate "research" because it was one of the few that even addressed one of the major safety issues with a GMO. Ringer posted that list as proud evidence of established safety, you linked to it, that's what you are arguing from, and it's a frigging joke.

You don't have a single research result that even attempts to describe (let alone quantify), say, the change in horizontal transfer probability via bacterial and viral infected arthropods created by the mobility framing and vulnerable location and shotgun insertion technique of Bt expression genetics in dicotyledons (We know that the published and officially claimed resistance development time for pests of Bt cotton was blown out of the water within two years of its sowing in India). You don't have a single research result that even attempts to investigate the risk of antibiotic resistance transfer to disease organisms from consumed genetic complexes in third world locations where both chronic infection and low level exposure to antibiotics is common. And so forth.

I'm not going to argue about trans-fats, potato famines, or anything that does not have relevance to the science behind GMOs themselves.

It was you claiming that the dietary safety of GMOs had been established by 30 years of food from one particular GMO on the supermarket shelves without research turning up any visible problems. You seemed to think that 30 years without disaster was so much more than was needed for establishing safety the question was rhetorical - you asked it as a rhetorical question.

2) The decline of genetic diversity, southern corn blight in the 70s.....all of this happened prior to GMOs.

3) Provide me with actual evidence, I want actual research papers that show the decline in genetic diversity is the result of the introduction of GMOs. You are merely making an unsupported assertion. In contrast, I have shown several times now in this thread that these declines occurred before the use of GMOs and were driven primarily by factors such as conventional breeding.

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2) Both links refer to a transgenic rubber tree that is still in development and not used in the field. So logically, the lack of genetic diversity in rubber tree monocultures is not due to the use of this transgenic plant when it isn't even available commercially yet.

The agribusiness driven decline in diversity prior to the advent of GMOs, which I referred to above in mentioning the sudden emergency and wakeup call of the corn blight in NA in the late 70s, and also directly posted in reference to rubber trees, makes the further narrowing by corporate sequestration and selection for genetic manipulation more severe, more dangerous, not less. Making bad things worse is something we should avoid, in my opinion - what do you think?

3) As I pointed out to you earlier, genetic engineering is being used to speed up breeding. Did you just ignore that post entirely?

As I had already provided examples of such benefits in previous posting (chestnut blight, dutch elm), I saw agreement and no need for repetition.

The loss of the opportunity, the potential benefit, of a return to publicly available and promulgated standard breeding augmented or enabled by these engineering techniques, breaking the hybrid seed trap and the short term private-data corporate profit grip and all the dangers that brings as well as the bizarre world of brand new hazard from phylogenetically alien code insertions and their auxiliary manipulations, is a shame - that's all.

It would be even more of a shame if one of the really nasty risks these irresponsible GMOs are imposing on us all came through, and tagged the whole topic with some kind of Chernobyl indelibly associated in the public mind with genetic engineering itself instead of this insane corporate profit driven tangent to the field.

What a farmer can produce from such lines and their hybrids far exceeds whatever they could obtain from growing their own seed, so farmers choose to buy their seed.

Not the lines, the hybrids only. That conversion to purchased hybrid seeds was a major step in the corporate takeover of agriculture in North America - a conversion that could be reversed by genetic engineering, btw, if enough of the big research universities were motivated to follow more in Norman Borlaug's footsteps and less in Dupont's and Pioneer's and Monsantos.

Edited March 19, 2014 by overtone

chadn737 · March 19, 2014

Your unmoderated spam deluge? It's already linked above, by a poster with more courtesy. I have already referred to one of the articles in it, as evidence for my observation that no GMOs, not even the few we have a little experience with, have been adequately evaluated for even basic safety to the direct consumer in the human diet - let alone the widely varied and morecomplex and longer term concerns of less apparent urgency.

So far, you haven't posted a single citation that actually supports your claims, and I have borrowed two or three of your posted citations to support mine. Saved me the trouble. But no need to spam again.

You keep repeating this assertion without support and its wrong.

I previously linked you to several long-term studies in animals of all sizes (some multigenerational) that have tested the safety of these products. Furthermore, it should be noted that every new GMO event has to undergo safety testing and approval....not just by the FDA, but all the markets it will end up (Europe, Japan, Korea, China, etc). All told there are about 18 or so different groups that evaluate GMOs for safety to humans (not to mention testing by EPA, USDA, etc for other concerns). Many of these studies are later published. Each GMO undergoes testing for possible allergic reactions. This includes determining the structure of the transgenic protein and searching it for any known structural components that could cause allergies. More testing has been done for health effects on GMOs than any other food source....far more especially than the potentially dangerous foods/supplements/health fads that are sold in so many organic food stores and places like Whole foods.

Now as I said, I linked to multiple long-term studies above. I have pointed you to more recent studies as well. To continue to reassert the false claim that testing has not been done is nothing more than an argument from repetition and fallacious. You can address these claims by showing actual danger using real research or you can retract the claim, but I am not allowing you to get away with making unsupported arguments.

The agribusiness driven decline in diversity prior to the advent of GMOs, which I referred to above in mentioning the sudden emergency and wakeup call of the corn blight in NA in the late 70s, and also directly posted in reference to rubber trees, makes the further narrowing by corporate sequestration and selection for genetic manipulation more severe, more dangerous, not less. Making bad things worse is something we should avoid, in my opinion - what do you think?

That simply does not follow and is nothing more than an assumption. If the seed companies both increase the genetic base of their lines and the different lines in which their GMOs are present, then that will encourage genetic diversity, not decrease it. Your entire argument is based on the assumption that GMOs are introduced only into a small number of lines with no subsequent outcrossing or use of wider genetic base to improve them. As I have pointed out numerous times now, this is directly contradicted by the fact that seed companies have increased the base of their genetic stock and are continuing to do so.

Once again, you need to either provide direct and tested evidence that crop diversity has and is declining because of the use of GMOs or retract your statement. The continued repeating of unsupported assumptions is fallacious and has to stop.

As I had already provided examples of such benefits in previous posting (chestnut blight, dutch elm), I saw agreement and no need for repetition.

The loss of the opportunity, the potential benefit, of a return to publicly available and promulgated standard breeding augmented or enabled by these engineering techniques, breaking the hybrid seed trap and the short term private-data corporate profit grip and all the dangers that brings as well as the bizarre world of brand new hazard from phylogenetically alien code insertions and their auxiliary manipulations, is a shame - that's all.

It would be even more of a shame if one of the really nasty risks these irresponsible GMOs are imposing on us all came through, and tagged the whole topic with some kind of Chernobyl indelibly associated in the public mind with genetic engineering itself instead of this insane corporate profit driven tangent to the field.

1) The run-on sentences....seriously....

2) Also....this is nothing more than more scare mongering. You don't offer any support or facts. Again you are using scary words meant to invoke fear in readers. Words like "Chernobyl" or "bizarre world". This is nothing more than classic fear mongering. It has no place in a science forum where topics should be discussed based on fact, not appeals to emotion.

3) What "hybrid seed trap"? You do realize that non-hybrid seed simply cannot compare, correct? Companies like Pioneer have the best inbred lines in the world, but these still are not as good in agronomic characteristics (including yield and disease resistance) as the resulting hybrids. Its biology. When you cross two different species or two divergent lines, the first generation offspring are often larger, more robust, and more productive than either parent. This effect is known as heterosis and its still not understood at all why it happens. When hybrid corn seed was first being commercialized, it was a game changer. This figure is a perfect example. It shows two parental lines in maize and rice and the resulting hybrid. I'll talk about the maize, as I know it the best. Here you have the maize inbred lines B73 and Mo17. Both of these are very well studied, high-producing, and publicly available lines that any farmer could get ahold of and plant. In the middle is the F₁ progeny (first-generation) cross of the two. Its twice as high, yields far time more, etc, etc. Thats the power of heterosis and that is why farmers choose to grow hybrids rather than lines like B73 and Mo17.

If it were not more profitable for farmers, if it did not help them, then they would not do it. If you think that this is some big scheme or "trap" then you really need to take the time to understand agriculture and the biology behind it.

Not the lines, the hybrids only. That conversion to purchased hybrid seeds was a major step in the corporate takeover of agriculture in North America - a conversion that could be reversed by genetic engineering, btw, if enough of the big research universities were motivated to follow more in Norman Borlaug's footsteps and less in Dupont's and Pioneer's and Monsantos.

No...the lines too. B73 is a publicly available line...pretty good too. Farmers have access to these things, but talk to any farmer out there...none of them want to grow their own seed, clean that seed....they sure as hell don't want to waste time and money on making their own hybrids. My family use to grow hybrid corn seed. We would plant the female lines and the male lines, detassle, harvest, etc. Its a ton of work and my father does not regret not growing it anymore.

Blame the high cost of development.....$35 million in regulatory fees alone. This destroys any potential for competition from small farmers or even universities. You seem to want a double standard. You cry foul about the market is driven by corporations, but then ignore the fact that the impossibly high standards of testing that you want make it impossible for anyone but large corporations. You want to have your cake and eat it too. The vision you paint of agriculture is incredibly naive.

The assertion that there has been a corporate take over of genetic engineering is also wrong. ~80% of the products in the pipeline are from the academic end, not industry. Take for instance Golden Rice or virus resistant cassava....all developed by academic researchers for humanitarian purposes and free distribution in third world countries. All facing off against intense anti-GMO pressure from groups like Green Peace who think it better that millions die or go blind from vitamin A deficiency rather than let GMOs be used freely by third world farmers. Those facts are overlooked by you and all anti-GMO activists.

Edited March 19, 2014 by chadn737

overtone · March 19, 2014

I'm separating this out to make a different point:

1) There certainly has been misuse of Bt and this has led to the development of resistance. However, that is not an argument against the technology itself, but its misuse.

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The funny thing is that it is the biotech companies that stand to lose the most resistance and they are very familiar with how evolution works. That is why they have spent great deals and much time into developing ways to responsibly use Bt crops and prevent resistance. As much as I love farmers, its really them that have misused the technology.

OK, let's make a deal: Monsanto can do all this genetic engineering stuff that is so risky in the wrong hands, but they have to keep it secure - they can't market it to actual farmers, or plant it in fields where it can get loose and do damage, and so forth.

The common code referred to is the engineered stuff, the herbicide resistance complexes etc. With some peripheral (but possibly significant for safety etc) modifications to fit it to a given plant, this stuff is moved en masse whenever possible, taken off the shelf and plugged into the latest GMO - a block of code found in, say, Bt expressing plants all over the planet, and normally in easily accessible organelles in the leaf. We could, say, get a retrovirus that spreads from cotton to corn to rice like that. It's not likely, but it's a vulnerability - even a kind of vulnerability - that was not there before.

This is why it pays to use correct terminology. "common code" is vague and given the context in which it was written, I could only assume you were referring to the plant genome itself, not the transgene.

Look, I can't anticipate all of your reading comprehension problems. When something I post makes no sense to you, do not reply to it.

2) This image of transgenes being "moved en masse whenever possible, taken off the shelf and plugged into the latest GMO" is yet another example of fear mongering. You are trying to paint a picture that is very inaccurate and also somewhat disturbing to readers in order to appeal to emotion rather than fact. In truth there is nothing routine about it.

You are invited to describe the actual process and especially the actual results in a couple of representative crops - might I suggest a dicot and a monocot, and an herbicide resistance vs a pesticide expression? - and reassure everyone. Note that I will then contrast your description with your assertion earlier that "the only thing Monsanto did" in creating glyphosate resistant soybeans - one of the earliest and simplest of all GMs - was trade one version of an enzyme already present for another.

3) What do you mean by "easily accessible organelles in the leaf"? This makes no sense to me. Bt is localized in the cytoplasm of cells, while organelles are specialized subunits of cells...not leaves. I definitely have no idea what you are trying to imply by "easily accessible" other than it seems to be yet more fear language.

4) What are you talking about when you say "get a retrovirus that spreads from cotton to corn to rice like that. It's not likely, but it's a vulnerability - even a kind of vulnerability"? What does this have to do with Bt being in "easily accessible organelles in the leaf." What is the connection here? You seem to be jumping from one thing to the next without any connection and certainly lacking clarity. Its senseless.

And this is why I separated the posting.

One of the consistent themes of the past few years of watching and contributing to the GMO debate, is the combination:

GMO proponents wrapping themselves in the mantle of "scientific consensus" and so forth, even openly mocking the people who question the motives and wisdom of what the genetic engineers are doing, or mistrust their degree of care and control over the consequences;

and GMO proponents seemingly unable to follow even the simplest of objections, warnings, mentions, references or descriptions of even the best known hazards and risks attendant on these manipulations. They misread, they overlook, they don't know what's being discussed - and in the end it's somebody else's fault they didn't follow, or they never do get a handle on it and it's just hippie gibberish to them.

Anyone who has even the slightest familiarity with the risks created via the physical setup of the currently marketed pesticide expression GMOs knows exactly what I'm talking about here: " - - a block of code found in, say, Bt expressing plants all over the planet, and normally in easily accessible organelles in the leaf." Anyone who has trouble following that, or anything like it, has obviously not been thinking seriously about the risks of these GMOs, and has no idea what they are - even the very well known ones.

And that's OK, in a sense - we can't all be interested in everything. But I'm getting the impression that the promulgation of GMOs, their marketing and distribution and regulation, is in the hands of such folks. And that's a cause for worry - they may be constatnly talking to non-biologists, but they apparently aren't listening to anybody except each other.

I previously linked you to several long-term studies in animals of all sizes (some multigenerational) that have tested the safety of these products. Furthermore, it should be noted that every new GMO event has to undergo safety testing and approval....not just by the FDA, but all the markets it will end up (Europe, Japan, Korea, China, etc). All told there are about 18 or so different groups that evaluate GMOs for safety to humans (not to mention testing by EPA, USDA, etc for other concerns).

Unlike you, I have read through that list of studies. So when I tell you that "the safety of these products" is not adequately addressed by them, it's from actually looking at them, and not misreading weasel word quotes from Italian compilers of unknown provenance and agenda.

As far as your claim that "every GMO event has to undergo safety testing and approval - not just by the FDA, but all the markets it will end up in - - " two points:

one of the results of what little testing is actually done is that those markets have simply banned almost the entire lot of them. That is not evidence of safety.

and second, you are not correct in that claim, and your error is typical of GMO proponents in general and especially the "scientific" ones. Here is a quote from analyst David Schubert, which you can find in last September's very favorably biased and presumption laden (you can have no objection) Scientific American article on GMOs: "Ninety percent of the scientists I talk to assume that new GM plants are safety tested the same way new drugs are by the FDA. They absoluley aren't, and they absolutely should be."

No...the lines too. B73 is a publicly available line...pretty good too. Farmers have access to these things, -

B73 is a line developed to hybridize - an inbred single line, publicly available for those who want to detassel their own corn and make their own hybrids.

3) What "hybrid seed trap"? You do realize that non-hybrid seed simply cannot compare, correct?

Exactly.

but talk to any farmer out there...none of them want to grow their own seed, clean that seed...

If you are talking to third world farmers about food security and independence from the local bankers, landlords, foreign corporations and their political influence, etc, you will get different answers to those questions.

chadn737 · March 20, 2014

I'm separating this out to make a different point:

OK, let's make a deal: Monsanto can do all this genetic engineering stuff that is so risky in the wrong hands, but they have to keep it secure - they can't market it to actual farmers, or plant it in fields where it can get loose and do damage, and so forth.

But Bt is not "so risky in the wrong hands". It doesn't pose health risks or even environmental risks. The only risk that anyone has been able to stick is the development of resistance, which only matters to those that use it in the first place. If you don't use Bt or roundup, then the development of resistance is not a threat. In fact, the Bt crops have been used with success for the past 8 years and the development of resistance has actually been delayed longer than predicted.

Furthermore, the development of resistance to ANY pest management scheme is a given. Life evolves and there is no way around that. Weeds evolve in response to even to tillage: germinating in response to tillage itself, growing rapidly, and putting out massive amounts of seeds. Even using genetic resistance from natural variation, eventually these too will create resistance. This idea that resistance is something that can be avoided is only true if one never uses any method to control the pest in the first place.

Look, I can't anticipate all of your reading comprehension problems. When something I post makes no sense to you, do not reply to it.

Or you could perhaps learn correct terminology and clarify your writing.

You are invited to describe the actual process and especially the actual results in a couple of representative crops - might I suggest a dicot and a monocot, and an herbicide resistance vs a pesticide expression? - and reassure everyone. Note that I will then contrast your description with your assertion earlier that "the only thing Monsanto did" in creating glyphosate resistant soybeans - one of the earliest and simplest of all GMs - was trade one version of an enzyme already present for another.

I'll describe for you how glyphosate resistant plants were made. The exact details were in a paper I linked to earlier.

1) The EPSPS gene was cloned from Agrobacterium tumefaciens. This was done through standard molecular cloning techniques: PCR of the gene, restriction digestion of insert and vector, ligation, and amplification of the plasmid by growth in bacteria. These methods are so common place that they really do not need describing. These constructs also contained the GUS gene, which has been used thousands of times in Biology in all manners of species, even animals. However, the final plants did not contain the GUS gene.

2) The plasmids would have been isolated and then the specific insert, the part containing EPSPS and GUS would have been isolated from the rest of the vector. Gold or tungsten particles would have been coated with the cassette (part to be inserted). These particles serve as the delivery device for transformation of soybeans by particle acceleration. Typically this is done on soybean embryos or potentially soybean callus developed by tissue culture.

3) The transformed soybean would then be cultured and grown. GUS assays were initially used to screen the plants. However, since glyphosate is a herbicide, the use of the herbicide make for a built in method of screening. Typically only 1-2% (its since gotten a bit higher) of transformed plants are successfully transformed.

4) What then follows is the real work...growing and selecting plants, testing them for expression, copy number, identifying insertions, etc. Initially these plants would have been grown and constantly selected for resistance over several generations. There would be crosses made (back crosses, outcrosses). From this you can determine roughly the copy number and also eliminate extra copies. You would perform Southern Blots to determine copy number, etc.

5) Eventually, the best lines would be identified and taken further. In these lines, GUS gene expression was lost. This was because of recombination and segration, the parts containing the GUS gene were removed. Furthermore, the exact location of the transgene insert was determined using PCR based methods.

The end result is a herbicide resistant gene that contains only one copy of the EPSPS gene, with no other transgenic genes. The exact location of the gene is known, as is its expression.

GMOs only have to be proven safe using the same methods of assessing toxicity, allergenicity, and other health effects.

Stop repeating unsupported assertions.

Edited March 20, 2014 by chadn737

overtone · March 20, 2014

The only risk that anyone has been able to stick is the development of resistance, which only matters to those that use it in the first place.

Such as most "organic" growers and small farmers. Can they sue, or is this a freebie for Monsanto?

If you don't use Bt or roundup, then the development of resistance is not a threat.

Bt and glyphosate are two of the safest and most useful chemicals avaialble to the human race. Their replacements are more toxic, more ecologically damaging, and more difficult to handle. Who is going to compensate the users of these valuable herbicides and pesticides for their loss?

In fact, the Bt crops have been used with success for the past 8 years and the development of resistance has actually been delayed longer than predicted.

That is flatly false. The development of resistance has been much, much faster than predicted - it happened less than two years after deployment in India cotton, for example.

5) Eventually, the best lines would be identified and taken further. In these lines, GUS gene expression was lost. This was because of recombination and segration, the parts containing the GUS gene were removed. Furthermore, the exact location of the transgene insert was determined using PCR based methods.

That describes an ideal - in practice of course pieces get lost, inverted, swapped around, etc. The GUS gene expression is lost in some cases, but that doesn't mean no parts of it remain, for example. The exact location of the active gene complex of interest - not the inactivated junk and fragments - is determined afterwards - not beforehand - which means that the expression in the plant itself is not actually fully known. And so forth.

Which means, for instance, that in occasional plants some of this stuff is expressed in unplanned ays and places, including the bits people or animals eat. Also, the herbicide resistance causes chemcial complexes including this herbicide to build up in the plant - that also is eaten, by people and animals. And so forth.

The end result is a herbicide resistant gene that contains only one copy of the EPSPS gene, with no other transgenic genes.

Even your link lists portions of three other genes remaining just at the main insertion point, including the promoter and key stretches of the mobility enablers from other plants and bacteria. Other locations of inert or non-expressed fragmentary genetic insertion (including of the several other genes and code stretches employed) are not analyzed, and may or may not exist in a given GMO.

The process of making Bt maize or really any other transgenic is not very different and involves pretty much the same things I described

Except that some use different insertion genetics and mechanisms, go into different places, involve different kinds of promoters and insertion code, etc. - little details that wouldn't interest anyone, right? Certainly not the average GMO promoter.

In particular, the marker genes are often antibiotic resistance expression code, rather than GUS, which is no more likely to disappear completely than the GUS stretch you waved your hands at.

If these same amino acid changes were made through mutational breeding nobody would care. There are literally thousands of crops species that have been improved through mutational breeding, used all over the world.

And mutational breeding could be enabled - speeded up, greatly increased in scope and flexibility and benefit - by these wonderful new techniques. So there's no excuse, eh?

. In contrast, with transgenics, you know the exact changes, the exact insertion sites, the exact sequence, and even the exact protein structure.

And this gives the techie the illusion of control, safety, etc. These people simply don't have a clue, and this research needs complete transparency and public oversight and careful, conservative regulation.

chadn737 · March 20, 2014

B73 is a line developed to hybridize - an inbred single line, publicly available for those who want to detassel their own corn and make their own hybrids.

Exactly. So any farmer who wanted to could create his own seed without going through a seed company. Thus we see the argument that they don't have such options is false. A farmer is not obligated to buy seed from any company.

Why do you think hybrids started taking off in the 50s? Its because they yield more than open-pollinated varieties. Here is a very recent test comparing hybrids versus open-pollinated varieties (which are still available to farmers). Hybrids consistently yield more. Farmers chose to buy hybrids and whats more, they chose to buy those hybrids rather than develop them themselves.

If you are talking to third world farmers about food security and independence from the local bankers, landlords, foreign corporations and their political influence, etc, you will get different answers to those questions.

If you talk to third world farmers, they want the technology and they are willing to pay for it. Its funny, I just read an article today that showed 95% of Philippine farmers would willingly pay more for transgenic eggplant seed because it would reduce pesticide costs.

Then there is the fact that most GMOs in the pipeline are from academic sources and include such life saving developments like Golden Rice which would be offered for free to third world farmers. Yet because of the ignorant anti-GMO backlash, these technologies are being held up and millions of children are going blind or dying due to vitamin A deficiency.

Of course the irony of this is that when they first thought of developing Golden Rice, many of the patents on certain technologies were held by companies like Monsanto. However these companies have licensed the technology for humanitarian purposes for free and supported it.

Edited March 20, 2014 by chadn737

overtone · March 20, 2014

If you talk to third world farmers, they want the technology and they are willing to pay for it. Its funny, I just read an article today that showed 95% of Philippine farmers would willingly pay more for transgenic eggplant seed because it would reduce pesticide costs.

That doesn't mean they want to be dependent on foreign corporations for all their seed and other necessities every year.

Why do you think hybrids started taking off in the 50s? Its because they yield more than open-pollinated varieties.

And that is of course a law of the universe handed down from the mysterious and unknowable past, and the great benefits of getting rid of them are never to be discussed as a possibility of genetic engineering properly employed.

Then there is the fact that most GMOs in the pipeline are from academic sources and include such life saving developments like Golden Rice which would be offered for free to third world farmers.

Most GMOs in actual deployment are not being offered free to third world farmers. The "pipeline" is where most of the benefit of GMOs has always been, and the academic sources is where most of the beneficial GMOs will come from, probably. Meanwhile, the GMOs we actually have to deal with, that have come to dominate US agriculture say, are not available for free from the academic sources that were crucial in inventing them, and are not life saving developments showering us all with benefits.

And if they destroy major Bt varieties and glyphosate effectiveness, they will have been a serious net loss to us all - except their corporate marketers.

Edited March 20, 2014 by overtone

chadn737 · March 20, 2014

Overtone:

That describes an ideal - in practice of course pieces get lost, inverted, swapped around, etc. The GUS gene expression is lost in some cases, but that doesn't mean no parts of it remain, for example. The exact location of the active gene complex of interest - not the inactivated junk and fragments - is determined afterwards - not beforehand - which means that the expression in the plant itself is not actually fully known. And so forth.

Which means, for instance, that in occasional plants some of this stuff is expressed in unplanned ays and places, including the bits people or animals eat. Also, the herbicide resistance causes chemcial complexes including this herbicide to build up in the plant - that also is eaten, by people and animals. And so forth.

All of this is false or misleading.

Yes you determine the locations afterwards, when else are you going to do it? Before the gene is inserted? Thats nonsense. However, this is misleading because it implies that we do not know the insertion sites or copy number of what gets planted in the field. When you first grow all these plants, it is done in the greenhouse under controlled conditions. The greenhouses themselves are even specially built to have pollen traps to prevent any escape of pollen. You can't even plant in the field until you have met federal guidelines. You generate numerous lines and grow them all in the greenhouse. You then begin selecting these for multiple factors. Included in that is determining copy number and the location of the insert. You can also test to see if there are any "fragments".

Furthermore, these lines are placed under multiple rounds of backcrossing and outcrossing, which segregates away that which is unlinked to the actual transgene. Basic genetics. Not only that, but you can know the gene expression. There are numerous methods of determining gene expression: Northern Blots, qPCR, in situ hybridizations, microarrays, RNA-seq. These are all used and standard part of making transgenics.

All of this is done BEFORE even being planted in the companies' own field plots. To claim or imply that none of this done before being sold commercially is false and deliberately misleading.

Also, the herbicide resistance causes chemcial complexes including this herbicide to build up in the plant - that also is eaten, by people and animals. And so forth.

That is complete bullshit. Support this claim or retract.

Glyphosate resistance acts by making the EPSPS protein inaccessible to inhibition by glyphosate. It does no build up in the plant. You are spreading false information.

Such as most "organic" growers and small farmers. Can they sue, or is this a freebie for Monsanto?

What risk do "organic" growers have from something like glyphosate resistance? They can't use Roundup anyhow. As for Bt resistance...does it not bother you that organic farmers spray Bt on food directly consumed by humans? You've spent a great deal of time arguing how unsafe it is. Besides, they can always use the far more toxic broad spectrum (i.e. kills honey bees) heavy metal pesticides that are ironically considered "organic".

Bt and glyphosate are two of the safest and most useful chemicals avaialble to the human race. Their replacements are more toxic, more ecologically damaging, and more difficult to handle. Who is going to compensate the users of these valuable herbicides and pesticides for their loss?

Do you not find it hypocritical to have just argued that Bt transgenic crops are unsafe, but are now asserting the safety of Bt? Make up your mind.

Secondly, that is why companies instituted practices to prevent resistance in the case of Bt and are developing new strains that are more effective and will also fight resistance. Farmers never had glyphosate until ironically Monsanto developed it. Even then, its potential was limited because it kills non-resistant varieties. Once again you want to have your cake and eat it too. Glyphosate resistance is what makes Roundup such a useful chemical in the first place. If you never had GMOs, then it would just be another humdrum chemical with limited usage. Not much to compensate farmers for in that case, especially when they chose to adopt it in masse.

That is flatly false. The development of resistance has been much, much faster than predicted - it happened less than two years after deployment in India cotton, for example.

First off. Provide your sources. I am fed up with you making unsupported assertions. I know the mods have warned you many times and I want you to provide a source for this claim. Not only that, but its false. Bt cotton was first commercially available in India in 2002, although it was planted illegally before than. The first conformation of resistance was in 2008. Thats six years, not two. That four year span is not surprising given that compliance with refuge laws in India is horrible.

Early studies predicted resistance to Bt within 4 years if no preventative measures were taken. Bt crops were first introduced in 1996 in the US and we are only now seeing resistance. They are still being used with great success in the US. Thats 18 years of productive use in the US of Bt...and the second generation Bt crops have only been released recently and will extend the usefulness further. That 18 years of use is thanks to the preventative measures that were taken from the start.

Ringer · March 20, 2014

Follow the money. Who gains the most from a population in fear of GMOs?

I know, it drives me insane to see studies of 'natural' herbal products have ridiculous amounts of contamination, mislabeling, and 'fillers' and people react with a collective "meh". Then hear angry shouts about a described gene with research backing its safety that has been reviewed by the FDA being fed to people.

Then again, think of all the funding that would be available when no genetic mutation (because if what's the difference between inserted genes and, say, crossovers in hybrids [besides mutation type]) can go to market without at least 30 years of intensive study. Then again the farming industry might drop off when all farmers have to genotype every individual to make sure there are no 'unknowns' that could be dangerous.

overtone · March 20, 2014

Also, the herbicide resistance causes chemcial complexes including this herbicide to build up in the plant - that also is eaten, by people and animals. And so forth.

That is complete bullshit. - - -

Glyphosate resistance acts by making the EPSPS protein inaccessible to inhibition by glyphosate. It does no build up in the plant.

Yet another 50 second google, just from the first page without bothering to look for the best one

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18298069

http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/dienochlor-glyphosate/glyphosate-ext.html

http://afrsweb.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/64022000/Publications/Reddy/GRSnodule-WS2003.pdf

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_29058.cfm

One of the problems is that even with the glyphosate resistant plants that don't take in and sequester as high a fraction of the applied herbicide as others, their resistance allows so much of the herbicide to be dumped on them that they sometimes end up with more incorporated.

Fortunately glyphosate seems to be fairly benign when eaten, at least in short term dosage of non-pregnant healthy adults (one of the reasons we'll miss it when it's destroyed), but there's a complilcation: in its bound and sequestered and chemcally altered conditions it seems to able to get past the the stomach and end up released by bacterial digestion directly into the small intestine - research on the effects of that is still in progress.

I really don't know why you haven't learned to do a quick websearch before you respond to my posts. What is it with GMO proponents, that they never learn to listen to anybody but each other?

Then hear angry shouts about a described gene with research backing its safety that has been reviewed by the FDA being fed to people.

The FDA doesn't evaluate genes, or review their safety in GMOs.

(because if what's the difference between inserted genes and, say, crossovers in hybrids [besides mutation type])

GMO proponents often ask this question with perfect sincerity - they really don't know. Remember that when they reassure everyone about their safety. Edited March 20, 2014 by overtone

chadn737 · March 20, 2014

Even your link lists portions of three other genes remaining just at the main insertion point, including the promoter and key stretches of the mobility enablers from other plants and bacteria. Other locations of inert or non-expressed fragmentary genetic insertion (including of the several other genes and code stretches employed) are not analyzed, and may or may not exist in a given GMO.

1) These are not "three other genes". Promoters and terminators are part of a gene, not separate genes. You can't express a gene without a promoter. You do understand that promoters themselves are not expressed? They are only the sequence to which transcription factors, polymerases, and other proteins bind in order to begin transcription of the gene. The same with terminators, this is not expressed and is a standard part of any gene. I have no idea what a "mobility enabler" is...again learn the terminology before you write nonsense. I assume you are referring to the Chloroplast Transit Peptide. This does not "enable mobility", but rather directs the EPSPS protein to the cholorplast. You do realize that plant EPSPS proteins are normally localized in the chloroplast and have chloroplast transit peptides already, don't you? The reason they added this is because this EPSPS copy is not from plants, so no chloroplast. So they took a plant chloroplast transit peptide and added it to the transgene, just like the soybean native copy already has.

2) Support or retract your claim that other fragments are not analyzed. I have already provided abundant evidence against this claim. You are merely repeating it without support.

Except that some use different insertion genetics and mechanisms, go into different places, involve different kinds of promoters and insertion code, etc. - little details that wouldn't interest anyone, right? Certainly not the average GMO promoter.

In particular, the marker genes are often antibiotic resistance expression code, rather than GUS, which is no more likely to disappear completely than the GUS stretch you waved your hands at.

There are really only two methods used for insertion: biolistic transformation and agrobacterium transformation. One could use electroporation on protoplasts, but regenerating plans is so incredibly difficult that it is never used. For that matter, most companies use biolistic transformation. Agrobacterium is very ineffective on monocots, so is not typically used on crops like maize or rice. Nor was it used here to transform soybeans, even though it is most effective on soybeans of the major crop species. So if you want to understand how the commercial transgenics were made, not how I make transgenic arabidopsis plants, then its really just biolistic transformation that is the focus.

The use of different promoters...as I said earlier, promoters are not expressed. Sure they are of interest, but promoters are not what gets expressed or what poses a risk. All genes have promoters or else they wouldn't be expressed. I have no fricking clue what "insertion code" means, this is yet another made up term from you.

I have already addressed the use of antibiotic resistance marker genes. These are all tested for safety as part of any GMO testing.

As for your continued reassertion that these things disappear and hide in the genome. That has been addressed and is nothing more than fear mongering.

And mutational breeding could be enabled - speeded up, greatly increased in scope and flexibility and benefit - by these wonderful new techniques. So there's no excuse, eh?

Excuse for what? Are you complaining that genetic engineering isn't being used to speed this up? How do you know its not, just like when I proved earlier that it is being used to improve conventional breeding. For that matter, all that mutation breeding is, is the use of mutagens to generate new genetic variation that is then used in conventional breeding. You really cant use genetic engineering to speed up the mutation process, just the conventional side, which is already done.

Ringer · March 20, 2014

Fortunately glyphosate seems to be fairly benign when eaten, at least in short term dosage of non-pregnant healthy adults (one of the reasons we'll miss it when it's destroyed), but there's a complilcation: in its bound and sequestered and chemcally altered conditions it seems to able to get past the the stomach and end up released by bacterial digestion directly into the small intestine - research on the effects of that is still in progress.

So the 1,000 mg/kg dosage with an accumulation of 300 ng/g is a fear? The pregnant woman's stomach would explode to get a dangerous dosage, probably causing more damage to the baby than the chemical.

The FDA doesn't evaluate genes, or review their safety in GMOs.

Hmmm, that's odd

The developer produces a safety assessment, which includes the identification of distinguishing attributes of new genetic traits, whether any new material in food made from the GE plant could be toxic or allergenic when eaten, and a comparison of the levels of nutrients in the GE plant to traditionally bred plants.

FDA scientists evaluate the safety assessment and also review relevant data and information that are publicly available in published scientific literature and the agency's own records.

The consultation is complete only when FDA's team of scientists are satisfied with the developer's safety assessment and have no further questions regarding safety or other regulatory issues.

As of May 2013, FDA has completed 96 consultations on genetically engineered crops. A complete list of all completed consultations and our responses are available at www.fda.gov/bioconinventory.

http://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm352067.htm

Why would the FDA lie to me like that?

GMO proponents often ask this question with perfect sincerity - they really don't know. Remember that when they reassure everyone about their safety.

Yeah, they probably do this because crossovers in hybrids (or really any mutation type) has the chance to create novel or variant proteins and functions. So the difference is we know less about the mutations occurring in non-modified plants, in fact we don't even know if they're there. So if we use the principle of unknown = too dangerous that means any individual who has not been genotyped most likely genocidal.

chadn737 · March 20, 2014

And this gives the techie the illusion of control, safety, etc. These people simply don't have a clue, and this research needs complete transparency and public oversight and careful, conservative regulation.

More fear mongering and unsupported assertions of the unknown. Its growing old.

Besides, there is regulation. A lot of it.

overtone · March 20, 2014

These are not "three other genes". Promoters and terminators are part of a gene, not separate genes.

They are stand alone stretches of code taken in blocks from seperate organisms, with isolatable structure and function, completely alien code that is not part of the EPSPS gene in the target plant. If they get loose somewhere else in the target genome or somehwere else in the plants genetic materials, they can do stuff - change the plant's functioning. What would you like to call them?

I have no idea what a "mobility enabler" is...

You are allowed to move your lips while sounding out the words. Engineers are moving code from one organism to another, often between very distant taxa, and they frame the code they want to insert in stretches of code that enable that insertion. That framing code enables mobility - and it's often still there, when they are done. And in fact you had no problem following the general argument, slightly off center:

I assume you are referring to the Chloroplast Transit Peptide. This does not "enable mobility", but rather directs the EPSPS protein to the cholorplast. You do realize that plant EPSPS proteins are normally localized in the chloroplast and have chloroplast transit peptides already, don't you? The reason they added this is because this EPSPS copy is not from plants, so no chloroplast. So they took a plant chloroplast transit peptide and added it to the transgene, just like the soybean native copy already has.

So one might ask why they didn't use native soybean insertion material - the reason is that they have found stuff that works better between various disparate taxa, that enables cross-taxon mobility of code. It will still do that, as long as it is there.

A chloroplast is an organelle, btw, commonly found in the leaves of a plant. If I recall you were mystified by that at one time.

5) That quote from David Schubert is just plain stupid.

Really?

Here is the FDA official policy on GMO foods:

Food and food ingredients derived from GE plants must adhere to the same safety requirements under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act that apply to food and food ingredients derived from traditionally bred plants.

FDA encourages developers of GE plants to consult with the agency before marketing their products. Although the consultation is voluntary, Keefe says developers find it helpful in determining the steps necessary to ensure that food products made from their plants are safe and otherwise lawful.

The developer produces a safety assessment, which includes the identification of distinguishing attributes of new genetic traits, whether any new material in food made from the GE plant could be toxic or allergenic when eaten, and a comparison of the levels of nutrients in the GE plant to traditionally bred plants.

FDA scientists evaluate the safety assessment and also review relevant data and information that are publicly available in published scientific literature and the agency's own records.

The consultation is complete only when FDA's team of scientists are satisfied with the developer's safety assessment and have no further questions regarding safety or other regulatory issues.

In other words, the FDA does not test or otherwise evaluate the safety of GMO foods, nor does it require anyone else to.

Why would the FDA lie to me like that?

I crossed in the post, hence the duplication Edited March 20, 2014 by overtone

chadn737 · March 20, 2014

Yet another 50 second google, just from the first page without bothering to look for the best one

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18298069

http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/dienochlor-glyphosate/glyphosate-ext.html

http://afrsweb.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/64022000/Publications/Reddy/GRSnodule-WS2003.pdf

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_29058.cfm

Great that for once you actually support your arguments. About bloody time.

First I will admit a mistake. In my rush I said that glyphosate does not build up in the plant. Of course that is nonsense. Glyphosate has to enter the plant to work in the first place.

However, what is at issue is human consumption and humans do not consume soybean leaves or roots, but the seed. You claimed that the glyphosate builds up and then is eaten by people. So the only part of relevance is the seed and how much is in the seed.

Let me address your links one by one:

1) I get a "The requested page does not exist." error. Nothing to be said about it.

2) Merely asserts that it is metabolized in some, intact in others, and translocated throughout the plant. This is of course a given....how else is the herbicide going to work? What is at issue is this idea of it building up in the plant and being consumed by humans.

3) This is about soybean nodules. Nodules are part of the roots, its where nitrogen fixing bacteria are found. We don't go around eating soybean nodules or roots.

4) There is a reason I don't trust "organic food" links as a source about the safety of GMOs....they profit from fear of GMOs, so I took the time to actually follow that page to its sources and read the paper. This is a very poor paper indeed. First off it makes false claims such as that there are not any pesticide monitoring programs in the US, despite the existence of such a program for years. There are also many claims that lack proper citation and even incorrect citation. The experimental design is flawed, failing to control for collection time, location, etc, etc. To quote from it: "Since different varieties of soy (different genetic backgrounds) from different fields (environments) grown using different agricultural practices were analysed, we need to acknowledge that variation in composition will come from all three of these sources". No crap, they lack the proper control period. The sample sizes are way to small for a study of this complexity. For that matter, the mean glyphosate found in their samples is 55% of the allowable limit....in other words well under the limit considered safe in food.

One of the problems is that even with the glyphosate resistant plants that don't take in and sequester as high a fraction of the applied herbicide as others, their resistance allows so much of the herbicide to be dumped on them that they sometimes end up with more incorporated.

Can you support this? Again, I am tired of unsupported claims. It is not my job to research the claims you make.

Fortunately glyphosate seems to be fairly benign when eaten, at least in short term dosage of non-pregnant healthy adults (one of the reasons we'll miss it when it's destroyed), but there's a complilcation: in its bound and sequestered and chemcally altered conditions it seems to able to get past the the stomach and end up released by bacterial digestion directly into the small intestine - research on the effects of that is still in progress.

Again, support this claim or retract.

I really don't know why you haven't learned to do a quick websearch before you respond to my posts. What is it with GMO proponents, that they never learn to listen to anybody but each other?

I really don't know why you haven't learned to support your arguments. I don't do "quick websearches", I actually read every source I post and double check to make that it is credible from a scientific standpoint and relevant. That is why I don't post links from biased sources (like organic food groups or even Monsanto) on the subject. Yes I will reference Pioneer describing the technologies that Pioneer is doing, but not on subject matter like the safety of their products. Furthermore, its not my responsibility to go around finding your sources after you make a claim. The fact that you seem to do quick google searches after the fact suggests to me that you don't even have a source in mind when you make the claim.

They are stand alone stretches of code taken in blocks from seperate organisms, with isolatable structure and function, completely alien code that is not part of the EPSPS gene in the target plant. If they get loose somewhere else in the target genome or somehwere else in the plants genetic materials, they can do stuff - change the plant's functioning. What would you like to call them?

Damn, you must be terrified of evolution and all the shit that goes on in nature. We got nothing on it. Next time you eat a hamburger, realize that that cow contains transposons that arrived by horizontal gene transfer and the next closest species containing them are snakes.

No, promoters do not have "isolatable structure and function". Promoters are not expressed, they don't get made into proteins or have protein structure. Apart from a gene, they really don't have function. The promoters function is in relation to the gene it is expressing. No promoter, no gene expression. No gene, a useless promoter. As for the chloroplast transit peptides. CTPs are very small peptides who also don't really have function in and of themselves. They are a peptide sequence found in proteins targeted to the chloroplast. Specifically, they are recognized by other proteins that transport the protein to the chloroplast. However, their function is in relation to the effect they have on the attached protein. Native plant EPSPS proteins have them. In this case, they a plant CTP sequence and attached it. Do you seriously think that attaching a plant CTP peptide to a protein is going to make it toxic? Soybean is littered with promoters and CTPs, as are all plants.

What are they going to get do if they get loose? I hope you realize that right now every plant you eat has new mutations, transposons jumping around, viral insertions, etc. These are all more unstable and do far more to change the plant genome than a transgene. This is nothing more than irrational fear. The more you learn about genetics and genomes, the more you realize how targeted and specific genetic engineering is. Quite frankly, I find mutation breeding to be scarier. You really don't know what you are getting then much of the time.

You are allowed to move your lips while sounding out the words. Engineers are moving code from one organism to another, often between very distant taxa, and they frame the code they want to insert in stretches of code that enable that insertion. That framing code enables mobility - and it's often still there, when they are done. And in fact you had no problem following the general argument, slightly off center:

This is nonsense. In biolistic transformation there is not such thing as a "mobility enhancer". There is no specific "code" that enables insertion by this method.

Maybe you are referring to the borders of T-DNA that are part of Agrobacterium transformation? That is a different method than biolistic transformation, which has no such "mobilitiy enhancer". Furthermore, it has nothing to do with "enhancing", these are the recognition sites used by the Agrobacterium virulence genes to cut the T-DNA and transport it. Without it, it wouldn't work period. These site T-DNA borders are short stretches of sequence that do not code for anything. Furthermore, their ability to be cut, moved, and inserted is entirely dependent upon a rather large suite of proteins that are found only in Agrobacterium, not plants. Once inserted into the plant, the T-DNA can no longer be moved around else where by the same method.

Again learn the terminology and also the technology before making such claims. T-DNA, fyi, is a natural part of Agrobacterium which goes around infecting plants in nature and inserting its genes. Your worried about man taking a very cautious approach to inserting genes, meanwhile nature does it at whim and without concern for your health.

So one might ask why they didn't use native soybean insertion material - the reason is that they have found stuff that works better between various disparate taxa, that enables cross-taxon mobility of code. It will still do that, as long as it is there.

A chloroplast is an organelle, btw, commonly found in the leaves of a plant. If I recall you were mystified by that at one time.

The reason behind its use is that the 35s promoter has very strong constitutive expression in nearly all plant tissues. For a trait like herbicide resistance, you need a gene to be expressed everywhere and at high levels. Furthermore, the 35s promoter is very well defined. Its exact sequences and the minimal promoter elements necessary are all known. In 2014, we don't even known the binding sites of most transcription factors in Arabidopsis, the most intensely studied plant, let alone crop species. For most plant promoters, we don't even actually know how long the promoter itself is, let alone its expression pattern. This work was done back in the early-mid 90s before we even had sequence genomes for these species.

I have to laugh a little bit at the idea that this enables "cross-taxon mobility of code". You could take a promoter from soybean and put it into another plant species driving a gene and that gene would likely be expressed. Using the 35s promoter no more enables cross-taxon "mobility of code" than any other part of the plant.

If you recall, you were talking about Bt, not glyphosate resistance when you mentioned "organelles". Bt is expressed in the cytoplasm, not the organelles. Furthermore, that was in relation to some odd claim about retroviruses that made absolutely no biological sense. I'd still like a clarification.

Really?

Here is the FDA official policy on GMO foods:

Quote

Food and food ingredients derived from GE plants must adhere to the same safety requirements under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act that apply to food and food ingredients derived from traditionally bred plants.

FDA encourages developers of GE plants to consult with the agency before marketing their products. Although the consultation is voluntary, Keefe says developers find it helpful in determining the steps necessary to ensure that food products made from their plants are safe and otherwise lawful.

The developer produces a safety assessment, which includes the identification of distinguishing attributes of new genetic traits, whether any new material in food made from the GE plant could be toxic or allergenic when eaten, and a comparison of the levels of nutrients in the GE plant to traditionally bred plants.

FDA scientists evaluate the safety assessment and also review relevant data and information that are publicly available in published scientific literature and the agency's own records.

The consultation is complete only when FDA's team of scientists are satisfied with the developer's safety assessment and have no further questions regarding safety or other regulatory issues.

In other words, the FDA does not test or otherwise evaluate the safety of GMO foods, nor does it require anyone else to.

Yes really. The FDA does regulate GMOs, as does the EPA and the USDA.

"Food and food ingredients derived from GE plants must adhere to the same safety requirements under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act that apply to food and food ingredients derived from traditionally bred plants."

See this: http://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm352067.htm

Its called linking to your sources...try it sometime. GMOs are regulated and they do undergo safety testing. The FDA evaluated the safety of 96 different genetically engineered crops.

But not just the US organizations....those of Europe, Asia, etc.

overtone · March 20, 2014

Overlooked - edited in:

That is flatly false. The development of resistance has been much, much faster than predicted - it happened less than two years after deployment in India cotton, for example.

First off. Provide your sources. I am fed up with you making unsupported assertions. I know the mods have warned you many times and I want you to provide a source for this claim. Not only that, but its false. Bt cotton was first commercially available in India in 2002, although it was planted illegally before than. The first conformation of resistance was in 2008. Thats six years, not two.

In the first place, the assertion was that resistance has developed much faster than predicted by the GMO promulgators, not slower as you claimed - so you get nowhere by simply asserting six years instead of two, because you haven't compared with the prediction (it was much longer than six years, so comparison will do you no good anyway), and you aren't allowed to complain about other people making unsupported and false claims, because the major source of them is and has been you.

In the second place, one reason I don't need to provide even more sources (I've provided and quoted several) in these GMO threads is that in those rare cases where I am asserting something not immediately obvious or generally recognized or already stipulated other people inevitably oblige me. In this case it's you - here's a quote from your link there:

As noted above, testing insects sampled from Bt crops is critical for monitoring resistance. Moreover, the evidence in this case documents resistance in samples from non-Bt crops as well as from Bt crops, including a strain derived from non-Bt cotton in 2004 that had a resistance ratio >500 (refs. 59,115,119).

So we have commercialization in 2002, first planting presumably first half of that year, first resistant moth larvae collected from fields in 2004, those would be from eggs laid by adults hatched out in late 2003 or early 2004 - so less than 2 years, as claimed.

We could also read to the next page of your link, and find this:

Based on this criterion, the percentage of H. zea populations tested that were resistant to Cry2Ab rose from 0% in 2002 to 50% in 2005, only 2 years after commercialization of Bt cotton producing Cry2Ab and Cry1Ac^{21, 93}. The percentage of populations with a resistance ratio >10 also increased from 0% in 2002 to 50% in 2005 (refs. 21,93). Three populations sampled from non-Bt plants in Arkansas in 2005 had such low mortality in bioassays that LC₅₀ values could not be calculated, but were estimated to be >400 μg Cry2Ab per ml diet⁹³. The decreased susceptibility to Cry2Ab detected in 2005, when cotton producing this toxin was not common (Fig. 2), suggests that resistance to Cry1Ac caused some cross-resistance to Cry2Ab⁹³,

I do recognize that this example of resistance building up in two years, at least ten times faster than predicted, was from the US rather than India - but let's focus on the central claim and reality this time, OK? These pesticide expression GMOs create resistance, rapidly, exactly as one would expect and exactly as GMO critics predicted from Darwinian theory and the known behaviors of agribusiness corporations.

The fact that you seem to do quick google searches after the fact suggests to me that you don't even have a source in mind when you make the claim.

That's true - I've been around this block so many times that the ordinary facts are just riding in memory.

The fact that you never bother to check anything out before teeing off on stuff you obviously aren't familiar with is still a bit odd, though. Don't you get tired of being wrong all the time? Would you actually bet money on any of the assertions you make while calling other people's stuff "complete bullshit"? You've got a link up there that deals with translocation of glyphosate throughout a soybean plant, right next to link discussing its translocation into the seeds, right next to a link detailing the difference in glyphosate accumulation as a percentage difference between resistant and sensitive soybeans, and in all this you have to know - you have to know - that people apply quite a bit more glyphosate to resistant soybeans than to sensitive ones,

and what do you do? You find stupid quibbles with each separate link in isolation, and pretend there's no evidence for the obvious.

Or this, which is as far as I'm going to bother with that long post of nothing relevant (barring a couple of further self-contradictions of your previous assertions) :

No, promoters do not have "isolatable structure and function". Promoters are not expressed, they don't get made into proteins or have protein structure. Apart from a gene, they really don't have function. The promoters function is in relation to the gene it is expressing. No promoter, no gene expression.

So promoters are a defined block of code, and can be split out as a unit and moved from one genome to another as a block of code. And once moved - whereever they were moved to - they do their job if they can, which is to activate or "promote" the expression of whatever gene they are connected to. I'm just repeating your post there, in which you spent some time teaching your grandmother to suck eggs again - the question is, how in all that did you arrive at "No, promotors do not have isolatable structure and function"?

Yes really. The FDA does regulate GMOs, as does the EPA and the USDA.

"Food and food ingredients derived from GE plants must adhere to the same safety requirements under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act that apply to food and food ingredients derived from traditionally bred plants."

See this: http://www.fda.gov/f...s/ucm352067.htm

I already quoted it. More to the point, I read it. It does not support your assertion that GMOs are regulated by the FDA, the EPA, or the USDA. It says they are treated as if they were the food, etc, they are engineered to imitate or resemble.

GMOs are regulated and they do undergo safety testing. The FDA evaluated the safety of 96 different genetically engineered crops.

If you read your link there, you will discover that it is a record of 96 "consultations", in which the FDA recorded the approved the reported evaluations of food produced from several GMOs as presented by the developers of those GMOs.

The FDA did not safety test a single one of them, or require that tests be performed on them as if they were new products with data openly recorded and all that good stuff.

And that is exactly what one would expect, in accordance with their own description of their own policy, as quoted above. The FDA simply treats GMO food properly submitted to it as if it were non-GMO food, which is of course already tested and approved and so forth.

Edited March 20, 2014 by overtone

chadn737 · March 20, 2014

In the first place, the assertion was that resistance has developed much faster than predicted by the GMO promulgators, not slower as you claimed - so you get nowhere by simply asserting six years instead of two, because you haven't compared with the prediction (it was much longer than six years, so comparison will do you no good anyway), and you aren't allowed to complain about other people making unsupported and false claims, because the major source of them is and has been you.

What was the prediction then? Give me an exact number.

I stated earlier that they predicted if no preventative measures were taken, then it was estimated that resistance would evolve in 4 years.

In the second place, one reason I don't need to provide even more sources (I've provided and quoted several) in these GMO threads is that in those rare cases where I am asserting something not immediately obvious or generally recognized or already stipulated other people inevitably oblige me. In this case it's you - here's a quote from your link there:

Quote

As noted above, testing insects sampled from Bt crops is critical for monitoring resistance. Moreover, the evidence in this case documents resistance in samples from non-Bt crops as well as from Bt crops, including a strain derived from non-Bt cotton in 2004 that had a resistance ratio >500 (refs. 59,115,119).

So we have commercialization in 2002, first planting presumably first half of that year, first resistant moth larvae collected from fields in 2004, those would be from eggs laid by adults hatched out in late 2003 or early 2004 - so less than 2 years, as claimed.

You should be more careful when you quote mine my sources. Those lines were first commercialized in India in 2002 and reports of resistance were not found until 2008 in India. What you have quoted is in reference to the resistance the developed in the US, where those lines were first commercialized in 1996....thats 8 years before 2004. The first evidence of resistance was in 2002, 6 years after being commercialized.

Lets look at the actual context:

"Ironically, some of the dubious arguments disputing Monsanto's report of P. gossypiella resistance to Cry1Ac cotton in India mirror those offered by Monsanto and others⁹⁹ to challenge documentation of H. zea (bollworm) resistance to Cry1Ac cotton in the United States¹¹⁶. Researchers discovered the initial evidence of field-evolved resistance of H. zea to Cry1Ac cotton in the southeastern United States in 2002, 6 years after its commercialization in that region^{59, 117, 118}. The extensive evidence confirming this case of resistance includes >50% survival at a diagnostic concentration for four strains derived from the field in 2003 (refs. 59,115).

One of the primary arguments disputing the conclusion of field-evolved resistance in this case was that “larval samples should not be collected from Bt crops” for resistance monitoring⁹⁹. As noted above, testing insects sampled from Bt crops is critical for monitoring resistance. Moreover, the evidence in this case documents resistance in samples from non-Bt crops as well as from Bt crops, including a strain derived from non-Bt cotton in 2004 that had a resistance ratio >500 (refs. 59,115,119). Another challenge was that the evidence of field-evolved resistance came entirely from the laboratory⁹⁹. However, “unacceptable levels of boll damage” observed in problem fields were associated with decreased susceptibility to Cry1Ac in laboratory bioassays^{115, 117}, similar to the evidence from India^{97, 98, 113}."

What you have quoted (part in bold) is in reference to the resistance developed in H. zea in the US specifically to the Cry1Ac protein, not resistance in India. As the red section indicates, these lines were commercialized in 1996, six years prior to the detection of resistance.

We could also read to the next page of your link, and find this:

Quote

Based on this criterion, the percentage of H. zea populations tested that were resistant to Cry2Ab rose from 0% in 2002 to 50% in 2005, only 2 years after commercialization of Bt cotton producing Cry2Ab and Cry1Ac^{21, 93}. The percentage of populations with a resistance ratio >10 also increased from 0% in 2002 to 50% in 2005 (refs. 21,93). Three populations sampled from non-Bt plants in Arkansas in 2005 had such low mortality in bioassays that LC₅₀ values could not be calculated, but were estimated to be >400 μg Cry2Ab per ml diet⁹³. The decreased susceptibility to Cry2Ab detected in 2005, when cotton producing this toxin was not common (Fig. 2), suggests that resistance to Cry1Ac caused some cross-resistance to Cry2Ab⁹³,

I do recognize that this example of resistance building up in two years, at least ten times faster than predicted, was from the US rather than India - but let's focus on the central claim and reality this time, OK? These pesticide expression GMOs create resistance, rapidly, exactly as one would expect and exactly as GMO critics predicted from Darwinian theory and the known behaviors of agribusiness corporations.

Here is a somewhat valid example, although it should be noted that here they are again referring to the previous US based population of H. zea. Here they are talking about resistance to the Cry2Ab variant. Remember that Cry2Ac was being grown in this same region since 1996, so by the time you have detection of Cry2Ab resistance in 2005, Bt cotton and corn had been grown in the region for 9 years. You still have not supported the development of resistance in India in 2 years.

That's true - I've been around this block so many times that the ordinary facts are just riding in memory.

The fact that you never bother to check anything out before teeing off on stuff you obviously aren't familiar with is still a bit odd, though. Don't you get tired of being wrong all the time? Would you actually bet money on any of the assertions you make while calling other people's stuff "complete bullshit"? You've got a link up there that deals with translocation of glyphosate throughout a soybean plant, right next to link discussing its translocation into the seeds, right next to a link detailing the difference in glyphosate accumulation as a percentage difference between resistant and sensitive soybeans, and in all this you have to know - you have to know - that people apply quite a bit more glyphosate to resistant soybeans than to sensitive ones,

and what do you do? You find stupid quibbles with each separate link in isolation, and pretend there's no evidence for the obvious.

These are not "ordinary facts" and you have an intellectual obligation to support your argument. I have already shown many of your claims to be false. For instance the continued claim of lost genetic diversity due to GMOs. Or the claim that there were no studies done on Bees until recently. Or the claim that there were no long-term studies. Or the claim that GMOs are not tested for safety or regulated. Need I go on. What you consider "ordinary facts" have an amazing poor track record.

Earlier I admitted that I misspoke when I said that glyphosate is not found within the plant. It was late last night when I replied and I recognized immediately that this was a requirement for it to even work.

But that still does not mean that your claims about the health effects of this or even the presence of herbicide in our food is valid. You have yet to support any of the health claims I challenged you to support. As for your sources....the quality, validity, and relevancy of sources matters. I can find a lot of sources claiming that aliens have abducted people, that Bigfoot is real....hell there is even a paper out there claiming to have sequenced the genome of Bigfoot. Consider the recently retracted Seralini study that reported that glyphosate resistance caused tumors. The study was completely flawed and the results unbelievable, yet still it was published and continues to be touted by anti-GMO activists.

Your first link, as I pointed out to you last night doesn't work. Every time I click on it, it say that the page does not exist. However, after some searching, I think I found the paper its supposed to link to. These experiments looked at AMPA levels, which are the degradation product of glyphosate. They used vegetative tissue. Ironically, higher levels were found in non-GMO soybeans than GMO containing soybeans, which contradicts the claims made by your fourth paper.

Your second source again merely pointed out that it was metabolized in some, intact in others. This is hardly support that we are eating the herbicide. If glyphosate is broken down and metabolized, then we are no longer eating the herbicide....never mind the fact that the seeds are so processed by the time that they reach your stomach (fed to livestock, oil extraction, etc), that the idea that you are eating any significant amount of herbicide from this is ridiculous.

Third source, as I pointed out was about root nodules. You don't eat those. Its as valid as pointing out that there are herbicide residues on top of the leaf. Well of course, you sprayed the leaf, but raw soybean leaves and nodules are not fed to people.

Fourth source is from an organic advocacy group, but if you dig around for the actual paper, its as dubious a paper as they get. Poor experimental design, obvious lack of citation and mis-citations. If you just look at the figures, the variance in their detection is huge, with many of the GM-soy samples having next to no detectable traces. They then report the average concentration, which is well below what is even considered acceptable. Compared to the Italian paper, which you said was very cautious in their reporting, this paper demonstrates obvious bias and misreporting. As a scientist, I don't trust shoddy research. Theres way too much fraud in science as there is and this paper is one of the shoddiest I've seen.

So promoters are a defined block of code, and can be split out as a unit and moved from one genome to another as a block of code. And once moved - whereever they were moved to - they do their job if they can, which is to activate or "promote" the expression of whatever gene they are connected to. I'm just repeating your post there, in which you spent some time teaching your grandmother to suck eggs again - the question is, how in all that did you arrive at "No, promotors do not have isolatable structure and function"?

A promoter has function in relation to the gene, on its own, it will have no effect. Promoters do not produce proteins and thus have no protein structure or any other effect that could cause toxicity, allergenicity, etc. In this sense its function is not "isolatable" as you claimed. What matters about a promoter is how it drives the expression of the protein coding portion. On its own, it has no more effect than any other piece of DNA that you eat every day.

You are trying to imply to people here that because this is a defined "block of code" that it poses some sort of risk. You are implying falsehoods about them "getting loose in the genome". This after I described in detail how GMOs are made, how one goes about eliminating the possibility of other copies and them "getting loose in the genome". Its nothing more than fear mongering. You are misusing science to scare people.

I already quoted it. More to the point, I read it. It does not support your assertion that GMOs are regulated by the FDA, the EPA, or the USDA. It says they are treated as if they were the food, etc, they are engineered to imitate or resemble.

Quote: GMOs are regulated and they do undergo safety testing. The FDA evaluated the safety of 96 different genetically engineered crops.
If you read your link there, you will discover that it is a record of 96 "consultations", in which the FDA recorded the approved the reported evaluations of food produced from several GMOs as presented by the developers of those GMOs.

The FDA did not safety test a single one of them, or require that tests be performed on them as if they were new products with data openly recorded and all that good stuff.

And that is exactly what one would expect, in accordance with their own description of their own policy, as quoted above. The FDA simply treats GMO food properly submitted to it as if it were non-GMO food, which is of course already tested and approved and so forth.

This is false. It says: "Food and food ingredients derived from GE plants must adhere to the same safety requirements under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act that apply to food and food ingredients derived from traditionally bred plants." In other words, these products must adhere to a standard of safety that is written in law.

These products are treated as "food additives" under the FD&C, which means that they must meet the safety requirements set of food additives in order to be marketed.

Every single GMO on the market has been subject to such testing and approval by the FDA. You also don't seem to understand how the FDA testing works. Companies pay for the testing and conduct the trials, they do the same in drug testing as well. It costs $35 million alone to meet the requirements of regulations of GMOs, even more for drugs. The FDA is going to pay the cost and doesn't have the manpower to conduct the tests themselves. That doesn't mean the tests are invalid. The FDA requires a full report and oversight of the exact methods, experimental design, and results. The validity of the such tests can be judged by this, as with any research.

That doesn't mean they want to be dependent on foreign corporations for all their seed and other necessities every year.

As long as they make money, which they would due to reduced pesticide costs, why would they care? If they don't want to be dependent, then they don't have to grow it. Its the exact same situation in the US. Farmers want to grow these crops. They don't have to, they choose to do so because they benefit. This is nothing more than classic anti-corporatism.

And that is of course a law of the universe handed down from the mysterious and unknowable past, and the great benefits of getting rid of them are never to be discussed as a possibility of genetic engineering properly employed.

What are you talking about? Hybrid vigor or heterosis is a biological effect that can't be mimicked by non-hybrid varieties. What are the great benefits of going back to lower yielding, less vigorous varieties? Is it the increased environmental damage due to placing more acres under tillage to make up for decreased yield. Higher water usage? Higher nutrient demands? Hybrid crops have been an enormous boon.

Most GMOs in actual deployment are not being offered free to third world farmers. The "pipeline" is where most of the benefit of GMOs has always been, and the academic sources is where most of the beneficial GMOs will come from, probably. Meanwhile, the GMOs we actually have to deal with, that have come to dominate US agriculture say, are not available for free from the academic sources that were crucial in inventing them, and are not life saving developments showering us all with benefits.

And if they destroy major Bt varieties and glyphosate effectiveness, they will have been a serious net loss to us all - except their corporate marketers.

More anti-corporatist rantings. If glyphosate resistance or Bt were available freely from universities, we would still be in the same boat. Farmers would plant them and resistance would develop. There is no way to avoid resistance except to not use it period. Again, you want to have your cake and eat it too. You want to avoid resistance, but you seem to want to make this free for everyone to use, those are two contradictory goals. You complain about lack of regulation and the dangers of biotech, yet want it being used by academics for free distribution to farmers....whose going to pay for the regulation? Who is going to cover the $35 million in testing fees? You claim that Bt and glyphosate are safe and in the next breath claim how dangerous Bt crops and glyphosate resistance is. You are contradicting yourself all over the place and making it evident that the real issue for you is not the science, but anti-corporatism.

Edited March 20, 2014 by chadn737

Ringer · March 20, 2014

And that is exactly what one would expect, in accordance with their own description of their own policy, as quoted above. The FDA simply treats GMO food properly submitted to it as if it were non-GMO food, which is of course already tested and approved and so forth.

And why shouldn't it? You have yet to make a single point as to why GMO should be tested and regulated more strictly than any other food or additive.

chadn737 · March 20, 2014

And why shouldn't it? You have yet to make a single point as to why GMO should be tested and regulated more strictly than any other food or additive.

I agree, but I want to reemphasize the fact that it is treated as an additive by the FDA, which requires stricter guidelines than just food. GMO soybeans are not treated like non-GMO soybeans, etc.

Ringer · March 20, 2014

Also, a relevant article pertaining to other testing being voluntary.

http://grist.org/food/the-gm-safety-dance-whats-rule-and-whats-real/

overtone · March 21, 2014

You should be more careful when you quote mine my sources. Those lines were first commercialized in India in 2002 and reports of resistance were not found until 2008 in India

You are absolutely correct, there - whatever my memory was of Bt resistance detection in India almost immediately, it wasn't from that source. I'll have to go digging on my own - or just ride with the US data, which is even clearer about Bt resistance happening much faster than Monsanto's (or any other agribusiness's ) predictions. Life is short, though.

As long as we're on the topic, though - as you note the report seems to indicate that resistance to one type of Bt sometimes enables resistance to others, a pattern common in antibiotic resistance and similar situations. So the people who have been relying on this benign, safe, and effective pesticide for many decades now are likely to lose it even for unrelated crops. Do you think they will be able to sue Monsanto et al, or do the profiting corporations get a freebie there at other people's expense?

Consider the recently retracted Seralini study that reported that glyphosate resistance caused tumors. The study was completely flawed and the results unbelievable, yet still it was published and continues to be touted by anti-GMO activists.

The politically forced retraction of that paper makes an interesting counterexample to the claims made here that the tiny and powerless multinational agribusiness corporations are being kicked around by the large, rich, and powerful organic food industry bullies - there was nothing much wrong with it, the peer reviewers were upper echelon at that reputable journal, and even the editor who retracted it refused to describe its flaws or explain what had been wrong with its initial publication (too few rats was the only actual defect - but the results were so significant statistically that they survived) Furthermore, the study it reported has yet to be redone with whatever flaws it supposedly featured fixed - its results have never been contradicted. You don't have to believe them, and I have my doubts myself, but it's them or nothing so far.

And why shouldn't it? You have yet to make a single point as to why GMO should be tested and regulated more strictly than any other food or additive.

I would be happier if they were tested by the FDA at all, which as your link states they are not - but of course they should be tested as if they contained a new and previously unknown additive. That seems like a minimum, to me, since all that extra code and its various effects is at the very least a new and previously unknown additive that no one has ever eaten before.

Every single GMO on the market has been subject to such testing and approval by the FDA. You also don't seem to understand how the FDA testing works. Companies pay for the testing and conduct the trials, they do the same in drug testing as well.

And once again we see that the guy I quoted up there is not, as you claim, "stupid". He's right: You guys think the FDA is stringently testing these things, and they aren't. Read Ringer's link. 96 GMOs approved, none tested.

I agree, but I want to reemphasize the fact that it is treated as an additive by the FDA,

As Ringer's link establishes in detail, no GMO has yet been treated as a new additive by the FDA. (C'mon - just for starters, right in front of you, additives have to be labeled, right?).

GMO soybeans are not treated like non-GMO soybeans, etc

All the links posted here, including the FDA official policy, say that GMO soybeans are treated just like non-GMO soybeans.

For an example of why I'm not going to bother with the rest of those postings, here's a quote from a GMO proponent that illustrates perfectly what we face with these guys - this quote is from a poster who condescends and treats with derision the people who are trying to prevent what's happening out there at Monsanto's and Pioneer's and Cargill's direction, for their profit, and at our cost and risk. He's one of the expert folk who complain about non-biologists and their irrational fear of GMOs, and wonders how to "talk to them":

More anti-corporatist rantings. If glyphosate resistance or Bt were available freely from universities, we would still be in the same boat. Farmers would plant them and resistance would develop. There is no way to avoid resistance except to not use it period. Again, you want to have your cake and eat it too. You want to avoid resistance, but you seem to want to make this free for everyone to use, those are two contradictory goals. You complain about lack of regulation and the dangers of biotech, yet want it being used by academics for free distribution to farmers....whose going to pay for the regulation? Who is going to cover the $35 million in testing fees? You claim that Bt and glyphosate are safe and in the next breath claim how dangerous Bt crops and glyphosate resistance is. You are contradicting yourself all over the place and making it evident that the real issue for you is not the science, but anti-corporatism.

Aside from the minor irritation that I said none of those things he attributes to me, the striking feature of these posts is that these people are just incredibly, bizarrely, willfully clueless. They don't even know what the issues are, and you can't tell them anything. You can beat them over the head with the simplest, dumbed-down, step by step explanation or argument or whatever for weeks, and they will simply refuse to comprehend - that right there is what you will get in return. And that's who's dealing out the expert advice at Monsanto, Pioneer, Dupont, Cargill, the lot.

Houston, we have a problem.

chadn737 · March 21, 2014

You are absolutely correct, there - whatever my memory was of Bt resistance detection in India almost immediately, it wasn't from that source. I'll have to go digging on my own - or just ride with the US data, which is even clearer about Bt resistance happening much faster than Monsanto's (or any other agribusiness's ) predictions. Life is short, though.

As long as we're on the topic, though - as you note the report seems to indicate that resistance to one type of Bt sometimes enables resistance to others, a pattern common in antibiotic resistance and similar situations. So the people who have been relying on this benign, safe, and effective pesticide for many decades now are likely to lose it even for unrelated crops. Do you think they will be able to sue Monsanto et al, or do the profiting corporations get a freebie there at other people's expense?

So your India data has no support...duly noted. As for the US data, it did not happen much faster than predicted. Again, as I have pointed out, the development of resistance was predicted to occur within 4 years. With management, it was predicted to last a bit longer. It took 6 years for resistance to develop, 6 > 4. The resistance to one Bt strain in 2 years, as you acknowledge occurred within the context of 8 years of growing Bt crops in the region, 8 > 2. Finding resistant strains is not the same as the population being resistant or reduced efficacy of the Bt. If you actually read the paper, rather than quote mined it, you would note that a large part of it is about defining "resistance" and setting different degrees of resistance. If you look at Table 1 of the paper, you will note that though resistance of H. zea to Cry2Ab has been discovered through monitoring programs, at that time, reduced efficacy had not been reported as of 2013. So even though there was discovery of resistance in 2004, 9 years later, there has not been reported reduced efficacy. That will eventually change, but it shows that observed resistance in the lab of collected samples is not the same as reduced efficacy in the field.

Secondly, I can't get over how you flip flop between Bt being safe and being dangerous. You just said that this was a safe and effective treatment, but have spent much of the thread decrying its potential health effects. You are setting a double standard.

The politically forced retraction of that paper makes an interesting counterexample to the claims made here that the tiny and powerless multinational agribusiness corporations are being kicked around by the large, rich, and powerful organic food industry bullies - there was nothing much wrong with it, the peer reviewers were upper echelon at that reputable journal, and even the editor who retracted it refused to describe its flaws or explain what had been wrong with its initial publication (too few rats was the only actual defect - but the results were so significant statistically that they survived) Furthermore, the study it reported has yet to be redone with whatever flaws it supposedly featured fixed - its results have never been contradicted. You don't have to believe them, and I have my doubts myself, but it's them or nothing so far.

Calls for retraction of the paper came from many academics. Seralini's study was so poorly designed that it amounts to fraud. He designed it in a way to obtain bad results. Its not just that he used too few rats.

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.

This entire experiment was designed to give the result Seralini and by any ethical standard is fraudulent.

Just recently there have been calls for the retraction of the acid-stem cell paper in Nature. Nature is the number one journal in the world. The Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology is not a top-tier journal by the standards which journals are ranked. Its impact factor is 3.01. Not bad, but certainly not top-tier. Nature's impact factor is 38.597. If you think the reviewers were "upper echelon" (you really don't know this since the reviewers are anonymous), then the reviewers that Nature is capable of getting are practically gods. Yet Nature has published several high-profile papers that have been retracted. The idea that just because it passed peer-review does not make it a good paper or a non-fraudulent one. Finally, the editor-in-chief explained his decision to retract the paper and was because the results were so bad, so unreliable, that it deserved to be.

I would be happier if they were tested by the FDA at all, which as your link states they are not - but of course they should be tested as if they contained a new and previously unknown additive. That seems like a minimum, to me, since all that extra code and its various effects is at the very least a new and previously unknown additive that no one has ever eaten before.

They are tested. Every single GMO on the market has undergone testing and your continued reassertion of this is nothing more than an argument from repetition.

Also, let me point out that earlier you said that Bt was safe and had been used for decades, yet when its put into the plant its suddenly something nobody has ever eaten before? This is contradictory.

And once again we see that the guy I quoted up there is not, as you claim, "stupid". He's right: You guys think the FDA is stringently testing these things, and they aren't. Read Ringer's link. 96 GMOs approved, none tested.

As Ringer's link establishes in detail, no GMO has yet been treated as a new additive by the FDA. (C'mon - just for starters, right in front of you, additives have to be labeled, right?).

All the links posted here, including the FDA official policy, say that GMO soybeans are treated just like non-GMO soybeans.

Did you read Ringer's link?

"The bottom line is that the FDA requires all foods to be safe, he said. Insuring safety has meant that every firm bringing a genetically engineered food to market has gone through the consultation process, and has done safety testing."

Read that? Every one has gone through the consultation process and done testing. All 96 GMOs on the market....tested.

To continue to say that no testing has been done is a lie.

For an example of why I'm not going to bother with the rest of those postings, here's a quote from a GMO proponent that illustrates perfectly what we face with these guys - this quote is from a poster who condescends and treats with derision the people who are trying to prevent what's happening out there at Monsanto's and Pioneer's and Cargill's direction, for their profit, and at our cost and risk. He's one of the expert folk who complain about non-biologists and their irrational fear of GMOs, and wonders how to "talk to them":

Aside from the minor irritation that I said none of those things he attributes to me, the striking feature of these posts is that these people are just incredibly, bizarrely, willfully clueless. They don't even know what the issues are, and you can't tell them anything. You can beat them over the head with the simplest, dumbed-down, step by step explanation or argument or whatever for weeks, and they will simply refuse to comprehend - that right there is what you will get in return. And that's who's dealing out the expert advice at Monsanto, Pioneer, Dupont, Cargill, the lot.

Houston, we have a problem.

So when challenged with actual evidence you resort to calling or implying that people like me are just corporate shrills. I have never worked for any company or been involved with them. Its easier to attack me personally and rant about corporations than to actually address the facts. This is nothing more than an ad hominem.

Edited March 21, 2014 by chadn737

overtone · March 21, 2014

As for the US data, it did not happen much faster than predicted. Again, as I have pointed out, the development of resistance was predicted to occur within 4 years. With management, it was predicted to last a bit longer. It took 6 years for resistance to develop, 6 > 4. The resistance to one Bt strain in 2 years, as you acknowledge occurred within the context of 8 years of growing Bt crops in the region, 8 > 2.

If Monsanto had predicted the development of resistance to the valuable pesticide Bt within four, six, or eight years of its real world commercial deployment of any Bt GMOs, they probably would never have been allowed to plant the stuff.

Their actual predictions for their single line and new two-strain stuff, based on their guaranteed refuge establishment and topical applications of pyrethrin and other insecticides on the single Bt line (but not the dual) ranged from a low of 111 years (page five last paragraph) to more than 1200 (elsewhere in the review) with a 95% confidence level.

Their lowest possible resistance time estimate - for real world deployment of the single line without auxiliary insecticide application and at the minimum refuge size even considered (40%, all from the surrounding environment) - was 8 years, which was why they promised to use auxiliary insecticide on the single line, see to it that refuge areas were larger and better distributed than that, and so forth - 8 years would have been unacceptable.

111>2.

Here's the EPA review of the application: http://www.epa.gov/oscpmont/sap/meetings/2004/june/gustafson.pdf

Did you read Ringer's link?

"The bottom line is that the FDA requires all foods to be safe, he said. Insuring safety has meant that every firm bringing a genetically engineered food to market has gone through the consultation process, and has done safety testing."

Read that? Every one has gone through the consultation process and done testing. All 96 GMOs on the market....tested.

It's an empty assertion in the face of the evidence - which simply tracking the dates of the developments and approvals sufficiently provides, right there on Ringer's links - that the approved GMOs have not in fact been tested as claimed above (like brand new additives, say). Such testing would take years, for each one, and involve independent labs, and end up with labels. Instead, as we read in the FDA official policy description, they are treated as food, and proprietary corporate research accepted as data during "consultations". In other words, GMO soybeans are treated like non-GMO soybeans.

There have as yet been no long term consumption studies on glyphosate resistant soybeans in a large mammal, for example - and those have been approved for years now. Such studies can't be part of the FDA approval process, because they haven't been done at all. The bad effects, if any, will turn up in epidemiological surveys years from now - if we can find a control population.

Rather than quote empty and possibly irrelevant (what does that guy mean by "tested for safety"?) assertions that are contradicted by the evidence, link to the testing program and the results for a random selection - two or three would do - of those 96 GMOs.

edit in: if the evidence of your own eyes is insufficient, maybe you'll take it from Ringer's last link:

The FDA does a thorough job; it just focuses tightly on a few potential dangers, looking for allergens, amplification of toxins that naturally exist in the plant, and changes in nutritional composition.

When I asked Dietz why they didn’t cast a wide net, and ask for a rundown of all the compounds in each GE crop, he said: “An analysis like that would be very hard to interpret because it would capture everything, and it would be hard to identify those things that would be most important to safety. What we use is a focused approach that targets those things that we know, if they were changed, might be a problem.”

This seems eminently reasonable — if genetic engineering is just an extension of conventional breeding. But if GE foods are fundamentally different, the FDA’s approach appears, as Gurian-Sherman put it, “so thin that it would never raise a red flag if something were dangerous.” There are significant questions even about the problems the FDA focuses on, he said. (There’s a good overview of those concerns here.)

- - - -

and btw, continuing a neglected aspect of these threads:

Gurian-Sherman told me that he is concerned about health risks from GE foods, but that’s last on his list, behind concerns about the environment, monopolies, and the direction of agriculture.

Edited March 21, 2014 by overtone

chadn737 · March 21, 2014

If Monsanto had predicted the development of resistance to the valuable pesticide Bt within four, six, or eight years of its real world commercial deployment of any Bt GMOs, they probably would never have been allowed to plant the stuff.

Their actual predictions for their single line and new two-strain stuff, based on their guaranteed refuge establishment and topical applications of pyrethrin and other insecticides on the single Bt line (but not the dual) ranged from a low of 111 years (page five last paragraph) to more than 1200 (elsewhere in the review) with a 95% confidence level.

Their lowest possible resistance time estimate - for real world deployment of the single line without auxiliary insecticide application and at the minimum refuge size even considered (40%, all from the surrounding environment) - was 8 years, which was why they promised to use auxiliary insecticide on the single line, see to it that refuge areas were larger and better distributed than that, and so forth - 8 years would have been unacceptable.

111>2.

Here's the EPA review of the application: http://www.epa.gov/oscpmont/sap/meetings/2004/june/gustafson.pdf

That is with a 40% or greater unsprayed refuge.

However, 40%+ unsprayed refuges were never implemented and were resisted at many levels, including by farmers. If you actually look at the models in that paper, you will notice that for <20% refuges, the time drops well below 10 years. If spraying of refuges takes place, it decreases even more.

Based on the actual policies that were implemented by the government, the prediction of ~4 years was actually how long it was to be expected.

So the argument that this happened faster is false. You are basing it on policies that were never implemented. The prediction I give is based on the actual policies implemented, which even then, were not always followed by farmers.

Edited March 21, 2014 by chadn737

overtone · March 21, 2014

That is with a 40% or greater unsprayed refuge.

However, 40%+ unsprayed refuges were never implemented and were resisted at many levels, including by farmers

That 40% included the landscape, and was used as the minimum for resistance prediction because the landscape at issue was already at greater than 50% refuge almost throughout.

Not that that makes any difference. Monsanto would never have been allowed to plant that stuff if their official prediction of resistance time in the real world deployment was four years - so it wasn't. It was 111 years, minimum.

Based on the actual policies that were implemented by the government, the prediction of ~4 years was actually how long it was to be expected.

You mean the actual deployment Monsanto in fact implemented created resistance almost immediately? Why yes - and that was predicted by the critics, as I posted way back there, based on Darwinian theory and experience with related situations and the known behaviors of agribusiness.

That was one reason they were trying to get it stopped.

So the hippies and organic food nuts and all the rest of the derided crowd were - again - correct,

and after several years of listening to self-anointerd experts assure us that Monsanto was establishing adequate refuges when they weren't, and listening to GMO proponents assure us that these corporations like Monsanto had the most to lose by resistance development and so we could count on them to prevent it, and listening to random whackjobs take over the media to tell us that Bt cotton and corn and so forth were just like regular breeding of crops,

we are now seeing, right in front of our eyes, GMO proponents claim this mess was the expected result all along, we should blame the government if we don't like it, and it has nothing to do with whether GMOs are safe.

Edited March 21, 2014 by overtone

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