Focused Scientific Questions on GMOs

[chadn737]

The increasing debate and interest in the risk/safety of GMOs is typically tainted by anti-corporatism, making it difficult to address the actual scientific basis behind these issues.

 

I am an advocate for the use of GMOs. My interest and involvement in this topic has been ongoing for many years. If you are interested in my professional and personal background in this, I am willing to discuss it. My specific expertise is plant genetics and I have longstanding personal connections and history in agriculture. I have never worked in the corporate setting, always having been in academic labs.

 

I would very much like to discuss the actual scientific issues regarding the use of GMOs, especially those currently used, free of rhetoric regarding corporations.

 

If there are specific scientific questions or arguments that people have regarding GMOs, then lets discuss them. I just ask that no blind arguments be made against corporations or corporate control, this is of no direct relevance to the actual science of GMOs.

Edited March 16, 2014 by chadn737

[vampares]

What I like about genetic decoding is being able to see the DNA of a plant. Plants can have some "stuffy" DNA sometimes. Like a stuffed up nose. Without actually putting hands-on the DNA it is still possible to qualify one hybrid as being "genetically superior" to another -- which may have otherwise identical traits.

 

Has anyone looked into this field of study? It's probably a goldmine.

[overtone]

Here's a focused scientific question: what exactly would count as scientific evidence of the safety of a particular GMO, or GMOs in general?

 

We have seen, in multiple threads on this forum, a great many links to what would ordinarliy serve as warnings of a lack of care, a technology gotten a bit out of control - new data from short term rat and hog feeding studies published years after human consumption has been approved, say. These studies are presented as evidence of safety of not only the particular GM studied, but all of them.

 

Meanwhile, the avenues by which this new and explosive technology can do great and essentially irrecoverable harm are many and complex - no one study would amount to much, outside of a program of oversight and relevant research done independently of economic interests etc. That is, to infer safety we need evidence of recognition of hazard, appreciation of the nature of the risks, in the oversight as a whole.

 

What would such evidence look like? And until we have it, what should we do?

 

edit in, specific example: Obviously some GMs are almost risk free and have very high and direct benefits to almost everyone with costs low and met by the beneficiaries. Examples include using these engineering techniques to imitate regular breeding, only with much greater speed and control of the outcome (Dutch Elm disease resistance from engineered crossebreeds with other elms, say).

 

Other manipulations are obviously high risk in many ways and have benefits for only a few people with high costs imposed on non-beneficiaries - Bt espression in maize, say.

 

We will be wasting much time and money, on the one hand, or imposing serious and irresponsible risk on everyone for the benfit of agribusiness profiteers on the other, if we don't sort proposed GMOs by the risks of their manipulations, and a uiseful key or scale would be more than handy.

Edited March 26, 2014 by overtone

[chadn737]

What I like about genetic decoding is being able to see the DNA of a plant. Plants can have some "stuffy" DNA sometimes. Like a stuffed up nose. Without actually putting hands-on the DNA it is still possible to qualify one hybrid as being "genetically superior" to another -- which may have otherwise identical traits.

 

Has anyone looked into this field of study? It's probably a goldmine.

 

Yeah, you look at phenotypes and how they are inherited. This has been done since the dawn of genetics.

Here's a focused scientific question: what exactly would count as scientific evidence of the safety of a particular GMO, or GMOs in general?

 

We have seen, in multiple threads on this forum, a great many links to what would ordinarliy serve as warnings of a lack of care, a technology gotten a bit out of control - new data from short term rat and hog feeding studies published years after human consumption has been approved, say. These studies are presented as evidence of safety of not only the particular GM studied, but all of them.

 

Meanwhile, the avenues by which this new and explosive technology can do great and essentially irrecoverable harm are many and complex - no one study would amount to much, outside of a program of oversight and relevant research done independently of economic interests etc. That is, to infer safety we need evidence of recognition of hazard, appreciation of the nature of the risks, in the oversight as a whole.

 

What would such evidence look like? And until we have it, what should we do?

 

edit in, specific example: Obviously some GMs are almost risk free and have very high and direct benefits to almost everyone with costs low and met by the beneficiaries. Examples include using these engineering techniques to imitate regular breeding, only with much greater speed and control of the outcome (Dutch Elm disease resistance from engineered crossebreeds with other elms, say).

 

Other manipulations are obviously high risk in many ways and have benefits for only a few people with high costs imposed on non-beneficiaries - Bt espression in maize, say.

 

We will be wasting much time and money, on the one hand, or imposing serious and irresponsible risk on everyone for the benfit of agribusiness profiteers on the other, if we don't sort proposed GMOs by the risks of their manipulations, and a uiseful key or scale would be more than handy.

 

Feeding studies are conducted for every GMO prior to approval. Not a single commercial GMO has not undergone such testing. Not all such studies are published and oftentimes they are published after their initial use in obtaining approval.

 

The consensus of multiple scientific organizations is that 90 day feeding trial are sufficient to assess the safety of GMOs.

 

http://dbtbiosafety.nic.in/guideline/OACD/Concepts_and_Principles_1993.pdf

http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/biotech/en/ec_june2000_en.pdf

 

Using the publication date is not necessarily a good judge of when the study was conducted or when if it was used in obtaining appoval. The fact that such studies continue to be conducted is due to multiple factors. For one, everytime a new GMO is made, it goes through the regulatory process. Even if Bt corn were shown safe 6 years ago, they still test anew for Bt rice, Bt tomato, or whatever. Many transgenes, like the Bts are actually a family of genes, which then go through the process for every different gene used. A study conducted in 2012 does not mean that Bt was never tested before. Of course, there are many with an agenda, such as Seralini, who also actively conduct work to find something wrong, even if fraudulent.

 

What such evidence looks like is exactly the sort of evidence presented. Feeding trials that test for factors like allergenicity, carcinogenicity, etc, etc.

Edited March 26, 2014 by chadn737

[overtone]

Yeah, you look at phenotypes and how they are inherited

Excellent baby step.

 

Let's apply it to an apparently low risk GMO - something not proprietary and defended, so the economic risk seems in reason low; something not eaten by people at all, even indirectly, and in a non-toxic or otherwise low risk organism (probably a plant) so the public health danger is minimal; something where any inserted code comes from somewhere not too distant in taxonomy, and any incapacitated code is of at least fairly well dscribed function, so that we have real world long term experience with organisms closely similar to the new one and in particular expressing the engineered code in a similar physiological context; something in which the inevitable reduction of genetic diversity apart from the engineerd code, and the uniformity of the inserted code, does not created a hazard or lose us major benefits.

 

You would hardly need to look at the phenotype for even one generation, to have a reasonable scientific case for safe prudent deployment. The major risk would be that you bet on the GMO and it failed for some reason to deliver the benefits. So just don't bet too heavily, openly and publicly monitor the phenotype for trouble, and you're in reasonable shape, scientifically. (If you've made a cat whose eyes glow with the American Flag pattern at night, non-scientific considerations may apply)

 

To the extent that those criteria are not met, risks increase and scientific evidence becomes increasingly - exponentially increasingly, as multiple factors come into play - difficult and expensive and time-consuming and uncertain.

 

So if we look at, say, an engineered American Elm made resistant to a Eurasian fungus by swapping some alleles with Eurasian elms, we might have some minor worries with the debris inevitably riding along

 

- if the engineers used antibiotic resistance code in their proceedings, say, we might want to make sure the leaves and seeds of the eventual street and yard plantings were not featuring key fragments of that code in formats available to aphids and thrips and cockroaches and other bacteria-ridden commensals of our own lives - maybe discourage that particular marker technique in this case - but that seems fairly minor as a concern:

 

we're generally looking good there. Huge benefits, minimal hazards. Casually monitor the phenotypes, not much else needs doing.

 

Now if we ratchet a notch, and look at engineered American Chestnuts made resistant to a Eurasian fungus by swapping some alleles with Eurasian chestnuts, so far so good, but also gunning in extensive code taken from domestic wheat - now some new stuff comes up. For starters, people eat chestnuts if available and they will continue to do so, and people are sometimes seriously allergic to wheat. People even use chestnut flour fermented by yeast as a part substitute for wheat flour fermented by yeast, in baking. We hope to plant these trees all over, so people will be inundated by pollen from them. And so forth. So in addition to the minor concerns of antibiotic resistance etc above (but not forgetting them), we need a scientific basis for assuring ourselves that this gunned in code - in all its possible manifestations and locations and fragmentary expressions - will play no role in touching off allergic reactions in people.

 

So maybe we want to go back to the engineers and say "get your fungus resistance code somewhere else". Unfortunately, that is not as easy as it sounds. We are in the very early stages of this huge and complex field of technological expertise, and multiple well-understood sources of suitable fungus resistance code are not that easily come by. The genetic basis of fungus resistance in Eurasian chestnuts, for example (the obvious first choice), is very complicated and not well understood and certainly not available off the shelf from the lab next door. Wheat code is. So if we make that requirement, we impose large costs and long delays on the development of what would clearly be a great boon to us all.

 

We might have to, to be reasonable and prudent. But before we do that, let's consider: What kind of scientific basis do we need to assure reasonable safety in the deployment of wheat code gunned into chestnut trees? And as this post is too long already, without yet approaching the more pressing matters of high risk GMO agriculture (the eventual goal, but by experience one that needs gradual introduction on this forum), a break for the experts to weigh in.

Edited March 26, 2014 by overtone

[chadn737]

Excellent baby step.

 

Let's apply it to an apparently low risk GMO - something not proprietary and defended, so the economic risk seems in reason low; something not eaten by people at all, even indirectly, and in a non-toxic or otherwise low risk organism (probably a plant) so the public health danger is minimal; something where any inserted code comes from somewhere not too distant in taxonomy, and any incapacitated code is of at least fairly well dscribed function, so that we have real world long term experience with organisms closely similar to the new one and in particular expressing the engineered code in a similar physiological context; something in which the inevitable reduction of genetic diversity apart from the engineerd code, and the uniformity of the inserted code, does not created a hazard or lose us major benefits.

 

You would hardly need to look at the phenotype for even one generation, to have a reasonable scientific case for safe prudent deployment. The major risk would be that you bet on the GMO and it failed for some reason to deliver the benefits. So just don't bet too heavily, openly and publicly monitor the phenotype for trouble, and you're in reasonable shape, scientifically. (If you've made a cat whose eyes glow with the American Flag pattern at night, non-scientific considerations may apply)

 

To the extent that those criteria are not met, risks increase and scientific evidence becomes increasingly - exponentially increasingly, as multiple factors come into play - difficult and expensive and time-consuming and uncertain.

 

So if we look at, say, an engineered American Elm made resistant to a Eurasian fungus by swapping some alleles with Eurasian elms, we might have some minor worries with the debris inevitably riding along

 

- if the engineers used antibiotic resistance code in their proceedings, say, we might want to make sure the leaves and seeds of the eventual street and yard plantings were not featuring key fragments of that code in formats available to aphids and thrips and cockroaches and other bacteria-ridden commensals of our own lives - maybe discourage that particular marker technique in this case - but that seems fairly minor as a concern:

 

we're generally looking good there. Huge benefits, minimal hazards. Casually monitor the phenotypes, not much else needs doing.

 

Now if we ratchet a notch, and look at engineered American Chestnuts made resistant to a Eurasian fungus by swapping some alleles with Eurasian chestnuts, so far so good, but also gunning in extensive code taken from domestic wheat - now some new stuff comes up. For starters, people eat chestnuts if available and they will continue to do so, and people are sometimes seriously allergic to wheat. People even use chestnut flour fermented by yeast as a part substitute for wheat flour fermented by yeast, in baking. We hope to plant these trees all over, so people will be inundated by pollen from them. And so forth. So in addition to the minor concerns of antibiotic resistance etc above (but not forgetting them), we need a scientific basis for assuring ourselves that this gunned in code - in all its possible manifestations and locations and fragmentary expressions - will play no role in touching off allergic reactions in people.

 

So maybe we want to go back to the engineers and say "get your fungus resistance code somewhere else". Unfortunately, that is not as easy as it sounds. We are in the very early stages of this huge and complex field of technological expertise, and multiple well-understood sources of suitable fungus resistance code are not that easily come by. The genetic basis of fungus resistance in Eurasian chestnuts, for example (the obvious first choice), is very complicated and not well understood and certainly not available off the shelf from the lab next door. Wheat code is. So if we make that requirement, we impose large costs and long delays on the development of what would clearly be a great boon to us all.

 

We might have to, to be reasonable and prudent. But before we do that, let's consider: What kind of scientific basis do we need to assure reasonable safety in the deployment of wheat code gunned into chestnut trees? And as this post is too long already, without yet approaching the more pressing matters of high risk GMO agriculture (the eventual goal, but by experience one that needs gradual introduction on this forum), a break for the experts to weigh in.

 

This entire response could be summarize as asking the question "How do we assess safety?"

 

The regulatory framework and the methods of doing so have been in place for at least two decades now and the scientific consensus is that this is sufficient to provide safety to the public health. In my last response I addressed how we do this.

 

P.S. Its ok to use periods and break run-on sentences up into multiple sentences.

[Ringer]

Now if we ratchet a notch, and look at engineered American Chestnuts made resistant to a Eurasian fungus by swapping some alleles with Eurasian chestnuts, so far so good, but also gunning in extensive code taken from domestic wheat - now some new stuff comes up. For starters, people eat chestnuts if available and they will continue to do so, and people are sometimes seriously allergic to wheat. People even use chestnut flour fermented by yeast as a part substitute for wheat flour fermented by yeast, in baking. We hope to plant these trees all over, so people will be inundated by pollen from them. And so forth. So in addition to the minor concerns of antibiotic resistance etc above (but not forgetting them), we need a scientific basis for assuring ourselves that this gunned in code - in all its possible manifestations and locations and fragmentary expressions - will play no role in touching off allergic reactions in people.

That's why they test for common allergens. And if there is an allergen present it would be in their best interest to add a label, else they would lose an unbelievable amount of money to law suits.

 

So maybe we want to go back to the engineers and say "get your fungus resistance code somewhere else". Unfortunately, that is not as easy as it sounds. We are in the very early stages of this huge and complex field of technological expertise, and multiple well-understood sources of suitable fungus resistance code are not that easily come by. The genetic basis of fungus resistance in Eurasian chestnuts, for example (the obvious first choice), is very complicated and not well understood and certainly not available off the shelf from the lab next door. Wheat code is. So if we make that requirement, we impose large costs and long delays on the development of what would clearly be a great boon to us all.

Why would the fungus resistance automatically code for some allergen we know to check for? Do you think these engineers are ignorant enough to not be able to selectively code for resistance, or alter the gene, so the allergen is not present?

 

We might have to, to be reasonable and prudent. But before we do that, let's consider: What kind of scientific basis do we need to assure reasonable safety in the deployment of wheat code gunned into chestnut trees? And as this post is too long already, without yet approaching the more pressing matters of high risk GMO agriculture (the eventual goal, but by experience one that needs gradual introduction on this forum), a break for the experts to weigh in.

 

Again, just because the code came from a wheat plant =/= wheat allergens are present. So, since we know allergens in wheat we will not add those genes. In case there is an unknown, we test the protein that is being coded to see if there is some sort of allergic reaction. Then further tests are conducted to see if there are dangerous metabolic products or reactions when eaten. If none are found we can conclude the inserted gene is relatively safe.

[Prometheus]

If there are specific scientific questions...

 

 

Hi. I have two questions i hope could be addressed:

 

1.) I have heard it said that through GMOs it will be possible to feed the world, in the context of arguments for it. I have also heard it said that there is currently enough food in the world to feed its current population. Assuming both these are correct, and assuming of the latter that it is a problem of distribution rather than production, how is it envisaged GMO will feed the world?

 

2.) What assurances are made that GMOs will not upset existing ecosystems? I'm speculating about something like a plant species given some reproductive advantage, and then that species proliferates to competitively destroy its competition, leading to a single species dominating, with consequences on the rest of the local ecosystem.

 

This is a subject i know little about, so looking forward to answers.

[chadn737]

 

 

 

Hi. I have two questions i hope could be addressed:

 

1.) I have heard it said that through GMOs it will be possible to feed the world, in the context of arguments for it. I have also heard it said that there is currently enough food in the world to feed its current population. Assuming both these are correct, and assuming of the latter that it is a problem of distribution rather than production, how is it envisaged GMO will feed the world?

 

Much of it is distribution, but there are many reasons to be concerned about overall production. For one, much of our production is used for purposes other than food production or even feeding livestock. Significant amounts of the US corn harvest goes towards ethanol production. Secondly, redistributing the production of the first world to those regions that most need it is probably not the best approach. Its the old adage of "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." It is more than merely feeding people, it is also giving them independence and alleviation of poverty. By making resources available to third world farmers, we can do both. This is exactly what happened during the green revolution, when the number of chronically hungry people in the world dropped from 60% to 17%.

 

We also have to think in terms of population growth. In the next 50 years, we will have around 3.5 billion additional people and in the next 20 alone, a 50% increased demand on our cereal production. GMOs alone wont solve this problem, neither will genetic diversity. The green revolution was fueled in no small part by breeding, but also fertilizer and pesticide usage. Going forward, GMOs will be an integral part. Though there is a lot of untapped genetic diversity within plant species, there is only so much. Some species are just diversity poor...Soybean for example. Maize has incredible diversity, but soybean surprisingly lacks a lot. Thats why many breeders are trying to integrated the diversity found in related, yet different species. Its not just about production either. Millions of people suffer from vitamin A deficiency, even though they get enough calories to live. Engineering crops with increased nutrient content (like Golden Rice) can directly address this issue.

 

40% of our food supply comes from irrigated lands, which accounts for 70% of water consumption. One of the major areas of research and development in GMOs is finding ways of dealing with drought. Then include the fact of climate change, new pest pressures (human movement spreads new diseases, weeds, insects to regions they never were before), land degradation, etc and we have a major challenge ahead of us. GMOs are an essential component of the toolbox.

 

2.) What assurances are made that GMOs will not upset existing ecosystems? I'm speculating about something like a plant species given some reproductive advantage, and then that species proliferates to competitively destroy its competition, leading to a single species dominating, with consequences on the rest of the local ecosystem.

 

 

GMOs are tested by both the EPA and USDA (other agencies in other nations) for their effects on wild species. Domesticated species in general are not good at competing alone with wild species. They possess traits that make them less competitive. The concern then is with gene flow of the specific trait out of the domesticated crop to wild relatives. This is of a concern, and there are extensive studies of gene flow to and from crops and wild relatives. The USDA also directly tests and regulates this issue. A lot of it will depend on the specific trait. For instance, glyphosate resistance is only of advantage in cases where glyphosate is sprayed. So primarily in the field. Traits meant to confer increased value, such as high oil content, would actually be disadvantageous in the wild as it diverts resources and energy towards traits that are not involved in survival.

 

Of all the concerns, I find gene flow and resistance to be the only truly valid ones with any backing by scientific evidence. However, agriculture has forever altered the landscape and there are alternative considerations tradeoffs. If we risk gene flow into wild relatives, is that a worst fate than requiring more land and more habitat destruction? I'm interested in discussing this more, but can't at the moment.

[Prometheus]

 

It is more than merely feeding people, it is also giving them independence and alleviation of poverty. By making resources available to third world farmers, we can do both. This is exactly what happened during the green revolution, when the number of chronically hungry people in the world dropped from 60% to 17%.

 

So GMOs aren't patented and farmers will be free to grow without dependence on industry?

 

I couldn't find a reference for the drop in world from 60% to 17%. Are you anticipating a similarly spectacular drop with wholesale implementation of GMOs, and if so based on what findings?

 

 

GMOs are tested by both the EPA and USDA (other agencies in other nations) for their effects on wild species. Domesticated species in general are not good at competing alone with wild species. They possess traits that make them less competitive. The concern then is with gene flow of the specific trait out of the domesticated crop to wild relatives. This is of a concern, and there are extensive studies of gene flow to and from crops and wild relatives. The USDA also directly tests and regulates this issue. A lot of it will depend on the specific trait. For instance, glyphosate resistance is only of advantage in cases where glyphosate is sprayed. So primarily in the field. Traits meant to confer increased value, such as high oil content, would actually be disadvantageous in the wild as it diverts resources and energy towards traits that are not involved in survival.

 

Of all the concerns, I find gene flow and resistance to be the only truly valid ones with any backing by scientific evidence. However, agriculture has forever altered the landscape and there are alternative considerations tradeoffs. If we risk gene flow into wild relatives, is that a worst fate than requiring more land and more habitat destruction? I'm interested in discussing this more, but can't at the moment.

 

Are EPA and USDA bodies with similar powers as the FDA and MHRA (medicines regulators) in that certain strains will not enter the market if there is insufficient evidence of benefit and non-maleficence?

 

I'm unfamiliar with the field (pun not intended), but i understand that ecosystems are very complex and not well understood. If so, what constitutes good evidence of non-maleficence?

[chadn737]

 

So GMOs aren't patented and farmers will be free to grow without dependence on industry?

 

I couldn't find a reference for the drop in world from 60% to 17%. Are you anticipating a similarly spectacular drop with wholesale implementation of GMOs, and if so based on what findings?

 

Some are. It takes $137 million dollars typically to develop a GMO. Some aren't. Those developed by companies are patented. They would go bankrupt if they weren't. Some are developed by academic and philanthropic organizations and they are made freely available. An example of the former would be Bt cotton. An example of the latter is Golden Rice. However, many third world farmers are willing to and want to pay more for GMOs because it increases yield, decreases other costs, and increases their profits.

 

There are several references on the drop in hunger.

 

Are EPA and USDA bodies with similar powers as the FDA and MHRA (medicines regulators) in that certain strains will not enter the market if there is insufficient evidence of benefit and non-maleficence?

I'm unfamiliar with the field (pun not intended), but i understand that ecosystems are very complex and not well understood. If so, what constitutes good evidence of non-maleficence?

 

 

Yes, the EPA and USDA have power to prevent a product from entering the market. There are multiple experiments that have to be done. For instance, in the case of Bt crops, which produce a natural pesticide, the experiments are done on toxicity on non-target species. The effects of Bt on insects like Bees were done from the start. I'll write more later, have to run at the moment.

[Prometheus]

I look forward to hearing more, particularly about what would constitute evidence of potential harm to an ecosystem as whole.

[overtone]

For instance, in the case of Bt crops, which produce a natural pesticide, the experiments are done on toxicity on non-target species. The effects of Bt on insects like Bees were done from the start.

One of the most obvious lessons from the advent of Colony Collapse Disorder was that whatever research had been done on the effects of Bt maize or cotton plantings on honeybees had been completely inadequate - nobody knew whether Bt ubiquity in the landscape was responsible, a contrbuting factor, or not indicated at all.

 

Nobody could say for sure what the exposure regime and distribution was, even - the GMOs involved had been pirated in places (making definitely unexposed bees hard to verify), horizontal transfer had not been studied long term in the field, the exposure of bees in various landscapes not been observed over enough time and was not being monitored (full seasons of bee behavior over several common real world landscape flowering sequences and standard winter regimes, for enough years to get a handle on variation, have not been done to this day).

 

No studies on combinations of various pesticide and herbicide interactions with GM Bt over enough normal agricultural seasons and landscapes to cover normal weather and tillage variations had been done - mostly still haven't, as the expense and time prohibit. The field surveys and lab studies of these, brief investigations under greatly simplified circumstances, were begun after the collapse of the bee colonies was found to be of unknown cause and that aspect of the situation was finally recognized by the non-hippy corporate crowd - years after the GMO most suspected of involvement had been deployed across entire landscapes.

 

And of course the investigation into various bee and Bt interactions with the natural landscapes - with their native bees and other insects, possibly contributing plants, diseases and organisms implicated in genetic spread, etc - has barely begun yet.

 

And so forth. The launching of numerous basic investigations into various aspects of Bt GMOs and honeybees after the CCD reached emergency levels is proof of that. The investigation into all the potential channels of influence on CCD that Bt GMOs have available will take decades yet.

 

And that is the situation with the most thoroughly reasearched and directly important insect on the planet, and the second best researched and second longest experienced GMO on the landscape, in First World countries. Everything else is less well known or investigated.

 

Since nobody has weighed in usefully on evaluating the human medical safety of American chestnut trees engineered with wheat anti-fungus code - a narrowly focused real world question that science has much to say about - we observe that it's not an easy evaluation to make at this stage of this profoundly new and potential-ridden field. Can we at least say that converting all of our commercial chestnut plantings to this GMO, without knowing much more than we do, would entail serious risk? Good. How about planting the tree all over the country, at this level of our knowledge?

 

We can also make the following focused statements: It is not true that the scientists doing this engineering have complete knowledge of the role of the code they are inserting even in its original plant or people's harms from that plant - even if this code has no relationship with gluten, which is not known, and the auxiliary code they use has no harmful medical effects of any kind (also unknown), there is a large area of unknown here. It is not a safe place to place bets of significance. ( Just this past month or so we have articles about newly recognized non-gluten based wheat sensitivity, possibly six times as common as celiac disease, harmful, of unknown cause. If as with many such disorders it develops over time, like many food problems it would not be detected by any test currently employed by anyone before approval for deployment of any GMO.

 

So no evidence of harm, see, which when taken as evidence of safety marks serious and basic errors of comprehension.)

 

 

 

If we risk gene flow into wild relatives, is that a worst fate than requiring more land and more habitat destruction?

GMOs are the basis of the latest wave of prairie destruction for beans and even corn in my region - marginal land in the Dakotas and surrounds, though not as productive with GMOs, is more profitable with them. Glyphosate is a great herbicide for clearing and keeping marginal land - much cheaper than physical methods, until it stops working.

 

 

 

GMOs are tested by both the EPA and USDA (other agencies in other nations) for their effects on wild species

As the serious concerns and problems with pollinators surfaced, and nobody knew what was going on, we saw that whatever tests had been done were nowhere near adequate to address even the most obvious concerns.

 

And that is in the US and Europe. In India and China and Indonesia, nobody is even pretending. The Chinese are planting Bt trees - about the equivalent, in responsible awareness of risk, of installing an anitbiotic dispenser in your air conditioning.

 

At the current level of ecological knowledge, only rudimentary and poorly informative "tests" in this matter are possible anyway - and those would take years. Nobody is delaying deployment of highly profitable GMOs for years while their effects on some soil arthropods nobody ever heard of are properly studied, and their unsuspected interactions with the fungus that kills grasshoppers in boom years are traced. Or any other of the billion possibilities we cannot rule out at this stage.

 

There is no safety in ignorance. There is great risk in obliviousness to one's ignorance.

 

 

 

Of all the concerns, I find gene flow and resistance to be the only truly valid ones with any backing by scientific evidence.

The resistance is basically a certainty, the only question being how much harm and to whom. The evidence for risk from the dietary alterations is probably the best established, as risk - little or no adequate research or regulation, wholesale conversion of the diet of a continent on short notice, not even labelign let alone carefully monitoring for trouble. Gene flow would be the new thing that we know about - but it's so recent and underinvestigated that even basics (such as the typical increase in rate and distance of horizontal transfer due to the physical circumstances of shotgun engineering, or the gene flow rate during bacterial processing in one's small intestine) are still to be established.

 

 

 

It is more than merely feeding people, it is also giving them independence and alleviation of poverty. By making resources available to third world farmers, we can do both. This is exactly what happened during the green revolution,

Creating dependence on foreign agribusiness and foreign bankers and foreign markets, destroying local agricultural markets and resources and local food security, is not what the Mexican government and Norman Borlaug et al did in the Green Revolution.

 

In many cases, such as in Colombia with quinoa, it's more a matter of what resources the Third World can be coerced into making available to "us".

 

One can modernize primitive agriculture without the current industrial ag GMOs - divert more of the research moneys into "standard" crop and animal husbandry, use genetic tech to speed up regular breeding or abet commensals rather than creating chimeras, get the benefit, take fewer risks among vulnerable people.

Edited April 28, 2014 by overtone

[chadn737]

I look forward to hearing more, particularly about what would constitute evidence of potential harm to an ecosystem as whole.

 

That is a difficult question...how do you define an ecosystem as a whole and the harm done to it? I come from Iowa, where my family farms. Nearly the entire state was under cultivation and the ecosystem permanently altered long before GMOs. Ecosystems are in constant flux and I'm not sure how one would even go about determining harm to the system as a "whole", unless it constituted complete die-off, massive extinctions, or something else drastic, like desertification. None of these are even reasonable effects of GMOs. The hypothetical harm of GMOs in an ecosystem...and lets keep in mind that this is hypothetical...are more targeted to a handful of species.

 

Fears of "gene flow" are valid, but they are not limited to GMOs. One of the worst weeds of Sugar beet in Europe (and growing in the US) is weed beet. There is extensive hybridization between domesticated sugar beet and weed beet which contributes to the weediness of weed beets. All of this occurs outside of the context of GMOs.

 

So when I hear arguments of the risk of gene flow made against GMOs, I recognize them as valid to an extent, but I also find this argument to be a nonstarter. That is because the risk is a general one of all domestication and life in general. So the problem is a much bigger one of agriculture as a whole and the simple fact is that the risk is still as real whether one uses traditional breeding or GMOs. Gene flow and hybridization will occur under organic production as well as conventional production. There is no "innocent" or "harmless" way to produce food....at least not in the sense that many anti-GMO advocates and environmentalists envisage. I increasingly hear such phrases as "species barrier" and other nonsense used in the context of these debates. All which suggests that a lot of opponents have an unrealistic sense of evolution, of nature, of agriculture, and its purity.

 

Each GMO must be evaluated separately for its environmental risks and that is done. The EPA and USDA are pretty strict about this. Ironically, no such risk assessments are conducted for crops produced by traditional breeding or mutagenesis, all of which pose the same risks and all of which are acceptable by organic standards. Thats why I view GMOs as the "safest" crops.

[chadn737]

One of the most obvious lessons from the advent of Colony Collapse Disorder was that whatever research had been done on the effects of Bt maize or cotton plantings on honeybees had been completely inadequate - nobody knew whether Bt ubiquity in the landscape was responsible, a contrbuting factor, or not indicated at all.

 

Nobody could say for sure what the exposure regime and distribution was, even - the GMOs involved had been pirated in places (making definitely unexposed bees hard to verify), horizontal transfer had not been studied long term in the field, the exposure of bees in various landscapes not been observed over enough time and was not being monitored (full seasons of bee behavior over several common real world landscape flowering sequences and standard winter regimes, for enough years to get a handle on variation, have not been done to this day).

No studies on combinations of various pesticide and herbicide interactions with GM Bt over enough normal agricultural seasons and landscapes to cover normal weather and tillage variations had been done - mostly still haven't, as the expense and time prohibit. The field surveys and lab studies of these, brief investigations under greatly simplified circumstances, were begun after the collapse of the bee colonies was found to be of unknown cause and that aspect of the situation was finally recognized by the non-hippy corporate crowd - years after the GMO most suspected of involvement had been deployed across entire landscapes.

And of course the investigation into various bee and Bt interactions with the natural landscapes - with their native bees and other insects, possibly contributing plants, diseases and organisms implicated in genetic spread, etc - has barely begun yet.

And so forth. The launching of numerous basic investigations into various aspects of Bt GMOs and honeybees after the CCD reached emergency levels is proof of that. The investigation into all the potential channels of influence on CCD that Bt GMOs have available will take decades yet.

And that is the situation with the most thoroughly reasearched and directly important insect on the planet, and the second best researched and second longest experienced GMO on the landscape, in First World countries. Everything else is less well known or investigated.

Since nobody has weighed in usefully on evaluating the human medical safety of American chestnut trees engineered with wheat anti-fungus code - a narrowly focused real world question that science has much to say about - we observe that it's not an easy evaluation to make at this stage of this profoundly new and potential-ridden field. Can we at least say that converting all of our commercial chestnut plantings to this GMO, without knowing much more than we do, would entail serious risk? Good. How about planting the tree all over the country, at this level of our knowledge?

We can also make the following focused statements: It is not true that the scientists doing this engineering have complete knowledge of the role of the code they are inserting even in its original plant or people's harms from that plant - even if this code has no relationship with gluten, which is not known, and the auxiliary code they use has no harmful medical effects of any kind (also unknown), there is a large area of unknown here. It is not a safe place to place bets of significance. ( Just this past month or so we have articles about newly recognized non-gluten based wheat sensitivity, possibly six times as common as celiac disease, harmful, of unknown cause. If as with many such disorders it develops over time, like many food problems it would not be detected by any test currently employed by anyone before approval for deployment of any GMO.

So no evidence of harm, see, which when taken as evidence of safety marks serious and basic errors of comprehension.)

 

As the serious concerns and problems with pollinators surfaced, and nobody knew what was going on, we saw that whatever tests had been done were nowhere near adequate to address even the most obvious concerns.

And that is in the US and Europe. In India and China and Indonesia, nobody is even pretending. The Chinese are planting Bt trees - about the equivalent, in responsible awareness of risk, of installing an anitbiotic dispenser in your air conditioning.

At the current level of ecological knowledge, only rudimentary and poorly informative "tests" in this matter are possible anyway - and those would take years. Nobody is delaying deployment of highly profitable GMOs for years while their effects on some soil arthropods nobody ever heard of are properly studied, and their unsuspected interactions with the fungus that kills grasshoppers in boom years are traced. Or any other of the billion possibilities we cannot rule out at this stage.

There is no safety in ignorance. There is great risk in obliviousness to one's ignorance.

 

 

Thats false. I know that in the past I linked you to at least one study from the early 90s (when these crops were first being evaluated and commercialized) that directly looked at the potential effects on honey bees. There are many others from this same time period:

 

1) Bacillus thuringiensis var. kurstaki [CryIA ©] protein expressed in transgenic cotton: effects on beneficial and other non-target insects

 

2) Effects of a Bacillus thuringiensis toxin, two Bacillus thuringiensis biopesticide formulations, and a soybean trypsin inhibitor on honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) survival and food consumption

 

3) Impatto ecologico di piante transgeniche-Bt [bacillus thuringiensis]. 1: Verifica dei possibili effetti della tossina CryIIIB su colonie di api domestiche (Apis mellifera L.)

 

4) Safety Assessment of Insect-Protected Corn

 

Ironically, since Bt has long been used as a sprayed-on pesticide and still is by organic farmers, there have been studies of its environmental effects, specifically on bees going back even before the development of GMOs or apart from their effects as GMOs.

 

5) Environmental and Health Impacts of Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Look at table 3 which lists a massive number of studies looking at effects on non-target species...some studies going back to 1980).

 

So we know that there has been numerous studies on the effects of Bt before, during, and after the development of Bt crops. Many studies looking specifically at the effects on honey bees. These studies continue to this day:

 

6) A Meta-Analysis of Effects of Bt Crops on Honey Bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

 

7) Effects of Cry1Ab protoxin, deltamethrin and imidacloprid on the foraging activity and the learning performances of the honeybee Apis mellifera, a comparative approach

 

8) Contact and oral toxicity to honey bees (Apis mellifera) of agents registered for use for sweet corn insect control in Ontario, Canada

 

9) The oral toxicity of the transgenic Bt+CpTI cotton pollen to honeybees (Apis mellifera)

 

10) Bacterial community structures in honeybee intestines and their response to two insecticidal proteins

 

I could give you many more studies....time and again, no significant impact is found. To suggest that there is an association between Bt and colony collapse disorder or that we did not know the effects of Bt then or now flies in the face of a large body of research.

 

In fact the major culprit appears to be Varroa destructor, a parasitic mite.

 

You keep making these vague unsubstantiated claims trying to implicate GMOs, yet all the research argues the exact opposite. This is a science forum, not a conspiracy theorist forum. Lets base our conclusions on hard scientific data, not vague suggestions and conspiracy theories.

 

GMOs are the basis of the latest wave of prairie destruction for beans and even corn in my region - marginal land in the Dakotas and surrounds, though not as productive with GMOs, is more profitable with them. Glyphosate is a great herbicide for clearing and keeping marginal land - much cheaper than physical methods, until it stops working.

 

 

Also false. You are confusing correlation with causation. The basis of increased corn and soybean acreage is the increased demand for these products, driven primarily by government mandated ethanol requirements. This has led to rapid increases in corn prices, making it more profitable to grow corn even on mariginal land.

 

Ethanol-fueled corn boom advances conversion of prairie potholes -- study

 

Ethanol destroys prairies

 

That these crops happen to be GMOs is merely coincidence, not causative. Again, you are making unsubstantiated claims trying to implicate GMOs as harmful, when the facts say the exact opposite.

Edited May 2, 2014 by chadn737

[overtone]

Thats false. I know that in the past I linked you to at least one study from the early 90s (when these crops were first being evaluated and commercialized) that directly looked at the potential effects on honey bees. There are many others from this same time period:

So what claim was falsified by y6our link? They did some studies - and when the honeybee population collapsed they found out that they had to do a lot more studies - because they didn't know a lot of stuff.

 

 

 

Ironically, since Bt has long been used as a sprayed-on pesticide and still is by organic farmers, there have been studies of its environmental effects, specifically on bees going back even before the development of GMOs or apart from their effects as GMOs.

And when the honeybee population collapsed, they were forced to recognize what anyone with a basic undergrad famliarity with insect ecology could have (and many did) told them - their studies of spray-on Bt did not tell them what they needed to know about the effects of Bt GMOs on honeybees or anything else.

 

 

 

To suggest that there is an association between Bt and colony collapse disorder or that we did not know the effects of Bt then or now flies in the face of a large body of research.

So you're sure that's what they are going to find? Clairvoyance is a valuable talent.

 

Meanwhile, the launching of so much major research in the wake of the honeybee collapse is essentially proof of my contention that the research had not been done. Are you claiming they are duplicating their prior efforts?

 

.

So we know that there has been numerous studies on the effects of Bt before, during, and after the development of Bt crops. Many studies looking specifically at the effects on honey bees. These studies continue to this day:

And some time in future, hopefully sooner rather than later, they will be able to describe the effects of Bt GMOs (and maybe even glyphosate resistant GMOs) on honeybees in real circunstances over time and weather and seasons etc. Meanwhile, before doing all this research, they converted most of American agriculure to them - so we certainly hope they do not end up with really bad news.

 

Meanwhile, we live with the risk.

 

 

 

Also false. You are confusing correlation with causation. The basis of increased corn and soybean acreage is the increased demand for these products, driven primarily by government mandated ethanol requirements.

All that acreage is being planted no-till, using glyphosate resistant crops.

 

Soybean acreage is reduced, not increased, by ethanol demand. It is increased, and expanded into formerly unprofitable land, by the availability of GMO beans.

 

And I am just passing on what the farmers and industry experts say about no-till making these drier, erosion-vulnerable, and otherwise marginal lands profitable - it's one of the big advantages of those GM crops, remember?

 

 

 

So when I hear arguments of the risk of gene flow made against GMOs, I recognize them as valid to an extent, but I also find this argument to be a nonstarter. That is because the risk is a general one of all domestication and life in general.

You speak of "the risk" as if it were one and the same risk, equivalent in nature and scope and severity across all life in general. That betrays a naivety and obliviousness to the nature of the risk here I find almost universal among GMO promoters.

 

The risk of gene flow from GMOs remains to be evaluated - so far, I haven't seen even an attempt at quantifying merely the change in probability of far-taxa horizontal transfer from GMOs compared with unmodified organisms. That is beyond current capability. The quantitative evaluation of the severity or change in risk, the danger as well as the odds, is a distant hope.

 

Much of the problem is a lack of sufficient understanding of natural gene flow and what limits it or boosts it. It's a classic low information low-probability high-consequence situation - exactly the kind of thing technocrats have proven to be really bad at assessing in advance, in other arenas throughout the modern industrial age.

 

The basic situation is obvious: GMOs are engineered in the first place by a process of enabling and establishing a horizontal gene transfer. The code goes into an accessible place, accompanied by everything it needs to set up and function - promoters, insertion code, whatever is needed to cut and splice, marker genetics so it's establishment and location can be determined, and so forth. It isn't a stretch to hypothesize, as an indicated possibility, that this code in this location and set up this way might be more likely to transfer horizontally across equivalent taxon gaps in the future, more likely than an average stretch of code.

 

And the damage it can do is not really in contention. It's self-reproducing - exponential growth is a real possibility.

Edited May 10, 2014 by overtone

[chadn737]

EDIT:

 

Many of the issue surrounding GMOs are discussed in this extensive book from the National Academies of Science:

 

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12804&page=R13

 

 

So what claim was falsified by y6our link? They did some studies - and when the honeybee population collapsed they found out that they had to do a lot more studies - because they didn't know a lot of stuff.

 

You are using classic fear mongering tactics. Even though we had studies on the effects of Bt going back to the 1980s, plus many more dealing with GMOs before their release, you claim that we did not know. That subsequent studies have only verified these earlier reports show that we actually did know and that those previous studies were correct.

 

Its a classic fear mongering tactic to try and falsely lead people to believe that "there is not enough research" or that "the research is inadequate" or that "we just don't know". This is the fallacy known as an "argument from ignorance."

 

These later studies prove that the earlier studies were in fact adequate and correct. The only reason we continue to need or fund these new studies is because anti-GMO advocates continue to make these claims and scare an ignorant public, thus forcing scientists to continually repeat themselves. Its exactly like the global warming debate. We know the Earth is warming, we know this is being driven by anthropogenic causes, yet global warming deniars continue to argue to the contrary making the exact same claims that "we don't know" or "the research is inadequate", etc...this has the cause of making us continually have to revisit the issue.

 

Its settled, we know that GMOs are not the cause of colony collapse.

 

And when the honeybee population collapsed, they were forced to recognize what anyone with a basic undergrad famliarity with insect ecology could have (and many did) told them - their studies of spray-on Bt did not tell them what they needed to know about the effects of Bt GMOs on honeybees or anything else.

 

 

Except that we have studies published in the early 90s (which means the research was conducted much earlier) at the same time when these crops were being developed. These showed no effect and there is absolutely no sensible reason why spray on Bt would have less an effect than GMO Bt. Spray on Bt is applied non-discriminately, meaning it will fall on whatever plant is pollinated by Bees. Furthermore, it is used in non-GMO crops, like fruits and vegetables where honey bees are especially active and used. Contrast that to Cotton and Maize fields, which are not pollinated by bees commercially and would not be a source of pollen for these collapsing colonies. If anything, spray on Bt would have a far more damaging effect, than GMOs.

 

So you're sure that's what they are going to find? Clairvoyance is a valuable talent.

Meanwhile, the launching of so much major research in the wake of the honeybee collapse is essentially proof of my contention that the research had not been done. Are you claiming they are duplicating their prior efforts?

 

 

Yes, they are duplicating their prior efforts. Some of this research is essentially duplications of earlier research. After all, do to the unfounded fear mongering tactics of anti-GMO activists, there is continued concern and pressure from an ignorant public. So we continue to duplicate efforts to prove the same thing over and over again. Its just like the global warming debate. Deniers continue to challenge sound science, forcing a stand still in research.

 

And some time in future, hopefully sooner rather than later, they will be able to describe the effects of Bt GMOs (and maybe even glyphosate resistant GMOs) on honeybees in real circunstances over time and weather and seasons etc. Meanwhile, before doing all this research, they converted most of American agriculure to them - so we certainly hope they do not end up with really bad news.

Meanwhile, we live with the risk.

 

 

This is again fear mongering.

 

You present no evidence to the contrary, no scientific basis for any of your claims. Despite all the research I presented, which there is much more, you simply make vague unsubstantiated claims that suggest we have no clue what is going on. That is false and is nothing more than fear mongering. Such unsubstantiated claims have no place in science or scientific debates.

I challenge you to support your claims or retract them.

 

All that acreage is being planted no-till, using glyphosate resistant crops.

Soybean acreage is reduced, not increased, by ethanol demand. It is increased, and expanded into formerly unprofitable land, by the availability of GMO beans.

And I am just passing on what the farmers and industry experts say about no-till making these drier, erosion-vulnerable, and otherwise marginal lands profitable - it's one of the big advantages of those GM crops, remember?

 

 

False.

 

Soybeans are the typical crop grown in rotation with corn. When farmers take marginal lands out of reserve...meaning lands that were not being used for commodity crop production and place them into corn production, due to high ethanol demand, they are most likely to use a corn/soybean rotation. The reason for this is to break disease cycles, reduce nitrogen requirements, etc. There is another driving force behind this as well. With the ethanol boom, corn on corn production increased, primarily in high-quality areas, like central Iowa and Illinois. This had the effect of also driving up soybean prices, thus making soybeans also attractive for production.

 

The result being that the conversion of marginal land to crop production, whether corn or soybean has been driven by the ethanol boom. This conversion of marginal lands has only happened in the last few years with high commodity prices. Through the mid-90s and early 2000s, when commodity prices were low, many farmers placed land under conservation reserve peaking in 2008...about the time the ethanol boom started taking off. However, we have had Roundup Ready soybeans for well over a decade at this point. So if GMOs were the driving cause....why did CRP acreage continue to increase throughout that decade and decrease only in 2008 when prices started to increase? Hmmm...logic and basic common sense says that your argument is wrong. Once again, I refer you back to my previous sources that clearly show that the driving cause is ethanol.

 

You speak of "the risk" as if it were one and the same risk, equivalent in nature and scope and severity across all life in general. That betrays a naivety and obliviousness to the nature of the risk here I find almost universal among GMO promoters.

Because the risk is the same. Once integrated into the genome, that transgene is no more likely to spread than any other "native" gene in the plant. So when hybridization of non-GMO sugarbeets with weedy cousins created one of the worst weeds in sugarbeet fields the risk of such gene flow for those traits was no less than that of a transgenic trait.

The risk of gene flow from GMOs remains to be evaluated -

 

That's complete bullshit. The risk of gene flow from GMOs has been extensively studied, far more so than gene flow from traditional breeding, which has produced far more effects than any GMOs.

A simple google search for such studies produces thousands of results. So don't tell me that it has not been evaluated.

so far, I haven't seen even an attempt at quantifying merely the change in probability of far-taxa horizontal transfer from GMOs compared with unmodified organisms. That is beyond current capability. The quantitative evaluation of the severity or change in risk, the danger as well as the odds, is a distant hope.

Again false...these risks have actually been assessed, which if you bothered to do a simple Google Scholar search before claiming there is no research, you would know. Heres a few examples (from many):

1) Risks from GMOs due to Horizontal Gene Transfer

2) A review of numerous studies: Horizontal gene transfer as a biosafety issue: A natural phenomenon of public concern

3) Microbial horizontal gene transfer and the DNA release from transgenic crop plants

4) And another review: Horizontal transfer of antibiotic resistance genes from transgenic plants to bacteria

What we have learned here is that 1) such research is not beyond our capability, 2) the studies have been done, 3) the risk is very low, 4) you are wrong, and 5) you did not bother to research your claims before making them.

Much of the problem is a lack of sufficient understanding of natural gene flow and what limits it or boosts it. It's a classic low information low-probability high-consequence situation - exactly the kind of thing technocrats have proven to be really bad at assessing in advance, in other arenas throughout the modern industrial age.

This is false, proven false by the numerous studies I have presented and also yet another classic case of fear mongering.

The basic situation is obvious: GMOs are engineered in the first place by a process of enabling and establishing a horizontal gene transfer. The code goes into an accessible place, accompanied by everything it needs to set up and function - promoters, insertion code, whatever is needed to cut and splice, marker genetics so it's establishment and location can be determined, and so forth. It isn't a stretch to hypothesize, as an indicated possibility, that this code in this location and set up this way might be more likely to transfer horizontally across equivalent taxon gaps in the future, more likely than an average stretch of code.

Actually it is a stretch. There no known way that horizontal transfer would be more likely to occur nor any reason to suspect as much. Furthermore, numerous studies suggest just the opposite, that it is unlikely to occur.

This is yet more unsubstantiated claims. I challenge you to support that it is more likely with scientific evidence or retract such claims.

And the damage it can do is not really in contention. It's self-reproducing - exponential growth is a real possibility.

 

 

 

Oooo.....SCARY!!!!!!! Yet again, more fear mongering language in the absence of any verifiable facts.

Edited May 21, 2014 by chadn737

[Prometheus]

Here is my honest assessment of this debate.

 

I'm too lazy, i mean busy, to look at the evidence for myself. Therefore i use proxy measures to help me decide. It has the feeling of climate science debates where a slew of information is presented making interpretation very difficult. Because i am more confident of the evidence on climate science i will prefer those who debate in a similar style to climate scientists and reject those who debate like climate denialists. At the moment i am erring on the side of pro GMO.

[overtone]

Even though we had studies on the effects of Bt going back to the 1980s, plus many more dealing with GMOs before their release, you claim that we did not know. That subsequent studies have only verified these earlier reports show that we actually did know and that those previous studies were correct.

Y'know, I think you have actually conflated Bt used topically with Bt expressed in the tissue of the plant, there.

 

At any rate, your contention that they were redoing and verifying previous studies is just silly. They had to do all those studies after the colonies collapsed, because they hadn't done them - and no, they did not "confirm" the harmlessness of GMO Bt or GMO glyphosate resistance in the honeybee foraging area: they got conflicting results, had some problems with complications introduced by newly discovered synergy between several factors including the weather, and the matter is not settled even yet. (One of their difficulties is finding control groups of bees in natrual settings that can be guaranteed free of GMO exposure)

 

 

 

These showed no effect and there is absolutely no sensible reason why spray on Bt would have less an effect than GMO Bt. Spray on Bt is applied non-discriminately, meaning it will fall on whatever plant is pollinated by Bees. Furthermore, it is used in non-GMO crops, like fruits and vegetables where honey bees are especially active and used. Contrast that to Cotton and Maize fields, which are not pollinated by bees commercially and would not be a source of pollen for these collapsing colonies. If anything, spray on Bt would have a far more damaging effect, than GMOs

OMG. Where to start - - - The most obviously stupid claim there was that Bt is applied non-discriminately compared with GMO Bt expression: topical Bt is expensive and specialized, is applied only when and wnere needed (so it is unlikely to saturate pollen, say), does not persist significantly, and like all insecticides is generally kept away from beehives and not applied to plants when or where the farmer expects pollination by bees. GMO Bt, on the other hand, is essentially spread over the entire landscape all season long regardless of circumstances. Whether the pollen involved (which was not supposed to express the stuff in the first place - so many surprises in a new field) was getting on the bees and into the hives somehow was one of those things they had to research after the colonies started collapsing - both maize and cotton are flowering plants, and bees do visit them to some extent. Also, maize pollen blows around and collects in places visited by bees, who are little dust bunnies in general.

 

And there is the glyphosate resistance GM, not studied either.

 

 

 

What we have learned here is that 1) such research is not beyond our capability, 2) the studies have been done, 3) the risk is very low, 4) you are wrong, and 5) you did not bother to research your claims before making them.

Uh, No, I realize that reading comprehension is not your long suit, but you quoted my actual claim - here it is again:

 

so far, I haven't seen even an attempt at quantifying merely the change in probability of far-taxa horizontal transfer from GMOs compared with unmodified organisms. That is beyond current capability.

None of the studies you posted, or the reviews etc you linked, result in any such quantification. Not one. On the contrary, they support my claim by revealing the state of the research, which is obviously new and uncertain and far from being able to quantify such things.

 

 

 

Actually it is a stretch. There no known way that horizontal transfer would be more likely to occur nor any reason to suspect as much.

Of course there is - I listed three or four above, the obvious ones visible by simple inspection.

 

 

 

3) the risk is very low,

That one's worth repeating - misspoken, of course (the probability is very low, the risk is another matter), but reading for what you appear to have meant you have made a rare accurate statement. The probability of cross-taxon horizontal transfer of genetic material, even the stuff located and primed and adapted to abet horizontal transfer, is very low. It's so low it's hard to observe in controlled trials.

 

But unfortunately that's not enough to make the risk small. A low probability, sure - but an unknown one, and a high volume of opportunity, and a huge potential for serious harm. GMOs in that respect join the set of high tech hazards that involve poorly comprehended low probabilities of great harms - and we are not good at handling these situations in general. (In other respects, such as the control of national food supplies by a small number of corporate interests, GMOs risk high probability and familiar harms).

 

 

 

Because i am more confident of the evidence on climate science i will prefer those who debate in a similar style to climate scientists and reject those who debate like climate denialists. At the moment i am erring on the side of pro GMO.

That's odd. The pro-GMO crowd here is the side debating like climate denialists - you should be doubting them, on your criterion.

 

Unless it's been deleted by the moderators, somewhere on this forum there's a list of ten or so specific parallels between the arguments of the climate risk denialists and the GMO risk denialists - the resemblance is not far-fetched, and extends to specific rhetorical techniques (for example: long and ballyhooed lists of "scientific studies" posted as official looking "evidence" that upon inspection do not support the claims made, were not performed by researchers in the field at issue, aren't actual studies, were collected by keyword search without being read, etc etc etc).

Edited May 23, 2014 by overtone

[hypervalent_iodine]

!

Moderator Note

Overtone, once again you apparently need reminding not to insult other members when you post here. chadn737, you almost crossed the line in this regard also, so please be more mindful in future.

As well, overtone, do we really need to go over the fact that you need to cite your sources for the claims you are making?

[overtone]

 

 

As well, overtone, do we really need to go over the fact that you need to cite your sources for the claims you are making?

What claims?

 

Are you seriously asking me to source the claim that maize pollen blows around? That bees visit flowering plants? That genetically coded Bt expression within the tissue of a crop plant is expressed throughout the planted area and growing season? That farmers are generally judicious in their topical application of expensive pesticides and mostly aware of the need for pollination in their fruit and nut trees? That topical Bt is on the expensive side, a specialty pesticide? That researchers only recently reporting that they are only now beginning to get a handle on the roles of various pesticides in honeybee collapse were not just repeating former studies to "verify" what they already knew?

 

Seriously: what exactly are you talking about? The only claim of anything other than common fact and common sense I have made here that was not sourced immediately in the thread - normally by quote, sometimes by link to outside example - is that there have been no studies ("sources") of certain kinds or comprehensiveness, such as would be necessary to establish various aspects of "safety" (ecological, economic, medical, etc) in even specific GMOs (never mind "GMOs" in general, an impossible category). That blank spot on the research map, where there ought to be studies, is one of the indications of great risk in the current promulgation of GMOs. It points to ignorance, and the ignorant are at risk.

 

I'm a bit baffled by the demand for sources to support that claim, (sometimes even phrased as a demand for peer reviewed studies detecting and demonstrating harms from "GMOs"!?). It indicates, at best, a failure to follow the argument. The inability of GMO proponents to follow that simple, plain, many times repeated and numerously exampled (such as by every GMO-proponent posted list of sources that proves empty upon inspection) argument;

 

joining their inability or refusal to follow other arguments, acknowledge physical reality, and so forth (look at this:: "A simple google search for such studies produces thousands of results. So don't tell me that it has not been evaluated.". How am I supposed to respond to that without insulting the guy? )

 

is one more solid piece of evidence that GMOs as currently promulgated carry great risk. When GMO promulgators and some other significant factions of the self-satisfied hippie-disparaging "scientific" community appear that startlingly oblivious (giving them all the benefit of the doubt, avoiding accusation) to even the best focused of scientific questions in the matter, that itself is a threat: we are relying on their judgment in these deployments, and by the evidence it is (putting the best face possible on this situation) poorly informed.

 

Meanwhile: Might I point out that no defender of current GMO promulgation here has yet provided any sources supporting their claims? The posting of irrelevant or contradictory links (see chad's above) is not, after all, providing a "source" of support, and often they don't even bother with that charade ("Yes, they are duplicating their prior efforts. Some of this research is essentially duplications of earlier research." no link, no example, no description of such a duplication - and missed the point in the first place, with "some"). Just a side comment - do with it what you will.

[iNow]

^Summary: "No, I won't be offering citations despite the rules and a direct request to do so from a mod."

[chadn737]

What claims?

 

Are you seriously asking me to source the claim that maize pollen blows around? That bees visit flowering plants? That genetically coded Bt expression within the tissue of a crop plant is expressed throughout the planted area and growing season? That farmers are generally judicious in their topical application of expensive pesticides and mostly aware of the need for pollination in their fruit and nut trees? That topical Bt is on the expensive side, a specialty pesticide? That researchers only recently reporting that they are only now beginning to get a handle on the roles of various pesticides in honeybee collapse were not just repeating former studies to "verify" what they already knew?

 

Seriously: what exactly are you talking about? The only claim of anything other than common fact and common sense I have made here that was not sourced immediately in the thread - normally by quote, sometimes by link to outside example - is that there have been no studies ("sources") of certain kinds or comprehensiveness, such as would be necessary to establish various aspects of "safety" (ecological, economic, medical, etc) in even specific GMOs (never mind "GMOs" in general, an impossible category). That blank spot on the research map, where there ought to be studies, is one of the indications of great risk in the current promulgation of GMOs. It points to ignorance, and the ignorant are at risk.

 

I'm a bit baffled by the demand for sources to support that claim, (sometimes even phrased as a demand for peer reviewed studies detecting and demonstrating harms from "GMOs"!?). It indicates, at best, a failure to follow the argument. The inability of GMO proponents to follow that simple, plain, many times repeated and numerously exampled (such as by every GMO-proponent posted list of sources that proves empty upon inspection) argument;

 

joining their inability or refusal to follow other arguments, acknowledge physical reality, and so forth (look at this:: "A simple google search for such studies produces thousands of results. So don't tell me that it has not been evaluated.". How am I supposed to respond to that without insulting the guy? )

 

is one more solid piece of evidence that GMOs as currently promulgated carry great risk. When GMO promulgators and some other significant factions of the self-satisfied hippie-disparaging "scientific" community appear that startlingly oblivious (giving them all the benefit of the doubt, avoiding accusation) to even the best focused of scientific questions in the matter, that itself is a threat: we are relying on their judgment in these deployments, and by the evidence it is (putting the best face possible on this situation) poorly informed.

 

Meanwhile: Might I point out that no defender of current GMO promulgation here has yet provided any sources supporting their claims? The posting of irrelevant or contradictory links (see chad's above) is not, after all, providing a "source" of support, and often they don't even bother with that charade ("Yes, they are duplicating their prior efforts. Some of this research is essentially duplications of earlier research." no link, no example, no description of such a duplication - and missed the point in the first place, with "some"). Just a side comment - do with it what you will.

 

 

For every challenge you have posed about GMOs I have provided countless sources showing the exact opposite. At some point, for your continued cries of risk and danger you have to provide credible evidence to the contrary of these numerous studies that demonstrate said danger. You can't simply assume it. That's not how science works. You do not get to advance claims based on your unsupported assertions. The fact that all the data shows the opposite addresses the issues and shows proves you wrong.

 

You have made numerous unsupported claims, such as your unsupported claim that transgenes are more likely to be horizontally transferred than non-transgenes. You have an intellectual obligation to support such claims.

 

To deny the facts in light of evidence is the same thing that is done by Climate Change Deniers. There are many parallels:

 

Climate Change Denial vs Anti-GMO Activism Similarities:

 

1) Abundance of data for Climate Change.......abundance of data for advantages and safety of GMOs

2) Scientific consensus for Climate Change......scientific consensus for advantages and safety of GMOs

3) Major scientific organizations (National Acadamies, AAAS, etc, etc) have taken a position that Climate Change is happening......same major scientific organizations have taken a position that GMOs are safe and advantageous

4) Climate Change Denial is first and foremost a political position....Anti-GMO activism is first and foremost a political position

5) Climate Change Denial puts lives at risk.....Anti-GMO activism puts lives at risk (rejection of Golden Rice, virus resistant cassava, etc)

6) Climate Change Denial is laden with conspiracy theories......Anti-GMO activism is laden with conspiracy theories

7) People profit off of peddling Climate Change Denial.....people profit off of Anti-GMO activism

8) Climate Change Denial is fear/ideology driven.....Anti-GMO activism is fear/ideology driven

 

The list goes on...essentially both amount to a substitution of fear/ideology and conspiracy theories for science and fact-based logic.

Edited May 23, 2014 by chadn737

[chadn737]

 

 

Meanwhile: Might I point out that no defender of current GMO promulgation here has yet provided any sources supporting their claims? The posting of irrelevant or contradictory links (see chad's above) is not, after all, providing a "source" of support, and often they don't even bother with that charade ("Yes, they are duplicating their prior efforts. Some of this research is essentially duplications of earlier research." no link, no example, no description of such a duplication - and missed the point in the first place, with "some"). Just a side comment - do with it what you will.

 

 

No link?

 

I linked you to the very papers themselves. The evidence is right there. At this point I have lost count of how many papers and studies I have linked you too....to claim the opposite is an outright lie and I am calling you out on it. All it takes is reading them to know that they are essentially duplications and use the same methodology and techniques. What you have just proven is that you have not bothered to read the research, but yet dismiss it anyhow and reassert claims that you have not once provided a shred of evidence for.

Edited May 24, 2014 by chadn737

[overtone]

 

 

^Summary: "No, I won't be offering citations despite the rules and a direct request to do so from a mod."

I already posted that summary, right here: "I'm a bit baffled by the demand for sources to support that claim, (sometimes even phrased as a demand for peer reviewed studies detecting and demonstrating harms from "GMOs"!?). It indicates, at best, a failure to follow the argument. The inability of GMO proponents to follow that simple, plain, many times repeated and numerously exampled (such as by every GMO-proponent posted list of sources that proves empty upon inspection) argument; - - - - - - - - is one more solid piece of evidence that GMOs as currently promulgated carry great risk ".

 

 

 

You do not get to advance claims based on your unsupported assertions.

And you don't get to tell me what my claims and assertions are. You can deal with the actual content of my actual posts, or quit responding to them - I recommend door 2, considering your track record of incomprehension. Look at this from you, for example:

 

You have made numerous unsupported claims, such as your unsupported claim that transgenes are more likely to be horizontally transferred than non-transgenes.

I don't know how you get away with that shit here, but given your manner of addressing me from the beginning in these threads there's no reason for me to respond to it with anything other than contempt.

 

 

 

I linked you to the very papers themselves. The evidence is right there. At this point I have lost count of how many papers and studies I have linked you too....to claim the opposite is an outright lie and I am calling you out on it.

The fact that you think those papers and studies contradict any of my claims here, if you really do think that, is a piece of evidence - and one I have posted several times - in support of my contention that obliviousness to the risks of GMO promulgation among GMO promulgators is an important factor increasing those risks.

 

Another is denial:

 

To deny the facts in light of evidence is the same thing that is done by Climate Change Deniers. There are many parallels:

 

Climate Change Denial vs Anti-GMO Activism Similarities:

 

1) Abundance of data for Climate Change.......abundance of data for advantages and safety of GMOs

2) Scientific consensus for Climate Change......scientific consensus for advantages and safety of GMOs

3) Major scientific organizations (National Acadamies, AAAS, etc, etc) have taken a position that Climate Change is happening......same major scientific organizations have taken a position that GMOs are safe and advantageous

4) Climate Change Denial is first and foremost a political position....Anti-GMO activism is first and foremost a political position

5) Climate Change Denial puts lives at risk.....Anti-GMO activism puts lives at risk (rejection of Golden Rice, virus resistant cassava, etc)

6) Climate Change Denial is laden with conspiracy theories......Anti-GMO activism is laden with conspiracy theories

7) People profit off of peddling Climate Change Denial.....people profit off of Anti-GMO activism

8) Climate Change Denial is fear/ideology driven.....Anti-GMO activism is fear/ideology driven

I posted a list of parallels between the GMO risk deniers and the climate change risk deniers earlier, on another thread, and I know you read it.

 

One of the differences between my list and yours is that I drew direct parallels, as advertised, rather than oblique oppositions - consistent logical structure in argument.

 

Another is that I did not assert falsehoods or impossibilities of physical fact, such as points 1 and 2 in your list; or arrange slippery deceptions, such as points 3, 6, 7, and 8; or compare incommensurables, such as 4.

 

So my parallels made much more sense as well as better aligning with factual reality. Granted this was much easier for me to arrange since I was aligning two specific denials of risk (current CO₂ promulgation risk and current GMO promulgation risk) rather than a specific denial and a general affirmation - the far more difficult task you attempt. But since you can't tell the difference in rhetorical task anyway, the comparison is a fair one.

 

But the more important issue, aside from the implications of the incompetence of your attempt to imitate my earlier posting (and all efforts to draw that particular set of parallels, afaik, not just yours) is the focus on politics: one of the seriously deceptive aspects of the current GMO propaganda campaign is the attempt to dismiss the objections to their current promulgations on the grounds that the people making the objections are politically aligned or ideologically grounded.

 

And that is not a focused scientific question on GMOs.