Genetic modification: fear it! fear it like THE BOMB!

ElectricFetus

ElectricFetus

Sanity going, going, gone
Valued Senior Member
I recently had a revelation (thanks to Blindman) that Genetic engineering as replaced nuclear as the next stylish fear! It's not that people have stop fear anything with the world “nuclear” and "radiation", but that it's now out of style, now days movies and shows don’t use nuclear radiation to create the some horrible monster (or super ability) it now genetic engineering. This makes me sick from the childish fear people now have of GM. Did you know there are people out there that actually think genetically modified organism can mutate you through attack of ingestion?

It not like there are not legitimate fears of what genetic engineering can do: for example the fear of GM foods because they could have harmful side effects to human health, could breed super weeds and bugs, could cause havoc to the environment, ect all of this potential fears have already happened… from old fashion forms of genetic engineering, the ones no one fears and thinks are totally safe: selective breeding and hybriding! Even so now that a guy in a lab coat claims to have a new way of breeding better food, plant and people, people hate it, and that is the core of the problem: once a scientist gets into it, it is consider evil and against nature, look they developed the bomb it most be evil!

Ok I’ll stop ranting now I feel better.
 
The science doesn't worry me Oh Great Fetus in a jar. I'm more bothered about the opportunity to patent food. If we gave GM away I'd be all for it but you gotta admit that ain't quite the case. What do you think about handing over all that sexy science to the Bill Gates' of the biotech industry?

Dee Cee
 
Yes I agree that corporate control is not cool, but it not like GM foods are going to allow corporations to monopolize agriculture.
 
Originally posted by WellCookedFetus
Yes I agree that corporate control is not cool, but it not like GM foods are going to allow corporations to monopolize agriculture.
Click to expand...
Then who is going to take control of agriculture? It's not like I can rent a tractor and buy 30 acres of land and make a living.
 
First, i don't fear some guy getting filthy rich out of a monopolized bio-industry (its going to happen anyway:m: ).
Let him get rich while millions reap the benefits of it.
And I dont fear modified species, why should I? Its ridiculous. The only thing I fear are those millions of mindless zombies, whose prejudiced vie's get feed by popularistic & baist power-groups
 
Originally posted by DeeCee
The science doesn't worry me Oh Great Fetus in a jar. I'm more bothered about the opportunity to patent food. If we gave GM away I'd be all for it but you gotta admit that ain't quite the case. What do you think about handing over all that sexy science to the Bill Gates' of the biotech industry?Dee Cee
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I think it's important to remember that if corporations couldn't patent GM food, there wouldn't be many GM foods. Very few altruistic organizations are interesting in investing the time and money necessary to create a new GM food.
 
wellborn

quote: "I don't fear sme guy getting filthy rich out of monopolized bio industry, it's going to happen anyway."
________________________________________________

It will only happen if it is allowed to happen. And from what I have seen of corporate America in tha past few years, I don't want a buch of chemical companies who just recently turned to biotech, to have control of what ends up in my stomach.

There are a lot of good ideas involved with genetic alteration and agriculture but, at some point we have to separate the wheat from the chaff. There have to be some guidlines set before we jump into an empty swimming pool.

For instance, when Monsanto tested its new herbicide resistant soy beans on people, the people were given altered soy products that had never actually been sprayed with roundup. In a real life situation the soy beans would have been sprayed several times during the season with the herbicide. Roundup is highly systemic and travels into all parts of the plants including the beans and roots. It does not wash off. It becomes a permanent chemical in the plant.

In the past no plant that was sprayed was ever eaten, because the plants all died, how do we now know that eating foods containing the herbicide is safe when it has never been tested.

We have to look at all of these bio products on a case by case basis and not allow the quest for a quick buck to blind us towards caution.
 
Selectively breed and hybridized crops are still competitive products, and no one has patented them?
 
questions

A close friend of mine plants the Roundup tolerant soybeans and
I am sure he told me the beans he harvested could only be used
for animal feed, not for direct human consumption. The active
ingredent of Roundup herbicide is Isopropylamine salt of
Glyphosate, which, from what I have read, has been tested
on several animal species from rats to fish and has shown no
serious effects. justiceusa, where do you get your information?
I have no doubt you are better informed in this matter than I,
but could you give some links or something to verify what you
stated. Don't regular soybeans also receive treatment with
herbicides? Herbicides reduce the yield of regular soybeans,
but not the Roundup compatable ones. At least, this is what
I have been told, correct me if I am wrong.
 
As I recall Roundup works by inhibiting one of the enzymes that plants use to produce cellulose in their cell walls. Since humans don't have cell walls or the enzymes that help produce it, roundup has no effect on people.
 
Zingquizitive-Nasor

Nasor :
Simple elemental copper is essentia for human life. Too much copper is deadly. Your generalization that, humans do not have cellulose = roundup is safe , is only speculation. And humans most certainly do have cell walls.

Zinquisitive:

As I mentioned above, if regular soybeans are sprayed with herbicides, they promptly die.

Crops that are used for humans , but have GM relatives that are only supposed to be fed to animals present a new problem. There is a GM corn that produces its own pesticide. It was by law, only supposed to be used as animal food. It now contaminates our entire corn supply due to cross pollination and failure of the growers to comply with regulations.

The information I used came from a number of links similiar to the one below.

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/weiz-cn.htm

There will also be a problem with herbicide resistant plants becoming, "rogue" plants just like weeds, except normal herbicide application will not kill them.
 
What spuriousmonkey said, if you want us to give you the chemical details on how different this is we would love to.
 
Hey guys, I am an old geeser, when I went to college it was still defined as "a membrane known as the cell wall" exxxuuuusssee me.

What I was implying is that we still don't know the answers to some very basic questions about the human body. For instance, look at the inclosed product information that comes with any major antidepressant, be it prozac, paxil. or choose your own. It will say "It is "unknown" how prozaxlefate acts to relieve depression in the human. It is "thought" that it effects serotonin reuptake bla bla bla." Hey guys, they still don't know, and this stuff has been on the market for twenty years.

If you want to give me some useful chemical details, tell me how I can save my high school sweetheart from dying from amyotropic lateral sclerosis. And please hurry she doesn't have much time left.

There is more science that we don't yet know about than we want to admit.

The GM crops in the long run could be of tremendous value. At their current stage there is more marketing than scientific strategy involved. Until a few years ago Monsanto was a chemical company which manufactured products that killed living things. Now they have developed a living thing that their or anyones product will "not" kill. Its more about market share and stock value than it is science at this point.

Hopefully at some point when the profit motive is put on the back burner and pure science is allowed to prevail we will see some wonderful results.
 
Originally posted by justiceusa
The GM crops in the long run could be of tremendous value. At their current stage there is more marketing than scientific strategy involved. Until a few years ago Monsanto was a chemical company which manufactured products that killed living things. Now they have developed a living thing that their or anyones product will "not" kill. Its more about market share and stock value than it is science at this point.
Click to expand...
Actually Monsanto has been in the agricultural business for a very long time, and began investing heavily in GM research in 1982. I don't know why you call them 'a chemical company that manufactured products that killed living things.' They've always manufactured all sorts of things from plastics to pharmaceuticals. The company got its start by manufacturing saccharine, an artificial sweetener. It's not like they make nerve gas or something.

In any case, if the FDA (the most paranoid government-sponsored consumer safety bureau in the world, hands down) isn't concerned about GM crops then I doubt that I need to be. There's not a whole lot that slips past them.
 
justiceusa, I am truly sorry to learn of your friend's sickness. I
thought of not posting again on this thread because I thought
maybe you were in some way connecting her illness with GM
foods in your mind. I have since read some of your other posts
about GM foods in another thread.
I don't know what you do for a living, but you are not a farmer.
You keep insisting herbicides are not used on "regular" soybeans
because it would kill them. True, a broadband herbicide such as
Roundup is not used on them because it kills broadleaf plants
also. There are MANY other herbicides that are engineered NOT
to kill broadleaf plants that are used on soybeans. Try this link-
http://www.ag.uiuc.edu/cespubs/pest/articles/images/200220table1.html
Also, the CP4 EPSPS protein used in Roundup Ready soybeans
is a modified version of a common protein found in the soil and
much like bakers yeast.
 
Re: wellborn

Originally posted by justiceusa
In the past no plant that was sprayed was ever eaten, because the plants all died, how do we now know that eating foods containing the herbicide is safe when it has never been tested.
Click to expand...
This kind of hyperbole seems to be the standard procedure with the anti-GM crowd. Someone says that Roundup has never been tested on people, and pretty soon everyone else is repeating it without even stopping to consider how absurd it is.

For the record, Roundup has been tested very extensively on people and many other animals. A quick look at a Roundup MSDS revealed that the LD50 for roundup is a whopping 5 g/kg. This means that table salt and baking soda are both more toxic than Roundup.
 
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2 inquisistve - Nasor

I grew up on a farm in Indiana many years ago. Most of the herbicides and pesticides that we used back then have long been banned. The pesticides we used included chlordane! The herbicide we sprayed fence rows with smelled like deisel fuel and was called WD 12. And at the time we , of course, scorned people who objected to our using them.

I am definitely not anti GM, but I have enough experience in life to be very pro caution. I have seen both the strengths and weaknesses in science. I have witnessed both the successes and the failures.

I have found no link to any tests done on people who have eaten rounup resistant, "roundup" sprayed soy products. The only link I found stated that the test were done with resistant soy that had not been sprayed. Why then should I not be cautious? If A is safe, and B is safe, this does not mean that A+B is safe.

When speaking of Monsanto I did not clarify that I was referring to their agricultural products, which indeed primarily were products that killled living things.
 
Santa: I want a portable genetic engineering device with a full graphical laptop interface and an organism preview function. I've been very good this year.
 
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