Genetically Modified foods: Good or Bad?

[clusteringflux]

Well, we're putting animal genes in food over here in the states. Is that good or bad? Why?

THe Chem companies want to own gene configurations. Feel free to comment on that as well.

Forgive me if this poll already exists.

 

[ElectricFetus]

Genetic modification its self is nothing to fear, and yes I think we have done poll like this before.

 

[clusteringflux]

Genetic modification its self is nothing to fear, and yes I think we have done poll like this before.

Care to expand?

How could we know all of the outcomes of such actions. Why does Europe keep these issues at arms length?

 

[ElectricFetus]

Care to expand?

How could we know all of the outcomes of such actions. Why does Europe keep these issues at arms length?

I didn't say I know all of the outcomes of such actions, rather GM is like all other technology is a tool which can be used for good or bad. Just as there are legislators that have an irrational fear of nuclear power in the states there are those that have an irrational fear of genetic modification in Europe. The specific problem is related to many new technologies and is called an appeal to the unknown fallacy: what people don't understand they fear, because to them if its possible its a problem no matter how improbable.

 

[iceaura]

Just as there are legislators that have an irrational fear of nuclear power in the states there are those that have an irrational fear of genetic modification in Europe.

It's a brand new technology with dramatic and serious potential to do harm.

If it weren't for the "irrational" naysayers and alarmists, hundreds of nuclear power plants in the US would have been built to Chernobyl standards, the waste and hot debris mixed with concrete and used in all the highways and public buildings or simply dumped into he nearest lake or ocean, fusion bombs used to dredge harbors in Alaska and drive tunnels through the Rockies, etc.

Something like that order of foolishness is currently standard and prudent behavior in the big commercial genetic engineering operations. Cross your fingers.

 

[Simon Anders]

They simply cannot take into account all of the factors and possible problems. The companies that are introducing these things have too much power over all regulatory bodies . It's a bad combination. Most technologies have relatively local side effects. As our technological skills have gone up, the square milage of local has gone up. Now we are messing around with global side effects and leaving the profit motive and PR firms to decide what is safe. Let alone the way companies are trying to replace nature and non-GM life forms so that they can own the whole damn planet.

We are simply not mature enough as societies to pursue gene modification.

 

[ElectricFetus]

It's a brand new technology with dramatic and serious potential to do harm.

If it weren't for the "irrational" naysayers and alarmists, hundreds of nuclear power plants in the US would have been built to Chernobyl standards, the waste and hot debris mixed with concrete and used in all the highways and public buildings or simply dumped into he nearest lake or ocean, fusion bombs used to dredge harbors in Alaska and drive tunnels through the Rockies, etc.

Something like that order of foolishness is currently standard and prudent behavior in the big commercial genetic engineering operations. Cross your fingers.

Riiiiiiggghhht, and next you tell me cowpox vaccine will turn people into cows. the evil corporations are going to get us all, next it will be the 5 jewish bankers.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be wary and have safety regulations, but suppressing the technology altogether would be wrong, fears of public health are largely irrational, fear of environmental damage could actually be fix with GM technology (lethal operons and sterility) if only legislation would be installed for such measures which would end the general issue of invasive species that has plagued all agriculture thought history.

 

[Simon Anders]

Riiiiiiggghhht, and next you tell me cowpox vaccine will turn people into cows. the evil corporations are going to get us all, next it will be the 5 jewish bankers.

No the corporations are not out to get everyone. They are out to make money. How this will affect everyone is not the concern of these now more powerful than country organizations. Those who think life forms are really complex machines should take a hard look at the machines (corporations) that are getting ever more power. Want your son's life to be decided by a machine?
Amoral is just as dangerous as evil.

 

[ElectricFetus]

No the corporations are not out to get everyone. They are out to make money. How this will affect everyone is not the concern of these now more powerful than country organizations. Those who think life forms are really complex machines should take a hard look at the machines (corporations) that are getting ever more power. Want your son's life to be decided by a machine?
Amoral is just as dangerous as evil.

As if corporation leaders were not human them selves and could not be controlled by laws and judges. If your problem is corporations are getting to powerful that has nothing to do with GM, I advice you try to curtail the supposed power of corporations rather then a technology you'll get a lot more done in fact.

Oh and life forms are machines: plant, animals, people, all of use, doesn't change anything though, doesn't reduce our value or our morality.

 

[iceaura]

If your problem is corporations are getting to powerful that has nothing to do with GM,

Corporations and other large bureaucracies cannot be trusted with such dangerous technology without severe restrictions and diligent oversight.

They will paint children's toys with lead, use fusion bombs to dig boat canals, dump plutonium into the ocean, and sell cars with exploding gas tanks to their own employees.

And that's when they know what they're doing,with ordinary and well-understood technology of limited and known range, not self-reproducing and self-prolificating and self-modifying stuff of unknown potential. In the case of much genetic engineering currently in progress, they don't know, and it would cost them a fortune to find out. They will not spend that money, to learn something that at best is worthless to them, and at worst will cost them their shiny new project.

They are already shotgunning pesticide production genetics and herbicide resistance genetics into food crops, and hundreds of people are now put to work trying to figure out whether that little innovative practice is what's killing all the bees. Nobody knows, yet. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. The range of effects possible from broadcasting radically engineered genetics into the general environment are almost completely unknown. If they find out it is, what will be done? There's hundreds of millions of dollars riding on these stunts, and when trouble shows up it's hard to turn that heavy a ship.

They are already establishing corporate dependence on their products in subsistence farming economies, in which even small changes in the weather or discovery of some disease adaptation could lead to inviability - at which time there would be no fallback, the local food economy having been ruined.

And they don't care. By design and policy, they take no interest. They will even lie and cheat to enable themselves to do great harm, if it were profitable.

If permitted, some drug company would attach its product to engineered "disabled" smallpox virus and market it over the counter to treat acne. That is not an exaggeration. They are morons following dollars like a donkey following a carrot on a stick, and they will walk right over a cliff and take half the planet with them if not reined in.

 

[phlogistician]

My problem with GM crops is choice, ie, with cross pollination, soon we won't have a choice, or possibly even knowledge about whether we consume them or not.

Also, it's a legal minefield, with farmers growing cross-pollinated corn being sued for not paying to use the bio-technology, and counter suing (rightly IMO) saying that they didn't want to use it and their crops have been contaminated and the bio-tech companies should compensate them for that.

I think these legal problems should have been though of in advance, well in advance of planting outside controlled laboratory conditions.

 

[ElectricFetus]

They are already shotgunning pesticide production genetics and herbicide resistance genetics into food crops, and hundreds of people are now put to work trying to figure out whether that little innovative practice is what's killing all the bees. Nobody knows, yet. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. The range of effects possible from broadcasting radically engineered genetics into the general environment are almost completely unknown.

Just because something is unknown does not mean it likely to be bad, if you want to suggest GM is killing bees please suggest a mechanism first. And exactly what is "radically engineered genetics"? GM is as likely to breed super-weeds and invasive species as conventional agriculture is with all of its artificial selection and hybridizing, if not far less so because GMs can be engineered sterile or with lethal operons that prevent growth outside of human control, but it not like these evil companies would install such a features because no one is asking them too, rather unpragmatic fear mongers are simply leveling fear against corporations, resulting in very little regulations in some places and complete banishment in others. And criticism is unfairly leveled against all GM: if its rice meant to prevent vitamin deficiency that causes blindness in children, forbid it because its GM, if its crops capable of growing in harsh climates and with little fertilizers so that poor people in central africa can feed them selves, fuck it, let them stare!

Here a video, not the nicest but it makes it point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIvNopv9Pa8

 

[iceaura]

Just because something is unknown does not mean it likely to be bad,

When you are messing around with self-amplifying and self-propagating features that play central roles in extraordinarily complex systems you depend on, yes it does.

If you don't know what you are doing, you will do something that self-propagates and self-amplifies right in your face, in some way you never even imagined until too late.

And with these guys in Monsanto's gene labs, it doesn't have to be all that obscure to drop off their radar

if you want to suggest GM is killing bees please suggest a mechanism first.

How about this one: I wildly hypothesize that pesticides and sequestered herbicides in the nectar and pollen of flowers visited by insects might have some effect on those insects, and I further hypothesize that genetically engineering field crops to produce pesticides or sequester herbicides within their cells might possibly, by extraordinary bad luck that no one could have foreseen, have lead to pesticides and sequestered herbicides being present in their pollen and nectar.

And in the pollen and nectar of any other neighborhood plant that has picked up those easily transported little genetic modeules, say from some thrip-spread virus or bacterium or virus-infected bacterium.

I admit it's farfetched, but strange things do happen. At any rate, it has to be checked out now, because no one checked it out before, and the bees are in fact quite mysteriously vanishing.

And the point is not about the bees. I don't know what's killing them, and I don't know why the investigation into what's killing them is marked by such odd hints of trouble in science funding and publication world, and the matter here is different:

They don't know about the bees either, and they don't care - they don't care on purpose, rigidly and firmly and by edict and through design don't care. It's not their job. So it's ours. We have to put a leash on this stuff, or it will bite our collective ass.

 

[clusteringflux]

Perhaps, El phetus, we should consider that transhumanism is not advancing at the rate Franken-food is being unleashed in nature. We can not yet go to the lab and pick out a new body that's resistant to whatever weird shit springs up...for,are we not creating an environment that would serve as an accelerant to the increasing strength of these plant's natural adversaries?

 

[ElectricFetus]

When you are messing around with self-amplifying and self-propagating features that play central roles in extraordinarily complex systems you depend on, yes it does.

Central roles? Do bananas play central roles? fuck they can't even grow on their own, we've been cloning them for the last half century plus! And what about wheat and corn?: our artificially selected breeds don't even grow well in nature, they can't compete, you think a GM organism that being designed to produce food for human months at the sacrifice of everything else is going to compete in nature, take over the world and force us to be it slave??? FUCKING UNLIKELY!

If you don't know what you are doing, you will do something that self-propagates and self-amplifies right in your face, in some way you never even imagined until too late.

Appeal to unknown! fallacy, illogical and failure at critical reasoning, end of story. "Lets not make computers because we never know if they will get smart and kill us all." "Lets not make fast transport because we never know if humans won't be able to survive the sight of things wizing by at over 80 miles an hour!" "Lets not make vaccines, we never know if it might mutate or kill people!" Heard it before! We calculated the probability of problems compared against the obscene advantage to the human race and made the leap forward.

And with these guys in Monsanto's gene labs, it doesn't have to be all that obscure to drop off their radar How about this one: I wildly hypothesize that pesticides and sequestered herbicides in the nectar and pollen of flowers visited by insects might have some effect on those insects, and I further hypothesize that genetically engineering field crops to produce pesticides or sequester herbicides within their cells might possibly, by extraordinary bad luck that no one could have foreseen, have lead to pesticides and sequestered herbicides being present in their pollen and nectar.

or it could just be pesticides in general, or a new bee diseases, considering bees have been dieing in countries without such GM crops: end of hypothesis!

And in the pollen and nectar of any other neighborhood plant that has picked up those easily transported little genetic modeules, say from some thrip-spread virus or bacterium or virus-infected bacterium.

Assuming first that surrounding plants can breed with the GM plants! Fuck we can't even get today's hexaploid wheat to breed with anything else but other artificially selected hexaploid wheat! You must live in a 1950's atomic B movie where radiation makes giant spiders and huge ants and people turning into 3 eye freaks with psychic superpowers! Reality is not as simple as genes just spreed Willy-Nelly with things like speciation, chromosome count, a hybrid depression deselection getting in the way.

We have to put a leash on this stuff, or it will bite our collective ass.

What kind of leash, regulator, sure why not. Put labels so that ignorant people can not buy it, so that governments in Africa run by ignorant fools can forbid it and let there people starve, no, I don't think so. GM has great potential for good, and I'm not going to forbid it because first world country types like me have an option to choose some kind of idealized food, and thus inevitably ask in our elitist ignorance questions like "why can't they just eat organic cake" or extended as "why don't they just eat organic rice created in the 1950's with wholesome artificial hybridizing (like fucking a horse and a donkey) instead of evvviiillll gm rice that is proposed by evvviiillll corporations with their evvvilll plan of making rice with evvvilll vitamins that prevent natural (and thus good) blindness in starved children... No, no, fuck you, no.

Perhaps, El phetus, we should consider that transhumanism is not advancing at the rate Franken-food is being unleashed in nature. We can not yet go to the lab and pick out a new body that's resistant to whatever weird shit springs up...for,are we not creating an environment that would serve as an accelerant to the increasing strength of these plant's natural adversaries?

I rather not risk the world having enough food to make it to the singularity and deal with the extremely small chance of serious public health problems from GM food. What natural adversaries? like human grown corn and wheat and apple trees, and bananas, etc are natural???

 

[iceaura]

Central roles? Do bananas play central roles? fuck they can't even grow on their own, we've been cloning them for the last half century plus! And what about wheat and corn?: our artificially selected breeds don't even grow well in nature

Once again you try to pass off all the new GM techniques as somehow analogous to ordinary plant breeding.

Great and fundamental ignorance explains that. Despicable and manipulating dishonesty explains that. I can't think of too many other explanations. You've been called on it at least three times now. From now on, it's you telling deliberate lies for some reason, and it will be so described.

you think a GM organism that being designed to produce food for human months at the sacrifice of everything else is going to compete in nature

The genes are not confined to the organism, for one thing. And there are few environments unmodified by humans - herbicide and pesticide and antibiotic resistances are very useful properties to have in many "natural" environments, these days. And the modifications are for many reasons - not just to produce food or other benefits, but for cosmetic and commercial and other advantages to the corporations financing the modifications.

And that describes only some of one aspect of the range and scale of the risks being run by the genetic engineers now.

Heard it before! We calculated the probability of problems compared against the obscene advantage to the human race and made the leap forward.

You guys haven't calculated shit. You have no idea what you're doing. And the obscene advantage has so far been to Cargill, Monsanto, etc. - not the human race.

or it could just be pesticides in general, or a new bee diseases, end of hypothesis!

Or it could be something else entirely.

But you don't get rid of a hypothesis that comes with mechanism and correlation by merely postulating other hypotheses. You have to check it out.

btw: What was the calculated probability of killing all the honeybees before these modifications were broadcast across the landscape? Has anyone gone back and recalculated that probability, based on the Bayesian event "lots of dead bees, cause unknown" ?

considering bees have been dieing in countries without such GM crops:

For example? There are very few such countries.

Assuming first that surrounding plants can breed with the GM plants!

That's always a possibility, as many organic farmers have discovered. But that is not the only means of spreading the kinds of modifications employed by genetic engineers.

And again, only one of the dangers.

Put labels so that ignorant people can not buy it, so that governments in Africa run by ignorant fools can forbid it and let there people starve, no, I don't think so.

How else are you going to establish accountability ? You say these people are fools, others reserve that label for the blindly arrogant in service to the amorally greedy.

If the industrial investment necessities of GM export monoculture, for example, drive all the local farmers off their land, and they go to the cities to starve, do you recognize that as a consequence of GM agriculture? Is the potential of GM techniques to bring wonderful benefits in the future, maybe, adequate justification for industrial agriculture and the launching of great risks on top of certain evils now?

Again, just one (another one) of the dangers.

GM has great potential for good, and I'm not going to forbid it because first world country types like me have an option to choose some kind of idealized food,

It used to be called "ordinary food". And potential is a wonderful thing.

 

[Simon Anders]

As if corporation leaders were not human them selves and could not be controlled by laws and judges.

As I said, they have the power and they do use it to override oversight agencies that would try to enforce the laws. "Crimes against Nature' is a rather scary book about how this has happened in the US under the Bush regime - though democrats have also been rather effective in these ways also. People who actually try to enforce laws lose their jobs, are debudgeted or transferred. The people running the oversight agencies have often been recently in the very industries they are supposed to watch. That is the point. They are not vulnerable to laws in the ways we mere mortals are.

If your problem is corporations are getting to powerful that has nothing to do with GM, I advice you try to curtail the supposed power of corporations rather then a technology you'll get a lot more done in fact.

They are not mutually exclusive acts. But as long as companies run as currently it is russian roulette on a global scale. So first responsibility, then the right.

Oh and life forms are machines: plant, animals, people, all of use, doesn't change anything though, doesn't reduce our value or our morality.

Man, you really gotta keep up with science, that is so like early 20th century thinking. And even if you will not get that, I certainly hope that your priorities are vastly more nuanced than corporate machines even if you think of yourself as a machine.

 

[ElectricFetus]

Once again you try to pass off all the new GM techniques as somehow analogous to ordinary plant breeding.

Great and fundamental ignorance explains that. Despicable and manipulating dishonesty explains that. I can't think of too many other explanations. You've been called on it at least three times now. From now on, it's you telling deliberate lies for some reason, and it will be so described.

Your the one that ignorant to believe this is somehow new and dangerously different. I guess killer bees were the result of GM, I guess purple Lucite and cane toads in Australia were the result of GM. GM even has the power to prevent these kind of agricultural disasters, but Nooooo its evvvviiiilll.

The genes are not confined to the organism, for one thing. And there are few environments unmodified by humans - herbicide and pesticide and antibiotic resistances are very useful properties to have in many "natural" environments, these days.

No, there is not use for being resistant to herbicide, pesticide and antibiotic out in a forest or parrie.

And the modifications are for many reasons - not just to produce food or other benefits, but for cosmetic and commercial and other advantages to the corporations financing the modifications.

Surely blue roses and tomatoes that stay freesher longer are going to kill us all!

And that describes only some of one aspect of the range and scale of the risks being run by the genetic engineers now.

What risk? You didn't describe any risks. It like saying "Hair dryers are used for drying hair and floor tiles and shrinking shrink wrap and this describes the range and scale of the risks.".

You guys haven't calculated shit. You have no idea what you're doing. And the obscene advantage has so far been to Cargill, Monsanto, etc. - not the human race.
Or it could be something else entirely.

Riiiiggghhtt. This is again an appeal to fear and unknown fallacy, you state no proof that "You have no idea what you're doing" and that "obscene advantage" for GM food produces don't equate to humanity.

But you don't get rid of a hypothesis that comes with mechanism and correlation by merely postulating other hypotheses. You have to check it out.

I did: bee are dieing in non-gm fields and countries, ergo you can't blame GM. Did you read that article? http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/CCDPpt/NontargeteffectsofBt.pdf

How else are you going to establish accountability ? You say these people are fools, others reserve that label for the blindly arrogant in service to the amorally greedy.

I don't get a cent for GM foods, so I don't know about the greed, as for arrogant, if we are arrogant that only for hindsight to prove.

If the industrial investment necessities of GM export monoculture, for example, drive all the local farmers off their land, and they go to the cities to starve, do you recognize that as a consequence of GM agriculture? Is the potential of GM techniques to bring wonderful benefits in the future, maybe, adequate justification for industrial agriculture and the launching of great risks on top of certain evils now?

No, that a problem endemic to modern industrial agriculture, not GM, your not going to fix that problem focusing on GM. I'm guessing your saying let the farmers starve on their worthless fields over having them get jobs in a city and their countries developing and the median standard of living increasing? Sure developed countries have their problems but there nothing compared to the undeveloped countries, I would gladly allow corporate intrusion over starving to death.

It used to be called "ordinary food". And potential is a wonderful thing.

yes, dieing of old age at 45 from eating ordinary food, good times, lets all go back to the old days of eating blight infected wheat and mushrooms out of the forest.

As I said, they have the power and they do use it to override oversight agencies that would try to enforce the laws. "Crimes against Nature' is a rather scary book about how this has happened in the US under the Bush regime - though democrats have also been rather effective in these ways also. People who actually try to enforce laws lose their jobs, are debudgeted or transferred. The people running the oversight agencies have often been recently in the very industries they are supposed to watch. That is the point. They are not vulnerable to laws in the ways we mere mortals are.

Again this is not GM fault, this is the companies: try regulating the companies to prevent influence on testing. Your argument is equivalent to saying "We need to get rid of all drugs! Drug companies have too much power to manipulate regulations" your right: fuck cancer patients, fuck diabetic, fuck the mentally ill, we should take away those eevvviiiilll drugs they use to keep them selves alive and functional. Now if you feel america is over medicated sure try to reduce drug use, try to disconnect the FDA from drug companies, but don't take away all drugs! Same with GM, your not going to tell starving people to die because you won't allow GM foods because of cooperate intrusion!

Man, you really gotta keep up with science, that is so like early 20th century thinking. And even if you will not get that, I certainly hope that your priorities are vastly more nuanced than corporate machines even if you think of yourself as a machine.

Ad hominem.

 

[Simon Anders]

Again this is not GM fault, this is the companies: try regulating the companies to prevent influence on testing.

as I made clear, one can do both.

Your argument is equivalent to saying "We need to get rid of all drugs! Drug companies have too much power to manipulate regulations" your right: fuck cancer patients, fuck diabetic, fuck the mentally ill, we should take away those eevvviiiilll drugs they use to keep them selves alive and functional.

Nope it is not the same. 1) The dangers are much greater. 2) the GM stuff is not helping people and it is not the intention of the companies to do this. Individual scientists may have this as a goal, but the corporations are want to create dependency and money. Some of the first products they marketed were made to allow MORE pesticide use. You are believing the PR of the companies way too much. 3) there are other ways of getting food, etc. to people without the same risks.

I would happily support the denuclearization of the world for similar reasons. Especially around weapons. I think there are technologies we are not mature enough to use.

We have restrictions around the use of other technologies. Very few people can investigate biological weapons or their precursors. There is precedent for extreme restrictions on certain technologies.

There should be one on GM.

If the changes come about, then perhaps....

But given the current situation, I think it is sick to allow the corps. to do what they are doing.

Now if you feel america is over medicated sure try to reduce drug use, try to disconnect the FDA from drug companies, but don't take away all drugs! Same with GM, your not going to tell starving people to die because you won't allow GM foods because of cooperate intrusion!

You know what I notice about your posts, you avoid saying whether you agree or disagree about these issues. If you agree about the oversight problems, why do you not say that. This would be a more convincing stance for the pro-GM crowd. But as it is it just sounds like lip service and distraction.

Ad hominem.

But not just. There are a good number of scientists who no longer consider machine an appropriate metaphor for living organisms, especially us. And you seem to have no idea that calling all of us machines is ad hominem.

 

[Simon Anders]

Central roles? Do bananas play central roles? fuck they can't even grow on their own, we've been cloning them for the last half century plus! And what about wheat and corn?: our artificially selected breeds don't even grow well in nature, they can't compete, you think a GM organism that being designed to produce food for human months at the sacrifice of everything else is going to compete in nature, take over the world and force us to be it slave??? FUCKING UNLIKELY!

Well, I am glad you are so confident in your ability to calculate the liklihood of such catastrophies. I remain skeptical.

All it takes is something that fucks up the nitrogen fixing bacteria in the soil, for example, and we can kiss civilization good bye for a hundred years.

But I admire your trust in your own intuition.

I mean seriously with this kind of statistical intuition by an outsider of the field, you should be able to make money in the market hand over foot.