billvon said:
Right. Pomelos and oranges were familiar individually, but completely separate organisms. They were combined to create a new organism - a grapefruit This was done at random through hybridization
The entire genome of both plants and every piece of them as expressed in a familiar plant body has been vetted by thousands of years of human consumption just as they are. The genomes are not combined at random, in a hybrid - the code is not shotgunned or otherwise inserted within arbitrary stretches of the native code. No auxiliary code is packaged with them (such as antibiotic resistance code to check on combination success). And so forth.
billvon said:
Likewise, Bt bacteria and corn were familiar individually,
Likewise? You have got to be kidding.
No. Bt was not at all familiar as a plant eaten in large quantities by people for thousands of years. Its genetics as expressed within a plant genome and phenotype and under plant growing circumstances were not familiar at all - we had no experience with anything like that. The Bt code is not brought into the genome of the plant via recombination, an orderly process in which the code has its assigned slots, in which similarly functioning code was in place and under evolved, familiar regulation. It is instead shotgunned into essentially randomly chosen places, where we little advance information about its interactions and regulation with the rest of its new and radically different home.
Being familiar with such disparate organisms does not provide familiarity with how pieces of each others code shotgunned in at random would be expressed in each others bodies. That should be kind of obvious - it's a bit disturbing to see such plain facts overlooked so completely and naively by the people we are depending on to not do anything stupid with this stuff.
There is nothing comparable with hybridization here - and that's just considering the Bt code and the plant's code: we haven't even got to the auxiliary genetics used to package and transfer the Bt code and check on its operations and so forth.
billvon said:
Nor do we have any reason to be more wary of a genetically engineered plant transferring its new code to viruses.
Of course we do - the stuff is deliberately designed, engineered, to be transferred - physically, by a physical insertion engineered to insert itself into functioning code. It is packaged for transfer and insertion, provided with code whose function is to do exactly that in its target home, and even on occasion delivered in its transfer by a virus. This target home is an organism of not just a different species, often, but a different Family, Order, even Phylum. If you engineer a stretch of code to make it more easily transferred between completely different kinds of organisms, it's not much of a stretch to consider the possibility that it might be more easily transferred between different kinds of organisms, eh? We even have the specific case: If you engineer it to be transferred by a virus in the first place, you're an idiot if you don't carefully and thoroughly handle the possibility that it will lend itself to transfer by a virus in the future.
Guys, this is pretty obvious stuff.
billy said:
He agrees that GM seeds cost more but never tells why every year more farms are switiching to use them to get lower yields!
That isn't true. Again.
I have never mentioned the price of GM seeds, and I have several times pointed to reasons why farmers switch to GM crops - off hand, I have mentioned that farmers often get cheap loans, cheap fertilizer, and other support when they switch; I have mentioned that GM crops are often the only modern and scientifically bred crops available to the poor (remember when you were asserting that farmers were choosing among comparable alternatives, and I pointed out that was nonsense?); I have mentioned that although they usually yield less per acre in fair comparison they often yield more per dollar, especially in the first couple of years before the blowback hits (studies that last less than five years are all but worthless for that assessment).
So that is what, the fourth false assertion you have made about my posts here - about simple stuff that is typed right in front of your face? No wonder you don't seem to be able to comprehend your own links, as they support my assertions; no wonder you demand evidence for what are frankly obvious, sky is blue type observations (such as the one about Golden Rice not yet working as hoped in the real world, the GM non-allergenic peanut not actually on the market yet, the one about the many varieties of GM foods being new and untested and unfamiliar health risks, and so forth).
billy said:
I´ve ask for reference several times, but iceaura only gives "logical agruments" and assertions.
I just used your references, for the little I've asserted that needs reference, such as in post 167. They work fine, if I can get you to read them carefully.
russ said:
For the last freaking time: So far, almost every GM crop in commercial release is lower yielding per acre - that's lower, not higher - than the comparable non-engineered varietals.
Do you have a reputable source for that nonsense?
It's remarkably difficult to find informative studies on that simple question (studies merely showing a year or two of increased yields after adopting a GM variety, without the necessary comparisons and controls, are obviously not informative, agreed?) but the necessary info for assessment is out there. If you can read, Billy already has posted some. Here's a European report:
http://ec.europa.eu/food/plant/gmo/reports_studies/docs/economic_performance_report_en.pdf but you have to be able to notice the significance of the language used (i.e. understand what's going on when overall yield advantages "vary in time and space" and are "lower in places which already have well adapted varieties" or good pest management practices and so forth).
Here's a more easily read summary of the field:
http://www.annualreviews.org/eprint/ESHx4FnZadAJZqvIsGRg/full/10.1146/annurev.arplant.043008.092013 And the generally favorable tone and conclusions should be acceptable to you guys. I direct attention to the one small sentence that bears on my assertion labeled "nonsense":
One important factor for farmers in considering crop profitability is yield. Although current GE crops are not engineered for higher yield per se, increased yields have been observed
In other words, in most current GM crops, genetic material has been added and is expressed that diverts resources away from yield. Increased yields observed are not in comparison with the same variety minus the engineered code, farmed the same way, and farmed according to best practices. One can read some of the situation between the lines like this:
Studies on economic impacts on farmers in developing countries have also been conducted. One study in India showed increases in yield and revenue with Bt cotton compared with non-Bt cotton using farmer plot rather than trial plot data, although there was some variation among subregions (211) and a few areas did not benefit (41). Yield increases in India improved when coupled with IPM practices (Section 2.17) (26). A study of farm-level preproduction trials in China showed that compared with households cultivating non-GE rice, small and poor-farm households, without the aid of experimental station technicians, realized both higher crop yields and reduced pesticide use after adopting GE rice varieties (150)
Here's another, for reading between the lines:
http://www.choicesmagazine.org/magazine/print.php?article=129
And for background on the issue (yield vs whatever):
http://www.organicauthority.com/org...ue-to-high-yield-selective-seed-breeding.html
Some random stuff for the context:
http://www.non-gm-farmers.com/news_details.asp?ID=2961
http://www.non-gm-farmers.com/news_details.asp?ID=2253
billvon said:
Now, an edible grass that can grow in salt water estuaries? THAT would likely be very worthwhile, and many people will try to accomplish that.
Y'know, maybe, but I bet not. The problem would be profiting, and estuaries are difficult to set boundaries on. I'd predict more salt tolerance in desert and especially irrigated landscapes, as a priority for Dekalb and friends.