GMO foods a good thing or bad?

[typical animal]

Yep. They also started to lose their teeth by age 18 (which is why we still usually get wisdom teeth even though, nowadays, we don't need them) and died around age 35, due to lack of medical care and malnutrition.

They did not, this is all completely incorrect and myths of the modern age. NOBODY claims they lost all their teeth at 18 and they only died due to disease after the start of civilization with many living well over 70.

I'm pissed off at this because I explained it all before. I don't specifically remember who I explained it to but I'm pretty sure you were there, therefore it's redundant if I'm just saying all the same thing again.

 

[iceaura]

True, in general, but if the bugs don´t eat the crop because it tolerates glyphosphate and they are all dead, that tends to have an indirect result of boosting yields.

In the first place, you have picked up on the thread confusion of herbicide tolerance with pesticide expression. Glyphosphate is a herbicide, poisonous to most field crops as well as weeds. The plant does not devote resources to poisoning itself by expressing it but instead devotes resources to storing it and rendering it harmless to the plant. This has little to do with bugs (although bug resistance is compromised a bit, in consequence - no free lunch, remember? The herbicide resistant crops often need a little extra insecticide). And this matters, because the visible habit of the people who are promoting the current promulgations of currently commercial GMOs, of lumping all these radically different types and means and products of genetic engineering into one undifferentiated blob of scientific progress, is proof of profound ignorance. The people promoting this stuff as it is being used today by and large have no idea what it actually is, what they are talking about, what Monsanto et al are in reality doing.

In the second place, you are still failing to recognize the central pivot of the entire discussion about yields here: Compared with what?

This is the kind of link you need: https://www.agronomy.org/publications/aj/abstracts/93/2/408?access=0&view=article But it won't work for you, because all the links like that are going to hand you news like this:

We conducted a field experiment at four Nebraska locations in 2 yr to evaluate the GR effect on soybean yield. Five backcross-derived pairs of GR and non-GR soybean sister lines were compared along with three high-yield, nonherbicide-resistant cultivars and five other herbicide-resistant cultivars. Glyphosate resistant sister lines yielded 5% (200 kg ha−1) less than the non-GR sisters (GR effect). Seed weight of the non-GR sisters was greater than that of the GR sisters (in 1999) and the non-GR sister lines were 20 mm shorter than the GR sisters

Or you could try links like this: http://www.biofortified.org/2011/02/does-glyphosate-restrict-crop-mineral-uptake/ [/quote] which are quite interesting in several ways, but in this context would involve making an argument from indirect evidence - which you find unpersuasive in other people.

Which you have not found, I notice.

Why would I? You're the one looking for sources supporting your position, not me!

So when I point out that of the several relevant sources and links posted so far on this thread, by me and billy and typical and so forth, none - not one - support the odd and mysterious notion that a genetically engineered varietal can be expected to have higher yield than a comparable varietal without the jacked in genetics,

you agree? Good. You no longer fail elementary biology.

The real world does normally and generally agree with Biology 101, so it's not surprising to find that what Monsanto calls "yield drag" from metabolically expensive genetic inclusions does exist. What is surprising is to see so many people on a science forum demanding a level of proof for that unremarkable assertion far beyond what they feel obligated to provide for their own comparatively dubious and presumptively unlikely claims.

Instead, we get irrelevant shit like this, four and five and six times repeated:

In the third world where traditional scientific seed improvement lag decades behind the GM yield increases on (cotton? - too lazy to go back and see which crop had the LEAST average increase) - was an increase that AVERAGED 30%. On some other grains (as I recall) crops the yield INCREASES averaged 50% with peak gain found in one study of 85%

This is just weird. What is it about this topic that fries people's ordinary reasoning and perception capabilities to this extent?

We've been going down it for almost 40 years now, and I don't think we are at "complete chaos."

We've been just lucky, dumb lucky, at least twice now that we know of (the nut allergen, the rubber tree escape so far) just in the very early stages of the very first baby steps. Less than ten years, actually, of adequately scaled field experience involving anything like the variety being distributed now. And of course you - like the rest of us - have no idea whether or how close we are approaching serious problems, even disasters: we haven't even begun much of the important research or evaluation. For example, just to pick one: if the continual release of herbicide, antibiotic resistance genetics, and other auxiliary chemicals and genetic code, directly into the bacterial fauna and digestion processes of the human small intestine, has cumulatively significant and unfortunate side effects, we probably won't find out about them for several years. At that time we will have converted 90% of the world's soybean crop, and most of several others, an all of the food produced from them, to that form of herbicide resistance - and will be dealing with resistance, often necessitating heavier applications and a return to more toxic herbicides.

So cross your fingers.

Because there is one definite difference between the ugly early stages of past agricultural revolutions (

Yep. They also started to lose their teeth by age 18 (which is why we still usually get wisdom teeth even though, nowadays, we don't need them) and died around age 35, due to lack of medical care and malnutrition

which is not true, btw, - wisdom teeth long predate grains, and the miserable life of the early grain farmers doesn't seem to have driven much actual evolution otherwise)

and this one we are being catapulted into: the benefits accrued to the sufferers. The profits went to the people involved.

 

[billvon]

They did not, this is all completely incorrect and myths of the modern age. NOBODY claims they lost all their teeth at 18 . . . .

Nor did I. Re-read my post and you will realize your error.

and they only died due to disease after the start of civilization with many living well over 70.

Nope. They died early due to malnutrition and disease. (Malnutrition both due to loss of their teeth and the reduction in resilience to famine as they aged.)

============
Life Expectancy in Prehistory
Archaeology 101

Our prehistoric ancestors were lucky to live past their twenties and suffered from hard physical work and recurring ailments.

Ian Arthur Colquhoun
Oct 24, 2008

We now take modern medicine and access to hospitals for granted. We have a whole plethora of medicines which make our daily life more comfortable. Imagine, however, that you were born in Britain at the time Stonehenge was in use. What was your life expectancy?

A number of archaeological excavations have produced human bones which have been studied and give us an idea of the diseases people suffered from. We can also estimate the age at death, which gives us an idea of how long people lived.

The Archaeological Evidence

A neolithic tomb at Isbister (The Tomb of the Eagles) on Orkney, off the north coast of Scotland, produced the remains of 342 people. The age profile of the bones showed a population where children outnumbered adults three to one. The most common age of death was early adulthood, between 15 and 30. Only 1.5% of people were over 40, and very few lived to reach the age of 50. Old age, rather than life, began at 40.
=========================
Jefferson Chapman, PhD
Frank H. McClung Museum
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Our knowledge of the prehistoric Indians of Tennessee is a result of over 150 years of archaeological investigations. Archaeology is the scientific discipline responsible for the recovery and interpretation of the remains of past cultures. Modern archaeology has three basic objectives: first, employing excavations and analysis based on scientific principles, archaeologists seek to develop temporal sequences of past cultures; second, archaeologists seek to reconstruct the lifeways of past human societies; and third, archaeologists address the evolution and operation of cultural systems – topics such as the origins of agriculture and changes in political organization. Places where cultural remains are found are called sites, and these may be as simple as a location where several arrowheads are found and as complex as a ten acre village and mound complex. . . .

The material culture of the Archaic people becomes more diverse over time with an array of stone and bone tools for a myriad of tasks. One must realize that for all the culture periods, we are missing a significant portion of the record; except in rare instances, gone are the perishable materials – wood, fiber, feathers, hides, furs, and basketry. Housing evidence is restricted to a few postholes; many hearths and storage pits remain as mute evidence of residential sites. Analysis of human burials from the Middle and Late Archaic periods reveal an average life expectancy of 25 years.
=================
Ask A Biologist
Heinrich Mallison

Much of the discussion depends on what you define as "early man". If you go back not to the earliest radiation of Homo sapiens, but stick to the earliest civilizations (sedentary, agricultural civilizations, to be exact), you get quite a different picture than what Jonathan described.

The problem early farmers faced was grinding cereal seeds. With stone tools you're quite limited with regards to what material you can shape into a grinder. Sandstones are often the best compromise between tough and shape-able. They are make for rough grinding surfaces, which grind well, and stay rough. This is because they erode during grinding. And this places a lot of tiny quartz balls in your food, and that is a prime way of grinding your teeth down. I have seen quite a few skulls dug up by archaeologists even from medieval times (but also Roman, and pre-Roman, so we are talking bronze and iron age, too!), skulls of poor farmers or low-skill (tiny village) craftsmen with horribly eroded teeth, at young age. Down to the gums, in some cases, before the age of ~20.

So yes, in earlier times, many humans had serious tooth trouble at relatively young age, which certainly may have contributed to their early deaths.
=================
Prehistoric medicine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The life expectancy in prehistoric times was low, 25–40 years, with men living longer than women . . .
==================

Let me know if you'd like more info.

I'm pissed off at this because I explained it all before.

Yes, and you were just as wrong then. Prehistoric life was not a Disney movie. Early death was the rule, not the exception.

 

[billvon]

( which is not true, btw, - wisdom teeth long predate grains, and the miserable life of the early grain farmers doesn't seem to have driven much actual evolution otherwise)

?? That's what I said. Wisdom teeth have been with us for a long, long time - long before milling. Teeth used to rot out of our heads starting around age 18, and our"backup" teeth allowed us to continue to eat, and thus survive, past that event. Thus the evolutionary drive for such teeth.

 

[typical animal]

?? That's what I said. Wisdom teeth have been with us for a long, long time - long before milling. Teeth used to rot out of our heads starting around age 18, and our"backup" teeth allowed us to continue to eat, and thus survive, past that event. Thus the evolutionary drive for such teeth.

You're suggesting that wisdom teeth somehow evolved because we lost all our other teeth at 18?

That is crazy nonsense talk. Whatever you are doing with your life, you need to change it, even an illiterate and uneducated person knows a lot better than you on many important things. Go out in the real world and stop inventing stuff in your head. What you're reading is about AFTER CIVILIZATION STARTED where there are a lot of teeth problems starting up.

It's just invented or confabulated nonsense, and I'm beginning to suspect that you're in fact trying to draw our outrage and ire at this point. Animals, other than humans, do NOT get horrible tooth aches and have all their teeth fall out just after puberty, or in adult hood, or at any time, the only possibility is *sometimes* they wear down and this starts to cause a problem when they get really old. Maybe a very few limited animals such as elephants, do appear to get bad teeth IN OLD AGE even without human interference into their food, that's it.

Only in humans do you see the type of teeth deterioration before they're even an adult yet. This was demonstrated decades ago by Weston Price in his famous book Physical and Nutritional Degeneration long ago.

Take a look at this chimpanzee's teeth:

View attachment 6145

They're very much like our own, are they not?

Wisdom teeth are an unlikely "backup". My dentist said that they're normally the first to go. Full disclosure: I'm removing some critical remarks since I found something on google saying they can be used as a backup. As for the other things you are saying... pathetic.

Animals do not lose their teeth even in very old age, maybe some of them wear a little but that's it. They do not go around in agony like a 20 year old human would because of their diet. Teeth are an exceptional example of how foolish human beings are, though they have invented toothpaste and brushes to hugely mitigate the problem.

Animals don't get tooth decay like humans do, and neither would humans if they ate the right foods.

 

[Billy T]

In the first place, you have picked up on the thread confusion of herbicide tolerance with pesticide expression. Glyphosphate is a herbicide, poisonous to most field crops as well as weeds. ...

Thanks for the correction, but my point is still correct. If the GM was designed to cause X which benefits the plant then yields increase also as a side effect.

X could be tolerated Glyphosphate so the plant, rather than weeds gets most of the soil nutrients and moisture, Or so that bugs die with less damage to the plant, Or use less energy in growing tall stocks ("corn as high as an elephant’s eye" -Oklahoma musical- is not optimum use of the solar energy, etc. for food production) Or making the crop ripen at nearly same time (harvest once with less cost) and not drop off plant over several weeks, as was the case with wheat, Or have longer shelf life in the store so all along the supply chain they are more valuable (farmer gets more dollars per 100 pounds). None of these GM engineered objectives was directly designed for increasing the farmer’s profit - that is just a desirable side effect.

The most solid evidence that GM foods are yielding more profit to the farmers is that they are rapidly switching to use them, despite a lot of ignorant public resistance to buying them. For several years China would not buy Brazil´s GM soybeans. In one shipload they found a few (some farm had certified it was not using GM seeds but it was to increase yields /profits) so the ship could not unload and either returned to Brazil or the soy was re-sold to some other closer to China buyer (I forget which).

You so stubbornly stick with your false claim that GM LOWERS YIELDS perhaps a little ridicule will help you understand that it is false.
So here is the latest ad from Monsanto (based on your "facts"):

BUY GM SEEDS; true they cost a little more, but you will get:

AT LEAST 15% LOWER YEILDS. We guarantee it! - Monsanto

 

[billvon]

You're suggesting that wisdom teeth somehow evolved because we lost all our other teeth at 18?

Nope, never said that. You're making things up again.

Here's some more information for you:
=================================
ScienceLine
Rachele Cooper
February 5, 2007


. . .

Anthropologists believe wisdom teeth, or the third set of molars, were the evolutionary answer to our ancestor’s early diet of coarse, rough food – like leaves, roots, nuts and meats – which required more chewing power and resulted in excessive wear of the teeth. The modern diet with its softer foods, along with marvels of modern technologies such as forks, spoons and knives, has made the need for wisdom teeth nonexistent. As a result, evolutionary biologists now classify wisdom teeth as vestigial organs, or body parts that have become functionless due to evolution.
==================================

That is crazy nonsense talk. Whatever you are doing with your life, you need to change it, even an illiterate and uneducated person knows a lot better than you on many important things.

I'm an engineer and thus must live and work in the real world. I would lose my job if I lived in the sort of Disney-esque world you seem to have constructed for yourself. I realized you have an emotional, almost religious attachment to this world so I will leave you to it.

 

[iceaura]

If the GM was designed to cause X which benefits the plant then yields increase also as a side effect.

That's ridiculous. Lots of things "benefit a plant" without increasing its yield, lots of things are engineered into plants for the benefit of the farmer, or Monsanto, or some middleman, rather than the plant.

None of these GM engineered objectives was directly designed for increasing the farmer’s profit - that is just a desirable side effect.

None of the current commercially distributed engineered plants was designed for anything except somebody's profit - hopefully the farmer's is included, but somebody's is guaranteed. Usually the farmer's is at least promised.

The most solid evidence that GM foods are yielding more profit to the farmers is that they are rapidly switching to use them,

Now we have another topic, farmer's profit, which you seem to have confused with boosted or depressed yields (long after tjhe initial confusion of improved yield with improved food supply, which begs some real world questions).

Farmer's profit was one of the reasons I listed, several posts ago, as a motive for switching to GMOs despite somewhat lower yields than would be available from comparable non-engineered seeds. In fact, I listed it as probably the most important reason, certainly in First World countries - American farmers, unlike Third World targets of Monsanto's efforts, do have (or had, up until very recently) access to comparable non-engineered seeds bred for their geography, along with the farming methods and resources necessary to grow them. For such farmers, the balance between the lowered costs of cultivation and the lowered yields of the modified crop is important, and so the marketing efforts address it directly.

So here is the latest ad from Monsanto (based on your "facts"):

BUY GM SEEDS; true they cost a little more, but you will get:

AT LEAST 15% LOWER YEILDS. We guarantee it! - Monsanto

The yield drag for GM herbicide resistant soybeans, documented in the link I posted just above, was 5%. The yield drag for "stacked" modifications (necessary for resistance to multiple insect pests, as Bt is a family of insecticides which are individually highly specific) is rumored to be more than additive (the relevant research is mostly proprietary) but probably not as high as 5% to begin with - so 15% is possible, but unlikely. I'm sorry - were you joking? If you peruse Monsanto's actual ads, the ones directed at First World farmers, you will find frequent mention of improvements in "yield drag", with the latest and greatest featuring less of it - so basically your ad, worded better for sales.

You can't ridicule from a basis of ignorance, and you are profoundly and significantly ignorant in this matter. And as mentioned before: So are the other gung ho promotors of GM crops here. It's a pattern.

 

[typical animal]

Nope, never said that. You're making things up again.

Here's some more information for you:
=================================
ScienceLine
Rachele Cooper
February 5, 2007


. . .

Anthropologists believe wisdom teeth, or the third set of molars, were the evolutionary answer to our ancestor’s early diet of coarse, rough food – like leaves, roots, nuts and meats – which required more chewing power and resulted in excessive wear of the teeth. The modern diet with its softer foods, along with marvels of modern technologies such as forks, spoons and knives, has made the need for wisdom teeth nonexistent. As a result, evolutionary biologists now classify wisdom teeth as vestigial organs, or body parts that have become functionless due to evolution.
==================================

Well Rachele Cooper is full of shit. She's just called wisdom teeth "organs". No credible evolutionary biologist would claim wisdom teeth are vestigial since we use them on a daily basis if we stuff our mouths full of food, even if you only use them a tiny bit they aren't vestigial. The appendix is something that's vestigial. Also, no credible evolutionary biologist would say that something is "vestigial" because modern technologies mean they aren't used by all people anymore.

Scienceline is a student-run online magazine published by the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) in the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. For more information, e-mail us. See below for our corrections and comments policies.

Scienceline’s writers and editors are unpaid but you can express support for them and their work by making a tax-deductible contribution to a university-administered SHERP scholarship fund, the proceeds of which are used solely to benefit future SHERP students via tuition-remission scholarships.

Herpy derp. http://scienceline.org/about/

I suggest reading The Descent of Man (Penguin edition, it's online also but I recommend a physical copy). It's my evolution "bible", or one of them.

 

[Russ_Watters]

https://www.agronomy.org/publications/aj/abstracts/93/2/408?access=0&view=article

Congratulations, you found an example of a study showing a yield reduction in one case. No one here suggested you wouldn't. If you look hard enough, you might find one or two or ten or a hundred. But that doesn't prove your claim. Your claim was that GM almost always decreases yields, a claim that can only be proven with a meta-analysis such as the one you posted previously. The problem is, your own source explicitly contradicts you. You ignored it last time, so I'll repost:

The most recent overview study (Carpenter, 2010), which was
based on 49 peer-reviewed publications reporting on farmer surveys in 12 countries
worldwide, came to the conclusion that benefits from growing GM crops mainly derive from
increased yields...

So there it is in black and white: you claimed "almost every" GM crop produces lower yields, whereas your own source says that they almost always increase yields.

That source goes on to list a couple of dozen different crops with a quantitative accounting of their yield increases.

In any case, I too would like an explanation of why you think that farmers are buying GM seeds if they produce lower yields.

 

[Russ_Watters]

Oh it'll be "edible" alright, it'll be TOO edible, like bread. Over time its integrity and how well it fits our human biology though is going to dramatically decline as it departs from the food we are co-evolved to eat.

I don't understand/that sounds contradictory. How can it be "too edible" while at the same time its "integrity" is declining? Or are you saying it hasn't happened yet? When will it? How? Will we wake up one day and our soybean crop that last year was just fine is inedible this year?

I saw Bob Geldof making a similar statement to you: "if we can make this gm food and give it to poor people, then why not do it?"..... and it all sounds so simple and easy. Usually when a person talks in a simple and easy way like that, they can either be rebuked in a simple and easy way or else they're right. However with GM it takes a huge amount of explaining and understanding as to why this would actually be a terrible, terrible thing....

Is it still worthwhile if while you are explaining to a person why you won't give them food, they starve to death?

In any case, I'm not starving to death and I ate a bowl of almost certainly GM soybeans last night that also didn't kill me, so could you please try to explain it to me why it is so bad? All this sounds very vague and hand-wavey to me.

 

[typical animal]

I don't understand/that sounds contradictory. How can it be "too edible" while at the same time its "integrity" is declining? Or are you saying it hasn't happened yet? When will it? How? Will we wake up one day and our soybean crop that last year was just fine is inedible this year? Is it still worthwhile if while you are explaining to a person why you won't give them food, they starve to death?

Edible means you can eat it. Integrity is the nutritional value including phytonutrients, micronutrients, antioxidants and many other chemicals and structures composing food that are unknown and at the present state of progress unknowable at any time in the foreseeable future.

Got it? Edible = Can eat. Integrity = Value. No contradiction.

 

[iceaura]

. The problem is, your own source explicitly contradicts you. You ignored it last time, so I'll repost:

No, it doesn't. And no, I didnt'.

You don't understand the argument, and reposting your lack of comprehension does not help you.

I directed the post at Billy, because he at least is not stupid, but here's another chance for you to ponder the central issue: increased yields compared with what?. When you have answered that question, you can compare your answer with may assertions and claims and arguments and so forth and begin to participate in a discussion of this matter.

In any case, I too would like an explanation of why you think that farmers are buying GM seeds if they produce lower yields.

So go back are reread the several reasons and arguments and explanations and so forth I've posted already, some more than once. You don't read, or what is your problem?

I ate a bowl of almost certainly GM soybeans last night that also didn't kill me,

You don't know that, actually. You ate a bowl of resistance genes for antibiotics and herbicide complex and various auxiliary code that was digested and released into the bacterial flora of your small intestine in uptake ready form, and whether or not you will eventually be killed by the side effects of that is an open question. It's very unlikely, but it's not a matter of secure knowledge - and it's not just you: nobody knows what the eventual effects of that will be.

 

[billvon]

You ate a bowl of resistance genes for antibiotics and herbicide complex and various auxiliary code that was digested and released into the bacterial flora of your small intestine in uptake ready form, and whether or not you will eventually be killed by the side effects of that is an open question. It's very unlikely, but it's not a matter of secure knowledge - and it's not just you: nobody knows what the eventual effects of that will be.

True. His alternative was to eat a bowl of unnatural, artificially engineered organisms that were designed by randomly adding bits of DNA to the organism until it seemed to taste good and yielded a good yield for the farmer. Whether or not he will be killed by that is also an open question, although it's very unlikely. (Although since these were designed by random hybridizations with other plants, some people will be happier with this risk of death.)

 

[scheherazade]

Pardon my intervention but this excerpt from a recent article looks like it might have a fit with the discussion currently underway.

Turns out, though, that both assertions in BIO's statement are highly questionable. Washington State University researcher Charles Benbrook has demonstrated that the net effect of GMOs in the United States has been an increase in use of toxic chemical inputs. Benbrook found that while the Bt trait has indeed allowed farmers to spray dramatically lower levels of insecticides, that effect has been more than outweighed the gusher of herbicides uncorked by Monsanto's Roundup Ready technology, as weeds have rapidly adapted resistance to regular doses of Monsanto's Rounup herbicide.

And in a new paper (PDF) funded by the US Department of Agriculture, University of Wisconsin researchers have essentially negated the "more food" argument as well. The researchers looked at data from UW test plots that compared crop yields from various varieties of hybrid corn, some genetically modified and some not, between 1990 and 2010. While some GM varieties delivered small yield gains, others did not. Several even showed lower yields than non-GM counterparts. With the exception of one commonly used trait—a Bt type designed to kill the European corn borer—the authors conclude, "we were surprised not to find strongly positive transgenic yield effects." Both the glyphosate-tolerant (Roundup Ready) and the Bt trait for corn rootworm caused yields to drop.

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/02/do-gmo-crops-have-lower-yields

 

[Russ_Watters]

Edible means you can eat it. Integrity is the nutritional value including phytonutrients, micronutrients, antioxidants and many other chemicals and structures composing food that are unknown and at the present state of progress unknowable at any time in the foreseeable future.

Got it? Edible = Can eat. Integrity = Value. No contradiction.

Ok, then what about the rest? Are you saying the nutritional value is or will be going down? Do you have evidence of that?

 

[Russ_Watters]

No, it doesn't.

So you see "increased yields" and you think that means "decreased yields"?

...here's another chance for you to ponder the central issue: increased yields compared with what?.

Increased yields compared with what the farm was producing before.

 

[typical animal]

I already answered that multiple times in this thread and/or the other one. If you're too lazy to go through it or not bright enough to understand or saw it already but forgot already then I can't help you. Saying it again would be simply repeating myself.

 

[river]

I already answered that multiple times in this thread and/or the other one. If you're too lazy to go through it or not bright enough to understand or saw it already but forgot already then I can't help you. Saying it again would be simply repeating myself.

Just a question about you

You take a strong stance , fine

But you intimate a knowledge with the subject and with stem cell research

Now why should I not just think of you as a blowhard ?

What are your credentials to speak so authoritatively ?

 

[river]

Typical wrote

Got it? Edible = Can eat. Integrity = Value. No contradiction.

Disagree completely

Edible = can eat , is it wise though ? That is the question

Integrity = value

Absolutely false

Actually , Integrity = truth , honesty , and being honourable