To leopold
Let me tell you what I told Ultra and iceaura.
I will totally ignore any reference that comes from non reputable sources. GM has become a highly politicised matter, and all kinds of political lobby groups have web sites using extremely lousy science to attack GM.
I will give full credence to any reference coming from a reputable scientific source. If you post material from peer reviewed scientific journals, or popular but reputable science news journals like
New Scientist,
Scientific American,
The Scientist,
Sciencedaily, or reports from good science research institutes, or the research departments of government health bodies etc., then I will treat those references with respect.
On the other hand, if you post political bullshit, like
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...xt=va&aid=7277 , then I will treat it with total contempt.
On the GM potatoes and the now discredited researcher Dr. Pusztai.
This work was evaluated by the British Royal Society, which is one of the most reputable scientific bodies on the planet.
http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-info/articles/biotech-art/pusztai-potatoes.html
I quote :
"But a committee of six eminent members of the British Royal Society, set up in April of 1999 to review the Pusztai data, reached the opposite conclusion. The committee sent out the material they received from Pusztai, the Rowett and other sources to scientists with expertise in statistics, clinical trials, physiology, nutrition, quantitative genetics, growth and development, and immunology. The committee reviewed the opinions it received and issued a summary statement in June of 1999. The consensus of these experts was that the experiments were poorly designed, the statistical inappropriate, and the results inconsistent. Their recommendation was that the experiments be repeated and the results published."
Of course, the anti-GM radicals and Dr. Pusztai himself will argue against these conclusions. But I trust the British Royal Society, as being good scientists. I do not trust the radical opposition.
On the question of monitoring.
It is kind of laughable that we keep getting the complaint that no-one monitors. Actually, the truth is that this kind of research is intensive, but consistently fails. In other words, the researchers give up because they cannot find anything wrong. Numerous Ph.D. students of epidemiology have tried to find links between GM and disease. This has become a pretty neglected field, for the simple reason that such links have not been found. It is hard to get a Ph.D. on the basis of a thesis that is consistently negative!
So when Chimpkin says little data from independent tests exist, she is right. That does not mean those tests have not been done. Many have been done. The problem is an old one in science. When a researcher runs tests, and finds negative results, the researchers tend not to publish.
If a researcher tests the safety of a GM food or crop, and discovers a problem, it gets published pretty damn quick. If no problem is found - no publication. This distorts published research results. Those who understand how things work, understand this distortion and allow for it. Those who do not understand, read into it things that do not exist. The difference between those who understand how science works and those who do not.
I have no problem with more research being done. If government regulations require long term feeding studies, I applaud. Gathering extra data is never a bad thing, as long as it is done via good science, and not from political web sites.