Transgenic fish go large

[keith1]

Actually, there have been numerous feeding studies on humans. Duration : 15 years. Numbers : at least one billion.
Results : no harm.

That is not a qualified study. But, over time, we will have to live (or not live) with the results.

In the mean time, I and mine, will stick with the locally grown organic varieties, and steer clear of the Atlantic grown salmon. Thanks, but no thanks.

 

[Skeptical]

On the contrary. That is the kind of study that has the greatest, by far, reliability. Real world. Large numbers. Long duration. And lots of happy little epidemiologists trying very hard to make their reputations by finding a problem.

On the basis of one hell of a lot of data, we know that there is no reason to suspect that approved GM foods cause any harm at all.

You appear to be keen on organic food. You should be aware that this carries significant hazards. Because organic food is not well protected against insect attack, the organic plants tend to produce large amounts of natural insecticide. One example is cucurbitacin from zucchinis.
http://archives.heritage.com/sr/20030918/R10IMBV.htm

I quote (about organically grown zucchinis):
"Carla Scruggs, Saline’s director of Parks and Recreation, is one such gardener who has shared her harvest with friends, family and co-workers. But, the result of her generosity has brought mixed reviews. Two of the recipients of her zucchinis became violently ill after consuming meals which featured her home-grown zucchini"

 

[keith1]

That is the kind of study that has the greatest, by far, reliability. Real world. Large numbers. Long duration....

On the basis of one hell of a lot of data....

You appear to be keen on organic food....

Actually, there have been numerous organic food studies on humans. Duration : 10,000+ years. Numbers : at least 115 billion.**
Results : no harm.

With this in mind, clearly GM products have been pushed down the world's throats, with little thought or testing of the long term (multi-generational) consequences. It was a rush job, and russian roulette with the species.

**courtesy:wikipedia

 

[Skeptical]

Keith

re organic food studies
What epidemiologists have been monitoring the results?

In fact, recently the British Food Safety Agency concluded a study of organic food and concluded there was no health or nutritional advantage to it compared to other foods.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/29/organic-food-nutrition-fsa

Organic food enthusiasts usually try to say that pesticide residues in conventional food make it less safe. However, conventional food is routinely tested by a number of authorities (Here in New Zealand it is by the NZ Food Safety Authority) and sufficient pesticide residue to represent even the slightest risk is rare to the point of non existence. According to the journal put out by the NZFSA (Food Facts), 50% of all tests for pesticides known to have been applied return a finding of too low to detect - about one part per trillion or less. The other 50% are almost all way less than one part per million. These levels are totally insignificant in terms of health.

In fact, overall, organic food has substantially more pesticide residue than conventional, if you take into account natural insecticides. That is because organic plants, being more attacked by insects, produce a lot more natural insecticide. In some cases, such as my zucchini example, this becomes quite significant, and can be hazardous to health.

Another problem with organic crops is from toxic fungi, spread by insects. For example : the fungus Fusarium grows on organic maize, because lack of insecticide spray means insects attack it, and spread the fungus with their mouthparts. This means higher levels of the fungal toxin fumonisin (which can cause serious birth defects - to the human brain).
http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=...v=onepage&q="organic maize"+fumonisin&f=false

Organic maize consistently scores the highest levels of this hazardous toxin.

 

[keith1]

I believe I made my point. Let others decide their preference.
I showed scientific evidence that lab rats diminished in health and litter size after four generations of GM food consumption.
You showed that science testing is not needed, that the world has been duped into ingesting GM foods, with little testing, and everything is okay, after half a generation (15 years).
Good luck with that analysis.

 

[Gremmie]

I like salmon.. Like it, not love it.

I would never knowingly eat GM salmon though, or any other GM food.

Man should only go so far..


Just my opinion.

 

[Doreen]

The government oversight of American foods is controlled by industry....

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68C39320100913

This is based on a survey of government inspectors and scientists.

Go ahead. Eat the stuff these guys are making. I am sure they have tested it adequately. What possible motives could they have for rushing something to market?

 

[Neverfly]

Call me crazy, but I fail to see a safety issue with genetically modified food. All food has been selectively modified for a very long time.

Food safety deals with foreign harmful substances such as toxins, bacteria and basic allergens.

But genetically modified food has nothing to do with any of that. What risk is there in eating genetically modified food as opposed to food that mutated naturally or a variety of foods that have very different DNA from eachother?

 

[keith1]

" ...variety of foods that have very different DNA from each other?...

Unfortunately, such a seemingly harmless act of transferring a specific wanted gene trait requires additional transfer of other genes, called "switchs" or "promoter".
These "switch on" genes may not be precise in their intended action...

...Numerous studies are showing that the CaMV promoter not only turns on the foreign gene to which it is attached, but other native genes as well, including those that are supposed to stay dormant..."

"...Silencing native genes can result in all manner of unpredictable outcomes..."

"...Scientists warn that the energy and resources that an organism requires to keep a gene switched on round the clock in every cell will ultimately pay the price in the health of that entire plant or animal (humans included)..."

"...switch consequences may be cancer. Many scientists are now seeing that this promoter could affect the stomach and colonic linings by causing a growth factor effect, thereby hastening the development of abnormal cells..."

"...When a foreign gene is inserted, the whole metabolic process is changed, and not just the one thing on which that particular scientist is concentrating. Each change will impact other pathways. Genes influence each other as do proteins. Altered proteins can activate or de-activate genes. With each change comes a new interaction which sets off even more changes..."

courtesy: Jeffrey M. Smith, "Seeds of Deception"

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

courtesy: Jeffrey M. Smith, "Seeds of Deception"

This is what happens when you form your opinions using a privately published, non-peer reviewed and obviously biased book instead of peer-reviewed neutral scientific sources of information (such as journal publications or commissioned reviews from identified experts with no declared conflicts of interest). This is merely a list of ‘maybe’ and ‘might be’ suppositions, as well as some unsupportable assertions.

...Numerous studies are showing that the CaMV promoter not only turns on the foreign gene to which it is attached, but other native genes as well, including those that are supposed to stay dormant..."

Let’s see these “numerous studies”. Unless the promoter also contains associated upstream enhancer elements, it’s unlikely that a tissue and/or temporal specific promoter alone would affect anything other than the transgene that lies directly downstream of it. besides, CaMV is a plant promoter; I thought we were talking about GM salmon.

"...Silencing native genes can result in all manner of unpredictable outcomes..."

Granted, but let’s see the scientific evidence that this is occurring in the GM salmon in question. It’s not valid to assume this is the case.

"...Scientists warn that the energy and resources that an organism requires to keep a gene switched on round the clock in every cell will ultimately pay the price in the health of that entire plant or animal (humans included)..."

Firstly, I do not believe that in cases such as the GM salmon in question that expression of the transgene is ubiquitous constitutive expression (ie. on in all cells all the time). In fact, it’s stupid to believe that. The GM salmon is bigger than its natural counterpart due to exogenous growth hormone production coded for by the introduced transgene. The transgene itself may be present in every cell, but the promoter that drives transgene expression will be tissue specific for the cell types that can actually produce growth hormone. In other words, although the transgene is present in every cell, it is not active in every cell, only in those cells that have the biochemical apparatus to produce growth hormone.

Secondly, even if we accept this faulty premise, to suggest that this would have any impact on a human consuming the fish is unsupported assertion.

"...switch consequences may be cancer.

Yeah, maybe. It may be. It might be. It could be.

It's more unsupported assertion. There’s no rational scientific reason to suspect that eating a GM animal will cause any sort of cancer. That’s yet another example of the ill-informed hysteria surrounding this topic.

Many scientists are now seeing that this promoter could affect the stomach and colonic linings by causing a growth factor effect, thereby hastening the development of abnormal cells..."

More unsupported assertion.

"...When a foreign gene is inserted, the whole metabolic process is changed,

No.

 

[keith1]

This is what happens when you form your opinions using a privately published, non-peer reviewed and obviously biased book instead of peer-reviewed neutral scientific sources of information (such as journal publications or commissioned reviews from identified experts with no declared conflicts of interest). This is merely a list of ‘maybe’ and ‘might be’ suppositions, as well as some unsupportable assertions.[]





Let’s see these “numerous studies”. Unless the promoter also contains associated upstream enhancer elements, it’s unlikely that a tissue and/or temporal specific promoter alone would affect anything other than the transgene that lies directly downstream of it. besides, CaMV is a plant promoter; I thought we were talking about GM salmon.



Granted, but let’s see the scientific evidence that this is occurring in the GM salmon in question. It’s not valid to assume this is the case.



Firstly, I do not believe that in cases such as the GM salmon in question that expression of the transgene is ubiquitous constitutive expression (ie. on in all cells all the time). In fact, it’s stupid to believe that. The GM salmon is bigger than its natural counterpart due to exogenous growth hormone production coded for by the introduced transgene. The transgene itself may be present in every cell, but the promoter that drives transgene expression will be tissue specific for the cell types that can actually produce growth hormone. In other words, although the transgene is present in every cell, it is not active in every cell, only in those cells that have the biochemical apparatus to produce growth hormone.

Secondly, even if we accept this faulty premise, to suggest that this would have any impact on a human consuming the fish is unsupported assertion.



Yeah, maybe. It may be. It might be. It could be.

It's more unsupported assertion. There’s no rational scientific reason to suspect that eating a GM animal will cause any sort of cancer. That’s yet another example of the ill-informed hysteria surrounding this topic.



More unsupported assertion.



No.

Source please. Your countering my source with nothing. Worse, you are accepting a premise without conclusive data. A premise which will not be easily countermanded, once in play. So you add or detract nothing to the claim that there has not been enough scientific testing on the issue. That is the main point here.

 

[Michael]

Keith

re organic food studies
What epidemiologists have been monitoring the results?

In fact, recently the British Food Safety Agency concluded a study of organic food and concluded there was no health or nutritional advantage to it compared to other foods.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/29/organic-food-nutrition-fsa

Organic food enthusiasts usually try to say that pesticide residues in conventional food make it less safe. However, conventional food is routinely tested by a number of authorities (Here in New Zealand it is by the NZ Food Safety Authority) and sufficient pesticide residue to represent even the slightest risk is rare to the point of non existence. According to the journal put out by the NZFSA (Food Facts), 50% of all tests for pesticides known to have been applied return a finding of too low to detect - about one part per trillion or less. The other 50% are almost all way less than one part per million. These levels are totally insignificant in terms of health.

In fact, overall, organic food has substantially more pesticide residue than conventional, if you take into account natural insecticides. That is because organic plants, being more attacked by insects, produce a lot more natural insecticide. In some cases, such as my zucchini example, this becomes quite significant, and can be hazardous to health.

Another problem with organic crops is from toxic fungi, spread by insects. For example : the fungus Fusarium grows on organic maize, because lack of insecticide spray means insects attack it, and spread the fungus with their mouthparts. This means higher levels of the fungal toxin fumonisin (which can cause serious birth defects - to the human brain).
http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=...v=onepage&q="organic maize"+fumonisin&f=false

Organic maize consistently scores the highest levels of this hazardous toxin.

Just on the pesticides, I used to work in a grocery market and it was a fact you had to wash fruits and veggies and handle them with elbow length rubber gloves. One woman didn't because she said the gloves chaffed and in a few weeks her arms were literally covered wit open sores and scabs from whatever the hell was on the food.

Ever since then, I have always washed my fruit with cold soapy water and rinsed well. I also stopped buying cherries unless organic because the skin holds the chemicals so well (actually absorbs it) it can't be washed off. I'm not waiting around for some study that says: Oh yeah, I guess all those cancers weren't better screening but actually from all the chemicals we ate,

Organic has it's problems too, don't get me wrong. I'm sure in many cases it's better not to eat organic simply because it's not fresh and is infected with bacteria and molds (unless you grow it yourself).


We live in a society where our food is part of a manufacturing process (just to feed all of us cheaply) and I'm sure we can't do it for 5 billion humans without either pesticides or new technology like the transgenic salmon. That said, I'd rather there were just less people and we didn't have to resort to these drastic measures. We need to cut back on the number of god damn people! /rant/

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

Source please.

My own expertise in the area. This is what I do for a career; I make GM organisms. Granted, it’s for medical and pure research purposes, not for commercial projects. But the genetic engineering technology I apply to my research is identical to that used by companies to make GM foods and animals. I live and breathe genetic modification technology.

Your countering my source with nothing.

Your link points to a page which makes a series of statements without a single supporting reference. It’s not even indicated anywhere that I can see that the material is from the book "Seeds of Deception" by Jeffrey Smith, as you claim. I don’t know who Jeffrey Smith is; perhaps he’s a scientist. But so am I, and I’m labelling his analysis as mostly imbalanced scaremongering.

 

[Skeptical]

Michael

There are many causes of rashes from handling plant material. I would be exceedingly surprised if it was synthetic pesticides. The thing is that modern, government approved, pesticides are all biodegradable, and have broken down before the food gets to market. Unless something badly wrong happens, which should be a very rare event.

I have read of cases of such rashes from organic food also. As I said earlier, organic food has, overall, a much higher pesticide load than conventional, if we count natural pesticides as well. Some of these are highly irritant. For example : psoralins from parsnips and celery are strong irritants to human skin.

I also wash all fruit and vegetables before eating. My reasons, though, are more related to the fact that other humans handle food in greengrocers and at supermarkets, and some of those dirty buggers do not bother to wash their hands after going to the toilet, even after 'serious business'.

 

[keith1]

My own expertise in the area. ... pure research purposes, not for commercial projects...

At least you specify the difference. It would be nice to see some more research. Horses look better pulling the cart, not chasing it.
Of course your supportive stance is to be expected, regardless. Trust me.

 

[ElectricFetus]

I'm all for it, better then fishing the oceans bare.

 

[Kat9Lives]

i love Salmon!!
but the thought of eating transgenic salmon groses me out!!
so i vote NO to eating it.

 

[John99]

I would never knowingly eat GM salmon though, or any other GM food.

Man should only go so far..


Just my opinion.

See how it tastes first OR be superstitious?

 

[Gremmie]

See how it tastes first OR be superstitious?

Has nothing to do with being superstitious. Merely a matter of personal preference.

 

[John99]

What kind of a preference? Must not be from taste since you havent eaten one.

It is just like eating a vitamin or getting the vitamin type from a vegetable.

If the fish in its natural state is safe to eat then enhancing the same exact components should not be any different.